Until the Colours Fade

by Tim Jeal

  Goodchild disliked Summers and resented the fact that, as commander of the garrison, he was in overall command of the troops in the town, but he admired the colonel’s manner as he said:

  ‘In the present circumstances electors must expect some inconvenience to attend the exercise of their privilege.’

  ‘Is that your view, my lord?’

  Goodchild turned reluctantly and faced his benefactor, twisting his golden sword knot between his fingers.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I had never hoped, my lord, to see you tolerate intimidation.’

  Goodchild felt a spasm of choking anger and indignation. How did the man dare speak of intimidation when a quarter of the shopkeepers in the town stood to lose their leases or their custom if they voted against him?

  ‘I believe that money and property have methods of persuasion quite as pressing as the mob’s.’

  A loud cheer rose from the square. Goodchild turned and saw a man with a heavily bandaged head leaving the polling booth supported by several others. He swung round the telescope mounted in the window and picked out Magnus and Strickland. He pushed the eye-piece towards Braithwaite and said:

  ‘There’s a man able to vote in spite of certain impediments.’

  The slight intake of breath as Joseph looked through the instrument convinced Goodchild that he had known exactly what had happened to Magnus. Nor would he get much pleasure from seeing Strickland in young Crawford’s company. Already his shock seemed to be giving way to anger. Joseph pushed aside the telescope and walked to the door.

  ‘Gentlemen, you will regret it if you fail to do your duty to the electors.’

  ‘My duty, sir, is to the whole town,’ replied Summers, as the door closed after their visitor.

  Five minutes later, a young subaltern burst in on them. The Union marchers had left Millcroft Fields and were heading for the High Street along Mytongate and Granby Street.

  *

  As Goodchild, accompanied by a subaltern and the adjutant, stepped out into the stable-yard, the order ‘Prepare to Mount’ was given and men hurried to remove heavy grey blankets from the horses’ backs; underneath, the animals were already saddled. The thawing snow in the yard was littered with straw and hay and stained with urine. Goodchild’s batman came up with his white gauntlets and black-plumed shako. Horses neighed and whinnied and the cobbles resounded to the clash of hoofs as the thoroughbreds pranced and skittered in the sharp cold air. Without their usual lances and fluttering pennants, the 17th were equipped with carbines and sabres; their scabbards so highly polished that they could be, and sometimes were, used as shaving mirrors.

  Goodchild mounted his large mettlesome black horse and his servant adjusted the stirrup leathers and checked the reins and girth. The command ‘Forward!’ was given and, with clanking sabres and clattering hoofs, the troop, defiled in fours, moved out of the yard. The sun caught the gold lace on epaulettes and glinted from the brass ornaments on shakos and pouches, and from numerous buttons. The black plumes spread out and caught the wind as the walk was increased to a trot. At the appearance of the horsemen, with their dark blue uniforms and striking blue facings, a roar of anger rose from the crowd in the square, but this changed to an ironic cheer as the cavalry wheeled towards the High Street. Riding just ahead of the two troop leaders, Goodchild felt thankful to be escaping from the square, where Summers would now be wholly responsible for supressing a riot, if one started. His lordship’s task was now to prevent the strikers’ march reaching the centre of town; and with four troops of cavalry at his disposal, he was confident that he could halt four thousand marchers without violence.

  When Lord Goodchild reached the top of the High Street, he was surprised that, although he could hear distant shouting and the music of the Union’s band, the signal flag had not been broken out above the Free Trade Hall ahead of him. The flag was to have been hoisted the moment the marchers passed the troop of yeomanry, positioned to prevent them forcing their way into Horsefair, the street leading into the Quadrant – the open space where the only other polling booths were situated. Either the strikers had turned back or they had overwhelmed the yeomanry.

  The captain of the troop of Lancers deployed across the High Street rode up to Goodchild and saluted.

  ‘Did you send out advance pickets?’ Goodchild asked sharply.

  ‘My orders forbade sending out small bodies of men, my lord.’

  Goodchild nodded. How even the yeomanry could have failed to hold the narrow archway leading into Horsefair was beyond him.

  ‘I want you to lead a small scouting party – say ten troopers and a sergeant – to see what’s happening in Horsefair. If you’re not back in five minutes, I’ll send a troop after you and enter the Quadrant from the west with another two troops. On no account must the marchers be penned into Horsefair. If they’re in there, we’ll get them out from the Quadrant end.’

  ‘And the High Street, my lord?’

  ‘We’ll still have one troop here and I’ll send for another from Silver Street.’

  The captain rode off to collect his men and Goodchild called over his adjutant and two other senior officers to give them orders. He kept glancing at the flagstaff above the Free Trade Hall, but no flag was hoisted. Ahead the streets were eerily empty and now the band was no longer to be heard. Goodchild’s heart was pounding, more with anger than fear. The whole exercise had been perfectly planned, but the yeomanry could have been counted on to let them down. Trust the yeomanry.

  *

  George Braithwaite sat waiting on his horse, behind the two closely-packed lines of yeomanry troopers blocking the narrow medieval archway of Monkgate Bar. In theory he knew that his two dozen men under the Bar, and the further hundred in reserve behind them, should be able to hold the confined opening into Horsefair against many thousands. Certainly, had his men been on foot with orders to fire if attacked, they could have turned back any mob; but George’s orders, as he understood them, only empowered him to use mounted men, and were unambiguous in forbidding any shooting, unless in answer to shots. Although George had been told that there was little likelihood of the marchers trying to force their way into Horsefair, he had his doubts. They would send forward spies who would at once see that the High Street was impassable and would therefore know that their only way of reaching the centre of town would be through Monkgate Bar. Nor, when they came level with the line of green uniforms under the Bar, would the marchers be able to see the larger reserve force in Horsefair.

  When the marchers arrived and at once started to hack out cobbles with pick-axes and iron bars, George and the troopers in front of him knew what was coming, but were powerless to do anything. If they charged with so small a line, they would be surrounded and the crowd would surge through the arch behind them. To have fired at once would have been their only salvation, but their orders ruled that course out.

  In the narrow space under the Bar, the first cobbles crashing among the terrified horses caused pandemonium; animals reared-up, threw their riders and brought each other down. In the ensuing chaos, the mob poured forward through the archway into Horsefair, and saw the reserve troop facing them two hundred yards away with drawn sabres, preventing their further advance on the Quadrant. The marchers’ leaders could not stop because of the pressure from behind, as hundreds pressed on oblivious through Monkgate Bar.

  Acutely conscious of Goodchild’s repeated exhortations to avoid bloodshed, George did not give the order to charge, but prayed that the forward impetus would slacken, as more and more came to realise that the way ahead was blocked. Deciding to give them room, he ordered his men back but, when the mob kept coming, he saw that his withdrawal had been interpreted as irresolution rather than design. Simultaneously the thought came to him that unless he charged immediately, he would be unable to meet the mob at anything above a gentle trot. He felt the same sickness and confusion he had experienced a month before on the station road. But now there was no Magnus Crawford to give advice. In train
ing the charge ended with a double flank retirement in column of troops and the reforming of the first line behind the reserve line; but today, would he even be able to use a second line? And how could the first line clear itself after a charge against such a densely packed crowd? One line would have to be enough.

  He screamed out the order for the front line to move forward, and at the trumpet note to trot rode out in front, noticing that, since there would be no room for the normal four phases of the charge, most of the troopers did not know whether to hold their sabres at the ‘carry’ or at the ‘engage’. As the white sea of panic-stricken faces grew closer, George forgot to give any more orders; it was as much as he could do to keep hold of his sabre, but the pace of the line increased to a canter regardless. The idea was that the squadron sergeant-major, in the centre of the front rank, should hit the opposition fractionally in advance of the markers on each flank, the whole line going in in an extended arrow-shape; but, as the yeomanry neared their target, all orders to dress by the centre were ignored, and the line thundered pell-mell into the screaming crowd, now surging and falling back over itself to escape.

  The noise around George was the loudest and most awful sound he had ever heard: groans, shouts, curses, neighing horses and the clash of metal. Whatever will the mob had had to reach the Quadrant had now clearly gone. He could see his men hacking wildly with their sabres, drunk with success. ‘Retire!’ he screamed to the trumpeter, as he saw people falling, struck down by hoofs and sabre cuts. A horse sank to the ground, evidently stabbed or shot. A moment later he heard a distinct shot and the whizz of a bullet. The trumpet notes to retire rang out and the line wheeled and backed out of the breaking crowd, leaving thirty or forty wounded men on the dirty slush-covered road. George was shocked to see that one of those struck down was a boy of eleven or twelve. He ordered two troopers to bring him back, but, as the men dismounted, one fell, shot through the shoulder.

  Without waiting for more, George cantered back down the street towards the reserve line. The shots were coming, it seemed, from a churchyard to the right of the street, where a length of the railings had been torn down by large numbers of the crowd in their frenzy to escape the charge, and to reach the cover of the gravestones in case the soldiers opened fire. A moment later he saw a puff of smoke beside the church tower under some yew trees, and then men swarming up a builder’s ladder onto the porch and from there onto the roof of the nave; and from that position, George knew that they would be able to hit his men at almost any point in the street, giving them virtual possession of Horsefair. When another of his men fell from his saddle, he gave the order to dismount and draw carbines.

  While they huddled together against a warehouse wall, ramming home cartridges and getting rid of cumbersome gauntlets and sabretaches, George picked twenty men, intending to lead them into the churchyard to clear out the armed strikers. He ordered a squad under the troop-sergeant to rip out loose railings when they passed through the gap; his plan being to use them to batter down the locked church door so that he could get men up into the tower. From the top they would need to fire only a few isolated shots down at the nave roof to clear the strikers from it. His legs were trembling with fear at the coming danger, but he also felt sullen resentment and anger. Remembering Magnus’s prophecy of disaster, these feelings intensified; doubtless Crawford would laugh at the comic irony that had made George Braithwaite the victim of his father’s stubbornness. If Catherine read in the papers that he had dislodged some armed strikers, she would probably think nothing of it; such proceedings had none of the glamour of war. As it was, he was likely to be blamed for allowing the marchers to get into Horsefair.

  Sick with bitterness and fear, George led his men towards the gaping rent in the railings, walking upright, although his followers were crouching. But, when a bullet hit one of the railings with a sound like a clapper hitting a cracked bell, he found himself following their example. When they reached the gap, bullets cracked and whined about them, as they sheltered a moment under the cover of the low wall on which the railings were mounted. George had no carbine, but raising his useless sabre, he gasped: ‘Forward after me!’, surprised that what he had intended to be a resounding shout had come out little above a high-pitched whisper. His bowels also troubled him and his legs felt as soft as wax as he hurled himself in a stumbling run towards the nearest gravestones. In threes and fours his men sprang through the gap after him.

  On the long grass in the churchyard, the snow still lay thick in places, unmarked save by a thin film of smuts and the footprints of the strikers, most of whom were now either behind the church or up on the roof of the nave. An ominous silence had fallen, as though they were saving their shot and powder for the time when the yeomanry should reach the open grass in front of the porch. But the brief respite from danger gave George time to collect his wits. Beneath the cap of snow on the soot-blackened stone, behind which he was crouching, he made out a banal epitaph.

  HERE LIES MARY JANE POTTER

  WHOSE MANY VIRTUES

  DELIGHTED THE LIVES OF OTHERS

  AND ADORNED HER OWN

  George was pleased to be calm enough to manage a wry smile at the possibility of being killed in a graveyard. He darted on again, and this time dropped down behind a raised box-tomb. Around him, in an extended line, his men were advancing on the church. When the soldiers reached the last gravestones, George watched the group under the troop-sergeant, armed with their railings, dash towards the cover of the porch and reach it without loss under an intense crackle of firing from the roof, while the remainder of the yeomanry, still kneeling behind the gravestones, did their best to give covering fire.

  Seconds later, as the churchyard echoed to the sound of heavy metal hammering and smashing against the locked door, George was not alarmed by the absence of shots from the roof; the overhanging porch provided perfect cover for the work. When the doors gave way, George waited impatiently for his men to appear on the roof of the tower. Suddenly he was stunned to hear the rattle of musketry coming from behind him. He could not believe it, until a bullet sang past his shoulder, nicking a gravestone and showering him with fine splinters of stone. He threw himself face down in the snow as other shots whipped past. Before he heard the warning shouts from the tower, he realised what had happened. At the first sound of the attack on the door, the strikers on the roof of the nave had crawled to the other side of the leads behind the high parapet and had lowered themselves to the ground by the drain-pipes and creepers on the wall of the north transept. Before starting to break down the door, he should first have surrounded the church. The realisation of his elementary error made his head swim. He had let them escape and steal up behind him, where the gravestones gave them excellent cover. Around him men were cursing and crawling flat on their stomachs vainly seeking to escape the raking fire. A troop-corporal crawled up to George on his hands and knees, his face grey with fear. A long scream came from a few yards behind him.

  ‘’ave to do summat,’ he gulped, almost angrily.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ snapped George, on the point of telling the man to stand when addressing him. ‘When I make a move, we’ll run for the porch. Tell them that.’

  As the corporal crawled away, muttering meaningless filth under his breath, the unpredictable direction of the bullets, as they cracked and whizzed off the tombstones badly unnerved George; so much so that, to stop himself screaming, he forced his knuckles against his teeth until they bled. Then, unable to stand the strain any longer, he leapt to his feet, and brandishing his sword, fled towards the porch. Moments after he and his men had reached their objective, a body of Lancers clattered into the street. Thinking themselves surprised from behind, between ten and twenty armed strikers broke from their positions and ran in confusion towards the wall on the far side of the churchyard, their heavy fustian coats dark against the snow.

  ‘Fire, dammit, fire,’ yelled George, hardly aware of what he was doing after the agonising tension of the past three minutes. H
is men however, seeing their enemies doing their best to get away, had no wish to detain them, and fired high or wide, reloading slowly. Only one man was hit on the wall.

  *

  Having left the main body of his men in an adjacent street, Lord Goodchild had ridden through the Quadrant with a small detachment of officers and troopers, and had been greatly relieved to find that, although the crowd there was as excited as the people in the market square, no violence had taken place. On entering Horsefair, he was incredulous to find the street empty and could not understand it; only a quarter-of-an-hour before, he had been told that the yeomanry had been overwhelmed, leaving the mob in possession of the street. He was still more perplexed when he saw sixty or seventy yeomanry troopers smoking and lolling against the wall of a large warehouse. Moments later he caught sight of some bodies in the road and heard the rattle of musketry coming apparently from inside the churchyard. Having sent his adjutant across to ask the yeomanry what they meant by leaving unattended wounded on the ground, he rode on in the direction of the firing.

  It now seemed tolerably clear to Goodchild that the mob had broken into Horsefair and had then been dispersed by shooting or a charge. He was completely at a loss to work out how they had forced their way in, since two overturned carts, blocking Monkgate Bar and defended from behind by men with sabres, should have made the narrow entrance impassable. He reined in opposite the churchyard and saw men in the yeomanry’s green jackets firing down from the top of the church tower. Answering shots from the ground were puffing out clouds of dust from the stonework around the battlements. Next he saw a group of soldiers, led by an officer with a sword, run for their lives towards the church porch. As the rest of Goodchild’s detachment clattered up beside him, some dozen or so men, probably strikers, broke from behind the gravestones and raced towards the far boundary wall. After a pause the soldiers in the porch opened an irregular stammer of fire on them. Goodchild reckoned that the break in the railings had been made by the mob in a desperate attempt to create another escape route when charged by the yeomanry; that the soldiers had then followed these fleeing men into the churchyard made Goodchild almost more angry than the fact that they had incompetently allowed the mob into the street in the first place. The lunacy of risking their own and other lives in an effort needlessly to hunt down armed men in a place providing such a variety and abundance of cover, left him speechless. Also shooting tended to attract more guns to an area; the yeomanry were lucky not to be already involved in a battle as serious as the one which had taken place outside the workhouse three nights before. At present there could not be more than half-a-dozen guns firing regularly at the yeomanry, and these snipers seemed intent only on escaping; if the green-jacketed idiots stopped firing for a few minutes, their adversaries would be able to get over the wall and make a peaceful exit.