Alice in Love and War Read online

  “That one has better manners than his sergeant,” she said as they went indoors. She told the sergeant about the badly wounded soldier. “If your surgeon is in the village, the man must be taken down there.”

  While they were discussing this, Alice slipped outside. There was always work to do on the farm – and many places to be busy yet away from her aunt’s eye.

  The barn was a good place to hide, and there was often the excuse of eggs to be searched for. But the barn had now been taken over by soldiers. Instead she chose the dairy, deliberately passing Robin Hillier without a glance as she walked across the yard.

  The dairy was a favourite haunt of hers: cool, fresh and orderly, with a faint pleasant sour-milk smell. There were stone sinks and tables and pewter dishes all scrubbed clean; linen aprons hanging on a hook; butter shapers with the Tor Farm mark on them; curds tied in a linen cloth and hung up for the whey to drip into a bowl; bunches of parsley and chervil. This morning there had also been a great round yellow cheese. That was gone – taken by Jenefer to feed the soldiers.

  She busied herself chopping herbs for the curd cheese. It was not long before Robin Hillier’s figure darkened the doorway. She glanced up, nervous now, even though she had hoped for this.

  He looked about in approval. “Your uncle has a fine house and farm.”

  “He keeps sheep, mostly,” said Alice. “They run free on the moor.”

  “He’ll be taking some to market soon.”

  “Yes.”

  They were talking of nothing, and both knew it. Her hands trembled; she struggled to chop the herbs finely.

  “Has he children?”

  “Two sons. One dead, last year, fighting for the king.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. He died in a noble cause.”

  “The other is with the Parliament army. They had always fought each other, even as boys. There is no love in this house.” She blushed and looked down as she said the word “love”.

  “And how came you here? An orphan?”

  “Yes. My mother died when I was five; I scarcely remember her. My father did not marry again. He brought me up himself, with the help of neighbours, and I was always with him in his shop.”

  “His shop?”

  “He was an apothecary. We lived in Bideford. It’s a big port – do you know it?”

  “No.” He leant back against the table, settled himself to listen. “Tell me.”

  So she told him about Bideford, with its quay where ships unloaded cargoes from all over the world: tobacco, wine, spices. She told him about the long bridge – “twenty-four spans” – across the River Torridge. “Our shop was at the top of one of the drangs—”

  “Drangs?” He was teasing her, and she laughed.

  “Alleyways. They lead up from the quay into the town. My father was always busy. We’d get sailors as well as townsfolk. And sailors’ wives…”

  She thought of the sailors’ wives, those women, often desperate, wanting remedies for whispered “women’s troubles”. She’d been too young then to understand what some of these troubles might be. But of course no woman wanted a new baby at the breast when her husband came home after a voyage of a year or more.

  “I became my father’s assistant. Helped him make medicines, keep records and accounts.”

  His eyes widened. “You can write?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  He questioned her more, and seemed to listen to her answers; and she found herself telling him how much she had loved her father, her grief at his death, the coldness of her reception at her uncle’s farm, how her aunt resented her. “My uncle was not so bad, at first. But he’s a weak man.” She could not tell this young man about her uncle’s advances; that would be too shaming. Instead she asked, “And you?”

  “I am lucky. My parents are both still living and have always been indulgent.” He smiled, and Alice felt that she too would want to indulge him.

  He told her his father had a farm in a hamlet near Oxford; he himself was twenty-one, the youngest of three sons. He had worked there with his family, but had been glad enough, when the chance came, to join up and serve the king. His eyes lit with enthusiasm when he spoke of the king, and he described with shock and anger how the rebels were in contempt of both king and church, stealing silver plate from a bishop’s tomb near Exeter, riding their horses into the nave. “And in Lostwithiel church,” he said, “they made play of christening a horse in the font, calling it Charles in mockery of his sacred majesty. They are rough fellows, many of them, apprentice boys from London; and their leaders psalm-singing hypocrites. But we humbled them at Lostwithiel.”

  Alice, who until then had thought little about it, felt herself drawn to the campaign, to him, to his loyalty to the king.

  “Oh, I envy you!” she exclaimed. “To have such a cause! I long to leave this place.”

  “But you’ll leave in time. You’ll marry, won’t you?” And he moved closer. “You must be spoken for, a pretty girl like you?”

  A pretty girl? She shook her head in denial that she was promised to anyone, and considered these words with hope but some mistrust. Her aunt had told her frequently that she had no beauty, no pleasing ways. But there was no man hereabouts whom she wished to please. It was true that Sim Braund, from Upper Farm, had called her pretty when she encountered him at Tavistock sheep fair. But he had been drunk, with hands that had constantly to be slapped away. She flinched at the memory. He disgusted her. She knew well what he was after.

  This one made it sound true. And marry? Oh, if only one such as he—

  “Alice? Where are you?” Her aunt’s voice came from the kitchen doorway.

  “Stay here!” Alice whispered, and put out a hand, almost touched him. “I’ll go out to her.”

  But he seized her hand, making her shiver with excitement and alarm. “Alice—”

  “Alice!” came from the yard, loud and irritable.

  “She must not see me with you!” She broke away and ran out, breathless. “I’m here, Aunt. I was chopping herbs for the curd cheese.”

  Mary Newcombe was no fool. She looked suspicious and glanced towards the dairy, but at that moment her husband came tired and hungry into the yard, and her attention was turned to him and the forthcoming supper as well as food for the men in the barn.

  Later, Alice was kept busy hurrying back and forth between barn and kitchen with Jenefer, taking meat and beer out to the soldiers. (“For if we don’t, they’ll seize what they want themselves, and make havoc,” said her aunt.) Mary Newcombe and Sarah waited on the officers indoors. There was no time for Alice to talk to Robin Hillier, though once he brushed his hand against hers as she passed by. The sergeant, however, was grappling with Sarah as openly as with his meat; she made only token resistance.

  Jenefer, crossing the yard with Alice, said, “If he gets that foolish slut with child the missus’ll throw her out.”

  That night, Alice could not sleep. The room was full: Sarah, Jenefer and herself all sharing it with her uncle and aunt, all breathing with different sighs and rhythms. Alice had been given a mattress near the foot of her aunt and uncle’s bed, and was disturbed not only by these sounds and by wariness of her uncle – though she was sure he’d try nothing here, and he soon fell to snoring – but by thoughts of Robin Hillier and where in the house he might be lodged. In her mind she went over and over their encounter in the dairy, and imagined what might have happened if her aunt had not called for her; and what might happen tomorrow. She longed to be loved. She imagined kissing him, lying down with him, and was shocked at her own thoughts about a man she had only just met.

  There was no chance of leaving the room during the night, for Jenefer’s mattress was laid across the doorway. Before daylight Jenefer went downstairs to start the kitchen fire. Mary Newcombe followed, after prodding Sarah and Alice to encourage them to get up. Sarah groaned and pulled the blanket over her head, but Alice rose promptly and went out. In what had been her own room, the bed curtains were drawn and
she heard snoring. The sergeant, she guessed. She shuddered at the thought of him there, in her bed.

  The stair room was an annexe screened only by a curtain. Alice started when she heard Robin’s voice from behind it. “Alice?” The curtain was twitched aside, and he was there, kneeling up in his shirt on the bed she’d made yesterday. “Alice!”

  He caught her hand, pulling her down to sit beside him. His hair was tousled, his shirt untied and open at the neck. She smelt the bed warmth coming from him, and trembled.

  “I must go! My aunt—”

  “Where can we meet? Away from your aunt.”

  Alice knew that either Mary Newcombe or Sarah might appear at any moment. And now, to her alarm, she heard a sigh and movement close at hand in the shadowy room, and realized that at least one other soldier was lodged there.

  “Let me go, for shame!” she whispered.

  He released her, but persisted. “Where, Alice?”

  “Up on the tor. The high rocks, at the top. I don’t know when.”

  Two

  As she went about her morning’s work, fetching water from the well, looking for eggs, scouring the plates, Alice thought about what she had proposed. Had she demeaned herself? Would Robin think she was like Sarah? She asked herself, over and over, whether she should go. But the desire to spend more time with him was so strong that she knew she would.

  Her heart was racing with more than the exertion of the climb as she set off at mid-morning, after slipping away from the farm. The tor was her special place, where she came to be alone, to weep, or think, or simply sit and gaze into the distance. It was over half a mile from the farm, and she took the long route, skirting the edge of the circle of old stone houses rather than crossing it. These houses were foundations only: hut-sized rings of flattish stones enclosed in a larger circle. They were ancient, perhaps not built by humans. The pixie rings, people called them, and were wary of entering the enclosure.

  Robin had the sense to climb from the other side and not be seen following her up the open hillside. When she saw him approach she wondered again what she had set in motion, what he would expect of her. Fearful of being observed from the farm, she sat down out of view with her back against a large stone.

  He dropped down beside her, breathless from his climb. “What a place you’ve chosen! Windy, wet and in view of everyone!”

  “Not if you stay low.” And then she blushed, wondering what he’d make of that remark. But it was true that although it had stopped raining, the ground was wet and she could feel the damp through her skirts already.

  He took off his coat and spread it out. “We can sit on this.”

  It obliged them to sit close together, touching. He put his arm round her. Alice felt breathless, intensely aware of his body next to hers, of the feel of his arm encircling her.

  “That’s a fine view,” he said.

  The moor stretched out before them: green turf and grey rock, sheep calling, a wide, pale sky.

  Alice drew breath, found her voice. “It’s misty. On a good day you can see for miles.”

  “Which way is Plymouth?”

  She pointed.

  “We might be going there. I heard talk.”

  She tensed, and his arm tightened around her.

  “How long will you stay here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Till the king and Prince Maurice and their generals come to a decision. It won’t be long, I fear.”

  They turned towards each other, their faces close; and then both his arms went around her and he began to kiss her in a way that was gentle and exciting, and as different as could be imagined from her uncle with his wet, eager mouth and bristly chin.

  Robin must have untied the strings of her bodice for she felt his hands, warm and sudden, on her flesh. The pleasure she felt was mixed with a fear that things were going too fast, that she should not be here, alone with him: and she tried to cover herself and said, “I can’t stay long … my aunt will miss me—” but he interrupted her with kisses.

  “Truly,” she said, “I must go back.”

  “In a while.”

  And he drew her down with him on the coat and they lay close together and kissed. She liked that, and the feel of the breeze on her bare shoulders; but when he began to reach under her skirts she stopped his hand. He laughed, and his breath tickled her ear; he did not try again.

  When they sat up he brushed earth and twigs of gorse from her hair, and set her cap back on her head. “There! A modest maid!” She giggled. He kissed her once more. “Come here again? Please?”

  “My aunt will have her eye on me…”

  And yet she knew she would contrive a meeting, somehow. There was so much excitement in being desired by this man, and the longing to be with him – to escape, to be loved – was so strong. She had never felt like this before, and was amazed at her own boldness. “I don’t know when,” she said. “You’ll have to watch me.”

  “I will.” And he grinned, making her laugh.

  She had no chance to be with him again that day, but the next morning her aunt sent her down to the village on an errand. The village was now the centre of the encampment. There were soldiers all around the streets and byways, and among them she glimpsed Robin, along with others from Tor Farm.

  She saw women too: the women who followed the army. Some, with painted faces and dresses cut low almost to show their nipples, she knew at once to be whores. But there were also homely looking women there, one holding a small child by the hand. She wondered, uneasily, if Robin knew any of these women; if he used the whores. Surely, she thought, he would not?

  And, indeed, he took no heed of the women, and when he saw her he smiled and came straight towards her. He walked back with her to the farm, taking her hand as soon as they were out of the village. Some of his friends overtook them and called out, chaffing him; but he only laughed and kept hold of her, and swung their joined hands. Alice felt a rush of happiness to be out with him like this, acknowledged by him in sight of his companions.

  As they walked he talked to her about his time in the army: shocking stories of men hanged for pillaging, of duels between officers, accidents with muskets – men’s fingers blown off – and he made her laugh with tales of townsmen chasing chickens in a farmyard, his own attempts to build a waterproof shelter. Once, they stopped and chatted with a group of soldiers, and he stood with his arm round her, drawing her into their circle. She felt admired, approved of, as she never did at Tor Farm, and proud to be seen with such a handsome man.

  When they came in sight of the farm he let go her hand and she ran on ahead, and so arrived alone.

  That evening, after supper, they met briefly behind the dairy. He pressed her against the rough stone wall and kissed her with a passion that startled her. She felt him grow hard, and he whispered, “Alice, please… I’ll be going away soon…”

  And his hand went again to her skirts, but again she caught it and said, frightened, “No, I can’t, not—”

  And then they heard someone coming, and sprang apart.

  The next day, Sunday, Alice was miserable. In the morning the soldiers went down to the village for a service led by the army chaplain. Alice had hoped to go to church, so that she might meet Robin afterwards, but her aunt saw through her plans and said she would not allow Alice and Sarah loose in the village on a Sunday, ogling soldiers; they could go to evensong later with her. Mary Newcombe was angry because the soldiers had killed and eaten five of her chickens. She harried Alice and kept her constantly at work in the house. Alice found no chance to speak to Robin that day, and neither did he seem to seek her out. All through evensong she brooded on their last encounter, and thought, I told him no; I denied him; and now he thinks I don’t love him. He’ll reject me, find another girl…

  On Monday morning he was nowhere to be seen. The soldiers’ beds in the house were empty; there were no men in the kitchen. Alice had heard, at dawn, a distant drum tattoo from the village. Now, barely able to speak for dread,
she asked Jenefer, “Have they gone? Struck camp?”

  “Eh? No, young mistress.” Jenefer glanced up from the ashes of last night’s fire. “But a bunch of them took off to the village, early.” She looked slyly at Alice. “Your lad among them. They’ll be back, don’t fear. They left their shirts and hose with me for washing.”

  Alice breathed again. And, indeed, Robin returned in the afternoon, but he was deep in conversation with his fellow soldiers. She knew something must be afoot. It was evening before she found out what.

  She made her way up the tor, her desperation to speak to Robin overcoming any fear of passing the pixie rings at sunset. The afternoon had been fine, and the low sun lit the moor with a mellow golden light. It was too wet from yesterday’s rain to sit on the earth, but she leant against a rock and watched the way he would come – if he came at all.

  When she saw him she forgot all reserve and ran into his arms.

  He kissed her eagerly. “Oh, Alice, I’ll be sorry to leave you!”

  She looked up at him, shaken. “You’re going soon?”

  “Tomorrow, early. Now, listen, Alice.” He held her against him as tears sprang to her eyes. “We go to Plymouth. But the wounded will remain, and the baggage, and many of the men. So we won’t strike camp here. We’ll come back.”

  She wiped her eyes, and sniffed. “What will you do there?”

  “We’ll storm the defences. The town is in rebel hands.”

  “Cannon? Artillery?” The images terrified her.

  “Yes.”

  She tightened her arms around him. He was perfect, unmarked, unhurt, alive. But tomorrow?

  He said, his voice muffled by her hair, “There’s a shepherd’s hut I passed…”

  Alice knew what he wanted. For her own part, she would have liked more courtship, more time, a promise of marriage. But the country was at war: there was no time; and soldiers, by their nature, were bound to be passing through. She wanted so much to please Robin, to be loved by him. If she agreed to this, then surely he would love her more, come back for her? And even if he did not … there was a fear always in her mind that one day soon her uncle would succeed in taking her by force. If I’m to lose my virginity, she thought, then let it be to Robin, who is handsome and desirable and the man of my choosing.