CHAPTER XVII. A VOICE AT DAWN
Word was passed about that we were going to surprise the militia
at Bridport at dawn. We were told to keep quiet on the march,
after passing Charmouth, as the night was so still that we should
be heard far off. We did not know how near the Bridport outposts
might come to us under cover of the night. "You come with us,
Martin," said Lord Grey: "Take a horse. If we win Bridport you'll
have to gallop back with the news." I was made a little nervous
by the thought of going into battle so soon; but gulping down my
fears I mounted a marsh-mare which stood near the inn door. I
hoped sincerely that no militia bullet would find any part of
either of us. Then the drums began to play us out of the town
with their morning roll. A fife whined out, going down to our
marrows with its shrillness. Lights showed at the windows. We saw
dark heads framed in yellow patches. People called to us. In the
door of the great inn stood Monmouth; his face seemed very white
in the glare of the torches. He raised his hand to us as we
passed him. The last thing I noticed of the town, for I rode in
the rear with Lord Grey, were the ranks passing the lamp on the
town hall. They came up to it in waves, their cloaks showing in
glimmer for an instant. Then they passed on into the night,
sliding forwards slowly with a steady roll, like the moving of
waves to the shore.
We were a long time riding; so long that the dawn was on us by
the time we were within shot of the enemy. I don't remember very
much about the ride, except that it was unreal, very unreal; for
the mists came down, blotting the world from us, so that we rode
in a swirl of cold grey, amid a noise of dropping. When we got to
the top of the long hill after Chideock I was bidden halt at a
cross-roads, with a waggon full of ammunition, while the force
moved on to the attack. The hills were showing up clearly above
the mist; but the valley lay like a sea, a great grey formless
level, like some world of the ghosts. The troops passed down in
it, moving pretty briskly, lest the mist should lift before they
were in position. Most of them knew the country, so that they
could well walk confidently; but their quickness had something
nervous in it, as though they were ill at ease. Very soon they
were out of sight, out of hearing, swallowed up in the fog.
I waited a long time (as it seemed) up there at the cross-roads.
After a long wait I rode a little down the hill, from sheer
anxiety. I pulled up in a bank of cloud, through which I could
see dimly, in the growing light, for about a dozen yards. I was
leaning well forward, listening for the sound of shooting, when
something made me look down. Someone was standing at my side,
slipping something into my pocket. It gave me a start. I clutched
at the person. It was the old lame puppet-man who had been at
Lyme the day before. "Latter for ee," he said in a whisper. "Read
en, unless you'm a fool." His hand pressed lightly on my bridle
hand for an instant; then he ducked sideways swiftly into the
wilderness of ferny gorse at the side of the road, where I could
not hope to follow him, even if the mist had not hidden him.
Something in the voice, something in the lightness of the touch
startled me into the knowledge. As he ducked, it came over me
that this old man was Aurelia disguised, come to spy upon us, but
bent, also, on giving me a warning, some little kind word of
advice, at the beginning of my lord's war. I ought to have
recognized her before. I had been blind. She had been under my
eyes the whole day, yet I had never once suspected, no one, of
all that army, had suspected. She had been disguised by a
master-hand. She had played her part like a great actress. It was
terrible to think of the risk she was running. One man's
suspicion, in a time of war, would have been enough to give her
to a horrible death. I tried to follow her into the jungle into
which she had vanished; but my horse would not face the furze. I
tried hard to see her, but it was no use; the tangle was too
thick; she had gone. I called out to her softly; but I got no
answer; only, at some little distance away, I heard a twig snap
under a passer's foot.
In a momentary clearing of the mist, I pulled out my letter. It
was written in a fine, firm hand, with signature. It was a short,
purposeful letter, which kept sharply to the point. It only
contained two lines. "Your Duke's cause is hopeless. He has no
possible chance. Take the Axminster road to safety." That was the
whole letter. It gave me a feeling of uneasiness; but it did not
tempt me to desert. I thought that if I deserted I might very
well be tortured into betraying all that I knew of the Duke's
plans, while I doubted very much whether the Duke's body- servant
would find mercy from the merciless, frightened King. What was I
to do, even if I escaped from the King's party? I was too young
for any employment worthy of my station in life. I had neither
the strength nor the skill for manual labour. Who would employ a
boy of my age on a farm or in a factory? All that I could hope
would be to get away to sea, to a life which I had already found
loathsome. As to going back to my uncle's house, I doubt if I
would have gone, even had I had the certainty of getting to it
safely. When a boy has once taken to an adventurous life, nothing
but very ill health will drive him back to home-life. Yet there
was the thought of Aurelia. Somehow the thought of her was a
stronger temptation than any fear of defeat. I would have liked
to have seen that old enemy of mine again.
I was thinking over the letter, wondering what would come to the
Duke's cause, when the valley below me began to ring with firing.
A heavy fire had begun there. It thundered in a long roll, which
died down, momentarily, into single sputterings through which one
could hear shouting. About twenty minutes after the beginning of
the shots, when all the party on the hill-top were edging nearer
to the battle, taking a few steps at a time, on tenter-hooks to
be engaged, we heard a great gallop of horses' hoofs coming to us
at full tilt. At first we were scared by this, for the noise was
tremendous, too great, we inexperienced soldiers thought, to be
caused by our little troop of cavalry. We thought that it was the
Bridport militia charging down on us, after destroying our
friends. The mist by this time was all blowing clear, though
wisps of it clung along the hedgerows in unreal rolling folds.
The day above was breaking in the sultry blue summer dimness. We
could see, I suppose, for a quarter of a mile, straight down the
road.
We had swung round, facing towards Lyme, when the noise of the
hoofs first came to us. When the turn of the road showed us a
squad of cavalry coming to us at the charge, led by half a dozen
riderless horses, we waited for no more. We spurred up our nags
in a panic, till we, too, were going full tilt for Lyme, shouting
out as we went any nonsense which came to our heads. We were in a
panic fear; I believe that the horses in some way felt it too. We
galloped back to Chideock as though we were chased by witches,
while the gun-firing at Bridport steadily grew less, till at last
it stopped altogether. At Chideock, some of the cavalry came up
with us. They were our own men, our own troop of horse, not an
enemy after all. The riderless horses were a few of the militia
charges which had been seized from a cavalry outpost to the west
of the town. We had bolted from our own crazy terror. But we were
not the only fleers. Our cavalry had bolted first, at the first
volley outside the town. It is unjust to say that they were
afraid. Lord Grey was not a coward; our men had stout hearts
enough; but they had not reckoned on the horses. The first
discharge of guns scared the horses almost frantic. They swung
about out of action in a couple of seconds. Another volley made
them all bolt. It was when they were bolting that the men began
to grow alarmed. Fear is a contagious thing; it seems to pass
from spirit to spirit, like a flame along a powder train, till
perhaps a whole army feels it. Our horsemen pulled up among us in
Chideock in as bad a scare as you ever saw; it was twenty minutes
before they dared walk back to find out what had happened to the
foot at Bridport, after their retreat.
Our foot came back very angry with the horse. They had fired away
a lot of powder to very little purpose, before orders reached
them, bidding them retire. They had not wished to retire; but at
last they had done so sullenly, vowing to duck Lord Grey for
deserting them. We had taken about a dozen horses without
harness, instead of the two hundred equipped chargers which we
had promised ourselves.
We had killed a few of the militia, so everybody said; but in the
confusion of the powder-smoke who could say how many? They were
certain that none of our own men had been killed; but in a force
so newly raised, who could say for certain which were our own
men? As a matter of fact several of our men had been taken by the
royalists, which is as much as to say that they had been killed.
Altogether the affair had been a hopeless failure from the very
beginning. The foot had learned to despise the horse. The horses
had learned to be afraid of gun-fire. The cavalrymen had learned
to despise Lord Grey. The militia had learned to despise us. The
only valuable lesson that our men had learned was that a battle
was not so terrible a thing. You knelt down, fired your gun,
shouted, borrowed your neighbour's drinking bottle, took a long
swig, then fired again, with more shouting, till somebody clapped
you on the shoulder with orders to come away. But this lesson,
precious as it was did not console our men for their beating.
They were cross with the long night-march as well as with Lord
Grey's desertion. We dragged our way back to Lyme very slowly,
losing a good fifty of our number by desertion. They slipped away
home, after falling out of the ranks to rest. They had had enough
of fighting for the Duke; they were off home. The officers were
strict at first, trying to stop these desertions; but the temper
of the men was so bad that at last they gave it up, hoping that
some at least would stay. That was another evil consequence of
fighting for the crown with an undisciplined mob; they could
sustain defeat as ill as they could use victory. We did not trail
into Lyme until after noon; for we marched like snails, fearing
that the militia would follow us. When we got into camp, the men
flung their arms from them, careless of the officer's orders. All
that they wanted was sleep (we had eaten a late breakfast at
Charmouth), they were not going to do any more soldier's foolery
of drill, or sentry-go. As for Lord Grey, whom everybody called a
coward, the Duke could not cashier him, because he was the best
officer remaining to us. Poor Fletcher, who might have made
something of our cavalry, was by this time far away at sea. The
other officers had shown their incapacity that morning. For my
own part, I chose out a snug billet on a hearthrug in the George
Inn, where I slept very soundly for several hours. While I slept,
the Duke held a melancholy council to debate what could be done.
They say that he ought to have marched that morning to Exeter,
where Lord Albemarle's militia (all of them ripe for rebellion)
would have joined him.
Exeter or Bristol, one or the other, would have been a fine plume
in his cap, a strong, fortified town, full of arms, where he
could have established himself firmly. I do not know why he
decided against marching to Exeter. He may have had bad reports
of troops being on the road waiting for him; or he may have
thought that his friends (who were plentiful on the Bristol road)
would rally to him as soon as he appeared. He was deceived by
those protesting gentry, his friends, who had welcomed him so
warmly only a few months before. He thought that all the
countryside was ready to join him. He had been deceived, as
perhaps a cleverer man would have been deceived, by the warmth of
his welcome on his earlier visit. An Englishman is always polite
to a Duke when he meets him in a friendly gathering. But when the
Duke says, "Lend me all your ready money, together with your
horses, or rather give them to me, since I am the King," his
politeness leaves him; he gets away to London to warn the police
as fast as his horse will take him. Thus it was with the Duke's
friends scattered about along the main-road from Lyme to Bristol.
I know not who persuaded the Duke to march; probably it was Grey;
it may have been Venner; it may have been a momentary mad
resolution caused by a glass of wine. They say that he was solemn
about it, as though he expected to fail. Perhaps he would have
gone back to Holland if the ship had been still in the harbour,
but of course she had gone away. He would not go in La Reina; for
she was sluggish from barnacles, having been long un-careened.
The Channel at this time was full of ships looking for him; how
he escaped them when he sailed from Holland I cannot think. He
hesitated for a long time, poor man, before deciding; no man
could have acted more like a Stuart, at such a time. When the
decision was made he gave word to start early on the following
morning. But this I did not know till one A.M, when Lord Grey
routed me out from my berth on the hearth-rug, so that I might go
from house to house, calling up our officers.
I suppose that all our officers were out of bed by two o'clock,
yet it took them eight hours to get their men together, into some
sort of order. We were hardly ready for the road at ten A.M. when
the drums beat up to play us out of the town. As I was the Duke's
servant, I was allowed to ride by my master; I daresay people
thought that I was the young Prince. We marched up the hill
gaily, with a multitude flocking all about us, but there were
many of that crowd who looked doubtfully at my master's sad face,
thinking that he looked over-melancholy for a conquering king.
We marched out of Lyme into a valley, through a sort of suburb
called Uplyme. After that we marched steadily up hill, a long
climb of two miles, having a great view of the countryside on our
left hand. Our right was shut from us by a wooded hill. It was a
warm, sunny June day: the grass just ripe for hay harvest; the
country at its best; everything at its full flower, so that you
wondered at the world's abundance. We sent out scouts, when we
were about a mile from Lyme; but when we were at the top of the
hill we could see for ourselves, without putting scouts abroad.
We could see horsemen on the high ground away to the left, two or
three hundred of them. Besides these there were some companies of
foot drawn up in good order in the fields outside Axminster, at
some distance from the town. When this army caught sight of us,
it began to file off towards the town, as though to dispute it
with us, so our advanced guard pushed on to drive them out of it.
The sight of so many men in order, was a very moving one. To see
them advance their colours, to see the light on the shifting
steel, to hear the low beating hum of the feet was stirring to
the heart. Word ran along the line that there was going to be a
battle. Our foot left the road, so as to spread out into line in
the open, where they could take up positions behind hedges. I was
sent back to the rear at this instant, to order up the ammunition
waggons, so that I missed some part of the operations; but I
shall never forget how confidently our men spread out; they
marched as though they were going into the fields for partridges.
The drums began again, to hearten them, but there was no need for
drums in that company; they began to sing of their own accord,
making a noise which drowned the drums altogether. I gave my
orders to the ammunition waggons, which were blocked in a jumble
of sightseers, camp-followers, etc., etc., so that they could
hardly move. The drivers got me to charge my horse through the
mob to make a path, which I did, with a good deal of pain to
myself, for the people thus thrust aside struck at me. The
drivers struck out at them in return; we had a little fight of
our own, while Axminster was being won.
