On the threshold, Cavendish made her a little bow, bade her a good night that was neither hurried nor lingering, and departed. And she dragged herself through like an old worn-out woman into her room, and closed the door behind her, and stood for a long while clinging to the door handle as though her knees were suddenly too weak to support her.
Someone had brought candles and set them on the mantel, she realized as her strength began to come back a little. Somebody had taken away the supper tray and turned back the silken coverlid from the bed. Might as well lie down. She had fought the best fight that she could for Bradford, and she had failed. Nothing to do now but lie down.
She lay down on the bed without even taking off her gown, only pulling the dark folds of her cloak across her feet. She even slept a little, a feverish, fitful sleep broken by dreams. But she was awake again before dawn, to the sound of a great coming and going outside, and the rattaplan of the drums beating to advance. For the moment, caught between sleeping and waking, she thought that it was the Parliamentary drums that she had heard so often; Thomas’s own drums with the sable lion’s head on the fringed banners. Then as sleep cleared from her eyes, she knew that she was hearing Royalist drums beating for the final assault on Bradford.
She slipped off the bed and ran to the window. It was still almost dark. Down below was the gleam of horn lanterns on men and horses; but she could see nothing more than that. And a few moments later, as she stood staring down, her hands whitening on the stone transomes, a scuffing step came along the gallery; she heard the murmur of a woman’s voice outside, and the sentry’s in reply, and then a scratching at the door panels. She crossed to it quickly, turned the key and set it wide; and the old servant who had brought her her supper last night appeared on the threshold, looking as though she, too, had slept in her clothes. ‘Yes?’ Anne said.
‘My Lady, I hope I did not wake you. I was told to bring you this at once.’ She held a folded note, which Anne took and opened, turning to hold it close to the watch light. The few lines of writing were strong, swift, and graceful as the writer himself. ‘Lady Fairfax, I propose to wait upon you in a quarter of an hour, having something to tell you which it concerns you to hear. I beg that you will forgive the earliness of the hour, making due allowance for the fact that my time is not my own today, and receive me when I come.’
What was he coming for? What could this thing be that concerned her to know. Something to do with Thomas. Oh God, not that! Something about Bradford? An accusation against herself? Her wits were hurrying like mice in a trap. Anne twisted the note into a spill and dropped it into the bowl of the rush fight holder. ‘Light the candles, please, then remain here. Lord Newcastle, it seems, intends to wait on me in a quarter of an hour.’
And while the old woman did as she was bid, Anne set herself to shake out the creases of her orange-tawny gown and comb and hurriedly rebind her hair. There was a small Venice mirror against one wall and she peered into it, seeing her face pinched and grey under the brown of her skin, hollow cheeked and hollow templed, and more than ever overwhelmed by the big nose and heavy brows. With a kind of defiance she licked her finger and smoothed those heavy brows into shape, tried to rub the bruise-coloured shadows from under her eyes, and settled the gold drops in her ears. Then turned back to the window to await My Lord Newcastle’s coming.
She had not long to wait, though it seemed long to her, her mind full of darting, terrified conjecture, before a man’s step arabesqued with the silvery jingle of spurs came along the gallery, and again there was a murmur of voices outside. And as the servant scuffed across to open the door, Anne turned from the window. ‘Come in, Lord Newcastle.’
He closed the door lightly behind him, and stood a moment, his hand resting on the latch. Then leaving the serving woman to stand beside it, came forward as he had done yesterday. The candlelight shone on the bright steel of the breastplate he wore over yesterday’s velvet, and she thought he looked as though he also had slept badly. His feathered hat was in his hands, together with his gloves — fine russet dogskin gloves perfumed with amber; Anne caught the scent of them as she moved in from the window.
For a moment they stood in silence, facing each other in the light of the freshly lit candles. Then Anne said coldly, ‘I give you joy of this most fair day, My Lord.’
‘Thank you,’ he said gravely.
‘You wished to tell me something?’
‘In the first place, to set your mind at rest with regard to Cornet William Hill. His elbow is in reasonable shape, the wound has been properly searched and dressed, and he is in no danger. For the second —’ he hesitated an instant, and she knew that this was the real purpose of his coming. ‘I feel I owe it to you, Lady Fairfax, to tell you in person that I have countermanded my orders for the sack of Bradford. As it stands now, no woman is to be molested, nor any man killed save in resistance.’
Anne put out her hand and felt for the carved bedpost behind her. She felt almost sick for the moment with the intensity of her relief. But her gaze never stirred from his face. ‘Why?’ she demanded.
All at once there was a hint of a smile under his finely clipped beard, a flickering amusement far back in those most expressive eyes. ‘I woke in the night to find a White Lady beside my bed, Lady Fairfax, wringing her hands and crying, “Alas and alas! Pity poor Bradford! Spare poor Bradford!” and this morning, do you know, neither of my guards had seen her at all.’
Chapter 14 - Rearguard Action
Sir Thomas Fairfax, the thin dawn wind in his face and the sounds of the skirmish suddenly fallen away behind him, realized that he had broken clear through the ranks of the Royalist patrol, Fowlis and Gifford were with him, and a handful of troopers; no more.
He was wheeling White Surrey towards the scattered fighting, but Fowlis flung his own horse alongside as though to head him off like a cattle dog heading a break-away beast, crying to him, ‘Fairfax! For God’s sake, no!’
‘My wife —’ he said harshly.
‘Lady Fairfax is in the hands of men of honour. No harm will come to her.’
‘If it has not come already.’
‘Either way there’s naught that you can do that will not lose you to our Cause —’ Fowlis’s hand was actually on his bridle. ‘It is your duty to make the rendezvous. Ride on, man!’
It was true, he knew that. His duty was to the Cause he served. If she were not already killed or wounded, Anne would come to no harm, taken in this way; a very different matter if she had been in Bradford when the town fell. Fairfax made an odd broken sound in his throat. ‘So be it. We ride for Leeds.’
In Leeds, when he rode in, he found a Council of War sitting in the dining-room of the Arthington House in Boar Lane; sitting to discuss a dispatch just received from Mr Raikes, the Mayor of Kingston-upon-Hull, to inform them that Sir Thomas Hotham had been seized, and the town was ready and eager to receive Lord Fairfax and the remains of his army, should My Lord so desire it.
The thing had come just in time to save them. They were in no state, God knew, to meet the Royalists in the open; and beside Leeds, which could not long be held without supplies, they had no other town of any size left to them in Yorkshire. And so it was decided to gather together their remaining forces and retreat to Selby, get across the Ouse and so reach Hull, where they might collect another army to resume the war.
When the Council had broken up, Sir Thomas Fairfax, to whom had fallen the familiar task of commanding the rearguard, detained his father as he was about to go out again, saying urgently, and with his stammer under worse control than usual, ‘Sir — a m-moment if you please. The question of M-Moll —’
Lord Fairfax turned, his hand already on the door. ‘Little Moll?’
‘Yes. She will be safer with the main force. Will you take her and her nurse?’
Lord Fairfax relinquished the door latch and began as aways when he was more than usually harassed to rub the thinning hair on the top of his head. ‘Oh Thomas, Thomas, this trailing a woman a
nd a bairn on campaign!’ His long horse-face was haggard, his eyes sick. ‘No, really Thomas. I offered to bear Anne with me when I withdrew from Bradford. If she had seen fit to accept my offer she would have been safe in this house now. But I do not feel that on a forced march of this kind, I can burden myself or my men with a child.’
Thomas grew for a moment very still; then he said, ‘I quite understand, My Lord. Pray do not trouble yourself further. I will take her myself among my own troopers in the rearguard.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Tom,’ his father said quickly. ‘It is not fair to the bairn, let alone to your men. She will be perfectly safe here in Leeds. Mary and her bairns have already survived the two occasions that the town has changed hands.’
‘Maybe so, but once this place returns to Royalist hands, God knoweth when we may see the bairn again,’ Fairfax said levelly. ‘Nan is already in enemy hands, and in her absence, even if it were not also my own judgement in the matter, I owe it to her to keep Moll with me.’ He had a sudden vision of himself saying to Anne: ‘The bairn? Where did I leave the bairn? Ah yes, in Leeds; I’m afraid the place is in Royalist hands now.’ He checked, and took hold of himself, and said with a very real gentleness for his bothered parent, as though their relationships were reversed, ‘I see your point, Sir; in your place I should feel the same. But she’s no more to you than one of your grandchildren; she’s my bairn, and the only one I have, and I’m taking her with me.’
He opened the door and stood aside for his father to go before him, then turned off on his own account, to look for his sister Mary.
He found her in the sunny parlour, sitting rigid and waiting on events; and she rose as he appeared, full of soft inarticulate cries of relief and welcome and lamentation. He kissed her dutifully, and waited, courteous but unresponsive, until the babble subsided, then said without preamble, ‘Mary, we’re marching at eight o’clock tomorrow morning for Selby. Will you bid Christian to have herself and Moll ready to ride with me.’
*
Selby, dreaming in the first translucent warmth of the summer morning, woke to the sound of troops swinging up the Gowthorp; the thin, blood-stirring music of fifes and drums, the weary trudge-trudge-trudge of marching feet, and the clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobbles; and here and there folk ran to their windows to see the spent remains of an army marching by; company by company, red-eyed, leg-weary, white with the summer dust. Up Gowthorp and across the market place, under the lovely pinnacled tower of the old abbey church. The vanguard were already debouching into Ousegate, descending in a swarm upon the wharves and the ferry boats alongside them, setting to work under their Commander’s orders to embark the first of the horses.
And a mile behind them followed their rearguard; some forty Horse, led by the familiar figure in black armour (whitened now like all the rest) on a tall white stallion. And in the midst of these last grim troopers, the good folk of Selby’s eastern outskirts saw a big-boned daleswoman with fair hair whisping from under her hodden-grey hood; and mounted before her on the dun mare, a little white faced girl muffled in a cloak of the deep green of holly leaves, whose enormous dark eyes stared straight before her as though she saw nothing at all.
‘Eh well, ah do’ant know!’ said the good people of Selby. ‘He’s got t’little lass wi’ him! Poor wee hinny; she looks fair clemmed!’
Moll had been disappointed, when they set out from Leeds, to find that she was to ride before Christian and not high on the saddle bow of one of the troopers’ horses. But the setting out was so long ago, almost a whole day and night, and she didn’t feel anything very clearly, now, except a queer cobwebby greyness and a desire to cry without knowing what she wanted to cry for. Which, thought Moll, was silly, because she was a big girl of five, and anyway she was with father — if she craned her neck she could just see the brave kingfisher blue of the scarf over his shoulder, between the buff and steel of the troopers riding next ahead of her — and so there could be no possible need to cry.
She remembered dimly, yesterday’s ride over the high moors; still more dimly, a farm house in the northern dusk, and the hard comfort of her father’s arms round her, taking her from Christian, carrying her in because she was too stiff to stand. Then there had been sleep, but almost before she had fallen asleep, it seemed to Moll that Christian was waking her again, and there was a gleam of lantern light, and then horses again, clip clop, clip clop. And presently she had been asleep once more, but still the clip clopping had run on through her frightened hurrying dreams.
And now the darkness was gone and somebody said this was Selby. Selby. She roused and looked about her. Yes, she knew this place. Looking up at the abbey tower, she remembered holly berries; the bright string of holly berries for her neck that her mother had made for her and the longing to cry gathered itself into an aching knot in her throat, so that she had to swallow hard and keep her eyes very wide open so that any tears that she could not prevent might run down inside.
Sir Thomas Fairfax also raised his head to the tall abbey tower as it drew nearer. And through the deadening greyness of his own fatigue, through his anxiety for Anne and for the child among his troopers, through the constant driving reproach of Bradford abandoned behind him to the Power of the Dog, it pierced his tired spirit with its sword of beauty. He saw it not as a queen, not as an archangel, but as a promise. The promise of God’s mercy upon weary men; speaking as it did, the nearness of the river, beyond which lay rest and comparative security for his troops, and the road clear to Hull.
But the time for rest and security was not yet.
They were in the mouth of the Gowthorp now, and already Fairfax thought that he could hear the sound of his father’s troops embarking from the Ousegate Wharves. But he knew that he could hear something else; the drum of a horse’s hooves sweeping towards him down a side lane with a speed and urgency that could have only one meaning. One of the scouts that he had sent ahead swung out into the Gowthorp and came streaking down it at full gallop, to rein his horse back on its haunches almost under White Surrey’s snorting nose. ‘Sir, there are three troops of Royalist Horse close upon us from the Cawood road!’
‘Are they so,’ Fairfax said, almost gently. ‘Fall in with the rest of us, Peterson; we shall want every man we have.’ But they must spare two men, anyway. He had made his plans against such an emergency as this; Moll and her nurse were riding in a position from which they could be peeled off at a moment’s notice, with his galloper and a trooper for escort. He glanced aside at young D’Oyley who had returned to his old place since Leeds. ‘Right, Charles, the bairn is your job now.’ And as Charles D’Oyley flung up his hand in salute and wheeled his horse aside, he touched his spurred heel to White Surrey’s flank, crying, ‘Come on, lads — Hell for Leather!’ and broke from a canter into a gallop, the troops drumming up Gowthorp behind him.
Moll, bewildered and suddenly frightened, found that Christian was reining aside from the rest, reining back while the rest plunged forward. ‘Go on!’ she shrieked. ‘Go on, Christian!’ and tried in panic to tear the woman’s hands from the bridle. But Christian took no notice. Horses and men were sweeping past them, and then there was just one trooper who had peeled off beside them, and Lieutenant D’Oyley, and the empty road. Moll ceased to struggle. It was too late now, too late. There was only the empty road and the dust cloud settling; and she was crying piteously, but in her usual silence, in utter desolation and loss, as they turned back on their tracks and then aside into a narrow alley between two cottages.
‘Best get back from the road a bit,’ said Charles D’Oyley, falling a little behind the rest to do sheep dog. The alley ran out from between the cottages, and became a narrow lane deep sunk between nut-trees, with another lane branching from it and another running into it. They reined aside into a field gate set far back in almost a tunnel of the rooty bank. The trooper had wheeled his horse across the lane a few yards nearer to the town, but Charles D’Oyley was with them in the gateway; and the sun through the l
eaves made a dance of egg-shaped sunspots on his steel comb-cap. But he himself was quite still, his face turned alertly towards the town. Only after a few moments he leaned forward slightly, still looking to the town, and his hand went out to make sure that his pistols were loose in their holsters.
The drumming of hooves had quite died away into the morning quiet. Presently, soft and small with distance, Moll heard a splurge of shouting and a crackle of shots, and a cawing cloud of indignant rooks bursting and wheeling up from the trees in Church Park.
Tom Fairfax, drumming up the Gowthorp with his troops behind him, was aware of a torrent of horsemen pouring down Finkle Street towards the market place; clearly the enemy’s purpose was to turn about by the abbey and so take Lord Fairfax’s embarking troops between themselves and the river. A few moments ahead of them, he flung his own flying skein of Cavalry across the way, and reined them to a halt in the shadow of the abbey gate-house. And for a mere heartbeat of time the sleepy market place of Selby was empty save for a cat sunning itself in the stable gateway of the George and Dragon. And then, from the narrow mouth of Finkle Street, round the corner by the candlemaker’s shop, the first of the Royalists spilled into the open, and the morning emptiness was gone.
They set up a shout at sight of the Parliamentary troops barring the way, and spurred forward at an increased pace. Fairfax held his troop like hounds in leash waiting for the one moment, the perfect moment when the Royalists would be clear enough of Finkle Street to expose their flank, yet not clear enough to have gained full freedom of movement ...
The manuals of warfare demanded of a properly conducted charge, that the troops should wheel their horses at the last moment to fire their pistols into the enemy ranks, then press home with the sword; that was all very well in a set-piece battle, but in this kind of fighting the formal patterns of warfare had long since gone by the board. Tom Fairfax merely yelled to his men and rode sword in hand for the densest part of the Royalist force, and his men crashed in behind him. They took the Royalists on front and flank, and instantly the quiet market place was full of the clash of steel on steel, the shouts of men and the trampling of hooves, and the remote archangel tower of Selby Abbey looked down on the reeling mêlée that swirled and swept about the market cross and into Church Park, startling the rooks who rose in a wheeling, cawing cloud from the ancient elm trees.
The Rider of the White Horse Page 17