Take Courage (40 page)

“But you are rich in your children, Penninah.”

Then I reminded myself that Will and Eliza had had no children since that first ailing little girl who died, and I thought, yes I am blessed in my children, and a warm rush of feeling filled my heart, and I felt strong and able to fend for all three. I began quickly to talk to Eliza of John, thinking that to hear of her brother would cheer her as to hear of mine cheered me. It was a moving story, I found, that I had to tell, and they listened with gaping mouth and wide eyes; I spoke of the sieges of Bradford, the death of Francis, the battle of Adwalton, the retreat of Sir Thomas and the Royalists' sack of the town. Will seemed very sorry to hear about Francis; he wagged his head and said in his solemn ministerial tones:

“He was ever a scapegrace and ignorant of the ways of God, but there was much natural grace in him.”

Then I spoke of David, and Will's face clouded; he said he would make enquiries in the Royalist prisons, of which there were plenty in Leeds.

They had brought the gold I asked for, and Will laid it very solemnly in my hands, and said he and Eliza gave it me in trust for Mr. Thorpe's grandchildren. It was just a manner of speech, but I shrank from it all the same, sending a quick protective thought to my little Christopher. I asked Will to say a prayer over the child, and for all of us, before he left, and this he did; his invocation was somewhat long and ponderous, so that Sam fidgeted, but still it had a dignity and sincerity, and I was glad of it.

Thomas and Sam were a trifle subdued in the presence of their aunt and uncle, and we were all very merry together when Will and Eliza had gone. But for all that, their visit had been an immense relief, a lightening of my burden; it was as if they had opened a window in a gloomy and narrow house, so that I could see, no longer only my own troubles, but a distant open view. I had felt a mere starved defeated drudge, as well as a miserable sinner; now I remembered that I was Penninah Clarkson, and that though Bradford might be sacked, the cause of freedom was not lost.

Indeed—from the moment of my little Chris's birth, as I liked to think—the cause, as well as my own affairs, had taken a turn. Lord Fairfax and Sir Thomas having got into Hull, that being the only place in the county safe for them, the Royalists laid siege to it; but the inhabitants opened the river sluices and, the land round the estuary there being very flat, flooded the countryside. The chances of this mortal life are very strange; for because he was beaten at Bradford and had to go to Hull, and because the leaguer of the Royalists, and the flooding of the country, made fodder in Hull very scarce, Sir Thomas took ship with some horse across the Humber and went to fight with the men of the Eastern Counties in Lincolnshire, and there he fought at the side of Oliver Cromwell, and once those two men met, the cause of the Parliament took such a turn, in the military way, that it never looked back again.

I had no money for diurnals at that time, so I did not know these things fully, but now that Isaac Baume and I were in a sense partners, I heard more news. For we carried
out his plan just as he made it; we bought wool, and his children (who were both girls) and mine combed it, and Mrs. Baume and I saw to the spinning, and Isaac Baume wove it into cloth and took it to market, and came back with money and gossip. As we had no horse or donkey, he was obliged to carry the piece on his shoulder, and this for a wounded man with a lame leg was hard. But he managed to do it, he being a man somewhat despondent in speech but very stubborn in act, and he took Sam both to market and into the loom-chamber with him and taught him, and the child learned fast. There was little or no schooling going on in Bradford at present, Mr. Worrall having gone off to fight and the school revenues being all at sixes and sevens, so I let Sam leave his book and learn the cloth trade. But I taught Thomas myself, for I remembered what David had said about shielding the lamp of learning that it might be ready to shine out on a better day. When we had sold a piece or two and I had some precious silver coins as my share of what was above the price of the next lot of wool, I bought back some of David's books in the public market for a few pence, and when it was noised abroad what I was after, some of the garrison soldiers came one by one sheepishly up the lane and offered me our own books, tattered and dirty, for the price of a glass of ale. Thomas and I made merry over the gaps in the books caused by the missing pages; I remember in the Latin Accidence the page containing neuter nouns of the third declension was torn in half, and for a long time we were in great perplexity as to how to make their cases. But Thomas kept a record of all such nouns that he found in his reading book, and presently made out the whole declension thus, writing it down in a fair neat hand, and we were proud of it.

Thomas, too, kept the accounts for the wool and the cloth, for he was good at figuring, like his father. We could not, however, give the oats and hay into his charge, for when someone came begging with a piteous tale, his eyes grew very large and sad and his mouth quivered and before we knew what was happening he gave our precious oats away
for nothing. I could not scold him, for indeed I wished to do the same and steeled my heart with great difficulty, but we could not be over-generous if we were to live at all, so I put Sam to the task instead. Sam, although such a child, had a cheerful business-like manner which somehow sorted out the truly destitute from those who were trying to cozen; he reminded me very much of his grandfather Thorpe at these times, and also when I saw him so earnestly and carefully balancing the scales.

It was a hard, cold winter; and a hard, toilsome life. I did all the work of the house, keeping it clean—and when two healthy boys and a baby dwell in a house this is not inconsiderable; and I did the cooking, not that we had much to cook, and I patched and turned the boys' clothes and my own and knitted their stockings. At first I sat hours at the spinning-wheel, too, for we could not afford to pay for others doing the work, but as soon as we rose out of absolute penury, I put this out to be done by Sarah, who was glad enough to earn. There were the hens to feed, and the cow to milk, and the wood to chop; the boys and I shared these tasks, and very gallantly they played their part. There was my little Christopher to tend and nourish. There was Thomas to teach—and, what was pleasant but a little disconcerting, he learned so fast that I was hard put to it to keep ahead of him; I often sat up late at night, my eyes dropping with sleep—the fire out to save wood, the wind howling about the house, the cold rain beating on the windows—learning from the book enough to impart to my eldest son next day.

Yes, it was a hard, toilsome life; but it brought me one great boon, namely that I had no time to feel or think. Sometimes when the wintry dusk was falling, I had a moment of idleness because I could no longer see to work yet it was wasteful to light the candle, and then I stood open the door and wrapped a shawl round me and looked out, my hair blowing in the wind; and watching the rain driving in wild gusts across the hills, and listening to the wind's stormy roar, I fell into a melancholy mood, and thought of the tragic
happenings of my life, of my father and Francis cold in Bradford graveyard, of David rotting in some fever-stricken gaol, of John—ah, where was John? In flight across the moors, or fighting in some desperate ambush? How was he living? How was he feeling? What were his thoughts of me? Had he died, perhaps, unreconciled? Whenever I reached this point of my meditations a deep sigh escaped my lips, and I bowed my head, and I should doubtless have wept, tormenting myself, but there came always an imperious cry from Christopher, or Sam rushed in, wet and hungry, from market, or Thomas gently put in my hand an exercise he had written, and so my laments had to wait till I had performed my duties, and so I never came round to them at all.

Yes, it was a long hard winter and a long hard life—every day seemed as long as a year in what I did, yet far too short for all I had to do. But every week we made one piece of white cloth, and every week we sold it and bought more wool—when I thought of what a small thing one piece seemed to Mr. Thorpe and John and even to my father, and what a great thing it was to us, I smiled sadly; but what of that? The one piece sold, and I hoarded my share of the price so that when the time came I could have the oats field ploughed and planted, and we should have meal for the next winter again. The boys and I toiled day and night, and we looked like beggars from a poor-house rather than Thorpes of Little Holroyd, but what of that? I kept them to their manners and made Thomas read to us from the Holy Book morning and night, so their minds were not unfurnished nor were their spirits impoverished. Yes, it was a long hard winter and a hard toilsome life—but we lived, and the winter passed.

And as it was with us, so it was with the cause and the men who served it. They had a long hard winter, full of hunger, cold, misery, defeat; but, simply by their going on and not giving up, by their not being disheartened, the winter passed, and the cause lived.

Well do I remember the snowy day in January when Isaac Baume, standing talking to me outside our door with our cloth over his shoulder, waiting to set off to market, told me the first piece of stirring news. Sir Thomas, he said, had been appointed by the Parliament to cross over into Lancashire and Cheshire with what force he had, to meet a great Royalist army, mostly from Ireland, which had gathered there. Not being able to get over the Pennine hills by the usual West Riding road, which was barred to him by the Royalist garrisons, he had gone round through Derbyshire—though God knew how he had managed it in this weather, said Baume, for the mountains were much higher in those parts—and had got into Manchester, and all the Parliament men who could, were gathering to him.

“They say Hodgson, who has been in hiding up Skipton way since he got exchanged, has collected a troop and slipped across to him,” said Baume.

“John will be with them!” I exclaimed.

“Very like,” agreed Baume, nodding.

It was a very crisp cold day and he was much wrapped up, there was a drop of rheum at the end of his nose and his hand on his stick was red and swollen with frost, so that he did not appear a very heroic figure, but I thought I heard a wistfulness, a note of longing, in his tone.

“You wish you were there too?” I said.

Baume struck the ground with his stick and turned aside, not wishing to reveal his feelings by answering. But he did not go away, though Sam was skipping about in the snow, ready to start, so I waited, and after a moment Baume turned back to me.

“'Tis said that Black Tom wept when he looked on 'em,” he muttered.

“Looked on whom?” I asked him, puzzled.

“Our Yorkshire lads. They were so sick and naked and haggard,” said Baume gruffly.

I exclaimed in grief and pity. After a moment: “Mr. Baume, let us send them our next piece of cloth,” I said.

“Why, that would be very difficult, d'you see, Mrs. Thorpe,” grumbled Baume, though from the tone of his voice I knew this was what he had been aiming at all along. “Nay, I reckon it couldn't be done. How should we get t'cloth to Black Tom? Over t'mountains, and right to Manchester! I don't see as it could be done.”

“By carrier from Halifax,” I suggested.

“Aye? And how if the Royalists there find out it's for Black Tom?” objected Baume. “Where would piece go then, eh?”

“You can send the cloth in care of John Thorpe,” I said. “Royalists away from Bradford won't know his name.”

“It might never get to him,” said Baume.

“But it might,” said I.

“What would be t'use of twenty or thirty yards of cloth among all them men?” objected Baume again.

“Thirty yards more use than none,” said I. As he stumped off, grumbling, I called after him: “I will send a letter to my husband with the cloth.”

“Look sharp and get it written, then,” Baume threw over his shoulder crossly. “Women! Letters! I reckon we'll send one piece for nowt, and one to sell.”

So I wrote to John. I scarcely knew how to address him, for I felt he would not wish endearments from me; so I began simply:
Husband
, and wrote a plain bare account of what had happened at The Breck. Christopher Was born on
September 18, I told him baldly; The Breck was sacked but none of us hurt; David is a prisoner; Lister got in the hay and oats and then left us and I know not where he is; Will and Eliza have lent Isaac Baume and myself money and we are making one piece of cloth a week; at first it was hard but now we shall do well enough; Sam, if it please God, will be a clothier, and Thomas a scholar, and they send you their dear love; one piece that comes herewith is a gift to the Parliament, the other, if it may be, is for sale.
That God be merciful to you and bless you, and direct you in all your ways, and give you the victory over all your enemies, is the prayer of your wife Penninah Thorpe
, I wrote, and so concluded, save that I put below:
Remember our humble service to Sir Thomas Fairfax.
The letter was tied and sealed, and put in the pack with one of the pieces, and as soon as they were ready they were sent off by carrier from Halifax.

For a fortnight I was strangely happy; I sang about the house, and when I chanced to see my face in the little mirror which Sam had brought me, I saw my lips had colour again and my eyes were bright. I dressed my hair more carefully, and once again rejoiced in its thickness and length instead of feeling them a trouble; I pricked my ears whenever a footstep of man or beast could be heard in the lane. All this, though I did not own it to myself, was because I hoped for a letter from John. But none came. My hope died gradually; after a month I heard myself one day scolding crossly at the children, and caught myself up, ashamed, and then I knew why I was so cross, and put aside my hope and my scolding together, and told myself my hope was vain. It was a sad and stern admission, a bitter thing to face, that my husband was either dead or would not write to me, for that the packs had gone astray I somehow could not believe. To my own disappointment was added the vexation of Isaac Baume, who grumbled and scolded so bitterly and continually about the cloth, which indeed we could ill spare, that one day I broke out at him, and in a strange harsh voice cried loudly: