The Rider of the White Horse

  At that moment the woman of the house came back with the milk and some food on a platter, and saw what was happening. ‘Dinna mind him,’ she said quickly. ‘He’s human like t’rest of us, an’ he’ll not harm the little lady.’ Then to the boy himself, ‘Ah now, leave the bairn be! Dost want ta’ frit her out of her senses wi’ they gurt turnip face? Get up to t’loft now, or tha’ll be snoring when ‘tis time to milk t’cows in t’morning.’

  In a while, Moll began to stir, and the first little whimpering sound of her stirring brought the woman quickly to stand at Christian’s side, looking down at her. ‘Eh, she’s coming to herself, the wee lamb.’ And then as the child’s eyes opened and stared up at her in wide bewilderment, ‘There now; there’s nawt to fright thee here, but good friends and a good fire to warm thee.’ They got first the milk and then a little hot barley gruel down her; and Christian undressed her and put her into the great box bed where she sank among the feather bolsters and the dark wadmal blankets that smelled of sheep. And all the while she made no sound.

  But now suddenly, lying lost in the strange bed, she began to cry. Barely conscious as she was, she had done her best to drink the gruel when Christian bade her, because it was habit with her to do what she was told when possible; she had submitted like a doll with no life of its own, to being undressed and put into the soft smothering bed. But now that she had begun to cry she could not stop. Great gasping sobs tore at her, and she was shaking with a cold that it seemed nothing could warm. Christian held her close and told her over and over again that there was nothing to cry for, that her father would send for her in the morning. But she knew that, with unquestioning and perfect trust in her father, she wasn’t crying about that, she wasn’t crying about anything as far as she knew. She was only crying because she could not stop, just as she was shivering because she could not get warm, not for all the fug under the blankets and the hot brick which the woman of the house put to her icy feet.

  Bathsheba might have helped, but Bathsheba was in one of the saddle-bags, and they had forgotten to unstrap the saddlebags and so they had gone on to Barton.

  ‘Tha mun get some food theesen, or tha’ll sink,’ the woman said at last, turning her attention to Christian. ‘There’s oat cake and cold bacon on t’table; leave t’bairn, she’ll quieten by and by, on her own account, and none the sooner for thy coaxing.’

  That was true, Christian realized. She was making no impression on Moll whatever. Maybe the child would do better left to herself for a while. After a little persuasion she rose and dragged herself across to the table.

  And so Moll was left alone. She lay for a while rigid under the blanket, still crying and shuddering, and staring straight up into the darkness that was the roof of the box bed above her. And then suddenly she was not alone any more. Somebody else was bending over her, between her and the darkness. A man? A big boy? He looked like a grown-up man, but the person looking out at her from behind his funny fat face, she realized suddenly, was another child; a child not so very much older than she was herself.

  If Christian or Dicken’s mother had been beside her, something in them, some inner tension would probably have taught her that he was strange, abnormal and therefore to be feared and shrunk from. But Christian and Maudlin at the table, did not, for that brief all-important moment of first contact, see that Dicken, who had been watching so silently in his corner, had crept across to the box bed. And so Moll accepted the child behind the man’s face as something strange, certainly, but not in the least to be afraid of. Something lovely, like finding a friend in a strange land.

  He was carrying something in one big hand; it was tiny and furry, and it mewed fretfully like a seagull half a headland away. ‘Soft,’ said the boy, breathing heavily, in a voice that sounded like flannel. ‘Warm! Tha’ hold mun,’ and put into her arms a minute orange-golden kitten.

  Moll gave another sob, but there was a gasp of pleasure tangled in it, too. The kitten was so silken soft, so living warm, so tiny. She put her arms round it, and it began to purr. It began to nibble her ear. The two women glanced at each other, decided to let matters take their course, and watched across the big shadowy kitchen. Little by little, Moll’s sobbing died away, and her shuddering yielded to the kitten’s warmth.

  Presently, when Dicken had at last been persuaded to go up to his bed in the loft, Maudlin Gibberdyke again smoored the fire, making the Sign of the Cross in the warm ashes as she made it every night, to keep the house safe from fire, then went to her own bed on the far side of the hearth, while Christian, so dazed with exhaustion that she scarcely knew, save for the aching of her body, whether she was awake or dreaming, crept into the bed beside Moll, and instantly fell asleep herself, with the kitten’s purring like the beat of a moth’s wing in her ear.

  Moll slept until noon next day, and then woke up to all appearances completely recovered, and demanded to get up. Presently she was sitting on a stool under the willow tree, eating barley-bread and honey, and watching Dicken — he said his name was Dicken while he mended a weak place in the fence that kept the pigs out of the kale plot. Christian, a conscientious woman, sat close by; but Moll had forgotten Christian and was unaware of anyone’s eye on her; for a little while she had even forgotten the boat that would be coming for her presently, to take her to father. Yesterday was a bad dream gibbering behind her that could not reach out to hurt her now. The three kittens, two tabby and one marigold coloured were also having their middledays, lying in an ecstatically sucking row along their mother’s flank. The wind made silver bushings through the willow tree above Moll’s head, and stirred and ruffled the water in the dyke and tossed the heads of the meadowsweet and wild marjoram and codlins-and-cream that made pale dusty colour all along the foot of the bank.

  Moll munched in silence for a little while, watching Dicken at his task, with the frank interest of one child for another. Liking him as she did, she wanted to know about him. ‘Is she your mother?’ she inquired presently, with a little backward jerk of the head towards the house behind her.

  Dicken looked up from his work with a vacant grin. ‘Aye,’ he said.

  Moll kicked her heels and took another bite of bread and honey, forgetting about not talking with her mouth full. ‘I’ve got a mother,’ she told him. ‘Christian is only my nurse; I’ve got a real mother as well, but she’s — not — here.’ A shadow fell across the sudden brightness of her happiness, and to escape it she turned from mother to fathers. ‘Haven’t you got a father?’

  Dicken rubbed his head and didn’t seem too sure; but after a few moments’ rubbing, muttered something about his father being ‘Out to t’war.’

  Moll relapsed into suddenly anxious silence, finishing her bread and honey while she watched him fit the new cross-bar into place. Half the people who were ‘Out to t’war’ were on the wrong side, which was to say the King’s side and not father’s. It would be dreadful if Dicken’s father was on the wrong side, and therefore in some obscure way damned, and Dicken with him; so dreadful that she could not even ask, in case the answer should be the wrong one. Instead, with a sudden defiance, she licked the honey off her fingers, slid off her stool and went to her new friend — she still felt sore and wobbly when she moved — and set a small very sticky hand on his that held the hammer, and said protectively, as though she were much older than he was, ‘Never mind. I like you.’

  Dicken seemed to have no words with which to receive her sweet assurance, but made a joyful chuckling sound which so clearly meant, ‘I like you, too,’ that Moll was perfectly satisfied with it.

  All at once he was looking away to the right. ‘There’s a boat cum in, down yonder.’

  A boat! That must be the one father had promised to send for her! Moll clambered on to her stool for a better view, peering in the same direction but at first could see nothing for the tall growing things of the marsh. ‘Where?’ she said wildly, staring all ways at once. ‘Where, Dicken?’

  ‘There, down there,’ Dicken pointed, puzzled
that she could not see what was so plain to him.

  And then at last she did see, not the boat, even on her stool she was not tall enough for that, but the familiar figure of her father’s galloper making his way up through the thistles and tall seeding marsh grasses. She let out a little squeal of excitement, ‘Lieutenant D’Oyley! Cha-a-arles! I’m here!’ Then half falling off her stool, ran to Christian, crying, ‘Christian, the boat’s come in! Father’s sent the boat! He’s sent the boat he has!’ and doubled back to Dicken, where he stood with his mouth open, and his hands, with that curious heavy emptiness that came over them when he was not at work, hanging at his sides.

  The woman of the house had come out through her doorway; and Christian, snatching up her cloak and Moll’s — they had no other preparations for departure to make — stood waiting as Charles D’Oyley came up.

  ‘Charles, will you play nursemaid this once more!’ Fairfax had said, standing in the courtyard of the Governor’s Palace at Hull; and Charles D’Oyley had groaned inwardly at the odd duties that could overtake a galloper. But he was a good-natured lad, and nothing of that appeared in him as he looked into the small eager face that gazed so earnestly up into his. ‘Well then, Mistress Moll, are you ready? We have brought your ceremonial barge, timed to a nicety. The tide is on the turn.’

  Moll turned back to Dicken, and was pierced by the sudden knowledge that the moment had come far saying good-bye. Her voice wobbled a little. ‘Good-bye, Dicken.’

  Dicken rubbed his hands up and down his breeches and grinned vacantly. Moll stood quite still with her face tipped up for a kiss, gravely and sweetly, because she liked him; and his grin grew puzzled as he looked down at her.

  There was a little silence. Charles D’Oyley, looking on also saw, as Moll had done, the child in the shambling man’s body, but saw it as a prisoner, and knew for the first time in his young life a painful rush of pity from the whole to the maimed. Why didn’t the women do something? It was for the women to do something, not for him ...

  Suddenly Dicken’s whole dull face was irradiated with delight. Nov he knew! Now he understood! She was waiting for him to give her something. And wonderfully, gloriously, he had something to give; something that was worthy even of her! He muttered unintelligibly and shambled towards the place where the tabby cat lay with her kittens about her, while Moll watched him, as puzzled as he himself had been the moment before. He stooped and picked up the orange-golden kitten, and returned with a high prancing step of joy and triumph, and set the little creature into Moll’s arms.

  ‘For you,’ he said in his flannelly voice. ‘Soft! Bonnie!’

  Chapter 16 - Lord Newcastle’s Coach

  Bradford fell on the day that the Fairfaxes and their tattered army marched from Leeds. And while Sir Thomas Fairfax, the skirmish at Selby just behind him, was making his way down the west bank of the Ouse, Lady Fairfax at her fiercest was expressing her opinion of Lord Newcastle to his face. She had seen lowing and wild-eyed cattle driven up to the Royalist headquarters; she had seen men bowed under their weight of loot and singing under the spell of Bradford beer, and heard tales of soldiers questing through meal arks and slitting up mattresses and terrorizing householders in their drunken search for the life savings of respectable citizens. ‘And had not My Lord promised — had not My Lord given orders — did not My Lord expect his orders to be obeyed?’

  My Lord towered over her with a faint irony in his gaze. ‘Surely the White Lady’s plea was for the folk of Bradford, for the women and the wounded, not for cattle and feather beds?’ he said. ‘Even a White Lady, My Lady Fairfax, must not expect the conduct of archangels from mere common soldiers.’

  Anne conceded the point, though unwillingly, as he smiled into her small hard face. ‘The story of the White Lady is all through the camp; so says the woman who waits on me,’ she said.

  His smile deepened. ‘It is a good story; one well fitted to carry weight with the devout and the superstitious — with a Papist Army, in fact. You should be proud of it, Lady Fairfax.’

  On the morning on which Dicken gave Little Moll the ginger kitten, her mother was still in Bowling Hall, and still making herself felt with demands after the Parliamentary prisoners, and especially with demands for the welfare of Will Hill. But Anne’s own time as a prisoner of war was almost over. At an early hour next morning, when she was barely dressed, a rap sounded on the door. The woman who waited upon Lady Fairfax went to it, and a few low words passed between her and the sentry in the gallery. Then the woman returned. ‘My Lady, Sir Charles Cavendish presents his devotion to your service, and begs that you will join him for a few moments in the gallery.’

  That was typical of the difference between the two brothers. Lord Newcastle had come to her chamber, in all courtesy. He was perhaps well used to the ways of gallantry, used to being welcome in the bowers and inner chambers of womenkind. Sir Charles waited in the gallery, with the plea that she would come out to him.

  She shook out her tattered orange-tawny skirts, and went to the deep window embrasure where the grotesquely stunted figure in green and mulberry waited for her. He turned as she approached, and bowed, his hand on the cut silver hilt of his sword. ‘God save you, Lady Fairfax.’

  ‘God save you, on this morning, Sir Charles. You wished to speak with me?’ She sank into a billowing curtsy. How wonderful it was, this bright intricate web of formal courtesy that custom demanded for decency’s sake over the real thing, the dark and cruel and living things that ran beneath.

  He said, ‘My brother is much occupied, and has asked me to wait upon you in his stead, bearing his excuses, and inform you that his own coach will be at your disposal in two hours’ time, to take you to your husband in Hull.’

  Her hands flew to her mouth, her heart suddenly racing. ‘Hull?’

  A smile like a shadow crossed the man’s face, a small, bitter shadow. ‘Kingston-upon-Hull, My Lady. So the fortunes of war change about and about. Certain letters — treasonable by Parliamentary standards — from Sir John Hotham to my brother have been discovered, and Sir John has therefore been taken into custody. Hull is accordingly open again to the Parliamentary forces; and lacking all other strong points in the north, Lord Fairfax has withdrawn his army there, Sir Thomas your husband acting as rearguard for him.’

  Hull — arid Little Moll was at Leeds; in the sunny parlour of Mary’s house, playing with the unicorn cabinet. Or — was she not? Would Thomas have marched out and left her there? Would even Thomas have burdened himself with a five-year-old girl child on that gruelling rearguard march? Maybe he would think it better for the child to leave her ...

  ‘You seem distressed, Lady Fairfax. Is there anything that I may do?’

  She shook her head, turning a little from him to look out over the curve of the hayfield where the cocks were now falling into black ruin for want of carting, her hands straining together. ‘I pray you forgive me; it is — that I think I may yet have a little daughter in Leeds.’

  She was aware of a quiet movement in the man beside her; and turned to him again. ‘I think on the contrary it is more likely that you have a little daughter waiting for you in Hull,’ he said in that deep, unexpectedly beautiful voice of his. ‘Our scout’s reports of Sir Thomas’s movements came through at dawn. They include the fact that some seven miles from Barton, Sir Thomas sent a little girl and her nurse for shelter to a farm-house, the child being far spent, and that a boat from the Employment came up river for them next morning. The woman of the house would not talk, but her son, a halfwit, told them gladly enough.’ There was an indefinable warmth in his voice of a smile made audible. ‘The boy said that she was bonnie, and that he had given her a ginger kitten.’

  ‘May God be kind to that woman, and to her halfwit son,’ Anne said softly, then turned on him with a flash of anxiety. ‘You did not — your men did not — no harm came to them?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Lady Fairfax. It is not a crime to shelter a woman and a child, though — it may be one
day.’ The jester’s mask was for the moment all tragic; the eyes that looked out through it into her own, haunted. ‘It may be one day. The war grows more bitter as the months go by.’

  If it had been My Lord of Newcastle standing before her, Anne would have gone into battle on that, bidding him tell her whose fault made it so, bidding him remember the conduct of the Papist Army in victory, bidding him remember the damage and the looting in Bradford despite the White Lady. But it was My Lord’s brother. She gave him a rag of a smile torn off before it was well begun, and gathered her skirts. ‘I thank My Lord your brother for putting his coach at my disposal. I will be ready.’

  Two hours later she came down to the sweep below the terrace to find Lord Newcastle’s coach waiting for her. A great lumbering thing, heavy as a wagon, gilded like a ship of the line. The coach door was open, revealing squabs of sky blue damask; the steps were already down, and Sir Charles Cavendish came forward with a young man. ‘May I present Lieutenant Robert Gasgoine, who will take command of your escort when I leave it.’

  The young man was bowing over the hand she held out to him. She looked from him to Sir Charles, surprised, not at his being there to hand her in, for against all likelihood, here in the enemy camp, she had found a friend, and it seemed natural that he should come to bid her good-bye, but at his last words. ‘When you leave it? Are you then riding with us a little way?’

  ‘If you will allow me,’ he said, bowing, and turned to hand her in. He slammed the door on her, with a half smiling salute, then turned away to the tall red mare which a trooper had brought forward for him.

  Anne did not watch him mount. She knew that it must be a humiliating business for him. She busied herself spreading her skirts, as though they were capable of being made more crumpled than they were already, and settling herself on the sky blue squabs, and while she was still doing so, heard his voice give a quick order, the crack of the coachman’s whip, and the great coach groaned and lurched forward as the horses took the strain. She looked out then, and saw Sir Charles range alongside as the escort fell into place before and behind. Saw also that however he had contrived to get there, now that he was in the saddle he managed his mount with ease. Indeed, perched up there on the raking red mare like the mounted dwarfs that the knights of old used to carry their spare lances, he left behind him much of his grotesqueness. On foot, Sir Charles Cavendish was a deformed dwarf; on horseback he was a man among men.