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CHAPTER LXIV
SLAUGHTER IN THE MARSHES
We rattled away at a merry pace, out of the town of
Dulverton; my horse being gaily fed, and myself quite
fit again for going. Of course I was puzzled about
Cousin Ruth; for her behaviour was not at all such as I
had expected; and indeed I had hoped for a far more
loving and moving farewell than I got from her. But I
said to myself, 'It is useless ever to count upon what
a woman will do; and I think that I must have vexed
her, almost as much as she vexed me. And now to see
what comes of it.' So I put my horse across the
moorland; and he threw his chest out bravely.
Now if I tried to set down at length all the things
that happened to me, upon this adventure, every in and
out, and up and down, and to and fro, that occupied me,
together with the things I saw, and the things I heard
of, however much the wiser people might applaud my
narrative, it is likely enough that idle readers might
exclaim, 'What ails this man? Knows he not that men of
parts and of real understanding, have told us all we
care to hear of that miserable business. Let him keep
to his farm, and his bacon, and his wrestling, and
constant feeding.'
Fearing to meet with such rebuffs (which after my death
would vex me), I will try to set down only what is
needful for my story, and the clearing of my character,
and the good name of our parish. But the manner in
which I was bandied about, by false information, from
pillar to post, or at other times driven quite out of
my way by the presence of the King's soldiers, may be
known by the names of the following towns, to which I
was sent in succession, Bath, Frome, Wells, Wincanton,
Glastonbury, Shepton, Bradford, Axbridge, Somerton, and
Bridgwater.
This last place I reached on a Sunday night, the fourth
or fifth of July, I think--or it might be the sixth,
for that matter; inasmuch as I had been too much
worried to get the day of the month at church. Only I
know that my horse and myself were glad to come to a
decent place, where meat and corn could be had for
money; and being quite weary of wandering about, we
hoped to rest there a little.
Of this, however, we found no chance, for the town was
full of the good Duke's soldiers; if men may be called
so, the half of whom had never been drilled, nor had
fired a gun. And it was rumoured among them, that the
'popish army,' as they called it, was to be attacked
that very night, and with God's assistance beaten.
However, by this time I had been taught to pay little
attention to rumours; and having sought vainly for Tom
Faggus among these poor rustic warriors, I took to my
hostel; and went to bed, being as weary as weary can
be.
Falling asleep immediately, I took heed of nothing;
although the town was all alive, and lights had come
glancing, as I lay down, and shouts making echo all
round my room. But all I did was to bolt the door; not
an inch would I budge, unless the house, and even my
bed, were on fire. And so for several hours I lay, in
the depth of the deepest slumber, without even a dream
on its surface; until I was roused and awakened at last
by a pushing, and pulling, and pinching, and a plucking
of hair out by the roots. And at length, being able to
open mine eyes, I saw the old landlady, with a candle,
heavily wondering at me.
'Can't you let me alone?' I grumbled. 'I have paid for
my bed, mistress; and I won't get up for any one.'
'Would to God, young man,' she answered, shaking me as
hard as ever, 'that the popish soldiers may sleep this
night, only half as strong as thou dost! Fie on thee,
fie on thee! Get up, and go fight; we can hear the
battle already; and a man of thy size mought stop a
cannon.'
'I would rather stop a-bed,' said I; 'what have I to do
with fighting? I am for King James, if any.'
'Then thou mayest even stop a-bed,' the old woman
muttered sulkily. 'A would never have laboured half an
hour to awake a Papisher. But hearken you one thing,
young man; Zummerzett thou art, by thy brogue; or at
least by thy understanding of it; no Zummerzett maid
will look at thee, in spite of thy size and stature,
unless thou strikest a blow this night.'
'I lack no Zummerzett maid, mistress: I have a fairer
than your brown things; and for her alone would I
strike a blow.'
At this the old woman gave me up, as being beyond
correction: and it vexed me a little that my great fame
had not reached so far as Bridgwater, when I thought
that it went to Bristowe. But those people in East
Somerset know nothing about wrestling. Devon is the
headquarters of the art; and Devon is the county of my
chief love. Howbeit, my vanity was moved, by this slur
upon it--for I had told her my name was John Ridd, when
I had a gallon of ale with her, ere ever I came
upstairs; and she had nodded, in such a manner, that I
thought she knew both name and fame--and here was I,
not only shaken, pinched, and with many hairs pulled
out, in the midst of my first good sleep for a week,
but also abused, and taken amiss, and (which vexed me
most of all) unknown.
Now there is nothing like vanity to keep a man awake at
night, however he be weary; and most of all, when he
believes that he is doing something great--this time,
if never done before--yet other people will not see,
except what they may laugh at; and so be far above him,
and sleep themselves the happier. Therefore their
sleep robs his own; for all things play so, in and out
(with the godly and ungodly ever moving in a balance,
as they have done in my time, almost every year or
two), all things have such nice reply of produce to the
call for it, and such a spread across the world, giving
here and taking there, yet on the whole pretty even,
that haply sleep itself has but a certain stock, and
keeps in hand, and sells to flattered (which can pay)
that which flattened vanity cannot pay, and will not
sue for.
Be that as it may, I was by this time wide awake,
though much aggrieved at feeling so, and through the
open window heard the distant roll of musketry, and the
beating of drums, with a quick rub-a-dub, and the 'come
round the corner' of trumpet-call. And perhaps Tom
Faggus might be there, and shot at any moment, and my
dear Annie left a poor widow, and my godson Jack an
orphan, without a tooth to help him.
Therefore I reviled myself for all my heavy laziness;
and partly through good honest will, and partly through
the stings of pride, and yet a little perhaps by virtue
of a young man's love of riot, up I arose, and dressed
myself, and woke Kickums (who was snoring), and set out
to see the worst of it. The sleepy hostler scratched
his poll, and could not tell me which way to take; what
odds to him who was King, or Pope, so long as he paid
his way, and got a bit of bacon on Sunday? And would I
please to remember that I had roused him up at night,
and the quality always made a point of paying four
times over for a man's loss of his beauty-sleep. I
replied that his loss of beauty-sleep was rather
improving to a man of so high complexion; and that I,
being none of the quality, must pay half-quality
prices: and so I gave him double fee, as became a good
farmer; and he was glad to be quit of Kickums; as I saw
by the turn of his eye, while going out at the archway.
All this was done by lanthorn light, although the moon
was high and bold; and in the northern heaven, flags
and ribbons of a jostling pattern; such as we often
have in autumn, but in July very rarely. Of these
Master Dryden has spoken somewhere, in his courtly
manner; but of him I think so little--because by
fashion preferred to Shakespeare--that I cannot
remember the passage; neither is it a credit to him.
Therefore I was guided mainly by the sound of guns and
trumpets, in riding out of the narrow ways, and into
the open marshes. And thus I might have found my road,
in spite of all the spread of water, and the glaze of
moonshine; but that, as I followed sound (far from
hedge or causeway), fog (like a chestnut-tree in
blossom, touched with moonlight) met me. Now fog is a
thing that I understand, and can do with well enough,
where I know the country; but here I had never been
before. It was nothing to our Exmoor fogs; not to be
compared with them; and all the time one could see the
moon; which we cannot do in our fogs; nor even the sun,
for a week together. Yet the gleam of water always
makes the fog more difficult: like a curtain on a
mirror; none can tell the boundaries.
And here we had broad-water patches, in and out, inlaid
on land, like mother-of-pearl in brown Shittim wood.
To a wild duck, born and bred there, it would almost be
a puzzle to find her own nest amongst us; what chance
then had I and Kickums, both unused to marsh and mere?
Each time when we thought that we must be right, now at
last, by track or passage, and approaching the
conflict, with the sounds of it waxing nearer, suddenly
a break of water would be laid before us, with the moon
looking mildly over it, and the northern lights behind
us, dancing down the lines of fog.
It was an awful thing, I say (and to this day I
remember it), to hear the sounds of raging fight, and
the yells of raving slayers, and the howls of poor men
stricken hard, and shattered from wrath to wailing;
then suddenly the dead low hush, as of a soul
departing, and spirits kneeling over it. Through the
vapour of the earth, and white breath of the water, and
beneath the pale round moon (bowing as the drift went
by), all this rush and pause of fear passed or lingered
on my path.
At last, when I almost despaired of escaping from this
tangle of spongy banks, and of hazy creeks, and
reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh of a
fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon
which the other, having lost its rider, came up and
pricked his ears at us, and gazed through the fog very
steadfastly. Therefore I encouraged him with a soft
and genial whistle, and Kickums did his best to tempt
him with a snort of inquiry. However, nothing would
suit that nag, except to enjoy his new freedom; and he
capered away with his tail set on high, and the
stirrup-irons clashing under him. Therefore, as he
might know the way, and appeared to have been in the
battle, we followed him very carefully; and he led us
to a little hamlet, called (as I found afterwards) West
Zuyland, or Zealand, so named perhaps from its
situation amid this inland sea.
Here the King's troops had been quite lately, and their
fires were still burning; but the men themselves had
been summoned away by the night attack of the rebels.
Hence I procured for my guide a young man who knew the
district thoroughly, and who led me by many intricate
ways to the rear of the rebel army. We came upon a
broad open moor striped with sullen water courses,
shagged with sedge, and yellow iris, and in the drier
part with bilberries. For by this time it was four
o'clock, and the summer sun, rising wanly, showed us
all the ghastly scene.
Would that I had never been there! Often in the lonely
hours, even now it haunts me: would, far more, that the
piteous thing had never been done in England! Flying
men, flung back from dreams of victory and honour, only
glad to have the luck of life and limbs to fly with,
mud-bedraggled, foul with slime, reeking both with
sweat and blood, which they could not stop to wipe,
cursing, with their pumped-out lungs, every stick that
hindered them, or gory puddle that slipped the step,
scarcely able to leap over the corses that had dragged
to die. And to see how the corses lay; some, as fair
as death in sleep; with the smile of placid valour, and
of noble manhood, hovering yet on the silent lips.
These had bloodless hands put upwards, white as wax,
and firm as death, clasped (as on a monument) in prayer
for dear ones left behind, or in high thanksgiving.
And of these men there was nothing in their broad blue
eyes to fear. But others were of different sort;
simple fellows unused to pain, accustomed to the
bill-hook, perhaps, or rasp of the knuckles in a
quick-set hedge, or making some to-do at breakfast,
over a thumb cut in sharpening a scythe, and expecting
their wives to make more to-do. Yet here lay these
poor chaps, dead; dead, after a deal of pain, with
little mind to bear it, and a soul they had never
thought of; gone, their God alone knows whither; but to
mercy we may trust. Upon these things I cannot dwell;
and none I trow would ask me: only if a plain man saw
what I saw that morning, he (if God had blessed him
with the heart that is in most of us) must have
sickened of all desire to be great among mankind.
Seeing me riding to the front (where the work of death
went on among the men of true English pluck; which,
when moved, no farther moves), the fugitives called out
to me, in half a dozen dialects, to make no utter fool
of myself; for the great guns were come, and the fight
was over; all the rest was slaughter.
'Arl oop wi Moonmo',' shouted one big fellow, a miner
of the Mendip hills, whose weapon was a pickaxe: 'na
oose to vaight na moor. Wend thee hame, yoong mon
agin.'
Upon this I stopped my horse, desiring not to be shot
for nothing; and eager to aid some poor sick people,
who tried to lift their arms to me. And this I did to
the best of my power, though void of skill in the
business; and more inclined to weep with them than to
check their weeping. While I was giving a drop of
cordial from my flask to one poor fellow, who sat up,
while his life was ebbing, and with slow insistence
urged me, when his broken voice would come, to tell his
wife (whose name I knew not) something about an
apple-tree, and a golden guinea stored in it, to divide
among six children--in the midst of this I felt warm
lips laid against my cheek quite softly, and then a
little push; and behold it was a horse leaning over me!
I arose in haste, and there stood Winnie, looking at me
with beseeching eyes, enough to melt a heart of stone.
Then seeing my attention fixed she turned her head, and
glanced back sadly toward the place of battle, and gave
a little wistful neigh: and then looked me full in the
face again, as much as to say, 'Do you understand?'
while she scraped with one hoof impatiently. If ever a
horse tried hard to speak, it was Winnie at that
moment. I went to her side and patted her; but that
was not what she wanted. Then I offered to leap into
the empty saddle; but neither did that seem good to
her: for she ran away toward the part of the field at
which she had been glancing back, and then turned
round, and shook her mane, entreating me to follow her.
Upon this I learned from the dying man where to find
his apple-tree, and promised to add another guinea to
the one in store for his children; and so, commending
him to God, I mounted my own horse again, and to
Winnie's great delight, professed myself at her
service. With her ringing silvery neigh, such as no
other horse of all I ever knew could equal, she at once
proclaimed her triumph, and told her master (or meant
to tell, if death should not have closed his ears) that
she was coming to his aid, and bringing one who might
be trusted, of the higher race that kill.
A cannon-bullet (fired low, and ploughing the marsh
slowly) met poor Winnie front to front; and she, being
as quick as thought, lowered her nose to sniff at it.
It might be a message from her master; for it made a
mournful noise. But luckily for Winnie's life, a rise
of wet ground took the ball, even under her very nose;
and there it cut a splashy groove, missing her off
hindfoot by an inch, and scattering black mud over her.
It frightened me much more than Winnie; of that I am
quite certain: because though I am firm enough, when it
comes to a real tussle, and the heart of a fellow warms
up and tells him that he must go through with it; yet I
never did approve of making a cold pie of death.
Therefore, with those reckless cannons, brazen-mouthed,
and bellowing, two furlongs off, or it might be more
(and the more the merrier), I would have given that
year's hay-crop for a bit of a hill, or a thicket of
oaks, or almost even a badger's earth. People will
call me a coward for this (especially when I had made
up my mind, that life was not worth having without any
sign of Lorna); nevertheless, I cannot help it: those
were my feelings; and I set them down, because they
made a mark on me. At Glen Doone I had fought, even
against cannon, with some spirit and fury: but now I
saw nothing to fight about; but rather in every poor
doubled corpse, a good reason for not fighting. So, in
cold blood riding on, and yet ashamed that a man should
shrink where a horse went bravely, I cast a bitter
blame upon the reckless ways of Winnie.
Nearly all were scattered now. Of the noble countrymen
(armed with scythe or pickaxe, blacksmith's hammer, or
fold-pitcher), who had stood their ground for hours
against blazing musketry (from men whom they could not
get at, by reason of the water-dyke), and then against
the deadly cannon, dragged by the Bishop's horses to
slaughter his own sheep; of these sturdy Englishmen,
noble in their want of sense, scarce one out of four
remained for the cowards to shoot down. 'Cross the
rhaine,' they shouted out, 'cross the rhaine, and coom
within rache:' but the other mongrel Britons, with a
mongrel at their head, found it pleasanter to shoot men
who could not shoot in answer, than to meet the chance
of mischief from strong arms, and stronger hearts.
The last scene of this piteous play was acting, just as
I rode up. Broad daylight, and upstanding sun,
winnowing fog from the eastern hills, and spreading the
moors with freshness; all along the dykes they shone,
glistened on the willow-trunks, and touched the banks
with a hoary gray. But alas! those banks were touched
more deeply with a gory red, and strewn with fallen
trunks, more woeful than the wreck of trees; while
howling, cursing, yelling, and the loathsome reek of
carnage, drowned the scent of the new-mown hay, and the
carol of the lark.
Then the cavalry of the King, with their horses at full
speed, dashed from either side upon the helpless mob of
countrymen. A few pikes feebly levelled met them; but
they shot the pikemen, drew swords, and helter-skelter
leaped into the shattered and scattering mass. Right
and left they hacked and hewed; I could hear the
snapping of scythes beneath them, and see the flash of
their sweeping swords. How it must end was plain
enough, even to one like myself, who had never beheld
such a battle before. But Winnie led me away to the
left; and as I could not help the people, neither stop
the slaughter, but found the cannon-bullets coming very
rudely nigh me, I was only too glad to follow her.
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