Apples and Prayers (25 page)

‘You're charged with an honourable, dangerous task,' my Lord began. Murmurs of keenness skittered round the men's lips, like mice on a parlour floor. ‘Sir Walter and Robert will lead a posse. Five men. You'll burn the city gates and gain us entrance. It's time to bring this waiting to an end.' 

Indeed, it sounded treacherous and was met with silence.

‘Well, what d'you say?' Sir Walter stepped forward. ‘Has the Devil got your tongues? Won't you embrace the call; your good fortune? It's time to
do
something.' 

Again the men looked round from face to face, waiting for someone to take the lead.

‘The plan seems well and good, my Lord,' John Toucher then spoke up for all, ‘and an honour, as you say, to take it. But who, exactly, is going to do it?'

My Lord raised his hand and placed it on John's shoulder. ‘Strange that you of all should ask, John Toucher. I've watched you since the day we first embarked on this. I've seen your strength and courage, above all others, grow.' 

John seemed bemused to hear such praise. 

‘You shall do it,' said my Lord. 

‘I'm honoured to find you trust me so,' said John.

‘You choose the others.'

‘I'll do it,' the ploughman Lucombes offered, smoothing down his breeches, as if to impress his betters. He lowered his cap and bowed his head in his discreet and considered way. Beside him, Reynolds also muttered ‘Aye' in quiet agreement, although I heard his reply as resignation: he was a strong man, but not so brave or foolish as to endanger himself in reckless plans.

‘Which makes three,' said my Lord. “Two others?' 

John looked into the faces of the men, but saw no willingness there. As everyone's discomfort grew, my Lord sealed the matter. ‘Take the tanner. And his partner in crime, the gravesman. Both strong in their ways. It's about time they both did something useful for us.'

‘My Lord?' said Harvey and Ben Red in unison.

‘Are you sure, my Lord?' John asked. 

The two men were as little suited to cooperation, as a sow and a bull are likely to produce fair offspring. I'd been watching Harvey with suspicion for weeks. I knew he was still waiting for his moment to come even with John Toucher, who'd gouted Harvey's nose and flattened him in the cider barn those weeks before. For once, however, Ben Red was in no position to refuse his master. It was one thing to refuse a Cornish captain, another thing entirely to go against his Lord.

‘How dare you!' Sir Robert snapped, jabbing John Toucher's shoulder with the butt of his staff. I saw John flinch and, in his mind consider returning the blow, but he restrained himself. I relaxed. ‘Do you doubt your Lord's wisdom in these matters? If you aren't willing, I'm sure we can find some women more courageous than you and animals more loyal? You can think on that while you nurse the wounds of your flogging…'

John Toucher yielded. ‘No, sir, I don't doubt it and am happy to take the order. And the men.'

‘Or maybe you'd rather be turned over, right away, to the Protestants within?' the young Lord tested him further.

‘No sir. I didn't mean anything by it,' said John. ‘I'll discharge my duty with whosoever my Lord sees fit.'

‘Good. Good,' Sir Robert and Walter then echoed each other. ‘The matter's decided then.'

‘Excellent,' my Lord shouted. Harvey and Ben Red shuffled in their boots, unwilling, yet unable to refuse. ‘The plan is this,' and he issued details of the men's attack, with measures set to start that afternoon.

In hindsight, rolling a wagon up to the city gates and setting it alight might have been a well-conceived plan, had it not been for the unknown blockade they'd built behind the postern, or the tag-along folly of Sidney Strake who, once again, jumped unseen on the wagon, keen for some part in the action.

And yet, as it unfolded, the danger didn't come entirely from these, nor from the enemy, but once again from within. There's no proving it now, but Harvey, I'm sure, gave the plan away to some confederate within the city walls. I didn't need a pot of sage and mallowsweet to divine it… I could have written the whole thing down beforehand. I should, of course, have seen it. Should have known.

When it came to the push, our men stole up to the north gate in their covered wagon, playing the part of patriots; tradesmen eager to enter the city for safety. But, in that moment, Harvey saw his chance to get the better of John. It was his two-sided tanner's skin, his split nature that made him do it, I'm sure. Why else would he risk the lives of our men, but for his own dented pride? Only the pleasure of seeing John suffer would satisfy him.

And so they approached the gates, these seemingly benign traders, bringing in much needed supplies. From our distance, we watched them ready themselves to jump down on command and set the wagon's stack aflame. 

But in that instant, Harvey, who'd lagged behind, called out like a frightened child.

‘Look out!' he hollered, waving his arms and feigning some danger above them. 

Our men halted; looked on high to gauge the danger. 

Above them, the townsfolk on the ramparts turned from their wandering patrol and saw the deception beneath them. 

A sudden rain of flint and shot came down upon our fellows' heads, as though it had been magicked out of the air by the Devil. 

By the time they made it back to the safety of our lines, most had escaped without injury, including John, including Harvey. He'd get his horsewhipping later. Although my Lord believed he had, indeed, detected some danger up above, Harvey's lack of nerve had put the men at risk and that would not go unpunished. I suppose he must have reckoned a flogging was a fair price to pay for seeing John Toucher injured, or killed. Now he'd pay the price without the pleasure.

One of them, however, did not made it back. He lay, hit square in the chest, collapsed in the mirey ditch below our palisades – the unaware and frightened Sidney Strake. 

There he lay, bleeding and blubbering for more than an hour, until the defenders had halted their fire. When our men finally brought him back in to our tent, for remedies and care, the simple man was gravely feverish and losing blood, as if from a faucet.

While he lay there dying, Alford and I made what medicines and poultices we could from the herbs we had in our camp. Death was waiting to claim him as his own. But we would hold him off as long as we could. The mercy was that Strake was too simple to know that this was his end. Alford and I measured out our days with work like this, for medicine and cures were always needed, concocting more than we had ever done at home. In their way, these chores had begun to wear away at Alford and she was now as gravely fatigued with her labours, as much as she was with her child. She was swollen greatly and only finished her chores with tremendous trouble. 

All our old talk and games, such as we'd played throughout the year, had now come to an end. Ours was now a friendship based on sheer necessity. Nothing more. She relied on me and I on her for every practical measure, with no degree of chat and making play. 

Yet even the practical was wearing thin. 

I felt I'd failed her in letting her come, though she would no more be parted from Dufflin, than a goose from her gander.

I was dreaming of Alford one morning, of her happiness, of the rosemary growing outside her new home, when I woke on my rag bed, uncomfortable and aching from another restless night. I looked to Alford's sweet, but sickened face, beside me. She'd had to grow in girth and soul, barely more than a child herself, with only her determination in her faith and future keeping her going. But our conditions were spoiling her body and she seemed as weak as the child she'd soon deliver. To think the child might light upon a world of heresy or, worse, that it should never know the freedoms we have known, incited my resentment. It was as much for her unborn child, I told myself, as for those already living, that we were now fighting this fight. Her hair and eyes were dull, where she should have been blooming, her limbs no longer strong. We rose and started the work of our day, rekindling the fire and preparing food. But there was no fire in her. None at all. 

I can't say I was surprised then, later that morning, to see her weakened knees give way as we walked across the mead beyond the bridges, gathering in wild plants for us to stew.

Her head bumped the ground with a leaden thud I heard from several steps away.

‘Alford!' I shouted and ran to aid her. She lay in the long grass shaking and shrieking. ‘Alford! Holy Mary! What is it girl?' I cried again, but she made no intelligible sound.

At first, I thought she'd been wounded by an arrow, or a shot fired from the city walls, but we were too far from the ramparts; no way on earth could she have been wounded like that. Then I thought, perhaps the child was coming?

When I looked, however, I saw that this was a wounding of a different, deeper kind. I don't think now that there was anything I could have done, although I've anguished over it since and blamed myself for letting down my watch on her. Her eyes were suddenly blank, rolling in their sockets, like sloes in a bowl. Her face was pallid. 

Looking down, she'd begun to bleed and the skirts between her legs were soaked in blood, as though she'd been cut off at the knee with a hatchet.

‘God in Heaven, Morgan!' she agonised and looked up into my eyes with a fear that rocked the substance of my faith. We both fully knew then what this must mean. 

How she then yelled and wailed. ‘Help me, Morgan,' she pleaded. ‘For God's sake, help me…'

I was wasting my breath in trying to calm her. She was delirious, frantic and by now almost speaking in tongues. Nonsense. Quickly, I gathered her arms around my neck, hoisted up her lumpen weight and struggled with her back to camp.

‘Help us! God help us!' I hollered as we returned. ‘Bring us some water!' I ordered the nearest man. It was Peter Lock, still tending to the needs of Sidney Strake. 

Between them, Alford and he were pouring blood. I had it all over my apron.

Hearing our distress, my Lady also came out from her quarters secluded in the nearby grove.

‘Whatever's going on?' she asked around, raising her sleeve to shield her eyes as she stepped from the tent. ‘Such bawling and shouting! Has the city fallen? God, let it be so!' She looked overjoyed to think it might, finally, have happened.

‘Your women, my Lady,' the priest replied. ‘They are…' 

I watched him gesture down to Alford's bloodied legs, there on the ground beside her. The girl let loose a horrible groan. My Lady stopped and looked, all of a sudden, like a lost child; as though someone had pulled at the very fabric of the world to unravel it and things were no longer how they had once appeared to her. She looked dizzy, as though she might faint from one of her headaches. And, then, I saw, she understood. She recognised the urgency of the moment and, within seconds it seemed, had brought a can of heated water, as if from out of the aether. A miracle of sorts.

‘Lie her on the ground, for Heaven's sake,' she ordered. I did as she said. We gathered over Alford's trembling form, shaking in ourselves as much as she. ‘What's to be done?' I asked, knowing the answer already.

‘I fear the child is…'

‘Indeed,' I whispered and we turned to see the babe inside coming out in shocking delivery. Bloody and unmoving. The poor lamb wouldn't even take a breath.

‘We must save the girl,' my Lady said matter of factly. Alford now faced the horrible task of passing her dead baby there in the muddy fields.

‘God's body, it grieves me to see it,' I wept, ‘to see her suffer, so young and green and all... It's my fault…'

‘We all feel the pain, Morgan,' my Lady rebuked me, ‘but none as much as she. This is no time for tears. The infant is, perhaps, already dead. We must bring it out, or there's little hope of saving the girl.' Beneath us Alford wailed and jabbered, like a lass possessed by fiends.

My Lady's candor warmed me. She knew the matter and, although the task was tortuous and undignified, she bore no airs and graces over me in our attempt to save poor Alford's life.

‘Pennyroyal,' she said quickly. ‘Fetch some, to speed the expulsion.'

I had to think a while what she meant and then, realizing, stood to fetch the herbs. ‘Pennyroyal, my Lady. Yes.'

‘You have some?'

‘Yes, my Lady… I suppose we do,' I replied hesitatingly, not able to make my mind work fully.

‘Then fetch us some now, Morgan! No time to waste. Go!'

‘Of course, my Lady,' I said and turned to the tent. 

When I got there, I rummaged amongst the jars to find the herbs from those arrayed. The dried Pennyroyals were wrapped in a cloth within a small stoneware phial. I pulled the cork and unwrapped them and then ran back to Alford.

‘Water!' I demanded and my Lady placed the heated can beside me. 

Dropping in the ground up flower heads, I made a strong and rough infusion for the suffering girl to drink. While I was mixing it, my Lady knelt close to Alford and whispered in her ear. I think she must have said some miraculous things, for a moment passed when Alford ceased her screaming and simply bade me, ‘Give me the drink, Morgan.' In that moment, I knew she was resigned to the infant's death and knew that we would help to save her life. I lifted the cup to her lips and made her drink the liquid down.

‘Don't worry yourself, sweet friend,' I said. ‘We're doing what we can.'

‘Yes, Morgan,' she winced back at me, in the semblance of a smile that soon turned to clenched teeth.

‘She's in very bad pain,' my Lady said. ‘Is there nothing in your jars, Morgan, that'll help her?'

I rummaged in my sack and found the tansy, adding it to the infusion. Alford made to drink it and some of the remedy went in, though more dribbled down her front, for she was almost too weak to swallow. There was nothing doing with it. We took her to a private spot and prayed her through the pain and awful happenings.