The Vizard Mask (70 page)

For a second her mind drew back as if full understanding would scald it. The Duke was the Duke of Monmouth. Did he mean Henry King was the unknowing father? Because if he did .. .

'There, there, my 'andsome. Don't take on so.' Prue Ridge was holding her on to a stool with one hand and waving a smouldering taper under her nose with the other.

'M-my-s-ss-son,' said Penitence, 'I have a s-sson.'

'That's what 'twas then,' nodded Prue. 'Would un be a Benedick? Iss fay, she mentioned a Benedick. Would MacGregor be his pappy?'

Penitence shook her head. Her lips had gone so stiff she had difficulty enunciating. 'He's D-Dorinda's husband. They were very f-ffond of Benedick.' My son, my son. She began to get up but Prue stopped her. 'Where be going?'

'My son. He came with Mon-monmouth. He's out there.'

'Iss and a thousand others with un. You'll never find un.'

'Neither will Dorinda.'

'Mebbe not,' Prue said, truthfully, 'but she made a ... a rendezvous, she called it. Mudge'd told her to tell her man if he ever got lost on the moor to make for the west side of the Poldens and turn south. That's where they gone, I reckon.'

Penitence's knuckles pressed against her cheeks. She was trying to comprehend the chaos of a battle but could only see the dear body of her child amongst those throbbing lights and knew there must be a thousand impediments to her son finding his way to the Priory — death, for one. 'It's hopeless.'

Prue shook her head: 'There's Mudge with her.'

Penitence seized on the girl's faith because there was no other counter to despair. She built on the flimsy optimism: 'And Dorinda's been sensible.' For if you were lost on the moor you could always see the Poldens — not very high hills by normal standards, but on this flat terrain they stood out like a mountain range — and if you made for the western side of the Poldens and turned south you would be unlucky not to see the light from the Priory hall windows eventually.

She stood up. To keep busy might, just, keep her sane. 'We'll get bandages ready,' she said, 'and food. And tell me everything.'

She tried to concentrate to keep her mind away from the battle; even so she kept losing the thread. Eventually, however, chronology and events and personalities became linked into some sort of coherence.

Three weeks before, practically the entire population of Athelzoy and the marsh villages had crossed the ten-mile causeway to Taunton to look on this son of Charles II who had come to challenge his Papist uncle and raise the Protestant rebellion standard in the market square.

It had been difficult to glimpse him, Prue said, so great was the crowd that had come in from all over the countryside. Dressed in purple with a silver star on his breast, he was besieged by people trying to kiss his hand and shouting 'A Monmouth! A Monmouth! The Protestant Religion!' Prue had listened to his 'Declaration' read aloud by cryers. There had been some interesting bits, as when the Duke accused King James of having burned down London and murdered King Charles. But it was very long and when Prue asked one of the men standing by what it meant, he said: 'We come to fight Papists', which it was a pity the Declaration hadn't said in the first place.

Then twenty-seven girls from the town school — 'little Rachel Yeo was there,' Prue said, proudly — had made a pretty procession and presented the Duke with a flag they had sewn themselves.

Men had come from all over the county to enlist. So many, said Prue, that she thought the whole world must be for Monmouth. 'Five or six thousand foot and a thousand horse, people do say.'

But the next Sunday Sir Ostyn Edwards, JP, had ridden over to tell the Athelzoy congregation that it mustn't aid the Duke with men or food. '... and if us did we'd be traitors to our lawful king. None of the gentry were joining him, Magistrate Edwards said, and we mu'n't neither. But after he'd gone comes Master Hughes to the village cross and says the good old cause of God and religion as had lain dead is risen again. And who cared what the gentry did anyhow.'

Martin Hughes. Benedick and Martin Hughes. How strange that two such dissimilar relatives should be on the same side; the fanatical old man from conviction; but what could have tempted the young one to Monmouth? Romance, of course. And love of a fight. She heard Dudley's voice saying that Benedick wanted to join an army, any army.

Her son would almost welcome that the cause was lost as long as he fought for it; he would see himself as another Rupert. Oh, Benedick, why didn't you tell me?

She went to the window and held on to the sill, feeling it vibrate with the percussion of the guns. I've been here before. A long time ago she had stood at a window, just as helpless. Then, as now, it was to Dorinda that she'd had to entrust her son's safety. I thought it was I who'd changed while she stayed the same. But all I did was become rich. I haven't been paying attention.

It was Dorinda who'd paid attention to the people who mattered where she had let them go, too busy - as Dorinda had said - to find out what they were feeling.

MacGregor's letter to Dorinda had argued a depth to their marriage that Penitence had never guessed at. Never tried to. It was Dorinda who had kept in closer touch with Benedick, through MacGregor's frequent visits to the radical exiles in Holland, than she had. Dorinda had known it was in her son's mind to sail with Monmouth, and tried to change it.

A moth singed by one of the candle flames fluttered on to the back of Penitence's hand and she stared at it. I don't know what to do. I don't even know what to do with this moth. It rolled off her hand to the floor and she turned away.

Together they tore up an old sheet for bandages and prepared soup. Prue was full of her own and Mudge's cleverness in having concealed so much of the harvest from 'they old wreckers', as she called army requisitioners. Her complaint was against James's men, who had occupied the area when the Duke had marched off towards Bristol and done little to endear themselves by demanding, then forcibly taking, supplies. The Duke's quartermasters, on the other hand, hadn't had to requisition food; it had been brought to them in cartloads, flocks, herds — a gift from the common people of Somerset to their Protestant saviour.

She had thought she knew what her village thought and did, but she suspected Prue's narrative of concealing that many of its men had joined Monmouth, or certainly sympathized with him. I didn't pay attention.

The candles in the windows were low and they fetched others to replace them. They burned without flickering in the heavy air but there was a tremor to the flame. The noise of bombardment was getting louder and it seemed to Penitence that she could distinguish out of it the racket of drums and trumpets.

'How far away is it, do you think?'

Prue joined her. 'Five mile. Six. I reckon 'tis round about Chedzoy.' For the first time her self-possession gave way. If you get killed, Barnabas Turvey, don't you come crying to me.'

'Barnabas?'

'Chedzoy chapel,' wailed Prue, 'and a girt fool. Couldn't wait for Monmouth to get to Taunton, oh no. Has to leave his tidy little loom in Chedzoy and tramp all the way to Chard to enlist.'

'Nice lad?' Penitence put an arm around the girl's shoulders.

'I seen worse,' sobbed Prue. 'What for do they do ut, Leddyship? Eh? Answer me that.'

'1 don't know.' Young men, perhaps Benedick, perhaps Barnabas, had their limbs blown apart. Wheatfields were trampled and soaked in blood. All the good, growing things mangled because somebody thought their religion better than somebody else's. I did once. And then she had met Her Ladyship, and come to know Dorinda and the Cock and Pie, and found that, basically, it didn't matter what you believed as long as you didn't hurt people and you let the corn grow. Stop it. Stop it.

It was impossible to stay still. She went out and led the donkey round to the farmyard, fed and stabled him. She walked down the driveway to the gates, her eyes checking but not registering the dark rows of young chestnuts which would one day line its avenue.

She stood, keeping her eyes away from the flashes so that her sight could distinguish between the blacks and not-so- blacks of the near moorland, trying to hear local sound beneath the barrage. The moon was coming up; she could see the outline of the Poldens against the sky. Make for them. Come home and be safe.

She couldn't bear to watch any more. She turned round and went slowly back to the house.

Chapter 3

The night was so long that Penitence kept taking out Rupert's time-piece and shaking it, believing it had stopped, until it did. She fell asleep and woke up to find she was clutching the time-piece to her chest. Prue was still standing at the window. 'Ladyship.'

Penitence went to stand beside her. The artillery had stopped, though sounds of musketry had become widespread. And the sky had changed, losing the deepest layer of black. 'Dawn.'

They went out into the expectant air of a July dawn, crossed the moat and went down to the gates. Firing was much closer now and they could see the occasional tiny stabs of light that went with it. The first scream they thought was an owl's until it lasted too long. There were others, shouts and splashings, travelling easily over the flatness from differing distances.

Cordite tinged the air which grew lighter until the landscape revealed itself as if dipped in milk; white at the bottom where the mist was thick and then in opaque gradations so that the top branches of willow and alder stuck up like flat scenery artistically arranged between a muslin haze. It was going to be a beautiful day.

The sharp kik-kik-kik of a water-rail in the reeds woke up the land birds in the Priory trees. A marsh harrier began quartering his hunting ground, waiting for the mist to clear.

With the birdsong came the ragged shouts of men, still some way off but unmistakably swearing in panic.

'Where are they?' It was like being marooned on a mountain top trying to penetrate cloud cover below them.

'Heading for Scaup rhine,' said Prue. They couldn't see the men, only the dislodgement of the haze made by their running. What they could see was the horsemen who chased them because eerily, almost ridiculously, the horsemen's hats were the only things visible. Ten or so hats, mostly brown, one black with a high feather, zigzagged through the marsh like hounds. Once a sabre rose up above the haze to gleam in the dawn sun before it flashed down. There was a scream.

Giggling even as she wept, Prue said: 'Which is which?'

'It doesn't matter.' It only mattered that the hidden foxes should escape those dreadful, millinery hounds. Even if it was Benedick under one of those hats, she still prayed that the men he was chasing got away.

The mist was clearing and the bank of the rhine was high so that they could see the running men as they topped the bank and fell down into the trench of fog on the other side. 'So many.' Twenty or so. They were too far away to distinguish faces, for which Penitence was always glad, but they could see the fear. They could tell that one didn't attempt the bank but ran along it, because the figure of a cavalryman bobbed in a horizontal direction on his invisible horse until his sabre swept in a beautiful movement along the line of his gallop. They saw him come trotting back.

The cavalrymen dismounted and ran to the top of the bank. This time they had pistols in their hands.

'Oh no,' said Prue, "tis too deep.' The men in the rhine would be dragged down by mud, trying to climb up, slipping, clawing. She began to jump up and down shouting, 'Leave un be.'

'They won't.' They were too far away to hear Prue's light voice anyway. Still Penitence joined her, waving her arms, yelling, because if it was useless, it was also against nature not to protest.

The cavalrymen used the men in the ditch for target practice. They made an elegant frieze along the bank, perfectly etched now in the sun that had burned away the mist, taking aim, once or twice pointing out an escaper to each other.

Penitence dragged Prue away as the shots began.

The two of them ventured back out of the gates when the firing was over. If the royal army had won the battle, two of the men in the ditch might be Benedick and MacGregor. Whoever had won the battle, there might be somebody still alive in the rhine.

But though the cavalrymen had gone, the Levels were busy and they didn't dare venture into them. Here and there knots of mounted men rode the causeways. Sometimes they dismounted to slash at clumps of reeds with their sabres. Every hut and haystack on the marshes was burning. Once, the two women saw a line of men roped around the neck being driven north along the Taunton causeway. At least they're taking prisoners. But who's taking who prisoner?

The morning wore on while they dithered and did nothing until it became afternoon. 'I can't bear it. I'm saddling the damn donkey. I'll ride over to Ostyn's. I've got to know.'

Together they went towards the farm, Prue protesting it was dangerous to go. Then she said: 'There's some'un behind us.'

They had come the old way to the farmyard rather than up the house drive; it was quicker. Behind them the deep ruts of the track disappeared round a bend dappled with cowpats and the shadow of leaves. As Penitence listened she heard a dislodged stone rattle away from a foot. 'Get into the trees.'

But lumbering round the bend with a body across his shoulders was Mudge. The body's dark hanging hair hid its face and funnelled blood down Mudge's jacket but Penitence knew who it was. She ran to him. 'Thank you, Mudge. Oh, Mudge, oh Mudge, thank you.'

She steadied her son's head as Mudge lowered his body on to the track. 'Is he all right?' She could see he wasn't. Around his forehead a piece of lace she recognized as the bottom of one of Dorinda's petticoats had dislodged and was allowing blood to seep out of a wound that had torn across the back of his head. His skin was yellow-white.

'He'll live.' Mudge straightened and put his hands to the small of his back. 'He's a tidy weight.'

'Where did you find him? Is Dorinda with you? Where's MacGregor?'

'Miracle 'twas.' Mudge addressed his sister. 'There's King's men all over but the man MacGregor'd got un in a dip on Yancy Hill. Miss Dorinda weren't pleased we had to go so far. "I told you further south, you ballocker," she says to her man as she kissed un and he smiled like, then he fainted. Broken ribs, I reckon.'