Apples and Prayers (28 page)

We re-camped at Sampford, where this mission had begun. 

Two long weeks went by. 

Russell stayed in Exeter, executing our fellows. While his blood rites continued, we strengthened our emplacement against the Royal advance. 

When they finally came, their number was excessive. Horsemen, light and heavy, armed with lances and bows. Archers, arquebusiers. Footmen in mail shirts with pikes and bills. Their cavalry blew trumpets. Hundreds. Their infantry beat drums.

I recall the battle only by its deaths. 

After some small skirmish in the lanes, our captains were captured and most were quickly slain. The Royal charge was fierce, the footmen and mercenary bowmen unforgiving. We fell back to our barricades. 

For one brief moment, when Arundell himself attacked the rear, we thought we might prevail. Then I was wounded. A toppling cart. I lay beneath its weight, the last grim moments played out before my eyes and me helpless to move, to help. I simply lay and stared.

Underhill was the first I saw. He stood before a charge of Royal horsemen, armed himself with nothing more than a pike. As the horsemen hit, I saw a look of terror on his face, so far from the zeal he'd shown here on Whit Monday. He disappeared beneath their hooves in a flurry of dust and gouts of blood. When the horses had passed, there was nothing remaining of Underhill, save for a few tattered rags, a stain of blood upon the stones and the vague shapeless lumps of meat that had once been his walking, God-fearing body. 

Others, I also watched die. The winds ceased blowing once more, the rivers ceased their flow and, while the whole chaotic world seemed to still – just as it had when Alford had died, when Hellyons was slain – the angel of death walked abroad. Lord Ponsford, gored in the belly by a halberd. His son Walter, struck down by a bolt, as he lent his good father assistance. The other son, Robert, struck down by a myriad arrows, stuck like one of my Lady's pin cushions. Tan Harvey beheaded by the sword. Billy Down trampled by horses. Northcott, in borrowed armour, no longer limping, but striding superbly at his last, reduced by banks of arrows to a jerking corpse. Tom Putt, Barum and Brimley – so help them they would've wished to die together – burned alive in a captured barrow. Woodbine, run through with lances. I think of the young boy Rawlings, who so feared dying at the end of a rope, he threw himself into the fray with reckless leave and was butchered like a boar at carnival.

I was spared the deaths of others. I only know they must have died, or else they'd be here with me tonight. I dream against all likelihood that John himself might not be dead, but rather gone to ground in some safe part of the shire. That day of apple harvest as a child, when he ran away from me, he later came back when he was cold and through with his solitary hiding, although I don't imagine he'll come back now. Not til kingdom come. That our closeness died, before our battle ended, grieves me sorely. I lost my man from cherished love, to the greater love of church and rectitude. 

I should have seen the end of this before. The omens have been visible all year. Flowers with their Spring heads drooping; birds caught in the Barton's chimneys; coffin-shaped coals in the fire. The wraiths of Saint Mark's Eve. Boggarts have roamed free everywhere, around the house, souring milk and breaking plates, in the yard, making my Lord's hounds go lame, or turning them to sheep killers. I even heard that down there in the marshes, the bugbears had been seen flying in swarms one twilight, into the air from their holes in the ground, to take a village child away, Plumderity, just five years old, who up and vanished early March so fast as say her name and gone…

How did I ignore it? Why didn't I trust in what I saw? God be in my eyes and in my looking. 

Perhaps if I'd placed more faith in my own eyes, I wouldn't have simply followed John from blind devotion, nor let young Alford also come along. I might have dissuaded our people. I might have seen the ghosts of St Mark's Eve for what they truly were. But no use for all this now. Tomorrow we go to a better place than the hell this one has become.

The battle over, my capture, or murder, was certain. I lay beneath that heavy cart, injured and immobile. A soldier, some time later, saw me breathing and made to strike me dead with his cudgel. I let out a sigh and hoped the blow was sudden. But when he heard my breath and saw I was a woman, he stopped himself and dragged me roughly out. The pain in my stomach was dreadful. He picked me up. An Allemayn. A mercenary. Soon he was joined by others of his kind. Their faces were clogged with blood, congested with the spiteful lust of battle. 

I spat in his face and wished him kill me there and then. 

One Devil unhitched his britches and made to come at me with his parts out like a pike, while others held me down. God's wounds, I fought and kicked so hard they'd only have me by running me through.

And then their captain arrived. He horsewhipped the mercenary and they scattered. He threw me in a tumbril cart, packed with other prisoners. We puked and gibbered there together in a bloody heap for the whole ride back to Exeter.

That journey to gaol was bitter. Our hands secured behind our backs, they packed us in, the living and the half-dead, the walking and the mutilated, carting us over the moor to the city we'd only just deserted. It was a crushing return. Already, they'd started on the hangings. Gallows lined the roads and greens of every village on our way. I'm sure I saw the bodies of men and women I knew. Thank God I didn't see John's.

On arrival, the body of one of our priests was hanging from the spire of his church at St. Thomas. They'd hung him there in vestments, with his properties: his bell and beads, his holy-water stoup. They'd even hung a stray, a dog with paws folded across a semblance of the Sacred Host, in mockery. I thought of my Lord's hound, Listener, and felt my tears coming.

Our trial next day was short and brutal, truth and fairness never on their minds. I heard the words of our sentence but, for my part, felt myself already dead. I saw a girl, like Alford, no more than fifteen years old, piss her skirts. The guards beat her until she lay without moving. Then they carried her away.

Tomorrow the barbarities are enacted. Blessed be God the Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth. Blessed be Jesus Christ upon his throne of Resurrection. Blessed be the Virgin Mary, Mother of all things. So help me God that there might be some delivering angel beneath our own legs tomorrow, to pull on our shins and snap our spines before the executioner gets his bloody blade into us. Death doesn't come with a fall from the gallows. They say the hangman cuts you down before your breath has faded. They say he digs his knife inside and quarters you, removing the innards while the heart still beats, burning up your organs in the fire. 

God's blood, have they lost their minds! It makes me want to vomit at the thought. 

Jump hard from the ladder you men and women. Break your necks and save yourself the torture. Yet if your present trembling is a sign, you'll be shitting and pissing with fright and too frozen to make the leap. 

Merciful Mother, break our necks in those nooses as we fall. Protect us from the blades and irons tomorrow. 

As for my own grave, Ben Red's a long time gone. I die tomorrow to lie in ground I don't know where. And who'll be there to place coins on our eyes once we're gone? Who to keen our way to the grave? Who to shroud us in blankets and tributes of flowers? No one. Tomorrow is the day of cruel disposal.

The summer is past and fading. The harvest should be in by now, but I hardly know if even the simplest of tasks has been settled. It saddens me to think of all we leave behind this Lammas-tide. To taste once more the sweet-smelling corn bread. To once more make a dolly of corn from the stook. To ride once more as Harvest Queen upon the cart, green with boughs and strewn with flowers. To taste one final Harvest Supper – meats, cheeses, pies and puddings, plaited loaves and dishes piled with apples, roasted, studded sweet with caraway. Ale and cider by the gallon. 

Close my eyes and I can taste it, trickling down my throat like a sweet river. Close my eyes, I can feel John's hand in mine.

God be in my heart and in my thinking. God be at my end and my departing.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Pray for us in our hour of need, my Lady. Amen.

Although there are several excellent primary and secondary sources relating to the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, there are no existing accounts of events from the side of the Catholic Western Rebels. This novel is an imaginative account of possible events. I have been as accurate as possible with regard to the chronology and placing of recorded events, but have taken liberties in almost everything else. The village of Buckland and its surroundings are entirely fictional.

All characters, place names, episodes and many turns of phrase, are directly derived from the names of 144 breeds of Devon apple, or apples which have a close and historic association with the county. A list is given, although this is not exhaustive, as varieties come and go. Existing lists also disagree as to the exact provenance of particular breeds, but I have tried to be as comprehensive as possible. While certain historic varieties of apple have been associated with the county since before the times of the Tudors, a good number of the others, however, did not exist until the twentieth century – the intention, therefore, is not to be chronologically accurate, rather to let the historic association of the fruit with the county to speak for itself.

 

The following list was compiled using
What is a Devon Apple: Provisional list of apples with close associations with the county
, (Dartington North Devon Trust (1992)), as main source, alongside lists in other reference books. The letter (c) denotes a variety that is known to be a cider apple. In some cases in the novel, I have only used the first part of the name – dropping qualifiers such as ‘apple' or ‘pippin' – or have made minor changes to the name for sense.

All Doer
Alphington

Barum
Beech Bearer

Beef
Ben's Red

Bickington Gray
Billy Down

Billy White
Bittersweet

Blue Sweet
Bowden

Breadfruit
Brimley (c)

Broomhouse Whites
Brown Snout (c)

Browns Apple (c)
Buckland

Butterbox
Buttery d'Or

Captain Broad
Catshead

Cerif
Chisel Jersey (c)

Coleman Seedling
Costard

Court Royal (c)
Crimson King (c)

Crimson Queen
Crimson Victoria

Devonshire Red
Don's Delight

Dufflin
Duke of Devonshire

Early Bowers
Ellis Bitter (c)

Endsleigh
Exeter Cross

Fair Maid of Devon
Farmer's Glory

Gilliflower
Glass Apple

Golden Ball
Goring

Halstow Natural
Hangy Down

Hoary Morning
Hollow Core

Honey Pin
Improved Pound

Jacob's Strawberry
John Toucher

Johnny Andrews
Johnny Voun

Keswick Codling
Killerton Sharp

King Byerd
King Manning

Kingston Bitter
Kirton Fair

Langworthy
Leathercoat Russet (1600)

Limberland
Limberlimb

Listener
Long Bit

Longstem
Loral Drain

Loyal Drong
Lucombes Pine

Lucombes Seedling
Major (c)

Moore's Seedling
Morgan Sweet (c)

Nine Square
No Pip

Northcott Superb
Northwood (c)

Oaken Pin
Old English Pippin

Old Pearmain
Payhembury

Peter Lock
Pig Snout

Pig's Nose
Pine Apple

Plumderity
Plymouth Cross

Polly White Hair
Ponsford

Pound
Quarrenden

Queen Caroline
Quench

Quoinings
Rawlings

Red Jersey
Red Ruby

Reine des Pommes
Reynold's Peach

Royal Russet
Royal Somerset

Sercombes Natural
Sheep's Nose

Sidney Strake
Slack My Girdle

Sops in Wine
Sour Bay

Sour Natural
Spicey Pippin

Spotted Dick
Star of Devon

Stockbearer
Stone Pippin

Stubbard
Sugar Bush

Sugar Loaf
Sugar Sweet

Sweet Alford (c)
Sweet Bay

Sweet Bramley
Sweet Cleave

Sweet Cluster
Sweet Coppin (c)

Tale Sweet (c)
Tan Harvey

The Rattler
Thin Skin

Thomas Rivers
Tidicombe

Tom Putt (c)
Tommy Knight

Tommy Potter
Town Farm

Tremletts Bitter
Upton Pyne

Veitches Perfection
Venus Pippin

Wellington
Whimple Wonder

White Close Pippin
Winter Peach

Woodbine
Woolbrook

I also wish to acknowledge the use of the following texts in researching this novel. In particular, John Hooker's
Description of the City of Exeter
, a contemporary account of the siege of Exeter from the point of view of the Protestant besieged and Thomas Tusser's contemporary
Five Hundred Pointes of Goode Husbandrie
. Joan Morgan and Alison Richards'
Book of Apples
and James Crowden's
Cider
provided excellent secondary source material, while Beverly Pagram's
Heaven & Hearth
was invaluable in matters of Tudor women's folklore.