Alice in Love and War (21 page)

She slept at last, but woke, screaming, from a dream of mutilated faces. The woman – Hannah – came in to calm her, to tell her not to be afraid; it was a nightmare. Alice was sweat-soaked and shaking, bewildered in the strange room.

“Go to sleep now,” Hannah said. Her hand on Alice’s shoulder was kind. “The baby’s sleeping. I’ve fed her.”

Alice was afraid to sleep again, but exhaustion overcame her at last and she slept until early morning, when sounds from outside roused her. She looked out to see Master Barford starting the fire in his forge. His little daughter stood watching the red flames grow. From downstairs Alice heard a baby – Hannah’s – squealing, and the woman’s voice, then a door opening and shutting.

She washed in the bowl of water Hannah had provided and put her sweat-stained linen back on. She took her comb from her pocket and struggled with the tangles in her hair. Her comb was now almost her only possession – that and the eagle stone she kept in a pouch on a thong around her neck. She pictured her hessian bag, her clean linen, her basket of salves, in the Erlams’ wagon. And saw again the field full of dead.

When will they bury them? she wondered. They’d be stiff now. Perhaps it was done already. And she felt horror at the thought that her friends might have been tumbled together into a pit dug by soldiers, unloved, unblessed.

She went downstairs. The two babies lay side by side, one in his cradle, the other in her basket. The yard door opened, and Hannah Barford came in with a bucket of water, her daughter beside her, chattering about the blacksmith’s fire. “Hot. Dadda’s fire, hot. Mustn’t touch…” She fell silent when she saw Alice.

Hannah smiled. “Prudence, say good morning to Alice.” She shunted her daughter forward.

But the child darted away and went to study the two babies. “Matty,” she said, rocking her brother rather too vigorously. She considered Elen.
“Babba.”

“This is Elen,” said Alice, lifting up Nia’s baby. It felt good to hold her again. “Can you say Elen?”

Prudence ran and clung to her mother.

Hannah had been watching Alice. “You are very young,” she said.

“I’m seventeen.”

“Don’t you have a family? This house near Oxford – is it your home?”

“No. But I worked there last winter. They would take me in, I believe, if I can find my way there.”

“My husband says you can stay here awhile. Best to wait till the armies are gone; then we’ll see how you might travel. Till then – there is a way you could help
me
.”

“Yes! I will.” Alice imagined washing and cooking.

But Hannah looked towards the closed inner door. She lowered her voice. “There’s a soldier – a dragoon – in there, in the parlour. He’s sorely wounded; mortally wounded, we believe. His comrades brought him here across the field on his horse after the battle; asked us to care for him until he died. He’s lost a lot of blood. My husband prised a pistol ball from his thigh and he has a sword cut in his shoulder. I thought to find him dead this morning, but he clings to life. Could you sit with him, Alice? Talk to him, give him sips of beer? He’s as comfortable as I could make him – oh, there was so much blood, and we’d to bring down an old mattress from the loft, and no time to air it – but I don’t want Prue to see him, and I can’t leave the children alone. I look in on him when I can. But it seems an unchristian thing to let him lie there alone, facing death. Would you sit with him?”

“Yes. Of course,” said Alice, though there was nothing she wanted to do less. The thought of more death filled her with despair. “I’ll go to him now.”

“Oh, have a bite to eat first.” Hannah set meat, bread and beer on the table, and Alice was surprised to find herself hungry after all.

“There’s a flagon of beer for him in there,” Hannah said afterwards, “and a wash bowl and some clean linen cloths. We fetch water from the well in the yard.”

He was lucky to be brought here, to these people, Alice thought. We were both lucky.

“This village,” she asked, “what’s it called?”

“Sibbertoft,” said Hannah.

Sibbertoft. It sounded gentle. Not a name for a place of death.

She braced herself and opened the door to the parlour.

Twenty

It
was dark in the room, and stuffy. Although Hannah had evidently been burning herbs to purify the air, nothing could mask the smell of blood.

Alice steeled herself to look at the man on the bed. He lay as if asleep, his body covered by a blanket, his face so white she felt sure he must have died, as Hannah had predicted. She sat down on the stool at his left side, watched the blanket where it lay over his chest, and was relieved to see a faint, steady movement. She studied his face. He was young, with fairish hair hanging dirty and tangled, a moustache, a few days’ pale stubble on his jaw. His skin was pitted with gunpowder. An ordinary-looking young man, were it not that he was perhaps mortally wounded and already close to death.

Near by were his belongings: a bulky buff coat of tan leather; a helmet; big leather gauntlets; a sword and musket lying against the wall; and on the floor, near her feet, a jumble of belt, leather flask, bandolier, various bags and pouches. On top lay a Bible and some printed papers. She glanced at these. Some were newsbooks and pamphlets. One seemed to be a hymn sheet.

He was one of the other side, she felt sure. The hymn sheet in particular suggested it. She supposed she should hate him because of what had happened to her friends, but she found she felt nothing at the sight of this man but sadness and a profound pity at the waste of his life.

She could see part of the bandaging on his left shoulder. It bore a dark, dried bloodstain. The other wound, she had been told, was in the thigh: a pistol shot. A cavalryman must have caused that injury, since only they had pistols.

She touched the man’s forehead gently. His eyelids flickered. “My name is Alice,” she said. “Mistress Barford asked me to sit with you. Is there anything you need?”

“Drink…” The word was a whisper.

She poured a little beer into the tankard. He was lying slightly propped against a pillow, but even with her help he managed only a few sips before he fell back, exhausted.

Alice glanced at the Bible. “Would you like me to read to you?” she asked.

He gave the faintest of nods. “Thank you.”

She picked up the Bible. Its leather binding was scuffed with use and it fell open at several much-studied passages. She glanced at the flyleaf and saw his name written there:
Jeremiah Banks
. Jeremiah: he was the son of Puritans, then, for sure. She wondered what text to choose, what would be appropriate, and fell back on something familiar that would be easy for her to read without stumbling:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…”

He listened, or she supposed he did. His eyes remained closed.

She read on, and when she stopped he said, on a faint breath, “We’ve met before.”

He was rambling. She hoped it was not the first sign of fever. “No,” she said. “You’re thinking of someone else.”

Most of that day she sat with him. From time to time she gave him more sips of beer, but when she suggested food he seemed too tired. He slept for hours, his breathing so shallow that sometimes she wondered if he would ever wake again. Once, while he slept, she drew the blanket away and looked at his injuries. Both wounds – in the left shoulder and right thigh – had been bound in clean linen which was now soaked with blood. But the blood had dried; it did not seem to be flowing, at least while he lay still. She wondered whether any salve or poultice had been applied, whether anything should be done now, or whether the wounds were best left alone.

In the late afternoon she helped Hannah change his bandages. He came more fully, and painfully, awake then, for they had to turn him onto his injured right side so that they could prise the stuck linen away from the wound just below his left shoulder.

Alice flinched at the sight of the great slicing cut, but Hannah said, “It heals well. The bleeding has almost stopped.”

They bandaged the arm again, rolled him gently onto his back, and attended to the thigh wound. This still oozed blood. It was less extensive, but deep, and Alice knew that such a wound could do much damage.

They left him resting and went into the kitchen.

Alice said, “I’ve been watching him. I believe he may live, if the wounds don’t fester.”

Hannah nodded agreement. “He has clung to life for a full day now. Does he drink?”

“Not much. He’s very weak. I think he has almost no blood in him.”

“Some red wine would do him good.”

“To replace the lost blood. Yes.”

“And perhaps a thin broth, made with meat stock.”

She left Alice with the children and went to the inn on the green, returning with a flagon of wine. Its dark red colour made Alice feel sure it would be wholesome for the injured soldier.

Elen, meanwhile, was thriving on Hannah’s milk. Alice changed the baby and swaddled her again, all the time talking to her and getting smiles in return. She was determined to do as much for Elen as possible, for she had a jealous fear that if they stayed here long, the baby would come to love Hannah, and not her.

Not that she intended to stay any longer than necessary. When Master Barford came in for his supper, her easy relationship with Hannah changed and the air became charged with mistrust. The blacksmith had been persuaded, out of Christian charity, to take her under his roof, but it was clear that he regarded her as a woman of dubious morals who might corrupt his wife and daughter. He avoided speaking directly to her, and she could only listen as he told his wife what he had been hearing from his customers during the day about movements of the troops. It seemed that hundreds – maybe thousands – of Royalist prisoners were being sent to London under guard; but General Fairfax was believed to be leading the Parliamentarian army towards Leicester. Alice thought with pity of the people of Leicester, who had already suffered so much under Prince Rupert’s assault.

After supper Master Barford went out to see what he could find on the battlefield. Alice had told Hannah earlier about the possessions she had left in the Erlams’ wagon, but she did not dare ask the blacksmith to search for them. And she would not go out herself; she knew people would be stripping the corpses. She ventured only as far as the field edge at the back of the forge. From there she could see wagons, some overturned, and distant figures moving about. There were more men walking the field tracks north-east of the village, and she noticed circlings of crows over the highest ground.

Master Barford returned with a pair of pistols, spurs and other horse trappings, and a man’s gold ring that Hannah took and examined.

“Anything worth having has gone,” he told his wife. “I reckon General Fairfax’s army have taken most of the wagons with them. The villagers are coming out now, same as me, to look around. Some have gone up Hellcombe, towards Wadborough.” He sighed, passing a hand across his face. “Lord, there are some sights! The corpses…”

In desperation Alice turned to him. “My friends … the women?”

He looked at her with a reluctant compassion. “There were soldiers left behind to bury the dead. I saw them filling in a pit near where the baggage train was attacked.”

Alice tried not to think of the pit, but the image forced itself into her mind: the tumbled bodies, purplish-white, stripped of any saleable clothes. Her friends were gone. But what of Bryn? What of Gethin and Edryd? Were they prisoners now, or were they too among the dead, buried in another pit a few fields away from their wives? And Robin? She hadn’t thought of him until now. Surely Robin would somehow have escaped the slaughter?

Hannah had made the promised broth, and added some of the red wine to it. Alice fed it to the soldier with a spoon. He seemed better already, less hollow-faced, his eyes more alert.

That night Alice was tired and fell asleep quickly; but once again, towards dawn, she woke from a nightmare to the sound of her own screams. From the next room she heard Prudence begin to cry, and her mother soothing her. When Hannah appeared, Alice was sitting trembling on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s not your fault.” Hannah yawned. “Your baby’s awake. I’ll feed her.”

Alice was afraid to fall asleep again. “I’ll go down and see how the soldier is.”

They never referred to the man by his name, though Alice had told Hannah she had found it on the flyleaf of his Bible. It was as if by not naming him they would be less unhappy if all their efforts failed and he died.

Alice washed and dressed, then went downstairs, feeling her way in the dark. In the kitchen several cats woke and pressed around her ankles. She knelt and stroked them, soothed by their warm furriness.