It would be a week at the earliest before my regiment could come out from London-which amounts to saying that Monmouth had a week to raise his army, and that I had a week in which to make myself useful. I waited in a queue in the market-square of Lyme Regis until the clerk could prick my name down in his great book; I told him I was Jack Shaftoe and under that name I joined Monmouth’s army. The next day we mustered in a field above the town and I was issued my weapon: a sickle lashed to the end of a stick.

The next week’s doings were of some moment to John Churchill, when I told him the tale later, but would be tedious to you. There is only one part you might take an interest in, and that is what happened at Taunton. Taunton is an inland town. Our little army reached it after several days’ straggling through the countryside. By that time we were three thousand strong. The town welcomed us even more warmly than Lyme Regis; the school girls presented Monmouth with a banner they had embroidered for him, and served us meals in a mess they had set up in the town square. One of these girls-a sixteen-year-old named Abigail Frome…

Shall I devote a thousand words, or ten thousand, to how I fell in love with Abigail Frome? “I fell in love with her” does not do it justice, but ten thousand words would be no better, and so let us leave it at that. Perhaps I loved her because she was a rebel girl, and my heart was with the rebellion. My mind could see it was doomed, but my heart was listening to the Imp of the Perverse. I had chosen the name of Jack Shaftoe because I reckoned my brother was dead by now and would not be needing it. But being “Jack Shaftoe” had awakened a lust I had long forgotten: I wanted to go a-vagabonding. And I wanted to take Abigail Frome with me.

That was true the first and possibly the second day of my infatuation. But in between those long sunny June days were short nights of broken and unrestful sleep, when fretful thoughts would dissolve into strange dreams that would end with me shocked upright in my bed, like a sailor who has felt his ship hit a reef, and who knows he ought to be doing somewhat other than just lying there. I’d not bedded the girl or even kissed her. But I believed we were joined together now, and that I needed to make preparations for a life altogether different. Vagabonding and rebellion could not be part of that life-they are fit for men, but men who try to bring their women and children along on that life are bastards plain and simple. If you spent any time on the road with Jack, you will take my meaning.

So my Vagabond-passion for this rebel girl made me turn against the rebellion finally. I could flirt with one or the other but not with both; and flirting with Abigail was more rewarding.

Now came word that the militia-my old regiment of local commoners-was being called up to perform its stated function, namely, to put down the rebellion. I deserted my rebel regiment, crept out of Taunton, and went to the mustering-place. Some of the men were ready to throw in their lot with Monmouth, some were loyal to the King, and most were too scared and amazed to do anything. I rallied a company of loyal men, little better than stragglers, and marched them to Chard, where John Churchill had at last arrived and set up an encampment.

This is as good a time as any to mention that while sneaking through the rebel lines at Taunton I had been noticed-not by the sentry, a dozing farmhand, but by his dog. The dog had come after me and seized me by the leg of my breeches and held me long enough for the farmer to come after me with a pitchfork. As you can see, I had let things get out of hand. It was because I have a fatuous liking for dogs, and always have, ever since I was a mudlark boy and Persons of Quality would call me a dog. I had removed the sickle from the end of my stick and left it in Taunton, but the stick I still had, so I raised it up and brought the butt down smartly between the dog’s brown eyes, which I remember clearly glaring up at me. But it was a dog of terrier-kind and would on no account loosen its bite. The farmer thrust at me with his pitchfork. I spun away. One tine of the fork got under the skin of my back and tunneled underneath for about a hand’s breadth and then erupted somewhere else. I made a backhand swing of my stick and caught him across the bridge of the nose. He let go the pitchfork and put his hands to his face. I pulled the iron out of my flesh, raised it up above the dog, and told the farmer that if he would only call the damned creature off I would not have to spill any blood here, other than my own.

He saw the wisdom of this. But now he had recognized me. “Shaftoe!” he said, “have you lost your nerve so soon?” I recognized him now as a fellow I had passed time with while we waited in the queue in Lyme Regis to enlist in Monmouth’s army.

I am accustomed to the regular and predictable evolutions of the march, the drill, and the siege. Yet now within a few days of my conceiving a boyish infatuation with Abigail Frome, I had worked my way round to one of those farcical muddles you see in the fourth act of a comedy. I was forsaking the rebellion in order to forge a new life with a rebel lass, who had fallen in love, not with me, but with my brother, who was dead. I who have slain quite a few men had been caught and recognized because I would not hurt a mongrel. And I who was-if I may say so-doing something that demanded a whiff of courage or so, and that demonstrated my loyalty, would now be denounced as a coward and traitor, and Abigail would consider me in those terms forever.

A civilian-by your leave-would have been baffled, amazed. My soldier’s mind recognized this immediately as a screw-up, a cluster-fuck, a Situation Normal. This sort of thing happens to us all the time, and generally has worse consequences than a pretty girl deciding that she despises you. Fermented beverages and black humor are how we cope. I extricated myself without further violence. But by the time I made my way into the camp of John Churchill, the pitchfork-wound on my back had suppurated, and had to be opened up and aired out by a barber. I could not see it myself, but all who gazed upon it were taken a-back. Really ’twas a shallow wound, and it healed quickly once I became strong enough to fend off the barber. But that I had staggered into the camp bleeding and feverish at the head of a column of loyal militia troops was made into something bigger than it really was. John Churchill heaped praise and honor upon me, and gave me a purse of money. When I related the entire tale to him, he laughed and mused, “I am doubly indebted to your brother now-he has furnished me with an excellent horse and a vital piece of intelligence.”

Jack tells me you are literate and so I will let you read about the details of the fighting in a history-book. There are a few particulars I will mention because I doubt that historians will consider them meet to be set down in print.

The King declined to trust John Churchill, for the reasons I stated earlier. Supreme command was given to Feversham, who despite his name is a Frenchman. Years ago Feversham undertook to blow up some houses with gunpowder, supposedly to stop a fire from spreading, but really, I suspect, because he was possessed of that urge, common to all men, to blow things up for its own sake. Moments after he satisfied that urge, he was brained by a piece of flying debris, and left senseless. His brain swelled up. To make room for it, the chirurgeons cut a hole in his skull. You can imagine the details for yourself-suffice it to say that the man is a living and breathing advertisement for the Guild of Wigmakers. King James II favors him, which, if you knew nothing else about His Majesty, would give you knowledge sufficient to form an opinion about his reign.

It was this Feversham who had been placed in command of the expedition to put down the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, and he who received credit for its success, but it was John Churchill who won the battles, and my regiment, as always, that did the fighting. The Duke of Grafton came out at the head of some cavalry and did battle with Monmouth at one point. The engagement was not all that important, but I mention it to add some color to the story, for Grafton is one of Charles II’s bastards, just like Monmouth himself!