Take Courage (22 page)

“But will there be fighting in Bradford?” I asked, incredulous.

“Perhaps,” said John.

“We will try to keep it aw-w-way,” said Sir Thomas gravely.

“As I understand the matter,” began John, “Parliament holds Hull and Selby in the east of the county, and these clothing towns in the West; York and Pomfret are for the King.”

“Aye,” agreed Sir Thomas.

“It will be very difficult for us here,” said John, frowning: “If the King's men spread over the middle of the county. We shall be cut off from our markets and our wool, and our roads to London and to Hull; we shall starve and make no cloth, and there will be no money from us for the Parliament's army.”

Sir Thomas gave him a keen searching look.

“Go on,” he said.

“Well,” began John.

Sir Thomas took a step or two, John moved beside him; they began to walk up and down by the front of the house, talking and drawing maps in the air with their hands. I went in and took the children with me (though they were very reluctant to come) so that the two men might have peace for their discussion. After a time the air grew chill, and I sent Sam out with Sir Thomas's cloak, for I thought he looked not very strong, with his sallow face and thin frame; he wrapped it round him, but continued walking. It was not till long after I had seen the boys in bed that they came in. I rose from my chair by the hearth to meet them.

“Wife,” said John in an eager tone: “Perhaps Sir Thomas would stay the night here, if you asked him.”

“It would be a great honour for The Breck,” said I. “Will you honour us thus, Sir Thomas?”

I spoke very cordially, for I wished it with all my heart, and Sir Thomas gave me his searching look and his gentle smile, and accepted.

I stayed with them only long enough to see them well settled by the hearth, and then went away to prepare his room. It gave me pleasure to light a big fire there and thrust our best copper warming-pan between the sheets, for when a woman sees a sickly and melancholy man of a kindly disposition, she tends to think that his wife scants her care of him, and that she could make a better job of it herself. The voices below still sounded in earnest talk; pausing a moment to listen, I heard Sir Thomas say, clear and deep and without any stammer:

“The welfare of the people is the supreme law of nations, and resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

I went to see how the dragoons were faring, sent the maids to bed and saw the men housed in Lister's room, he being both fearful and eager of this military company; then I went to bed myself. But I had twice slept, and twice waked to put fresh logs on Sir Thomas's fire, before at last I heard John showing our guest upstairs. Then he came in to our room, treading very softly so as not to disturb me, for indeed the hour was very late.

“I am awake, John,” I said.

Then he began to pour out all the history of his meeting with Sir Thomas; how he had had to take devious ways home to avoid the Royalists, and how he had fallen in with Sir Thomas and his brother-in-law, who were about the business of raising the West Riding Train-Bands and their own tenants. The brother-in-law, being Will's patron at Adel, knew John, and introduced him to Sir Thomas as a man of good spirit and plentiful estate, and a strong supporter of the Parliament in Bradford—“Those were his very words,” said John. At this Sir Thomas looked him over with a mild gaze which seemed to see everything right through to his backbone, said John, laughing, and asked him some searching questions about Bradford affairs. His answers to these evidently gave satisfaction, for Sir Thomas invited him to ride with their party. He had been of some slight service in writing letters and keeping records of the numbers of men promised, said John, and so it had come about that Black Tom, as his men called him, consented to visit The Breck.

To me it was clear, first that Sir Thomas knew a useful man when he saw him, and second that he and John had become friends the moment they met. They were made for each other's friendship, religious fervour, hatred of injustice, strange fires, sombre depths and all; already, I saw, Sir Thomas understood John better than I did, though I was his wife and had known him nigh on twenty years; while I suspected that in the world of shifting loyalties which high-up
gentry then lived in, the solid integrity of John was to Sir Thomas at once a healing balm and a pillar of support. John was speaking now of Sir Thomas's commission under his father, of Train-Bands and Constables and commissions of array issued by the King. I had never heard him speak so eagerly before, even when the subject was cloth.

“And what of the kerseys, John?” I said as he blew out the candle, not without a slight intent to tease.

“They sailed for Hamburg on Thursday,” said John shortly. “Sir Thomas is not very happy with his wife,” he went on, lowering his voice. “I think it was not a match with any love in it.”

I hoped, with some reproach for myself, that this was not another point in which John and Sir Thomas found themselves in agreement.

“What is wrong with Lady Fairfax?” I whispered.

“Oh—nowt special,” said John cheerfully. “I think it is just that she is—shallow. And talks too much,” he added. “'Tis an intolerable fault in a woman.”

“It is not one of my faults, is it?” I said on an impulse.

As soon as I had spoken I wished to recall my words, for the coy practice I often saw in women, of referring to themselves everything said, whether it was meant so or not, in order to draw attention, was one I despised heartily. But I need not have troubled myself, for John's attention was not drawn; he uttered a rapid perfunctory “No,” and went on about Lady Fairfax and Sir Thomas.

“At one time he almost broke off the marriage contract,” he said. “I think 'twas respect for his late General, her father, that brought him to the altar. A fatherless girl—he could not leave her.”

It was long before we slept; but we were both astir early next morning. I had my guest's entertainment to see to; John roused Lister, and they sat together in the loom-chamber, busy with papers and figures and letters, putting the affairs of the cloth-ship into good order. Sir Thomas slept long; the boys had both gone off to school before he
woke, though they lingered so long in the hope of seeing him that they had to run all the way to Bradford for fear of being late. Sir Thomas seemed vexed with his own lateness when he at last came down, and also quite astonished; he made a deep apology to me, with a colour of embarrassment in his sallow cheek. It was rare, he said, for him to sleep so long; indeed he was not much of a sleeper at any time, it was his practice to read a great deal during the night. He had already noticed the books about our house, and asked now if one of the family were a scholar, and listened attentively while I told him about David.

Then John and he sat down to the long table, and one of the troopers brought in papers from a pack, and they began to work. I left them; but once or twice as I passed by the door I saw Sir Thomas striding slowly up and down, with his hands behind his back, dictating letters in his low uneven stutter to my husband.

While they were busy, there came a great jingling up the lane, and several gentlemen and their attendants rode up and enquired for Sir Thomas Fairfax. Black Tom was not too well pleased to be interrupted thus, I thought; and indeed these visitors seemed to do more talk than work, though they spoke soberly and gravely about the Parliament. I had them served with wine, and their horses fed and watered, for they had come some distance. They left, but more came, and yet more, and again more, so that the knocker seemed never silent. All day long gentlemen stood about in every corner of our house, waiting to see Sir Thomas to receive instructions, or talking of rumoured battles in the south. There was a hum and a bustle about The Breck, such as had not been there since the day of my Thomas's christening; the yard was full of strange horses—of which I have always had a foolish fear—whinnying and stamping and backing their great haunches against the windows. In the kitchen the maids flew about with warm cheeks, laughing and busy.

Sir Thomas was courteous but decided with his visitors, and between each interview he dictated, and my husband
went on writing and figuring. The hours went on; I laid a slight refreshment of powdered meat, cheese and apples at their elbows; they munched and went on working.

At last, all of a sudden as it seemed, everyone save Sir Thomas and his two men had departed; not a horse was left (for which I was truly thankful), not a gentleman to stare at me as I passed by. The sun shone in clear and strong, and everything seemed very still and empty.

“The house looks as if it had been sacked,” I said to myself—but that was one of those exaggerations of youth, which uses phrases whose true meaning it has not yet learned by experience.

Then John came out, looking weary but content, and called for Sir Thomas's horse, and bade me go in so that our guest could take leave of me.

Sir Thomas was lounging in a chair by the hearth with his cloak already round him; he looked tired, but scarcely as much so as I expected. He rose as I entered, and bowing over my hand, told me my husband and I had done good service to the cause that day.

“We are very grateful for the opportunity,” I said.

“This house and all in it are always at your service,” said John gruffly, coming up behind us.

“I h-h-hope I shall visit The Breck m-m-many times,” said Sir Thomas, looking about him with an air of affection.

Just as he crossed the threshold I called to him on an impulse: “Will you not bring your little Moll to see us?”

As soon as I had spoken I felt abashed, fearing I had been presumptuous, but he turned and gave me the happiest smile I had yet seen on his reserved and melancholy countenance.

“It is a p-p-p,” he began, but could not get the word
promise
out, so said simply: “I will b-b-bring her.”

John saw him to his horse, and stood beside him a moment when he had mounted, in silence. Sir Thomas sat silent too, looking in front of him.

“Then,” he said at last, as if continuing a previous conversation: “If I need thee, Jack, thou'lt come?”

“I will come,” said my husband steadily.

Sir Thomas took his hat off to me and rode away down the lane on his white Fairfax horse, the two troopers thudding solidly after him.

Looking back on this time, the beginning of our Civil War, from the distance of some thirty years, I see now that, in Yorkshire at any rate, men were perplexed as to how to begin to fight. Even Sir Thomas, who was a trained soldier, having fought much in the Low Countries was confronted with circumstances new to him. Hitherto going to war, for an Englishman of our time, had meant joining a regiment and being shipped overseas and then marching in proper order up to a great body of enemy also arranged in proper order, who spoke a language different from ours and could never be mistaken for one of us. But here at home it was all quite different; a Royalist recruited one day in a town, a Parliament man the next, and when they had collected their troops, they hardly seemed to know what to do with them. We heard chiefly of small skirmishes in different parts, when a troop on one side beat up the quarters of a troop on the other, made a few prisoners and took, what was much more valuable, some muskets and kegs of powder. For both sides lacked supplies of these, though the Royalists at this time were better armed and better mounted than our men, and more abundantly provided with money, from the help of the great noblemen about the King.

I do not quite remember whether it was at this time or later that my husband was appointed the assessor of Bradford district for the Parliament, but whether he received the official appointment then or not, he was greatly employed in collecting monies and sending them to the Fairfaxes for the upkeep of their men. The Breck grew very busy; my remembrance of those days is of John sitting at the table
bent over his Parliamentary accounts, with two or three men standing about waiting to see him. Some of these were poor men, weavers and the like, who held their few pennies in their hand and had walked many miles to hand in their contribution; others were wealthy clothiers or yeomen farmers, who had ridden in bringing gold. All this John kept a strict account of, and despatched promptly to Black Tom. One day he came home with a couple of muskets, greatly to little Sam's delight; with so much of the county's wealth in the house, he said, it was our duty to have also the means of defending it.

At first things went well with our side in Yorkshire. Lord Fairfax, who had already the south-eastern part of the county, Hull and Selby and along the banks of the Ouse, decided to hold also all the line of the River Wharfe, stretching right across from the hills in the west to the Ouse, and he sent his men to hold the river bridges at Tadcaster and Wetherby. This pleased John greatly, for it linked up our clothing towns in the west with the port of Hull, and kept the Royalists quiet in the middle of the county, so that our cloth carriers could travel with a fair safety towards the sea or London. Since this was exactly what John had represented to Sir Thomas as necessary for the well-being of the clothing towns and the Parliament's cause which depended on them, it was very possible that Sir Thomas had urged John's plan on his father. I mentioned this to John. He coloured and joked gruffly: “Nowt o' t' sort, lass.” But I could see he was pleased, and in his heart really thought it was so.

But then the Royalists in the county, seeing that they made no headway, invited the Earl of Newcastle to come down from the northern parts and help them. This Earl was a very great and rich man, high in favour with the King; I remembered that I had heard of him before, as handsome and fond of music and poetry, though I could not then call to mind who it was that told me of him. Certainly I never thought that I should meet this Earl; he was just a name to me. He soon became a name of terror, however, for he
broke easily through the small army sent to check his crossing of the Tees, and swept down on Yorkshire with eight thousand men. These men were all well equipped and mostly used to fighting, so that now the war became a much more stern and well-marshalled affair than it had been before. The next thing we heard was that the Earl had entered York, and the next, that a battle was going on between him and the Fairfaxes, at Tadcaster. Bradford was convulsed by this news, for the Bradford Train-Bands were with Sir Thomas; Sarah Denton, who had become a great deal more homely since her marriage and doted on her husband with a submission amazing to me, came rushing out to The Breck, wailing that she was sure her husband was killed; and I had much ado to quiet her. As for John, he was as white as a sheet, and would not touch food all day; the thought of Sir Thomas in battle for the Parliament, not thirty miles away and at that very hour, was almost too much for his endurance.