She swung round. ‘Mary, I’m leaving Little Moll and Christian with you. I’m away back to Bradford tomorrow.’
She saw Mary’s gentle pink and white face aghast, her mouth open. ‘Anne, no! You cannot mean it! Anne, why?’
‘Thomas needs me,’ Anne said.
‘Does he say so in that letter? He should not ask you, not with the countryside in this state.’
Anne did not answer that directly. ‘Thomas needs me,’ she said again, clearly and deliberately.
The two women looked at each other a moment, and then Mary turned her fussing in another direction. ‘But how will you make the journey?’
‘There’s a supply wagon going up tomorrow, you heard William say so.’
‘And you’ll ride in the tail of the cart like the veriest camp follower? Anne, you cannot do it — you’re young, I know. You do not see these things —’
Anne flared out at her between fury and reckless laughter. ‘What else am I but a camp follower? Yes, I’ll ride in the tail of the cart like any scarlet petticoated drab following her man, and thank God there’s a cart tail to ride in!’ She gathered up the orange-tawny gown, and swept to the door, then turned, looking back at Mary’s distressed face. ‘Mary, I am sorry and I thank you for the dress. You will look after Moll for me, won’t you, until I can come back again.’
‘Yes, yes, of course, love, but not in the tail of a cart! If you must go, I’ll speak to Mr Arthington for our own carriage.’
‘Which then I should have to get back to you again. No, Mary, the cart’s tail is best.’
And next day, jolting in the back of the supply wagon with her bundle beside her, Lady Fairfax set out for Bradford in her new orange-tawny gown.
The miles passed uneventfully, save that once a man on horseback passed them, riding hard from Bradford towards Leeds, who called something to the driver in passing; she could not hear what, but she thought that the driver whipped up his lumbering team more often thereafter, as though there were some added call for speed. She thought also, once or twice, that she heard something above the rumble of the wagon wheels that might be thunder or might be guns.
It was almost evening when the way began to run ever more steeply downhill; and she knew that they were coming down into Bradford. The rumbling grind of the great wheels changed its note and the vibration increased through every timber of the wagon, through all her weary body, and she knew that the cobbles of Goodman’s End were beneath them. They swayed and rumbled down Ivegate into the market place, and lurched to a stop.
As Anne rose in her place, stiff and aching and more than a little sick, and with the escort corporal’s help struggled to the ground, it seemed to her that the sense of increased urgency that she had felt on the road when the rider went by was thrumming in Bradford also. People were coming and going, a crowd gathering before the toll Boothe and on the steps of the market cross. But she did not wait to ask what the shouted message had been. She was in too wild a haste to be at Mistress Sharpe’s house.
The whole of Bradford seemed thrumming like a disturbed bee skep. Through a gap between the leaning gables the staunch grey tower of the church looked down into Ivegate, and glancing up at it in greeting, she saw men at work up there amid a spider’s web of ropes, and the face of the tower hung with woolsacks as it had been before. What did it all mean? Well, she would know soon enough now. There was a sense of homecoming in her as she caught her first sight of the proud white unicorn hanging far over the street. She was almost running as she came towards the door. It stood open, the shadows cavernous beyond it; and someone was looming up through them as through dark water. She heard the quick tramp of spurred feet, and on the threshold all but ran into Fairfax himself, coming out.
He checked with a startled exclamation, and swung round on her so that for an instant she thought he was angry; Thomas who had never been angry with her yet. ‘Nan! A’ God’s name what do you here?’
She had given back half a step before his vehemence, but she gave back no further, standing braced before him, her hands gripped together. ‘I thought it possible that you needed me. I came in the supply wagon.’
‘And Little Moll?’ he demanded.
She shook her head. ‘I left her with your sister Mary.’ He had drawn her swiftly into the shadowed passage. ‘Thank God you’re safe — oh, thank God you’re safe!’
She looked up at him, seeing even in the sudden gloom how white he was; white and haggard under the dingy yellow of his sickness. Yes, she had been right; another bout of the old sickness. ‘What has happened, Thomas? The whole town seems buzzing like a hornet’s nest — and now you —’
‘Lord Newcastle’s forces are out from Sheffield and Rotherham,’ he told her briefly: ‘The news came in scarce four hours ago that they have taken Howley Hall.’
‘Then that must have been the guns that I heard,’ Anne said searching his face with questioning eyes, for the significance behind his words. ‘All Lord Newcastle’s forces, just to take Howley Hall?’
‘As a basis for operations against Bradford,’ Fairfax said. And so the sense of urgency was explained.
‘I should maybe send you straight back to Leeds, but you must have passed within three miles of the Papist Army, and to send you back now may be to send you into worse danger than you face by staying here. Oh Anne, Anne, why did you come?’
‘Because when I got your letter, I thought it possible that you needed me,’ Anne told him again.
He looked down at her a moment, and then pulled her roughly and hurriedly into his arms. ‘God bless you and keep you safe, my Nan; my most sweet and most foolish Nan. I must be away — Mistress Sharpe is within.’
Then he was gone, past the small drippy-nosed boy in the doorway, striding up the street and away.
*
Towards dusk two evenings later, Lord Fairfax marched into Bradford with all that could safely or unsafely be spared of the Leeds and Halifax garrisons. Anne, leaning from the window, strained her ears for the jolting rumble of guns coining after. But there were no guns. The available store of powder was too small to make them usable, and therefore they had had to be left in Leeds.
Several days’ lull followed, and at Bradford the defences were strengthened by every possible means. But defence, they knew, could not save them. In the dark-raftered, tobacco-hazed parlour of the Unicorn, the Council of War sat, dusty and weary. And when all possible and impossible methods of defence had been discussed and argued, agreed and disposed of, Lord Fairfax exchanged a glance with his son, and rose to his feet at the head of the black oak table.
‘So much for defence, Gentlemen. It may be that we can hold off My Lord Newcastle’s attack — though this town is about the most untenable in Yorkshire — but our chances of breaking his hold on us afterwards do not exist. We have not sufficient men, nor powder, nor shot, to drive them off, and from the reports of our own scouts it appears that they are making all preparations to maintain a siege if their attack fails. We have supplies for ten days, here in Bradford, and no means of getting more before they close down on us. Therefore I propose that we take the initiative; I propose that we carry the war into the enemy’s country, march out of here in two days’ time, and forestall them by an attack on their headquarters at Howley Hall.’
There was a moment’s startled pause, while under the wreathing blue tobacco haze, the men around the Council table looked at their Commander-in-Chief, and at each other; looked at the quiet dark son whose plan they guessed it to be. General Gifford lounged in his chair, an arm along the back of it, hand cupping the bowl of his pipe. ‘Too much of a risk, My Lord, without artillery and against a force three times the size of our own. Better pull out the whole army and fall back on Leeds again.’
‘And abandon B-Bradford?’ Tom Fairfax said quickly.
‘We’ve abandoned more towns than Bradford since the war started. Should be getting used to it by now,’ Gifford said, his thin sardonic face cracking into a grin.
Fairfax,
suddenly longing for the sense of reinforcements that came of having William at his shoulder, said, ‘Major General Gifford, we shall not win this war by retreating out of towns.’
Chapter 10 - ‘Thy mercy in the morning’
And so during the next few days, while the scouts watched Howley Hall for the first sign of movement, matters were hurriedly put in train for the attack. Several days’ rations of biscuit and hard yellow cheese were served out to the troops, fodder for the horses, ammunition and slow-match was issued, and every musketeer had his twelve apostles and powder horn filled with powder and his bullet bag replenished. And then, early on the morning of June the thirtieth, the little army marched out, three thousand men all told. And when they were gone, the town was silent enough; a silence that seemed to Anne a weight upon the heart.
‘Let us go t’still-room,’ Mistress Sharpe said, when the last fading tramp of marching men was gone from them. ‘I picked t’Morello cherries last night, and in this close weather they’ll be tarnished before we can preserve them if tis na’ done today.’
At about mid morning, just as the cherries were finished, a low muttering rumble of sound stole down the long slopes of the moor, and set the sweet steaming air of the still-room quivering; and then, even as the two women turned to look at each other, muttered away into silence. ‘Mebbe ‘twas nowt but t’thunder,’ Mistress Sharpe said. “Tis heavy enough, I’m thinking.’
But even as she spoke, the low growl set the air quivering again; and Anne turned and swept up the three steps into the garden. Mistress Sharpe was with her, and the scared maids hovering behind.
The sound was more tangible out here, a deep boom that muttered and grumbled to and fro, flung back from this side and that by the steep valleys. ‘That is not thunder,’ Anne said, and then, ‘But surely they could not have reached Howley yet?’
The other woman shook her head. ‘We heard t’guns at Howley when’t was taken, but further — much further off than that. Yon’s not much further than Drightinton — up Adderton Moor, maybe.’
Anne’s hands tightened convulsively upon each other. ‘Oh God!’ she said, very softly, ‘what does that mean?’
‘Happen My Lord Newcastle has had word of their coming and marched out to meet them.’
‘If only we knew,’ Anne whispered. ‘If only we could see what is happening up there.’
Somehow the day passed; hour after dragging hour, until towards evening the guns fell silent. Anne and Mistress Sharpe had come out again into the garden, away from the house where there seemed no air to breathe.
Mistress Sharpe’s narrow, high-walled garden had the beauty that comes to a garden only through being very much beloved, and things grew in it for her that would not grow elsewhere in Bradford. There was even a vine such as grew in the monastery garths of an older England. The vine and the rosemary grew still in most lowland gardens: rosemary for remembrance, the vine for Our Lord, who likened himself to it. And their peace was over all Mistress Sharpe’s garden.
But no peace could reach Anne that evening, as she paced to and fro along the short turf path. The hay in the fields close about the town had been cut, and the scent of the new mown swaithes came to her as she paced, mingled with the scents of the garden; thyme and lavender and bergamot as her skirts brushed by; the white foxglove that grew beside the wall must have strayed in; for Christian said that white foxgloves belonged to the Good People, and could not be planted in any garden, but came only by their own choosing. Wild white foxglove, wild white unicorn ... The white flower with the shadow of the honey-questing bee at its heart stabbed her with a piercing awareness of beauty, of the transience of the shining moment. Gradually, through the past war-racked months, she had become an immeasurably richer woman than she had been through all the quiet Nun Appleton years. And with increase of riches she had become immeasurably more vulnerable, more agonizingly afraid of loss, having so much more to lose. She knew that it should not be like that; Frances would have told her that it was the people who had little who were afraid to lose it ... But she was afraid — afraid — afraid —
In a while she checked her pacing beside Mistress Sharpe where she sat on the turf bench with the little cat playing among the grey folds of her skirt. ‘Surely we must hear soon — some word must come. The guns fell silent an hour ago.’
‘We shall hear in good time,’ said Mistress Sharpe, ‘or in bad.’
‘Don’t say that!’ Anne cried with a thrill of terror in her voice. ‘Don’t say “Or in bad” — it might come true!’
Mistress Sharpe sat perfectly still, her back against the wall, her hands, which Anne had so seldom seen unoccupied, lying in her lap. But her serenity had become brittle. ‘If ‘tis true, then ‘tis true already; the guns fell silent an hour ago.’ She looked up at Anne; the fading light on her fine-boned highland face. ‘Either way, there’s no spoken word can harm thy man, or mine — or mine.’ And then, with something of bitterness in her tone, ‘At the least, tha’ can pray for thy man with a whole heart, believing in the Cause he mebbe dies for.’
There was a little silence. Anne looked down at her with a sudden warmth of sympathy that brought with it also gratitude. Dorothy Sharpe, with her Royalist leanings, had been very kind to the woman whose husband was the leading spirit of the Parliamentary Army in the north. She seldom spoke of her loyalty to the King, though she never denied it, and now ... ‘It must be very hard for you,’ Anne said, seeing the other woman’s situation as it were for the first time — with fully open eyes. ‘Yes, I can pray for Thomas with a whole heart; and for our victory, up yonder.’
‘Oh, I think that I pray for that, too,’ Mistress Sharpe said in a low toneless voice. ‘If I had enough courage, I should not; but My Lord Newcastle will be none so gentle a conqueror — not to Bradford that has denied him so long; and it is hard to have courage when one is about women’s business.’ She raised those dark shadowed eyes of hers to Anne’s face, her hands suddenly writhing together in her lap. ‘Lady Fairfax, I’ve a bairn on t’way.’
Anne found that she had caught the other woman’s hands and was holding them. ‘I did not know. Why did you not tell me?’
‘I did not know myself till a few days since. I have na’ told my man.’
‘I’m so glad for you!’ Anne said. ‘I will be glad for you! It will be all right!’
‘Will it? We waited so long; seven years — and now mebbe Thomas will be seven months dead when the wee lamb is born.’
‘No,’ Anne said vehemently. ‘Not your Thomas, nor mine!’
They were silent a moment; then as a gust of soft wind set the garden shivering, Anne cried out as though in pain, ‘How sweet the honeysuckle smells this evening! I never knew a sweeter garden than this, small though it be.’
‘It is the smallness that saves it; t’high walls keep off some-thing of t’wind from t’moors.’ Better to go on talking, better than the waiting silence that the guns had left. ‘There’s things that t’wind blows in over t’wall, all t’same, wind or mebbe a bird; like my foxglove yonder. They do say that the white foxglove is a fairy flower, and comes only as a gift from t’Good People. But mebbe tha’ll not believe in t’Good People; there’s many that doesn’t, nowadays.’
‘I have been brought up to believe in no supernatural beings save God and his Angels,’ Anne said rigidly. She was silent a moment, her gaze on the white foxglove that was beginning now in the fading light under a colourless crystal sky to be a glimmering and enchanted thing; then she drew a long quivering breath. ‘But God help me, tonight I wish — oh I’m wicked, wicked — He seems so far off, and I’d be so glad of a small once-human saint to pray to — or — to leave my ribbon or a grass garland for a White Lady by a pool!’
Mistress Sharpe took her hands slowly from Anne’s and rose, shaking out her grey skirts. The movement had been gentle, but there was nothing gentle in her voice, and its old wood pigeon softness cracked on a note between laughter and horror. ‘Gin there was a White Lady lived down
at t’mill pond, she’d not be there for thy bonnie grass garland tonight, My Lady. Happen she’d be up to Lord Newcastle’s head-quarters, wringing her hands at Lord Newcastle and crying, “Woe to Bradford! Alas and alas, spare poor Bradford!”’ She caught herself back as though from the edge of hysteria.
Even as they stared at each other with dilated eyes, there rose a distant murmur of sound, formless, ragged, distressful. A sound that, as it drew nearer, was less marching than trudging, a weary and disheartened trudging with something of hurry in it that could have only one meaning. The two women listened as though held in a spell, hearing the sounds draw nearer; a ragged shout of orders, the leaden trudging filling all Ivegate.
Then Anne gathered her skirts and ran, back through the house, Mistress Sharpe close behind her, past the frightened maids huddled in a corner, to the street door. Ivegate was full of men, weary, red eyed, many of them wounded; straggling by in a ragged moving flood towards the market place.
A man had fallen out, and sat huddled on the scrubbed doorstep; and when Anne stooped and touched him on the shoulder, he raised a face streaked and dabbled with blood from a great gash in his head, and looked at her with dazed eyes. ‘What has happened?’ Anne demanded. ‘Oh, you’re sore hurt. Come away in.’
‘Na,’ he said dull. ‘I mun be after t’rest.’ But he seemed too dazed to move.
Mistress Sharpe had joined her, sending the maids scurrying for water and clean linen; and there on the doorstep Anne knelt, holding the man’s battered and bloody head between her hands; while the other women bathed and bound it. Only one soldier among so many; but he was the one who had fallen on their threshold, and they dealt with him with a passionate gentleness for the sake of all those other wounded men who he was not. When his wound was finally bandaged, Anne fetched him a mug of ale and gave him to drink; and as the life began to steal back into his face, demanded again, ‘What has happened? For God’s sake tell us what has happened.’
The Rider of the White Horse Page 12