Alice in Love and War Read online

The two of them went to sit on a grassy bank. They could hear Bronwen and Rhian talking a little way off, and other women’s voices around.

  They shared half a loaf of hard bread, along with some of the freshly picked berries. Nia spilled purple juice on her breeches and rubbed at the cloth, spreading the stain and laughing. “Bryn says I look like a bugbear dressed this way!” she said cheerfully.

  Alice thought that certainly Nia’s small rounded shape showed to better advantage in women’s clothes. She wondered about herself. “I don’t know what Robin will say,” she admitted. Would he be amused, or shocked? She could not guess.

  “How long have you known him?” asked Nia.

  Alice felt herself blushing. “Not long.” She looked up defiantly. “He came to the farm when the army was camped in the village.”

  It was time to tell her story, and she did. Nia listened, little sighs and head-shakings escaping her now and then. Alice knew she would be telling the other two later that day.

  “I love him,” she insisted. “And he loves me. He said so.”

  “But will he marry you, Lisi?”

  “Why not? I’m sure he will. If we’d had the chance to go into Exeter, I believe we’d have been married by now.”

  “Has he spoken of marriage?”

  “Yes…” Alice struggled to recall exactly what Robin had said. “He spoke of it in a general way, as a thing that happens.”

  Nia was silent for a moment. Then she said, “It will be a long way home to your aunt and uncle if he does not marry you … if you should find yourself abandoned, and with child.”

  At this picture of herself alone, all Alice’s unacknowledged fear rose to the surface. Robin loved her! He would marry her – surely he would!

  “Tor Farm is not my home,” she said. “I can never go back there.” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  Nia put her arms around her. “Oh, Lisi, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you cry. It’s only that I’m concerned about you, you being so young. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen. Seventeen, almost,” Alice said, wiping her eyes.

  “Too young for this. To be on the run with a young man you hardly know. And with such disreputable women as us! Welsh riff-raff who go about in men’s breeches!”

  They giggled together.

  “I suppose,” Alice said, sniffing back tears and laughter, “you’ve known Bryn a long time?”

  “All my life,” said Nia. “Our two families lived almost next door, and we used to play together when we were tiny, and then work together in the fields as soon as we were old enough to labour. I always loved Bryn, even when I was a little girl. He’s two years older than I am and he used to look after me – champion me. I remember once, when we were harvesting peas, I couldn’t help eating some of them. We were always hungry and they were so sweet and tender. The man in charge hit me and shouted at me to get back to work, but Bryn stood up to him – got between us and said he’d fight him if he hit me again. I walked home with Bryn that evening, and made up my mind right then that I’d marry him one day.”

  “Do you have brothers and sisters at home?” Alice asked. She felt envious of Nia, despite the obvious poverty.

  “Three sisters and five brothers. I’m somewhere in the middle. We joke that my mam probably hasn’t missed me yet! But our cottage was so crowded, Lisi, and my father drank, and he beat my mother. I always wanted to be at Bryn’s. They had just Bronwen, Bryn and Rhian – Rhian’s the youngest, only a year older than you. And their father played music, and they all sang. It was a lovely house – the spirit in it, I mean; they were very poor. And then Bronwen got married, and later I married Bryn, and Gethin was courting Rhian; and all the talk among the young men was of going to the wars…”

  “Bronwen has no children, then?”

  “No. Bronwen is barren. It’s a great sorrow to her, but it left her free to travel with Edryd.”

  “But you – you and Bryn… How do you…?” Alice stumbled, embarrassed.

  “We are careful. And we trust to luck.”

  But Nia looked as if the question had troubled her. Alice briefly wondered why, before Nia began talking of other things.

  It was their last day at the camp. Tomorrow they were bound for Chard, in Somerset, and it would be a long day’s march. The Welshwomen lit their evening campfire early and began cooking: a stew with turnips, mushrooms and cabbage. No meat. They’d had rabbit two nights out of the six, and there was cheese packed for the march, but supplies were low.

  Alice helped with the cooking, and carried a jug of stew across the field for herself and Robin, along with new bread, and some blackberries in a fold of linen. He was pleased with her efforts, and amused at the thought of her foraging, dressed as a boy. Later, as they walked to the barn together, his arm round her, tight against the chill of evening, she thought, he does love me, and he’s glad to have me with him. And the doubts that Nia’s questions had raised in her mind faded away.

  Seven

  “Prince Rupert is coming,” Robin said.

  They had stayed a week near Chard, and during that time the camp had buzzed with an alarm that the enemy – General Waller’s men – had been sighted near the coast at Bridport, raising troops. And now Prince Rupert, the king’s nephew, was come from Bristol with his army. There was a great rendezvous on the Downs. The women, left behind with the wagons, heard the drums and fifes and saw soldiers in the lanes and on the hills all around. When at last the army took to the road its numbers were hugely increased.

  Mistress Erlam told Alice that the shire they were now passing through was Dorset. It was a land of high ridges and deep green combes: a beautiful place, though the weather was wet and the people unwelcoming. Everywhere the harvest had been bad, and there was little food for hungry soldiers. Another long day’s march brought them to a place called Sherborne, where they remained almost a week, and where the alarms subsided and no one knew what was happening or why they were waiting there.

  The gentry and officers stayed in a great house, the army in cottages, barns and farms all around. Alice was separated from the Welsh girls.

  “I’ve got us a billet at a farm,” Robin told her.

  He was smiling, and she soon saw why. They had a tiny room to themselves – the first time they had been truly alone together since they left Dartmoor – and there was an outhouse, chilly and stone-floored, but with a tub and water for washing. They both stripped and cleaned away more than two weeks of filth.

  “We could wash together,” he’d suggested.

  “No! I want to undress.”

  “So do I!”

  “Go away!” She laughed and shut the door on him.

  She washed quickly, dried herself with the shift she’d been wearing, and put on a fresher one. Then she darted barefoot up the steps to their room.

  Later she let him persuade her to take off the shift and sit beside him on the bed, her hair damp and long over her bare shoulders. It was the first time they had seen each other naked.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  And she looked shyly at him, and thought how perfect he was, and how much she loved him. They kissed, and drew together slowly, spinning out this new delight of being naked, of the touch and warmth of each other’s bodies. The little room, with its broken floorboards and straw-filled mattress, was theirs alone. That night, and every night that week, they were able to lie and talk and make love without being overheard. Alice felt an intense happiness and desire for Robin. She did not care about the risks she took. Nothing, she thought, could make her happier than to have Robin’s child. In the passion of the moment even the fear of childbirth could not frighten her.

  She did not see Nia again until the day they left Sherborne, but that morning she went to join the other camp followers, and found her friends.

  Nia hugged her. “We’ve missed you, Lisi.”

  And Alice felt guilty because she had not missed them at all and had thought only of Robin.

  Now she noticed
that Nia looked pink around the eyes, as if she had been crying. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked. “Tell me, Nia. What’s the matter?”

  Nia bit her lip. “My courses have not come. Not last month either.”

  “You are with child…?”

  Alice thought, then, of her own lovemaking, all the last week; this could happen to her too. And she realized, seeing Nia’s face, that it would be momentous, terrifying; not at all to be wished for.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “Do you keep count of the days?”

  “No. I’ve always looked at the moon. That’s how I remember. I think it’s two and a half months since I last had any bleeding.” She gave a little gasping sob. “I ought to be happy. I love Bryn. And I want a child. But I’m so afraid of giving birth – and on campaign! I’d always thought I’d be at home for that.” Her voice broke. “We’ve tried to be careful, but – oh, Lisi, I wish this wasn’t happening now!”

  Alice said, tentatively, “There are herbs you might try. Parsley…”

  “I’ve tried it. And jumping off a wall.” She managed a smile. “This one means to be born. I won’t try anything else; I see now that it is God’s will. But Bryn is anxious for me. He says when we reach our winter quarters he’ll find me somewhere safe, among women, where I can stay on after the army leaves in the spring.”

  “That might be wise,” said Alice, knowing what her friend would say, because it was what she herself would have said.

  “I won’t be left behind,” said Nia. “I won’t let him go on without me.”

  Eight

  Alice and Nia scurried along a cobbled street in Salisbury, heads down against the driving rain. They were looking for a cobbler’s shop they had been told was near. Nia spotted it first – its sign, with a shoe painted on it, swinging in the wind. Because of the wild weather the shop counter had been pulled up, but the door was opened to their knock.

  “I’ve nothing for the likes of you!”

  The shoemaker was hostile, and Alice realized he had taken them for vagrants, they were so patched and bedraggled. But when they produced money and he’d bitten and tested it, he was glad enough of two new customers. Alice’s feet were sore from the sharp stones of the road. It was mid-October. She had been following the army now for over a month and the soles of her shoes were worn through. Nia wore sturdier boots, but even these were in need of repair. She showed the man how the upper of one of her boots had split from the sole.

  He set to work while the two girls sat on a bench and waited, since they had no other shoes. Alice tucked her feet under her skirts, ashamed of the holes in her stockings. She was made aware, here in town, of how dirty she had become. It was an effort to wash, in public view, in the cold wet fields. There was dirt under her fingernails and ingrained in the skin of her hands. The hem of her gown was muddy, and the skirt was stained with grass and grime and had a long tear that she had mended with thread of a darker brown. On the march she was no dirtier than anyone else, but here respectable people stepped away from her.

  “Parliament troops have been around,” the cobbler remarked. “Manoeuvres. Reckon a battle’s coming?”

  “We don’t know,” said Nia. “We follow our men, that’s all.”

  The man’s wife watched them from an inner room. She was hanging children’s linen around the fire to dry. Two little boys played with wooden blocks, and a baby lay whimpering in a cradle. Now and again the woman rocked the cradle with her foot, and the baby’s cries briefly subsided.

  Alice saw that Nia was looking at the baby. Nia was sure now that she was with child and, despite her fears, was happy enough about it. Alice had bought dried camomile flowers and a tiny piece of ginger root from one of the army apothecaries; with these she was able to make Nia a tisane to relieve the sickness she had begun to feel in the mornings.

  “Take it every day,” she said. “And later, when your time is near, I’ll make you raspberry leaf tea. It will ease the birth.”

  “I’m glad you’ll be with me, Lisi.”

  “I’m no midwife.”

  “No. But I trust you.”

  Nia had been greatly impressed by Alice’s book, the one her father had left her, and which Alice had consulted on the properties of camomile and raspberry. Nia, who could not read, even in her own language, had turned the pages reverently, exclaiming when she saw a drawing of a plant she recognized, such as dandelion or fennel. Alice realized that for Nia the book was almost a magical object.

  “These herbs and their uses are all God’s work,” she assured her. “My father taught me how God has given us signs to show us which plants to use.”

  Nia understood. “Like woundwort? With its flowers like drops of blood?”

  “Yes! And lungwort. And aspen leaves, which help those with the shaking palsy.”

  Alice knew how important it was for Nia to have faith in her, to believe she could achieve what both of them wanted. Once, as a child, she had asked her father about the dried turtle that hung from the ceiling of his dispensing room.

  “What is it for?”

  “What do you think it might be for?”

  She regarded the strange creature from foreign seas. “Some remedy. Something very powerful – rare and costly.”

  He smiled. “It has no medical use whatsoever.”

  She looked at him shrewdly, to see if he was teasing her; but he was not. “Then why…?”

  “It gives my customers belief in me. They see it hanging there and, like you, they think it must be some rare medicine, or perhaps a charm.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?”

  “Not at all. If they don’t believe in me they may not get better. It helps their recovery.”

  “Then it is a medicine!”

  He had laughed then. “You are sharp, Alice. Yes, perhaps it is.”

  Thinking now about Nia and her unborn child, Alice became aware of a familiar ache in her own back and thighs, and thought, My courses will come soon. It was a burden lifted; and yet, after her week of love with Robin at Sherborne she had half hoped to find herself with child, so that he might make haste to marry her. Here, in Salisbury, would surely have been an opportunity, but Robin had said nothing. Of course he’s busy, she thought. The army may move on to battle at any time. His mind is on manoeuvres and drill. He’ll marry me in the winter, for sure, when the campaigning season is over. She wished, though, that she felt closer to Robin: close enough to argue, quarrel, kiss and make up, as the Welshwomen did all the time with their men. Instead she took delight in his affection when it came her way but never really knew what was in his mind.

  The cobbler had finished. He gave them their shoes, and they went out again into the rain and scampered back to the outbuildings where they were lodged.

  Later that day Alice saw a few of the soldiers standing in groups holding letters, some helping others to read them. There was great excitement. It seemed that a carrier with letters for Salisbury had brought mail to the army – most of it for officers and much of it months late.

  None of Alice’s friends could read, and she was not surprised that they had no news from home. But a young woman came to her, holding a letter. She had the hard, blank face of a whore, but she spoke diffidently to Alice. “They say you can read. Would you read this to me? I’d be much obliged.”

  Alice took the letter, embarrassed, and fearful too, wondering what news she might be required to pass on.

  The handwriting was difficult, and she stumbled often as she read aloud:

  “To Margaret Evans, travelling with the king’s army, from her sister Elizabeth Evans of Newell near Buckingham, the eighteenth of September, 1644.

  Dear Sister, Master Holdom at the parsonage writes this for me, it being necessary to tell you in all sorrow that our mother has departed this life but is gone into that greater life of the spirit which is the reward of true believers.”

  Alice looked up to see tears in the girl’s eyes. “I am sorry,” she said.

  “Read on
,” the girl replied.

  “She fell sick of a fever and died this Saturday last, and was buried at St Martin’s beside our brother Richard. She spoke of you at the end, and forgave you, and wished that you had never left home, as I do wish also, dear Meg…”

  The girl dashed a hand across her face. “Would you write me an answer? If I can find paper for it? I’ll pay you.”

  “Yes. Of course,” said Alice.

  That evening she told Robin about the girl and her letter, and how she’d felt pity for her. He was with his friends, and joked, “You could make a living there, sweet – writing letters home for drabs.”

  His friends laughed, but Alice felt hurt on behalf of the bereaved girl.

  Next day they moved off and marched towards Andover. The women, camped in fields a few miles outside the town, saw nothing of the fighting, but they heard distant sounds of gunfire and saw smoke rising on the horizon. By nightfall the town was in Royalist hands and the enemy in flight. From the lanes all around came shouts and the clash of weapons as the defenders were pursued and taken prisoner.

  Alice stayed with her Welsh friends while she waited for Robin.

  “There will be more fighting tomorrow,” Bryn predicted. “We’ll go after the rebels.”

  But for now they celebrated, singing, joking and playing music; a group of the men lined up and linked arms and, despite their long march, danced while the onlookers clapped and sang.

  Over the next week there were skirmishes and movements of troops all around. Alice heard names: Newbury, Basing House, Donnington Castle.

  “What’s happening?” she asked Robin. “We go round about the same places, day after day. Nothing makes sense.”

  “We don’t try to make sense of it,” Robin said. “We obey orders, go where they send us.”

  “But will there be a battle?”

  “How should I know?”

  He stared moodily at the ground. He’d been distant with her lately, as if there was something on his mind. She supposed it was all the extra drills and alarms, the prospect of fighting to come. It made her feel very alone.