Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  “There are that.” They turned to watch as the group came up, and Roger Satchell thrust the stumbling blacksmith forward into the circle around the fire. The earnest discussion died as men turned to stare.

  “It seems we have a Judas in our midst, friends!” Roger Satchell glared fiercely round the circle, then pointed angrily to Thomas Dyer. “A fat traitor who has come to spread doubt and fear amongst us, all in the service of our enemy, the papist Duke of York.” He held up the proclamation contemptuously. “And he has shown you this!”

  Ann searched amongst the watching faces to see what Tom and Israel Fuller would make of it, but she could only find Tom, whose face was sullen and guarded.

  Roger Satchell continued. “Well, friends, I don’t know what you make of it, but I for one am glad. For I came from Colyton, as I think you all did, to fight the Devil and all his tricks, that we might have the honest religion of God back amongst us again. And when the Devil comes amongst us with tricks like this, we can see all the plainer who it is we have to fight!” He pointed scornfully at the surly Dyer, and dropped his voice to make his next point. “We can see, too, friends, just how much we’ve scared our enemy. For do you think he’d have offered such a glozing lie, such a fair-seeming promise as this, if he weren’t already afraid for his very life?”

  “‘Tis no lie!” burst out Dyer. “‘Tis plain truth. I seen ‘em ...”

  “Shut your mouth, Judas! Or I’ll save the hangman his trouble!” Colonel Wade pointed a pistol roughly at the man’s head. Roger Satchell sighed, and turned back to the rest. “Even if ‘tis true, ‘tis only the Devil being kind now, to be more cruel later, like a man putting down ground bait to draw in the fish. But if any man here be faint-hearted or fool enough to go - let him! ‘He that hath no stomach for the fight, let him depart, ‘ as it says in the good Book. For this is God’s army, and we only want God’s soldiers in it. But don’t let him come along after, and pretend to be any friend of mine!”

  He turned away angrily, and again Ann searched the faces for their response. Most looked solemn, and several were guarded and sullen, as Tom’s had been. She wondered where Israel Fuller was, and when she looked for Tom, she found that he was no longer there, either. As the meeting broke up, several of those with the more guarded faces made their way quietly out of the light of the fire into the gathering shadows.

  Those who left the fire must have spread the news that Thomas Dyer had brought, for when the roll was called in the morning, it was found that nearly a thousand men had disappeared from the army in the night. But Ann was still there, and for the moment there was no more talk of her leaving.

  41

  “MY GRANDFATHER used to say they were the souls of babies who had died before being baptised.”

  Ann shivered as another bat flittered past, so close that she fancied she almost saw its huge ears and tiny, pig-like snout, like those on the gargoyles on the church tower below them.

  “I doubt that - there’s too many of ‘em,” surgeon Thompson grunted calmly in reply. “Anyhow, I never saw one do a person harm, for all folk hates ‘em.”

  “So long as they don’t get in my hair - I’d hate that.” She drew her hood tightly around her, and then shrieked as the surgeon gripped her shoulder hard in his thin, bony hand.

  “There! Did you hear it? A shot, I’m sure ‘twas!” He pointed urgently out into the darkness with his other hand.

  Ann stared where he pointed, her heart pounding as she tried to pick out some flash, some sign of movement in the dark countryside below. But she could see nothing - not even the church towers of Westonzoyland and Chedzoy, which the surgeon had pointed out to her so eagerly in the last of the twilight, when they had known the attack would come.

  “No! I didn’t hear nothing. But then I had my hood over my ears because of the bat.”

  “Sssssh!”

  But if there had been one shot there was bound to be another. They both waited, eyes and ears strained to the utmost, for what seemed an age, until Ann was sure that the Great Bear had moved several inches across the sky, and despite her anxiety her attention began to wander again. She stifled a yawn and shuffled her cold feet to keep them warm.

  They had been on the tower of St Mary’s church in Bridgewater for nearly three hours now, ever since the first files of the army had begun their silent, stealthy march out of Bridgewater and up the road towards Chedzoy. No drums, no trumpets, no singing; hardly even any orders; just the silent, steady tramp of four thousand foot soldiers and a thousand horse - many with muffled hooves - marching in a long, slow snake out of the east gate of the town. They had no matches lit - all their muskets were firelocks. Their banners were folded and lowered. But it seemed incredible to Ann that so many armed men could possibly hope to march three or four miles down the roads and across the moor at night, as they proposed to do, and surprise the enemy without being seen. Surely, even if they met no guards, the steady tramp of so many feet would be heard, or a horse neigh, or ... had Nicolas Thompson heard a shot? If he had, surely Lord Feversham’s troops would have heard it too?

  But there was no sign of movement, no sound, from the village of Westonzoyland to the south-east; nothing, in fact, but the occasional hoot of an owl, or a laugh or muttered conversation from some late-goer in the streets of the town below, up like themselves perhaps, watching, waiting ...

  At least the attack was a move forward. Their arrival in the little, busy town of Bridgewater yesterday had been in marked contrast to the joyful celebrations Adam and the others remembered from when they had come before. The citizens had accepted them, stoically enough, but only in a mood of grim determination to make the best of a bad job. Ann had seen many gloomy faces among the shopkeepers as they had barricaded the bridge and dragged some of the guns into the cross, the castle and the south gate, as though preparing to stand a siege. A deputation had gone to Monmouth begging him not to expose the townsfolk to ruin, and reminding him how little time - only eleven days - it had taken Lord Fairfax to capture the town when the royalist army had tried to stand siege in it in 1645. Monmouth had looked stern, and said they should be of stronger heart, for the Lord was with them this time, as He had once been with Lord Fairfax. But the deputation had insisted, saying that they could get no food to support such a large army over a siege; and Monmouth had withdrawn into a council of war with Wade and Grey and Holmes and the others, while the orders to continue fortifying the town had ceased.

  Ann remembered how the early part of the day had seemed like a holiday; a strange, earnest sort of holiday in which every man found himself with free time on his hands to enjoy himself, and a sense, too, that whatever enjoyment he chose should be worthy of the time, for it might easily be the last holiday he ever had. There had been something of the same feeling in Frome, even in Wells - Ann remembered with a shudder how each of those had gone sour. Yet this Saturday, at least, the devils of riot and destruction seemed to have been exorcised - cast out perhaps with those who had left at Pedwell - and the mood for the most part had been one of earnest, determined sobriety.

  Not that the ale-houses had been empty - she had even seen her father, with William Clegg, Sergeant Evans and John Spragg, sitting outside one - but there had been no mood of drunken riot or despair, as there might have been. The ale-houses and streets had echoed rather with cheerful psalms, and good stories of famous fights in the civil war that some of the older men had seen. Everywhere there was an atmosphere of good-humoured banter between man and man, that at once calmed the latent, horrible fears deep in everyone’s mind, and also let them be shared without ever being mentioned.

  The knowledge of the King’s offer of pardon had spread throughout the army, and it was as though that knowledge had been a watershed, beyond which things could only get better. Everyone knew that those around him had chosen to stay rather than take the broad and easy path home; and the harder the choice had been for themselves, the more they respected it in others, and felt themselves proud to be amongst men wh
ose courage they so valued.

  And so each man drew strength from his neighbour, and the whole army acquired a quiet, determined trust in itself which was very different from the brash conquering euphoria with which it had first marched into Bridgewater a fortnight ago, but was perhaps more likely to last them through the days ahead.

  The town was full of women, so that Ann for once did not feel conspicuous. She even found herself a little resentful, hoping that people would notice the stains of travel and blood on her brown riding dress that she had tried so hard to wash out, and realise that she too was part of the army, a surgeon’s nurse, and not some mere wife or sweetheart that had come in with food and tears and tales of home to wear her man’s spirit down. There were no women from Lyme or Colyton or Axminster, because Lord Albemarle’s militia held the roads of Devon and Dorset; but there were a few from Taunton and many from the little villages round about Bridgewater, who had followed the foraging parties in.

  In the same way many men had taken the chance to go home for the day, some passing their wives en route. But just as the women who came to town did little to wear down the calm determination of their men to see it through, so nearly all the men who visited home came back; those who had been going for good had already gone.

  There had been a skirmish outside the town in the afternoon. Ann remembered the excited cheers and groans from the walls as they had watched a troop of their own horse clash with some royal dragoons who had come too close to the town. The dragoons had escaped, but few of the watchers had been dispirited - it had been enough to see them run.

  Later, Ann had been in a crowd watching the strange invention of a man who said he was the brother of the master gunner of England, and who had a machine which he said could devastate the enemy by firing a dozen muskets at once. He had been in the middle of his demonstration when the news had come in that the council of war had broken up, and decided to march north that night, to attack Keynsham and Bristol again.

  She remembered how the men had sighed at the prospect of another march, but accepted it, for they were rested, and at least it was attack. But then a rumour had spread that there was a change of plan. A countryman was said to have come to Monmouth and told him a hidden path to Lord Feversham’s camp, which they were to attack secretly that night; and the rumour was confirmed by the sight of Monmouth, Grey and Wade standing on the very church tower Ann was on now, conferring urgently with one another, and staring south-east through their perspective-glasses.

  Then came the orders to prepare for attack. Ann and surgeon Thompson were told to stay behind with the wounded, but to be ready to move. Ann remembered the urgent thrill that had gone through the whole town, and the eager buzz of talk and scurry of preparation. Later, she had slipped away to join the army, as they formed up in the fields to the north of the town. As the sun slowly sank behind them, she watched her father standing quietly in line with the others, his seamed face quite still, shadowed under his helmet, impassive.

  He was such a small man, she thought, and old; too small and frail and old to be a soldier. Once he had seemed so strong to her; a father who could travel miles every day through the country, and then lift her on his shoulder or bounce her on his knee when he came home. She wished she could say something which would give him back that youth, that strength, then he could survive any battle, she was sure. On that evening when he had decided to go and fight she had thought she understood him and could help him, better even than her mother; but he did not listen to her now. He sought strength only in his mind, in his belief in the rightness of the cause and his faith that they could win.

  The silent lines of soldiers stood, occasionally checking their equipment, and listened to chaplain Ferguson’s earnest sermon at the drumhead, on the text of Joshua 22:22 “The Lord God of Gods, He knoweth, and Israel he shall know: if it be in rebellion, or in transgression against the Lord, save us not this day.” Then they marched softly away, and Ann watched them, until the dusk and her tears hid them from sight.

  Now the sun was long gone. The little group of watchers shivered in the tower, waiting and wondering as they stared south-east, to where the tall tower of Weston Zoyland church could sometimes be seen white in the moonlight. Ann wondered if there were watchers on that tower too, and what they could see. There were a few clouds, though much of the sky was clear, and it was a full moon; but the flat peat moor in front of them was covered with a cold, white mist, higher than a man, so that she wondered how her father and the others would find their way. Still, they had the countryman to guide them; he would know.

  The church clock below them chimed loudly, shaking the boards beneath her feet. One o’clock. They had been gone over two hours now. Still no sign of movement from Weston Zoyland. Perhaps it would be a surprise. Perhaps they would really win. Ann saw the lips of a woman beside her moving quietly, and folded her own hands together to join her in silent prayer.

  42

  ADAM WAS behind William Clegg in the column. The little man’s thin shoulders seemed hardly wide enough for the great musket he carried, and the old helmet made his head seem strangely huge and unreal on the wiry, intense little body. Adam had been concentrating on the helmet a long time now, for sometimes it was all he could see in the mist. Once the mist had swallowed Will altogether, and sudden panic had welled up in Adam as he feared he was lost. Then he had seen the pale gleam of moonlight from the helmet floating like a marshlight to his right. He had stumbled desperately after the light, unspeakably glad to see it turn into a helmet with the little body plodding stolidly forward beneath it.

  A few minutes later he bumped into Will as he stopped. John Spragg trod on his heels from behind, and there were suddenly a dozen or more men jammed together in the tiny scope of his vision, waiting for the obstruction ahead up the lane to clear.

  It had been the same for hours, now; each man following the one in front down narrow, winding lanes. Sometimes the lanes were sunken low between hedges, sometimes out on the soft peat turf with the grey mist swirling about them, where each direction seemed the same as any other. Once they must have been on a little rise, for their heads suddenly came out above it and Adam had looked out over a grey moonlit sea of mist, with the church tower and houses of Chedzoy close upon his right, and the heads of his friends all around him.

  It was a strange, holy feeling, as though they were alone in the night, detached from their bodies, blessed by God. Adam remembered a night like this many years ago, when he had been a young man coming home alone at night with his pack-horses. He had been hurrying because Mary was near her time, and tired because he had been walking all day. The mist had risen near the river Coly, and he and the horses had walked home with just their heads above it, bathed in white moonlight. The moon and stars had been wonderfully clear that night, and he had believed, all alone as he was under the immense sky, that he had heard the angelic music of the spheres. Then he had come home to his house, stabled the horses, and found Mary by the hearth, cradling the new baby that they were to call Ann.

  But the sergeant was worried by their exposure. He feared that they would be seen and signed urgently to them that they should duck their heads quickly below the surface of the mist again. For a while, until the track led down again, they walked with their heads bowed and shoulders hunched. Adam wondered what Mary was doing now, and whether Simon and Rachel and Sarah and little Oliver were sleeping peacefully, or whether they would wake in the night and know that their father was going into battle in the darkness.

  Once, when they stopped, they heard the clatter of hooves on the road in front, and when they had gone the whisper came back that there had been royalist troopers crossing the road. But no-one had moved and they had not been seen. The order had gone out that any man who spoke or shouted was to be clubbed down or knifed by his neighbour; but there was little need for that. Another time one of their own horses started at something it thought it had seen; but even then the men stepped aside as quietly as they could, while the rider he
ld the beast and stroked it calmly so that it did not neigh or give them away.

  Adam was beginning to think they would make it. They had waded through one of the wide, black drainage ditches which he had heard the locals call the rhines, and they were well out on the open peat moor. The soft, springy turf soaked up the sound of the men’s footsteps, and there were no stones for the horses hooves to clatter against. It could not be far now, he thought, if they were not lost; and they had been going forward for some time now with an easy, swinging stride which suggested that someone at the front knew the way. He knew Colonel Wade was there, out of sight ahead of him, and Roger Satchell at the rear. Earlier he had even seen Monmouth himself striding along with them, a half-pike in his hand, and that old look of eager daring in his face that made every man love him, and stride out a little more proudly for his sake. They really would do it, Adam thought; if the royal army did not hear them soon it would be too late. They would come upon them while they lay in their tents, and then ...

  There was a check and then a splash ahead, horses and men crossing another rhine. A heron croaked indignantly as it flew away. The column stood still for a moment, Adam watching the drips forming among the beads of condensation on William Clegg’s helmet. And then, as they began to shuffle slowly forward again, there was the loud crack! of a pistol shot.

  Adam froze, then fumbled his musket forward, ready for the attack; but none came, only a splash, and a barrage of furious muttered curses from Colonel Wade and the others in front. It must have been one of their own men who had fired. Everyone seemed to stop, even those crossing the rhine, to listen ... and Adam thought he heard a faint drumming of hooves going away ahead of them, but it was hard to tell. It could have been nothing, or the drumming of fear in his own ears.