Women of Courage (138 page)

“If the Good Lord has taken one of our family already, perhaps He won’t need another. But whatever happens, Mary, don’t you see that’s why I
must
go? If Roger went for nothing, just because someone asked him, should I hold back from a great cause like this, which every man of sense can see is just?”

“Every man will
not
see it. Nor did Roger have a wife and family to care for.” Just poor Ruth, Adam thought, but she had wept long enough, before she had met John Spragg.

“And what has happened to our family already, just by staying at home? By God, if this were not a holy cause I should have to take up arms anyway, just to avenge what has happened to Simon!”

Mary Carter shuddered. “Don’t swear about such a thing. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, Adam, not to you.”

“I know it, my love. I’m sorry.” Adam bowed his head for a moment in his hands, and when he took them away Ann thought she saw beads of sweat glistening on his seamed forehead. “Believe me, Mary, I don’t want to go. There’s nothing I want less in my whole life than this. I thought, when I was at the meeting this evening, that I would not go, that I would let the others go and fight for me, that life and family were more important than God. But if you had seen those men tonight ...!”

Words failed him; he looked at Ann to see if she understood what he meant. “And do you know, Mary, do you know who was ready to go instead of me, if I had not gone? Simon! You have not heard him talk as I have! He would have gone instead of me, if I had let him - my own son! So should I sit at home now, while he lies up there with his leg ruined before my own eyes, and do nothing? What sort of a father would I be if I did that?”

“A wise one,” said Mary slowly. “One that does not let his son’s judgement outrun his own.”

“Then I shall be a fool,” said Adam, looking wearily at his wife across the table. “I have done my best to be a wise father all my life, and I have kept you and Ann free from sin and want as a man should, and loved you too, and hoped that that was enough. But there are some things ... Mary, this is in the hands of God, but I tell you, if the Duke of Monmouth comes and I don’t go to join his army, it will be through fear only, and not wisdom or even love of you. For it is God’s cause, however much of a sinner I am, and the Lord knows ... He knows how much I am afraid.”

He buried his face in his hands again, while the two women sat still, the red tallow light flickering on their faces. Ann had never seen her father like this; and yet his pain seemed to her in some way like her own. She reached out a hand, gently, to his shoulder, and held it there, while her mother watched, unmoving, isolated in her sorrow.

Adam took his hands away from his face, and patted his daughter’s hand gratefully. When he spoke his voice was his own again.

“I’m sorry. You see what a poor soldier I shall be. Let us pray the Lord gives me courage, when the Duke comes.”

He ventured a smile, but Mary’s face stayed bitter and stiff, refusing him the comfort he craved. She got up, and walked woodenly to the stairs.

“Let us rather pray he does not come at all.”

8

T
HE NEXT day Adam was out most of the morning, collecting and packing cloth for a journey to Exeter, and the family settled to an uneasy, shattered peace. The surgeon came, and Ann and her mother united in finding useful ways in which the girls and little Oliver could care for Simon, whose leg was hurting him abominably. After the surgeon came Tom, who spent a while talking and praying upstairs. When he came down to the kitchen Ann at first avoided him, pretending to be busy with the cooking; but he stayed, amusing little Oliver by letting him help to fashion some crutches for his brother, and trying to talk to her, without success. She did not want to speak to anyone, and the comfort she got from his solid, friendly presence troubled her; but nonetheless comfort it was, and when he had gone she felt a sudden contrary flutter of remorse for the way she had treated him, and went round to the shoemaker’s shop.

He was working at a bench by the window when she came in, surrounded on all sides by shoes and boots and knives and augers and needles of different shapes and sizes, and everywhere the rich smell of leather. He looked up in surprise as she came in. As usual she thought how small everything looked beside him.

“Well now. I thought you didn’t want to talk to me today.”

“I’m sorry, Tom, truly I am. I didn’t want to talk to anyone this morning, somehow. It’s just that I was upset about Simon. And then also you were so near being killed, and I a widow without ever being married. And I was ashamed, for being frightened.”

“You didn’t look frightened, at the time. If that devil hadn’t had so many friends, and them a-horseback, ‘twouldn’t have been I you’d have needed to fear for!” Tom’s big hands gripped the boot he was mending, so that the sole creaked and bent, as he relived the fight in his mind. “That young dandy-cock with his sword, Robert Pole - by our Lord, he did anger me! If I do meet he again I shall take his little sword, break it across my knee, and stuff it up his arse!”

He flushed and then laughed, a great rueful grin creasing his strong, handsome face. “I’m sorry, Ann, I shouldn’t use such words. But if there is one thing I hate it’s such a man as that, who comes down here from the great city to disport himself in fine clothes and wicked scents and perfumes! Such men do think of nothing but false religion and their own riches. Did Simon tell ‘ee what Robert Pole and his army friends did t’other night, breaking into Throckmorton’s house over to Farway and frightening his poor wife in childbed, like the very soldiers of Herod killing the firstborn? ‘Tis a very Satan incarnate!”

Tom stabbed his auger savagely into the wood of his bench, his face suffused with anger; and then, as he watched it quiver there in the wood, a whisper of doubt seemed to cross his mind, and he looked up at her more quietly.

“But wasn’t it he that stopped you on the road last Wednesday and tried to molest ye? Young Simon told me something of that, too.” Under his dark brows, Tom’s eyes watched her warily for the answer to the suspicion he dared not speak.

“Yes, that was him. But he didn’t molest me though. ‘Twas only talk.” And mostly Simon’s talk, too, she thought bitterly. How still Tom had become! “I don’t think he’d dare do more, now he knows who I’m betrothed to!”

Tom relaxed a little, his hands playing with the auger. “He’d better not. Did you tell him that, then?”

“I ... tell him? When?” It was a cunning question, shrewd, like a wrestling trick she had seen him use, when he relaxed his grip and with a little trip sent his opponent stumbling forward with the force of his own efforts.

“When? How should I know? When you’ve met him. Anytime.”

“Tom, I’ve not met him at all, but Wednesday, and last night with you.” Her voice sounded strangely slow to her, as though time was not passing as quickly as usual. She suddenly felt how bare her face was; it must be so easy to lie if you could hide your face behind a mask, as Robert had said some fashionable ladies did in London.

“That’s just as well then. For I should find him one day, and tear him limb from limb, if I thought otherwise!” Nor would he leave
her
untouched - he meant that too, though he did not say it. But her gamble had won; he had no reason to disbelieve her, only his own suspicion.

“I told him that. I said he should leave honest girls alone, and that I had a young man to marry. And now that he’s seen you, I don’t think he’ll be back.”

For a moment he sat there, quite still, considering; she reached out and put her hand on his arm, awkwardly, and prayed that her fingers might not tremble. Then he smiled, relieved, and smothered her own hand in his.

“If that be the truth of it, then I am glad. ‘Tis only that - forgive me for saying it - I had thought sometimes, when you were strange to me, that you were tempted by such things as fine clothes, and music, and dancing, and these heathenish tales as we do hear from travelling men of the life of rich folk in the country and in great cities. I did fear for your soul, Ann.”

Her soul
. For a second she shivered, and felt the colour drain from her face, as the blood drained from her fingers in the sudden crushing earnest strength of his grip. Was not her soul in peril from Robert, as she feared her body was from Tom? But no, that was all settled now - she had made a peace for her soul with God. He understood. And anyway, what she was doing now, trying to love Tom again, was what He wanted, what was really right.

She looked up at him, her big childish eyes calm and solemn, and put her other hand softly on the one that was crushing hers.

“Tom, all that is like the town of Vanity Fair in the book I lent you, of the
Pilgrim’s Progress
. Things in such places may seem fair, but they are temptations to be resisted. I know that. And sometimes we get a sign to help us too. Such things are easy enough to resist when they come in their other shape, that of men with swords and pistols who attack us like devils in the night.”

She knew that what she said was true - surely in time she would come to feel it, too? As surely as Tom felt love for her?

But Tom misunderstood her. “Aye - ‘twould take a foolish maid indeed to be tempted by such men, when their evil is so plain to see! But I do hope the day do come soon, as Israel Fuller says, when we honest Christian folk do rise and sweep the likes of they from the face of the earth, even as the Lord helped our grandfathers before us.”

“Amen to that,” murmured Ann, closing her eyes in something that might have been a prayer. Then she opened them and smiled, releasing her hand from his. “But Tom, let’s not talk of war, the Poles, and such Papist nonsense now. Let’s talk about us. Do you know my father wants to give a feast for us on Thursday night?”

“Yes, he were round here prating of it this morning. ‘Tis fine enough, but I’ve to make a speech, he says. I shan’t know what to say.” He frowned as he spoke, the very idea making him nervous.

“Oh, come now, Tom - you’ve got enough to say for yourself in the normal way! And you’ve only to thank my father for his beautiful daughter and promise to be a godly husband to me. Surely you can manage that?”

“I can do it, but I can’t say it. You’m the one who do love books and schooling and suchlike. You shall have to help me with it, or I won’t come.”

“Won’t come! To your own betrothal feast? A fine husband you’ll make!” She laughed, tossing her head and flouncing to the other side of the little room, in a way that made him dumb with admiration and longing. For a while she mocked and teased him a little more, and then agreed to help, as she had always helped him with such things at school, and a peace was established between them, like that of their childhood.

Indeed, to Tom’s parents it seemed more than a peace, for Ann, despite her brother’s injury, was over the next few days outwardly happier and more cheerful than for many weeks, and their only regret was that the wedding could not be sooner.

Only Ann knew how desperately her joy skated above the surface of despair, and the knowledge made her skate faster to avoid falling, until at times she began to enjoy her pretence for itself, as she had promised God she would. But at night, watching the shadows in their endless slow journey across the rafters, she saw again the vision of Robert laughing in the sunlight, leaping off his bay horse and running towards her, and she wondered if it had been the moon that had lied to her after all, painting his face the grey, loveless colour of indifference.

9

“O
LIVER, PUT that pasty back on the table at once! It is not for you!”

“But I hungry! I want eat
now!”

“Put it down! Oh, mother, look what he’s done!” Rachel’s voice rose in a wail of indignation. “I spent an hour trimming the pasties and now he’s put his fingers right through two of them, and everyone will think I can’t do it! Oliver, you naughty boy!” Rachel picked up a wooden spoon and smacked Oliver’s hand. The little boy retreated under the table, sucking his fingers and howling.

Mary Carter sighed, and turned away from the fire, where she was basting the leg of mutton and three spitted chickens. Since dawn she and her three daughters had been labouring to prepare Ann’s betrothal feast, and the excitement they had felt in the early morning was going sour in the midday heat. Outside it was a blazing hot June day, and the added heat of the great cooking fire had nearly roasted the cooks as well as the meat. Mary wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, and picked up her defiant young son.

“Oliver, that was very bad. You’ve spoilt the nice pasties for Ann’s betrothal feast! What will uncle John think now?”

“Don’t care! Don’t want Ann get ‘trothed! Want her stay here, marry me!”

Everyone laughed, and the little boy pouted, pressing his face into his mother’s neck and peeping out angrily at Ann.

“Oh Roly, don’t be silly!” Ann smiled, and held out her arms to him. “Come here now and watch me get the hot bread out of the oven. Then you can have some of the loaf you made.”

Oliver let go of his mother and shuffled shyly over to watch his beloved big sister open the door of the bread-oven and pull out the hot loaves on her long wooden peel. The glorious smell of fresh bread wafted across the room.

“That one mine!” Oliver pointed excitedly to the most unusual-shaped loaf. “I make that one! Cut it now, Ann! Eat my bread!”

“Wait a minute, Roly. Tis hot, you know!” Ann took the loaf in her gloved hands and carried it to the table. “Let’s eat outside, mother, shall we?”

“That would be a blessing.”

So for a welcome half hour they relaxed outside, under the shade of the apple tree where Simon sat with his leg stretched out in front of him. They ate hot bread and chunks of cheese, and drank long cool draughts of watered cider. Ann watched little Oliver trying to feed bits of cheese to a butterfly, and thought perhaps it would be all right after all.
‘It is only a feast for the family to enjoy, that’s all,’
she thought.
‘I will make the promise but I don’t have to leave them, not yet.’