Liberty

by McWatters, Nikki;

  ‘It is better that we stay here and attend your cousin,’ one heavily powdered older woman said in a prim voice. ‘She is badly injured and needs our attention. Let the men deal with the enemy soldiers. It isn’t our place. Men fight and women tend the injured.’

  I gave a sigh of exasperation and shook my head.

  ‘You don’t understand that the Burgundians will leave all of us in the same state as Aimee upstairs if they breach the walls.’ I almost cried. ‘Our men are taking arrows just like that one in my cousin’s side and every man down means one less of an already very small garrison. Half of them have one foot in the grave, they are so old, and cannot even muster the strength to throw the rocks or boiling oil.’

  I looked pleadingly around the room.

  ‘Anyone?’ I asked. ‘Is there any one of you who can see the reason in my idea? We have thousands of women running around, bumping into wagons and draping wet hides over rooves but that won’t help us if the enemy clamber up their belfry and cut down the men on the battlements.’

  ‘None of us has ever held a weapon, let alone knows how to use one.’ A woman spoke up and I recognised her as Madame de Balagny. ‘My husband would punish any woman who wielded a weapon. It’s unseemly. Savage.’

  ‘Then he’s a fool!’ I shouted angrily. ‘We will be slaughtered and you want to sit here and drink rosewater and eat croissants while Beauvaisi blood is spilled. I will die fighting for my people, not here with you cowards.’

  ‘When your betrothed hears what you are proposing, girl, he will throw you out.’ The woman tutted. ‘And I’ll see that my husband has you in the stocks for your wild ideas.’

  I laughed maniacally.

  ‘We’ll all be dead!’

  I could see that some of the younger women were becoming distressed.

  ‘Perhaps we should rally together some of the women, Madame Balagny,’ a pretty brunette suggested timidly. ‘Not us of course but some of the stronger peasant women.’

  ‘Our peasant arms are strong and our wills are even stronger,’ I growled at her. ‘But we’ll not risk our lives while you play parlour games. If we go and fight, you will too. When blood is spilled it all looks the same. Yours is no prettier than mine.’

  I ripped aside my outer skirts and displayed my two hatchets.

  ‘I am going to march out there and find myself an army of women and we are going to storm the battlements with whatever we can find and we will repel the invasion. Who is with me?’

  I glowered at the women and caught the eye of one fair young girl wearing a soft, frilled bonnet. She was pale but her eyes were lively and intelligent.

  ‘I’ll fight beside you, Jeanne.’ She nodded, crossing the room to stand beside me before addressing the others. ‘For my children. For Beauvais.’

  ‘No, Giselle!’ Madame Balagny cried. ‘Don’t you dare!’

  ‘We have no time to lose,’ I said to the young woman. ‘Come.’

  It was a grey and overcast afternoon, which felt ominous after such a thick and humid morning. The city streets were oppressive. The muggy heat and dense atmosphere of smoke was trapped by the overhanging clouds. As we walked through the streets I waved a hatchet at those hurrying by. ‘All of you women who are able,’ I called. ‘Take up arms, hammers, swords and knives and march with me. An army of women. We will repel the enemy from the battlements!’

  Many gaped at me, wide-eyed with disbelief, but others nodded and stopped what they were doing and joined us, some carrying pots, others clothes irons and some with chisels and hammers. Nearly all the new recruits were serving girls and peasant women. There was no time for any of them to learn battle skills. We headed straight into the action.

  A crowd of women had gathered south of the main gates. Many were yelling up to the men on the battlements, wailing like mourners as more and more men were taken out by arrows.

  ‘The belfry is almost level with the battlements and it is well fortified and can hold many soldiers,’ someone shouted.

  ‘They are climbing it now and others have tied their ladders together to make them longer,’ another woman told us as we neared. ‘We have killed hundreds but the sheer numbers are overwhelming us!’

  ‘Come on, sisters!’ I called. ‘All of us. Up to the wall! Follow me.’

  A shout of assent went up. Some of the older women hurried away, but the younger and stronger ones rose and we began to rush up the stairs, climbing higher and higher until we stood beside the archers on the battlements, struggling to reload their crossbows fast enough to pick off the encroaching enemy soldiers.

  The tops of the towers and the upper parts of the battlements blazed with rows of torchlight, burning stakes that were continually being replaced as they were hurled down toward the belfry. Captain Balagny was reigniting a torch and turned to see a seething mass of women storming the battlements with all manner of implements in their hands. I held my hatchets by my side.

  ‘What is this?’ he demanded.

  ‘You are outnumbered,’ I yelled over the sound of battle cries from outside the city walls. ‘But no longer. The call has gone out and every woman who loves her city is here to defend it.’

  His eyes left mine and fell on the girl beside me.

  ‘Giselle,’ he shouted in a panic. ‘Go home to your mother immediately and lock yourself in the attic. We are about to fall to the Bold. Run. Hide away.’

  ‘No, Papa,’ she said firmly as she cast off her stole and tore at the buttons on her wrists to begin folding up the sleeves of her expensive silk blouse. ‘I will fight this fight because we can win it.’

  ‘What?’ he scoffed. ‘You and the coward’s daughter? And your motley crew of soft women? Get away from here now, girl. That is an order.’

  Giselle looked at me and began to stammer something but I ignored her and addressed Captain Balagny.

  ‘You can throw me in the stocks later,’ I said. ‘But right now you need us and we are here. So stand aside and let us all come up.’

  I ripped off my bonnet and dropped it to the ground, letting my dark hair fall loose over my shoulders. My eyes bored into the Captain’s until he looked away.

  A shout went up nearby. A flash and scream of metal cut through the smoky air. Further along the stone battlements I could see that the first armed Burgundians in their blue and white uniforms had climbed the belfry and were breaching the wall. They were emerging with swords ready and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with our men. We had no time to lose. I ran to the edge and peered over. Spread out over the fields as far as I could see were the Burgundian camps. Directly below us, the men-at-arms were clambering over the scaffolding like insects, hundreds and hundreds of them lining up to begin the ascent. Further back I could see crossbowmen arrayed in formation, aiming their flaming arrows toward us. One whizzed past my head so close that I felt the breeze of it. My heart was racing and my dirt-stained face was prickling with fear.

  Nearby, I saw the armoury room, tucked into a tower, and turned and ordered the women to raid it for whatever they could find.

  ‘Grab yourselves longbows, pikes, whatever you can find and go and chop them back. Push them, burn them, slash them! They cannot get onto the battlements or we are finished!’

  I could see our men wrestling with the enemy soldiers and ran with my hatchets, yelling to embolden myself and calm my fear. Men beside me were wrenching off the helmets of the enemy as they came up against the wall. Then they rained hammer blows on their heads, disorienting them. The Burgundian soldiers were pushed back, to fall screaming from the lofty scaffolding. I watched men fall away until they were as small as ants, smashing onto the stones below, some tumbling into the filthy bog of the moat. I could see that a causeway had been built across the moat, and that the belfry was strong and covered in humans, all surging upward.

  I felt as if I was moving in a dream, pushing at the enemy, struggling from t
heir grip as they tried to cling to me. I could only wield one hatchet at a time and kept the other on my hip. Many of the women were hesitant when confronted with such brutality. Giselle was standing by, watching, her hands nervously running over a hammer. I lopped off a man’s hand as it reached up, taking it clean off his arm with the glove still intact. I felt bile rise in my throat as a spurt of blood splattered my tunic.

  ‘It’s no use,’ one of our archers shouted back along the line. ‘They are coming too fast.’

  I looked back over my shoulder and gasped. Further along, near the next tower, I saw a man in a blue and white uniform with a silver helmet covering his head rolling his body up over the stone battlement wall. There was no one there to stop him. He held the Burgundian flag.

  I ran, without thought or reason, toward him. I stared, horrified, as he jammed his spear into the grouting so that the flag flapped in the breeze. A roar went up from below and all along the upper reaches of the battlements. Our people seemed to freeze, all eyes falling to the planted flag, and a terrified ripple of voices began screaming that Beauvais had fallen. I ran as fast as I could and as I approached the soldier, I swung back my little axe and with all my strength I buried it in the centre of his chest. Through his narrow visor I could see the shock and surprise in his dark eyes. He stumbled backward, resting against the wall. With a grunt, I grabbed his legs and pulled as hard as I could, lifting and tumbling him over the edge with surprising ease. I leaned over the wall and watched as he fell like a pebble to the moat below, my hatchet still embedded in his chest. I wrenched the flagpole from the stone and threw it down after him, seeing it flap like a dying bird into the grey nothingness. A huge cheer came up from the women. As one we swelled with a new sense of hope.

  I snatched a torch and ran to the edge of the belfry and tossed it. I gave a cheer of relief as the wood of the scaffolding caught fire and soldiers began to leap from the lower rungs and hurry away from the higher ones, back down and across the causeway.

  I felt someone beside me and grinned at Giselle as she spun another torch down at the enemy. Other women were taking our lead, seizing more torches and hurling them until the belfry began to burn. A mighty and victorious cheer went up all over the battlements and I saw Captain Balagny helping a wounded woman down the steps. He caught my eye, giving me a nod. With the belfry and ladders burning below, the Burgundians had begun to retreat back to their camps. We all knew that they would rally their forces and come at us again the next day with cannons and battering rams, but the first strike against us had failed. I felt a change in the human weather of Beauvais.

  ‘Jeanne,’ I heard a voice call, and turned to see Colin running toward me. He had a deep cut on his cheek and blood on his shirt.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ I cried, going to him and touching the skin near the wound.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘But you! Jeanne. Everyone is talking about you. Without the rise of the women to bolster our resistance, we would have been overtaken. Spirits were sagging. But now we are triumphant! You are magnificent. They won’t call you the daughter of the coward any longer. I just heard Balagny call you Jeanne Hachette! Can you believe it? Jeanne Hachette!’

  I laughed. I liked the name. My smile wilted as I saw Lieutenant Jean Lagoy marching toward us, his helmet under his arm, his brow darkly furrowed. I had the feeling that he was not going to congratulate me.

  The ride was slow as we had avoided the roads and kept to the darkest shadows of the paddocks and farmlands. Once we reached Antrim, I’d been left as the lookout on the edge of town. Alone. I was becoming afraid. George and Will had been gone a long time and I was beginning to wonder if it had all gone terribly wrong and they’d been detained while trying to bust Jimmy out. The snow had melted but the hard earth was cold; sheets of frigid mist coiled about Finn McCool’s strong legs as we waited in the gloom.

  ‘Shhh, boy,’ I whispered, not wanting him to whinny or stomp too loudly.

  Cold and terrified, I bristled at the sudden sound of clattering hooves and shouting, coming from the corner of Milliner’s Lane and Main Street. Someone was calling Jimmy’s name.

  ‘Jimmy Ballantine! Stop or I’ll shoot!’

  I reined in Finn McCool tightly to stop him from rearing up at the commotion. Overhead, the moon was full and just moving away from a shelf of dark cloud. A man galloped down the street on my mother’s black horse while two others behind him shouted and frantically urged their horses on.

  The arrival of three mounted riders told me that my brother and Will had successfully rescued Jimmy from the lock-up. If he’d been in the prison proper it might have been impossible, but they’d been informed he was only in a holding cell, awaiting an appearance at the bench the next day. The boys had gone in, confident that neck scarves tied over their faces and the threat of a musket barrel would be enough to encourage the guard to use his keys to release Jimmy from the small lock-up.

  The first horseman gestured wildly, pointing down the small laneway where I was waiting. From the rear, well behind the approaching horses, I could see a man in uniformed breeches and stockinged feet running and waving his arms. His threat to shoot Jimmy appeared to be idle as he carried no weapon.

  As the horses came toward me I turned my great stallion and pressed him back into the dim grey shadows down the laneway, fleeing fast from the town toward the free paddocks and the cover of the woods.

  ‘Déan deifur!’ Will cried into the night and I felt the wind and the rumble of horses’ legs behind me but did not turn to look back until we were well clear of the houses.

  As the landscape opened up and above us a mosaic of stars twinkled in the wide-open night sky, my heart settled and slowed, along with my breathing.

  ‘Whoa.’ I recognised George’s voice and we all slowed to a canter, then a trot.

  All four of us were out of breath almost to the point of being winded. George and Will peeled off their dark face-scarves and shook out their damp hair.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Jimmy panted, laughing at the same time. ‘You mad bastards! You risked your very lives for me.’

  ‘It was more for my sister Brigit, if truth be told.’ George laughed back. ‘Can’t let you hang and leave my sister without a provider.’

  We kept to the dark paths over the patchwork of farmland. The redcoats would be raising the alarm that a prisoner had escaped and while it was unlikely they’d come riding down to Gransha immediately, it was still safer to press home hard and get Brigit and her family well away.

  ‘The guard thought we were United Irishmen from the Antrim local chapter,’ Will told me as he pulled his black horse alongside me. ‘They’ll be asking questions around Antrim all night but Patrick Lonigan has the boat at the ready down at Bangor. If we can get your sister and her family there before dawn, they’ll find safe passage to Cairnryan in Scotland and then they can make their way to Paisley.’

  At home my father was up and furious. He had heard the horses leave and had gotten dressed and interrogated Brigit for hours. She had given him the bare bones of our story. He was waiting in the parlour.

  ‘I cannot believe you’ve done this thing!’ he roared at George. ‘And you, Will, letting Betsy go along for the ride and endangering her life? What sort of husband will you prove to be? A dead one if they find out it was you behind this.’

  And then he turned his wrath on Jimmy.

  ‘My daughters have some wicked bad taste in husbands! Jimmy Ballantine! A rebel! A Catholic! And now an escaped criminal, wanted by the Crown!’

  ‘He is family,’ George said quietly. ‘We did this, not for any great political cause, but for Brigit. And little Isabella.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’ Da raged as he paced about the room, his face beet-red. ‘We’ll be hanged, the lot of us.’

  ‘They’ve no reason to believe it is us,’ George explained calmly. ‘As far as many people know, you are estrang
ed from the Ballantine family on account of the Catholicism and …’

  ‘You’re not sympathisers, are you, boys?’ Da frowned at Will and George, pointing at them. ‘You’re not running with the rebels?’

  ‘Of course not!’ George lied. ‘Not at all, Father.’

  I thought he oversold it too much. There was a hint of melodrama in his voice. My father did not look convinced.

  Brigit had already packed a satchel of clothes for the trip.

  ‘Ma’s clothes are a little big but I’ll eat lots of haggis in Scotland and fill them out.’ She laughed as I helped her get ready for the long ride. ‘Thank you, Betsy, for bringing Jimmy home to me. I love him so.’

  I hugged her tightly and we stayed like that, warm body against warm body, for some minutes.

  ‘It was the boys that took the most risk,’ I told her. ‘I was just a lookout and no one came to stop us, so I did naught much at all but freeze my nose off.’

  ‘I’ve scratched Isabella’s name in the sister book.’ Brigit smiled and patted my hand. ‘I know Mammy was watching over you tonight. I just hope she keeps smiling on us from heaven. The book is back in the trunk. Take care of it. I looked through the other trunk and there was some jewellery. I took half to sell in Scotland to help Jimmy and me get on our feet again. The other half is on the dresser for you. There are some nice pieces. Perhaps you can wear them at your wedding. I will be sad to miss it.’

  I went into my room and took the rest of my mother’s jewellery and the strange old book, wrapped them in a pillowcase, and took them back to my sister.

  ‘There is more stability and safety in Scotland,’ I told her. ‘Here, Ireland is perched on the edge of a major rebellion and I think the book is safer in your hands. Bring it back when you come home. I’m in no rush to provide Will with daughters and I want you to have all Mammy’s jewellery. She would want you to use it to keep safe and well and you will need it more than me. Just save her wedding ring. The rest is decoration.’