The Impregnable Women, page 16
They were in three divisions, and for a little way they advanced in line of companies. But when they had room they deployed and halted to dress their ranks, facing the enemy in line. The women were disposed in a deep crescent. Their centre lay in front of the drawbridge, where they were massed eight or ten deep. To their right and left their flanks were thrown forward in front of the low wall that guarded the empty moat. It was Julian’s plan to push their forward-reaching wings back upon their main division, causing confusion where they were already badly crowded, and so drive them all before him. He himself commanded his centre company. His right was under a Canadian captain, scarred and lean, a soldier of fortune who had served in many wars, in Spain and Mexico and the mountains of Szechuan; while the left wing obeyed a gallant but headstrong young Scot, the Master of Ballantyne.
The mutinous women already outnumbered him by three to one, and they had reserves of unknown strength. But their discipline was poor, their strength unequally disposed. Lysistrata and Mrs Curle had been persuaded to seek safety in the Castle, and the defending army was under the command of Lady Oriole. She was a striking figure – booted, top-hatted, and veiled – as she reviewed her troops, and, where they were needed, uttered soldierly words of encouragement. She carried as her only weapon a hunting-crop with which, at intervals, she smacked her riding-skirt in a boisterous and defiant fashion.
Apart from the disparity of numbers and the difference of sex, the most noticeable inequality between the two forces was that whereas the men had no weapons but their natural strength, the women were all armed. For the most part they carried golf-clubs, hockey-sticks, or various domestic utensils; but a few had implements more dangerous, both to themselves and others, which they had found among the trophies in the Banqueting Hall of the Castle; such things as broadswords, halberds, and long Lochaber axes. Their temper, too, was more obviously hostile. They kept up a chorus of shrill defiance, now breaking into song that was soon abandoned because so few could agree as to what song should be sung; now shrieking the most scathing of insults; and now like howler monkeys in the jungles of India, yelling for the mere pleasure of listening to the savage reverberation of their own voices.
In contrast to this unruly behaviour, Julian was pleased to observe the calm demeanour of his men. Their mood was a grim humour. As they removed their tunics and rolled up their sleeves, they commented without rancour on the appearance and conduct of their enemy, and were seemingly without fear of the issue. Despite the odds against them, Julian felt sure that their quiet confidence was justified, and his assurance was equally shared by his two lieutenants.
When all were ready he gave orders to a saturnine tall piper, who had been one of the first to volunteer, to play The Cock o’ the North. A cheer broke from his men, deep-throated and spontaneous, that drowned the shrill clamour of the women.
‘Stand fast, the centre!’ he commanded, and signalled to his lieutenants. Their voices rose together, the nasal tone of the Canadian captain, the warlike yell of the Master of Ballan-tyne: ‘By your right, quick march! Double march! Cha-arge!’
Their feet thundered on the stony ground. They cheered once more, at the very moment of coming to grips with the enemy, and then for a long time nothing was heard but the multifarious clamour of close and savage conflict. The hoarse breathing of antagonists well-matched in strength; the small dull thud of a mashie meeting bone or muscle; the larger noise of a descending hockey-club; the cheerful exclamation of a hard hand smacking plump cheeks; the protesting scream of a girl whose Lochaber axe had drawn blood; the despairing cry of a soldier whom some gigantic Amazon had hurled into the moat; and the music, growing fainter, that the saturnine tall piper played – here was the noise of battle that rose in the darkness under the ramparts that had known so many battles, yet none as strange as this.
Julian watched keenly, and with growing anxiety, the fortune of his two companies. On the right, for a little while, the men seemed to have the advantage. The smacking of faces and the cries of female pain were uppermost in the din. But then the soldiers, pressing home their advantage, began to go too far, and many were surrounded by women, and their strength was nullified by the close pressure of ponderous foe-men. Here and there in the battle rose the head of some tall trooper or great Guardsman, towering above their adversaries, and there rose and fell again the huge fist and mighty arm – pale in the dusk – of a stalwart shoeing-smith who fought alone among his enemies; but they sank from sight, and were seen no more. Slowly the weight of numbers told. The attack had failed, and the survivors, still fighting stubbornly, began their sullen retreat.
On the left, where the women were more loosely ordered, the impetuous Master of Ballantyne had at the first shock led his company into the very thick of them. But the women, though yielding in all directions, had nowhere fled. If at one minute they gave ground, at the next they encircled it. Where they drew back, they lured forward, and when they fell they did not fall alone. Surrounded on all sides, the hundred soldiers of the left wing struggled vainly like explorers: lost among the clinging vines and too luxuriant foliage of a tropical forest. A steam of mingled perfumes rose above the fray, and so great was the heat of conflict that men felt their strength fail them, and their spirit swoon. They were pulled down by innumerable writhing arms, and disappeared beneath a billowing mass of uncounted bosoms. Here the battle was all but lost. Only some dramatic reversal of their fortune could save the men from utter defeat.
Julian took a gambler’s chance, and resolved to throw his remaining division against the enormous strength of Lady Oriole’s centre. It was his only hope. ‘Allons! faites donner la garde!’ he muttered, and with a desperate valiance ordered his remnant to the attack.
He heard the staccato cheering of his soldiers and the answering cries of the defenders. He was gathered into the torrent of the charge, and flung against the solid mass of women. He saw faces flushed and wild, teeth gleaming, and fierce lovely eyes. A poker prodded him in the ribs, he gasped, and was flattened against a gigantic bosom. The breath went out of him, and his sight darkened. He caught feebly at some loose garment as he fell, but the fabric tore, and he was down among frantic feet, and silk-clad ankles. He seized a shapely leg, and saw the knees above him bend, and down came a great hockey-player. But in her fall she stunned him, and as she lay she stifled him, and he knew no more.
In the meantime the ever-diligent police had slowly driven the great mass of onlookers away from the Castle, and doggedly prevented them from joining the battle. The battle was apparently a political affair, and therefore the police kept out of it themselves, and exerted all their strength to keep excited spectators out of it. Having escorted the Prime Minister and his party to a place of safety, they drew their batons and drove the obstreperous multitude to the lower end of the Esplanade, and kept them there. With admirable self-control the police kept their heads, and cracked no more than forty or so belonging to the populace. But all the outward channels from the Esplanade were hopelessly blocked. The narrow ways of Castle Hill and Ramsay Lane and the steps into Johnstone Terrace were swarming with people, and even the police could not drive the crowd home.
Over the dark uneasy mass of humankind – still struggling, tight-packed as herring in a drifter’s hold – rose a gibbous moon. It climbed slowly above the tall black houses behind them, and grew brighter as it rose. The sky cleared, and the great lop-sided lantern lighted equally the heavens and the earth, and shone upon the Castle walls.
The battle was over. In a corner of the Esplanade there stood, or lay wearily on the ground, the survivors of Julian’s little army. They were bruised and listless. Many were bleeding from deep scratches, and two or three had received a trifling wound from halberds or the broad blade of a Lochaber axe. More than half had been taken prisoner. Julian, who had recovered consciousness when the battle ebbed away from him, was stiff and sore, and his heart was bitter. But weary though he was, he was counting casualties and taking, so far as he could, the names of the missing.
One of his men spoke sullenly: ‘What are they randies gaun tae do next?’
He pointed to the Castle, and looking up they saw a dozen misshapen bundles being lowered over the parapet of the Half-Moon Battery, the high round wall a hundred feet above the main gate. The bundles swayed gently to and fro. The bright moon lighted them. From the closely penned crowd at the lower end of the Esplanade there rose a confused harsh noise of exclamation and inquiry. Curiosity gave them strength, and like a bursting dam they broke through the cordon of police, and charged towards the Castle. When they came nearer they saw clearly what the bundles were.
They began to laugh. – Feather-brained, weathercock-witted as always, they forgot that women were now their enemies, and seized upon a joke, no matter who had made it. – Their laughter came at first from little groups and individuals. The crowd grew rapidly larger and denser as more and more people rushed on to the Esplanade from the streets and lanes that led to it. The newcomers had first to see, distinguish, understand, and swallow their astonishment. Then they also began to laugh. The laughter spread. It swept like a wind across the crowd. It grew louder and louder, till it roared like a forest fire. It broke in waves upon the Castle walls, and reverberated with the thunder of an Atlantic tide. Men laughed until their bodies weakened, and when strength returned they wiped their flowing eyes and laughed again.
The bundles that hung from the Half-Moon Battery were some twenty of the captives that Lysistrata’s mutineers had taken. In the very centre was Sir Joseph Rumble, and on either side of him Commander Lawless and Mr Pelham-Blair. Lieutenant McCombie was also there, and the impetuous Master of Ballantyne. They had been stuffed – not wholly, but as much of them as would go – into those large wire receptacles that are used, in parks and public places, for the collection of waste paper and other debris; and in these strong baskets they swung gently in the moonlight, the evidence of victory.
The women had won their initial trial, and the moon that had so many times betrayed them, now in their honour silvered the fruits of their first battle.
Chapter Five
The Love Siege
I
Showing a pretty taste in architecture, the Government had taken possession of the greater part of Charlotte Square, the north side of which housed in reasonable comfort the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Government Whips. Lord Pippin, who greatly admired the work of the Adam brothers, was delighted with his new residence, and often at some Cabinet meeting forgot the topic of discussion in more agreeable contemplation of mantelpiece, fanlight, or ceiling. The houses, too, reminded him of Bath, and rarely had he read the novels of Jane Austen in surroundings so congenial to himself and them. In a room which he called his arcana curia he had, indeed, recently taken to morning reading – an hour or so between eleven and twelve with Emma or Mansfield Park – a form of intemperance from which he derived intense though guilty pleasure.
It was three days after the battle for the Castle, and he had recently begun Emma for the twentieth time, when contrary to all orders he was interrupted – his arcana curia invaded – by Sir Joseph Rumble, Mr Comyn Curle, and General Puffin-Lumkyn. The last was a tall stout man with large pink cheeks, a small red mouth, a Socratic nose, and rather colourless eyes, one of which looked at the world in pale astonishment through a single eye-glass.
They came in without being announced, with no more ceremony than a loud knock at the door, and Lord Pippin had barely time to stuff Emma between the cushion and the arm of his chair before they confronted him with the determined aspect of honest men who were about to make themselves thoroughly unpleasant.
‘This state of affairs, Pippin, can’t continue,’ said Sir Joseph, and selecting a chair, sat ponderously down.
‘It must be stopped,’ said Mr Curle.
‘Before things have gone too far,’ added the General.
‘From all over the country,’ declared Sir Joseph, ‘reports are coming in of new disorder. This mutinous idea of a regimented continence is gaining ground.’
‘It’s spreading like wildfire,’ said Mr Curle.
‘It’s playing the devil,’ said the General. ‘I never heard of such a thing. And it isn’t only in public that these women are going in for chastity. They’re practising it in their own homes, a lot of them.’
‘The situation is quite intolerable.’
‘And it must be stopped,’ repeated Mr Curle.
Ruffled by their unmannerly intrusion, the Prime Minister permitted himself to show a little anger.
‘Then why,’ he asked, ‘have you done nothing to mend it? – It would be supererogation, my dear Curle, to stop a situation. – But you are clearly too excited to appreciate such a nicety of language; and to be frank with you, I think your excitement is natural, since you must realize how much to blame you are for our present difficulties. The Castle was your War Office, and you failed to take proper care of it. Were you a soldier, like General Puffin-Lumkyn, you would certainly be court-martialled for losing Government property. And you, General, must feel as guilty as Mr Curle, for, as Commander-in-Chief of Home Defence, you are responsible for the conduct of the sentries and the squadron on guard who allowed the insurgents to dispossess them of their charge. Throughout the country, moreover, there have been mutinies similar to the one we have witnessed in Edinburgh; and wherever military action has been taken against the mutineers, it has resulted in the defeat of your troops. That is a grave reflexion on their discipline and training, and I quite understand how uneasy you must feel. Almost as uneasy, perhaps, as Sir Joseph? You, Rumble, are most culpable of all. In permitting yourself to be captured by the women you were guilty of criminal negligence, and your being displayed, on two occasions, I think, in a receptacle for waste paper, has seriously embarrassed the Government and sensibly weakened its authority. But perhaps it is unfair of me to – shall I say, rub it in, like this? For I suppose you have now come to tell me of some plan that will speedily – I think we agreed to say mend? – that will soon mend a situation which we all find extremely disagreeable if not positively intolerable.’
The Prime Minister had now recovered his normal equanimity. With open disregard for the opinion of his Ministers, he pulled Emma out of its hiding-place, laid it on a table, and settling himself more comfortably in his chair, looked from one to another of his colleagues with a blandly inviting smile. ‘And now for your plan,’ he said.
His visitors were engulfed in silence. Like cavalry in a quicksand, the indignation which the Prime Minister had set galloping down their arteries was now caught in the embarrassment of having nothing to suggest. Their fury struggled and sank in the shifting bottom of their impotence. Their breathing grew louder, they coughed, but were otherwise inarticulate.
Mr Curle was in a pitiable state of mind. Robbed of his War Office and deprived of his wife, he had had for three days little to do but mourn his double loss and regret his vanished felicity. He had laboriously prepared for the Prime Minister’s information a statement of the difficulties of carrying on a war without a War Office – when he was even more concerned with the impossibility of being a married man without a wife – and now, abashed by Lord Pippin’s jobation, he could remember none of it. Nor had he conceived any more likely idea for dealing with the love-strikers than to persuade them out of rebellion with some happy display of eloquence and logic – some irresistible mixture of rhetoric and reason – and unfortunately his tongue-tied condition did not give him a fair chance to bear witness to the power of words.
Sir Joseph, too, was in no enviable state. He had suffered, not in spirit alone, during his exposure in the wire basket. Never in his life had he been so humiliated, nor endured such discomfort in his legs. Twice those infernal women had hung him over the parapet; once in the moonlight, and again on the following morning. Then he and the other prisoners had been released, and the fickle crowd had met them with jeers and mockery. It was torture to be reminded of what he had gone through in the recent past; and as in all his political life he had never committed himself to any definite opinion nor failed in finding for his Party some way of securing release with honour from the more daring pledges of its rasher members, he had naturally no positive suggestion to make for the future. It was, perhaps, some comfort to him that Lady Rumble had not joined the insurgents; but not so much as it might have been, for she had announced her intention of starting a rival loyalist movement, and her first recruits, whom she had invited to dinner, were all phenomenally ugly, and most of them had so far passed the age of consent that it had long since become inoperative.
Not less unhappy was General Puffin-Lumkyn, though ignorant as yet that he was at last to be rewarded with a peerage and put on the retired list. The Prime Minister’s criticism had not seriously upset him, for he tolerantly regarded all dispraise of the military as a symptom of civilian jealousy. But his private life had been tragically disrupted by the strike. He was a bachelor, a man of means, of taste and appetite as well, and his household staff had been famous. He had kept neither butler nor valet, but his tablemaid had been a regal brunette, and he was always dressed with loving attention. And now they had all gone, his gay domestic bevy, and his cook as well, who was worth the lot of them, and had gifts more lasting. The General was suffering severely; but discipline and a keen regard for decorum enabled him at last to break the embarrassing silence.
‘We could shell them,’ he said gruffly.
‘Good God, no!’ cried Mr Curle.
‘You mean we could have the Castle bombarded?’ asked the Prime Minister.
‘Yes. It’s not a pleasant idea, of course, but war’s not pleasant either. And we’ve got to get on with it, haven’t we?’
‘Now that is a point worth considering,’ exclaimed the Prime Minister, delighted by the chance of forgetting more serious discussion in pursuit of the General’s non sequitur. But he was balked by Sir Joseph, who had been horrified by the suggestion, and now insisted on describing his revulsion, which, he said, would be shared by every decent man in Britain. He was supported by a series of heartfelt ejaculations from Mr Curle.
