Alice in Love and War (7 page)

Nia teased her. “You’re like the girl in the song.”

“That last one?” Alice tried to remember the tune, but it had gone. “Tell me the words.”

Nia began teaching her the song. It was about a girl who was at the riverside, washing her lover’s shirt, when a knight came by and asked if she would sell it.

“But of course she won’t sell,” said Nia. “‘Not for a hundred pounds,’ she says, ‘not for two hillsides full of sheep, not for two fields of oxen under yoke, not for all the herbs of Llandewi, trodden and pressed, not for anything would I sell the shirt of the boy I love.’ You’ve got Robin’s shirt there, Lisi. Wouldn’t you say the same?”

“Yes,” said Alice, laughing. “I would!”

When all the linen was blowing on the lines, they rested, sharing beer and some oatcakes that Bronwen had bought from one of the traders. Bronwen, Alice realized, saw herself as the one responsible for the three – now grown to four with the addition of Alice. She was a strong, quiet woman, protective of her younger sister Rhian, who seemed shy and childlike – “A bit of a daydreamer,” Nia said fondly. Rhian was playing now with her kitten, a little bold black thing with startled eyes. It crawled around her shoulders, tangling in her hair, then sprang down into her lap, breaking the oatcake she was holding into flying fragments.

“Oh, Rhian!” Bronwen sounded exasperated.

Rhian had been given the kitten on one of their expeditions around the village and farms when they knocked on doors, seeking food. She had bought a jugful of milk too but, as Bronwen pointed out, some of their milk now went to the animal.

“There were five of them, all to be drowned,” Rhian had said. “I only took one.”

“We should go around the farms again before we move on,” said Nia, “though I doubt they’ll have much to sell.”

Alice knew the farmers must be preparing for a hungry winter. The harvest was ruined; and the army had already swept through these villages in July on its way west, eating everything, “like the plague of locusts in the Bible”, one woman had said, “and now here you are again”. Robin had told Alice that these same people, or others near by, had beaten and robbed the captured rebel foot soldiers as the king’s men forced them to march east from Lostwithiel. There was no love here for soldiers of any army, and still less for the women they called “Welsh whores” or, as often as not, “Irish whores”. They could not tell the difference but particularly hated the Irish, remembering the stories they had heard of how Irish Catholics had attacked and butchered English Protestants only three years before.

Alice fared better on these forays. She was young and not yet as dirty and ragged-looking as the others, and she spoke the local dialect. She often came back with some bacon or cheese when others had been refused.

On one occasion she and Nia came to a house where a woman was in pain with a toothache. Alice felt sorry for her, and struggled to recall one of her father’s remedies. “Daisy roots,” she said, “and salt. Pounded together, strained, and mixed with the leaves of sweet flag. I think that was all. It makes a juice.”

She helped the woman dig up roots and pound the fibrous mass in a mortar while Nia went to gather flag leaves. “You breathe it in,” she said. “The scent eases the pain.”

The woman was grateful, and gave Alice a pudding in a bag, in addition to the milk she and Nia had come to buy.

“You could be useful in the women’s camp,” Nia said afterwards.

“But I don’t know much! And I’ve no supplies. Besides, there must be apothecaries with the army – and other women who have some knowledge.”

“Oh, there are. Sian, she’ll pull teeth and give you powders to bring on your courses or tisanes for the rheum; and Anwen can see your future in the stars. But I’d trust you more than most, Lisi. You have a gentle way about you.”

Maybe, thought Alice. But she was wary of putting herself forward, and perhaps antagonizing the likes of Sian and Anwen. She was young, a newcomer here, and a foreigner in the Welsh camp. She’d respond quietly, she decided, if and when the need arose.

The next day, the girls planned to go afield, foraging for autumn berries and nuts.

Mistress Erlam tossed Alice a bundle. “Try these on. You don’t want to attract the attention of men while you’re away from the camp.” There was a pair of breeches, well worn and patched, and a felted cap of dark red wool.

Alice climbed into the covered wagon and took off her skirt. She bunched up the length of her shift and stepped into the legs of the loose knee-length breeches. She removed her woman’s cap of linen and put on the felted one, tucking her hair inside it. The breeches felt strange, and she was embarrassed by the sight of her stockinged calves, exposed like a man’s.

She emerged shyly, and Mistress Erlam clapped her hands in delight. “You look like a boy player on the stage! You could leave off your stays and put a few more pins in your hair. But you’ll do, from a distance.”

Alice found her Welsh friends clothed in the same way. She felt afraid at first; she knew the king had forbidden women to dress like this. But as the day wore on she found she could climb trees, clamber over gates, stride across small streams, all without the need to pick up her skirts. She experienced a great sense of freedom.

The group of women had split into pairs. Alice was with Nia. In a woodland clearing they found mushrooms. They ate some raw, brushing the dirt off them and savouring the pungent, earthy flavour, then laid the remainder in a flat basket, taking care not to break or bruise them. They picked cobnuts and crab apples at the edge of the woods. Then Nia exclaimed,
“Mwyar!”
and led Alice across a rough field to a hedge where ripe fruit hung in glossy clusters: blackberries.

“No one has been here!” she said in amazement.

Most of the blackberry bushes around the camp had been picked clean by locals. Here the fruit was so ripe it burst and stained their fingers purple. Nia lined her basket with soft leaves and they dropped the berries in gently.

“They are too ripe to save,” said Alice, and Nia agreed.

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?”