She let the little girl remain in the window until another trumpet sounded far off up the straight road that ended at the Micklegate Bar of York and, straining her eyes in the direction from which it came, she made out through the snow flurries the distant darkness of marching men. Then she lifted the child down, and turned her round, saying, ‘If you have finished your bread and milk, go now and let Christian wash you.’
She herself remained at the window, watching as though she could not look away. She could hear the enemy fifes and drums now, she could make out the troops of Cavalry spread far over the fields on either side of the York road, and in the midst of the marching Foot three dark objects drawn by straining teams of horses that made her catch her breath and lean against the window frame, suddenly a little sick. ‘Christian,’ she said, trying to keep her voice normal for the sake of Little Moll, to whom at five years old the tone would mean so much more than the words, ‘Christian, they have culverin with them.’
She heard the brush of Christian’s hurrying skirts behind her, and then the other woman had joined her in the window. ‘Eh My Lady, ‘tis sheer murder to bring them things against muskets and pikes!’
‘No,’ said Lord Vere’s daughter. ‘It’s war.’
They were silent awhile, watching those three menacing shapes dragged by their straining gun teams, being manoeuvred into position on the further bank, the enemy Horse and Foot deploying for action; while on the near bank and behind the curved breastworks the defenders waited. And between them the river looked like a curved blade of grey damascened steel through the snowy fields. ‘It’s like David and Goliath in the Good Book,’ Christian said.
Anne, not usually demonstrative, put an arm round her. ‘David won,’ she said stoutly. ‘David won because his cause was righteous!’ But her heart was cringing within her, not with fear of defeat — somehow she did not think of defeat — but knowing the red slaughter that there must be down there in the lower town, when Lord Newcastle’s guns began to speak. There would be work for the women then, and as yet they were an army with few camp followers, for the swiftly moving warfare of that autumn was not the kind that encumbered itself with women among the baggage train. They would need every woman they could gather, presently. Every woman ...
At that moment Davie Morrison, the Scots surgeon who had accompanied the army, stepped out from the doorway of the Falcon on his way down to the church. They generally carried the wounded to the church, churches being big and strong walled for defence, and easily found. She leaned out, and called down to him, ‘Surgeon Morrison, wait but a moment. I am coming with you.’
He raised a raw-boned Scots face under a thatch of greying sandy hair, but she had already drawn back from the window. She caught up her cloak lying across the foot of the bed, dropped a kiss on the top of Moll’s head, and, with a parting injunction to the nurse whose mouth was still open for the protest she had not yet had time to voice, ran from the room and down the stairs.
The Scots surgeon had reopened the street door and stood waiting for her as she fled out to him, fastening her cloak. She saw the startled look in his greenish eyes and knew that he had not realized who it was that had called to him, and was not best pleased. ‘Leddy Fairfax, this is no time for pretty gestures and angels o’ maircy play-acting!’ he said sternly. ‘Aye, ye’ve no need to tell me ye’re Lord Vere’s daughter and followed yer father’s camp i’ the Low Countries; ye’ve told us all, often enough — and ye’ll have followed it in leddy-like fashion, I’m thinking. It’s the rough camp following lassies that can thole the sight of blood, I’m wanting now.’
As she drew the door to behind her, Anne answered him with the flash of fierce laughter that was always to come to her in time of danger. ‘Yes, I followed my father’s camp in leddy-like fashion; do not hold it against me. I do not faint at the sight of blood and dare say that I am as strong and willing as any of your rough camp following lassies, and I can obey orders.’
‘Ye’d better, as ye’ll gang out as fast as ye came, Tom Fairfax’s wife though ye be,’ said Davie Morrison. He hesitated an instant, looking down at Lady Fairfax, and for the first time really seeing her. He saw a woman short and thickset and hardy as a fell pony, saw moreover the resolution of the brilliant hazel eyes under the strong brows that seemed more fitted to a man than a fine lady. ‘Come away down, then,’ he said.
The drums had fallen silent, and the straight street was all but deserted as they hurried down it. The women had swept their children within doors, and the men were for the most part with the troops at the barricades and breastworks. Only the snow, churned to a brown half-frozen slush under foot, told of the great coming and going of men and horses. The snowy churchyard was full of reserves. Farmer-faced pikemen in back-and-breasts and still comb-camps, musketeers more homely in leather jerkins and breeches of grey native kersey, leaning on their musket rests among the gravestones and the old quiet yews; and all with their waiting in their faces. In the churchyard gate Anne checked an instant to glance towards the bridge, and the strongly manned breastworks on the far side. And even as she looked, the waiting was over. It ended with the deep reverberating boom of a culverin from the rising ground across the river, and a ball crashed into the bridge parapet, sending up a fountain of broken stone.
‘Come away in,’ Surgeon Morrison said. ‘Ye’ll have work for your hands soon enough, I’m thinking, and I’ve nae wish that ye should become work for mine.’
And she followed him into the hollow gloom of the church, where woolsacks had been piled against the high windows to give cover to the sharp-shooters posted at every chink that faced the river. Outside, it had been cold, with the raw grey coldness of sleet, but within the church the cold was like death. And scarcely had she crossed the threshold than the culverin roared again, and above the crash of the landing ball rose a sharp cry that seemed to tear the grey morning apart.
‘Aye, it begins, I’m thinking,’ said Surgeon Morrison.
All that short December day, Lord Newcastle played upon the bridge and lower town with his eight-pounder culverin and little yapping sakers, striving to soften up the defence; then sending in wave after wave of Foot to attack the breastworks where the raw militia stood their ground. All the short December day the ridiculous little army of raw Wharfedale yeomen and Bradford weavers held the bridge against overwhelming odds, toughed and kindled to a kind of heroism by the tall man in black armour who seemed everywhere at once. And Anne, working with a handful of other women, under Surgeon Morrison’s orders, in the icy church where long dead Vavasours slept gravely effigied in stone beneath their pinnacled canopies, heard the intermittent boom of the guns, the rattle of musketry, the surf-roar of cries and yells, cheering and counter cheering.
The light in the shot-torn church was already beginning to fade, and the grey shadows were creeping out from behind the columns and the quiet crusader tombs, when Anne, busy with the wound in a pikeman’s shoulder after Surgeon Morrison had got the bullet out, became aware of a sharper and more ragged note rising through the tumult of battle, and glanced up at the marksman in the shattered window above her, and cried above the uproar, ‘What is it now, friend?’
The little man was in the act of tipping the charge from one of the Twelve Apostles on his bandolier into the barrel of his musket, his hands were busy with wad and bullet and rammer, his narrowed gaze never leaving the scene outside. ‘The Amalkites have got another house on the river side, that’s what ‘tis; and our lads are going in now to rout ‘em out! There’s Captain Lister at their heads a-waving of his sword like Joshua at the battle of Jericho!’ He returned his musket to its rest across the ledge of the window and patted the beech-wood stock as a man patting the neck of a horse; waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect shot, his small wedge-shaped face immobile in the faint snowlight through the shattered window. Anne, busy again with the torn flesh under her hands, heard the crack of the musket shot above her, and for the moment the air was thick with the reek of burned powder.
She did not look up again or ask any more questions. If the Royalists turned their flank, that would be the end; but it was not in her hands. For her, just now, the thing was to stop one man bleeding to death.
The musket cracked again above her, and presently again, until at last, as the ringing deafness that each discharge brought with it lifted from her ears, and the acrid smoke drifted away to join the smoke that hung ever more densely under the roof, she heard the little marksman chanting whole triumphant verses from the Psalms as a king of battle hymn. ‘I will praise the Lord, with my whole heart; I will show forth all thy marvellous works. When mine enemies are turned back they shall fall and perish at thy presence. Done it! Done it by t’Lord Harry!’ His hands were busy with the next charge his gaze narrowed and intent as ever, but his voice cracked and swooped above her. ‘Ma’s t’way; set ‘em running like hares i’ t’corn! Eh, well done lads!’
She had finished with her pikeman, and left him sitting with his back to a tomb, nursing his arm and sweating, when a shuffling tramp of feet sounded at the west door, and several men came in carrying more wounded. She went towards them, and found herself looking down at John Lister; at the marred and rather horrible thing that was left of John Lister. The house on the river bank had not been retaken without a price to be paid.
She heard her own voice, level and clear, bidding them set him down here — just here — and fetch a lantern. But she knew that there was no need for light, even before she put back the blood sodden fair hair to come at the wound, before Surgeon Morrison, kneeling at his other wide, looked up and shook his head.
John Lister had been shot in the temple, only quite a small wound, with blue edges but there was nothing to do for him but let him die. He was unconscious but something in her could not leave him to die alone.
When he was dead, she got up from her knees, and left him without lingering, and turned to the next torn body that needed her.
She was confusedly aware of a spent and ragged cheering in the world outside; the tumult sinking little by little into an aching quiet. Somebody said that the enemy were drawing off for the night, but she could no longer take it in. For the moment she was beyond taking in anything very clearly. She saw Thomas standing bareheaded in the church doorway, and had a feeling that she had seen him there before, in the course of the day, though she had been too busy to notice him. ‘Get some food in from the town, and a couple of braziers,’ she heard him order somebody.
The Puritan preacher, cut short in his reading, protested harshly, ‘Braziers in the Lord’s House?’
‘The Lord shall not begrudge the comfort of a brazier in His House to men wounded in His service, friend,’ Fairfax said. Across the huddled forms and through the smoky lantern-laced shadows, his eyes met Anne’s, and both of them had space to be aware of each other for the first time that day. Anne was dirty and dishevelled, her hair falling wildly about her face, her gown stained and torn at one shoulder where a man’s sweating hand had gripped it in agony. Young Lister’s blood was on her hands and the blood of other men beside; and a smear of it was on her forehead. And for one fleeting moment of vision she was beautiful in her husband’s eyes. He put up his hand to her in a small gesture of salute, and then turned and strode out again into the December dusk.
Later, much later, Anne found herself back at the Falcon without any very clear idea of how she got there. Moll was asleep. Christian brought warm water from somewhere and washed her as though she were a child. Anne crept shivering under the coverlid of the great bed, beside Moll. She looked at her hands in the light of the low bedside lamp, as though expecting to find blood still on them. She longed for the comfort of the child’s little loving body in the curve of her arm. But her hands were icy despite the fire, and she dared not touch the little girl for fear of waking her. She fell asleep still shivering, with the mutter of voices from the Council Room below stairs sounding as though under her pillow.
In the candlelit inn parlour a tragic choice was being debated. The line of the Wharfe must be abandoned, there was no question as to that; the choice lay between retiring on the faithful towns of the West Riding, thereby cutting themselves off from the supply base and arsenal at Hull, or making their new defence line on the Ouse, keeping in touch with Hull, but abandoning all the country to the south and the West Riding to Newcastle’s mercy.
It seemed to Anne that she had scarcely fallen asleep before she was awake again to the sound of her own whispered name, and the knowledge of someone bending over her. She dragged her eyes open and saw by the light of the lamp she had left burning that it was Fairfax, still wearing his black harness as though he had that moment come from battle.
‘What is it, Thomas?’
‘Nan, you must rouse up Christian and the bairn, and be ready to ride in half an hour.’
She was sitting up before he had finished speaking. She slid out from under the covers, careful even in that moment not to wake Mary, and set her bare and still cold feet to the icy floor. ‘We’re leaving the Wharfe? We’re pulling back?’ Her body cried out against the further call on it, and her mind cried out in revolt at the withdrawal.
‘We have no choice,’ Fairfax said wearily. ‘We have held off ten times our number and three field guns for one clay, with musket fire. Now we are down to our last round, and we cannot hold them another day with pikes and our bare hands. The victory is to us, but we have bought it dearly in dead and wounded, and it is a barren victory. We march for Selby in half an hour, to make a new line on the Ouse.’
‘I will have them ready,’ Anne said, reaching as she spoke for her cloak to cover her shift.
He looked down at her, seeing the tense weariness of her face in the light of the little lamp. There were bruise-coloured shadows under her eyes, and it seemed to him that he could still see the smear of blood on her forehead. He took the cloak and put it round her. ‘Nan, we shall pass within two miles of Nun Appleton, tonight. If you choose to take the bairn and go home, I shall remember that you rode with me all these first two months. I shall remember with pride and gratitude, that you were with me through this day at Tadcaster, my dear.’
She looked up at him, and shook her head. ‘I go where you go, Thomas, I and the bairn also.’
Chapter 5 - The Rider of the White Horse
That twelve mile ride through the deepening drifts was not an experience that Anne was likely to forget; but with the rest, the driving snow and the protesting ache of her weary body that made it hard even to sit her horse, the cold and the sense of looming danger, she remembered also Corporal William Hill, a hard bitten veteran of the Swedish wars, who had taken the child from her weary arms and settled her in the crook of his own bridle arm.
‘Give her back to me,’ Anne said. ‘You cannot fight with a bairn on your saddle bow.’
‘Gin ther’s trouble, I’ll give her back to thee, My Lady,’ said Corporal Hill. ‘Gin ther’s none, she’ll do graidley where she is.’
There had been no trouble, and at dawn they had clattered into the narrow streets of Selby; quiet and gentle lowland Selby gathered about its grey abbey church, that seemed scarcely to rouse from its dreaming for the sudden influx of weary and battle stained men and horses, and wounded.
Once again Lord Fairfax made his headquarters in the principal inn of the town. And the long upstairs parlour of the George and Dragon at Selby became the place where Fairfax and his officers met in Council, ate their meals and lounged in off duty hours.
The meals were sparse enough, but on Christmas Eve, Major General Gifford, a new acquisition to their ranks, had unearthed a few bottles of fine Muscatel. And to do justice to the thin liquid sunshine, Anne had gone to her travelling chest and brought out her cherished Venice glasses, that stood to her now for all the graciousness of life left behind, from their place among the few petticoats that she had allowed herself. And the fragile glasses, long and slender, gave to the scanty meal a sense of occasion almost as much as did the pale bright wine that sang an
d sparkled in them.
Now, sitting in her place at the foot of the table — for she generally supped with the rest — Anne was wishing that she had not brought out her cherished Venice calyxes, because Sir Hugh Cholmley, who had joined them after avoiding Tadcaster, was half drunk and, as always when in that state, becoming slightly offensive.
Her gaze dropped him with distaste, to move among the other faces gathered in the candlelight. She saw her father-in-law at the head of the table, his long thin features even more anxious than usual. She saw his son gently swirling the wine in his glass and watching the swirl of it. Odd how alike they were in repose, those two, until Thomas’s long swarthy face woke and took flame at the call to action or the touch of a friend’s spirit on his own. She saw Major General Gifford, the provider of the golden wine, narrow-eyed in the candlelight, watching his own rapier hand on the table before him, idly flexing the fingers and rotating the supple swordsman’s wrist.
They had been talking over the situation through most of supper; and the situation did not make for cheerful talk. Here they were, back to the line of the Ouse, with nine hundred men, little stores or ammunition and no artillery, while the Royalists, with ten times their number of well equipped troops, and unlimited supplies reaching them from Holland, where the brittle and valiant little Queen was buying them with the proceeds of the Crown Jewels, were the masters of the countryside. In the fortnight since Tadcaster, Lord Newcastle had thrust forward to Pomfret, and posted detachments in villages all across the Ainstey, cutting the clothing towns completely off from help. Any time now, Anne supposed, they would hear that Bradford, too, had fallen.
The Rider of the White Horse Page 6