Take Courage (26 page)

“Thorpe, they're here!”

Without a word John sprang to his feet and hurried down the aisle. I followed him, pulling Sam, who was eager enough to come; but soon we were delayed, caught in the confusion of the congregation, whose members, crying: “Here! So soon! God save us! Here already!” scrambled hurriedly from their knees and made for the door, jostling each other in their haste. Just then the church bell began to ring above our heads, very harsh and loud.

“The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge!” shouted our under-minister staunchly.

“Amen, Amen!” cried John. “By your leave, friends! I am about the Lord's business.”

At this the crowd, being honest and godly folk, drew back decently, and we found ourselves outside the church, at Baume's side. Baume stretched out his hand and pointed; I shaded my eyes and followed his finger; sure enough, away
up on the hill beyond Barker End, the wintry sunshine lighted on a gleam of steel and a flash of scarlet. I shivered, and Sam's hand tightened in mine.

“Aye, that's Savile's lot, right enough,” said John grimly. He turned, spread out his arms to call attention, and shouted: “To your posts, friends! The enemy's on us. We'll give him a welcome he isn't looking for.”

“That's right!” cried the men.

There was a moment of confusion as those unable or unwilling to fight dispersed down the Bank, while the rest gathered round the weapons and picked out their own. “The best marksmen to the steeple,” cried John, raising his voice again, and at once some pushed past us into the church.

“Be off with you, Baume, over Coley way to Halifax,” went on John urgently, putting his hand under the clothier's arm. “There are many there well-disposed to us. Fetch in all the men you can find.”

“They'll all be at worship,” objected Baume.

“Aye; well; that makes it easier,” said John impatiently. “Go in to each congregation and acquaint the ministers of our condition here in Bradford; tell them to beg from the pulpit for the assistance of every godly and able man.”

“They wouldn't stay with us last night,” grumbled Baume again.

“Now the enemy's in sight they'll see things different,” John urged him. “We'll send to Bingley too—we'll bring in the whole countryside. We must hold these malignants off till Sir Thomas reaches Bradford. Take my mare—she's at the Pack Horse.”

Baume, compressing his lips doubtfully, nevertheless set off at a good pace down the Bank.

“Thorpe! Thorpe!” came a shout from above our heads. John stepped back and looked up; I did the same, and saw men crowding at the steeple windows, their musket barrels protruding in all directions like faggots in a bundle.

“Are we to give fire when we see them, or wait for their warning shot?” cried out one. “Or will you give the word?”

“Fire as soon as they're within your reach,” shouted John. “They won't expect resistance, and it may daunt 'em.”

With a beating heart, I watched the men raise their pieces and take sights along the barrels—the Royalists were too far to fire at yet, they called.

When I looked down again, Sam was no longer at my side. I supposed he had run back into the church, to see what was going on there, and so I followed him. Some of the men gathered there were looking to the priming of their muskets, some breaking the glass of the windows to give them room to aim, some tying scythes and sickles to long poles. All this was just what a boy like Sam would be eager to watch, I thought, but Sam was nowhere to be found. I felt I dare not go to John with such a tale, and began to search the church again, asking every group if they had seen my little son.

“I reckon I saw him a while ago, running off down Church Bank,” said Mr. Atkinson at length, coming kindly up to me with a fowling-piece in his hand. “A sandy-haired little lad, tall for his age, isn't he? Aye, he went off down the Bank. Making for home, I dare say.”

Knowing my little Sam, I doubted this, but glad of any news of him I hurried away. At the foot of the Bank I heard my name called; turning, I saw Sarah Denton at her cottage door, dandling her latest baby in her arms, with her little girl and the other children clinging round her skirts.

“Have you seen my Sam?” I cried.

“He's gone off to Little Holroyd,” said Sarah. “Our Sarah here saw him running by, and he told her he was bound for home.”

I was surprised but greatly relieved, for since the Royalists were coming from the east and The Breck lay south-west of Bradford, Sam's course home took him out of their way.

“Stay a minute, Mrs. Thorpe, love,” urged Sarah. “You look quite peaked and out of breath.”

“Nay, I'd best go home,” said I, mindful of John's orders.

“Eh, what are they up to now?” cried Sarah, shading her eyes and looking over my head.

I turned; and so both heard and saw a volley come from the muskets in the steeple. The noise was a heavy crackle, like a foot on breaking ice; the sight was very strange, for the short red flame seemed to start a foot or more away from the muzzle of the guns. There were shouts of applause from the direction of Kirkgate, and I looked there and saw a crowd of townspeople come out into the street to watch the fight; and there were angry shouts and cries from up at Barker End, and I looked and saw the hillside thick with scarlet and buff coats, some in ranks with pikes held vertically and colours, some lining the walls and the frosted hedges, some lying prone, some dragging a great gun out over the brow.

“That'll be one of the Queen's pocket pistols your father talks of,” said Sarah, pointing it out to her little girl.

“It's a piece of ordnance, a cannon,” I said. “Oh, look! There is another.”

“Aye, they're a pair. The men call them the Queen's pocket pistols, in joke,” explained Sarah.

Her air of satisfaction maddened me; it seemed as if she cared not how great the danger was, since her Denton was safe out of the fight. The Royalists were now drawing their guns down into the shelter of two weavers' houses which stood together on the slope; they planted them to point directly at the church, and wedged their wheels with billets of wood, and presently, as I supposed, charged one of them, for I saw a huge heavy black ball being thrust down its maw, and a buff-coat stood by its muzzle with a piece of lighted match in his hand.

“I wish John would go within the church,” I said uneasily, for I could see his dark head at the foot of the steeple, a clear aim for any marksman.

But now there came another volley of musketry from the church. The cannoneer with the match stumbled suddenly to one knee, the match flying as if thrown from his hand, and then he rolled over and lay full length, drawing
up his legs as if he had cramp in his stomach, and then two other buff-coats came and lifted him away; and at this a great shout of applause arose from all the people across in Kirkgate. Then a Royalist on horseback with his arm bound up rode quickly out and seemed to instruct the gunners, stooping to them and waving his sound arm, and they moved away the billets of wood from the other gun, and turned its wheels with their hands, and rolled it out so that it pointed directly in a line with Kirkgate. Our men from the steeple gave out another volley, but seemed not to hit anyone, and we could see the Royalists charging this second gun—it was a sight to see how heavy the cannon-balls were to lift. Then the gun was ready and they all stood back, except one man who came forward with the match, and while he stood waiting for the word to fire there was a kind of silence, everyone waiting to see what the gun would do.

And through that silence, clear and loud and merry, came Francis Ferrand's laugh.

God pity any woman who sees her husband and her lover as I did then! In that moment the truth I had been trying to keep at a distance closed on me and burned into my heart with a searing agony: Francis was there with the Royalists to take Bradford—certainly he was there, certainly, certainly! He was the officer with the bandaged arm—and John was there to defend it with his life; they were both in desperate peril, they would kill each other if they could; whichever side triumphed, I should be in the dust; my soul was for John, my heart for Francis. As the Royalist cannoneer bent over the breach I buried my face in my hands in anguish—but then I knew I could not bear to let either of those I loved out of my sight in such a fearful moment, so I let my hands drop and I raised my head and I watched them both with dry and burning eyes. There came a puff of smoke from the cannon, which looked grey against the frosted ground and then there was a great deep roar, a noise like thunder which made the whole air quiver, so that the house shook and my ear-drums pulsated; and then, across Kirkgate, there were screams, and people running and huddling
together, and the corner of one of the houses crumpled at the roof like a piece of cake broken off by a child, and first two or three stones slipped apart and then the whole wall tumbled headlong. Immediately there came a crackle of musketry from the church, and then another deep angry roar from the other cannon, and great chips of stone flew from the base of the steeple, barely a yard, as it looked, from John's head. A shuddering moan escaped from my lips, and Sarah, looking pale, seized my arm and tried to drag me in, but I shook her off; and as I watched, I saw John and the rest go into the church and close the door. The relief was so great that a faintness almost overcame me, my knees trembled, and I leaned against the door jamb, scarcely able to stand.

After these first exchanges in which each side, as it were, learnt the other's strength, both Royalists and Parliamenteers settled to their hateful work and made their dispositions. Our men stayed close in the church, giving fire whenever the Royalists exposed themselves; the Royalists soon saw this, and seemingly had no mind to encounter unnecessary peril, for the main body drew off a little up the hill, waiting till the ordnance should finish the business, and of those left with the cannon, some sheltered by the weavers' houses except when actually at work on the guns, and some went indoors and gave fire with muskets through the row of windows in the loom-chambers. We knew their presence there only by an occasional glimpse of a red sleeve or shoulder, and it seemed to me that they were safer in those small openings than our men in the large church windows, and that our men knew it, for they appeared and fired and withdrew all very suddenly, as if aware that they offered an easy mark. Thus the advantage of the height of the steeple was offset by the good shelter of the weavers' houses, and neither side made much progress. And so the siege went on all morning: the cannon scouring Kirkgate and battering the steeple, and our men giving a rattling uneven fire whenever they saw a buff or scarlet coat, and the Royalist muskets replying on the instant ours appeared in the
windows, firing all together very steadily. Between the firing Sarah and I looked at each other to see if we were still alive, and exchanged a word or two with her neighbours, who were also standing at their doors. I know not how I looked, for I know not how I felt; my whole being seemed gathered in my eyes, and when they no longer had occupation, there was nothing left of me. But Sarah's face was keen and set; at each discharge from our men she cried out encouragingly: “Take that, you godless rascals!” and when a cannon thundered without doing harm, she exclaimed with great satisfaction: “God knows His own!” The folks in Kirkgate learned to run for shelter when the cannon was charged and ready to sound, so that few were hurt excepting once when a ball lighted on a tenter in a nearby close and the bars flew amongst the people; but the church could not move, its steeple began to look worn and spoiled, and the men at the windows grew fewer.

As the morning drew on towards noon, the conviction grew on me that the Royalists would win—there were so many of them, so well ordered, and their guns so great; and besides, Francis in any encounter had always seemed so much more able to come off best than John. When I thought of our men—decent, honest, God-fearing, liberty-loving men, who only wanted the right to obey their own consciences—shut up in the church, with only a few muskets and old-fashioned fowling-pieces, and not much powder, and no hope of any relief, Sir Thomas being yet miles away, my heart burned so with pity for them and hatred for the Royalists that I could scarcely contain myself, and a longing grew on me to scold Francis for a clock hour for his callous, selfish, high-handed, tyrannical ways. Bitter phrases formed themselves in my mind; I longed to turn him inside out to his own view, to expose his high-flown Royalist sentiments or the oppressive cruelty, the arrogant injustice, they truly were. But even as I thought thus, in imagination my tongue faltered, and I knew I meant to end my scolding like a woman, in forgiveness and a kiss.

About the time of noon, during a lull in the firing, we
heard a kind of murmur from Kirkgate, and looking in that direction saw the folk there crowding to the open end of the street, whence they could see the Turls. They were pointing and talking.

“What's going on there?” wondered Sarah, craning her neck.

“Perhaps the men from Halifax are coming!” I exclaimed.

We waited eagerly, and soon my expectation seemed to be fulfilled, for a band of men appeared at the foot of Church Bank, the sunshine flashing on some weapons they were carrying. But they were few, and walked along together in an unaccustomed haphazard way, very different from the military motions of the Royalists.

“If that is all a big town like Halifax can do,” began Sarah in a tone of great disgust, “God root it out for a nest of black-hearted malignants.”

“There's Uncle Lister, Mother,” piped up her eldest little girl, pointing.

The child was right; it was our Lister who headed the band, and the rest were all Little Holroyd men. The poor lads, ignorant of how things were going, began to march right up the middle of the Bank towards the church, forming a mark for the Royalists as easy to hit as a haystack, once they should come within musket-shot. We all called to them and beckoned, and the men from the steeple shouted too—I saw John leaning from a steeple window, waving, then cupping his mouth in his hands to shout in an exasperated way: “Lister!” The Holroyd men stood still, bewildered; then all of a sudden the bullets began to sing past their ears, and they understood their danger and ran for shelter. Lister and some others came tumbling down on top of us, unhurt. I saw now that they carried scythes and sickles and such-like homely weapons; Lister held a notable long pike which seemed familiar to me, when I looked more closely I saw that it was the sharp blade of our spit tied to a pole.