A Falling Star, page 35
part #3 of Wintercombe Series
‘Failure? But I thought that half of Somerset was behind Monmouth!’
‘So it is — but it’s the wrong half. No gentleman to speak of has joined him. His army must number several thousands by now, but they’re mostly small men, by all accounts, weavers and farmers and suchlike, no one of any consequence. Like Alex, the gentry of Somerset have too much to lose. I suspect they’re all watching each other, waiting for the first one to move. It might only take one or two with courage, and the rest would follow. But so far, the one or two have not shown themselves. And few would wish to be associated with an army they probably consider to be a rabble, with a disgraced royal bastard at its head.’
‘Put like that, it does sound very unlikely,’ Louise said. She looked at the array of crumbs on the white linen tablecloth, representing the towns and cities of the West Country. ‘So where are the rebels now? Still at — what was it called? Cansham?’
‘Keynsham. They were there yesterday.’ Phoebe crumbled a lump of cheese, and distributed the pieces. ‘The King’s commander, Feversham, is in Bath, apparently, with a few horses. Lieutenant-General Churchill is following the rebel army, a few miles to their rear — say they’re here, at Glastonbury. The Duke of Grafton is bringing several foot regiments from London, with the artillery train following slowly behind, and he’s probably quite close to Bath now — say here, a few miles away, near Chippenham. So Monmouth can’t very well linger too long where he is. He must take Bristol as soon as possible, or the King’s men will fall on him, and all his advantage will be lost.’
‘I hope he comes nowhere near Wintercombe,’ Louise said. ‘If he doesn’t take Bristol, where will he go?’
‘Anywhere,’ Phoebe said, picking up the piece of bread that rather inadequately represented the handsome person of the late King Charles’s favourite bastard. ‘North, into Gloucester, and well away from us. Eastwards, towards Bath, and London — though he risks a pitched battle if he does, or south again, back into Somerset, which would undoubtedly be an admission of failure. But if Bristol is out of the question, then he will surely go wherever he has, or thinks he has, most support waiting to rise in his favour. And where that might be, well, I am not Monmouth, so I have no idea.’
Louise studied the makeshift little plan. She had been long enough in England — nearly a year now — to have a fairly accurate picture of the lands around Wintercombe, the positions of the larger towns, and the steep hills and valleys that folded the countryside. She had no knowledge of military strategy, but Monmouth’s plight was obvious, even to her ignorant eyes. The King’s forces were closing in, and he must run, or turn and fight.
She had thought that she cared nothing for either side: such things held no interest for her, unless they touched her directly. But rebellion, possibly even a battle, lay so close, no more than a dozen miles away, that she could not help but wonder what would happen. She said, ‘How many are the rebels?’
Phoebe spread her hands. ‘I don’t know, and neither does Alex. Perhaps as many as seven or eight thousand, but of course they’re not soldiers, and I don’t think all of them are properly armed. But Monmouth has military experience, so they may well prove to be a formidable fighting force. If the two sides were to meet, who knows what the outcome might be?’
Who, indeed? Louise stared at the scattered, apparently meaningless crumbs in front of Phoebe, as if she were a buzzard wheeling above the land between Bath and Bristol, studying real armies, real people, with a bird’s beady and dispassionate eye. But at least it did not seem very likely that any of the forces involved would come near Wintercombe. And her emotions were not engaged, anyway: she knew no one who marched with the rebel army.
‘Good morning, Lou — good morning, Phoebe.’
It was Charles, stocky and fair, in the doorway. He bowed punctiliously, a courtesy that in the informal family intimacy of Wintercombe seemed rather superfluous, even pompous. Louise was thankful that Lukas was no longer in the room, and that she and Phoebe had just been discussing the rebel army in general, not Alex in particular. She smiled, and returned his greeting. Phoebe, with a quick significant glance at her, indicated the apparently random scatter of crumbs. ‘We were debating the position of the rebels and the King’s army, Charles. Have you anything to add? Monmouth was at Keysham yesterday, apparently.’
‘I can’t imagine what Feversham thinks he’s doing, letting them march up and down Somerset as they please,’ Charles said, coming over to the table. He peered at Phoebe’s makeshift map. ‘Is that Bristol?’
‘Yes, and Bath is here — this is Frome, and Shepton, and Wintercombe. Now do you see it clearly?’
‘I think so,’ her cousin said, frowning. ‘And this piece of cheese is the rebel army, I take it?’
‘Yes, and this is Lieutenant-General Churchill, and the Duke of Grafton here. I don’t think you’ll find that Monmouth will be allowed to progress freely for very much longer,’ Phoebe told him.
‘I fervently hope not,’ was Charles’s comment. ‘I shall pray that the traitor and all his followers receive the penalty they so richly deserve. They have sacrificed the peace of the kingdom to their own selfish ends, and to my mind no punishment is too harsh.’
There was a brief, uneasy silence. Louise, remembering Bram on the subject, said mildly, ‘Perhaps if those who are Dissenters could be sure that they would not suffer further persecution, they would not be so ready to take up arms against the King.’
Charles looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted horns. ‘Louise, there is no excuse, none whatsoever, for treason and open rebellion.’
It would have been more sensible if she had meekly agreed with him and kept her thoughts to herself. But something about the unshakable self-righteousness of that statement had raised her hackles. She looked up at him, and said provocatively, ‘Oh, do you really? So all those poor Huguenots, persecuted in France, have no justification for resistance, even though their maidservants are dishonoured, their children taken away from them, and they are subject to daily abuse, injury, harassment and even death?’
Charles looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘That is in France. You know as well as I do that the Dissenters here in England do not suffer any such persecution.’
‘I agree, they don’t,’ Louise said. ‘Not at present. But they fear it.’
‘They have no reason to,’ said Charles indignantly. ‘None at all. His Majesty has every intention, I am sure, of protecting the rights of all his subjects to worship as they choose, without persecution.’
‘Then perhaps he would be well advised to make his thoughts on the matter absolutely clear,’ Louise pointed out tartly. She did not like arguing with Charles, but his obvious intransigence had goaded her into taking the opposite side.
‘Sit down and take some breakfast,’ Phoebe said, indicating the chair next to her.
Charles shook his head. ‘No, thank you, Cousin. I have just remembered something I must do. Pray excuse me.’ And he went out with rather less than his usual courtesy, banging the door.
Louise made an expressively ugly face. ‘Hélas! I seem to have put him out of sorts.’
‘Well, what did you expect?’ Phoebe began to search about for her stick. ‘Charles’s chief fault is that he always knows that he’s right. Damn, it’s fallen on the floor.’
Louise bent down to pick it up for her. ‘I know that I was unfair to him, but I couldn’t help it. It was as if I wanted to be rude.’
Phoebe took the stick from her, and prepared to rise from her chair. She gave her cousin a shrewd glance, and observed drily, ‘You have noticed that he is devoted to you?’
Unusually, Louise flushed. She glanced down at her plate, and then up at the other girl. ‘Yes, of course I have. Poor Charles — he’s never said anything, but there’s no mistaking that look.’
‘And doubtless,’ Phoebe said, getting with difficulty to her feet, ‘you have seen it frequently before.’
Louise gave her a dry glance. ‘Yes I’m afraid I have. But Charles… I know I was unkind just now, but that was unusual. It isn’t easy to be the subject of feelings that I can’t return. I…I have never given him the slightest encouragement, all I want from him is friendship, and yet he looks at me so imploringly sometimes, and I feel guilty because I can’t give him any hope, nor do I value his feelings so lightly that I can just dash them to pieces with the truth. How can I tell him, without hurting him, that he will never be any more than a friend to me, and that his hopes are futile?’
‘In the long run,’ Phoebe observed, ‘it may be kinder to tell him so, soon. Then he will no longer be prey to unrealistic expectations.’
‘If I find the right moment, I will try,’ Louise said thoughtfully. ‘But nothing has been said, no declaration, and that makes it very difficult.’
‘And meanwhile, you have to live under the same roof,’ Phoebe pointed out. ‘I am truly grateful that my defects make me safe from such dilemmas. Desirability, it seems, is a double-edged sword.’ She smiled self-mockingly, and inclined her head. ‘I will go and find Lukas — he should have covered several sheets of paper by now. Doubtless I will see you later. Au revoir, ma chère Louise.’
‘Au revoir,’ said her cousin, and watched as Phoebe made her halting, indomitable progress from the dining parlour.
It was true, of course. She ought to make it quite clear to Charles that his yearning adoration, never voiced, absolutely obvious to anyone with half an eye, was hopeless, and certain to remain so for all time. It was not his lack of money, nor prospects: she would marry for worldly reasons, certainly, but she wanted also a man who would be a friend and a lover, someone with whom she could laugh and enjoy herself. Charles, conventional, cautious and strait-laced, might be in love with her, but as a husband he would drive her mad with frustrated tedium inside a month. She suspected that her sophistication and self-assurance and her flavour of the exotic attracted him: and her wildness, that he would never tolerate in a wife.
Perhaps the quickest, easiest and most brutal way to shatter the scales over his eyes would be to tell him the truth about herself. But no one in England knew of it for certain, although her grandmother must suspect. And she feared his inevitable revulsion and hurt, and also the power over her that such knowledge would give him. She desired no more scandal.
It was raining again: even if she had wanted to risk her scarce-healed shoulder, this was emphatically not riding weather. She thought of Monmouth’s army, somewhere near Bristol, doubtless miserable and dispirited in such a downpour, and of Alex, who, unlike poor prudish, loyal Charles, attracted her like a moth to a flame, and would singe her sorely if she let him.
The thought of his face, his hands, his kiss, made her blood sing and all her resolution falter. She put him with determination from her mind, and rose to go in search of some diversion, whether a book or conversation, to while away the dull morning.
*
The endless rain, that seemed to have fallen without ceasing ever since they left Bridgwater, had somewhat sapped the enthusiasm of Monmouth’s motley band of soldiers. It seemed to the weavers of Taunton, as they tramped under a sky as lowering and depressed as their spirits, that this would never end, that they were doomed to march eternally around Somerset until their feet rotted, pursued at a distance by enemy forces that might choose any moment to launch a surprise attack.
They had made an early start from Pensford, and reached Keynsham later that morning, the day before Louise’s conversation with Phoebe over the breakfast table. From there, so it was said now, up and down the ranks, an attack would be launched upon Bristol, second city in the kingdom, and, like Taunton, a hotbed of Dissent and rebellion. That information was enough to raise the army’s hopes, and the line of tramping men buzzed with rumour as they straggled down the hill, under a weeping grey sky, to Keynsham in the Avon valley below.
Bram was very glad to be part of the cavalry now. The rain had turned the highways into quagmires, with ruts and puddles a foot deep and more, and the foot soldiers were plastered in mud to the waist. Their shoes, too, had often failed to withstand the long arduous marches, and many men were limping, their toes exposed between flapping, disintegrating pieces of sodden leather. He was, like them, cold and wet, but at least his feet, in his cousin Sam’s old boots, were dry and protected from the elements, and even in those terrible conditions most of the mud had not reached him, his horse having taken the brunt of it.
There was singing as they entered Keynsham. A troop of rebel horse had driven off a band of militia the previous night, and had repaired the bridge over the Avon that would give Monmouth and his army access to Bristol’s relatively undefended eastern and northern sides. Beside Bram, Ben began to whistle tunelessly, beating time with his hand on his saddlebow, a broad smile on his face. His evident glee was infectious: Hucker’s troop took up the tune as they rode over the bridge and drew up in the meadow beyond in which the army would muster for the attack on Bristol. It was still an hour or more until noon, and they sat their wet, steaming horses expectantly, hoping that the heavy rain threatening in the western sky would hold off, at least until they were given the chance to fall on Bristol. Cheerfully, the men around Bram talked of the dry beds they would occupy tonight, and the welcome they would receive as they entered the city. If the godly citizens could be organised to rise at the right time, they might not even have to fight for it.
It was very easy to be swept away by their enthusiasm, and to join in the excessive hope all about him. But Bram could not believe that Bristol would fall so easily — it was much too important for that. There would be guns, militia, perhaps a detachment of the regular army. Surely, surely even the King, who had seemed very unprepared for his nephew’s invasion, would not have left such a prize undefended?
They waited for what seemed like hours in the meadow, in a light, intermittent drizzle. The people of Keynsham brought bread and cheese, refusing payment, and, even more welcome, the landlord of one of the inns arrived with a small cart, laden with barrels of beer, which he and his tapsters decanted into leather jacks, to be passed around the tired troops. Monmouth had set up temporary headquarters at the abbey, home of Sir Thomas Bridges, who had fought for the King forty years previously, and there he and his council of war discussed the strategy for taking Bristol, while their men waited, bored and urgent for a decisive move, in the meadow beside the Avon.
Early in the afternoon, the menacing heavens finally opened, and torrential rain drenched the soldiers. Soaked, shivering and miserable, they huddled together under makeshift and inadequate covers made of blankets or coats thrown over their weapons. In this weather, the powder would be damp, and matchlock muskets useless. No one was really surprised when the order came to return to Keynsham for shelter, and the weavers and clothworkers of Taunton, used to working indoors and unaccustomed to prolonged rain, hurried gratefully back into the town, to find quarters where they could.
It took some hours to settle everyone. The horse, needing stables, occupied all the inns, of which Keynsham boasted several. Bram tended his weary animal, trying to rub down the worst of the mud, with indifferent success. Ben had already earned the respect of the men for his unrivalled knowledge of horses, and he spent all afternoon moving from stall to stall, soothing, advising, begging medicines and poultices from any likely source, and administering them to suffering mounts. His own horse at last made comfortable, with water and a full manger, Bram went in search of his cousin, and found him at the centre of a good-humoured huddle of troopers, explaining in his thick, almost unintelligible speech, why purging pills compounded of tar, butter, liquorice, aniseed and garlic were an infallible remedy for all manner of ailments.
It was plain that the soldiers regarded him with a curious mixture of comradely friendship, condescension, and a certain amount of superstitious awe, rather as if he were a small child with incongruously magical powers. Bram hovered on the outskirts of the group, smiling. Ben, wise and innocent at once, would always find friends, save amongst those who feared people thus afflicted in their wits. Already, the men of Hucker’s troop seemed to have adopted him almost as a mascot, someone who would bring them good fortune. Since many lack-wits led a miserable life, persecuted and abused, Bram knew that his cousin was exceptionally lucky. Or perhaps his warm and sunny nature was responsible, for it was impossible to dislike him.
There was a sudden alarm outside, a great confused noise, and several shots, shatteringly close. The untrained troopers stood, staring in bewilderment, until Bram shouted, ‘It’s an attack! To horse!’ And then the chaos was instant, men running for their mounts, flinging on saddles and bridles in frantic haste, while a soldier ran down between the stalls, his boots banging on the rough cobbled floor, bawling, ‘Attack! Attack!’
Bram dragged his reluctant, startled horse out into the inn yard, jostling with others. It was still raining, though not so heavily as earlier, and the sky was dark. In this light, the scene was an inextricable confusion of shapes, all struggling to mount and ride out into the long main street of Keynsham. There was a great noise of drums and trumpets that terrified the horses, and Bram’s chestnut flung up its head and banged him painfully on the nose, making his eyes water. And then he and a dozen others had burst into the street, to see more of their horse engaging furiously with several score of Royal troopers, distinguished by their back-and-breast armour and scarlet coats.
Bram was never sure, afterwards, of exactly what happened that evening, nor was anyone else in his troop more certain. There seemed to be two separate parties of the King’s horse, for there was fighting along the length of the street, and utter confusion, the clash of swords, shots, the smell of powder and the screams and neighs of injured men and frightened horses. Any concerted action was impossible, and none of the rebels appeared to have any idea of what to do, save to charge at the enemy, shouting ‘Monmouth!’ and waving their swords. And their maddened, terrified mounts, wrenched abruptly from their warm quiet stables to face this nightmare, were almost beyond all control.
