Women of Courage (171 page)

When he had left them they sat for a while without talking, like strangers put by accident in the same prison cell. Tom stared at the wall, and Ann watched him, wondering if it would be like this when they were married, and whether she could bear it if it were. Perhaps, she thought, if you sit still long enough your heart turns to stone, and ceases to ache. Or do love and hope just go bad through lack of use and turn to hatred and despair, like wine to vinegar? She had never loved Tom as she had Robert, but until yesterday she had thought they could at least marry and be friends. She had never hated him until now. Now she only wanted to hurt him, for his treachery.

He fiddled nervously with the wood he had been carving, as though she were not there.

“You don’t want to marry me, do you?” she said at last, to break the boredom.

“No. But it seems I’ll have to.”

“Yes. And every night I’ll bleed on you, and whisper to you about how I coupled with other men, and what they said to me when they did it. Shall I tell you about Robert Pole?”

“No!” He scowled at her in horror.

“Oh, but I think I should, Tom, to remind you what a sacrifice you are making, and help you to repent properly of your sins. You see, when I spread my legs for him ... “

“Shut your mouth, you filthy harlot!” He got up and slapped his hand hard across her face, so that she almost fell sideways off the bench, and had to grip it to stop herself. She glared at him bitterly through the hair which had fallen about her face, her cheek aching with the pain.

“If we are to be married you will not talk to me like that, ever! Such words are not fit for a Christian woman!”

“And you will stop me by hitting me? A fine Christian marriage we shall have. Like a whited sepulchre.”

“‘Tis a husband’s duty to chastise his wife.”

“Not every day, Tom. And I shall remind you of it every day, now. My father will not be very pleased when he sees me with a new bruise every day.”

“Then he shouldn’t force us to get married. ‘Tis a proper Devil’s mockery!” He got up angrily and strode to the window, banging his fist on the low oaken beam above it, and leaning his forehead against one of the small panes to cool it.

Ann rubbed her bruised face and sighed, trying to hold back her tears. It was not this she had had in mind when she had ridden down the hill at Philip’s Norton to become part of her own world again. Nor when she had tried to love Tom and give him back his courage. If her future was to be like this, it was not worth fighting for.

“Perhaps it won’t come to anything after all, Tom. If the army is defeated, you may not be alive to marry me anyway. Perhaps we should pray to God for that.”

She regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them. They were too cruel; a treacherous blasphemy that included not only Tom but her father and all the men from Colyton, all the thousands of good honest men in the town around them who were risking their lives for their King Monmouth. But it was too late to take the words back. Tom had heard them, and turned, his face twisted with bitter scorn.

“I knew you were one of the Devil’s party. Only a Papist’s whore could say such a thing. I don’t care what your father says, I could never marry you. You’re a harlot — a Papist’s whore!”

It was as though some great revelation had suddenly come to him. He stared at her for a moment defiantly to see if she would respond, then spat violently on the floor and walked out into the street, leaving her alone with her regrets.

39

A
DAM’S ANGER was still smouldering in the early afternoon of the next day, as they marched into the little cathedral town of Wells. Tom had not come to see him the night before, but Adam had sought him out, and the short, bitter argument had left him white-hot with rage and shaking in every limb. Unable to sleep, he had spent half the night pacing up and down the kitchen of the house they were billetted in, while John Spragg tried to calm him.

The worst of it was being forced to plead with Tom to marry Ann. He felt he had to do that, for propriety’s sake, but he did not want the marriage to take place now, at all. The more he heard of the boy’s pious accusations and imagined what had happened the more he hated him, and wished him out of his own and Ann’s life for ever.

Ann had betrayed him too - he burned with shame as he remembered the way he and Luke Goodchild had encouraged their wives’ first fantasy that their two first-born should unite in marriage, and how he himself had only mildly thrashed them both when he had caught them, at the age of three or four, examining each other’s bodies as children will. If he had known then what it would come to today, he would have whipped young Tom within an inch of his life, and forbidden him ever to go near his daughter again.

But as he marched towards Wells the next day, a few ranks behind the great, gloomy, good-looking man the little boy had grown into, he wondered if even that would have done any good. Perhaps, contrary though the idea seemed, it might have made things even worse. Shameful though it was, it was common enough, and natural, for children to explore each other’s bodies until taught it was wrong. And many young couples took their betrothal for a sign of marriage; some did not wait so long. Men like Israel Fuller might consider him lax, but he could have forgiven his daughter that.

For despite the stern things he had said to Ann that morning, it was not what they had done together than hurt him most, in the end. What he could never forgive was that pious canting refusal of Tom to admit that he had had any part in the guilt of what had taken place, or that he was any longer under an obligation to marry Ann. It was a lie - a proud, self-deceiving lie, anyone could see that, except Tom. He had left the straight and narrow path - did he think he could step back on it again, and push Ann down into the mire? It made Adam so angry that at times that day the very sight of the boy’s back made Adam want to unshoulder his musket there and then and blow a hole right through it.

The incident had hurt Ann deeply, he could see that. He remembered how she had wept that morning, tears of rage as much as pain. Even as Adam had chastised her he had forgiven her in his heart, as he had done so many times before. At least she had had the self-respect to say that she would never marry Tom now, even if he went down on his knees to ask her.

And so throughout the day, as Adam’s rage focussed itself on Tom’s broad back marching in front of him, he felt once again that Ann’s waywardness somehow brought her closer to him and he loved her all the more for it.

He meant to speak to her again when they arrived in Wells, but he knew that at first she would be too busy helping the surgeon settle the wounded into their billets for the night. Adam was in a detail set to guard half-a-dozen supply wagons, containing welcome amounts of money and arms, which had somewhat surprisingly been left there by Colonel Lambe’s dragoons on their march west. So it was not until three-quarters of an hour or so later that they were dismissed, and he decided to have a brief look around the town with some of the others before seeking out his daughter. John Spragg and William Clegg came with him.

They were surprised by the number of canons and other religious men they saw around the town. William Clegg had heard Israel Fuller say something about paying a visit to the cathedral.

“‘Tis ‘ardly like our Israel to be a-worshipping in a cathedral,” said John Spragg. “I wonder what he’s after?”

“Maybe he’s thinking to convert the bishop,” said William Clegg. “That should be worth seeing!”

John laughed. “True enough, Will. I’ve always wanted to see our Israel preach from a proper pulpit. I reckons ‘e could out-argue a bishop any day!”

As they came into the market place a curate came hurrying across it like a pigeon, his black and white robes fluttering behind him in the breeze.

“Israel’s arguments be too strong for ‘un, I reckon!” laughed William Clegg. “‘e’s blowing they idolaters away like chaff in the wind!”

They hesitated for a moment in the market-place, uncertain which way to go, and then headed for a large door in the wall to the east, above which rose the massive towers of the cathedral.

Two curates at the door attempted to bar their way, but John Spragg and some others pushed them firmly aside.

“‘Tis God’s house, is it not, sirs, for all your idolatry? I don’t think He would bar the door to us.”

“Those who claim to respect the Lord should respect His house also,” retorted one of the curates, a short fat man of about fifty, with two double chins which made him gobble his words like a turkey.

“We come to do no harm, sir, just to look,” said Adam reassuringly, but the outrage in the man’s eyes showed that he did not believe them. As he came under the arch of the gatehouse Adam had to step over a mass of heavy stone which had fallen from a niche in the wall, but he did not at first realise what it was.

On the other side of the gatehouse the massive western front of the cathedral stood solidly before them, its two towers rising square into the sky. At first Adam paused to look up and so did not see the activity below. But then he heard cheers and a flat crunch as though something heavy had fallen, and he saw a great crowd of men, small and black like ants around the foundations of a house, poking and levering with their pikes at the stone statues in the lower niches of the front immediately above them.

“Here be no preaching, Will,” said John Spragg. “It do look more like demolition work to me.”

“Looks like they’m arguing with dead bishops more’n live ones,” muttered William Clegg in awe.

The group hurried forward across the grass to where the mob were heaving out another statue with their pikes. They ducked as it fell and hit the floor, sending sharp chips of stone flying everywhere. They saw Tom and Israel Fuller busy amongst the rest, and pushed their way towards them.

“What be at now, friend Israel?” called John Spragg to the preacher, who stood fanning the dust from before his face with his hat, a fierce smile of fulfilment on his bearded face. He turned to them proudly.

“What do it look like, John? Casting down false idols and images, that the idolaters have set up in place of God. ‘Tis the Lord’s work, John - roll up thy sleeves and join us!” As he spoke, one of the men behind him jolted the head of a statue above the main entrance with his pike, and it nodded forward from its neck and smashed into the ground with a thud. A man standing near it kicked it derisively to his friend like a football.

John Spragg shook his head slowly.

“I’m a mason, Israel. I use my hands to build, not destroy.”

“You do not use your hands to build temples of idolatry, John,” answered the preacher sharply. “Use your eyes, man - can you not see what this building is? They have set up a golden calf here, and are worshipping it instead of the Lord! Christ himself would do as we do - as He did in the temple in Jerusalem!”

“‘Tis true enough, preacher,” said Jack Bennet, a grim-faced, crop-headed man from Taunton, who had come with them. “This yer building be a monument to graven images, not holiness. Look at that there!” He pointed to a tall statue of a bishop in the wall above them, its two fingers raised in benediction on those below. “‘Tis plain Popery, that, nothing less! Hey, Tom lad, bring thy pike over here!” He strode purposefully off to join the others, leaving John Spragg, Adam, and William Clegg alone together.

“‘Tis Popery plain enough,” said William Clegg, looking up at the statue. “Yet I’d not like to lift a hand against it.”

“Nor I,” muttered Adam. “I didn’t come here to war against stone.”

There was another crash, and then cheers from their left, as the main doors were thrown open, and a great throng of men burst in, shouting and laughing noisily. Adam and the other two followed the pressure of the crowd, half unwillingly, into the cathedral itself.

As they came inside, most of the men paused for an instant despite themselves, feeling suddenly dwarfed by the sense of airy space and light. To Adam it seemed as though he had stepped into a vast stone forest where the leaves filtered down sunlight of various reds and yellows and blues and greens to dapple the grey walls and floor.

He had always thought the parish church at Colyton big enough, but this was infinitely greater and more beautiful. Despite his puritan upbringing he felt a sudden overwhelming sense of religious awe and wonder that men would build such a celebration to their Maker in stone. He wanted to kneel by one of the huge pillars and give thanks that such a wonder could be.

But even as he stood, the whispering echoes of the vast building were shattered by a triumphant burst of noisy laughter, and the crumbling boom! of falling stone again from one of the two small chantries ahead of them near the organ. In the great open nave of the church, he saw some men dismembering a statue which they had heaved out of one of the chantries. One man picked up the hand of a bishop, laughing, and heaved it with a mighty throw through one of the stained-glass windows above their heads on the right, towards the cloisters, letting a sudden patch of naked daylight into the delicate, ancient picture. In a moment half-a-dozen others had picked up pieces of stone and followed his example, and the window was spattered with daylight like a painting covered with birdlime. A couple of clergymen stood helplessly watching, while another prayed earnestly on his knees near the organ.

As Adam stood uncertainly watching, there was further clatter from the west door, and they turned to see a dozen or so horsemen riding their nervous mounts in amongst the rest. William Clegg saw John Clapp among them, and waved to him. John Clapp clattered up to them, his round red face beaming with amusement.

“What be up to now, John? Be ‘ee setting up for squire, to ride to church?” asked William Clegg.

“No, tidn’t that, boy. But us got to ‘ave somewhere to stable the horses, don’t us? And us were just looking round when someone told us about this great barn of a place yer - ‘twill suit us proper, won’t it?” He smiled, and dismounted, holding his horse’s tossing head firmly to calm it from the noise. A few of the other troopers were already tethering their mounts to ropes they had tied around the pillars, whilst laughing footsoldiers hurried in with bales of fresh hay from a cart outside, and a curate gasped in horror.