Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  “I’m a mason, Israel. I use my hands to build, not destroy.”

  “You do not use your hands to build temples of idolatry, John,” answered the preacher sharply. “Use your eyes, man - can you not see what this building is? They have set up a golden calf here, and are worshipping it instead of the Lord! Christ himself would do as we do - as He did in the temple in Jerusalem!”

  “‘Tis true enough, preacher,” said Jack Bennet, a grim-faced, crop-headed man from Taunton, who had come with them. “This yer building be a monument to graven images, not holiness. Look at that there!” He pointed to a tall statue of a bishop in the wall above them, its two fingers raised in benediction on those below. “‘Tis plain Popery, that, nothing less! Hey, Tom lad, bring thy pike over here!” He strode purposefully off to join the others, leaving John Spragg, Adam, and William Clegg alone together.

  “‘Tis Popery plain enough,” said William Clegg, looking up at the statue. “Yet I’d not like to lift a hand against it.”

  “Nor I,” muttered Adam. “I didn’t come here to war against stone.”

  There was another crash, and then cheers from their left, as the main doors were thrown open, and a great throng of men burst in, shouting and laughing noisily. Adam and the other two followed the pressure of the crowd, half unwillingly, into the cathedral itself.

  As they came inside, most of the men paused for an instant despite themselves, feeling suddenly dwarfed by the sense of airy space and light. To Adam it seemed as though he had stepped into a vast stone forest where the leaves filtered down sunlight of various reds and yellows and blues and greens to dapple the grey walls and floor.

  He had always thought the parish church at Colyton big enough, but this was infinitely greater and more beautiful. Despite his puritan upbringing he felt a sudden overwhelming sense of religious awe and wonder that men would build such a celebration to their Maker in stone. He wanted to kneel by one of the huge pillars and give thanks that such a wonder could be.

  But even as he stood, the whispering echoes of the vast building were shattered by a triumphant burst of noisy laughter, and the crumbling boom! of falling stone again from one of the two small chantries ahead of them near the organ. In the great open nave of the church, he saw some men dismembering a statue which they had heaved out of one of the chantries. One man picked up the hand of a bishop, laughing, and heaved it with a mighty throw through one of the stained-glass windows above their heads on the right, towards the cloisters, letting a sudden patch of naked daylight into the delicate, ancient picture. In a moment half-a-dozen others had picked up pieces of stone and followed his example, and the window was spattered with daylight like a painting covered with birdlime. A couple of clergymen stood helplessly watching, while another prayed earnestly on his knees near the organ.

  As Adam stood uncertainly watching, there was further clatter from the west door, and they turned to see a dozen or so horsemen riding their nervous mounts in amongst the rest. William Clegg saw John Clapp among them, and waved to him. John Clapp clattered up to them, his round red face beaming with amusement.

  “What be up to now, John? Be ‘ee setting up for squire, to ride to church?” asked William Clegg.

  “No, tidn’t that, boy. But us got to ‘ave somewhere to stable the horses, don’t us? And us were just looking round when someone told us about this great barn of a place yer - ‘twill suit us proper, won’t it?” He smiled, and dismounted, holding his horse’s tossing head firmly to calm it from the noise. A few of the other troopers were already tethering their mounts to ropes they had tied around the pillars, whilst laughing footsoldiers hurried in with bales of fresh hay from a cart outside, and a curate gasped in horror.

  “‘Tis never right, John,” said Adam, staring round him at the growing crowds of loud, irreverent men milling about, pulling down statues, smashing windows and idly kicking their legs against the wooden mountings of the organ. A sudden burst of strangled, discordant sound from the organ terrified most of the horses, who began to rear and plunge wildly; one escaped, and clattered snorting across the nave, looking for a way out, wide-eyed with panic.

  The noise from the organ was followed by the sound of splitting wood and the clanging of pipes as men attacked the alien instrument. Beyond it, he saw that some of the Colyton men, including Tom, had made their way into the choir-stalls. Israel Fuller was contemptously picking up the gold and silver chalices and candlesticks from the High Altar.

  “No,” said John Clapp slowly, glancing sideways into one of the wrecked chantries where only the statue of the Virgin, the faded blue paint on the cowl still framing the delicate, gentle face of motherhood, had been left. “‘Tis not right, but remember how Mayor Timewell burnt Paul’s meeting house in Taunton. That was a crime worse than this.”

  “But this is mere destruction, John,” said Adam, filled with increasing disgust. “‘Tis never the Lord’s work just to smash things like this!”

  There was an outburst of angry shouting from the main gate, and they turned their heads to see a small determined knot of men hurrying up the nave. At their head, sword drawn, was Lord Grey, his usually puffy, effete face grim and determined. Behind him strode the stocky, dynamic figure of Colonel Wade, the pale, one-armed Colonel Holmes and several other men, including the curate whom they had seen rushing across the market place, and Roger Satchell, who stared about him with a look of horrified disbelief. Several men tried to stop the group as they made their way through the organ to the choir-stalls, but Grey pushed them aside angrily, his gaze intent on the High Altar.

  “You men! Leave those chalices alone! Get back to your billets!” Grey’s furious voice cut through the echoing hubbub, instantly focussing everyone’s attention into the choir-stalls to see what would happen.

  Israel Fuller raised a chalice on high, scornfully turning it upside down.

  “‘Tis mere gold, my lord - Mammon profaning God’s house!”

  “‘Tis you who profane the High Altar! Give me that!” Grey struck Israel hard with the flat of his sword on the outside of his elbow, making him drop the chalice, and shoved him roughly out of the way. There was an immediate roar of anger from the men behind, and the small group of officers found themselves with their swords drawn and their backs to the High Altar, facing a yelling, angry mob. For a moment the two sides shouted at each other, and then Adam saw someone strike at Roger Satchell with one of the altar candle-sticks and he could hold back no longer.

  “Come on, Will! John! ‘Tis mutiny!” The three men hurled themselves into the crowd, pushing and pulling men furiously aside to get to the front. They did not have their muskets with them, but on the way John Spragg wrenched a piece of wood from one of the men who was wrecking the organ. Adam took a pistol from the belt of one of the horsemen, and reversed it to use as a club.

  When Adam reached the front of the crowd he was at first thrust back by Colonel Wade, who thought he was one of the rioters; but then he and William Clegg turned on the men beside them, forcing them away from the altar too, and he found the determined young Colonel beside him.

  “Shed no blood, soldier, if you can help it!” Wade shouted in his ear. “Just bring these fools to their senses!”

  And indeed, despite all the sound and fury it looked as if there would be no bloodshed, for the officers used only the flat of their swords and the threat of their pistols, and the men in front of them seemed at first afraid to fight with more than shouts and blows of their fists. But then Adam saw a great pike and two wicked-looking scythe-blades looming towards them over the heads of the others, and yelled a warning.

  As the pike came forward Roger Satchell swung at it with his sword to try to cut the pole, but only succeeded in pushing it aside so that it caught Lord Grey’s coat and pinned him back against the altar. Adam saw the long blade turning so that the wicked spike set at right-angles to the blade could jab into the earl’s side, and leapt forward desperately to grapple with the pikeman. As he laid his hands on the pike he saw t
hat the man holding it was Tom, his face set in a glare of iron determination.

  Tom glanced at Adam and then looked away past him, his grey eyes fixed on the spot where Grey struggled to free himself from the pike like a butterfly on a pin. Adam felt the pike turning under his hands, and drawing aside to gain that little distance it would need for the short, lethal jab into Grey’s side.

  “Tom, no!” He forced the pike down and away with all his weight, and then John Spragg leapt on it behind him so that the weight was too much even for Tom and it tore free from Grey’s coat. Tom dropped the pike and leapt forward, still making for Grey, but Adam grabbed his arm and forced him back against one of the choirstalls. Then John Spragg had him by the other arm and they stumbled sideways past the bishop’s throne until at last they collapsed on the ground beside a great tomb, the two older men only just able to control Tom’s giant strength.

  For the first time Tom seemed to notice who was holding him, and let out a roar of bitter frustration.

  “Mr Carter! Mr Spragg! What be ‘ee doing? Let me get to the Papist bastard!”

  He struggled again, knocking John Spragg’s head sideways onto the tomb, but the two were almost lying on top of him, a little sheltered from the swirling chaos behind them. Adam held the clubbed pistol in front of Tom’s face.

  “God help me, I’ll knock your head in with this, Tom Goodchild, if you don’t come to what little sense you have! Hold still now!”

  Tom glared at them uncomprehendingly. “What be ‘ee doing? Let me go! I could’ve killed Grey, don’t you see!”

  “He’s our officer, you young fool! You don’t kill officers!”

  “He’s a Papist idolater! Didn’t you see him strike Israel?”

  “Israel’s not a bloody graven image, boy, for you to worship! He was desecrating the altar!”

  “‘Tis just a table, isn’t it? This whole place be full of Mammon and Antichrist! We was cleaning it out! He’s a heathen bloody Papist to stop us!”

  “He’s your officer, Tom. Just like Colonel Wade’s your officer - and Roger Satchell. Would you take your pike to them too?”

  For a moment Tom stopped struggling, and seemed to withdraw a long way into himself as the frenzy faded from his face. But the cold fanaticism never left his eyes as he answered bitterly.

  “You’re damned, Adam Carter, you and John Spragg too! You understand nothing - you take the side of the idolaters against the Lord! In God’s army the officers should be chosen by purity of soul and knowledge of Scripture, not rank and fancy clothes and such idolatry!”

  Adam could take no more. He lifted his pistol, ready to club the life out of his old friend’s son as he would have killed a mad dog, but John Spragg saw what he was doing, and held his arm.

  “Come on, now, Adam, let’s get the boy outside. If Grey finds out who held that pike he’ll have ‘un hanged by morning, without you doing it!”

  Adam looked at his friend and let out a long, shuddering breath. He saw that the fighting behind them in the choir-stalls seemed to have stopped, and the crowd were listening to a firm speech from Colonel Wade.

  “You’re right, John,” he said. “You deal with him. But if he so much as says another single word to me today, I’ll be swinging for him myself!”

  John Spragg looked down at Tom, and held his shortened club of wood near Tom’s face. “All right, boy, we’ll let ‘ee go. But just you listen to me first. I’ve heard a bellyful of your talk about Papists and idolaters today, to say nothing of what you done to Adam and his daughter. This army of ours needs discipline just as much as it needs religion, and you don’t get discipline by sticking your pike into your own officers, whatever you may think of ‘em. No more’n you get respect from taking advantage of a young girl and then not marrying her!”

  “That’s none of your business, John Spragg, you keep out of that!” Tom struggled violently to get up, but they held him down, John Spragg forcing the wood across his throat.

  “Now just shut up and listen to me, boy! When they get a bit of order round here Lord Grey’s going to be looking for the man who tried to kill him, whatever you say, so if you wants to save this neck o’ yourn you better get quietly out of this church and back to your billet and hope he didn’t see you. Whether you do that or no is up to you, but I tell you this: if I see you lift your hand against an officer again, I’ll knock your bloody brains out with this to save the hangman his trouble!”

  John and Adam got up and stood back, and Tom climbed to his feet and glared back at them for a second, his gaunt face bitter with hatred and frustration. Then he turned suddenly and walked down the aisle into the nave, where the horses were stalled, spitting at one of the fallen statues as he passed.

  40

  ANN DID not like the man even when she first saw him. He was short and immensely burly, with a big pot belly, massive ham-like forearms - a blacksmith, he said he was - and a rough shirt open at the neck to show a mass of thick black hair curling on his chest.

  But it was not so much his appearance which she disliked as his expression. Under the short, curly black hair his round, dark-jowled face looked around him with a combination of cunning and confidence quite absent in the tired, worried, resolute or resigned faces of Monmouth’s soldiers. It was as though he came to them as a spectator from quite another world, to whom all their struggles and torments were mere amusements, interesting to observe for a while, but easy to shrug off when they became tiresome.

  William Clegg, who found him, told the sergeant the man was a volunteer from Taunton who wished to join them, and so, it being supper time, he was given a bowl of stew with the rest. But as she watched the newcomer eat it, quietly, without undue haste, picking out the good bits and savouring them as he looked around him, Ann could not help comparing him with William Clegg and the other men, who held their bowls close to their mouths and spooned their stew in with the undiscriminating speed and concentration of real hunger.

  She wondered if there was really something suspicious about him, or whether it was just that he came from normal life, where men did not spend all day marching through rain and mud in worn-out footwear back along a road they had marched before, as the men wolfing their food around him had done. All day they had spent heaving carts and guns out of pot-holes, being splashed by horses and falling in the mud. Twice they had heard the rattle of pistol and musket-fire behind them, where some stragglers had been caught by the militia horsemen, and each of them had wondered when they would finally turn and fight, and whether they could still win even now, or if the Lord had utterly forsaken them. Perhaps that was why this man looked different; perhaps he was just not used to the trials of war yet.

  But if that was so, why had he come to join them now? And why did he still look so slyly confident, when he could see the dreadful effects of the war on the men around him?

  She shrugged, and turned again to her hopeless task of spooning a little thin broth into the wounded man whose head lay propped on her knee in the cart. He had the wound fever - Nicolas Thompson had extracted the bullet two days ago, but some fragment of cloth or dirt from the bullet itself had stayed in and so the wound had begun to fester. Now the man sweated and shivered as though he had the palsy. The surgeon said the evil had got into his blood, and twice today he had tried to draw it out by bleeding him; but Ann thought he only looked worse for the treatment rather than better.

  Some wounds looked worse, and cured more quickly. Ann smiled at Robert Sandy, from Colyton, who had finished his stew and lay back, resting his bandaged head on a bolt of straw and closing his eyes to enjoy the bliss of sleep in a cart that would not move or lurch or jolt again until tomorrow. She remembered when he had been carried half-dead into the kitchen at Philip’s Norton, a great wound in the front of his skull, a piece of bone as big as a five-shilling piece hanging loose in a flap of skin and hair. The surgeon said he could see the brain beneath; yet he had managed to clean it and patch it up well enough, so that now, five days later, his patient had the s
trength to spend half the day marching beside the cart, and perhaps in a few days more would not need to be with the sick at all.

  Ann knew he would be grateful for that. The constant jolting and lurching of the heavy carts was a torment to all the wounded, crammed together as they were on flea-ridden mattresses of straw and old sacking, with a leaking canvas above them which sometimes seemed as though it did more to concentrate the rain than keep it out.

  Not that any of them wanted to be left behind - a militiaman who had joined them had said that the militia surgeon had had orders not to treat any wounded rebels, and Ann had seen enough in her time with the regular soldiers to be quite sure that no-one could expect any better of them. One man they had left at his home in Shepton Mallet; but most of the wounded men’s homes were too far away, over hills and roads patrolled by the encircling militia, for there to be any hope of such treatment for them. Even if they did get home, there was no guarantee of safety for anyone whose neighbour knew he had got his wound with Monmouth’s army.

  The same was true for faint hearts as faint bodies; while they were still undefeated, the safest place for anyone suspected of having been part of the rebellion was in the army itself, with all his friends around him, not wandering the lanes, at the mercy of vengeful militia and magistrates. But then, for someone who had not been in the army before, was this a sensible time to join it? Ann glanced again at the stranger from Taunton, and was irritated even more to see that he had put his bowl of stew down without finishing it.

  Annoyed, she turned back to her patients. The man with the fever could drink no more, so she eased her knee gently out from under his head, made the straw pillow as comfortable as she could, and wrapped the torn, damp blanket more tightly around him. Then she went the rounds of the others in the two carts, seeing that they were all as comfortable as possible.

  The surgeon had gone off as soon as they had arrived, in search of a marsh where he could find herbs and leeches, so she tried to remember the few simple treatments that he gave - decoctions of comfrey and yarrow to be drunk for wounds, those that were still open to be bathed in an infusion of archangel and covered with a poultice of honeysuckle. Then one of the men helped her tie back one of the canvas awnings which had come loose, so that some of the wounded could enjoy the beauty of the evening.