Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  But the good nights were rare. The usual ones were a ghastly attenuation of the day, in which the noise of more than a hundred men’s fear and irritation and boredom continued long after everyone was too tired to bear it. There was always someone who could contain his emotions no longer, and hurled all his resentment and frustration at the others, so that they in their turn could not bear it, and so the cauldron of despair was kept simmering. It was enough, sometimes, for a man to snore, or splash another’s face as he used the latrine bucket, or throw something at a shape he thought was a rat, for a whole corner of the cell to erupt into an angry, fractious argument that left all of them more exhausted and on edge than before.

  If it did fall quiet, more often than not the guards would sense it, and hammer on the great door to frighten and wake them up. Or they would call out some man’s name from outside the window, telling him they had his wife or daughter, and what they had done or were going to do with her. Once they had done it there and then, so that the man could hear the women’s screams; and later in the night he had got up and run straight at the wall, smashing his head hard against the great projecting stone in the corner, so that he had cracked his skull and taken two long days and nights to die, threshing and moaning in great fits in a corner.

  Then there were the other, less dramatic deaths, where people lay all night shivering until their fever burnt them up. Like the proud Miss Blake, the schoolteacher from Taunton, who had been herded into the filthy cell with the men, for want of other accommodation, and had babbled all night in her final hours of how her maids of Taunton had been sold to the Queen, though Adam did not understand it then, and indeed had little sympathy for her after what had happened to Ann. The shrunken body of the old lady had been lugged outside next morning, one stiff cold arm banging awkwardly against the door as it stuck out from her side. John Spragg had wept then.

  Adam would have thought they were in Hell already, if it had not been for the hope. And yet the hope made everything worse, so that he began to think that that came from the Devil too.

  The hopes were very small and modest in their demands, and yet enormous in their meaning for each man. Adam hoped only that Mary and the children would be left alone, and would stay away and not come to see him. He did not think he would be able to bear that. As for the trials, he hoped only that they would come soon, so that there could be an end to it. He did not hope for anything from the trials, as some men did, for he expected only death.

  Some men, like John Spragg, hoped for the mercy of transportation to the West Indies, but Adam could see no advantage in that; it would only continue their present torments, with no chance of being able to escape or return, or forget. Several men even said they would plead not guilty, hoping they would escape with a fine or a whipping only, and at times John talked of a pardon, but Adam saw no chance of that either.

  Instead, he sometimes hoped the most modest and enormous hope of all - a secret which he dared tell no-one for fear they would ridicule it or call it a blasphemy. For though he knew he had not the faith for Heaven, he thought that perhaps after death he might be judged to have suffered enough already for Hell, and that his soul might go instead to a third place, different from both, which he had pictured secretly to himself as being nothing - nothing at all but a place where men could sleep endlessly without dreams or thoughts, without waking or memory. When he thought of this he longed for the King’s judge - Judge Jeffreys - to come, so the cruel, dreary imprisonment could come to an end at last.

  Once or twice he had been tempted, in the rare quiet nights, to simply turn his face to the wall and let life go as some men seemed to do. But though he had tried he had not had the trick of it, for he had woken up an hour later as usual, and the second time John Spragg had suspected something, and would not let him alone.

  He thought back over the time since the battle. It was nearly a month now since the wounded and the prisoners had been dragged into Weston Zoyland church, half unconscious from the battering they had had from the horses’ hooves and the soldiers who had caught them. Their bruised bodies had been stripped half naked by the greedy, vengeful royal soldiers, and some men, lying on the cool stone floor under the great carved wooden angels of the roof, had had no clothes at all. Most had been wounded in some way. Four men had died in that church before they had left, and dozens more had been summarily strung up on the trees outside the church, some in chains, or hacked down in the ditches and cornfields towards Chedzoy where they had been hiding.

  At the time it had seemed dreadful, but now Adam thought those men had been the lucky ones. He remembered stumbling the long, weary miles into Bridgewater, all the time being mocked and bullied by Colonel Kirke’s brutal soldiery, and watching them steal and rape in every village they came to. Death would have spared him that.

  Occasionally the soldiers caught some men who had escaped from the battlefield, hiding in a barn or a ditch or an attic; and often they would beat and torture them to get them to betray others of their friends. There were many men in the prison now who had to be helped to eat because of their maimed and festering hands that the soldiers had burned to the bone.

  Always these memories brought him back to his worries about Ann. When he had not seen her in Bridgewater he had felt sure she had been captured, and treated as scores of other women had been in the town; only when there had been no sign either of Nicolas Thompson, or the wounded left in their charge, had he begun to hope. But now that they were beaten, the country seemed full of soldiers and militia, so that her chances of having escaped seemed impossible.

  The thought of what might have happened to Ann tortured him even more than his fears for Mary and his other children, for they at least were at home. He sometimes wished he had sent her with Tom, despite everything; however cruel and bitter the boy had become, he could not have harmed her more than the devils the King had set loose in in the countryside - the men Colonel Kirke laughingly called his ‘Lambs’, because of the Paschal lamb on their coats that so ironically covered the wolves inside.

  Then one day Ann simply walked into the jail at Dorchester.

  Adam would never forget that moment, when she stood there suddenly in the cell doorway, straight and tall in the faded brown dress she had worn since Philip’s Norton. She peered anxiously around the filthy, overcrowded room, a look of confused shock and pity clouding her face. But her face looked older. Adam suddenly felt he was looking at a young woman rather than the girl he had raised, and that he himself had somehow become a child or an old man. He was ashamed, and wanted to hide behind someone before he was seen. But the thought came too late; she was crossing the room towards him, the other prisoners moving respectfully aside and staring at her with a desperate hope that perhaps she might have come for them.

  Behind her came Tom, his broad back shielding her from the jailor’s leer. But there was no room in Adam’s mind for anger at Tom, beside the glorious pain of seeing his daughter there, alive and unharmed and well and touching him.

  “Father! Have I found you, at last! You are truly alive? Oh, thank God for that!” She hugged him, and he patted her back gently, almost voluptuously, not knowing what to to do. Then he pushed her away, ashamed of the filth and fleas of his clothes, and the sores on his shackled legs. He held out his hand to Tom, determined to forgive, and the boy took it awkwardly, staring at him as though he could not believe what he saw. But for the moment Adam had eyes only for his daughter.

  “It is you, Ann? It is really you? They have not harmed you?” The words came clumsily; his throat seemed blocked when he tried to speak.

  “Not me, no, father - they never caught us. But you – your poor legs!”

  He glanced at the sores made by the shackles on his ankles, and smiled at the concern in her voice. “That doesn’t matter, now. There’s far worse than that here. But how did you come here? Have you been home? You must have, to bring Tom.”

  “I’ve been home this past week. We heard most of the prisoners were here, so we cam
e to look for you. We’d have gone on to Ilchester next.”

  “And your mother and the others?”

  “As well as you could hope, father. There have been soldiers in Colyton but they did not trouble us. But mother was afraid to come with the children.”

  “Very proper too. But she is well - the girls are well? Little Oliver?”

  “They are all quite well, father, I promise. And they’ll be the better for hearing you’re alive.”

  Ann smiled at him, yet her eyes were sparkling with tears. As she smiled, a woman jostled her roughly from behind as she made her way to another man. There were perhaps a dozen visitors in the cell that day, so that there was hardly room to move, and the noise was so great that at times they had to shout to be heard.

  “I shan’t be alive much longer, girl. The King’s judge is coming, you know. But ‘tis good to know you’re safe.”

  Ann’s face changed at his words. “No, father, they can’t! They won’t kill you! They can’t kill all these people!”

  “‘Twas rebellion, girl. What else can they do? Only leave us to rot in prison, or transport us, which is worse.”

  “‘Tis never worse than death, Adam! A man can live beyond the waters even if his family’s left behind. You tell him, girl!” John Spragg burst in eagerly, from where he stood by the wall a few feet away.

  “Mr Spragg! I didn’t see you! But it’s right what he says, father - transportation is not worse than death.”

  “‘Tis a vain hope, my dear. We had the chance to take a pardon and we scorned it. Now we must learn to take what the Lord gives.” It was what had been a hard comfort to him for many days past; but now he told it to Ann, his voice shook a little, as though he would weep. He wished she had not come, and would go.

  “‘Tis a hard justice, Mr Carter,” broke in Tom suddenly. “But if you do pray and acknowledge your sin it may be that the Lord will show you mercy, even as he did unto me.”

  Adam and John Spragg stared at Tom’s heavy, handsome face, thinking how strong and well-fed he looked, not knowing what to say in reply. Perhaps it was meant generously, Adam thought; the boy could not know, any more than Ann, how cruel hope could be. But John Spragg answered him first.

  “‘Tis never the Lord has shown mercy to you, boy - ‘tis the devil that rules this country, like Belshazzar! His time will come, and yours too; then you’ll be cast lower than us. You mark my words!”

  “‘The prophet that shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, even that prophet shall die,’“ Tom intoned, in a voice like that of Israel Fuller’s. “Deuteronomy 18:20. The Duke of Monmouth is dead already, Mr Spragg; his head cut off on a scaffold in London. We were misled. You should cast out the pride from your soul and pray for forgiveness as I did.”

  “Why, you little beggar!” John Spragg stepped furiously forward, the chains clanking round his ankles, but Adam held him back.

  “Peace, John, be calm now! The lad’s right, according to religion, isn’t he? We put our cause in the hands of God and He judged against us. Remember the text of that preacher, Ferguson, before the battle? You remember that?”

  “Aye, I remember.’If it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, save us not this day.’ Only it goes hard, to hear it from the lips of a coward like that boy there.”

  “I’m not a coward, Mr Spragg. ‘Tis only your pride makes you say that.” But Tom’s words hung hollowly in the air, for John Spragg had turned his back, and slumped sullenly down on his blanket by the wall, ignoring him.

  Adam took a deep breath, and faced Tom squarely. “At least you have brought my daughter here safely, boy, and for that I thank you. I trust you will care for her when I’m gone, in the way we spoke of before.”

  “If she repents ... “

  “Don’t talk so, father! You’re not going to die; you might even get a fine or a pardon and be out of here altogether. We’ll talk of it then!”

  “What do you mean, Tom, if she repents?” Adam had never felt so small, so like a child or a weak old man, before this big, well-fed young man who had come with his daughter. Yet he knew in that moment quite clearly and certainly that if he had had a knife he would have plunged it with all his remaining strength up to the hilt into Tom Goodchild’s stomach.

  “If she repents of her sin of lust, I could marry her.”

  “I told you, Tom!” Ann turned and grabbed Tom’s arm, forcing him to look at her. “I do repent of what I did with you, most earnestly I do repent it! I told you that before we came!” She turned back to her father, tears of humiliation in her eyes. “But there is no need to talk of marriage yet, father. I will not talk of it until after the trial, when you may be free to decide for me.”

  He shook his head sadly. “I shan’t be free, Ann, not now. That’s only a dream you have. You do as you feel right, my dear. I can’t help you now.”

  And so they embraced again, and Tom was ignored, and then they stood holding hands in the crowded, stinking cell, jostled by the endless movement about them, like children rather than father and daughter. Adam, for something to say, asked about Nicolas Thompson and the other men from Colyton, whom he and John Spragg had not seen.

  “Nicolas Thompson’s still alive, father. He and some others are hiding up in the woods near Axminster, waiting till the fuss has died down. But William Clegg’s caught. They’ve got him in the jail in Colyton with some others. They say Judge Jeffreys will go and try ‘em there, when he’s finished here.”

  “So how did you escape, my girl?”

  For the remaining time they were together, she told him.

  After the battle, knowing it was lost, she had hardly been able to believe it when she had seen a small grim knot of shattered men tramping desperately back to the refuge of Bridgwater, led by the short, stubborn figure of Colonel Wade. They were the remnants of her father’s own regiment, beaten but still together, undestroyed. She told him how they had stood in the street by the church, some two or three hundred of them all told, exhausted, many bleeding or soaked from their retreat through the rhines, those who still had muskets leaning on them for support like old men, their faces grey with gunpowder, fear and fatigue. She had searched desperately through them all, but found only William Clegg whom she knew, the little wizened man almost aged beyond recognition by what he had seen.

  Then, when it was clear no other regiments would return, Colonel Wade had spoken to them, his face drained by fatigue, his dark eyes haunted by the knowledge that all his courage and determination in holding his regiment together in the inferno were for naught, for no decision he could take would save the cause now, when even their leader had fled. He had told them to disband and save themselves as best they could, for they were too few to hope to hold the town.

  After that Ann wanted to go to Weston Zoyland to look for her father, but William Clegg and Nicolas Thompson had refused to let her, saying he was dead for certain now. So instead they had carried Nicolas’s three badly wounded men into the cellar of a brave woman in Bridgewater who promised to care for them, dragged a rug and an old wooden chest over the trapdoor, and fled.

  Ann had fled with the rest to Exmoor, hiding in lonely farms in the deep combes and valleys for a couple of weeks until they judged the first flush of the search would be over. Then she and the others had made their way quietly back, travelling across country by lonely tracks and side roads, often at night, until they came home. But even there some had found they were not safe, for their names were on lists in the hands of the constables and militia, who were still out looking for them.

  Ann told her father quietly of the little hut the surgeon and some others had built for themselves in the lonely woods towards Axminster, and the regular journeys of herself or some others from the village to leave food for them. She told him too of the night on the journey when they had been surprised by a party of four dragoons, and only escaped by killing two and mortally wounding the rest; and all the time she spoke she was lookin
g over her shoulder to make sure no jailor or spy was near, and making sure always that she was not too clear about details that could give anyone away. She whispered John Clapp’s name in her father’s ear and then told him how that fat, jovial man had climbed out of bed into the attic when the soldiers had searched his house, and how they had not found him though they knew the bed was warm. At that Adam smiled, but then she told him the less happy story of how William Clegg had got all the way home and then been caught because his six-year-old daughter had thought it was another of her father’s jokes when he had run out suddenly and hid among the cabbages in the garden; so she had clapped her hands and laughed and explained the joke to the nice men with guns who had just come into the kitchen.

  Of Roger Satchell Ann had heard nothing, until Adam told her he was in another cell here too; nor had she heard anything of Sergeant Evans or Nathaniel Wade since they had left them on the way to Exmoor.

  The jailors began to hustle the visitors out at the end of the day, though it seemed to Adam they were doing so earlier than usual. But then he had not had a visitor before, and time passed quite differently when he was looking into the eyes of his daughter. For a while he had so forgotten the stench and press of humanity around him, that he had thought he had been at home in the kitchen with Ann and Mary, and imagined Simon sitting reading in his chair, and remembered the very smell and sound of Mary coming in with a pile of clean washing in her arms, and the girls and Oliver fussing and playing round her skirts. Then the warder pulled Ann away, and Tom shielded her on the way to the door.

  As he watched her go, Adam ached with a huge physical loss that he had not embraced her one last time. He stood for a minute with his empty arms unconsciously, vainly held out in front of him. Then he sat down, numbly, with his back to the wall.