Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

  David and I exchanged glances.

  “Sir Thomas is not the man I think him, if he makes no attempt to reach his father,” I said. “He will surely try to get back to Bradford.”

  “Aye—the Cavaliers are not on this side of the town yet; he could come over Clayton Heights and down by Great Holroyd and slip in that way,” said David. “But he may not—there may be some point of military strategy in it of which we are ignorant.”

  “I am sure he will try to rejoin his father,” I persisted, and I went into the kitchen to set on water to heat, so that men’s wounds could be washed if necessary, and to prepare what slight stock of provisions was left to us. There was only one of our maids there, and when I asked for the other girl she looked uncomfortable. “Where is she?” I asked sharply, and the girl, stammering, told me she had run away when she heard Master David say we had lost the battle. “Oh, the silly child!” I cried, distressed. “To run off alone, in front of a whole Royalist army!”

  The remaining girl coloured and muttered agreement, but as it chanced I saw her slip a bundle under the table, and knew she had meant to run off too and was only prevented by my entrance. I set her to work and kept her bustling and cheerful.

  By the time I returned to the large room, Lady Fairfax was sitting by the hearth in cloak and hat, little Moll beside her dressed for a journey, her bundles all about her and her precious dressing-case in her lap.

  “He will send for me soon,” she said, almost simpering with pleasure.

  I was a little disconcerted by this sudden proposed departure and her certainty of it, so I made no comment. David, however, drew me aside.

  “Pen, I have been considering—you and the boys had perhaps better prepare to leave The Breck,” he began.

  “Leave The Breck!” I exclaimed. “Are you mad, David? What are you thinking of?”

  “If the Cavaliers mean to besiege Bradford, if they press close about it with their troops, make a leaguer, I believe it is called,” said David, pronouncing the unfamiliar word with great precision, “the inhabitants of the neighbouring countryside should seek shelter within the besieged city’s defensive works.”

  “Is that what they do in Xenophon?” I said, teasing him. “Well—I shall not leave The Breck without John’s orders.”

  “I do not propose that you should, Penninah,” said David gravely: “But there is no harm done, and perhaps much good, by preparation.”

  Though I was reluctant to take any step which seemed to bring me nearer leaving The Breck, I perforce agreed with him, and set about putting together some food, and extra linen, for myself and the children. When we were ready we all sat down together, and I set the door open so that we could hear anyone approach, and then I took out my needlework and sewed, and we played at spelling with the children. David was always very good at games with words, and Thomas took after him; Sam and Lady Fairfax had little skill but made merry over their blunders; Moll sat on David’s knee and we made easy words for her, and I had the maid and Lady Fairfax’s maid in from the kitchen, and so we passed the time on nicely. Lister came and stood by the stairway door, as usual, listening; David beckoned him to a seat by us but he shook his head, muttering mournfully.

  So engrossed were we in the game that we actually did not hear the mare’s approach till her hoofs clattered at the door. Then we all cried out sharply, and David sprang up and went to the porch, and I saw he had the fowling-piece in his hand, and I trembled. But his face broke into friendliness, and he lowered the gun, and in came John. He was dirty and sweating, his hair disordered and some dried blood on his neck, his jaw very set and his forehead in a strong frown.

  “David, unsaddle Daisy—give her a feed and put her in the waggon,” he said in a loud quick tone, without a word of greeting. “Sam, help your uncle. Lady Fairfax and you, Penninah, and the children, must all go at once into the town.”

  “We are ready, John,” I said, rising.

  “Where is Sir Thomas?” demanded Lady Fairfax.

  “By now he will be in Bradford,” said John. “I left him and the remnant of our half of the army, going down Holroyd Lane.”

  “Was there much slaughter, John?” I asked him, trembling.

  “Aye. And plenty more of our men have run off into Lancashire,” said John shortly. “Lister, how much wool have we in the house?”

  “Wool, Mester?” began Lister in his maundering way.

  “Aye—how many packs of wool?” said John impatiently, striding towards the stairs. “If you know not, out of my way; I’ll look for myself.”

  “There are three packs, Mester, one partly combed,” babbled Lister, following him.

  “Get them all into the waggon, then,” ordered John, halting.

  “Where are they to go, Mester John?” asked Lister curiously.

  ‘‘ To hang on the church steeple to protect our lads,’’ replied John. “I won’t have them wounded as they fire, this time.”

  “There’s more nor twenty pounds’ value in them packs, Mester John,” objected Lister. “What with the wool and the workmanship already done on it.”

  “I’ll go beg a fourth from Mrs. Baume,” said John, disregarding him.

  And this was the man I had once thought miserly.

  The summer dusk was falling as we set off down the lane. The poor mare, her flanks dark with sweat, was so exhausted, having carried John all day, that she could not hold up her head, and often stumbled as she put down her feet. But we had not another horse on the place, nor indeed was there a spare animal for miles, they were all employed in one army or the other. Lister led the mare; Lady Fairfax and I and the children and the maids sat on the woolpacks, John and David walked with their guns ready, beside the waggon. The evening was warm and overcast, and the air of urgency which hung over us made it seem sultry and menacing. God alone knows what I went through on that journey. The jolting of the waggon was a cruel suffering to one in my condition. I expected every minute that I should begin with a miscarriage; but however, I eased myself as well as I could on the woolpacks, and Lady Fairfax gave me her pungent smelling-bottle, and somehow I came through it, and reached the Pack Horse Inn without mishap.

  The inn was crowded with officers, some dejected almost to weeping point, others shouting angrily. The landlord, almost distracted, came out to receive Lady Fairfax, and conducted her to some small dark rooms—it was but a small hostelry, after all—across the passage from a larger room which he was fitting out with chairs and settles, to be used as a meeting place for the Council of War. I went with her, for in truth there was nowhere else to go.

  When we had been there a few moments, disentangling our baggage, Sir Thomas came in. I own I was somewhat curious as to how a general looked when defeated, but there was no change in his sallow countenance, save that it appeared a trifle less melancholy than usual. He kissed his wife’s hand, and—which I thought very pretty—thanked her for enduring the hazards and discomforts of the campaign with him. At this Lady Fairfax smiled broadly, completely happy. Sir Thomas then saw me, and wishing to say something agreeable to me, asked me good-humouredly what my brother had made of the battle. I hardly knew what to say, not wishing to hurt him, so I stammered out:

  “He had great difficulty in making it out at all, Sir Thomas.”

  At this Sir Thomas laughed aloud heartily, and with his fine eyes sparkling he replied:

  “C-c-commanders have the same d-d-difficulty, Mrs. Thorpe.”

  He then withdrew into the council chamber, where we could see Lord Fairfax and the other officers and gentry assembling. They all gazed at Sir Thomas in amazement, having heard him laugh and feeling there was nothing to laugh about. Lord Fairfax was a piteous spectacle; the curl was quite gone out of his moustache, and he lamented continually to his son:

  “They told me I should leave the field, but how could I leave the field when I hadn’t beat ’em?”

  Then at last, urged by his son, Lord Fairfax seated himself at the head of the table and called for ord
er, and the men ranged themselves about him, there not being chairs for all, and John and a man from Halifax I had seen in the fight in December made ready to write notes, and Lord Fairfax in a peevish kind of voice called on his son to speak, and Sir Thomas rose and began in his calm deep voice:

  “Gentlemen, we have s-s-suffered a temporary s-s-set-back.”

  Then the landlord officiously hurried up and shut the doors, so that we heard no more at that time.

  I got the children to bed—they protested they would not go, being too greatly excited, but as soon as we laid them down they went off into a sleep from which a cannon under their ears would not have woken them. Then I sat with Lady Fairfax. The Council lasted for nigh on an hour; at times when the doors were opened briefly for a servant taking in refreshment, we caught a word or two of what was going on; there seemed to be debate whether to try to hold Bradford or Leeds or both or neither. Sir Thomas wished his father to retire to Leeds, to hold it, while he himself did what he could in Bradford; but it was clear that most of the officers thought Bradford a death-trap, and wanted only to be out of it.

  “It is the c-c-cause of the P-p-parliament in the north, not our own skins, gentlemen, that we are deb-b-bating,” said Sir Thomas at length in a tone of vexation.

  While they were at it, a messenger came from Hull, and was admitted; the landlord told us that his news was very good, namely that the well-affected in Hull, which was a very strong walled place, had risen and imprisoned their treacherous governor, and were ready to receive the Lord General if he cared to go to them. This made the officers all the more determined to get off to Leeds as being on the road to Hull, and finally they decided that Lord Fairfax should go there at once, that very night, with the major part of the army, while Sir Thomas by his own wish should stay and defend Bradford.

  This loyalty to our town made every citizen of Bradford feel a deep love for Sir Thomas’s person, which they expressed by a most energetic and faithful service; as I heard later, they busied themselves at the works all night, taking turns to stand on guard and to labour with spade and shovel strengthening the centries.

  For my part, having slept at last from sheer exhaustion, I was awakened at dawn by the thunder of the Royalist ordnance. They had planted their two great “pocket pistols” in the sames places as before, and were battering away at the church and sending an occasional shot down Kirkgate. As soon as we had broken our fast the children and I and Lady Fairfax went out into Kirkgate to watch the fight. It was a bright sunny summer’s day again, the air very clear so that we could see long distances. The woolpacks were already in position, hanging by ropes from the pinnacles of the steeple; they made a fine protection for our men firing from the windows, and it seemed from what the crowd of watchers told us that the Royalists were aiming shot at them. Once or twice the packs swayed in the breeze, or in the startle of the air caused by the firing, and then the crowd drew a dismayed breath; when the packs settled to their place again they called out cheerfully. Lady Fairfax and I wondered where our husbands were, but had no means of discovering; Sam, who had escaped from my hand and clambered out of a window on to the roof of the Pack Horse, said that the Redcoats were closing in all round Bradford—“thousands of them,” said Sam—and he could see our men opposing them at the siege-works. The Royalists were between us and The Breck, he said, and a great crowd of them were clustered round Boiling Hall. This last seemed likely enough, Sir Richard Tempest of Boiling Hall being such a very strong Royalist. About noon, while we were within, resting, there came some very loud shouting in the distance; we went out and saw that the Royalist shot had partly cut through the cord by which one of the packs was hanging, so that it dangled crookedly. Even as we watched, the cannon roared again, the cord parted with a jerk and the pack fell headlong. A loud shouting and clapping of hands came from the redcoats up by Barker End at this, and a hooting from our people in Kirkgate. Some of our men came out of the church and tried to pull up the pack again, but their exposure to the ordnance made the attempt too hazardous.

  All day long the firing continued, from their ordnance and ours, which was planted in cover of the steeple, and from both sides’ musketry. It seemed to me that the Royalists made little headway, so I was pretty cheerful, but when Sir Thomas and John and such officers as were left came in to their dinner, I saw that they looked glum and dejected. From the snatches of their talk we heard, we learned the true situation. It seemed we had only one small cannon, the rest having been lost at Adwalton, and very few barrels of powder, and already the match was exhausted, the men using untwisted cords dipped in oil in its stead. The Royalists doubtless knew or guessed this shortage, and were firing hotly, to draw our reply and thus exhaust our ammunition and bring the siege to a swift conclusion. The officers, to my amazement, were already begging Sir Thomas to send out a trumpeter to the Earl of Newcastle and treat for conditions of surrender, while yet the defence would appear in good case to the enemy. But Sir Thomas frowned and denied them, for he wished, he said, to delay the Earl before Bradford as long as possible, to give his father and the main army of the north a chance to get to Hull before the Earl discovered their absence. This was clearly such sound strategy that the officers perforce agreed to it, and they stood to their posts again, as did all our men, with much resolution. The night was therefore disturbed and uneasy with disjoined shooting.

  The next day was Lord’s Day. While I was dressing little Moll—for Lady Fairfax’s maid was busy with a sweetheart she had among the soldiers, and our own, being niece to the Pack Horse folk, was busy about the inn—we heard a loud drum and a curious signal on the trumpet, which delighted the general’s lady, for she said it was a trumpeter come from the enemy, doubtless with conditions. The officers about Sir Thomas begged him to accept the conditions, whatever they were—as we could not help hearing, for we were so cramped in our quarters, we seemed beneath the men’s feet and in their way whenever they entered the house.

  “If they are honourable for us to take, and safe for the inhabitants of this town,” said Sir Thomas quickly without a single stammer: “I will accept them,” and he sent his safe-conduct for the Earl’s messenger.

  A captain was presently introduced, very fine in a scarlet coat and a feathered hat and embroidered gloves, and somewhat contemptuous in his manner, to say that to spare useless bloodshed the Earl proposed a parley until sundown, to discuss conditions of surrender. Sir Thomas agreed to a cessation of hostilities during the parley, and sent two of our own captains—not men I knew, gentry from further east in the county—to treat with the Earl about conditions.

  I gave a great sigh of relief, to think that we should have no more thundering ordnance all day, and perhaps be free afterwards to go our own ways in peace and quietness. It was strange to see how the people of Bradford all came out into the streets and strolled up and down in the sunshine, smiling with happiness for the mere cessation of the cannon. Since the church was in the occupation of our soldiers, Sir Thomas commanded the Bradford under-minister to say prayers and preach in the courtyard of the Pack Horse; this he did, and a goodly congregation attended, all of our family among them.

  The two captains were long in returning, and this troubled Sir Thomas. He paced restlessly about the inn, and then began to prick up his ears as though listening, and asked the landlord if there were any vantage point near for seeing over the countryside. Sam whispered in my ear: “The roof, mother,” and I sent him to Sir Thomas to tell him, which he did, not with quite as good a bow as I wished, but very clearly. Sir Thomas in spite of some demur from his officers went up to the roof, and came down with his doublet soiled and his mind angered, for he had plainly seen the enemy advancing some ordnance so as to command the heart of the town, on the far bank of the stream opposite the Turls, and also throwing up siege works to the north, beyond Fairgap. This, it seems, was very dishonourable during a cessation for parley, and he sent forth further captains to the Earl to remonstrate, and ask for a speedy return of his commissioners
with the conditions. But they came not and they came not, and we could hear continual sounds of movement around the town, and Sir Thomas grew more and more uneasy, and began to suspect the enemy of a design to attack us in spite of the parley. At last towards evening he gave the order to man all the siege works and stand on guard.

  It was indeed fortunate that he did so, else had the town been taken by storm. The captains did not return till after nine o’clock, when it was almost twilight, and the answer they delivered was no answer at all, for they brought no terms for negotiation, but simply a summons to surrender. At this Sir Thomas’s face slowly gathered a look of anger such as I had never seen on it before; he threw up his head and was just about to speak when suddenly there broke out a tremendous uproar, thundering of ordnance and crackle of musketry and wild prolonged shouting—the enemy, taking the hour as sundown and the parley as terminated, without any warning trumpet had resumed their attack on Bradford.

  The next few hours our little party spent in utter wretchedness. It was plainly the enemy’s intention to carry Bradford by storm; first on one side of the town, then on the other, came the roaring of the cannon; the night was almost as light as day, with so many guns firing continually; the reflections flashed in our windows and the echoes shook them. It was useless to try to make the children sleep through such a hideous din, and we did not attempt it; Lady Fairfax took Moll on her lap and held her head tight against her bosom so that the sound should not strike her ears so fearfully; my lads would not consent to this, but they held my hand and pressed close to me. The assault increased in fury; as fast as our men, rallying, beat the Royalists from one trench, they attacked another. A dread rose and rose in my mind about the ammunition; how long would it hold out, expended thus continually?

  The question was soon answered.

  In the dead of the night there came a lull in the firing. We were so unused to silence that we still shouted at each other, and our voices fell oddly on our numbed ears. In this silence, first Sir Thomas, and later his officers, one by one hastily entered the inn and went to the council chamber. I own frankly that Lady Fairfax opened our door, and tiptoed across the passage and set the door of the room opposite gently ajar, and returned to me smiling mischievously, and we drew chairs near and sat and listened with all our ears.