Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  “It is our sin! We have killed when we should not, and offended the commandment of the Lord!” he cried out, but his voice was lost in the sound of muskets and cheering. Then the pikes and snakes came for him too, and he was running, and weeping with fear and shame.

  “I meant to fight, Lord, though You do not love me, but it is too cruel, and Your Heart is too hard.”

  Then Israel Fuller damned him, and cast him out from the army of the Elect. Adam walked weeping past the scornful eyes of his family, Mary and Ann and Simon and the little girls and Oliver, and the Lord blotted out the sun from him. In the darkness he felt the first big drops of rain on his face, and he joined the other damned on their endless night march to Hell, their feet rotting in their shoes as they hauled their useless guns and carts through a swamp of rain and mud.

  “It’s me, father - Ann. Don’t worry, I’m here.”

  He turned his head away sharply from the horrid vision. It was too cruel - even in his worst dreams he had never thought the Devil would look like his own daughter! He groaned, waiting for the soft hand on his head to burn him, the rough straw bed to turn to a heap of coals. But nothing happened; the cool hand gently smoothed his hair back from something rough on his forehead and the raindrops fell on his face.

  “It’s only me, Ann. Don’t you know me?”

  He looked again. The face had not darkened, no fangs leered from a devilish grin. Only Ann, stroking his forehead softly, tears from her wet cheeks dropping on his face. He risked a question.

  “Ann?”

  “Yes, father. It’s only me. You were dreaming.”

  “Ann, where am I?” He half believed it now - but it could be a worse torment, to put his own daughter with him, in Hell.

  “In a house in the village. Surgeon’s seen to your head. He says you’ll be all right, but you’re to lie quiet.”

  He put his hand up to his head, and felt the pad and the bandage where the musket-ball had been deflected by his helmet. “But how are you here?”

  “‘Tis a long story, father. You’re to rest now. I’ll tell it later.”

  He lay back, weak but suddenly content, and looked at her. She was the same Ann, yet changed. The face framed by the loose red-brown hair was older, more womanly than he remembered. And the dress - where had she got that dress? He meant to ask her, but somehow, the effort seemed too great, and he fell into a calm sleep, blessed by the memory of her gentle smile.

  34

  ANN FELT her smile wear thin as the afternoon dragged on, though she knew it was needed now more than ever. In the farm kitchen where the surgeon had improvised his hospital, the pans on the wall shook and hummed regularly as the artillery crashed and boomed outside. It was like thunder that was stuck overhead and would not go away, she thought. At intervals, tired anxious men would come in out of the storm, shouting for the surgeon to see their friends whom they had carried bleeding from the field. They never came at the right time; often they came with three desperate cases when Ann and the other women were busy holding down a man for the surgeon to probe delicately for a bullet in his shoulder, and two other groups would follow the first. Then, after an hour’s desperate, frantic work, there would be a pause during which they had nothing to do but bathe foreheads, smile, and clean up blood and vomit.

  It was in one of these periods that they brought in young Davy, the boy whose neck Ann had bandaged. He was paler now, but conscious, though he did not move; only the wide pupils of his black eyes stared out of his white face with a shocked, final awareness that reminded her of a bird whose wing has been broken by a cat. She spoke to him, and smiled, but there was no recognition in the eyes; just the empty, liquid stare that saw her for a second and then moved on around the room, finally resting on the group around the bloody kitchen table where the surgeon was at work.

  Ann did not have time to spend longer with the man, for another group arrived at the same time - two soldiers carrying a third on a rough litter of wood, and an older man, a sturdy, grey-haired officer in his mid fifties. The officer stood firmly in the doorway, grasping the edge of it with his right hand to stop himself swaying, while his left arm hung uselessly beside him, bits of bone and bloody flesh dangling in the rags of sleeve below the tourniquet. There was a thumb, but no hand. Ann gasped and turned away, her hand to her mouth as the sickness welled up inside her; but only a little came, and then she turned back to face him, ashamed and trembling, trying not to look at his face and not to look at his arm. The face was as pale as the grey hair that framed it.

  “Is the surgeon here? Let him see to this man here as soon as he can. I fear his legs are shattered.” The officer nodded at the soldier on the litter.

  “The surgeon will see to him as soon as he can. If you would lay him down here we will clean the wound for him to see. But your arm, sir. Wouldn’t you like me to look at that first? This man is unconscious.”

  “The arm must come off, girl, there is no sense in cleaning it. You have pitch here, for searing the stumps of wounds, do you not?”

  “Yes, sir. On the fire.” She pointed to the fireplace where a cauldron of pitch was kept slowly bubbling, filling the room with its extra, unwanted heat and smell.

  “Good. Then leave me alone and see to my man.” The officer slumped down on a bench by the second of the two kitchen tables, his face hidden in his good hand.

  Ann turned to the two men carrying the litter. They helped her clear away the cloth from legs almost as shattered as the officer’s arm, and clean them so that at least surgeon Thompson could see where to cut. She glanced questioningly at the officer, but one of the men put his hand on hers and shook his head.

  “There’s nothing you can do for Colonel Holmes, girl, if he don’t want it. He’s already lost his son today, and now this arm. But he’ll have us see to Samuel here first. That’s his way.”

  Then they were busy washing away the cloth and blood as gently as they could. When they heard the first heavy thuds they were absorbed in their work, and it was not until a man cried out in horror from his bed that they looked up.

  It was a sight Ann never forgot. Colonel Holmes was sitting at the table, his left shoulder down on its surface, his shattered left arm stretched out in front of him. With his right hand he was hacking down at it with a great meat cleaver he had found on the wall, hacking down again and again just below the tourniquet, with his head arched back to be out of the way, his pale lips pressed firmly together, and a gleam of wild determination in his eyes. Before anyone could move he had finished. He jerked the cleaver out of the table-top where it was embedded, pushed the bloody remnants of his arm away with it, and then turned unsteadily to the cauldron of boiling pitch behind him. Very carefully he stretched out his right hand, lifted the ladle, and poured hot pitch over the bleeding stump. The hiss and stench made Ann cry out, but the Colonel, grim face white as a ghost, turned silently back to the cauldron again. Before he could reach it, surgeon Thompson had rushed over to him.

  “Wait! Colonel, let me.” In a moment more the stump was seared and the excess pitch cleared off. The Colonel stared into space, still and silent as a ghost, and everyone in the farm kitchen stared at him likewise. Only the surgeon moved and when he had finished, he stood back and looked at the Colonel also.

  “Now, sir, you have done a brave deed, but your body is sorely hurt. You should lie down and rest, to give it time to recover.” He pointed to one of the makeshift beds in the corner.

  The Colonel shook his head slowly. “There is no time for rest yet. I must see to my men. And then I have a bed ... at the inn.”

  He got to his feet, and began to walk towards the door. But halfway there he staggered and had to grip the wall with his one remaining hand. Ann saw the hand begin to shake, and then the arm and the whole body shook too, so that he would have fallen to the floor had the surgeon not caught him.

  “Your men be in the hands of God, sir. Trust yourself into His hands also, and mine. You can do no more fighting today, and I have no time t
o treat ‘ee for more injuries than one.” He beckoned to the Colonel’s two men. “Take Colonel Holmes to the inn, if he has a bed there, and give him brandy, if you can find it. But don’t let him fight again. We may need his courage another day.”

  The two men came forward to help him, but the shaking had stopped, and Colonel Holmes got to his feet by himself, only leaning on the arm of one man. His voice, when he spoke, was a gravelly whisper, drained of all expression but the grey will to survive.

  “I will take your advice, sir. But I think I can get there on my own feet, while the good Lord spares them to me.”

  He walked carefully out of the door, the two soldiers following close behind, ready to catch him if he fell.

  For a moment no-one in the room spoke. Then the man on the operating table groaned, and the surgeon returned to him. Ann could not bring herself to sweep the Colonel’s shattered arm into a bucket and take it to the pit in the kitchen garden, where the others were thrown, but someone did, for when she next looked up from cleaning the man’s leg, it was not there.

  35

  ADAM WAS woken by the water falling on his face, but this time Ann was not there. The water was dripping from the thatch above the rafters, and he could hear the steady patter of rain from outside.

  He raised himself on his shoulder and peered around in the gloom of the big kitchen. There were ten or a dozen men like himself lying on makeshift straw beds around the walls, some asleep, some bandaged and moaning. The kitchen was darker now as though it was evening, and in one corner a group of flickering tallow dips showed the tall figure of Nicolas Thompson bending over a bloody, pale figure lying on a table, helped by the two men who had carried him in. There was a girl there too - Ann! - in that strange brown riding dress she had worn in his dream. He wanted to ask why she was here, but felt too faint to cry out, and lay back weakly on the straw.

  As he watched, the man on the table screamed sharply, and struggled, while his friends held him down. Then the surgeon held up a bullet in his forceps for them all to see before dropping it with a clang into a pan. Ann helped him clean the wound and bandage it, speaking soothingly to the man as she did so.

  Then as the men helped to lift the wounded man into a bed, he recognised them - the short powerful figure of John Spragg and the bigger, bonier frame of Tom Goodchild. Adam tried to sit up to call them, and then lay back feebly with the pain swirling around his head. But they saw him and came over.

  “Adam! How is it, boy? ‘E ‘aven’t gone to join the Lord yet, then?” John Spragg peered at him cheerfully in the gloom.

  “No.” Adam winced at the memory of his dream, and disguised it by touching his head. “‘Tis only a bit of a bruise, I think. But who was that you brought in?”

  “Michael Taylor, poor fellow. ‘E got a ball in the shoulder when we was driving ‘em across that field, and has been left for dead in the rain for three hours since. Tom found ‘un when ‘e started groaning.”

  “Will he be all right?”

  “If ‘e don’t take the fever, surgeon says. Your young maid’s gone to seek some dry clothes for ‘un, bless her heart.”

  “Ann? Oh, yes.” Adam looked round the barn and saw that she had gone. He shook his head helplessly. “Why is she here, John? I sent her home.”

  John Spragg laughed. “I’m sure I don’t know, if you don’t. ‘Tidn’t my daughter. Perhaps young Tom can tell us?”

  Tom looked bemused and tired, irritated by John’s good humour. “No, I don’t know. ‘Er said summat about escaping from the royal troops, but I didn’t follow it at all.”

  “Anyhow, you be glad to have ‘er yer, Adam, however ‘tis come about. Proper home comforts, bain’t it? And ‘er’s marvellous at helping surgeon.”

  “‘Tis no place for a girl,” said Adam, and winced again as he moved his head. “Tom, you’re to see no harm comes to her while she’s here, now.”

  “As best I can, Mr Carter. But we’m to go back to the ranks, now.”

  “What, is the fight not over yet? The guns have stopped.”

  “Oh yes, the fighting’s over, boy,” said John Spragg cheerfully. “We drove ‘em off, Adam, the Lord blew ‘em away like chaff. But now we’m to make ready to march again, it seems.”

  “Again? Tonight? But ‘tis raining. Have we not beaten them?” It did not seem to Adam to make sense. His head was spinning so that he did not understand.

  “That’s what the Duke says.” Tom’s voice was flat and bitter, in complete contrast to John Spragg’s. “Turn your backs and run off through the night. In this bloody rain too. After we sent half a hundred or more of those Papist beggars straight to Hell, and the rest of ‘em running back to Bath in the rain! ‘E don’t know what ‘e’s at.”

  “But what were all the guns? Wasn’t there a proper battle?”

  “Proper enough! You saw it, Adam, didn’t ‘ee? Else what be you lying here for?” John laughed, trying to ignore Tom’s gloom.

  But Tom would not be cheered. “That’s just it, Mr Carter, you did see it all. After we drove ‘em out of the lane and back over the fields the rest of the Papists’s army come up and formed a line to face us, like you saw. We should’ve ‘ad ‘em then. The Duke was there ...”

  “Ar, ‘e was doing his part all right, cheering us on proper, boy. Don’t you forget it,” said John determinedly.

  “Up to then ‘e was. And then Colonel Wade tells Mister Satchell we’m going to fight, and off ‘e goes to see the Duke, and what happens? Nothing, that’s what! We bloody stand there, waiting, while they brings the guns up and fires pot-shots at each other. And then it rains while we’m waiting, and they packs up and goes ‘ome. Just like bloody Bristol, ‘twas!”

  “Except that ‘twas them as ran off in the rain, this time, not us. Don’t ‘ee forget that, boy.” John Spragg’s determined optimism was turning to irritation now, at the heavy gloom Tom was spreading.

  “Then if they run off, why don’t we chase ‘em, or stay yer? Why’s he say we got to march south tonight, eh? ‘Tis cause ‘e’s a bloody coward, that’s why!”

  The bitter words stunned Adam, hurting him more than his wound. He was so sure he had seen the enemy run, had heard the cheers of victory. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps he was dreaming again, and these words had come from the depths of his own mind, not from Tom. But John was staring at Tom too, his face as shocked as Adam felt. For both of them, the hidden fear that Tom was right made it all the more impossible for them to admit it.

  John Spragg had finally had enough.

  “Just you keep your mouth shut, Tom Goodchild, if you’ve got nothing else to use it for than to show your own ignorance. The Duke - our new King rather - has been in more battles, and won ‘em, than you’ve made shoes. Winning battles isn’t just a matter of walking up to t’other lot and giving ‘em a poke with a pike, you know. It takes brains and experience to know what you’m at, so’s you get the right lot of men in the right place at the right time, like we did this morning. If he didn’t fight this afternoon, and wants us to march on tonight, ‘tis cause he’s got a good reason for it, which boys like you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Then why did Colonel Wade want him to fight? He’s got brains enough - and courage. Why didn’t we take Bristol? Why have we got to march off tonight in the rain, like a lot of thieves, when there’s men falling down in the ranks for lack of sleep? Do that seem like sense to you?”

  “‘Tis not your place to question it, Tom,” Adam said, as firmly as the pain in his head would let him. But he knew as he spoke how wrong his words were, how they betrayed the independent spirit they fought for. But Tom’s fear - Adam’s, everyone’s, fear - had to be controlled, suppressed.

  “I come out to fight for the Lord, not for no royal bastard who only thinks of the crown, and lacks the guts to fight for it,” muttered Tom stubbornly. “I begin to wish I never come.”

  “If you thinks like that, boy, you’d better keep your mouth shut,” answered John Spragg. “Such talk is treason no
w.”

  “Then ‘tis treason to go on, and treason to turn back.”

  The two glared at each other over Adam’s bed, until at last the younger man looked away. For a while they stayed in silence, and then helped to lift Adam and the other wounded into the carts. And as the cart lurched and jolted through the night, with men moaning and dying all around him, and rain leaking through the canvas above, Adam thought how utterly unlike a victory it seemed.

  36

  “SO, THIS is the famous Mistress Carter, is it? Well, I see that our friends show some taste in the ladies they kidnap, at least. Have a seat, mademoiselle - Ann, is it not? May I call you that?”

  “Yes, my lord - I mean your Majesty.”

  A slight frown flicked across the Duke of Monmouth’s face at the reminder of his kingship, as though it were a burden to him. Ann settled herself in the wooden armchair by the fireplace. She thought how strained the young, handsome face looked now that she could see it close to, how big and dark the eyes, how petulant the soft, round chin. Once she had thought he looked like Lord Churchill, but now she had seen them both close to, she knew that Churchill had a strength that this man lacked. Had Monmouth changed since she had seen him presented with banners by the schoolgirls of Taunton, or had he always looked more relaxed and confident at a distance, in front of a large, applauding crowd? Only the smile was as charming as she remembered.

  She wondered why he had sent for her.

  “They tell me you were taken prisoner by the enemy, Ann. By Lord Churchill himself! And yet you escaped.”