A mood of deep quiet had come upon both men, as though from the quiet of the evening all about them. It was almost twilight, and the pale moths and night flying things that loved the walnut tree as he did, were hovering among the leaves. Something flew past Thomas’s cheek with a loud metallic whirring and landed with a plop on a leaf beside him; and he put out his hand, laughing a little, and captured it as he had done when he was a boy, seeing the great clumsy beetle shape on his finger, feeling with a small sharp half-forgotten pleasure the prickling grip of the hooked feet that clung to his skin. He would have liked to have a son to initiate into the joys that had been his and William’s twenty years ago. Then he turned from the thought as from a disloyalty to Little Moll. One day, when the war was over, he would bring Little Moll out here on a summer evening and show her how to catch cockchafers. When the war was over — everything always came back to that.
The cockchafer abandoned his finger and blundered off with the same loud whirring of leathery wings. ‘Will you be seeing Frances and the bairns tomorrow?’ he asked, breaking the silence that had held them.
William nodded, watching the blue smoke wreathing upward, with narrowing eyes. ‘I shall hand over to Meldrum for a few miles of the march, and snatch an hour at Steeton to drink a stirrup-cup.’ And then, as though his thoughts had been following the same road as his cousin’s, ‘Almost, in this garden, in this light, one can believe in a time beyond the war, a time to hold our wives in quietness and contentment, instead of only for a snatched hour between marches, with the sound of the guns always in our ears, and watch our children growing up — your one, and my four.’ He had taken the pipe from his lips, and sat holding it in the hand that rested on his knee, looking before him into the twilight. ‘But it will come, one day. And for you — you will go back to breeding horses, Tom, and make your rose garden at Nun Appleton the fairest in Yorkshire. And all these years behind you will seem a harsh dream.’
‘And you?’ Tom said.
William tipped back his head and looked at him, consideringly. ‘Not sure. I cannot see myself so clearly without a war. I have been a soldier for more of my life than you have, and I belong to war more naturally, for all that I long for peace.’ His face was very sober in the fading light; but after a few moments his thin, uncompromising mouth curled upward slowly at the bearded corners, and there was a deep lingering note of laughter in his voice when he spoke again. ‘Maybe I’ll breed pigs. Very companionable creatures, so I’ve heard, pigs. And tha’ shall come and scratch their backs wi’ me, lad, and I shall come and try thy horses wi’ thee, while Anne and Frances talk still-room management together — and the bairns catch cockchafers in t’old walnut tree.’
Silence descended on them again, and he returned to his smoking; and then, his pipe smoked out, knocked out the dottle on the heel of his boot and stowed it away, but still lingered, with elbows on knees, softly whistling ‘Greensleeves’ between his teeth.
Presently the distant notes of Cavalry trumpets sounding for watch-setting woke them to the passage of time, and he drew his long legs under him and got up. ‘I must be shogging.’
‘I’ll come round to the stable with you,’ Thomas said.
They walked across the ruined grass, shoulder just brushing against shoulder, as they had walked as boys, and through the arched doorway into the stable yard. A newly lit lantern hung against the stable wall, turning the sky above the gable end to a luminous witchball green, and amid the usual coming and going a trooper was walking William’s big roan up and down.
William mounted and gathered up the reins, and with the roan fidgeting under him, turned to look down at Thomas. For a long, suddenly arrested moment of time, the two men looked at each other in the dusk and the lantern light. Then on a sudden impulse, they did a thing they very seldom did; they reached out and gripped hands.
Without a word on either side, William wheeled his horse and clattered out into the street.
Black Tom stood listening to the quick strike of hooves dying into the distance, then swung round, hitching at his sword belt, to go about his own last-minute preparations for the march.
Chapter 23 - William
Anne was in the still-room, spreading the last of the marigold petals in sand to dry for winter soups, when the letter came, and she hated the hot peppery smell of marigolds ever afterward. She took it from the maid who brought it to her with a leap of the heart. But the angular handwriting was not Thomas’s and the eagerness turned to sharp dread within her as she broke the seal. It was from Davey Morrison. The writing danced and wavered under her eyes, and she forced it to steady, forced her eyes to take one word at a time and get its meaning before she went on to the next. When she reached the last word, she looked up, and found her mother watching her.
‘Is it bad news?’ said Lady Vere.
‘Yes. It is Thomas; he’s wounded — a ball through his arm and a smashed shoulder.’ Her mouth felt woolly and her heart was racing, breaking up the words into little jerks as she spoke them. ‘They have taken him to — the old house at — Bishop-hill, but he’s in a high fever ... Mother, will you keep Moll for me? I must — go and pack a few things.’
Her mother put her arms round her, holding her close for the instant, saying something about eating first, something about the coach.
‘No,’ she said, ‘not the coach. Tell Collins to get Cherry saddled — you’ll lend me Cherry for the first stage? — and to be ready to ride with me. There may not — be much time.’
Time? It was days since that letter was written, and Thomas had been in a high fever then ... She tore herself from her mother, leaving her to give the necessary orders, and fled upstairs to change into her riding dress and cram a few things into a saddle-bag. Within an hour, with the old groom riding half a length behind her, she was on the road.
She did the journey in five days, and they were five days that had for her the half seen, half lost quicksand quality of a feverish dream. Nothing had any reality, the long miles spooling out behind them, the post houses at which they changed horses, the marching troops they passed or overtook, the news of the second battle of Newbury that met them at Grantham. Nothing but the urgency of her haste — when it might be already too late for haste.
And then at last they were clattering over the cobbles of Bishophill, clattering to a halt before the familiar door, with all the long nightmare road from London unrolled behind them.
She was aware of a flurry of activity that seemed no more real than the rest had done; someone saying sharply, ‘It’s Lady Fairfax!’
Men hurrying out; and she found herself looking into the familiar face of young D’Oyley come striding to help her down. ‘Charles — my husband — is he?’
She slipped into his hold and was set down, and he was smiling at her. ‘We hope — we think the General is going to be all right, My Lady.’
She drew her breath in a sob of unutterable relief and weariness and breaking strain; and suddenly she must cling to Lieutenant D’Oyley’s arm to keep from falling. Then the world steadied again, and she was saying, ‘No, I am a little — tired, that is all. A long ride, and I have been — so anxious —’ Gathering herself together, gathering her dusty skirts, hurrying into the house, while Collins took the horses away. There were soldiers in the hall, some with faces that she knew; with her mind hurrying ahead of her to Thomas’s bedside, she demanded of them, ‘Where does he lie?’ turning even as she spoke, to the shallow stairs that ran up into the shadows.
Her answer came from above. ‘In your own chamber, Anne,’ and looking up, she saw a woman standing at the turn of the stairs, one hand on the balustrade, looking down at her; a woman like a dark lily.
‘Frances!’ Anne cried, abandoning the men in the hall, and fled up to her. ‘Frances! Are you here?’ It was stupid to ask that, one of the stupid, needless questions one does ask ...
‘They sent word to me,’ Frances said, ‘and I came to be with Thomas until you could reach him.’ She put her arms round
Anne and held her close. ‘And now you have come and the news is good.’
They were climbing the stairs together as she spoke; in a few moments they stood outside the chamber door. ‘He is asleep now. It is sleep that he needs, and to wake and find you there.’ On the shadowed stairhead, her eyes held Anne’s with an unexpected comprehension. It seemed to Anne that William’s wife had grown much older in the years since she had seen her. ‘He called for you when his fever was at its worst.’ She stooped from her greater height and kissed Anne; opened the door, and shut it softly again behind her.
Anne stood in the familiar chamber; stood for an instant quite still while reality fell into place again around her, much as it had done on that wild evening on the moors above Denton, when Thomas had wrapped his cloak about her to keep out the rain. And the quiet that had folded round her then, enfolded her once more. In the quiet, she moved across to the great canopied bed, and stood looking down at Thomas, who lay there, propped high with pillows, asleep. His face was turned from her, and she could see only his profile in the light of the candle beside the bed; worn, yellow, the wild black hair clinging lankly about the grey hollows of cheek and temple, and outflung across the pillow; yet despite its old-man gauntness, with something of both the purity and the vulnerableness of a boy in his sleep. Thomas had always looked like a boy in his sleep.
She bent a little closer, seeing the marks of suffering on him, the burned-out look of spent fever. All that, he had had to suffer, and she not here to help him, not with him when he was like to die; not here to answer when he called to her. A sense of inadequacy rose in her, of having failed him in his need. She knew that that was foolishness, but still the ache of it rose in her throat, and she could have laid her head down beside his and wept with sorrow that was for herself as well as for him because she had missed his need for her.
She made no sound, no movement to rouse him. But as though something in her, the mere fact of her nearness reached out to him in the dark distance of his sleep, he stirred, drew a long fluttering sigh, and turning his head on the pillow, opened his eyes to look directly up at her as though he had known that he would find her there. ‘Nan,’ he said, and moved the gaunt hand that lay on his breast, uncertainly, to find her. The other he could not move, for it was strapped to his body under the masses of bandage linen that swaithed his left breast and shoulder.
Anne caught the weakly fumbling hand in hers. ‘Thomas, my dear.’
For a little he lay looking up at her with a still contentment, a contentment remote with weakness, and Anne stood as still looking down at him. Now that his face was turned towards her, she saw what had been hidden from her against the pillow in his sleep; the purplish, ill-healed scar of Marston Moor seaming the left side of it from temple to chin. Suddenly there was a shadow of a smile in the eyes that rested so quietly on her face. ‘You never had a handsome husband, my Nan; and I fear that what beauty he ever had, he left behind him on Marston Moor.’
Anne stooped and kissed him on his scarred temple. It was almost pulseless under her lips, drained of all vital force; and a swift fear shot through her again. He was so terrifyingly weak, so far away. She sank to her knees beside the great low bed, her arm curved across his poor spent body, as though to shield him, to hold him safe...
He seemed to sense her fear, for he said after a moment. ‘No, Nan, not this time; I’m — coming back, my dear.’
He withdrew his hand from hers, and reached out, concentrating on the effort, to touch her face and turn it a little to the candlelight. ‘You look very tired — and very dusty.’
‘I have had a long ride, Thomas.’
‘Of course — you were at Hackney. Do you know, I had forgotten that ... You must go and rest, Nan.’
‘In a little, not just yet. Don’t send me away just yet.’
The shadows were crowding in the corners of the room, as the candlelight began to take effect. Outside the window the sky was a wonderful luminous peacock blue behind the branches of the old walnut tree. Anne knelt on, unmoving, until in a while Thomas slept again. Then she got up and left the room, suddenly so tired that she could scarcely drag one foot after the other; to find Frances waiting for her, to stretch herself still fully dressed on the truckle bed in Thomas’s dressing closet.
Next day Thomas seemed much stronger, and the old Scots surgeon, arriving on his morning visit to find Anne there, gave her a creaking smile and bade her, ‘Heart up, for the General would be a sound man again and fighting the Lord’s battles by Christmas.’
That day passed with a slow contentment, and another came, and a while after noon the two women were together with Thomas in his chamber. It was Frances’s last day with them. She had stayed on so long to give Anne time to be rested from her journey, but this morning she had begun to pack to go home to Steeton and the children. Now she sat on the low cushioned chest in the window, the lute that she had fetched from its case in the parlour lying in her lap, and her dark bent head touched with starling colours by the changing lights of the windy afternoon.
Anne could not remember quite how music had entered into their scheme of things for that afternoon; some laughing notion of Frances’s that Thomas was in need of entertainment, maybe. It seemed to have grown naturally from the mood of the moment, certainly it was fitted to the mood of Frances herself. There was a lustre about Frances this afternoon, an air of tiptoe expectancy. The dark lily had a flame in its heart, Anne thought, seated beside the bed, her hand just touching Thomas’s on the coverlid.
Thomas, it seemed, was also aware of the winged mood of his kinswoman, for he gave a weak croak of laughter, broken off short because he could not yet fetch a full breath. ‘Do not you fly out of the window, Frances; you are like a butterfly spreading velvet wings in the sunshine. Are you then so glad to leave us?’
Frances flashed him up a long, half smiling look, and returned to the lute that she had begun to tune. ‘I am glad to be going home to the bairns.’
But it was not only the bairns, Anne knew. Frances was going home to Steeton like a girl going to meet her lover; because Steeton was William, every lichened stone of it, every leaf of the lime trees; and once there, she might look out of the window at any moment of the day, to see William himself riding in under the arch of the gatehouse. Watching her now, with her dark green gown outflung around her, her head bowed over the slender melon-shaped instrument in her hands, hearing the husky sweetness of her voice as she hummed to her tuning, Anne thought suddenly of a February evening at Nun Appleton, so long ago; Frances singing to the lute with Sir Henry Slingsby; laughing with William on the edge of the dark, that swift light laughter edged with fear.
‘It is sorry long time since this was last played upon,’ Frances said, laughing now. ‘That is war — a lute lying forsaken until it forgets how to sing ... It is tuned now. Say then, what music shall we have?’
But her hand had already strayed into the old familiar tune of ‘Greensleeves’, that William had made his own. William seemed very much with them today, Anne reflected, their thoughts hovering persistently about him. But it was a happy hovering; and their mood lifted to meet Frances’s own, as she sat with the lute in her hands, her head flung back now on its long neck and the flying sunbursts and shadows of the wild September day all about her. The moment flowered into a fragile lightness of heart that held them together in a sudden sweet intimacy that was like that other evening, too; that February evening at Nun Appleton.
‘Greensleeves now fare thee well, adieu,
God I pray to prosper thee,
For I am still thy lover true,
Come once again and love me …’
Far off through the house, the beat of a horse’s hooves came trippling up the street from Micklegate; but there was nothing unusual in that. It stopped before the house, but that, too, was a thing that happened. But Frances let her hand fall from the lute, and a sudden silence took the three of them; almost, Anne thought afterwards, as though they knew ...
A b
lurred mutter of voices sounded somewhere, and then a foot on the stairs. Someone came to the door and opened it without knocking. ‘My Lady, will tha’ come down a moment?’
Anne looked at the serving woman’s face, and some instinct warned her against asking the meaning of the summons. She rose, murmuring something to the other two, and went out.
‘Tis a soldier — a messenger asking for thee, My Lady. I’ve put him in t’dining parlour.’
Anne nodded, hurrying downstairs, and turning to the door at the foot, pushed it open and went in, closing it after her. How dark the dining parlour was after the windy sunlight upstairs. Perhaps because of the darkness, she had a sudden premonition of tragedy, as she paused, with her back to the door. A man standing by the empty hearth stirred and turned towards her, a young man unknown to her, in the uniform of a cornet of Horse.
He said with a bow, ‘You are Lady Fairfax?’
‘I am.’
‘They told me I should find the other Lady Fairfax here — Sir William’s lady.’
She thought for a moment that there had been some confusion, that he had wanted Frances, and the servant had summoned the wrong Lady Fairfax. ‘She is here. You wish to speak with her?’
He shook his head, picking up his hat that he had lain on the table, looking deeply into it, then set it down again, and turned a desperately troubled gaze upon her. ‘With you first, My Lady — if you will break it to her —’
‘Break it to her?’ she said quickly.
‘Sir William was killed five days since, before Montgomerie Castle.’
Anne thought that she had known before he said it, she thought that she had seen it coming; but for a moment, now that it had come, she could not — would not — believe it. She reached out and took hold of the nearest chairback because suddenly her knees felt weak. ‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘Oh no, no!’ And then, foolishly, ‘Are you sure?’