A couple of lanterns burned before the kirk, and around the kirkyard gate the crowds that were dark and formless elsewhere sprang to life and colour and dramatic reality, at least so far as their heads and shoulders were concerned. The lanterns splashed their swinging brightness and fantastic shadows on the shifting throng of men and horses, striking fugitive gleams from the steel ridge of a comb-cap, from the boss of a snaffle bar as a horse tossed his head, glinting on the long dark barrel of a horse pistol, as a corporal of Fairfax’s troop, leaning against his mount, drew the weapon from his holster to make sure of charge and priming, and turned with a cocked eyebrow to grin at his neighbour. Cornet Hill was edging White Surrey through the sea of buff and steel and upturned faces; and as Anne put back her hood, and the lantern light fell on her face also, someone shouted, ‘Eh, lads, it’s Black Tom’s Lady.’
They were all round White Surrey as Will Hill brought him to a stand, and many arms came up to aid her down. She slipped into the embrace of a kindly grinning giant, and was set down so exactly as though she had been Little Moll that for a moment of wild inward laughter she expected to have her skirts pulled down for her. Cornet Hill had dismounted behind her, and Sir Henry Fowlis appeared through the press, his modish languor a little marred, but his bright eyes in the lantern light more than ever like a pretty girl’s. ‘Sir Thomas is with the troops at Barker End,’ he said, seeing her glance about her; then to the cornet, ‘Thanks, Hill. I’ll take Lady Fairfax into the church.’
Anne cast hurried and absent-minded thanks after Will Hill as he turned away about his own duties, and made to sit down on the mounting block by the kirkyard gate. ‘There is no need that you take me anywhere. I shall do well enough here, Sir Henry.’
‘Sir Thomas left word that you were to wait for him in the Leventhorpe Chapel. Lady Fairfax.’
So Anne gathered her skirts again and went with him, still feeling somewhat as though she were Moll, up the wet kirkyard path to a narrow doorway that spilled lantern light under the dripping yews. As Fowlis stood aside for her and she passed through into the old Leventhorpe Chapel, she saw that someone had set the lantern for her on a niche high on the wall; at least she was to have the comfort of light while she waited. ‘Will you be all right, Lady Fairfax, if I leave you now?’ Fowlis said, in the doorway. ‘It is cold comfort, I am afraid.’
Anne glanced about her, gathering in her cloak against the chill of the place. ‘I shall feel myself most royally lodged until Thomas comes. No, I want nothing more.’
It seemed to her in the mood of heightened sensitivity that came upon her as the waiting lengthened, that there was a warmth in that quarter of the disused and dusty chapel under the ancient cross, a sense of refuge. The preaching cross that was older, so much older than the church, from which the Word of God had gone out under drifting dale skies before ever the walls rose and the great roof was flung across with angels to uphold it on their outspread golden wings. Men had raised the church to the Glory of God, but the old broken preaching cross was the living seed and the living heart of what they built.
Somebody else, she realized suddenly, had felt the warmth as she felt it, for on the chest of rough black oak that stood against the wall below it, an unknown hand had set a knot of blue flowers in an earthen cup. For Anne they rang a small silver note of memory, but it was a moment before she realized that the flower was rue. The Herb of Grace. Herb of Grace springing from the ruins among which the wild white unicorn trampled with his proudly shining hooves; Herb of Grace set here at the foot of the old preaching cross as though for a statement of faith. At most times it would have seemed to her a Popish thing to do. But not tonight ...
She stooped to touch the small valiant flowers, and her thoughts touched again the painted blue flowers of the inn sign, and went out from them to her little daughter who had loved them, too, and believed at first that the unicorn was White Surrey. Her little daughter sleeping in the house in Boar Lane, seven moorland miles away. Would she be with her before another night came, feel the clutch of small loving arms round her neck? Or maybe — never again? What would it feel like to be shot in a night skirmish?
The possibility had at the moment no terrors for her. It only turned her restless thoughts back to Thomas, with whom she would be sharing the danger; Thomas who would be coming presently to take her out of this beleaguered place.
Time passed. Men came and went in the church and through the churchyard outside, without disturbing Anne’s waiting quiet. Voices spoke and were silent, a horse whinnied. And then she heard Thomas’s voice near at hand. ‘Yes, rendezvous at Leeds. The Lord God grant that we keep it ... Bring me word when General Gifford returns.’
And as she rose from her cramped seat, Thomas was in the archway that opened from the aisle. For an instant he stood quite still, with the stillness of an alabaster knight on a tomb, and the gold of the lantern woke no light but depth beyond depth of sheeny darkness in the black steel of his cuirass. Then he came in from the archway, and she saw his face.
She had expected him dead-weary; but she should have known him better than that. The face she saw in the lantern light was grey and hard, and there were bruise-coloured patches on it, but the dark eyes were alive and alert with unquenched energy and resolve. ‘Hill has told you?’ he said.
He did not seem even to remember that they had not seen each other since before Adderton Moor.
‘That we are abandoning Bradford? Yes, he told me.’
‘There is no other way,’ Thomas was saying, as though in answer to some protest within himself. ‘Nothing to do save get out what men we can to fight again elsewhere. Bright and Hodgson are taking the Foot ... If we could hold out here for another day, it would but be the worse for Bradford the day after.’
His words fell heavy, seeming to Anne to hang in the cold still air of the chapel, spreading out as a ripple spreads, to die at last into the stones of the walls. And behind them she thought she heard other words, spoken by Mistress Sharpe in the garden where the white foxglove grew. ‘Lord Newcastle will be none so gentle a conqueror, not to Bradford that has denied him so long.’
‘Nan, I am going to mount you behind Cornet Hill. You’ll not be afraid?’
‘No, Thomas, I shall not be afraid.’
‘I wish to God I had not to carry you into this danger; but you will risk worse things if I leave you behind to be in Bradford when the town falls.’
Anne had moved closer to him. She saw the frown of desperate personal worry between his brows that made him for the moment like his father, and said a little piteously, ‘It was not such a good idea after all, was it Thomas — following you as I have done?’
He brought up his mailed hands and set them on her shoulders and stood looking down at her. ‘If you are content, then I do not complain,’ he said.
Anne stood braced under the weight of the mailed gaunt-lets that had somehow no feeling of the living hands within them, and looked up at him with an almost painful directness. ‘When I was a little lass, I used to wish that I was a boy. It is a thing one grows out of. But tonight — this morning — it comes to me again; and I would be so glad — so glad to change my woman’s shape for a man’s hard body.’
‘Dear heart, why?’
‘That I might be an added strength to you, instead of a burden. I would be so proud to be one of your troopers — to be a comrade to you as William is!’
‘Small fierce Nan! Maybe Lord Vere should have had a son in place of another daughter. But for myself — I do not ask for another William; I want one William — and one Nan. I find no fault with the matter as it stands.’
And then at the last instant, with the tramp and spur-jingle of booted feet already coming through the church, his arms were round her, bruising her against the rigid coldness of his breast-plate, dragging her close with a sudden harsh urgency. ‘God keep you safe through this, my Nan!’
She passed her hands up over the edges of his gorget, over the rumpled linen of his falling-bands, lacing
her fingers together behind his neck, with the live dry softness of his hair tangled between them; but made no attempt to draw his head down to hers. Here in the old dusty chantry chapel, amid the stark tragedy of Bradford, in this one quiet moment before they went out to meet the storm and danger ahead of them, was no time for the outward signs, only for holding close. And in that instant she felt as she had never felt it before, his love come out to her, folding her as he had once folded her in his cloak to keep out the rain.
Fairfax released her as the footsteps reached the archway, and Lieutenant Illingworth appeared on the threshold. ‘General Gifford is back, Sir, and all’s ready.’
‘Thanks, Illingworth,’ Sir Thomas Fairfax said, and turned to follow him.
Anne gathered her cloak about her and followed Thomas, through the crowding shadows of the church, leaving the lantern to burn itself out in its wall niche.
In Kirkgate the troopers were already mounted or swinging into the saddle, and beside the churchyard gate a trooper stood holding White Surrey. The great horse flung up his head and whinnied as his master appeared, and Fairfax fondled the thrusting creamy nose from Roman arch to flared nostril, then turned for a quick word with Fowlis and Gifford. His orders with regard to Anne had already been given, and she had ceased to exist for him. As she hesitated by the gate, Will Hill brought his mount sidling through the ranks towards her. She saw his rough-cut, steady face in the swinging lantern light as he doffed his comb-cap in salute; and a trooper was bending to mount her.
‘If tha’s ready, Lady Fairfax.’
And she set her foot in the human stirrup, and felt herself flung up into the saddle. Part of her mind registered with relieved surprise the fact that they had got a proper pillion saddle from somewhere. She had not expected that; she had thought to ride uncomfortably on the crupper.
Fairfax was mounting now, followed by Fowlis and Gifford. She heard the low spoken order for the march run back through the massed dark shapes around her, and settled herself, her hands twisted in the broad belt that Will Hill wore, as the whole squadron slipped forward down the narrow gorge of Vicar Lane, heading for the open ground at Barker End, and the start of the Leeds road; Barker End which was the thinnest place in the blockade.
And now they were in the open ground; the still, dark bulk of the tanneries; the oak-bark water in the square tan pits catching the first hint of light that scarce showed as yet in the sky. The little night wind, chill and thin with the coming day, ruffled the surface of the oak water, bringing the stench of the tanning hides to their nostrils as they reined in to a moment’s alert and listening check. No sound, nothing from the scouts sent on ahead. Fairfax gave the low order, and they broke forward again, out from the last draggle-tail fringe of the tanner’s cottages, the hooves of the foremost troop making surprisingly little sound on the deep July dust of the Leeds road and the lower verge of the hayfields on either side.
The rearmost troops were clear of the cottages now; a few minutes more and they would be taking to the open moors; and still there was no sound nor sign of the enemy. It was all going so simply and smoothly, this break out of Bradford, too simply, Anne suddenly knew, too smoothly ...
From the dark slopes of the hayfield above them came the shrill neigh of a horse.
Afterwards she was never sure in her mind whether that was the start, or whether the black flurry of horsemen that was the scouts streaking back to them came first. The two things happened apparently in the same moment. And indeed there seemed no sequence to the events of the next few minutes. It was simply an explosion of action, with all the ugly formlessness that an explosion has.
One moment the quietness of the summer night just before dawn was all about them, the jink of accoutrements and the soft muffled sounds of the squadron trotting along the dusty verges of the road; and the next, a dark wave of horsemen was sweeping towards them down the breadth of the intake fields, and all about her was the sudden wheeling and whirling turmoil of a Cavalry skirmish. Cornet Hill cried to her, ‘Hold fast, Lady Fairfax!’ And she heard a sudden order cried out in Thomas’s voice, and felt the surge and spring forward of the horse under her, the slithering scramble of hooves as his rider spurred him across the ditch and up the hay piled slope against the half seen mass of the enemy. A pistol cracked, a jagged flower of flame in the dark; more shots crackled through the chaos of whirling shadows, and she heard a man’s cry and the scream of a stricken horse. They were half-way up the field now, the hay flying like spume, a desperate spear-head of horsemen following Black Tom into the mass of the enemy that swirled about them; and then a pistol cracked again and Anne felt the horse shudder under her. The poor brute shrieked and shrieked again, going up in a rearing half turn with the blood spurting from the wound in its breast, then pitched down headlong with a crash that was to Anne as though the whole world heeled over and fell in ruins.
Somehow, without the least idea how it came about, she found herself standing beside the fallen horse, in the midst of the Royalist troopers. Instinctively she stooped and snatched one of the long pistols from the holster at the saddle bow. She was aware of Will Hill’s voice crying to her, ‘No, Lady Fairfax! For God’s sake no!’ But not as anything that had to do with her. The only thing that had to do with her just now was the pistol. She whirled about, feeling the balance of the heavy walnut stock in her hand, and brought it up ... Someone shouted and caught her wrist, wrenching it back. ‘Ah! would ye now!’ And there was a roar of flame as the pistol went off, and she felt as though her arm had been kicked by a mule. Hands were on her, twisting her arms behind her back; someone laughed. ‘There’s a wench here — the veriest spit-cat —’
She gave up fighting, and stood panting in the grip of her captors, aware suddenly of the turmoil falling away into quiet-ness; aware in every fibre of her being, of the beat of horses’ hooves drumming away into the distance.
Will Hill was dragging himself slowly from under the dead horse, clutching at his sword arm that dripped dark at the elbow. The light was growing all about them, the thin colour-less light of dawn; and men lay black in it, face down among the scattered hay. A little wind ran through the pale stubble, and in the stillness beyond the fidgeting horses and the muttering of men, Anne caught the scent of the hayfields and the first shining thread of song as a lark leapt heavenward. A Royalist officer with a thin scholar’s face came between his men, and looked at the woman standing in the grip of two troopers, her hair torn down, blood on her cheek. ‘Good God!’ he said, and then, ‘Who are you?’
‘A hell-fire spit-cat, that I do know,’ one of her captors grumbled. ‘Tried to shoot Tim Thornton in t’belly she did, and fought like a bloody catamount.’
‘I asked the woman,’ said the officer, and repeated his question to Anne. ‘Who are you?’
Anne made no reply.
It was Will Hill, clutching his elbow, who gasped out, “Tis Lady Fairfax. Happen tha’s best treat her well!’
Anne turned on him in scorn. She had no desire for privilege, certainly none to let the enemy know her possible value as a hostage; but his face, sweating with the pain of a smashed elbow, looked back at her steadily enough, and she realized that he was doing his best for her, carrying out to the best of his ability his duty to Thomas. She thought she could still just catch the distant throb of hoof beats — no, not any more now; they were gone.
‘So—o,’ the Royalist officer said slowly. He pulled off his beaver hat, and bowed with a stiff courtesy. ‘I had heard that Sir Thomas’s truly Amazonian lady rode campaigning with him ... Your husband is clear away, My Lady, but I fear you must regard yourself as my prisoner.’
Chapter 13 - The White Lady
In a small upper chamber in Bowling Hall, Anne was walking up and down, up and down, eight paces one way, eight paces the other. The room, though small, was a richly beautiful one; a jewelled Italian Madonna on one wall, a gilded chair with rose velvet squabs in the French fashion standing beside the bed. The door stood open into the galle
ry, but she knew that if she tried to walk out through it, her way would be barred by the corporal of Lord Newcastle’s Whitecoats. Eight paces to the Popish feet of the Madonna, eight paces to the window. From the window she could look down into the stable yard full of a constant coming and going of men and horses, but the view towards Bradford was shut out by the end of the house. She knew now that Fowlis and Gifford and a few more of the Horse had got away with Thomas; but the rest, and all the Foot, those not dead, had been captured or driven back into the town. The intermittent rumble of the guns told her that Bradford had not yet fallen; indeed she thought that there had been no big attack today. It seemed that Lord Newcastle was in no hurry, now that he was sure of the place; now that Thomas was away. Standing with one hand clenched on the stone transome of the window, Anne sent her thoughts out to Thomas. Had he got safely through to Leeds? She hoped that he would find time to see Little Moll, that he would not let Mary and Christian frighten her with what had happened to her mother. The sun was westering now, casting a stain of light like living golden water across the narrow room to the feet of the Madonna; and supper had been brought to Anne a while since. It stood almost untouched still, on the table by the bed; a little cold meat, a salad garnished with pansy buds, a cream of gooseberries and ginger, a cup of wine, brought to her by a kindly serving woman, with ‘My Lady Tempest’s compliments’. But Lady Tempest herself had not been near her captive guest.
They had met socially more than once, in the old days, which somehow complicated the situation; and maybe it would be more comfortable for both of them that they should not meet now. Anne’s ruthless sense of justice told her that in Lady Tempest’s place, she would probably have done the same herself.
A burst of horses’ hooves sounded below her, and a knot of horsemen clattered into the stable yard. Anne saw that the newcomers were Lord Newcastle himself and some of his officers. For the moment the courtyard was full of life and colour, the tossing of hat plumes, the coloured flutter of ribbons, the gleam of steel. A few minutes later the whole party had disappeared indoors but Anne remained at the window, looking out, though now there was nothing particular to see. She was still standing there when a few minutes later steps came along the gallery, a voice spoke outside her door, and she turned quickly as Lord Newcastle himself appeared in the doorway, a middle-aged and somewhat weary Apollo.
The Rider of the White Horse Page 15
