Martin Hyde (19 page)

CHAPTER XVII

A VOICE AT DAWN

W
ORD
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 a 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 risks 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, without 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 tenterhooks 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 chargers 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 sight-seers, 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.