She went down the circular stair slowly, clinging to the newel post as she lowered herself from stair to stair. Half-way down, where the door to Master and Mistress Sharpe’s bedroom opened from the stairway, a little window looked into Ivegate, and she checked a few moments with a child’s superstitious hope that if she stood at the window, Thomas would come up the street while she was looking out. But nothing stirred in Ivegate, except the great painted sign of the Unicorn Inn next door, swinging to and fro in the wind.
The door at the stair foot stood open, and she caught the saffron flicker of firelight on the wintry air. She went through into the kitchen, closing it behind her, and crossed to the hearth. Master Sharpe was a prosperous man, and his wife kept a couple of servant girls, but they were scouring crocks out at the back — Anne could hear the clatter — and Mistress Sharpe was bending over the fire, a clear red fire with a heart of peat whose fragrance filled the big low-beamed room, tending something in a black pipkin among the ashes. Master Sharpe himself sat on the oak settle, pulling on his boots preparatory to going back to duty after a few hours at home. Every man in Bradford was a soldier now. A big man with red ruffled hair, and round pale blue eyes in a weather-beaten face that smiled very pleasantly as he greeted her. Mistress Sharpe turned from the fire and rose also, to make her welcome. She was younger than her husband, though she might have been almost any age, for her bones under the thin dry skin of her face had the ageless beauty that is the heritage of some Highland women. ‘Ma’s down then, My Lady,’ she said, in the throaty voice that had always made Anne think of wood-pigeons crooning in the beech woods on a hot day. ‘And tha’ll be fair clemmed, I’m thinking. Come to t’fire and get thee warm. I’ve summat for thee here that shall put new life into thee.’
Anne sank on to a low stool, holding out those slim strong hands of hers to the leaping warmth.
‘There,’ said Mistress Sharpe, and set beside her on the hob a mazerwood bowl of creamy porridge and a horn spoon. “Tis only t’same as t’bairn had, but food’s scarcer in Bradford than ‘twas when you were here in the autumn, My Lady, and grows scarcer every day, with the town a-swarm wi’ men, and the lowland corn and meat that we canna’ come by in these unhappy days.’ She was not complaining, simply explaining to her guest why it was that she could give her no better fare.
Anne looked up, cradling the bowl between her hands for the warmth that seeped through the mazerwood. ‘I had heard that there were many men coming in to my husband’s standard.’ She turned to include the Master of the house, who had taken down from the back of the settle a long cutting-rapier that looked as though it had maybe seen service against the Armada, and was buckling on the worn leather slings.
Mistress Sharpe stooped without a word to set another peat on the fire, then turned to her spinning wheel beside the hearth; and it was her husband who answered, testing a buckle. ‘Aye so, My Lady. Ever since he rode in this week a more a-gone, and word went out as t’Rider of t’White Horse was cum, they been swarming in from over t’hills.’
‘The Rider of the White Horse?’ Anne said, questioningly.
‘Aye. But of course tha’ll not be knowing about that.’ Master Sharpe came back to the fire, and stood with his arm along the great mantel beam, looking down at her. ‘This was t’way on it, tha’ sees. Sir Thomas cum riding in on that great white stallion of his, wi’ all his Horse and Foot behind him; deadbeat they looked to a man, and more than one of ‘em scaithed and bloody. And, Lady Fairfax, ‘twas as though all Bradford rang like a peal of bells to see them come. ‘Twas just a sunset, a fine fierce sunset, and when he drew rein before t’kirkyard gate, a great golden finger of light cum down through t’clouds and touched on him and t’horse, like as mebbe the Lord had reached out a great shining finger ... And Josiah Crabtree the preacher — ah, a powerful preacher, though apt to be carried away — he leaps on to the mounting block beside the gate, and began to cry out yon piece from the Good Book, about t’Rider of t’White Horse, and t’crowd took it up; and that was how it began.’ He smiled. ‘Ah now, he’ll always be Black Tom to us — begging your pardon, My Lady; but there’s no denying the other has a finer ring to it for a rallying cry.’
Mistress Sharpe was still spinning, withdrawn into herself, into a gentle remoteness far from what was passing, while the little grey cat who had been sleeping before the fire tried to catch the dancing bobbins on the floor. Across the hearth, Anne watched her, as the door shut behind the Master of the house, and his tramping footsteps died away. Mistress Sharpe was an unusual thing in Bradford — a person of Royalist sympathies. Anne had a shrewd suspicion that it was her influence that had kept Master Sharpe from accepting the commission Thomas had offered him last October. She wondered whether she would voice something of her own opinion now. But Mistress Sharpe only went on spinning, smiling a little at her own hand as it guided the yarn.
‘Finish thy porridge before ‘tis cold, then, My Lady,’ Mistress Sharpe said presently. ‘I’ll put a fire in t’parlour if tha’d like, but happen then be warmer in here.’
Anne took a spoonful of the creamy porridge, and looked up. ‘I’d liefer stay here. I want to be warm, and I want company.’
But she was alone, for all that, for both Mistress Sharpe and her maids were busy in the dairy, and the short winter day was drawing in to twilight, when she heard the step that she had been listening for coming through the house, and the door of the big shadowy kitchen opened, and Fairfax stood on the threshold.
Anne rose from before the fire and stood waiting, passive to all outward seeming, her hands folded together against the dark stuff of her gown.
‘Nan!’ he said, and came swiftly across the flagged floor and caught her hands, pulling them apart. ‘Nan my dear, I could not come before. William told me that you were here, and Little Moll. Where is Moll?’
‘In bed and sleeping like a dormouse,’ Anne said. ‘Close on thirty miles is a long rough ride for a little girl.’ She turned him a little as she spoke, searching his dark face anxiously in the grey dregs of the daylight. ‘Thomas, you’re not well. Is it the old sickness? I have brought some of the poppy heads and camomile with me. We can get onions —’
Fairfax shook his head. ‘Nan, Nan, I haven’t time to be ill. I haven’t time for your gentle doctoring; not just now.’ Suddenly he drew her towards him, and bent to her upturned face and kissed her with a great kindness, his lips and lashes cold and rain-wet as his hands had been. He slipped into the broad flat tongue of the dales, as she had heard him do so often with William, and Little Moll; never before with her. ‘Eh, lass, but I’m full fain to see thee, none the less ... Tha’s bonnie i’ efirelight; didst a’ know?’
Chapter 7 - Leeds
Anne was perfectly right; she was always right about Thomas’s health. It was only in the things of his mind and spirit that she sometimes made mistakes. Fairfax was ailing miserably, and it was the old sickness, the stone. All through January, while he struggled to make soldiers out of clubmen, and the constant raids and skirmishes went on, it grumbled like the menace of distant thunder among the hills, wearing him down, with bouts of pain that never became. unbearably severe, and fever that never held him from his work.
Nor even — towards the end of the month, when fresh supplies of arms, and reinforcements under Captain Hotham had reached him from Selby — from retaking Leeds between eleven and four o’clock of a snowy day.
A few hours later, after seeing his men quartered and taking stock of the prisoners and captured war supplies, he was in the Arthington town house in Boar Lane, being wept over by his sister Mary; dear, fat, untidy, emotional Mary, always prone to tears and more so now than usual because of the strain of the past months culminating in today’s affair of guns and barricades.
And later still that night, having been fed by Mary on the best she had, which was sadly wasted on him for he was too spent to eat, he sat alone in his own little closet, which she had given over to him with a fire in the hearth, when he asked for
somewhere to write his dispatches.
‘... A party of dismounted dragooners of Sergeant Major Forbes’ division then ran forward and opened fire on the second breastwork; and succeeded after upward of half an hour’s sharp fighting in carrying the position ...’ How grey it all sounded, grey and flat and spent of all emotion. This evening it had been different; this evening, in the first blurring of the January dusk, when they had swept aside the last of the hard-held breastworks beyond the bridge and stormed into Briggate on a wave of cheering, to meet William and his club-men, broken through from Headrow. He had forgotten his sick stomach then — he had scarcely remembered it all day. He had known only that he was fighting in a just Cause, fighting God’s battles and for the England of free men that he loved, and that to him, by God’s Grace, was the victory. Now it was over; the fires burned out. Nothing left but the grey ashes of neatly written words in a dispatch; and he was tired, so tired; aware again now that the guns were silent, that he was a sick man, that his head throbbed, and the pains of hell were waking in his belly.
He propped his aching head on his hand, and wrote on, neat line following neat line; drawing at last to a close. ‘Of prisoners we have taken four hundred and fifty, to whom, since we have no means of housing nor feeding them, I must tomorrow offer freedom on their parole not again to take up arms against the forces of Parliament. We have taken beside, fourteen barrels of powder and much ball and a great store of muskets which shall serve us well. Also two demi-culverin with some store of nine-pound shot ... Written this 23rd day of January in the year 1643, at Boar Lane, Leeds. My Lord, I remain, your Lordship’s most dutiful servant and son.’
He shook the sandbox over the sheet, folded and directed it, and sealed it after a frowning hunt for wax among the chaos of his sister’s writing table. Then with a sense of relief, he drew another sheet towards him, to write a few hasty lines to Anne; to tell her that by God’s Grace they had had the victory, that all was well with him, that he should be content when he saw her again, and she was to give his love to Little Moll.
When that, too, was written and sanded and sealed, he called to his orderly, ‘Swaine, is Lieutenant D’Oyley below? Ask him to step upstairs to me, will you.’
‘Sir.’ The man saluted, and clattered away, and a few moments later, young Charles D’Oyley stood in his place, doffing his steel comb-cap in salute.
Fairfax picked up the three packets before him. ‘Ah, Charles. See that is away by first light to my father in Selby. You had better take a small escort, a third of a troop should be enough; and send Corporal Hill back to Bradford with this dispatch for Captain Hodgson, and this —’ with a smile — ‘for Lady Fairfax.’
‘Sir,’ said D’Oyley and took the packets, then hesitated.
Fairfax looked up at him, his hands on the carved arms of his chair. ‘What is it, Charles?’
‘Captain Hotham is below stairs, Sir, demanding to see you — making a bit of a scene.’
More trouble! He had known that it must come. Young Hotham, who seemed to be under the curious misapprehension that his business in this hideous war was to win personal advantage, had been furious when Fairfax had not given him command of one of today’s assault parties. Fairfax had hoped that the fighting might burn up his resentment for him, but evidently it had not done so. The fool had carried his grudge into battle and out again. ‘Did he say what he wanted?’
The galloper’s eye met his. ‘No, Sir, he said a private matter between himself and the General. But he’s — I think he’s on the edge of being drunk, and he’s talking rather wildly about favouritism and being passed over, and — and matters of that kind. Shall we throw him out, Sir?’
‘Matters of that kind?’ Fairfax echoed wearily. He straightened his shoulders with a barely perceptible jerk. ‘No Charles. Apart from anything else, this is my sister’s house, and I’d as lief not have it turned into a bear garden. Send him up.’
‘Very good, Sir.’ Charles D’Oyley looked disappointed, for he had rather hoped to have the throwing of Captain Hotham into the street.
He clattered down the stairs in his turn and, shortly after, Captain John Hotham strode into the room. Fairfax took one look at him and decided against bidding him to sit down. There were times when that helped, when it put a man at his ease, or even, as William who had served at sea would have said, took the wind out of his sails. This was not one of them. So he remained quietly seated, looking up at the young man who stood before him, truculent of manner, and bright and somewhat glassy of eye. D’Oyley had been right, the fellow was half drunk, a state which was becoming increasingly usual with him.
‘You wished to speak with me, Captain Hotham?’ Fairfax said after a moment.
The other came a pace nearer. ‘Yes, by God I wished to speak with you! I wish to ask you, General Sir Thomas Fairfax, for what reason you denied me my right to lead one of the storming parties today!’
Fairfax raised one black brow. ‘Right, Captain Hotham?’
‘Aye. Right!’ John Hotham laughed rather thickly. ‘Oh I know I couldn’t expect of you any command that Sir William set his fancy to; a man keeps the plums for his own kin, and who shall blame him; but tell me why I should stand by and see that fop Mildmay and even a black bag-trotter like Forbes given a command over my head!’
‘Because I judge them the better officers for the purpose.’
‘You judge! On what grounds? I’ve seen more service in the Low Countries than either of those two — more than General Sir Thomas Fairfax, who sits in judgement on me, come to that!’ He was almost choking in his fury. ‘You shall tell me why I have been passed over in this way! I demand it!’
Fairfax sat very still, very upright in his chair, his hands clenched on the carved arms, his face coldly impassive. ‘Your rights, your demands! Captain Hotham, you have no warrant whatsoever to question my authority, and there is no obligation upon me to account to my officers for any decision of mine. Nevertheless, I will account for this one to you, now and in full. You have several years’ experience in the Netherlands, and you can be an extremely efficient officer, with a dash and a trick of enterprise that could make you a very valuable one. You are also unreliable and becoming increasingly so. You are not one of those who retain their judgement when drunk. If you were, you would have realized that whatever your grievance, a few hours after battle, when the General has barely finished writing his dispatches and is bone weary, is scarcely the moment to come to him with childish complaints. There is your answer.’
John Hotham flushed, and his eyes widened a little blankly, then narrowed into bright slits. ‘Ah yes, of course! I make no doubt that Parliament had reasons just as good and watertight when they passed over my father to appoint yours Commander of this whole bloody little army! God, what an army! A man would fare better with the King — at least he wouldn’t be thrust aside from his rights for fear that he might steal a gleam or two of the General’s glory. The Chevaliers know how to treat a gentlemen —’
He broke off; and in the utter silence that closed over his thick rush of words, he sobered for the moment as though cold water had been dashed over him.
‘Yes?’ Fairfax said at last. ‘You speak, it seems, as one who knows?’
Hotham shrugged, trying to recover himself, to bluster it out. ‘Doesn’t everyone know? They couldn’t treat their good men much more foully than do their God damned Lordships of the two Houses.’ And then, with a crude viciousness, as his fury got the better of him again. ‘Maybe it’s because rather fewer of them had to buy their baronetcies!’
It was a jibe at the old white lion, who, deciding that the dignity of the Fairfax family required a baronetcy, had bought one accordingly for three thousand pounds; and a cowardly one that traded on the fact that the General could not possibly fling a gauntlet in the face of one of his own officers. But Fairfax’s chief feeling, as he rose to his feet to end the affair, was a disgusted pity for the way the man’s mind worked. ‘Captain Hotham, you forget yourself utterly. If
you wish to make accusations against my justice, the proper person for you to make them to now is the Commander-in-Chief himself. Lieutenant D’Oyley will be carrying my dispatches back to Selby at first light; you will hand over your companies here to Captain Tyrwhit, and ride with him and the escort.’
There was another tingling silence, and then Hotham said, completely sober now. ‘Are you sending me back to Lord Fairfax?’
‘Yes.’
‘Under escort?’
‘No. Pull yourself together, and you’ll make a good officer yet.’
John Hotham shrugged with a battered insolence. ‘I suppose I should be grateful for so much mercy.’
‘I think perhaps you should,’ Fairfax said quietly. ‘Good night, Captain Hotham.’
When he had gone, Tom Fairfax turned and moved heavily to the window, and stood beside the ragged sleeping linnet looking down into Boar Lane. He stood bowed together a little, his hand pressed against the right side of his belly where the pain of the old sickness clawed at him like a living and angry beast. Cholmley had been right, then. He saw again the inn parlour at Selby, and the coarse red face, heard the thick voice, ‘How much do you suppose young Hotham’s faith is worth?’ And the very thought of it filled him with the vague distaste he always felt for Sir Hugh. It was hard to think of him victorious over Henry Slingsby at Guiseborough, three days ago. That was a thing that Anne would not understand. When a man became an enemy, Anne ceased entirely to think of him as a friend. Fairfax had not enough singleness of purpose for that ... So Cholmley had been right about the Hothams’ jealousy and resentment. Could he have been right also in that muddled half accusation of something worse? Anyone, angry, might have spoken as young Hotham had done of the Chevaliers knowing how to treat a gentleman. That was nothing. But the way he had broken off, the moment of startled sobriety, the bluster as though to cover a slip?
The Rider of the White Horse Page 9