It was so long before the passion of my grief exhausted itself, and I then felt so weak and so averse from life, that the morning was well advanced by the time I had gathered my courage and dragged myself back to Bradford. Indeed I do not believe I should ever have returned, I should have cast myself into the beck and gladly drowned, had I not had children awaiting me and depending on me. But a mother cannot desert her children, and so at last I entered the doors of the Pack Horse and trailed my tired and heavy body upstairs.
Sam was still fast asleep, his breathing sweet and steady; but Thomas lay awake and looked but poorly. The way his sad little face brightened when he saw me almost repaid me for my return to life. He sat up in bed and held out his arms and said: “Mother!” and I sat down beside him and hugged him, and he allowed himself to be fondled without any of the manly reservations he and his brother had lately thought it proper to make on childish caresses. His cheek was flushed, his head hot and his eyes heavy, and when I asked he confessed that he had vomited. I hesitated, perplexed as to whether he was fit to walk through the hot sun as far as Little Holroyd, and the landlady coming in I put my doubt before her.
She told me I was of course very welcome to stay. But I could hear in her voice that though she tried to mean this truly she could not, and I suddenly saw that in her eyes we were now the family of a man whom the Royalists regarded as a damnable traitor, and therefore not good company when the Royalists were about to sack the town. Her next words confirmed my guess, for without looking directly at me she went on:
“’Tis said the Earl will complete the leaguer to-day, and to-morrow enter the town.”
“Then I am better out of it,” said I, and watched her face brighten.
Sighing, I woke Sam and dressed Thomas. The poor child clung to me, hardly able to stand, as I fastened his buttons, and from time to time shivered down his backbone. Sam was a trifle bad-tempered and sullen, but I did not scold him; I knew what his loyal heart was suffering over the defeat of his heroes, his father and Sir Thomas. The air of the inn was stifling to us, who were used to the fresh country breezes at The Breck, and I thought we should all feel better when we were outside the town. I called for our maid, but instead her aunt came, and told me, colouring as she spoke, that they thought it best she should not leave them during this trouble. I could not blame them, for I judged I should have acted the same by a kinswoman of my own, so I gave a bundle of necessaries to Sam, and took Thomas by the hand, and without any further word descended and set out. The girl herself, tearful and angry, stood in the doorway and cried out that it was not her doing, for her part she wished to come with me, it was a shame and not her doing; and the landlord, looking troubled, for indeed he was a very honest godly man, said all in a breath that my reckoning had been paid by Sir Thomas, the girl’s wages should be returned, as soon as the country was settled she should come again to me, that he had a great respect for John Thorpe and was very sorry.
These intimations of our changed state were very disagreeable and disconcerting to me. Without much thinking about it or being over-proud of this score, I had always taken it for granted that I had a good standing in Bradford town—both the Clarksons and the Thorpes had always been well respected, if for different reasons, and of late John had been much looked up to, and his advice followed. The notion that the Thorpes of Little Holroyd could ever be anything but folk of solid substance and desirable acquaintance had never entered my head before, and now that it was thus forced in, it gave me a strange feeling of uncertainty and fear, a kind of painful hollowness. Suddenly, as we trailed along the street in the hot sunshine, I longed for John so keenly that I could hardly forbear crying his name, and when Sam innocently chose just this moment to ask when his father would be home, I fear I answered him sharply.
As we approached the bridge I saw scarlet coats on it, and my heart beat heavily. Sure enough the soldiers stopped us. They asked my name. Taught by my new fear, I did not give it; I roughened my voice, and speaking like our Sarah, said only that we dwelled in Little Holroyd. The corporal in charge said doubtfully he would consult his officer, and when I pressed him to let us through raised his hand in an exhorting way and said:
“Now, missis! There’s nowt gained by rushing!”
Since his speech showed that he was a Yorkshireman, I was terrified lest some of his troop or his officer should be men of our parts, who would know me, and I stood in an agony, when fortunately little Thomas, overcome by the delay in the hot sun, saved all for us by vomiting.
“You see the child is sick,” I said.
“Aye, poor little lad. Well, pass on then,” said the corporal, sniffing. “But see you stay in Little Holroyd when you get there.”
We moved on thankfully. When we reached the shade of the trees in the lane I asked Thomas if he would care to sit and rest, but though the poor child was pale and trembling he would not delay us, but pressed on manfully.
The Breck was empty. There was no one in the fields or the laithe or the house, no one in the kitchen or the loom-chamber. Though the day was so warm the house struck a chill on me, the air within being stale and motionless, and dust coating the furnishings. Everything was just as we had left it on Friday night—even to a pair of Sir Thomas’s boots which lay cross-toed on the floor of his room, awaiting polish—save that two of our cows had been milked, and the milk stood in crocks in the kitchen. The milk had curdled in the heat, much to the disgust of Sam, who had always a great thirst on him. I set him to fetch water for us from the beck, while I put Thomas to bed; between vomit and flux the poor lad was very uncomfortable, and I was kept busy all that day attending him. I did not judge, however, that he was very ill, for I had seen him in these upsets before when over-excited; his spirit was sensitive and seemed in too close connection, as I sometimes jestingly told him, with his stomach. Towards evening my judgment, thank God, proved accurate; the heat of his body sank and he ceased to vomit, and he smiled at me and asked for a drink of milk. By now the cows were lowing in distress, for it was past their evening milking hour; since no one had come near us all day I told Sam we should have to milk them ourselves, and set to work on it. I had never touched a cow before and made but a poor job of it, but Sam did splendidly. When we had finished and made ourselves some supper, we were so tired that the longing for sleep overcame all our other troubles; we fell into bed and slept round the clock.
It was the sound of drums which waked us. The thunderous beat went on and on while I rose and prepared oatmeal porridge and we ate it; when at last the drumming ceased there came a great clamour, screams and shouts and cries, from down over Bradford. I was so uneasy I made Thomas rise and dress, though he was scarcely fit for it, and I bolted the doors and put out the fire and drew everything away from the windows, so that the house might look as though it were empty, and I made the children sit very quiet by the hearth and I read them the story of Samuel out of the Bible. While I was just reading how the Lord called Samuel for the third time, I saw my Sam’s jaw drop and his eyes grow very round, and I knew he had seen a scarlet coat down the lane, and within myself I trembled, and I prayed God to give me strength to bear this calamity and save my children.
Sure enough in a few moments there was a sudden rush of feet across our yard, and a confused shouting, and then a shaking of our door and a great banging on it. The timbers quivered beneath the blows but did not yield. Then a scarlet coat came to the window and shouted at me. I turned my head towards him very slowly and calmly, as if I had no fear of him, and pretended not to understand what he was saying, but his face then grew crimson and grimacing with anger, and he lifted the butt of his musket and swung it through the window quarry, so that it broke and fell to the ground crackling and tinkling.
“Oppen t’door or it’ll be t’worse for you!” he shouted, sticking his angry face through the opening.
“We’ll burn door down if tha doesn’t!” shouted one of those at the door.
“Nay, shoot bolts off; that’ll be t’gainest way,” advised another.
“I am alone here with my children—we have done you no harm,” I cried.
“Oppen t’door and no harm’ll happen you,” said the man at the window grimly.
I hesitated. At my silence they showered blows from their musket butts on the door, striking all in unison; the timbers still did not yield, but a nail sprang from one of the bolts.
“I will open, I will open!” I cried, terrified, and I ran across to the door. With trembling fingers I shot back the bolts; half a dozen redcoats at once rushed into the house, almost knocking me over as they passed.
“Get out o’ t’road, missis, and nowt’ll happen thee,” shouted the man who had broken the window, who seemed to be their Corporal. “Now, lads, oats and meal first, remember!”
A shout of derision greeted this. “There’s better things here nor fodder,” said one, snatching down the candlesticks from the mantel.
“General’s order is oats and meal,” insisted the Corporal obstinately. “See if there’s any sacks upstairs to put ’em in—he’s a clothier, so I reckon there will be.”
One soldier went up the stairs two at a time, and a cry came down to us.
“Sam! Sam!” I cried in an agony, running to the foot of the stairs.
“And who’s Sam?” said the Corporal roughly, holding me back with an arm across my breast.
“My little son—younger than this one,” I explained, pointing to Thomas.
The Corporal still seemed disinclined to believe me, but the soldier just then appeared, holding Sam by the ear so tightly that the child’s eyes watered with the pain.
“Let him go!” I cried in a passion. “You’re hurting him—he’s only a child.”
“So this is Sam. He was sitting with his mother here a two-three minutes ago,” said the Corporal suspiciously. “What didst go up there for, lovey, eh?” he demanded, bending his knees to bring his face to the level of the child’s.
“I only went to fetch my brother’s cloak,” said Sam crossly. “He’s sick and feels cold.”
That this was a lie I knew from Thomas’s face, and I guessed Sam was hiding something beneath the cloak which he clasped in his arms.
“He was sick all yesterday,” I murmured.
“Well, let it go,” said the Corporal ill-humouredly, and he jerked Sam away from the soldier by his arm and sent him spinning. “Sit thee down there, missis,” he said to me, pointing to a buffet by the hearth, “and keep thy children close and hold thy tongue, or it’ll be worse for thee.”
So I sat there, and kept my children close, and held my tongue, and watched the soldiers sack my house.
At first I suffered a fresh anguish with everything on which they laid their hands, but I had had a surfeit of grief of late, and soon could suffer no more, but fell into a kind of stupor in which I merely watched with a dull interest to see what they would take. First, throwing back the lid of the ark so roughly that one of the hinges broke, they heaped the meal into a sack, and then they tore down our cheeses and our hams. Through the window I saw them driving off the cows and the sheep, and chasing the hens and geese; such a lowing and bleating, such a squawking and hissing, you never heard. When they had cleared the eatables, they turned to our finest and most easily carried goods; the only two gold pieces of John’s which had not gone to the cause were found by the Corporal, who chinked them joyously and put them in his pouch. Then the pewter went, and every trencher we had in the house, and every candlestick; and the spits and the ladles, and the kettles and pans. The soldiers ran upstairs, and came down carrying our blankets and coverlets rolled up in bundles, and my apparel and John’s and some of the Fairfaxs’ which they had left, and the children’s, and a piece or two of unsold cloth which lay in the loom chamber. The two men who had these bore them on their shoulders in the proper fashion, so that I knew they had been cloth-workers, and this, with their Yorkshire voices, was very bitter to me, for it seemed as if they were our own folk betraying us. They came from York, I supposed; there were many cloth-workers in York, and folk there were mostly Royalists, because of the Minster clergy and the gentry. Some of the other soldiers laughed at these two for choosing such cumbersome wares, but they took the chaff easily, knowing well the cloth’s value.
More soldiers continually poured in on us, for those that passed by, seeing the stream of goods going down the lane on men’s backs, turned in to The Breck hopefully.
By this time those already in the house had found, alas, our casks of home-brewed ale and tapped them, and so they grew drunk and quarrelsome, and resented badly the advent of the newcomers. A soldier coming down with one of our feather mattresses spread out flat over his head, not being able to see in front of him ran into one just entering; a loud fierce quarrel ensued, they came to blows, and trampled all over the mattress. One of them wore spurs, the cover tore and the feathers flew out. Their fellow-soldiers had to separate them; when the first rolled up the bed and went off, leaving a trail of feathers behind him. Those who came late now began to be vexed because there was nothing left for them; they pushed the others aside from the ale-barrel, and tried to snatch their booty, whereupon the first-comers shouted loud reproaches—the din was so great we felt quite stunned. One went tramping angrily upstairs, and then the noise of his boots stopped, so that I wondered what he had found to thieve, and when he came down I cried out, for it was our cradle he bore under one arm. I could not bear that my children’s cradle, which was full of tender memories, should be tossed about in the hands of a Royalist trooper; I sprang up and seized it and tried to drag it from him, but he put his free hand on my breast and pushed me aside. A drunken soldier who stood swaying by reproved him:
“Leave cradle,” he said in his thick drunk speech, shaking his finger at him: “Lady needsh cradle.”
The other gave a loud coarse laugh. “Aye, that’s plain to be seen,” said he. “But when she needs it she can come and buy it.” And off he went with old Mr. Thorpe’s finely carved gift under his arm.
Some who stood by, thinking there was more to be found upstairs, staggered up again, and finding nothing, began to break up the beds for fuel. The sound of great blows, and heavy thuds, and splintering wood came down to us.
“If only they leave the looms!” I prayed, and, perhaps because the looms were very heavy, or perhaps because some were men used to looms who liked not to break the tools of their trade, they spared them.
After a while there was nothing movable left in the house; even the books had been carried off, though amid expressions of disgust that there was nothing better left, all thumbed and dirtied by the soldiers’ rough hands. The din began to die away a little when two soldiers, newcomers, half drunk, came stumbling in. Without a glance at us they staggered rapidly all over the house, meeting again at the foot of the stairs.
“Nowt left here,” said one disgustedly.
“Let’s take table,” suggested the other.
The first soldier looked at our long oaken table dubiously.
“Think we could move it?” he said, scratching his head.
“We can nobbut try,” said the other.
Staggering each to an end they seized the table. It was a very solid heavy piece, made in Queen Elizabeth’s days for the wedding of old Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe, and they could not lift it; they dragged it inch by inch towards the door, so that both table and floor grated and shuddered. In the porch, praise be, it stuck; they tried to turn it sideways, but being partly drunk and not very clever, they mixed their commands to each other and somehow got it upended, so that Sam laughed and even I could scarce forbear a smile. One had clambered beneath and was butting at the top with his head, when there came some sort of a trumpet call and a drum, evidently summoning them back to their lines, for they dropped their hands from the table and peered over at each other, startled.
“Come away!” cried the one outside, and he pulled at his coat and hitched up his musket and ran off, though somewhat unsteadily. The one within gave a last look round, then staggered towards me.
“Up wi’ thee, missis!” he cried thickly, and snatched at my arm and jerked me up, and pulled out the buffet on which I was sitting. He ran to the door with it and tried to put it through our table, but caught the legs in a manner which was truly somewhat comical, and then remembered the back door and disentangled the buffet and ran out through the kitchen with it. We heard his uneven footsteps, and his shouts to his companion, dying away down the lane.
And so at last they were all gone. At first we could not believe it, and stood cowering together, pressed back against the wall by the hearth; but when the silence continued, Sam darted off and peeped into the kitchen, and shook his head and mouthed at us to say it was empty. A distant drum brought him back like an arrow to my hand, but soon he was off again, and the stillness confirmed his report that there were no Royalists anywhere in the house. We crept out, and I looked about to see what was left to us.
Very little, indeed. The looms, the table, the empty meal ark and the big cupboard, which was also broken and empty, were all I could find. The floors were spattered with feathers and trodden meal, and scraps of paper from our books and John’s accounts, and sticky runnels of ale and milk, and here and there a splintered piece of wood. It seemed that Thomas had unknowingly clutched our Bible from which I was reading to them, firmly beneath his arm, for he now discovered it there, but otherwise there was nothing; there was not a morsel of food, not a spoonful of drink, not a stick of fuel, not a cushion or a chair, not a pair of stockings or a cloak, left in the house.
“Sam, what hid you beneath your cloak?” I said, remembering.
Sam, blushing and hanging his head, drew out Sir Thomas Fairfax’s boots.
Then I laughed and cried together, and knelt down and drew my little sons into my arms, and we mingled our tears, and kissed, and put cheek to cheek, and so eased our hearts of their heavy burden and regained some courage.
After a time I smoothed back the boys’ hair, and wiped their faces with my skirt, and stood up, and tried to bethink myself how to get food for them.
First we tried to move the table from the door, but we could not shift it—the boys had not the strength, and I was afraid to strain myself. So we left it there, and perhaps it was better so, for the door was torn from one of its hinges and leaning sideways, and the table served to block the doorway. I set Sam to get water, and Thomas to clean the floor—there was no broom left to us, but I made him gather some leafy twigs and sweep as well as he could with those. And then Sam came in and said he had ventured a small way down the lane, and had found quite a heap of meal by the hedgerow—some soldier had emptied out the meal to put something of greater value in the sack, he thought. So we all went out to this blessed heap, and the boys scooped up the meal with their fingers and I held out my skirt to hold it, and we carried it back to the house with great gladness. I set Thomas to gather twigs, and Sam to chop some larger wood, and by a good chance I found an old pan with a hole in it below in the cellar, and so we made shift to get ourselves a fire and some supper, and to cheer the children I made merry over it.
And so the time passed, and it came night, and we heaped ourselves close together on the floor, and the children slept. But for my part I lay long awake, turning over and over in my mind where John and David were, and how I was to nourish my children.
The next day we heard the drums again, and the women’s screams, as strong as yesterday but not as frequent. We kept close in the house and lived on water and some handfuls of oatmeal; but I knew this could not go on, and spent the hours tormenting myself as to how and where I could obtain succour. Twice Royalists came to our door, but seeing the barrenness within went away again without troubling us, save for the fright, which indeed was pain enough.
Then, early next morning, we had another visitor. I was stooping over a little fire we had made in the kitchen, blowing on it to help the green wood to a glow, when I heard footsteps by the front, and an exclamation. My heart jumped; the moments while the steps rounded the house and came in at the back were some of the longest I remember. Then the door was pushed timidly open, and Lister’s freckled face peered in. It was criss-crossed with long red scratches.
“Are there any malignants here?” he whispered.
“No,” I said. “It is safe. Come in.” I stared at him, amazed, over my shoulder as he crept in, and my slow mind came round to ask why I was so greatly amazed, and then I knew, and I stood up from the fire holding my hands apart from my dress because they were dirty, and I cried harshly: “Lister, where is David?”
He hung his head and cracked his scratched knuckles, and looked aside, and I screamed at him:
“Where is David? Where is David?”
“I’ve seen Mester John—he’s safe at Colne over in Lancashire,” croaked Lister. “The Lord hath delivered him from his cruel enemies. He gave me this gold for you.”
I took the gold pieces from his hand and threw them down, and I stepped close up to him—I daresay my cheek was pale and my eyes glittering, for he backed away from me looking affrighted—and I seized him by the arms and shook him, and I panted:
“Where is David? Is he dead? Is David dead? Lister! Tell me instantly!”
“No, no, he’s not dead,” said Lister crossly. “The young man liveth.”
“He’s at Colne with John, then?” I cried joyously.
“No, he’s not at Colne.” Lister hung his head again, and finally got out in a piteous tone, his voice dying away from shame as he spoke: “He’s a prisoner.”
“A prisoner? And you come here and tell me that? He threw away his safety to save you, and you deserted him? Shame on you for a coward, Joseph Lister!” I cried, and my voice rang through the house, fierce and loud with anger.
“Under favour, Mistress, I did not desert him,” muttered Lister.
“God grant me patience!” I burst out. “Will you tell me what has happened to my brother, or must I strike you?”
“I did not desert him, I but hid in a holly bush,” repeated Lister obstinately. “In a secret place shall He hide me. A man on horseback espied us and came riding fast towards us with his sword in his hand—I will bring a sword upon you, saith the Lord—I must tell you we were four by that time; we met with two troopers who had left their horses in the town, and hoped to get away on foot, after we had waded the beck, that is. Mistress.”
“Lister,” I commanded, driving my nails into my palms to keep from raging at him: “Tell me this tale orderly, from its beginning. What did you after I left the two of you in Kirkgate? Leave your texts, and speak plain.”
“I led him to the far bridge,” explained Lister in a tone of grievance: “It was in my mind to get up towards Clayton and then turn Haworth way and go to Colne.”
“Why to Colne?” said I. I looked about for some place to sit, for I saw the story would be long, but the soldiers had left us nothing, so I wiped my hands on my apron and leaned against the hearth side.
“Because I reckoned I should find Mester John i’ Colne,” replied Lister, sullenly. “You had begged him to go to Lancashire, so I reckoned he would go there—more fool he,” he added, muttering. “The woman’s heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands. There was a foot company at the bridge, yet I think they did not see us, so we ran on the right hand of them, and then we waded over the water, and hearing a party of horse come down the lane towards the town, we laid us down in the side of the corn, and again they did not see us. The Lord hid us from their eyes. Then we went along in the shade of the hedge, and then, thinking we were past the danger of the leaguer, we took to the highway. And here we met with the two men that were troopers, and they and we walked on together, and hoped we had escaped all danger. And then all on a sudden this malignant on horseback espied us and came riding towards us with a drawn sword in his hand, and we, like lost sheep without a shepherd, kept together and thought to save ourselves by running. Had we scattered from one another, he had got but one of us.”
“Master David was on horseback, I think?” I cried. “He could have ridden away and left you, and escaped?”
“Aye, he could,” admitted Lister. His nostrils twitched, and suddenly his pretended complacence fell from him, and he wept. “Aye, he could have left us and saved hisself, poor lad,” he wailed. “But he never thought of it. You know well, Mistress, that David would never think of it. We all got into a field, and the Royalist crossed the field and came to us, and I being running by the hedge side, espied a thick holly tree, and I crept into it and pulled the boughs about me, and presently I heard David crying out to the horseman for—”
“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?”
“He’s my brother’s man from Adel,” I found the wit to tell him quickly.
The Royalist, disappointed, withdrew.
“We’d best keep the cow on the Hall land, I reckon,” said Lister, who was somewhat pale from this encounter, “and if we can break in, put her in their laithe at night.”
“We might borrow their scythe, too,” suggested Sam eagerly.
All this we did, and so through the days that followed we kept the cow and got in the hay, Lister using the scythe and the boys and I gathering and shocking it after him. Sam was jubilant over his trick with the cow, and worked well at the hay and soon forgot better times and was happy in the present business, but Thomas stayed very quiet and mournful, and I knew what ailed him. He had heard his mother and his brother lie, and to his sweet and sensitive soul that was truly dreadful. It is not only that we have lost our substance, that we are half-starved and John is in danger of his life, I thought as I toiled along the field in the summer heat; the children have known fear and injustice and lies in their young time, their spirits are being compressed into ugly moulds, God grant they may not take lasting shape from them.
But meanwhile, all we could do for the children was to strive to keep them fed. We got in the hay and exchanged some of it for some fowls and a goose or two, and then the oats luckily ripened early, and we got them in as well. It was killing work for one in my condition—my body ached continually, my beauty quite went from me, threads of grey came in my hair—but if only we could keep ourselves alive on stuff from our own land, I did not care. For the rents due to us on property John owned in and about Bradford, it was quite impossible to collect them; Lister tried but gave it up, for the whole neighbourhood, save the few Royalist supporters, was beaten to the earth, totally impoverished by the Royalist sack. But if we could live on our eggs and milk and meal, and if Lister could perhaps weave a little as well, we should not do so badly.
Just as hope began thus to raise its head, however, another blow fell to crush it.
One evening as I turned to go upstairs to bed—for we had laid in a few scanty necessaries for the house with the hay money, and I had a mattress now I called a bed, a thin poor thing but better than the floor—just as I came to the foot of the stairs, Lister planted himself before me.
“The oats and the hay are in now, mistress,” he croaked.
“Yes, God be praised,” said I, sighing.
“So now I can leave you,” went on Lister.
“Leave me!” I cried, aghast. “What mean you, Lister?”
“Mester John said he would not bind me to stay with you after harvest, I could leave you if I so desired, when the oats and hay were in and you were provided for the winter,” said Lister in a tone of angry wailing.
My heart sank. “Why do you wish to leave The Breck?” I asked him quietly. “After so many years of service?”
“You cannot bear the sight of me, Mistress,” wailed Lister. “And I cannot bear to see——”
He left his sentence unfinished, but I knew very well what it was Lister feared to see.
“Well, we will speak of it again in the morning, Lister,” I said.
“The time of my departure is at hand,” muttered Lister.
“We will speak of it in the morning,” I repeated wearily.
But by morning he was gone. He had stolen away in the night without a word.
So then I was indeed alone. My sin has found me out, I thought, and a despair swept over me.