Women of Courage (165 page)

The fight had spilled over into the fields between the manor house and the lane, and as Ann watched, a troop of dragoons in the field dismounted, their flank shielded by mounted horsemen. They formed a line to fire their muskets at the rebels lining the hedge in front of them, but a volley poured into them from behind the hedge, leaving a good half-dozen stretched on the ground. After the dragoons had fired the horsemen rode forward, but their advance was met by loud cheers and another volley, barely three minutes after the first, killing and wounding several men and horses. Their smart trot forward to discharge their pistols at close range drew to a hesitant stop, and they quickly drew back out of the most deadly range.

“What’s happening? ‘Tis very confusing. Why are they not drawn up in lines and squares, as they should be?” Marianne’s initial excitement had faded to a puzzled anxiety. “Surely my Lord Feversham should have them drawn up in lines? That’s how they fight - he told me so last night.”

“Perhaps they were surprised and had no time. Look. Marianne - Monmouth’s men are drawn up in lines, across the road and behind the hedges. Perhaps they are having the better of it.”

The triumphant tone was so clear in Ann’s voice that Marianne turned to look at her in astonishment, but Ann did not care. Now that she saw the armies actually fighting, she knew without a shadow of a doubt who she wanted to win; she knew it with her whole mind and body so that her hands clenched white around Blaze’s reins, and she could feel her heart pounding desperately in her throat.

“Do you not think we should go back, my lady? ‘Tis mortal dangerous here, and you know my lord’s instructions.”

“Oh shut up, Simeon, you old hen, we’re still a good mile away. Look, the King’s soldiers are forming a line at last, in that field. Perhaps they’ll attack! Oh, the poor dears - there’s another one down! I wonder if Robert is there?”

Ann’s heart missed a beat, as though the words themselves were unlucky. What if Robert
were
there, and were killed?

Please God, don’t let him be killed, let him escape safely! But please God, please, don’t let him win, don’t let this devil’s army of Papists and murderers form a line and defeat my father and our people -
Your
people, Lord.
Your own army who believe in You
! Oh Lord perhaps I have sinned and am damned forever, Lord, but it doesn’t matter about me, don’t punish them because of me! Let them win, Lord. What’s that, what’s happening now? Oh glory! Oh yes, Lord, be with us now,
please!

31

A
S ANN prayed, more dismounted dragoons struggled up out of the lane below, into the field by the manor house. Several royal horsemen got out of the lane too, forcing their mounts to leap and scramble up out of the sunken lane, through the hedge and into the field.

But at the same time more of Monmouth’s men were pouring out of two doors in the walls of the manor house to face them. As they came out they formed up into lines, men with pikes and scythes protecting the musketeers, who fired at the royal dragoons and troopers who were struggling to order themselves. Monmouth’s men fired first one volley, then another and another as each company formed its line, and then the first company fired again.

All over the field the royalist dragoons were falling. Smart blue and white coats crumpled and lay suddenly in the grass. A screaming horse dragged its dead rider jolting across the ground, his limp foot caught in the stirrup. Then the rebel troops advanced, pikes levelled, to drive the royalist soldiers back into the lane.

Adam was one of the men who had come out of the manor house. He had fired two volleys and was now advancing across the field. In front of him a group of disordered, desperate dragoons were moving back towards the lane, trying to reload their short muskets as they went. Their wounded lay sprawled in the grass behind them.

In all the noise, smoke, and turmoil, Adam’s eyes focussed on one man - a wounded dragoon, crouched in the grass about twenty yards in front of him.

The man was going to fire at them, Adam could see it. He had risen out of the grass where he had fallen, and was on one knee, his short dragoon musket levelled at them, waiting. He had lost his helmet; as they came closer Adam could see the white powdered hair, the staring eyes and snarling, ferocious grin beneath it - a grin that was just like the one he had seen on the dead face of Philip Cox! They were marching forward at a fast, steady walk - they would be on top of him in half a minute or less. Why didn’t he fire, or run, as all those round him had done?

The man frowned, and the musket wavered a little, as though he were having trouble seeing his target; but then it steadied, the neat black hole of its muzzle pointing straight at Adam, and the fierce, maniacal grin behind it searing his soul.

“Fire, then, you bugger!” Adam heard a terrible voice roar. There was a huge echoing clang! and he felt his head knocked sideways. He closed his eyes, felt himself staggering, and then opened them to see Tom’s pike ripping the blue intestines out of the man’s stomach. He realised his helmet had been hit, and the voice had been his own.

He stumbled forward, past the man, and then suddenly slumped to his knees. John Spragg bent to help him, his hand on his shoulder.

“Leave him, soldier! Keep your line!” roared the sergeant. John hesitated and then was gone, pushed onward by the ranks behind. Adam put his hands on the grass, and stared at it until it stopped spinning and the humming in his head was quieter. He put his hand to his helmet and felt the dent where the musket ball had glanced off it. There was no hole. Something hot and wet dripped past his left eye. He put his hand up and it came away red. He remembered the man who had shot him and whipped around in a sudden panic. But there was no danger. The man was dying, twitching in a heap with the bloody mess of his entrails on the grass beside him, his mouth stretching open in a scream without sound.

‘I should kill him,’ Adam thought, ‘I should stop that agony.’ His suddenly shaking hand reached for his musket but even as he did so the man’s back arched in a final jerk, a faint gargle came from his throat, and he died, his sightless eyes staring at the buttercups above his head.

“Oh Lord, help us poor sinners,” Adam muttered. “Be with us now and at the hour of our death.” He felt a momentary surge of disgust and pity for the man who had tried to kill him and was now dead; and then he felt fear for himself and forgot the man completely.

He looked hastily around the field. The others had gone on. He was alone and terribly vulnerable. At any moment a horseman might cut him down as Tom had. But there were no royal troops coming his way; only a few disorganised horsemen putting up a desperate fight against a line of pikes and muskets; and nearer at hand, a man crawling jerkily out of the way of the advancing company from Taunton. He heard a volley, screams and cheers, from the lane, and looked down the hill to see his own company lining the hedge and firing down into the lane. He had to reach them; only with them he would be safe.

“Hey, lads, wait for me!” He got to his feet, and staggered sideways as the faintness came over him; but he stayed upright, leaning on the musket, until the faintness passed, and then made his way forward at a careful, stumbling walk to the hedge. He leant against the bank beside William Clegg, gasping for breath.

“Adam! Your face! ‘Tis all blood, man!” Adam peered at William, wiped his hand across his forehead, and stared stupidly for a moment at the blood. Beyond his hand, the hedge seemed to be swaying strangely. He gave his friend what he meant to be a smile.

“‘Tis all right, I’m spared yet! And you’re not so beautiful yourself ...”

A volley of shots from the lane hummed past them, and Adam saw a white blaze appear on a branch just by William’s head. There was a scream from down the line. Sergeant Evans’ furious bullroar rose above it as he strode along the line behind them.

“Come on, move, you soldiers! Draw forth your scourers! Shorten them! Charge with bullet! Quickly now! Ram it home!”

The trained response pierced the confusion in Adam’s mind. He seized his scourer guiltily and then put it back as he realised his musket was still loaded. He set it in its rest instead and looked through the hedge, down into the lane, seeking a target and waiting until he got the order to fire.

The lane was choked with men and horses, some struggling to form into order, others struggling to escape. To his right Adam saw a cluster of royalist horsemen in blue coats attempt to charge the line of men under Colonel Vincent, who blocked the lane into the village. But the royalists had to slow down to guide their horses through the litter of dead and wounded men and horses in front of Vincent’s regiment, and a shattering volley poured into them from the hedges on either side of the lane, followed by another from the blockade. Only three or four of the dozen royalists reached the line, where they discharged their pistols, slashed wildly with their swords at the pushing, threatening pikes and scythes, and then hurriedly retreated.

“Cock your muskets! Guard! Present!” Adam saw an officer on horseback waving his sword furiously and yelling to get his men together. He sighted on the man’s hip as he sat sideways on to the hedge.

“Fire!” Through the smoke after the great boom and kick, he saw the officer’s horse rear wildly and plunge forward into a group of dismounted dragoons. blood pulsing from a wound in front of the saddle. All around it other horses and men were staggering and falling, the movement in the lane now definitely an impulse to escape rather than attack.

“Hip and thigh! Smite ‘em, Lord! Smite ‘em!” He heard a wild, high yell of triumph from William Clegg, and on his left, the voices of Israel Fuller and John Spragg raised in a psalm of triumph.

“Come on, boyos! Half-cock your muskets! Clean your pans! That’s it, now! Look to your primers. ‘Twas a good volley, lads, one more like that’ll finish ‘em! Prime! Shut your pans!” The sergeant’s orders came like a song now, too, but never for a moment did the Welshman stop or relax his urgency. And so on through the long drill until the muskets were ready again, in a little under two minutes. Adam saw the hedge sway again for a moment, and had to pause and lean against the bank until it was clear to him which was musket and which was scourer, but at last he was ready. And they were winning!

“Fire!” Again the boom and smoke, and through it the sight of the grenadier he had aimed at stumbling drunkenly round in a slow circle, his arms waving stupidly as though to ward off something from his face, before his knees gave way and he crashed over onto his back. This time the pikemen advanced into the lane, their long hedge of steel pushing the remainder of the royal troops back down the lane to where they received another withering volley from the Taunton company. A surviving couple of dozen scrambled away through the hedge, and then there were none. All the royal troops had fled in front of them!

A great cheer of triumph rose all along the line. The men in the lane waved their muskets and pikes to those lining the hedges, and Adam and William waved back, ecstatically. Then the men in the lane reloaded their muskets and marched off to the left, where firing could still be heard.

But Adam’s part in the battle was over. He stood in the line for about ten minutes, and cheered again hoarsely as he saw King Monmouth ride hurriedly past on a white horse to confer with Colonel Wade. But the effort was too great; his knees began to shake uncontrollably, and he sat down sharply, like a dropped sack.

John Spragg knelt beside him. “What is it, boy? Are ‘ee hurt bad?”

“No, no. ‘Tis just my head ...” But though he tried Adam could not get up. He leant weakly against the bank of the hedge.

“Don’t worry, us’ll get ‘ee to the surgeon.” The deep voice of John Spragg rumbled comfortingly in his ear.

William Clegg eased Adam’s helmet off and mopped his face with a rag torn from his shirt. “Proper scarecrow ‘ee look with all this red on thy face, Adam. I reckon ‘twas the sight of it that sent all King James’s soldiers running just now. But you’d best wash afore you sees Mary again, I think. ‘Er’ll send ‘ee straight out the house, else.”

But though Adam tried to join in the steady, comforting banter that was going on around him, he found that the words would not come. He was tired, and he began to forget where he was, and why he was there. He looked away, letting his eyes focus idly on the horizon. The last thing he saw, before he collapsed, was a group of three riders, two of whom looked like women -
women?
- on the crest of the steep hill to the north-east.

32

“I
T’S HORRIBLE! Truly horrible! All those poor brave men killed and wounded!” Marianne shook her head disbelievingly, tears in her eyes. “Where is my Lord Feversham and John Churchill? What can they be doing?”

“There are some more soldiers coming from the right, my lady. The others are running to them. Perhaps they will give the rebels a better fight.” Simeon pointed to the north, where a group of horse, in fact commanded by Lord Churchill, were beginning to give some protection to the hurried retreat of the surviving foot of Captain Hawley’s advance guard, which had been so decisively routed. About five hundred yards behind them the main body of the royal army was drawing up in a ploughed field to face the advancing rebels.

Ann said nothing, but sat silently, her whole body tingling with horror and joy. There were tears in her eyes too, but they were tears of gratitude, that the Lord had heard her prayers and was giving Monmouth the victory! Despite the haughty insolent confidence of all the royal officers she had been surrounded by for so long, the victory was going to her own people, the ordinary good honest religious people of Colyton and Lyme and Taunton! It was really happening, here in front of her own eyes; her father and Tom and William Clegg and John Spragg and Roger Satchell were decimating the royal dragoons and grenadiers and horsemen, sending them scurrying like rabbits back where they had come from! The Lord God had remembered them all!

She knew that Robert might be killed, as might her father or Tom or any one of them, and the thought filled her with horror; but greater than her horror and fear for their lives was her sense of the importance of the Cause, and her vengeful joy at the victory.