Take Courage (38 page)

“You heard him crying out for quarter?” I said hardly.

Lister bowed his head. “Aye,” he whispered.

There was a pause. O David, David, I thought; my little brother, my noble scholar lad. In prison! Will it be dark and
damp and full of fever? Will there be rough and tyrannous men, bullying and shouting, and I not there to comfort you? But they will not destroy David's dignity, I thought. At this his fine austere face rose before me, and anger and pity raged again in my heart.

“So one Royalist took four prisoners?” I said aloud scornfully.

“Aye—I've often thought since, we might easily have made him our prisoner, had we but had courage,” mourned Lister. “But alas, we had none. For their hands shall be feeble, and their knees as weak as water.”

“So it seems,” said I. “He did not see you in the holly bush?”

“He asked for me; he said: ‘There were four of you, where's the other?'” wailed Lister. “The other two had their backs to me, they did not see me, but Mester David looked right at me, and then turned away, and said he saw me not. It was like David, was that; aye, it was like him.”

“I am greatly indebted to you, Joseph Lister,” I said very smoothly, “for taking such excellent care of my brother David.”

“What more could I ha' done?” said Lister, weeping. “If I'd come out o' t' bush, I should have been taken too. And then I couldn't have seen Mester John, and brought the gold for you and the childer. The Lord judge betwixt you and me, Mistress; vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”

“The Lord will judge indeed,” said I. “Well, go on, tell me—how does your master? Have you got him into prison too?”

“Thou hast loved to speak all words that may do hurt,” faltered Lister. “You are cruel, Mistress. I love David as well as you do; I have always loved him.”

Bitter reproaches rose to my lips, and then I thought: I have heard those words Lister says, very recently, and I remembered I had used them myself to the Earl of Newcastle. I sighed very wearily, and said: “Well, let it pass.
Perchance it was not your fault. Tell me of your master. How does he look after so many tribulations?”

But Lister found little to say on this point, so that it seemed John must have appeared much as usual; and this was so like John that I thought it very probable. He had not said a word to Lister about his charge through the Royalist leaguer, or his ride through the dawn across Haworth moors, though to hear Lister's account of his own journey to Colne and back, one would think it a perilous road indeed. Instead of the tale of John's dangers, I heard Lister's adventures in Bradford on his return—the streets, he said, were full of meal and chaff and feathers, which I could well believe, and screaming women, which I could believe well enough also. He had hid in a cellar last night, there being companies of Royalists marching about the streets.

“Were many Bradford citizens killed in the sack?” I asked quickly.

“Very few,” said Lister. “Some dashing fellows wounded a few persons that resisted them taking their goods, and of those some have since died, but I think not more than half a score. The Earl of Newcastle ordered that quarter should be given to all the townsmen, so there was no great slaughter, nor is there like to be.”

“I am glad,” said I.

“God tied their hands and saved our lives,” said Lister sanctimoniously. “He gave us a special blessing.”

I daresay I smiled a little, though sadly, for I thought I had been the instrument of the Lord in that tying of hands, and perhaps Lister saw the smile and was vexed, for he went on angrily:

“It was a vision sent from God, an apparition.”

“What?” said I, startled.

“Something came to the Earl on Lord's Day night, and pulled the clothes off his bed, and cried out several times with a lamentable voice: ‘Pity poor Bradford!'” said Lister with unction. “Not till he gave orders about the quarter, did the apparition vanish away.”

“Where heard you that tale?” I asked him in derision.

“It is the general report in Bradford—I assert it not as a certain truth, but it is the general report,” said Lister in a huff. “‘Pity poor Bradford,' said the apparition.”

“Were there any friends of ours slain in the sack?” I asked, to divert him from this awkward topic. “What is the news of those who went with Sir Thomas?”

He told me that Mr. Atkinson was dead, of fright and anger when the Royalists sacked his house, and Isaac Baume lay sick at home, having been sorely wounded in the siege. Sir Thomas had got safe to Hull, it was said, with a broken wrist and some other wounds, escaping very narrowly, and his little daughter was safe with him, but the foot company which tried to break through the leaguer on Sunday night had been taken, almost every man. Mr. Hodgson was among these, he had been seen marching stripped to his shirt, with his hands tied. Many women had left Bradford before the sack and sought shelter in Halifax, others had hidden in their own cellars, but now the fair was set up near Boiling Hall, folk were creeping out and buying back their goods.

“What fair?” said I.

“The malignants have emptied the town of all that was worth carrying away,” began Lister. “The enemy said: I will divide the spoil.”

“You do not need to tell me that,” said I, looking about me.

“And now they keep a fair and sell the things,” said Lister. “The people, such as can find the price or borrow it, are buying back their own goods.”

He seemed to find this quite an equitable arrangement, but I burned with anger at the injustice of it. However, I thought, we can buy a cow and some hens with this gold John has sent me, and so eke out subsistence.

“Dare you go to the camp to buy for us?” I asked doubtfully, for, thought I, since David values Lister's life, who am I to throw it away. “You say the slaughter is over; dare you venture to Boiling Hall?”

Lister hesitated. “Go make atonement for thyself,” he murmured at length. “I will go if Mester John commands it.”

“But John is at Colne,” I said.

“I will go ask him,” said Lister, strengthened in his obstinacy by my objection. “I will go tell him all that is done at Bradford and The Breck, and ask his counsel.”

“Well, move the table from the door before you go,” said I, exasperated.

It was two days before he returned, but when he appeared at last he was driving one of our own cows before him. The children rushed out and threw themselves on the beast's warm brown neck, and I must say I have never been so glad to see a cow, before or since, for as a rule cows seem to me somewhat dull and tepid animals. Lister brought messages from John: we were to mow the grass, he said, and get in the hay, and buy a cow and some fowl, and make shift for ourselves as best we could. For his part, since there was a Royalist garrison in Bradford now, and like to stay there, it was not safe for him to return to Bradford; so he was determined to remove to Manchester and join the Parliament forces there, or if he could find out Sir Thomas Fairfax, he would fall in with him and join his army.

“And was that all he said?” I asked.

“That was all,” said Lister, producing a small fowl from within his doublet—the most of the poultry stolen by the soldiers, he said, had been killed, partly to save the expense of feeding them, partly to supply the officers' table, so this was the only living one he could find. The soldiers were so eager in selling to the Bradford townsfolk, he went on, that they had forgotten all their notions of slaughtering.

“And was that all Mr. Thorpe said?” I persisted, for Lister had given no message of love from John for me or the children, no expression, even, of concern for our welfare.

“That was all,” said Lister, shutting his mouth obstinately. “The good man darkeneth not counsel by many words.”

It was the forenoon, and the cow had been milked
before she left the camp, so we must wait some hours for the drink of milk the hungry children longed for; I hated to put them to work when their little stomachs were so empty, but since John said the hay was ripe we must set ourselves to getting it. Lister, grumbling bitterly that he was a weaver and dealt in yarn not grass, nevertheless went to the laithe for a scythe. But there was no scythe left, there was not a tool about the place. Dumbfounded, he came to me for instructions; I sent him off to all our neighbours in Little Holroyd, to borrow one. While he was away I went within to stir together a little thin porridge, from which dejecting occupation I was roused by a shout from Sam. I ran out, to find the little lad clinging round the cow's neck, while one Royalist soldier tried to drag him off, and another led the cow away by a halter.

“We bought her at your camp this morning,” Thomas was crying, plucking at the sleeve, first of one soldier and then of the other. “Don't you understand—we bought her!”

“Get off now—get off!” said the soldiers, lunging at him. “Call your children off, missis, or it'll be t'worse for 'em.”

“This is our cow twice over,” I explained, panting to keep pace with them. “She was taken from us on Monday—we bought her at Boiling Hall this morning.”

“You can buy her again now, if it suits you, missis,” said the soldier with the halter, stopping. “What'll you pay for her, eh? A fine healthy cow, in good milk,” he added with a grin.

I hesitated, then despairingly named a price.

“Aw!” jeered the soldier in derision: “We can get more nor that for her at camp. Come on,” he said to the other, jerking at the halter.

His companion picked Sam off the cow and threw him sprawling, and they went off dragging the beast down the lane.

There are few things bitterer in life, I think—and I have seen much grief—than injustice. If injustice is to be allowed, we feel, everything is hopeless, for nothing can be
certain; we seem like helpless birds beating against ever-changing, ever-narrowing, ever-hardening bars. I could scarcely keep my eyes dry and my voice steady as I helped Sam up, and gave the boys each a hand, and led them back to the house. Thomas's face was puckered and his eyes perplexed—poor child, it was his first encounter with injustice, and he could not credit it—but Sam's was crimson with anger and very sullen. We were hardly within before Lister came back to us, looking very bewildered and downcast; he had been quite unable to borrow a scythe, he said, for most had had their tools stolen, and if any had managed to hide them or buy them back, they were as precious as gold to them. Mr. Baume was very sick and like to die, he added; he only escaped being made prisoner by hiding in his own lead-house, and the colour on the walls and floor was not healthful for him. There was not a cow left, he said, in all Little Holroyd. He spoke this last complacently, thinking we still had ours; when he heard our news his long face dropped still longer.

“The days of affliction have taken hold upon me,” he quoted mournfully: “My welfare passeth away as a cloud.”

“Lister!” I protested. “Be not so uncheerful, pray!”

But I spoke with quivering lips, for a kind of horror had taken hold of me; if misfortune so continually pursues me, I thought, I fear I shall not be able to support it; my spirit will break, my courage will leave me; and what will happen to the children then?

“Take what money we have in your hand,” I bade Lister in a harsh loud tone: “And go to the camp and buy another cow.”

This I said merely to cheer myself by taking some action, even if it were not the wisest action to take; but all the three pairs of eyes which were fixed on me brightened as I spoke, and so I took some heart again. I roused myself and made them eat, and then bade Lister dispatch; and then I set the boys to gathering wood, and then had them reading to me from the Bible, and spelling and ciphering, and so the day passed.

About twilight, Lister came very quietly in from the lane, leading a cow, and put her in the laithe, and we all went out eagerly to look at her. She was not one of our own, but a thin scrawny beast with a flat bag, such as John would never have admitted within The Breck in our prosperous days, but these were not prosperous days and we were very glad of her. Lister had brought some cooking pans and spoons, too, and a rough buffet, a poor thing but strong, and a coverlet, so we were not totally without furnishings, and felt less helpless.

In the morning we had milk and an egg, and were cheerful, and Sam led the cow, Dolly we called her, down the slope to the beck, where she would be out of sight from the lane. But the grass was rough down there, and the beast from her natural instinct continually strayed up the bank to the better pasture, where she came into view, so that Sam was continually chasing her down again; and sure enough about noon when we were just sitting down to sup our porridge a Royalist in a scarlet coat suddenly thrust his head in at the back door and called out:

“Hi, missis! Where'st 'a hidden cow?”

Such a passion of anger seized me then that the blood left my face, and I clenched my hands and advanced on him, which seeing that he had a musket slung across his back would only have brought death down on us, when Sam prevented me:

“She isn't our cow,” he called out cheerfully, swinging one foot: “Take her if you like.”

“Who does she belong, then?” asked the Royalist, cautious.

“Mr. Ferrand of Holroyd Hall,” said Sam.

The Royalist's face fell. “Oh, the Captain's father,” he said in a disappointed tone. “Well—I'd best leave her, then.”

“Take her or leave her, it's nowt to do wi' us,” said Sam. “If you take her you'll save me driving her off our land, and I'm fair sick of it.”

“You're a young besom, that's what you are,” said the Royalist. “And who's yon?” he cried out suspiciously, as
Lister, who had been up in the loom-chamber seeing if aught could be made of an unfinished piece there, came into view. “Is that your father, eh? Is that John Thorpe?”