Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

“I didn’t ask her to come! She shouldn’t be here - ‘tis no godly army that has a girl dragging her skirts behind it, like some devil’s temptress!”

  “Tom!” Ann’s voice was sharp with pain, but he ignored her. “A man should keep his soul pure if he is to fight for the Lord, not be tempted and held back by women. Listen to your father, girl, a man who is happy to retreat just because it keeps you safe. Is that any way to fight? ‘Tis more than likely Monmouth’s brought us back here just because he fancies some drab like you!”

  “Thomas Goodchild! You will not speak of my daughter like that!” Adam half rose to his feet, furious, then thought better of it and sat down. He passed his hand across his brow to calm himself, and then began again. “What is the matter with you, boy? Everything seems wrong for you now - the war, King Monmouth, and now Ann! When we were in Taunton you were glad she was there. Your own father would not believe it if he heard you talking like this. You used to be a tower of strength to us; now you seem more likely to destroy us!”

  “I am out to destroy the works of the Devil, whereever I find them. And he is amongst us now, Mr Carter, though you are too blind to see it. Other men can see it; godly men, who listen to Israel Fuller, and study the works of the Lord and pray to Him daily. ‘Tis the Devil in our leaders that has denied us victory, and given them over to pride and vanity. There’s even the Devil in your daughter, Mr Carter!”

  “What do you mean, boy?” Adam’s voice was unnaturally level and warm, balanced as it was between the white heat of fury and an icy doubt. Ann stared at Tom, speechless. For a moment he hesitated, but it came out at last.

  “I mean that she ... only that she would hold us back from fighting out of fear for her safety, as you have said. I cannot give my heart to the Lord’s work if I am worried about what she may be doing with our own men, or with the enemy.” He looked down at his hands, confused, embarrassed now that he had said it. Then he lifted his eyes in sullen defiance.

  “Do you call my daughter a whore, boy? Is that what you mean by the Devil in her?”

  “I only say what I think to be true.”

  “But it’s not true, Tom! You know it isn’t!” Ann’s voice was high and wild with shock, so that Adam felt sure it could be heard in the street outside.

  “I know that you tempted me in a way any honest woman would be ashamed to do!”

  “I tempted you?”

  “I don’t like to say it in front of your father, but the Lord knows it to be true. Such conduct can only be some devilish trick that you have learned at the hands of your Papist captors, who sent you back to infect us with it!” Tom spat the words out with a venomous fury as though he were indeed infected, and then turned abruptly away from them both, to begin fiddling nervously with the wood again.

  Adam and Ann sat silent, stunned by the outburst, neither daring to look at the other. At last Adam broke the silence, a terrible sadness in his voice, as though his whole life were wasted.

  “Is there any truth in this, Ann?”

  She turned and looked at her father, desperately seeking his eyes, his understanding, but he only stared down dully at the wood in front of him, the terrible male conspiracy isolating her in guilt, as it had done before at Chard.

  “I only ... he is my betrothed, father!”

  “You only what? You are not yet married, girl, you should know that!”

  “Ask him. He knows it was not just me.”

  Adam turned to Tom, his face grim as an executioner’s. “What exactly is this Devil’s work that you complain of?”

  Tom too kept his eyes down as he spoke, as though what he spoke of were too shameful to be openly acknowledged.

  “She ... she put it in my mind that I might easily die in the next battle, and ... that if I did so, we ... she would never have had conjugal relations with me, as man and wife. And so she offered herself to me, brazenly like a strumpet, there in the wood!” His voice rose to a high sob as he finished, as though he himself had been raped.

  “And what did you do?”

  “It was a temptation of the Devil!”

  “And you accepted it!” Ann could keep quiet no longer. “Oh yes, father, he did! He coupled with me, and pretty roughly too! It didn’t take much tempting to get your breeches down, did it?”

  “Be quiet, Ann!” Adam banged the table in rage. “How can you speak like this, girl? My own daughter! My own daughter a whore!”

  “But it was only with Tom, father - we are betrothed!”

  “You did not learn to kiss like that from me!” Tom said. “You learnt that Devil’s art from other men - from those Papists and idolaters you coupled with before! From Robert Pole!”

  “No!” She looked to her father for support, but his eyes were stern and distant, withdrawn into deep, unreachable sadness. “I didn’t ... “

  “Be quiet, Ann. You will only further endanger your soul by lying, and anyway I do not want to hear what you did or did not do with other men. It is enough that you have sullied yourself with Tom.” Adam paused, and passed his hand across his eyes, searching for the words to go on. “I never thought I would live to hear a daughter of mine had behaved so ... shamefully with a man. It is your part to resist temptation, girl, not encourage it.”

  “Yes, father.” She bowed her head, hopelessly. It was useless to resist.

  “At least, as you say, you are betrothed, and you will be married as soon as this business is over. So perhaps only the three of us here will know of your shame.”

  “And what if I do not wish to marry her now, when she has brought these strumpet’s tricks into the army of the Lord? I agreed to marry an honest girl, not a …”

  “You will marry her now, Tom!” Adam cut across Tom, before he said the hateful word. “You have no choice. You admit that you have succumbed to temptation and lain with my daughter when you should not; now you must accept the responsibility for it, and care for her and the child, if there be one!”

  “But it may not be my child! If ‘er’s been with some idolatrous Papist let him look after it!”

  “Oh, Tom, I never did it with anyone else. You are the first, God help me!”

  “But how ...?”

  “You hear what my daughter says, Thomas. I believe her and so should you, if only for your own peace of mind. She may have sinned, as you say, but you sinned with her, and it would be a greater sin by far if you were to abandon her now. I hardly think your father or friend Israel would support you in that, and by the Lord God, Tom, if you abandon my daughter and sully her good name after this as you have sullied her body, I shall see to it that you never dare set foot in Colyton village again!”

  Ann remembered later how magnificent her father had looked then, in the strength of his conviction, and how cowed and sullen Tom seemed in comparison.

  “Consult your conscience, Tom, and see if you cannot find some of the good Lord’s love and charity in your heart as well as His wrath, for we are all sinners, you know; you as well as the rest.”

  “But we will not all be redeemed,” Tom muttered surlily. Adam got to his feet, and stood for a second, shocked that his own fear should come from the boy’s mouth. But his anger was flowing too quickly for him to hesitate long.

  “Redemption is in the hands of the Lord, boy, and best left there. Our task is to live our lives on earth as best we can according to His precepts, whatever may happen to us after. And it seems to me that the best way for you two to do that now is to sit quietly together here in this room and try to recover something of that which you have lost. I hope I can leave you alone safely, at least. I will speak to you later, Tom, to see what you have decided.”

  When he had left them they sat for a while without talking, like strangers put by accident in the same prison cell. Tom stared at the wall, and Ann watched him, wondering if it would be like this when they were married, and whether she could bear it if it were. Perhaps, she thought, if you sit still long enough your heart turns to stone, and ceases to ache. Or do love and hope just go bad thr
ough lack of use and turn to hatred and despair, like wine to vinegar? She had never loved Tom as she had Robert, but until yesterday she had thought they could at least marry and be friends. She had never hated him until now. Now she only wanted to hurt him, for his treachery.

  He fiddled nervously with the wood he had been carving, as though she were not there.

  “You don’t want to marry me, do you?” she said at last, to break the boredom.

  “No. But it seems I’ll have to.”

  “Yes. And every night I’ll bleed on you, and whisper to you about how I coupled with other men, and what they said to me when they did it. Shall I tell you about Robert Pole?”

  “No!” He scowled at her in horror.

  “Oh, but I think I should, Tom, to remind you what a sacrifice you are making, and help you to repent properly of your sins. You see, when I spread my legs for him ... “

  “Shut your mouth, you filthy harlot!” He got up and slapped his hand hard across her face, so that she almost fell sideways off the bench, and had to grip it to stop herself. She glared at him bitterly through the hair which had fallen about her face, her cheek aching with the pain.

  “If we are to be married you will not talk to me like that, ever! Such words are not fit for a Christian woman!”

  “And you will stop me by hitting me? A fine Christian marriage we shall have. Like a whited sepulchre.”

  “‘Tis a husband’s duty to chastise his wife.”

  “Not every day, Tom. And I shall remind you of it every day, now. My father will not be very pleased when he sees me with a new bruise every day.”

  “Then he shouldn’t force us to get married. ‘Tis a proper Devil’s mockery!” He got up angrily and strode to the window, banging his fist on the low oaken beam above it, and leaning his forehead against one of the small panes to cool it.

  Ann rubbed her bruised face and sighed, trying to hold back her tears. It was not this she had had in mind when she had ridden down the hill at Philip’s Norton to become part of her own world again. Nor when she had tried to love Tom and give him back his courage. If her future was to be like this, it was not worth fighting for.

  “Perhaps it won’t come to anything after all, Tom. If the army is defeated, you may not be alive to marry me anyway. Perhaps we should pray to God for that.”

  She regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them. They were too cruel; a treacherous blasphemy that included not only Tom but her father and all the men from Colyton, all the thousands of good honest men in the town around them who were risking their lives for their King Monmouth. But it was too late to take the words back. Tom had heard them, and turned, his face twisted with bitter scorn.

  “I knew you were one of the Devil’s party. Only a Papist’s whore could say such a thing. I don’t care what your father says, I could never marry you. You’re a harlot — a Papist’s whore!”

  It was as though some great revelation had suddenly come to him. He stared at her for a moment defiantly to see if she would respond, then spat violently on the floor and walked out into the street, leaving her alone with her regrets.

  39

  ADAM’S ANGER was still smouldering in the early afternoon of the next day, as they marched into the little cathedral town of Wells. Tom had not come to see him the night before, but Adam had sought him out, and the short, bitter argument had left him white-hot with rage and shaking in every limb. Unable to sleep, he had spent half the night pacing up and down the kitchen of the house they were billetted in, while John Spragg tried to calm him.

  The worst of it was being forced to plead with Tom to marry Ann. He felt he had to do that, for propriety’s sake, but he did not want the marriage to take place now, at all. The more he heard of the boy’s pious accusations and imagined what had happened the more he hated him, and wished him out of his own and Ann’s life for ever.

  Ann had betrayed him too - he burned with shame as he remembered the way he and Luke Goodchild had encouraged their wives’ first fantasy that their two first-born should unite in marriage, and how he himself had only mildly thrashed them both when he had caught them, at the age of three or four, examining each other’s bodies as children will. If he had known then what it would come to today, he would have whipped young Tom within an inch of his life, and forbidden him ever to go near his daughter again.

  But as he marched towards Wells the next day, a few ranks behind the great, gloomy, good-looking man the little boy had grown into, he wondered if even that would have done any good. Perhaps, contrary though the idea seemed, it might have made things even worse. Shameful though it was, it was common enough, and natural, for children to explore each other’s bodies until taught it was wrong. And many young couples took their betrothal for a sign of marriage; some did not wait so long. Men like Israel Fuller might consider him lax, but he could have forgiven his daughter that.

  For despite the stern things he had said to Ann that morning, it was not what they had done together than hurt him most, in the end. What he could never forgive was that pious canting refusal of Tom to admit that he had had any part in the guilt of what had taken place, or that he was any longer under an obligation to marry Ann. It was a lie - a proud, self-deceiving lie, anyone could see that, except Tom. He had left the straight and narrow path - did he think he could step back on it again, and push Ann down into the mire? It made Adam so angry that at times that day the very sight of the boy’s back made Adam want to unshoulder his musket there and then and blow a hole right through it.

  The incident had hurt Ann deeply, he could see that. He remembered how she had wept that morning, tears of rage as much as pain. Even as Adam had chastised her he had forgiven her in his heart, as he had done so many times before. At least she had had the self-respect to say that she would never marry Tom now, even if he went down on his knees to ask her.

  And so throughout the day, as Adam’s rage focussed itself on Tom’s broad back marching in front of him, he felt once again that Ann’s waywardness somehow brought her closer to him and he loved her all the more for it.

  He meant to speak to her again when they arrived in Wells, but he knew that at first she would be too busy helping the surgeon settle the wounded into their billets for the night. Adam was in a detail set to guard half-a-dozen supply wagons, containing welcome amounts of money and arms, which had somewhat surprisingly been left there by Colonel Lambe’s dragoons on their march west. So it was not until three-quarters of an hour or so later that they were dismissed, and he decided to have a brief look around the town with some of the others before seeking out his daughter. John Spragg and William Clegg came with him.

  They were surprised by the number of canons and other religious men they saw around the town. William Clegg had heard Israel Fuller say something about paying a visit to the cathedral.

  “‘Tis ‘ardly like our Israel to be a-worshipping in a cathedral,” said John Spragg. “I wonder what he’s after?”

  “Maybe he’s thinking to convert the bishop,” said William Clegg. “That should be worth seeing!”

  John laughed. “True enough, Will. I’ve always wanted to see our Israel preach from a proper pulpit. I reckons ‘e could out-argue a bishop any day!”

  As they came into the market place a curate came hurrying across it like a pigeon, his black and white robes fluttering behind him in the breeze.

  “Israel’s arguments be too strong for ‘un, I reckon!” laughed William Clegg. “‘e’s blowing they idolaters away like chaff in the wind!”

  They hesitated for a moment in the market-place, uncertain which way to go, and then headed for a large door in the wall to the east, above which rose the massive towers of the cathedral.

  Two curates at the door attempted to bar their way, but John Spragg and some others pushed them firmly aside.

  “‘Tis God’s house, is it not, sirs, for all your idolatry? I don’t think He would bar the door to us.”

  “Those who claim to respect the Lord should respect His
house also,” retorted one of the curates, a short fat man of about fifty, with two double chins which made him gobble his words like a turkey.

  “We come to do no harm, sir, just to look,” said Adam reassuringly, but the outrage in the man’s eyes showed that he did not believe them. As he came under the arch of the gatehouse Adam had to step over a mass of heavy stone which had fallen from a niche in the wall, but he did not at first realise what it was.

  On the other side of the gatehouse the massive western front of the cathedral stood solidly before them, its two towers rising square into the sky. At first Adam paused to look up and so did not see the activity below. But then he heard cheers and a flat crunch as though something heavy had fallen, and he saw a great crowd of men, small and black like ants around the foundations of a house, poking and levering with their pikes at the stone statues in the lower niches of the front immediately above them.

  “Here be no preaching, Will,” said John Spragg. “It do look more like demolition work to me.”

  “Looks like they’m arguing with dead bishops more’n live ones,” muttered William Clegg in awe.

  The group hurried forward across the grass to where the mob were heaving out another statue with their pikes. They ducked as it fell and hit the floor, sending sharp chips of stone flying everywhere. They saw Tom and Israel Fuller busy amongst the rest, and pushed their way towards them.

  “What be at now, friend Israel?” called John Spragg to the preacher, who stood fanning the dust from before his face with his hat, a fierce smile of fulfilment on his bearded face. He turned to them proudly.

  “What do it look like, John? Casting down false idols and images, that the idolaters have set up in place of God. ‘Tis the Lord’s work, John - roll up thy sleeves and join us!” As he spoke, one of the men behind him jolted the head of a statue above the main entrance with his pike, and it nodded forward from its neck and smashed into the ground with a thud. A man standing near it kicked it derisively to his friend like a football.

  John Spragg shook his head slowly.