Hilary was silent, hardly knowing whether she approved this new development or not. With a little shudder, she remembered the flash of indignation in Gabriel’s eyes when she had gleefully recounted that fifty of the rebels had been killed at Powick Bridge. Certainly in those early days, before she had in the least realised the horrors of war, it had been possible to speak in a careless fashion that would now have been out of the question.
Indeed, by the end of April the grim shadow of war drew yet closer to Bosbury, for the Parliamentarians under Massey, Governor of Gloucester, began to make inroads and to do their utmost to clear out small garrisons and to raise money for the troops. It was far from pleasant to realise that Massey and his soldiers were quartered at Ledbury, barely four miles off, and Hilary began to picture to herself what would happen if their peaceful village should be invaded.
Musing on this one afternoon, she set off to visit old Farmer Kendrick’s wife at the Hill Farm, and to carry her certain remedies for her rheumatism which Mrs. Durdle had made.
“Tell her,” said the housekeeper, “that she’d never have had the rheumatics had she taken my advice and carried a potato all winter in her pocket. But folk will be thinking there’s no cure without eating or drinking summat, and the worse the taste the better the medicine, they believe. So, my dear, I’ve flavoured this with camomile, as nasty a herb as grows, and do you tell her to drink it hot first thing in the mornin’, she’ll have a most powerful belief in that.”
Hilary laughed and promised. Crossing the churchyard she encountered Zachary, the parish clerk, who was also the gardener and general factotum at the Vicarage; his ruddy face looked less cheerful than was its wont, and, resting on his mattock, he said, earnestly:
“Don’t you be a’goin’ far from home, mistress; it be scarce safe for you to be abroad in times like these.”
“Why, Zachary,” she replied, with a smile, “I do but go to the Hill Farm, and who is like to molest me?”
“They say the Parliament soldiers never misuse women,” said Zachary. “But I wish the whole plaguey lot of soldiers were out of Herefordshire, whether they be Cavaliers or Roundheads. There’s sore news from Stoke Edith, they tell me.”
“What is that?” said Hilary, anxiously. “Have Massey’s soldiers molested Dr. Rogers?”
“Well, mistress, they set out for Ledbury with no good will to him, for, as you know, he has ever been severe to the Puritans, and I reekon they thought their turn had come. But, as ill-luek would have it, close by the wall at Stoke Edith they came upon an old parson and, belike, took him for Dr. Rogers.”