Anne, who was not gifted with such powers of concentration, became suddenly aware of the confused sounds of wheels and hooves and feet on the cobbles of the Micklegate that always filled the evenings of market day in York. ‘Surely the market crowds are homeward bound very early this evening, Christian?’ she said, listening.
Christian raised a broad-boned and freckled face under her folded coif. ‘Happen there’s little enough buying and selling these days, My Lady.’
‘Because of — because there may be going to be war?’
‘Eh now, I reckon so. My brother Luke’s loft is full o’ good woollen stuff that he canna’ sell nor his wife and bairns canna’ eat, and ‘tis t’same through all t’trade. And when a man canna’ sell his cloth, then he canna’ buy at t’market, and when he canna’ buy at t’market, then them as he would ha’ bought from grows lean, too. And folks gang home early, if they come at all.’
An earsplitting shriek wrenched the attention of both women back from the troubles of the wool trade to the nearest flower border, where they beheld Elizabeth sitting among the early pinks, her eyes tight shut and her mouth wide open in a prolonged wail, and one finger stuck straight out before her as though in accusation against the world.
Almost in the same instant, she gathered herself together, wailing still, and, dropping on all fours as she still did in times of stress, headed at top speed for her mother, heedless of the obstacles that lay between.
It was Anne who reached her first and went down on her knees, gathering the small sobbing creature to her. ‘My honey, my lambkin, what is it then? Did you hurt yourself. Did you hurt your poor finger?’
‘It was a bee!’ howled Elizabeth, who was by now passing into convulsive hiccups. ‘I only waa-a-nted to stroke it and it bitted me with its tail!’
Christian had already flown for the Cornflower cordial and an onion and Anne, holding the grief stricken child against her, was trying to see if the sting was still in the poor little crimson finger. ‘Na, na, don’t suck it, let me look. I’m not going to hurt. I only want to look!’ She was rocking the baby to and fro. ‘Shushie, shushie now. Christian has gone to get something to make it well again.’
Then she saw Moll standing close beside her, clasping Bathsheba to her breast, her eyes blazing in her small dark face. ‘Why Moll, what is the matter?’
‘I hope her finger hurts!’ said Moll with conviction. ‘She trod on Bathsheba!’
‘But she didn’t mean to,’ Anne protested, aware in every fibre of her being of the little warm grief-wrecked body in her arms, and the general dampness spreading down her neck. Elizabeth had such an abundance of tears for her sorrows. ‘She has just been stung by a bee, and she didn’t see Bathsheba was in the way. Oh shushie, shushie now.’
‘She should have looked,’ said Moll.
‘Would you have looked, if you had just been stung by a bee? For shame, Mary; and she’s only such a little girl!’
‘When I am grown up I shall have six little boys and not any little girls at all!’
Anne felt the argument escaping her. But Christian was already back with the onion and at the same time the door in the high wall opened from the street, and Fairfax appeared, closed it behind him and came long and dark as his own shadow across the grass to join his distraught family. ‘What is the matter with the small one?’
‘A bee stung her,’ Anne told him, without looking up. She had at that moment no leisure for looking up; but she was aware none the less of Moll drawing close against a long booted leg. Thomas’s hand resting lightly on the top of the little dark head, and the child pressing up against his palm as an adoring dog will do.
In a while the chaos had sorted itself out, and Elizabeth, her finger comforted with onion juice, was carried into the house by Christian with a promise of sugar candy. ‘Sugar candy for Little Moll, too,’ Fairfax said softly. Anne hesitated for a moment; both she and Thomas believed in the new way of bringing up children, with more gentleness and fewer beatings than had been the custom in their own childhood, but if Little Moll’s conduct did not merit a beating, she could not feel that it really merited sugar candy either. But with a sudden wish that everybody should be happy now in the safe moment while the sun shone, she stooped and dropped a kiss on the top of her daughter’s head where Thomas’s hand had rested. ‘Sugar candy for Moll, too. There now, go with Christian.’
She stood to watch the little bunchy figure trot away and disappear indoors, then turned back beside her husband to the turf seat under the walnut tree. ‘What news, Thomas? Is there any good news?’
‘What good news is there likely to be, Nan?’ He slipped the loose summer cloak from his shoulders, and sat down, one hand hanging from a lax wrist across his knee. She knew that sign; it meant utter weariness, spiritual as well as physical. ‘It is one long insane game of tit for tat. Charles forbids the Trained Bands and militia to rise for any order of the two Houses. Parliament counters with a resolution forbidding all Magistrates to allow the passage of war supplies to the north. So it goes on... Now the King has summoned all the freeholders of Yorkshire to gather on Hayworth Moor, seven days from now. He will halt out a long speech.’ Fairfax broke off, and sprang to his feet with the restlessness of strain. ‘May God forgive me that I should jibe at another man’s lame tongue! He will make a long speech that will convince none save those convinced already, and we shall present one last petition, begging His Majesty — among other things — at least to realize the bitter plight of the wool trade, to which he will pay as little heed as he did to that which we drew up on the day he issued the Commission of Array. After that —’ Abruptly he folded up once more on to the turf seat beside her. ‘After that, the Lord God knows.’
Anne watched him a short while in silence. ‘It is true about the cloth workers, then?’ she said. ‘Christian was telling me.’
‘Oh yes, it is true about the cloth workers. And the farmers — all the wool trade. This wild uncertainty has killed the wool trade stone dead. There’ll be starvation in the weavers’ homes next winter.’
Anne waited again. There was something more; she felt it in him; a personal hurt. If she waited, maybe he would tell her. ‘I met Henry in Micklegate,’ he said at last.
‘Henry Slingsby?’
‘Yes. He has been given command of one of the King’s newly raised regiments of Foot. I remonstrated with him for helping to raise troops by the illegal means of the Commission of Array. He told me he conceived that neither I nor any of mine need fear the troops so raised, since we have not yet appeared in arms.’
‘But Thomas — since you are for Parliament and an officer of the militia, it is not for you to come out in arms before the militia is called out! He must know that!’ She felt that she was being stupid, clumsy, even before the last hot words were out.
‘For King or Parliament. It hasn’t come to that yet, Nan,’ Fairfax said, and then: ‘It was as though he dashed his glove in my face.’
She looked at him in sudden sharp anxiety. ‘Thomas, when he said that — did that — what did you do?’
‘Do? What would you have me do, Nan? Send William to him with a choice of weapons? I left the insult lying, and walked away,’ Fairfax said. ‘I can’t fight old Henry; not — yet, that is. Oh my God.’
Anne looked down at her household book lying where she had left it when she rushed to Elizabeth’s rescue. The wind fluttered to and fro the page with the half finished lace pattern. She knew that she would never finish that particular pattern of pillow lace.
*
On Hayworth Moor the heat danced like a swarm of midges above the heads of the vast concourse that had gathered there in obedience to the King’s summons.
Sir Thomas Fairfax heard the broad flat speech of the dales and the Ainstey all about him. He was conscious through all his being of the rolled parchment in his hand, the petition drawn up under the eye of his father, of Hutton and the Sheriff and many more, on behalf of the freeholders of Yorkshire. Being a humble soul, he h
ad no very clear idea of why he should have been chosen to place the petition in the King’s hands, but since his fellows had seen fit to entrust him with the task, he was determined to see it well and truly carried out.
‘The King comes at last,’ said William beside him, and fell to whistling Greensleeves’ very softly between his teeth, a habit of his when preoccupied.
Fairfax nodded, his eyes narrowed into the sunshine as he watched the pale dust cloud rolling nearer. ‘And with a goodly escort, by the size of that smother.’
All around him there was a sudden stir, a sudden rising murmuration; not the roar that would once have greeted a King’s coming, but a ragged muttering, half eager, half sullen. ‘The King! The King comes!’
And a while later, ‘Hats off for the King.’
And so at last, at high noon, the King rode up, attended by a great company of his Court and followed by his newly formed bodyguard of Horse and Foot. The sun splintered on pike head and musket barrel; hat plumes tossed and ribbons fluttered in the wind; the Chevaliers were making their horses dance and caracole. ‘That is to impress the Yorkshire clods,’ said William with a quirk of laughter in his voice. Again Fairfax nodded. His gaze, moving among the King’s followers, had picked out Henry Slingsby, Bellasis and Ingram, so many old friends.
‘See, His Majesty is going to speak.’
‘Of all the Mazelin affairs!’ William said. ‘Not even Stentor could make himself heard over this moor-wide muster!’
It was true. The hush spread outward from those nearest to the King, even before the hard bright notes of the trumpets rang across the moor; they saw his arm go up, they saw that the King was speaking, but save for those nearest about him, none heard what he said. The whole thing was futile and ineffectual and oddly pathetic.
A sudden murmuring among the throng, told them that the King had finished his speech. The Sheriff came striding out from the crowd near by, and clapped Fairfax on the shoulder. ‘Now is the time, I think, Sir Thomas. Good fortune to you.’
Fairfax bent his head in acceptance of his task, and stepped forward. William was still beside him. ‘I will come with you, if you’ll let me, Tom.’
‘Was there ever a time or place when we were na’ shoulder to shoulder men, thee and me?’ Fairfax said, using the old Norse term that still lingered in the dales. ‘Come on, lad.’
Every eye within range was on the two tall cousins as they headed across the open towards the King’s party, every man present knowing what it was that Black Tom Fairfax carried rolled in his hand. And Fairfax felt them with him to a man, his fellows, great landowners and small fell farmers alike; and the determination rose within him not to fail them. But, on the outskirts of the throng that gathered about the King, his way was barred by a red-haired gallant who swung his horse across their path demanding their names and business.
‘I am Sir Thomas Fairfax, and my business is with the King, Sir. I have a petition from the freeholders of Yorkshire to present to His Majesty.’
‘His Majesty has no leisure just now to receive petitions.’
‘Surely, Sir,’ Fairfax said gently, controlling his stammer with an effort, ‘that is for His Majesty to say.’
Several of the men nearest to them were bringing their horses round or turning in the saddle to look on. ‘What is it, Lindsey?’ someone asked.
‘Some homespun Knight with a petition for His Majesty.’
‘There’s no time now; the King is just about to make a progress of the moor.’ The second speaker swung his horse in beside the first, effectually barring the way. Across an arched bay neck, Fairfax saw the King already moving off, and looked up once more at Lord Lindsey.
‘Then I have no choice but to follow His Majesty in the hope that he may find himself at greater leisure by and by,’ he said. ‘I bid you good day, My Lord.’
‘If your intention is really to follow His Majesty about in an attempt to force this fool petition on him, we shall doubtless see a good deal more of each other before the day is out,’ Lord Lindsey said pointedly, and wheeled his horse after the rest of the King’s entourage.
Fairfax and his cousin looked at each other. There was a small uncompromising smile on William’s mouth. Thomas straightened his thin shoulders with a barely perceptible jerk, and they turned in the same direction.
What followed was ridiculous. For all that long afternoon, while the King rode to and fro and up and down among his assembled subjects on Hayworth Moor, the Fairfax cousins followed him, dogged as a pair of terriers on a badger’s trail. Time and time again when on the point of success they were turned back by Lord Lindsey or some other of the courtiers about the King, who found them at first a source of amusement and then of exasperation. Finally it was the Earl of Newcastle, sitting his bay mare like a middle-aged centaur — he was reputedly the best horseman in England — who came between them and the King, bending a little in the saddle to say, ‘Thomas Fairfax, my dear lad, as one of your grandfather’s truest friends (God rest the old rogue) I beg you to be done with this foolery. Cannot you see that you but make yourself a laughing stock, trailing His Majesty in this way?’
‘Oh yes,’ Fairfax said, and added, ‘Is that important?’
‘I should have thought it might be considered so. But even if it is not, what effect do you imagine this petition of yours will have, supposing that you do indeed succeed in placing it in the King’s hands?’
Fairfax smiled, the swift, leaping smile that was like the springing up of a light in his dark face. ‘Quite honestly, My Lord, I think very little; but I have been entrusted with the task of setting this petition in the King’s hands, and I intend to set it there before the day is out.’
He had stepped sideways as he spoke, holding Lord Newcastle’s eyes with his own. Next instant, and so swiftly that the thing was done before any man saw what he was about, he had ducked under the mare’s nose. A startled shout sounded behind him as he dived under the belly of another horse and came up between two more; and then William was beside him again as he reached the King’s stirrup.
The black stallion danced a little; the King, clearly startled himself, soothing him with voice and hand. The Royal face, turned upon Tom Fairfax, was aloof and whitely angry under the feathered beaver hat; no fellowship between them now as they looked at each other, eye into faintly widened eye.
‘Sire, I bring you a petition from the freeholders of Yorkshire on behalf of the cloth workers who are brought near to ruin by the distresses of this realm. I beg you to take and read it.’
‘And must you force your way thus unmannerly into our presence, with this — petition?’ the King demanded.
‘I have been all afternoon seeking means to come to Your Majesty in a more seemly fashion. Sire, you must know it.’ Fairfax was almost forcing the parchment into the King’s unwilling hand.
What happened then, as the King took the roll, no man was sure; whether he spurred his horse by intention or by an involuntary movement of anger, or whether the great stallion plunged forward of its own accord ... Fairfax saw the upreared head with wild eyes and tossed mane right above him, and sprang back from the trampling hooves. Someone cursed, and someone laughed, and next instant the Royal party had swept on in a flurry, a lustre, of feathers and silk and glinting steel. And Fairfax stood breathing a little more quickly than usual, in their wake. ‘So. It is done,’ he said.
William was furiously angry, his eyes blazing in a face of chalky grey. ‘He tried to ride you down.’
‘No. I startled the horse and the brute plunged.’
‘It did not look like that,’ William Fairfax said; and that was all, but the last thread of old habitual loyalties that held him to the King was snapped in that moment.
As they went back towards the horse lines where White Surrey awaited his master beside William’s big roan, men were crowding round them. Hutton came up and Seville of Lupset, and lean hill farmers smelling of the byre. The more lighthearted of them beat him on the shoulders, others gripped him
by the hand. ‘Well done, Sir Thomas! Eh lad, tha’s t’game one! Tom’s done it! Black Tom’s done it!’ But under the small grim triumph lay their anger, like a tide setting to the sea.
That unlucky accident, or moment of ungoverned temper, or whatever it was, did much to harden the dales and the Ainstey against their King.
*
Some two months later, the King left York, and in mid August set up his standard at Nottingham, where the wind blew it down again the same night. Civil war was no longer a menace in the future. It had begun.
Very late on the night that the news reached York, William Fairfax came to his cousin in the old house in Bishophill. Anne had already withdrawn for the night, to see to the packing that must be done before she went to bed; and the two men had the upstairs parlour to themselves.
‘So it has come,’ William said, flinging down his riding gloves and rain-wet beaver hat on the table.
‘Aye, it has come,’ Thomas said heavily.
But William had not come out of the summer storm simply to comment on the obvious, and his cousin, looking at him, saw that his eyes were bright as a boy’s in the candlelight.
‘I’m away south to join My Lord Essex’s Army. Do you ride with me, Tom?’
Thomas Fairfax stood with a booted foot on the hearth, looking down into the low fire. ‘Not as yet, at all events,’ he said at last. ‘Tomorrow I am taking Anne and the bairns up to Denton. Whatever happens there isn’t likely to be trouble so far up the dale. After that — I don’t know.’ He looked up gravely to meet his cousin’s bright level gaze. ‘There are my own companies of the militia to be called out and hammered into shape... It may be that I shall follow you later. But for the present — I’ve an odd sense of destiny on me, Will; an odd feeling that whatever use God has for me in all this, the beginning at least is here in the north.’
The Rider of the White Horse Page 3