‘You have something for me? A letter? My mother sent you on here?’
He nodded, still fishing. ‘I went to Hackney, My Lady, as soon as I’d handed over the dispatches I brought south, having a letter for thee from Sir Thomas. And Lady Vere told me tha’ was here and not expected back for a day or so — so I cum on.’
He held out the letter, and Anne took it with a quick word of thanks, and was about to turn away, no room in her mind at the moment for anything else; then she swirled back to him.
‘Oh, forgive me. It is so long since I had word that I forget all other things. My Lord, I present to you Lieutenant William Hill of Thomas’s regiment, who carried Little Moll on his saddle bow all the way from Tadcaster to Selby, and mounted me behind him when we would have broken out of Bradford. He was wounded and taken prisoner, but now you see he is back to us again!’ Her eyes met those of Thomas’s grandfather, speaking to him wordlessly on behalf of this poor worn and weary, travel stained and doubtless thirsty ghost.
Lord Mulgrave’s eyes smiled a little in reassurance; she saw him hold out his hand to the ghost, saying, ‘God save you, Lieutenant. May I welcome you back from the Waters of Babylon.’ He took up the little silver bell beside him to summon again the servant, and bade him bring the burgundy. And as she turned away at last, into the window with her letter, she heard his quiet old voice hoping that the newcomer could stay for the night. Then at least that he could delay his return to Westminster long enough to enliven his own and Lady Fairfax’s dullness by supping with them before he rode.
Anne had broken the seal and opened out the crackling sheet, turning a little to catch the light, and settled herself to read the letter that she had been aching for. ‘Dear heart,’ Thomas had written, obviously in a hurry. ‘Though I stayed long for an opportunity of writing to you, yet God be thanked I can now have it, with cause of much thankfulness, for a great victory it hath pleased God to give us over the Irish Armies ...’ So the rumour had been a true one. She read on, finding a hurried outline of the past few weeks’ events, maddeningly without detail; finding Thomas suffering from his usual after-battle low spirits, for the letter, after all its triumph, ended on a minor key: ‘I have endured some hardship since I parted from you, being forced to march and watch night and day this frosty and snowy weather. I have much trouble to command those forces I now have, there being such division among the Commanders, which doth much impair my health.’ Yes, that would be truth enough; she knew how Thomas always reacted to such strains and stresses. Anne felt a strong desire to take those divided Commanders and bang their heads together for the sake of Thomas’s stomach. She read the last few lines. Thomas desired her to present his humble duty to My Lady Vere, sent his humble services to her sisters, and his love to Little Moll. ‘And so, dear heart, farewell.’ No more.
She refolded the letter and turned back to the room. She hesitated by Lord Mulgrave’s chair, all at once childishly torn with uncertainty as to whether or not she must offer him Thomas’s letter. Thomas was his grandson, and the action so briefly described in it would be of interest to him; but it was a personal letter, though it would be hard to say in what its intimacy lay, save in the small endearment of its beginning and ending.
Lord Mulgrave seemed to sense her dilemma, and looked up, patting the broad arm of his chair invitingly. ‘Is it a letter to your taste?’
‘There are some details of Nantwich Fight,’ she began uncertainly.
‘Later, maybe you will be kind and read me whatever parts you judge to be of interest to me. To speak truth, I never could read Thomas’s writing. And meanwhile let us call on Lieutenant Hill, who tells me that he was present throughout, to render us a true and faithful account of the whole undertaking.’
Anne flashed him a look of gratitude, and seated herself on the chair arm that he indicated, the letter still in her hands. She looked with deep expectancy to the gaunt creature in the tattered russet coat. There were so many things she wanted to ask him, about Thomas, about himself, but Nantwich Fight would do for a start. He raised his sunken eyes to her face. ‘Tha’ll know, My Lady, that Sir Thomas was ordered to raise the siege of Nantwich?’
‘I know since reading Sir Thomas’s letter,’ Anne said. ‘Before that, I had heard it, but only as a flying rumour.’
‘Eh well — the order cum about Christmas — just that he was to relieve Nantwich, not how ‘twas to be done, if tha’ sees what I mean — for the troops was in bad shape, with neither gear nor garments for a winter campaign. Sir Thomas raised the wherewithal on his own credit to get them kersey coats and boots that wouldn’t let in the snow; and just afore New Year he marched, wi’ summat over three thousand Horse and dragoons and a draggle-tail force drawn from all the Foot regiments in Lancashire and Cheshire. All that were before I joined him; I was up at Craven with Captain Hodgson, but the word came to us up there. Tha’ll remember Captain Hodgson as was left behind in Bradford?’
‘Yes. I remember Captain Hodgson.’
Lieutenant Hill looked again into the depth of his wine, as though deeply interested in something he saw there. ‘We was a queer kind of force that old Hodgson had collected; queer as Dick’s hatband. Odd companies scattered after Adderton. Moor or won clear of the Royalists when Bradford fell, all the ravellings of every battle we’ve ever lost in the north, and God knows that’s a few. We made up three companies all told, and when we heard that Fairfax was on the march, he marched us down from Craven to Manchester to join him. Half starved, most of us were, and the rags of old uniforms hanging from our backs, and our feet bound up in bloody rags. There was others joined the General at Manchester; Bright and Lambert, and Sir William down from the North Riding, each wi’ their own men; but happen we was t’proudest of the lot. Hodgson paraded us for Black Tom, so cool as though we’d just come in from outpost duty; and, “Reporting back for duty, Sir,” says he; and we sets up a kind of cheer, well nigh as ragged as we was ourselves.’
It was so quiet in the room that they heard with unnatural clearness the whisper of the flames on the hearth and the cry of a boatman on the river. Then Anne said, ‘And what did Black Tom do?’
Hill looked up from the glass in his hand. ‘The General cried,’ he said, very simply. ‘Eh well, I reckon there was good few of us glad enough to use our coat sleeves for a handker-cher, if so be as we’d got one. If the General was glad to see us back, we was — glad enough to be under his command again.’ His voice sounded curiously husky. ‘They got us boots from somewhere, and we marched from Manchester wi’ the rest, just after New Year — if “marched” is the right word. It’s been a hard winter in the north, and most of the time we was manhandling t’guns through t’drifts and blinding snowstorms. We cum up wi’ our first party of the enemy in Delamere Forest, and then six miles on they tried to hold a narrow place against us wi’ a couple of hundred men. The General sent dismounted dragoons against ‘em, and that affair didn’t hold us long. So we pushed on against their main strength. See now, Sir — My Lord —’ He had forgotten Lady Fairfax, he was refighting Nantwich Fight for the benefit of his fellow soldier. He began to shift about the objects on the table, drawing rivers and troop concentrations with a bony forefinger. ‘Byron formed his troops across country here, about a mile north of Nantwich.’ Nantwich was the wine flask of Venice crystal. ‘His brother’s regiment on the Left Wing, Gibson’s on the Right, Warren’s and Earnley’s here in the Centre; Sir Fulke Hunkes in the rear to watch the garrison. Sir Thomas advanced to engage them. So —’ The intricacies were beyond Anne, and indeed she made little attempt to follow them. The account had ceased to be for her, it was for the old man leaning forward in his chair to watch as though he saw the action being fought out in the sheeny depths of the polished table top, as those with the second sight may see things afar off in the darkness of still water.
There was a long silence, and then the Lieutenant finished the last drops in his glass, and rose quickly, refusing more. ‘If tha’ meant thy invitation to sup, My Lo
rd, I’ll go see that all’s well wi’ my horse, if tha’ll forgive me.’ He flushed under his leathery tan. ‘Eh now, it’s not that I don’t —’
‘That you don’t trust my grooms? No, I am sure that it is not,’ Lord Mulgrave said. ‘Every good Cavalry man thinks to the well-being of his own horse.’
Anne had risen also. She must not keep him; there would be time in plenty over supper to hear all the other things she wanted to know. But patience had never come easily to her. ‘Lieutenant Hill — a moment — those companies of Captain Hodgson’s. You spoke of men scattered after Adderton Moor. Was there a Thomas Sharpe, a big red-haired Bradford man, among them?’
She watched him searching for a moment, behind his eyes; then finding. ‘Eh now, tha’ll be meaning t’fellow where tha’ lodged? He was sound enough after Nantwich, My Lady.’
‘I’m so glad,’ Anne said softly. ‘Oh, I’m so glad! Mistress Sharpe was with child after waiting seven years; it — must be born by now.’ She smiled at him, cradling the letter in her hands, seeing him, now that the wine had brought a little colour to his haggard face, more nearly what she remembered him. ‘And you — how did they use you, Lord Newcasde’s men. Did they use you ill?’
‘None so badly, My Lady.’ He stood hitching at the crimson scarf about his waist, looking down at her. ‘Better, maybe, than they’d ha’ done if tha’ hadn’t bearded Lord Newcastle on my account like as it might have been Black Tom himself — which I don’t forget, My Lady.’
When he was gone, Lord Mulgrave said quietly, ‘Tell me, Anne, do you always feel personally responsible for anyone whose life touches yours?’
She looked at him, a little bewildered by the firm, swift change of subject, not quite sure what he meant, feeling the touch of the old man’s interest upon her, tangible almost as the brush of a moth’s wing; and after a pause he went on, ‘Yes, you do. Your Thomas, a woman with child in Bradford, a man taken prisoner in your service, the beggar you gave a penny to in the street. You reach out both hands and hold on. You want to fight their battles and bear their pain, and keep their conscience. And so, some people may say that you are a possessive woman.’
She looked down at the letter still in her hand, slowly, and then, still slowly, up again to his face. It was strange to be shown oneself in that way, suddenly, when one had been thinking of other things. ‘And you, My Lord?’
She saw that his eyes were smiling; he reached out and touched her hand with his own in which the veins showed blue. ‘I think that you are fiercely valiant and loyal to your own — to those you make your own — and very loving; and that you worry too much about — everything ... And I find an increasing delight in the fact that Tom gave you to me for a granddaughter ... And now, my great-granddaughter will be waiting for you, and you must go and see her have her supper, and give her the love that doubtless Tom sent her.’
Chapter 21 - Prelude to Battle
Meanwhile, in the north, General Sir Thomas Fairfax was being driven to the verge of insanity.
Early in the month Lord Leven and the Scots had crossed the Tweed in a snowstorm, whereupon Lord Newcastle, now become a Marquis, marched north to deal with them, leaving Sir John Bellasis, that small merry kinsman of Tom’s, as Governor of York. And when Tom marched back from Nantwich, he found Newcastle and Leven facing each other near Chester-le-Street, like a pair of fighting cocks not properly set on, and Bellasis from York overrunning all the open country of the East Riding. Clearly the urgent need was to enable Lord Fairfax, shut up almost as close in Hull as though the siege was still on, to bring his men out to the help of the Scots. At which point the newly formed Committee of Both Kingdoms ordered General Sir Thomas Fairfax to remain in Lancashire and lay siege to Latham House.
Latham House was far nearer to being a fortress than many great country houses that bear name of castle. Standing on boggy ground that made life excessively uncomfortable for a besieging force, it was encompassed by a moat, and within that, a wall and nine flanking towers in most of which were cannon. And there, for almost a year now, Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby, had shut herself up, loudly proclaiming her martyrdom and gathering a garrison about her; and, so poor harassed Tom Fairfax shrewdly suspected, enjoying herself hugely. She was an Amazon by nature, a creature of wild black hair and eyes of dark fire, with something of the stridency of a Normandy fishwife. And during her Lord’s absence about the King’s business in the Isle of Man, she wore the breeches. Indeed she was commonly reputed to wear them at all times. To deal with this termagant, Tom, with his stiff gentleness towards all women, and his very scanty knowledge of how to deal with them, was about the most unsuitable man in the four armies of Parliament.
He began by writing her agonizingly courteous letters. ‘Madam, I do owe you that so much honour as a Lady, as I would use all just means that would make me capable of serving your Ladyship.’ Pointed out with gentle reasonableness that duty forced him to disperse the garrison she had collected; offered fair and honourable terms, and begged her to believe that Parliament would have a tender care and respect for her, after her capitulation, and that he himself, ‘her most faithful and humble servant’, was always anxious to spare her suffering.
The Countess replied that she must have a week to consider the terms he offered. Tom, guessing her to be playing for time, with Prince Rupert already rumoured to be heading north, denied her request with yet more agonizing courtesy, William whistling Greensleeves derisively over his shoulder the while, and begged her to meet him and his chief officers at Newpark, the home village just outside the walls. The Countess replied with pained surprise that notwithstanding her present position, remembering both her husband’s honour and her own birth, she felt it more knightly that Sir Thomas should wait upon her than she on him.
‘And if you think to fall into that trap, Tom old lad,’ said William with grim amusement, ‘I’ll shoot you in the leg myself, and have you laid by for a while.’
Thomas, deeply harassed, and with an air of apology both for Lady Latham and for his own doubts of her, said, ‘Women have different ideas about these things,’ and he declined the proposal.
Four days of proposals and counter proposals followed, at the end of which time the Countess finally wrote that, ‘Though a woman and a stranger, divorced from her friends and robbed of her estate, she was ready to receive their utmost violence, trusting in God both for protection and deliverance.’
Tom Fairfax swore, with a breadth of scope and a fluent intensity that deeply astonished those of his officers who heard him, for they had seldom heard him swear before.
He could delay no longer. Everything in him revolted from the idea of turning his guns on a woman, but an armed enemy garrison could not be casually left to go its own way in the heart of Lancashire.
And then, at this eleventh hour, the order that he had been urgently demanding all this while, came through. He was to take two regiments of Foot and all the Horse and march at once to join his father at Selby, on the road north to the aid of Leven and the Scots in Durham. And with the order newly opened in his hand, he said with heartfelt though somewhat shamed relief to William standing beside him, ‘I leave My Lady of Latham in your hands, dear old lad, and wish you most heartily well of her.’
But another task awaited the Fairfaxes before they could join Lord Leven. For John Bellasis, as the only means of delaying their march, had gallantly flung himself into Selby ahead of them, with three thousand of the York garrison, knowing that they could not be mad enough to march on north leaving the place Royalist-held behind them. They were not mad enough; but the desperate expedient did not delay them long, after all. They attacked at first light of a showery April day and before noon it was all over, and Thomas, dismounted but with his arm still through White Surrey’s bridle, was looking down at Sir John Bellasis, who lay propped on one elbow on a spread cloak in a warehouse doorway, with some of his officers about him, while a surgeon lashed up the wound in his leg.
‘How bad is it??
?? Black Tom demanded.
‘I shall be laid by for a few weeks,’ Bellasis said briefly, forestalling the surgeon; his round face was grey and streaked with sweat, and his manner less merry than it had been two years ago in the long gallery at York while they waited for the King. ‘Doubtless the dogs at Westminster will give you another Thanksgiving at Saint Paul’s for this.’ But his eyes were without rancour; it was the fortunes of war.
‘God keep you, John,’ Tom Fairfax said. ‘Anything I can d-do —’
But there was not anything. He knew that. The bells were ringing from the high abbey tower as he turned away; the sun came out behind a flurry of shining rain, and three swans were flying low up river; but Black Tom was even more wretched in victory than was usual with him.
*
In the orchard of the Manor House at York the pear and apple blossom was long since over and the fruit well on in setting. On the topmost branches of the tall old quarrenders peering above the wall that formed part of the town defences, the tiny new-formed apples already showed as studs of greenish bronze among the leaves; and Tom Fairfax, on his hurried way up to yet another hastily summoned Council at Lord Manchester’s headquarters, saw the tops of the familiar trees and remembered rather painfully how often he had climbed among them as a boy, and the taste of the fragrant sun-warmed apples, milk white in their crimson skins. It felt very strange to be besieging York, a kind of betrayal, as though he were to turn his guns on Denton or Nun Appleton.
The siege was a hateful business, and from the first had been almost as much a strain on the besiegers as on the besieged. Within York, so said their prisoners, townsfolk and garrisons alike were down to a mutchkin of beans, an ounce of butter, and a penny loaf a day; but in the camp outside the walls, things were little better. The country round, sick of all armies alike, would supply them with no victual, and it was all that Black Tom and his kind could do to hold their troops from taking it by force. Most of the men were in rags, and crying evil though the siege might be, one could only pray God for no further marching orders because their boots were not in a condition to stand it. Tempers were getting strained, patience giving out; the general malaise finding its expression in flaring quarrels and irresponsible actions. Only a few days ago, Lawrence Crawford, Manchester’s Major-General of Foot, had without orders sprung the mine that was being worked under that same orchard wall, and swept half a dozen companies through the breech in a private assault of their own. What he had thought to gain by it, the Lord God knew; what he had done was to lose almost the entire force, killed or taken prisoner, in the enclosed spaces between the orchard walls. Probably, thought Black Tom in exasperation, General Crawford himself would not have got out of the affair so lightly, but for this insane and unworkable division of the Command between Leven, Fairfax and Manchester. He had little experience of Crawford himself, but he knew that Noll Cromwell very much doubted his capabilities as a soldier and Tom Fairfax had a very great faith in Cromwell’s judgement of men.