Alice in Love and War Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  1644

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  1645-1646

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  1649

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  To the memory of Faye, with love

  Prologue

  In the name of God, Amen. I, WILLIAM NEWCOMBE of Bideford in the County of Devon, being sick in body but well in mind, make this my last Will and Testament the eighteenth day of August 1639. I give all my goods and chattels to my brother HUMPHREY NEWCOMBE of Tor Farm near Tavistock in the County of Devon, and desire that he will take in my daughter, ALICE NEWCOMBE, and care for her as his own.

  In the dispensing room, men were packing the oils and potions into boxes, cramming in bottles carelessly, wherever there was space.

  “No!” Alice exclaimed. “They must be stored like with like.”

  Her father’s work, her home, her life – all were in disarray. She ran and tried to intervene, but the men only put her gently to one side and continued their activity.

  A dried turtle hung from the ceiling on strings. They cut it down, and dust flew about and glinted in the thin shaft of light from the window. Hanging bunches of dried herbs scented the air with a warm, sweet aroma. These were not dusty; her father would renew them and always kept fresh supplies. She remembered going out with him to gather them in the meadows and woodland: heart’s-ease, lovage, comfrey, rue. Now the neighbours would take the herbs away; but the medicines would be sold and the money given to her uncle towards her keep.

  Tossed aside on a stool was her father’s book: the one in which he had kept his lists of medicines and herbs, and their uses – all in the small, neat handwriting that he had made sure also to teach her. “Always write clearly,” he’d said. “Mistakes can be dangerous.” Alice picked up the book and pushed it quickly down the front of her gown, between her bodice and stays. This was hers now, she thought; no one else should have it.

  Behind the half-closed door of the kitchen she heard women gossiping. They were neighbours, come to help clear the rooms. Their voices were hushed, reproachful.

  “…should have made better provision…”

  “…too kind to poor folk; never earned much…”

  “…child to go to strangers…”

  “He’s her uncle!”

  “But a stranger to her. And she doesn’t come with money. Why would he want her?”

  Alice’s grief and fear rose up, overwhelming. She burst into the room and threw herself at Goody Chammings, clinging to her. “Take me in, please! Don’t let them send me away. Please take me! I’ll be good, I promise.”

  The woman held her close; her bodice smelt comfortingly of sweat and lavender. “I wish I could, my pigeon. But it’s a family matter. Not for neighbours to decide.”

  “This is the child,” the Reverend Master Morton told the man and his wife. “Alice. Eleven years of age.” His glance down at her was kind and regretful. “A virtuous child, tenderly reared.”

  Humphrey Newcombe, yeoman farmer of Tavistock, had a look of her father, Alice thought, but with a face set in discontented lines. She curtseyed, and he acknowledged her with a nod. He took a step forward, awkwardly, as if to embrace or kiss her, then seemed to change his mind. His wife remained still. She looked Alice up and down with a cold eye.

  Master Morton withdrew, leaving the three of them together.

  Humphrey Newcombe turned to his wife. “It is our duty to take the child in.” He was the master, but he sounded almost apologetic.

  The woman was full of suppressed resentment. Alice could see it in the rigid set of her head and body. She knew she would not be welcome at Tor Farm.

  1644

  One

  Alice was upstairs stripping beds, the windows flung open to sweeten the air, when she heard the drums.

  Soldiers! The king’s army, it must be, hotfoot from their victory at Lostwithiel. News of that battle had been all around the village yesterday. She ran to the window and looked out at the valley below. They came through steadily falling rain along the road from Tavistock; she saw the glint of metal, the colours raised aloft, the cavalry; and behind them a ripple of movement, countless men marching.

  Alice felt a charge of excitement. It was a brave sight, joyous, no matter which side you favoured. Like many people, her aunt and uncle cared for neither. Their two sons, Tom and Ned, who had always been rivals, had joined up with opposing sides. Ned, who had fought for the king, had been killed in a skirmish last year. Tom was off somewhere with General Waller’s army – the further away the better, to Alice’s mind. She only wished his father had gone too.

  Her aunt came into the room behind her and pulled her back from the window. Her fingers dug into Alice’s upper arms. “Don’t stand gaping!” Yet she stared out herself. “Jenefer said a quartermaster was going around the village yesterday. Pray God they leave us be.”

  Alice knew that her aunt, prudent as always, had begun to store what she could against the coming winter. It was early September, and followed such a cold, wet August as no one could recall: the roads awash with water, the crops rotting in the fields. There was hunger in the country, for last summer’s harvest had also been bad. Her aunt believed that the succession of ruined harvests was a punishment from God for the civil war that had begun two years ago. The armies lived off the land, demanding food, bedding, stabling, even livestock; people went in dread of them. Humphrey Newcombe had been lucky so far; Tor Farm was up a steep track, a mile and a half from the village.

  Let them come, thought Alice. She wanted them to come, even though it would mean more work for her. She longed for change. And why should she care if her aunt was distressed? Alice had no interest in the king’s war with Parliament, but she had been conducting her own war with Mary Newcombe for the last five years: a war of small disobediences and unwilling submission that had recently taken on a new intensity.

  She was not disappointed. An hour later a detachment of soldiers could be seen tramping up towards the farm. Alice ran outside as they marched into the yard. They looked tired: wet hair hanging lank on their shoulders, their boots and breeches spattered with mire. One of their leaders – young, dark, a band of powder charges slung across his body – caught her eye and winked. She looked away, feeling her face grow hot – then flicked a glance back. He was still watching her. Her heartbeat quickened.

  Mary Newcombe was in dispute with the sergeant. “Twenty men! We have not the beds!”

  “You have barns? Outhouses?”

  She nodded. Alice knew she would have to let them in. If she didn’t, they would take what they wanted by force.

  The servants had gathered in the yard: the maids, Jenefer and Sarah; the cowman, Jacob. Young Matt had already set off at a run for the high moor to fetch the master. Her aunt gave orders.

  “Sarah! Off to the kitchen! Help Jenefer with beer and meat. Alice, come with me.”

  Alice stole a quick glance backwards at the soldier who had winked at her, before following her aunt upstairs. She saw that he had caught her name.

  The rooms on the upper floor led one off another. Alice
slept in a small chamber of her own, but her aunt and uncle had to pass through it on their way to their bedroom. These days Alice kept her bed curtains tied tightly closed and her knife near at hand.

  “We’ll put one of them here,” her aunt said. “You can sleep in our room – and don’t give me that face!” Her own complexion had darkened. “I’ll hear no more of your lies. We’ll all share the one chamber – the maids too. Better that way. I can keep an eye on you and Sarah. Can’t trust you girls around men.”

  Alice seethed inwardly, furious at being linked with the kitchen maid, whom she despised, and even more at the accusation that she’d lied about her uncle.

  He had begun pestering her two years ago, but lately it had got worse. He would waylay her in the barn, the sheep sheds, even the kitchen. Last week it had taken all her strength to fight him off; she had bitten his hand and kneed him where it hurt and cursed him for trying to commit a sin against nature. She had run, trembling, into the house, found her aunt alone upstairs, and shouted and sobbed out the truth to her.

  Foolishly, she had expected her aunt to take her side; after all, there seemed little love lost between husband and wife. But Mary Newcombe had screeched at her, calling her a lying slut. She slapped Alice’s face so hard that her head rang; then she seized a broom and beat her across her back, shoulders and ribs till she begged for mercy. Alice hadn’t dared speak out again.

  Now, her aunt lifted the lid of the linen chest and the scent of lavender wafted into the room. She began pulling out sheets, her mouth set tight in resignation. From below came a crash of breaking crockery, a shriek from Sarah, and male laughter. Mary Newcombe stiffened, and Alice felt a brief moment of kinship, almost of sympathy. A liking for order – for a clean dairy, herbscented linen, jars and bottles all in their right places – was the one thing the two of them had in common.

  Her aunt thrust a pile of linen into Alice’s arms. “Take those and make up beds in the stair room. And when you’ve done that you can go down and help in the kitchen. But keep away from the soldiers.” She glanced out of the window. “Here’s your uncle at last.” She spoke of him, as always, with mild contempt.

  She went downstairs, and Alice heard a clamour of men’s voices, over which her aunt’s was raised in complaint.

  Left alone, she took her father’s book from the shelf in her chamber and hid it for safe-keeping above the lintel in the room she was now to share. Then she made up beds, smoothing the sheets, her mind on the soldier who had caught her eye. She met few young men. Two years ago she had formed a shy friendship with a boy in the village: the baker’s apprentice, a lad of fifteen. That summer they had exchanged smiles and glances, a few words. She had liked him, but it had come to nothing, for that winter he fell ill with a fever and died. There had been no one since. Her aunt kept her hard at work, close to home and farmyard; it was only on market days at Tavistock that she had a chance to look around. Of course, it was expected that one day she would marry. Her aunt complained from time to time of the inevitable loss of labour this would cause and of the cost of a dowry – pointing out that Alice was ill-tempered and without beauty, and that it was unlikely any man would choose her unless the dowry was worth having.

  And yet, thought Alice, it was not Sarah the soldier had winked at.

  When she went downstairs the sergeant was sprawled in her uncle’s chair, leaning back – his feet, in dirty boots, on the table. Three others sat on the stools, and all were drinking beer. There were pies, meat, bread and cheese on the table: everything Jenefer had been able to find. The master and mistress were not in sight. Alice knew they would have gone to hide away their money and good clothes and any other valuables. Jenefer, red-faced from the flames, was roasting beef on a spit; a cauldron of water for washing was heating to one side. Sarah was red-faced too. Blonde curls had escaped from her cap and now hung on her rosy forehead. She stood close to the sergeant, and Alice saw that he had his hand up her skirt. Quickly she looked away, at the other men.

  Close to, she became aware of how dirty they were. They smelt bad, almost rotten; and she thought of the waterlogged roads and the boots no doubt in need of repair. Their linen, where it showed, was grimy and torn, their blue coats stained, their hair matted and moustaches untrimmed. And yet they excited her. They brought with them an air of danger and freedom. They moved in the greater world. They were passing through – not trapped, as she was, in this cold-hearted house on the edge of the moor.

  Her gaze settled on the one who had winked at her. She began to rearrange some plates on the table, drawing gradually closer to him.

  “Alice, isn’t it?” He spoke softly, with an accent she didn’t know. “Are you chambermaid or daughter?”

  “Neither. I am Master Newcombe’s niece.”

  “And how old are you, Alice?”

  “Sixteen.”

  She knew she must be blushing. He looked older than she was – twenty or more – and she thought him handsome, despite the dirt: a “proper man”, as folk would say. He was tall and lithe, his hair and eyes dark and his face tanned from being out in all weathers. She wanted to ask his name, but did not dare.

  As if he guessed her wish, he smiled and said, “Corporal Robin Hillier, of Sir John Agnew’s Regiment of Foot.”

  She found her courage. “You’re not from around here?”

  “No. From Oxford.”

  Oxford: where the king now kept state, since Parliament had forced him out of London. Alice had only the vaguest idea of where Oxford was, or how far away, though she knew it was to the north. Most places were north of Tavistock.

  “We’ve been on the road five months,” he said. “Makes you long for home comforts.”

  Alice did not know what to say to this. She was almost relieved when her aunt reappeared and said, “Alice! Sarah! Be about your work!” Her sharp gaze would have taken everything in.

  The sergeant called for a tub of hot water “and a maid to pour it over me!” Sarah gasped and giggled, but Mary Newcombe assigned this task to Jenefer, who was forty and had – so she muttered on her way to fetch the tub – “seen it all before, and it’s nothing much”. Alice was set to tearing up rags for bandages. It seemed that some of the soldiers had been wounded at Lostwithiel and the wounds required dressing.

  “You’ll be more use to me than Sarah,” Mary Newcombe admitted grudgingly. “Come out to the barn and help.”

  They took cloths, clean water in a leather bucket, and a pot of salve that Alice had made from one of her father’s recipes. The hens were all in the yard, clucking and grumbling at being evicted from the barn. Their place had been taken by a crowd of men, most of them eating and drinking, a few lying exhausted on straw bales.

  The first man they dealt with had a sword cut in his upper arm. When her aunt removed the bandages Alice saw that the wound was oozing foul-smelling pus, the flesh around it red and swollen.

  “You need a surgeon,” Mary Newcombe said, and the man looked at her in terror. “There are surgeons with the regiment?”

  He nodded, his teeth knocking together as she swabbed the wound, smeared on salve, and got Alice to help her re-bandage it.

  “I’ll tell your sergeant. It must be seen to, soon.”

  Afterwards she said to Alice, “He will die, no matter what. It’s infected.”

  With brusque hands she set about attending to the next one. Alice went to help a red-haired lad, greenish-pale under his freckles. He had a thigh wound, still bleeding after four days. She washed it gently, trying not to hurt him, but she saw that he was frightened by the fresh gush of blood that ensued.

  “It will stop,” she reassured him. “And this salve will ease the pain and help healing.” She laid a piece of lint on the wound and bandaged it carefully.

  “Thank you, mistress,” he said when she was finished. He was a mere boy, no more than eighteen. She hoped she was right, that his wound would heal.

  When they were done, Mary Newcombe burned the soiled bandages and they both washed
themselves in clean water from the well. Alice looked down the hillside and saw large movements of soldiers, horses and wagons all around. It seemed that the entire army was settling in the village and the surrounding farms.

  “How long will they stay?” she asked her aunt, thinking of Robin Hillier and his warm gaze.

  “Why ask me? The sooner they go the better. They’ll be all over the village, making whores of folks’ maids and daughters, drinking a month’s brewing in a day.” She looked keenly at Alice. “You keep away from them! I know you and your sluttish ways.”

  You know nothing about me, thought Alice. Nor care. She remembered how she had tried, at first, to please this woman who so clearly did not want her. Alice had come from a loving home, a place where she was never beaten, but praised and cared for; where there were streets full of friends, neighbours, customers. Here there was nothing: no life, no love. And now her aunt called her a slut because she had grown into a woman and her uncle had laid hands on her. As often before, she thought, Why did my father send me here, to a brother he hadn’t seen for years?

  She knew the answer, of course: it was that or the orphanage and a life of servitude. He’d put his trust in his brother.

  When Alice and her aunt returned to the yard they found Robin Hillier there, alone except for the guard dog, Watch, who lolled against him, allowing the man to pull his ears and fondle his muzzle. Robin had shed his stained blue coat and wore fresh linen. The shirt hung loose on his lean frame.

  He stepped forward with an easy grace and acknowledged them. Alice dared not catch his eye with her aunt there. He smelt of her aunt’s wash-ball of best lavender soap, and she recognized the shirt, from a darn on the sleeve, as one of her uncle’s.

  Mary Newcombe also recognized it. “I see you have found my linen chest,” she remarked.

  “Indeed. And we are most grateful. Your generosity, mistress, prospers the cause of his sacred majesty.”

  Was he mocking her aunt, Alice wondered? If he was, Mary Newcombe did not see it. She appeared quite disarmed.