Women of Courage (157 page)

“Trick you? By God, Ann, I was never more honest with any girl than you! Nor had so much patience neither! And you must think yourself very fine indeed, to be talking to me of marriage when your father is marching the country in open rebellion against the King!”

“My father is risking his life for the cause of Truth. I hardly think that can be said for you, or any man in this devil’s army. So if there had been any question of marriage, I think the honour would have been yours.”

“Indeed.” He controlled himself, contempt beginning to succeed to rage. “Well, there
was
no question of it, that I recall.”

“No.” Again the silence, the mute reading of each other’s faces. He swayed slightly as he stood in the middle of the room, and she waited for him to leave, but he could not. He was held to her as by a magnet, by the memory of those afternoons on the hillside, and the vision of her body beneath her dress, the body that had lain naked and hurt on the ground the other night. and that he had held in the crook of his arm on his horse, shivering slightly through the folds of his cloak.

“How is your chin?”

Her hand leapt to the purple bruise at the base of her jaw. It ached still, but she had forgotten it in the troubles of the day.

“Well enough, thank you. The surgeon you sent last night gave me a poultice for it, and it has taken away most of the pain.”

“So nothing is broken?”

“No.”

“I am glad.”

Silence. She noticed the sound of the little clock ticking on the mantlepiece, and the clatter of horses being led across the yard outside. She wondered if he would go, and realised he was the only friend she had in this place.

“I came to ask, if you would have your food brought here, or would dine with me and the other officers.”

“Here, if you please. I am not a prize heifer, to be prodded and gloated over by your friends.” But she blushed slightly at her rudeness; it seemed absurdly formal to talk of having her food brought to her, when she was used to cooking for others. Even if she had wanted to accept, she did not know the right words.

“Then perhaps I can have mine brought here also?”

“As you like.” But it was
she
that liked as well; suddenly she knew it so strongly that she felt her hands shake with the fear that he would change his mind, that her rudeness would drive him away.

“I will go and order it. Is there anything else you require?”

“No - thank you. Oh, yes!”

“Well?” He turned back at the door.

“If you could - if the landlady has a comb, or a brush; I have not been able to touch my hair for the last two days.”

“It will be a poor inn if she has not!” A smile touched his face at the appeal in her voice, and he was gone.

Immediately she regretted what she had said; she regretted it, and she did not. Surely it was not wrong to want a friend in such a strange place; but she could never think of Robert as just a friend, and she had shown it. To ask for a comb was to throw everything away with feminine weakness and vanity. Nonetheless, she really did need one; she was sure there had been lice in the bed last night, and she had seen one on the head of the cook. Although that was vanity too; nearly everyone in Colyton had lice from time to time. It was only her own mother’s whim of a weekly inspection that kept her own family free. At first Ann had been glad that her borrowed clothes had not included the protection of a Puritan cap, for she loved to wear her rich, auburn hair loose and free; and later she had been too proud to ask for one, even though it would have saved her from some of the soldiers’ looks today. She should not have asked for a comb; Robert would think she was flustered about her appearance because he was going to eat with her, which was not what she had meant at all.

He returned in a few moments with the news that the food would be brought to them when it was ready, and to offer her his own brush and comb, which he used for his wig.

“I never thought of them when you asked, but they are bound to be better than anything you would get from the inn. See here.” He showed her a folding comb with an engraved ivory handle, which he had got from his wig-maker in London.

“Oh, no, Robert, surely! Thank you, but I couldn’t use those. They are far too fine. My hair is much too dirty.”

“Tangled too - and probably full of lice from these wretched inns. Come on, take them. That’s what they’re for.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t ... “

“Then let me.” And before she knew it he was beside her, holding her head with one hand, using the comb with the other. His touch froze her like a startled rabbit, so that she trembled in immobility, torn between the desire to wrench herself away in outrage, and the longing to relax meekly against him, to feel his firm body embrace her as she had done on those stolen summer afternoons. The latter she must not do; the former would be too much of an insult for something so trivial, so kindly meant; and so she stood still, tense and rigid, while he pushed her head gently forward against the motion of the comb, and the sparks crackled between them.

He knew what he was doing. At first he combed lightly on the surface of the hair, getting it straight, finding out where the tangles were; then when he found them he worked the comb gently but firmly in, holding the hair up with his other hand in order not to pull on her head so that she never had the excuse that it hurt, or that he was clumsy. He tugged one or two of the worst knots apart, and then began to comb with deep, strong, luxurious strokes. She began to relax, just a little bit, and then a little more ...

“Ah! Got one!” He stopped, and there was a little crackling sound between his fingers.

“Oh no! Robert ... “ She made as if to turn away, but his strong fingers gripped her head.

“No, stay still! There’s another. If I get them now I’ll have them all, before they go out into the room. If the room’s clean, that is. Here, sit down.” He pulled a stool for her out of the corner, and pushed her down onto it, and again, somehow it would have been too ridiculously churlish to resist. As she sat down she relaxed more, dropping her head forward a little so that her hair hid her face. At least he would not think she was trying to entice him with the beauty of her locks, she thought, and for a second the absurdity of it all threatened to bubble through her embarassment, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“I think that’s all. Four - that’s not very many.”

“I do try to keep it clean, you know. My mother goes through it with a fine-toothed comb every Friday, and I wash it once a fortnight.”

“Indeed. A proper lady of fashion, then.”

“Us bain’t all ignorant yokels, even down Colyton way, you know.”

“I do know.” He was using his brush now, with deep, steady strokes from the crown of her head to her shoulders. She felt the brush tingle on her scalp, and then pull the long swathes flowing down, and she relaxed into the luxury of it. He pushed her head gently to one side and then the other, and then cupped his hand under her chin so that her head was arched backwards, and the brush smoothed the warm red locks gently back from her brow.

He bent forward, and kissed her on the forehead.

“Robert, no ... “

“Your supper, sir!”

The call and the knock on the door came so closely on her words that she was able to pretend she would have stood up anyway, even if no-one had knocked. But she knew she would not have done that; even as she spoke she had been turning in response to the kiss, and her sudden leap to her feet was caused by guilt, not revulsion or fear.

“Captain Pole, your supper!”

“Yes, thank you. Bring it in.” The earnest frown on his face was somehow more appealing now than ever, as he stared at her, surprised, puzzled whether to apologise or smile in conspiracy. Then he looked away as the landlady and her son came in and began to set the table. They did it with a great deal of fuss and enquiry as to how he liked it, and all the time their eyes came back to Ann, measuring, assessing, and then looking away again. Disgusted, she turned away and stood with her back to them, staring out of the tiny window onto an empty square of cobbled courtyard.

“‘Tis the best we could do, sir, at a moment’s notice, what with the whole town being full of soldiers and that.”

“It looks very good, at any rate. Thank you.”

“Put that down careful, now, Sam. Not that I’m complaining, sir, you understand. ‘Tis a great honour, o’ course. Do ‘ee think you’ll be staying long, though, sir? Only ‘tis a powerful number of men for a small town like this yer.”

“I have no idea, I’m afraid. You must ask my Lord Churchill, I suppose - or the Duke of Monmouth.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t ask ‘im, sir. We haven’t had nothing to do with no rebels yer. No soldiers at all, ‘til you came.”

“I’m glad to hear it. That will be all, thank you.”

“Yes, sir. I ‘ope ‘e’s tasty, sir. ‘Tis only a young fowl, just coming into lay. too. My husband said ‘twas a dreadful pity, but us thought to keep the best one for you and the young lady, seein’ as you wanted to eat separate, like.”

“Yes, thank you. Very kind.” Ann heard the clink of coins as he paid for the meal, and then the door shut as they went out. She stood staring out at the cobbled courtyard, her back to the room.

She was a whore.
Everyone thought she was: the soldiers, the officers, the landlady of the inn, Robert. She felt her ears burning under her hair, with the thought of what the landlady must be saying to her son as she went down the stairs, and what the officers must be saying at their table. But it was worse than that.
She wanted to be a whore
.

If the landlady had not knocked, she would have turned and kissed Robert, kissed him wholeheartedly as she had done before, forgetting her father, and Tom and Simon, forgetting the rebellion and Kate and Elspeth, and the stealing and the torture and the hanged man in the tree outside, forgetting God! All for a man who was a landowner and a soldier and perhaps a Papist, who admitted he had never had any thought of marrying her!

“Won’t you come and eat? It does look reasonably palatable, for all her talk.”

She turned and faced him, seeing him fully as though for the first time; the tall, slightly gawky figure in the blue coat and riding boots; the strong sensitive hands; the thin, freckled face between the dark curls of the wig, with that strange, earnest frown that never quite went away even when, as now, he was smiling.

“Yes. Certainly I will.”

24

“W
HAT DO ‘EE think ‘tis, Joseph?”

“They’m burning the city down in front of us. looks like.”

“No, can’t be that, man. They wouldn’t do that.”

“Looks more out to sea, don’t it, than in the town? Can’t ‘ee see the light on the water?”

The little group, standing on the brow of a hill a few miles south of Bristol, strained their eyes in the gathering dusk, trying to see how close the red, leaping flames were to the wide, dark estuary of the Severn.

“Be an accident maybe?”

“That’s no accident there. John. That’s a sign sent to us. A sign from the Lord, or from his good people in the town.”

“‘Tis easy to say ‘e’s a sign, Israel, but what do ‘e mean? What be the townsfolk trying to say by it?”

“They be calling us to come now, to take the town while they’m ready to deliver it up to us.”

“Now hold on, now. Israel, how can ‘ee be sure of that? We can’t
know
that’s what ‘e means.”

“‘He set before them a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, that they might follow Him.’
The men of Bristol know their Bible well enough, from the good sermons of the Reverend Ichabod Chauncey, whom I’ve heard preach on that very text before now. ‘Tis only to be expected that they should think the army of the good Lord would know it too,” Israel Fuller insisted. “Do ‘ee hear me, Mr Satchell? I say ‘tis a sign that we should descend on the heathen tonight.”

“A sign it may be, Israel, but we can hardly go tonight. My own feet are almost burnt up from walking, and ‘tis still a good ten miles to Bristol, and a fight in the dark at the end of that.”

“I warrant there’ll be no fight at all, Roger. That city is crammed with men of our own faith. We have only to march around the walls for them to fall to us like those of Jericho.”

“Then if that’s to happen, I’d rather we went in daylight, so that I can see, and tell my children of it later!”

“Use your eyes now, John Spragg! You can see the beacon now, can’t ‘ee, calling us on? I say we should not delay, whatever the weakness of our flesh. We should take the city tonight.”

“‘Twill still be there tomorrow, and the good folk in it. Anyhow, Israel, ‘tis not for the likes of we to decide these things. King Monmouth got us this far well enough, and ‘e’s seen more soldiering than any of us here. He’ll know what to do.”

“Pray God you’m right, friend.”

“Of course I’m right. He’s the Lord’s chosen leader, isn’t he? And the Lord will give His servants the victory.”

“Amen.” There was a fervency in the one word, echoed from throat to throat, that made it more pregnant with prayer than many a whole service Adam Carter had attended before. For him it was at once an assertion of belief, and a prayer that the belief be shown to be true; that he had not offered up his life on a false altar. Perhaps they
were
God’s chosen army; perhaps even he himself might be saved, as part of it.

As the gruff prayer went up, a silent, expectant awe came over the little group on the dark hillside. For a while no-one spoke, and they stared north across the valley from Pensford to the great red glow in the darkness where the city of Bristol should be. From time to time they could see great flames flickering, sending up a brighter glow which must be a shower of sparks and smoke into the night sky. Adam thought that if it were a signal, it was a dangerous and reckless one, for a fire of that size could easily spread and burn the whole city, as London had been burnt nineteen years before. The secret thought even crossed his mind that the fire might be lit, not as a sign from God, but by Catholics, as folk said the one in London had been: to burn the Protestant sympathisers in the town, so that their army would march in tomorrow to a heap of smouldering ashes, rather than the arsenal of men and supplies for which they hoped.