Martin Hyde (26 page)

Now that they were after me, I did not know what to do. I dared not go on towards Taunton; for who knew how soon the squire would find his error, by viewing the fox? He was too old a huntsman not to cast back to where he had left the road, as soon as he learned that his hounds had changed foxes. I concluded that I had better stay where I was, throughout that day, carefully hidden in the yew-tree. In the evening I might venture further if the coast seemed clear. It was easy to make such a resolution; but not so easy to keep to it; for fifteen hours is a long time for a boy to wait.
I stayed quiet for some hours, but I heard no more of my hunters. I learned later that they had gone from me, in a wide circuit, to cut round upon the Taunton roads, so as to intercept me, or to cause me to be intercepted in case I passed by those ways. The hounds gave up after chasing the fox for three miles. The old squire thought that they stopped because the sun had destroyed the scent. With a little help from an animal I had beaten Aurelia once more.

When I grew weary of sitting up in the yew tree, I clambered down, intending to push on through the wood until I came to the end of it. It was mighty thick cover to push through for the first half mile; then I came to a cart-track, made by wood-cutters, which I followed till it took me out of the wood into a wild kind of sheep-pasture. It was now fully nine in the morning, but the country was so desolate it might have been undiscovered land. I might have been its first settler, newly come there from the seas. It taught me something of the terrors of war, that day's wandering towards Taunton. I realized that all the men of these parts had wandered away after the Duke, for the sake of the excitement, after living lonely up there in the wilds. Their wives had followed the army also. The whole population (scanty as it was) had moved off to look for something more stirring than had hitherto come to them. I wandered on slowly, taking my time, getting my direction fairly clear from the glimpses which I
sometimes caught of the line of the highway. At a little after noon I ate the last of my victuals near a spring. I rested after my dinner, then pushed on again, till I had won to a little spinney only four miles from Taunton, where my legs began to fail under me.

I crept into the spinney, wondering if it contained some good shelter in which I could sleep for the night. I found a sort of dry, high pitched bank, with the grass all worn off it, which I thought would serve my turn, if the rain held off. As for supper, I determined to shoot a rabbit with my pistol. For drink, there was a plenty of small brooks within half a mile of the little enclosure. After I had chosen my camp, I was not very satisfied with it. The cover near by was none too thick. So I moved off to another part where the bushes grew more closely together. As I was walking leisurely along, I smelt a smell of something cooking, I heard voices, I heard something clink, as though two tin cups were being jangled. Before I could draw back, a man thrust through the undergrowth, challenging me with a pistol. Two other men followed him, talking in low, angry tones. They came all round me with very murderous looks. They were the filthiest looking scarecrows ever seen out of a wheat-field.

"Why," said one of them, lowering his pistol, "it be the Duke's young man, as we seed at Lyme." They became more friendly at that; but still they seemed uneasy, not very sure of my intentions.

"Where is the Duke?" I asked after a long awkward pause. "Is he at Taunton?" They looked from one to the other with strange looks which I did not understand.

"The Duke be at Bridgewater," said one of them in a curious tone. "What be you doing away from the Duke?"

"Why," I said, "I was taken prisoner. I escaped this morning."

"Yes?" they said with some show of eagerness. "Be there many soldiers hereaway, after us?"

"No. Not many," I said. "Are you coming from the Duke?"

"Yes," said one of them, "we left en at Bridgewater. We been having enough of fighting for the crown. We been marching in mud up to our knees. We been fighting behind hedges. We been retreating for the last week. So now us be going home, if us can get there. Glad if we never sees a fight again."

"Well" I said, "I must get to the Duke if I can. How far is it to Bridgewater?"

"Matter of fifteen mile," they said, after a short debate. "You'll never get there tonight. Nor perhaps tomorrow, since we hear the soldiers be a coming."

"I'll get some of the way tonight," I said; but my heart sank at the thought; for I was tired out.

"No, young master," said one of the men kindly, "you stop with us for tonight. Come to supper with
us. Us 'ave rabbits on the fire." Their fortnight of war had given them a touch of that comradeship which camp-life always gives. They took me with them to their camp-fire, where they fed me on a wonderful mess of rabbits boiled with herbs. The men had bread. One of them had cider. Our feast there was most pleasant; or would have been, had not the talk of these deserters been so melancholy. They were flying to their homes like hunted animals, after a fortnight of misery which had altered their faces forever. They had been in battle; they had retreated through mud; they had seen all the ill-fortune of war. They did all that they could to keep me from my purpose; but I had made up my mind to rejoin my master; I was not to be moved. Before settling down to sleep for the night I helped the men to set wires for rabbits, an art which I had not understood till then, but highly useful to a lad so fated to adventurous living as myself. We slept in various parts of the spinney, wherever there was good shelter; but we were all so full of jangling nerves that our sleep was most uneasy. We woke very early, visited our wires, then breakfasted heartily on the night's take. The men insisted on giving me a day's provision to take with me, which I took, though grudgingly, for they had none too much for themselves, poor fellows. Just before we parted I wrote a note to Sir Travers, on a leaf of my pocket-book. "Dear Sir Travers," I wrote, "These men are well-known to
me as honest subjects. They have had great troubles on their road. I hope that you will help them to get home. Please remember me very kindly to your niece." After folding this very neatly I gave the precious piece of impudence to one of the men. "There," I said, "if you are stopped, insist on being carried before Sir Travers. He knows me. I am sure that he will help you as far as he can." For this the men thanked me humbly. I learned, too, that it was of service to them. It saved them all from arrest later in the same day.

Having bidden my hosts farewell, I wandered on, keeping pretty well in cover. I saw a patrol of the King's dragoons in one of the roads near which I walked. The nets were fast closing in on my master: there were soldiers coming upon him from every quarter save the west, which was blocked too, as it happened, by ships of war in the Channel. This particular patrol of dragoons caught sight of me. I saw a soldier looking over a gate at me; but as I was only a boy, seemingly out for birdsnests, he did not challenge me, so that by noon I was safe in Taunton. I have no clear memory of Taunton, except that it was full of people, mostly women. There were little crowds in the streets, little crowds of women, surrounding muddy, tired men who had come in from the Duke. People were going about in a hurried, aimless, way which showed that they were scared. Many houses were shut up. Many men were working on the city
walls, trying to make the place defensible. If ever a town had the fear of death upon it that town was Taunton, then. As far as I could make out it was not the actual war that it feared; though that it feared pretty strongly, as the looks on the women's faces showed. It feared that the Duke's army would come back to camp there, to eat them all up, every penny, every blade of corn, like an army of locusts. Sometimes, while I was there, men galloped in with news, generally false, like most war-news, but eagerly sought for by those who even now saw their husbands shot dead in ranks by the fierce red-coats under their drunken Dutch general. Sometimes the news was that the army was pressing in to cut off the Duke from Taunton; that the dragoons were shooting people on the road; that they were going to root out the whole population without mercy. At another time news came that Monmouth was marching in to music, determined to hold Taunton till the town was a heap of cinders. Then one, bloody with his spurred horse's gore, cried aloud that the King was dead, shot in the heart by one of his brother's servants. Then another came calling all to prayer. All this uproar caused a hurrying from one crowd to another. Here a man preached fervently to a crowd of enthusiasts. Here men ran from a prayer-meeting to crowd about a messenger. Bells jangled from the churches; the noise of the picks never ceased in the trenches; the taverns were full; the streets swarmed;
the public places were now thronged, now suddenly empty. Here came the aldermen in their robes, scared faces among the scarlet, followed by a mob praying for news, asking in frenzy for something certain, however terrible. There several in a body clamoured at a citizen's door in the like fever of doubt. There was enough agony of mind in Taunton that day to furnish out any company of tragedians. We English, an emotional people by nature, are best when the blow has fallen. We bear neither doubt nor rapture wisely. Our strength is shown in troublous times in which other people give way to despair.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE
END

A
MONG
all the confusion, I learned certainly from some deserters that the Duke was at Bridgewater, waiting till his men had rested, before trying to break through to the north, to his friends in Chester. He had won a bad name for himself among his friends. Nobody praised him. The Taunton people, who had given him such a splendid welcome ten days before, now cursed him for having failed; they knew too well what sort of punishment was sure to fall upon them, directly the fighting came to an end. Somehow all their despairing talk failed to frighten me. I was not scared by all the signs of panic in the streets. I was too young to understand fully; but besides that I was buoyed up by the belief that I had done a fine thing in escaping from prison in order to serve the cause dear to my heart. My heart told me that I was going to a glorious victory in the right cause. I cannot explain it. I felt my father in my heart urging me to go forward. I would not have drawn back for all the King's captains in a company riding out against me together. I felt that these people were behaving absurdly; they should keep a brave
patient face against their troubles. Tomorrow or the next day would see us in triumph, beating our enemies back to London, to the usurper's den in Whitehall.

It drew towards sunset before I had found a means to get to Bridgewater. The innkeepers who in times of peace sent daily carriers thither, with whom a man could travel in comfort for a few pence, had now either lost their horses, or feared to risk them. No carriers had gone either to Bridgewater or to Bristol since the Duke marched in on the fourth day of his journey; nor had the carriers come in as usual from those places; the business of the town was at a standstill. I asked at several inns, but this was the account given to me. There was no safety on the roads. The country was overrun by thieves, who stole horses in the name of the Duke or of the King; nothing was safe anywhere. The general hope of the people was for Monmouth to be beaten soon, or to be victorious soon. They had lost quite enough by him; they wanted the rebellion over.

At last, just when I had begun to think the thing hopeless, I found an honest Quaker about to ride to Bridgewater with a basket of Bibles for the Duke's men. He did not ask me what my business at Bridgewater might be; but he knew that no one would want to go there at such a time without good cause. "Well," he said, "if you can ride small, you shall ride behind me, but it will be slow riding, as the horse will be heavily laden." He was going to start at eight o'clock, so as
to travel all night, when the marauders, whether deserters from the Duke or ill-conditioned country people, were always less busy. I had time to get some supper for myself in the tavern-bar before starting. Just as we were about to ride off together, when we were in the saddle, waiting only till some carts rolled past the yard-door, I had a fright, for there, coming into the inn yard, was one of the troopers who had beguiled me from the Duke's army that day at Axminster. I had no doubt that he was going from inn to inn, asking for news of me. We began to move through the yard as he came towards us; the clack of the horse's feet upon the cobbles made him look up; but though he stared at me hard, he did so with an occupied mind; he was in such a brown study (as it is called) that he never recognized me. A minute later, we were riding out of town past the trench-labourers, my heart going pit-a-pat from the excitement of my narrow escape. I dared not ask the Quaker to go fast, lest he should worm my story from me, but for the first three miles I assure you I found it hard not to prod that old nag with my knife to make him quicken his two mile an hour crawl. Often during the first hours of the ride I heard horses coming after us at a gallop. It was all fancy; we were left to our own devices. My pursuers, I found, afterwards, were misled by the lies of the landlord at the inn we had left. We were being searched for in Taunton all that fatal night, by half a dozen of the Carew servants.

Bridgewater had not gone to bed when we got there. The people were out in the streets, talking in frightened clumps, expecting something. After thanking the Quaker for his kindness in giving me a lift I asked at one of these clumps where I could find the Duke. I was feeling so happy at the thought of rejoining my master, after all my adventures, that I think I never felt so happy.

"Where can I find the Duke?" I asked. "I'm his servant, I must find him."

"Find him," said one of the talkers. "He's not here. He's marched out, sir, with all his army, over to Sedge-moor to fight the King's army. It's a night attack, sir."

I was bitterly disappointed at not having reached my journey's end; but there was a stir in the thought of battle. I asked by which road I could get to the place where the battle would be. The man told me to turn to the right after crossing the river. "But," said he, "you don't want to get mixed up in the fighting, master. There be thousands out there on the moor. A boy would be nowhere among all them."