‘We have to get closer, Sergeant, to determine whether or not the lieutenant and the two ladies are in the column,’ Tonge said to Jack. He wondered what response he would get. Though regarded highly by Captain Critchell, Sergeant Jack had been surly and taciturn since joining the party.
‘They are not down there,’ Jack said in a way that said he didn’t doubt his own conviction and wouldn’t welcome Tonge questioning it.
Tonge wasn’t prepared to let it go. Exasperated, he said, ‘Sergeant, there are thousands of men down there. I think it not possible that you can take a glance and say that the three we seek are not among them.’
The procession went on below as Jack gave his officer’s words considerable thought. Having changed to a bawdy Taunton song, the voices had lifted in volume, the joy in them reaching up to the king’s men as a reminder of what a happy army it was that followed the Monmouth colours.
‘Women sit a horse very different to a man, sir, even when astride,’ Sergeant Jack then said as he continued to look down at the long column. ‘No women are riding down there.’
‘But what of the lieutenant?’
‘He would not be there if the ladies were not present, sir,’ Jack replied.
Lieutenant Tonge found that the restlessness that had been irritating him had now increased. If the lieutenant and the two ladies were not with Monmouth now, they were either making their way back to Lord Churchill’s camp, or they had perished. If it was a case of the latter, then though it would be a matter for regret, he wanted to establish it quickly so that he could return to Nancy. Never one to welcome special assignments, this one in particular, Tonge was a soldier who came into his own on the battlefield. He had gained distinction during the assault on the Fortress of Maastrich when, with his left leg shattered by the explosion of a Dutch mine that had killed fifty of his comrades, he had fought on beside d’Artagnan and his musketeers, who up to that time had been held in reserve.
That was soldiering, not wandering the British countryside in summer, looking for two women foolish enough to be captured by the enemy and an officer stupid enough to go after them alone.
Six
TONGE’S PERIOD OF mental discontent was interrupted by a shouted command from one of his squad of ten soldiers. They had been standing behind the sergeant and himself, waiting for orders.
‘What say you? Who do you ride with?’
Hearing his man shout, Tonge turned, Sergeant Jack coming up to his side, to see that the soldier had stopped a horseman by thrusting the spike of a halberd against his chest. Showing no fear the rider looked calmly down at the soldier. Expensively dressed, the horseman had an air of sophistication that came only with breeding. When he spoke it was in carefully modulated tones.
‘I ride with the Lord, my good fellow,’ the rider told the soldier. ‘I am a Quaker.’
‘Whither are you riding?’ the soldier demanded, giving the point of the spike a prod.
‘I ride westward,’ the horseman replied as Tonge and Sergeant Jack approached.
‘Your name?’ Tonge asked, standing close, resting a hand on the withers of the horse.
‘My name, sir, is John Whiting.’
‘And what business is it that takes you westward, John Whiting?’ the lieutenant inquired.
‘Business that concerns only the heart, sir,’ Whiting replied, his smile pleasant. ‘I ride to my fiancée, Miss Sarah Hurd, who is at Taunton.’
‘Have you seen anyone, a man going cross-country with two women?’ Jack asked.
‘Might I have this weapon removed from my…?’ the Quaker began, continuing after Jack had rapped out an order and the soldier had lowered the halberd. ‘Indeed, I did espy a small party consisting of two men and two ladies.’
Puzzled by this Tonge thanked the man, adding, ‘When was it you saw this party, and where?’
‘This very morning, a trifle east of South Petherton.’
‘We are grateful to you,’ the lieutenant gave a little bow of his head. ‘Now, ride on, John Whiting. Do not permit us to keep you from your love one minute longer.’
Giving a half-salute, Whiting moved his horse away.
They ate well that noon. The heat of the blazing sun had made walking inadvisable, and they sat in the cooling shade of trees enjoying a rabbit that Jonathan Piper had shot. Though detached and remote, the youngster had an easy self-assurance about him that lightened the load of McFeeley’s responsibility because he was able to entrust several duties, including keeping watch, to Piper. They were heading north-east, but there was no way of telling if Churchill’s camp was in that direction, and Lady Sarah expressed her worry about it as she finished her meal.
‘Are we relying on chance alone, Lieutenant?’ she candidly asked.
Lady Sarah’s genteel upbringing made their present situation an ordeal for her. McFeeley was conscious of how tough their long march had been on her. Although of the same class, Rachel had a tomboy facet to her that came with an in-built toughness.
‘In a way we are relying on luck, Lady Sarah,’ he answered, as always unsettled by her study of him. ‘But a party is sure to have been sent out to meet us.’
‘What if the rebel forces should find us first?’ Lady Sarah asked, not out of fear but interest.
‘Then Private Piper can join Monmouth as he wanted to do,’ McFeeley evasively replied.
When it was cool enough to be on the move he had Lady Sarah walk up front at his side, with Rachel pacing behind beside Piper. McFeeley encouraged talk to keep the minds of the women away from their own pains and fatigue. Jonathan Piper, speaking in a low voice to a surprised and fascinated Rachel, as well as an astonished, eavesdropping McFeeley, was giving an informative account of Sir Charles Sedley’s play, The Mulberry Garden, which Piper claimed to have seen in London. This was a suggestive play laced with innuendo and double entendre, but Piper handled his description of it with the modesty expected in the company of ladies, although McFeeley suspected that Rachel was willing the soldier to give a more frank account.
‘May I ask why you chose life as a soldier?’ Sarah asked, breathless from the fast pace.
‘I feel that my reason for following the drum will strike you as tedious: the heaviest weight in the world is an empty pocket, Lady Sarah,’ McFeeley said.
A little way in front of them a skylark shot up from its ground nest to do a vertical climb, singing a beautiful song.
‘A serenade to nature,’ Sarah said with a hand up to shield her eyes. She remarked to McFeeley, ‘Even as a lieutenant your pocket surely hasn’t been filled by the army.’
‘No, but the army filled my belly, begging your pardon, my lady,’ McFeeley said grimly.
She was angling for the story of his life. No one had ever heard it and, drawn to her though he was, Lady Sarah was unlikely to be the first.
His mother had been Maura Doyle, a serving girl in the house of the governor of Wexford. Made pregnant by his son, Maura had been close to her time on that Thursday morning in 1649 when Oliver Cromwell’s troops hit Wexford. Rampaging Protestant soldiers, driven close to madness by dysentery contracted in wild, wet camps during a long, miserable autumn, and incensed by tales of anti-Protestant persecutions, had ripped the town apart. Charging down the Spawell Road the soldiers had herded men, women and children into the marketplace. There, two thousand innocents were slain. The survivors had found Maura Doyle later that day, lying dead across the carcass of a horse, her baby swinging alive, suspended in the world on an umbilical cord.
Philomena O’Driscoll, widowed in the Cromwellian massacre at Wexford, had eased her grief by caring for the baby, naming him Colm McFeeley after the doctor that had saved his hour-old life on that grim and bitterly cold day. Emigrating to England while McFeeley was still an infant and taking him with her, Philomena, a gentle, loving, staunchly Catholic woman had earned a living in the only way available to her. Home had been a brothel in Whetstone Park, off Lincoln’s Inn. There, in spite of the degradations of her enforced p
rofession, Philomena had raised McFeeley well. He had gone short of neither love nor education, and on reaching puberty his chances in a harsh and deprived world were, due to the efforts of his devoted foster mother, far superior to those of his peers.
It was when McFeeley was poised to take a well-paid job and start to repay Philomena for her years of care and kindness that disaster struck. The apprentices of the City rioted on a Shrove Tuesday, the traditional day for their frolics, and for a reason never discovered demolished all the brothels in Whetstone Park. Philomena took McFeeley by the arm and fled among a throng of screaming, wailing, running whores. The military were called up, drum and trumpet sounded alarms, but it was all too late to save the home of Philomena and McFeeley, which was also her business premises.
The area soon became a blood bath as the military fought the apprentices in a bid to regain order. A swung club, accidentally or on purpose, split open the head of a prostitute running beside them. Always kindness itself, Philomena stopped to tend the injured whore, while McFeeley was swept off with the crowd to find himself down by the river. Naive as he was, he didn’t realize that the men of the riverside had gone underground, bolting themselves into their cellars. Soon McFeeley learned, the hard way, when a pressgang rounded the corner in front of him. There was no way of escape. McFeeley had been captured and brutalized on the way to being locked up with others they had captured.
At midnight they were brought out under escort to be shipped away. The street was filled with crying women running this way and that along the column as they sought husbands, fathers and sons. At the end of the street he saw her; she was running forwards with arms outstretched. He was calling her name as one of the pressgang swung a cudgel that caught Philomena full in the face. McFeeley cried out as she stood absolutely still, blood running from her nose and mouth. Then she dropped like a stone. That was the last time he ever saw her.
Early the next morning, due to a momentary lapse in vigilance by a guard, McFeeley and a boy of his age named Horlick were able to escape. Neither of them would be pressed into service with the navy. A shot from a musket ripped away the back of Horlick’s head while they ran. Another bullet skimmed across McFeeley’s right thigh, drawing blood but not interfering with his run.
Close to Lincoln’s Inn, determined to find Philomena, he collapsed from exhaustion. As he lay in a shadowy alcove formed in the wall of a church, fast regaining his strength, four men came upon him. Claiming that they, too, had eluded the pressgang, they befriended McFeeley. On the pretence of taking him for a meal, promising to bring him back to Whetstone Park and helping to search for his ‘mother’, the four betrayed McFeeley for a reward by delivering him up – to the army.
His reminiscence was ended by Lady Sarah Churchill’s regretful inquiry. ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant, have I evoked painful memories for you with my queries?’
‘Those are the only kind of memories I have, my lady, but you are neither responsible for them nor for my foolishness in visiting the past,’ McFeeley assured her.
He slowed his pace. To continue meant entering a long valley and putting them at risk should there be any Monmouth soldiers on their flanks. Rachel and Piper had caught up and were now standing beside them. McFeeley guessed that Piper knew what the problem was: that to protect the two ladies they had to get up onto the crest either to their left or the right, but to do this would tire the women so much that they would be unable to go on. Filled with an inward reluctance, he led them into the valley.
Half a mile on, the valley opened out into a wide, flat area. Keeping to the side where they were afforded some cover by bramble bushes, McFeeley took stock of the situation. Straight ahead of them the open area came to an end as the lush green of the downs closed in to have the valley resume. To their right was a narrow path that led up a steep gradient between wooded slopes. Checking the position of the late afternoon sun, McFeeley selected the narrow path over the valley, as the latter would take them too far to the north if it continued in the way it began.
In a precautionary move, McFeeley, his musket held at the ready, had Lady Sarah walk behind him, with Rachel coming next in single file, and Jonathan Piper bringing up the rear.
‘Did you ever attend any of the theatres in Shoreditch?’ Rachel was asking Piper when McFeeley silenced her.
‘No talking, please,’ he ordered in a half whisper.
Seconds later he held up his right arm to stop them, making a gesture with a forefinger against his lips for them to stay quiet. McFeeley heard it first, then Piper brought his musket up as he caught the sound. It went silent once more but the two soldiers knew that they hadn’t misheard as again the jingling of a horse’s harness came to them. Taking Sarah by the arm, McFeeley assisted her up the bank and into the trees, while Piper did the same for Rachel. It was difficult for the two women, who slipped and slid. Keeping up the pressure on them, McFeeley was able to get his little group up to a vantage point.
Partially concealed by the trunk of a tree, McFeeley peered up through the narrow pass. The wood had thinned up ahead so that the trees were sparser than where he was standing. With a good view of the track, he waited.
A sharp intake of breath by Lady Sarah told him that she had seen the soldiers heading their way down the track at the same time as he had. A mounted captain, sitting his horse upright and alert, rode ahead of a sergeant who led a squad of twenty men. The sight had McFeeley’s body tense. These were rebel troops, but not the poorly armed rustics that the duke had collected about him since landing at Lyme. This was the elite of Monmouth’s forces, each carrying a musket; each with the soldierly bearing that announced they could use the firearms expertly.
Aware now that he hadn’t climbed high enough, McFeeley knew that it was too late to move. Gesturing behind him with his right hand to have the other three crouch down, he resigned himself to hoping that the Monmouth troops would pass by without noticing them. A strange sound disturbed him, having him put his head on one side to gauge the direction from which it came. It was Rachel’s breathing. Laboured by fear, her breath left her with the sound of a panting dog. Leaning close to Lady Sarah, his lips actually touching her tiny ear, McFeeley whispered urgently, ‘Calm her.’
Sarah put her arms round her companion, hugging her as the soldiers came on, the captain now so close that McFeeley could see the steely-blue of his ever-watchful eyes. Himself wearing a Monmouth tunic, McFeeley considered signalling for Piper to take off his uniform. That way, if the worst came to the worst, they might save themselves in these conflicting times by stating that they were serving with the rebel duke. But it was a stupid idea, McFeeley suddenly realized. If Piper divested himself of his tunic now his movements would catch the restless eyes of the captain.
Initially, McFeeley could not tell what was happening. A soldier ran up from the rear of the column to the captain, who reined up and leaned sideways in the saddle to hear what the man had to say. Sitting back upright, the captain issued orders to the sergeant with movements of his arms. Dismounting, the captain led his horse up the bank, going high to conceal the animal in a cluster of trees. The rest of the squad had dispersed to go up the banks on both sides and take cover in a way that only veterans knew how. Within the space of a minute the track had been cleared so effectively that it was difficult to credit that it had contained twenty-two men and a horse so short a time ago.
McFeeley waited, wondering. Then he saw what had brought about the change. Coming down the track, walking with easy unconcern, was a squad of about a dozen king’s men. Mentally cursing their carelessness, McFeeley watched them sauntering like a family out on a Sunday stroll. McFeeley saw a young lieutenant at the head of the party, musket on his shoulder, parade-ground fashion. At his side was a sergeant. From the dark hue of his skin McFeeley knew that it was Jack.
Though not one given to comradeship, McFeeley had shared so much danger with Jack that they had tacitly become close. The number of Monmouth soldiers and the fact that they were strategically place
d made the situation hopeless. Behind McFeeley Jonathan Piper muttered a foul oath. It wasn’t a word a gentleman would say in the presence of ladies, but McFeeley felt that the soldier could be excused as the squad came ever onwards.
A petulant Lady Henrietta stood beside her husband in the Taunton street. The spectacular sunrise did nothing to lift her spirits. A little way along the street opposite to Lord Grey of Werke and his irritated wife, outside the front door of Captain John Hucker’s house wherein the rebel duke had spent the night, stood Miss Blake, headmistress of Taunton’s Academy for Young Ladies. Henrietta glared at the school-teacher, who stood in front of her young students. To the practised eye of Lady Henrietta, Miss Blake’s veneer of a blending of education and respectability couldn’t conceal a smouldering inner fire. Neither had this escaped the experienced eye of Monmouth, which was why Henrietta was denied her place in his bed the previous night.
A hush greeted the opening of the door. With the panache of an actor coming to the front of the stage, confident of acclaim, the Duke of Monmouth stepped out into the street. He was at his most stylish. At the sight of him the adoring people of Taunton cried out in a rapturous chorus:
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