‘Thank you,’ said Sir Thomas Fairfax, gravely; and then dropping into the vernacular, ‘Eh lad, tha’s a bonnie shot; happen Ishmael hisself weren’t a better marksman nor thee,’ and he turned again to the ladder, and went clattering down.
There was no more gun fire after that; and he had snatched a few moments respite and was sitting on a flat tombstone eating biscuit and hard yellow cheese, when Cornet Hill, who had taken over the job of General’s galloper since he had sent off Charles D’Oyley that morning with dispatches for Leeds, came striding up the kirkyard path between the yews to find him. ‘Sir — Lord Newcastle has sent in a trumpeter under t’white flag. They’re bringing him along now.’
Fairfax abandoned the remains of his bread and cheese, and rose. He had not lain down for two nights, and he was aware of it in every aching bone. There was a shimmer of activity by the kirkyard gate; the gold of the lanterns touched on something white, and he saw the Royalist trumpeter, escorted by two of his own troopers. A few moments more and the man stood before him pulling off his feathered hat in salute. A tall red-haired fellow with a pale mobile face, whose sweeping bow matched the crimson damask and silver bullion of his trumpet-banner that gleamed against the sombre darkness of the yews, rather than his worn and workmanlike buff coat. ‘Sir Thomas Fairfax?’
‘I am Sir Thomas Fairfax.’
‘I bring you, Sir Thomas, a letter from My Lord Newcastle, the King’s General in the north.’
Black Tom took the square packet that he held out, broke the seal and opened the thick sheet. In the fading daylight the writing blurred as he looked at it, and he called over his shoulder for a light. But he thought he knew what he should read when it came. A trooper hurried up with a lantern, and by its swaying yellow light, turning the paper in his hand from grey to gold, he read that Lord Newcastle summoned Sir Thomas to surrender himself, his troops and the town of Bradford to his discretion.
Sir Thomas Fairfax remained for a few moments unmoving, reading the missive again to give himself time. To surrender to discretion — to place oneself unconditionally in the hands of the man to whom one surrendered ... When he reached the bold graceful signature for the second time he looked up. The trumpeter stood waiting on the edge of the lantern light, quietly remote as one of the kirkyard yews. ‘Present my compliments to Lord Newcastle,’ Fairfax said, slowly, taking great pains with his stammer, ‘and inform him that I infinitely regret I find myself unable to comply with his summons. If he is prepared to discuss terms for surrender, then — I also am prepared to do so; in which case I suggest that his envoys meet me for the purpose tonight, under safe conduct.’
The trumpeter made a small inclination of his head and shoulders. ‘Where, and at what hour, Sir Thomas?’
‘If Lord Newcastle’s envoys present themselves at the Goodman’s End barricades at half after nine, they shall find an escort awaiting them to bring them to a suitable house near by.’ He was folding the letter again with meticulous care. ‘I propose, of course, the usual truce to be observed for the duration of the parley.’
The trumpeter drew himself up. ‘I will convey your message to Lord Newcastle, Sir Thomas, and bring you back his reply.’ He bowed with the merest trace of insolence, and turning between the troopers of his escort, strode away.
After he was gone, Black Tom turned to his waiting galloper. ‘Go and find Sir Henry Fowlis and Captain Bright, and bid them come to me here.’
‘Sir,’ said Cornet Hill.
‘And present my compliments to Master Forret the wool stapler, and request him, since his house is so conveniently situated to Goodman’s End, to grant me the use of his parlour for an hour, for the purpose of a possible parley with My Lord Newcastle’s envoys.’
*
The guns would have fallen silent at dusk in any case, but Fairfax was aware of their silence as an almost sinister thing. He heard the fall of his own feet hard and sharp on the cobbles of the lane that joined the head of Kirkgate to Goodman’s End, beating, beating like the question that beat in his tired mind. Where did his duty lie? To hold Bradford at all costs, until the last bullet was spent and the Royalists swarmed in over the dead garrison at the barricades? To pull out what little might yet be saved? The stock of powder was running low; at the most they could hold Bradford one more day — Ah, this heart-breaking business of supplies, or the lack of them, never enough of anything Better for the town, better for the wounded that he yielded up his sword to Lord Newcastle tonight; but for the Cause he served? Well, it was no good making up his mind what his answer must be before he heard My Lord Newcastle’s terms.
A few minutes later, six men faced each other in the darkly panelled parlour of Master Forret’s house. The Royalist officers made their salutations with a stately swirl of cloaks and doffing of feathered hats, and Fairfax responded with a grave inclination of the head, having, as was usually the case with him, no hat of his own to doff. He saw the ruddy, quick-tempered face of Saville of Thornhill, and the faces of two other men unknown to him, whom Lord Saville was indicating now. ‘Sir Thomas Fairfax, may I present my fellow envoys: Colonel Cathgart, Captain Philips.’
Thomas was bringing up his own officers, whom he had found waiting for him at the door, making introductions in his turn. ‘May I present Sir Henry Fowlis, Captain Bright.’ It was all very formal, very highly polished with a surface patina of rigid courtesy. They were gathering to the table now, drawing out the heavy fringed and studded chairs. Paper and pens had been brought, and watchful, gravely wary faces surveyed each other in the light of the candles in the three-branched pewter candlesticks. Sir Thomas Fairfax said to the opposing faces, ‘Well, Sirs, I imagine that you come to offer me terms?’
He was looking at Saville of Thornhill, whom he had looked at before now across friendly supper tables; and as he looked, it seemed to him that something flickered back in the man’s hot-tempered blue eyes. ‘Shall we rather say that in the first place we come to hear your own terms, Sir Thomas?’
It was a surprising climb down from the peremptory mood of Lord Newcastle’s original summons — a distinctly surprising climb down. Black Tom sat a little straighter in his chair, levelly surveying the other man across the candles as swordsman looks at swordsman. ‘My terms are these: if I yield up the town of Bradford, I must have assurance of good treatment for the townsfolk and for my wounded; and for myself and my troops. I claim full honours of war; that we be allowed to march out with colours flying and drums beating, bullet in mouth and slow-match burning, on a free pass to Leeds.’
‘The honours of war are not for rebels,’ Lord Saville said coldly.
‘Lord Saville, I refute that term. By whatever name you choose to call the present conflict, the fact, the hideous and tragic fact, remains that this is civil war; a subtly but undeniably different matter from rebellion.’
There was a swift movement of response among the other men about the table; a flicker of agreement or denial, unspoken, but as palpable as spoken words.
The table top was of embossed Spanish leather. Fairfax’s sensitive finger tips found a fine-petalled flower and followed its raised outline, part of his mind registering the fact that it was a rose. Red Rose or White? They were used to civil war, these hills — while his dark watchful gaze remained levelled on Lord Saville’s face.
‘Those are my terms, Lord Saville. May I now hear Lord Newcastle’s?’
Again he thought he saw that faint flicker at the back of his opponent’s eyes. ‘We have not been sent to state ready-made terms, Sir Thomas, but to treat; and while there is no denying that My Lord is greatly inflamed at the stubborn attitude of this town and of yourself —’
‘Odd how stubborn men can be in defence of their freedom,’ Fowlis murmured sweetly.
‘— it seems to me very possible that, arguing the matter like rational men, the six of us here may reach some sort of agreement possible of acceptance by both sides.’
‘I rejoice to hear you say so,’ Fairfax said. ‘Though I cannot b
ut feel it strange that My Lord’s mood and determination have undergone so great a mellowing since he sent me a summons to absolute surrender, not two hours since.’
Colonel Cathgart, a big sleepy man, smiled into the candle flame. ‘Maybe Lord Newcastle, like many another man, finds himself in a better humour after supper than before.’
‘That would no doubt be the explanation,’ Fairfax said gravely. ‘Well, however it comes about, we must consider it a fortunate thing, and set about reaching this agreement.’
But it seemed that no agreement was to be reached after all. Lord Saville and his fellow envoys argued through and round the core of the matter, never coming to it fully, confusing what seemed to Black Tom a very simple — a horribly simple —issue with a fine tangle of detail each thread of which must be dealt with separately; until gradually his formless suspicion crystallized into the certainty that they were playing for time.
He was on the point of saying so and suggesting that they bring the parley to an end, when the uneasy quiet of the night beyond the open window was broken by a sharp rattle of musketry.
In the tingling silence that closed down again, the six suddenly tensed men about the table looked at each other, in suspicion, in denial, in suspended judgement. The moment’s silence died in a smother of shouting, and more scattered shots, and then the ragged, rising tumult of close fighting. Black Tom crashed up from the table and strode to the window and leaned out, looking towards the barricades. He saw the fireflies of blown-up slow-match in the darkness at the end of the street, the jagged flashes of musket fire; he heard a quick desperate shouting of orders, and almost in the same instant feet came crashing up the stairs and somebody was hammering on the door. ‘Sir, Sir. The Papists have got a saker almost up the mouth of Goodman’s End and they’re attacking the barricades!’
Fairfax gave one last look to the three envoys standing about the table. ‘Gentlemen, I perceive that either My Lord Newcastle’s orders have been misunderstood, or this parley was not acceded to in good faith. In either case I have more urgent use for my time than to spend it in bidding you good night.’ He was catching up his gauntlets from the table as he spoke; but he checked one moment longer, his gaze meeting straightly with Lord Saville’s. ‘If you were a party to this, I salute three very brave men,’ (Lord Saville bowed slightly) ‘but I am bound to assume that you came in good faith and were unaware of what would happen after you left your own camp.’ He rounded on his officers in the doorway. ‘See that envoys of My Lord Newcastle are safely bestowed until I come again,’ and he ran out, hitching at his sword belt.
Taking advantage of the hedges and the stooked hay, and the soft rain that had begun to fall, the Royalists had succeeded in manhandling their saker to within a few yards of the barricades before they were detected; and in Goodman’s End all hell had broken loose. At such close range the little gun could sweep the street into the very heart of the town, and with the gun’s crew already at their loading, Captain Hodgson was sweeping forward a desperate charge of pikes.
The saker won the race, spitting orange flame and sudden death into the street where the matchlocks danced; and the street seemed full of dead and dying as Fairfax reached it. But before the sweating crew could reload, Captain Hodgson was on them, with the survivors of his pikemen yelling at his heels, a dark wave of men, powder-blackened and desperate, that swept across the barricades and down upon the Royalists, engulfing gun and crew and sweeping both away. And when the wild mêlée that followed was over, and the defenders of Bradford were again driven back over their barricades, they left the Royalist saker lying capsized like a great dead insect; but a heart-breaking number of their own dead to keep it company.
After that, the sortie became like any other surprise night attack. It ended with Bradford still in the hands of Parliament, and the Royalists for the moment driven back. But beside the defenders’ losses in men, and they had been heavy enough, especially at Goodman’s End, almost their whole remaining stock of powder and slow-match had been spent in that last desperate hour.
Well might Mistress Sharpe’s White Lady wring her hands and cry, ‘Woe, woe to Bradford! Pity poor Bradford!’
Chapter 12 - The Herb of Grace
Some while after midnight, Anne, still in her tawny gown now sadly rumpled, lay down to catch a few hours’ rest on the bed in the long attic chamber that had once been half full of woolsacks. But the woolsacks were all gone to the barricades now. In the room below her, Mistress Sharpe also would be lying down. They had been among the wounded in the Unicorn all day, as perhaps they would be again in a few hours’ time — or perhaps not. Who could say in Bradford tonight what the next few hours would bring? They had heard the sudden uproar of the night attack, after that aching lull when the word went round that Lord Newcastle had sent in to offer terms. The lull had come back now, and what it meant they had no means of knowing. But Mistress Sharpe, who seemed to have won back her serenity, had said, ‘Last night we didna’ lie down, and it will na’ help Bradford, it will na’ help the men, that we gang waking and on our feet again all this night, too.’ And Anne had allowed herself to be persuaded.
But there was no sleep, no rest for her in lying down; and after a while she rose and re-lit the tallow dip in its brass pan, and went to sit in the window. She had set wide the lattice before she lay down; and she heard the whisper of the rain in the narrow street. A little of it blew into her face, cool after the brooding heat of the day. But the rain was passing now, and a sliding fish-silver gleam of low moonlight stole across the wet roofs, below which the street was a narrow chasm of darkness. It touched the wild white unicorn above the inn doorway to enchantment, to a silent running; and all at once, drawing nearer out of the dark and the uneasy murmuring hush of the town, there was indeed a sound of running that made Anne glance instinctively at the painted beast. But it was no magic running, not the light trampling hooves of the unicorn among its flowering ruins, that she was hearing, but the heavy, purposeful feet of a man, that checked to a walk, ringing sharply on the cobbles as they drew nearer, turning into the stable arch just below her. She heard the rattle of a door, and then a low urgent mutter of voices. And almost in the instant, she was out on the stairhead, running herself. It must be news. Good news? Bad news? Her heart was thudding in the base of her throat as she reached the bottom and turned to the side door that gave on to the stable alley. She heaved up the bar and dragged the door wide, she caught the gleam of a stable lantern at the end of the narrow cobbled way, and a hat-in-hand figure loomed up on the threshold as though he had been in the act of knocking when she opened the door.
Hill’s voice said urgently out of the darkness, ‘I must see Lady Fairfax —’ And then as the swinging light of the lantern touched her face, ‘Eh, begging tha’ pardon, My Lady, I didna’ see ‘twas thee. Sir Thomas sent me to fetch thee.’
Anne stood quite still on the threshold, her heart still racing. ‘Fetch me?’
‘Aye — up to headquarters.’ He was breathing heavily, his voice strained and hoarse. ‘We’ve but one barrel o’ powder left in Bradford, and no slow-match. We mun surrender wi’ t’town tomorrow or try to cut our way out tonight between moon-set and first light.’
The same summons as last night, but now from Thomas, and — how much more desperate. Anne found it hard to form the words she wanted, but her heart was no longer racing. ‘So we cut our way out, tonight.’
‘Aye, My Lady.’
‘How long can you give me to be ready?’
‘Until White Surrey is saddled up.’
‘And what may I take with me?’
‘What tha’ stands up in, My Lady; no more.’
‘I will not keep you,’ she said, and turned and flew, up the curling stairs to her room again. She flung back the lid of the great dower chest, and delved inside, the smell of pomander balls spicy in her nostrils. She gathered up her tawny skirts and pulled on an extra petticoat, put in with hasty fingers the gold drop earrings that were the only jewelle
ry she had with her, and snatching up her dark cloak where it lay across the bed foot, flung it round her.
Mistress Sharpe’s door stood just ajar as it had done before; the thread of palely golden taperlight shone across Anne’s half advanced foot with the tattered Provence rose, as she checked in her flying descent, and hesitated there. Then she pushed the door open.
Mistress Sharpe was sitting in her tall chair by the empty hearth. She rose as Anne appeared, cloaked and urgent, on the threshold, and stood looking at her without question. ‘Tha’rt away, then,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Anne said, and that was all. But between them the whole bitter situation was understood and left unspoken. They moved towards each other; two women of opposing loyalties. One who was to stake everything on a wild attempt to break out through the enemy before dawn; one who would be in Bradford when it fell to an angry and long baulked soldiery. They had never so much as called each other by their Christian names, but they kissed now, their arms about each other, clinging together in the moment of parting; both giving, both receiving something of comfort from the other. ‘I will pray for thee,’ Mistress Sharpe said. ‘Do tha’ pray for me — and for the bairn.’
Below in the street, when Anne reached it, Cornet Hill was already waiting, mounted on White Surrey. He brought the horse round to the mounting block beside the door, leaning down to her over the moth-white arch of the great brute’s neck. ‘Better ride, My Lady.’ His opinion of the soldiery, and his anxious care for his Commander’s wife were in his tone.
The foot of Ivegate was thick with soldiers, and as they cornered the market place and swung into Kirkgate, the crowd grew denser still, and Anne was not sorry to be up above them, on White Surrey, instead of down among them on foot, trying to force her own way through.
The Rider of the White Horse Page 14