‘And so now the King seeks to bring a treason charge against honest men for doing what they conceive to be their duty, as though he and he alone were the Government of England,’ Thomas Fairfax said, in a tone not so much of anger as of furious regret.
Slingsby flushed like a boy. ‘And since when have the Puritan Party and they alone been the Government of England? It is they who have provoked this breach by their determination to take control of the militia out of His Majesty’s hands.’
William’s mouth seemed made of iron. ‘If there is one thing made clear in this most sorry affair it is that the very existence of the two Houses — of any kind of constitutional government in this country — depends now on the control of the militia.’
Again it was Frances who broke the silence, looking to William as though he, and he alone, could answer her question. ‘What — will the King do now?’
‘God knows,’ William said. ‘But whatever else he does, I think that he will no longer dare to remain at Whitehall.’ Then, flinging off the gravity of the moment with a kind of defiance, he reached out and caught her hand. ‘You are for ever crying out for a wind to rise ... Maybe you will see the King here in the north, sweetheart — the magazine at Hull has a value now that might well draw him — and feel the wind blowing high enough even for you, before the bairn is born!’
And suddenly, hand in hand, they were caught into laughter; shared laughter on the edge of the world’s end, the man’s swift and reckless, the girl’s edged with fear.
‘Is’t not fine to dance and sing
When the bells of death do ring?’
Anne wished that Slingsby had not chosen that particular song ... The harsh two-edged gallantry was too apt to that laughter.
*
Later that evening, when the horses and Frances’s litter (not the jolting family coach for a woman so far in child) had clattered away, Sir Thomas Fairfax and his wife stood together before the fire. The candles had burned low and Anne had pinched them out; and the window end of the room was lost in shadows beyond the reach of the firelight. It was warm here in the fireglow, for there was no wind tonight to set the draughts stirring; so warm that the chill honey scent had woken among the snowdrops on the table. To her dying day, the thin scent of snowdrops was to bring back to Anne Fairfax that night, and another that was as yet three Februaries away, and so much that lay between.
‘How sweet the snowdrops smell,’ Fairfax said, reaching out to touch a pointed white petal. ‘One does not think of them as scented flowers.’
‘They are like apple blossom,’ Anne said. ‘They only have their scent in some years.’ She looked up at him. ‘Thomas, how much does it mean, this action of the King’s? Oh, I see how all too clearly it shows the deepness of the rift between him and Parliament, but does it in truth bring war — war between the King and his people?’
‘God knows. But I believe so.’ Fairfax turned, his arm along the mantel, to look into the fire. ‘It is the King’s misfortune to be served by men too much of his own type,’ he said at last. ‘And it is a type unable to see reason or to profit by experience. He and the Archbishop Laud have tried to force a growing nation into the mould of a rigid formula that leaves no room for growth... If England rises against him as Scotland has done, it won’t be for political reasons, nor even because of illegal taxation — but in defence of deeper and more nameless liberties. So there will be much confused thinking, and many of us will be scarcely able to give a name to the thing that we are prepared to die for.’
‘Thomas,’ Anne said after a few moments. ‘If it comes to war — you will take your stand with Parliament and the people?’
Fairfax rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘I do not know yet, Nan. I have been trained in loyalty, and I must be sure where my first loyalty lies. When the time comes — if it comes — I shall know. For God’s sake leave it until then.’
He turned his head to smile at her, apologetically; and his face was haggard in the firelight, so that suddenly she cared nothing for kings and wars, nor bishops nor the soul of man, nor for what Thomas did, only for what Thomas was; and she longed to fling her arms round him and hold him close because he was like a lute that was strung too tight.
Once, she would have done it; but that was five years ago, in the early days, when she had been very young, and had hoped, that if she showed him all her heart, somehow it must make him love her in return.
She had learned wisdom now; she had learned to accept the fact that he had nothing to give her but gentleness and unfailing courtesy. At the very outset she had been no more eager for the marriage than Thomas himself; it had been a family arrangement, a matter for lawyers and nothing more. She had even felt a little resentful that she was to be tied to a man who was so often ill — for even when he served under her father before Boi le Duc, a boy scarce through his schooling, he had been sickly and often ailing, though his ills had never held him when the guns began to speak.
Oddly, it had been his illness, striking him down only a few days after their wedding, that had woken the fierce protective love for him that had hurt her ever since. Thomas, wretched and ashamed at being ill before a girl he scarcely knew, with the black sweat of agony running down his face — Thomas a blue and shivering wreck when the sharpness of the attack was spent, and the old fever he had brought back with him from the Low Countries laid hold of him in its stead. And with nursing him day and night Anne had caught the first bad cold of her life. Not a very happy start to their marriage; but the most unhappy thing about it had been that when it was over, Anne had been in love with Thomas, and Thomas had only been grateful to Anne. It was past and done with now; she was no longer a girl in love, she was a woman five years married and mistress of a great house. She was contented, even happy. She had Thomas’s unvarying kindness and his dependence on her for his physical well being; she had the children and Nun Appleton to love and be loved by. It was only sometimes that the old longings rose to hurt her; sometimes — tonight.
Tonight when suddenly everything that was in her was crying out to have what Frances had; Frances laughing with William on the edge of the dark. Blindly, scarcely aware that she did so, she held out her hands to Thomas. He took them in a light clasp, and stood looking down at her. ‘You’re tired, Nan. Time that you were away to bed.’
She smiled at him. There were other things she had that were lovely. ‘I must look in on the babies first,’ she said. ‘Come with me, Thomas.’
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Rosemary Sutcliff, Lady in Waiting
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