And so he had come riding south, to arrive less than an hour ago, clattering up Queen Street to a halt before the door, surrounded by the senior officers who had met him ceremonially in the suburbs, and followed by a small Lifeguard under Charles D’Oyley, a Lifeguard with familiar faces, for they were all Denton or Nun Appleton men. Anne, standing to greet them on the doorstep, had looked for another familiar sight; for a man in black armour on a great white stallion, and seen instead a man in a rain darkened-buff coat, on a sorrel gelding; and then remembered that of course Thomas would have ridden post.
She had welcomed them in, while young D’Oyley led off his flock to their own quarters, and played hostess in her new satin gown in the panelled dining-parlour; poured wine for them, seeing Thomas at an impersonal distance with no sense yet of any nearness between them; then left them to drink to the new Commander of the New Model Army, and retreated upstairs to her sitting-room, where Moll had been allowed down from the nursery to wait for her father on condition that she went to bed without a murmur when Christian came to fetch her.
It had seemed a long wait; but now it was almost over. The party below stairs was breaking up. She heard a door slam, voices in the hall, the wet ring of hoofbeats on the cobbles as horses were brought round, all the mingled sounds of departure that clattered away at last up the street, leaving behind them the quiet and the hushing of the February rain. A sudden sense of expectancy, a waiting quiet seemed to fall on the house, and then in the quiet, she heard the weary tramp of Thomas’s feet on the stairs.
She had left the sitting-room door ajar, that the candlelight might tell him where she and Moll were to be found in this house that was strange to him. She heard his steps reach the landing. A moment’s pause, and then the door swung wide, and Thomas stood on the threshold.
Moll, who had sat like a small graven image, frozen with expectancy, while the officers rode away and his feet came up the stairs, shot up from her stool, and then checked. She had not seen her father for more than a year, and a year is a long time when one has seen not quite seven years. For one long moment the man standing in the doorway, the dark man in buff and steel, with the great grey knotted scar all down one cheek, was a stranger. Then she spread wings, and flew to him.
He stooped and caught her in his sound arm, lifting her against him, hugging her close while she clung round his neck in a silent passion of happiness. ‘Sweetheart! Why now, here’s a welcome! Nay now, don’t strangle me altogether, Baby!’ He set her down, laughing. ‘But it is not Baby, not Little Moll any more. How you are grown, my tall daughter.’
Over her dark head, his eyes met Anne’s where she waited by the hearth. He smiled, a crooked smile because the scar contracted his cheek, and put the child gently on one side and came across the room to her and took her in his arms in a way that told her nothing save that he could not use his left arm freely and was not yet used to his awkwardness. ‘Dear Nan,’ he said.
Presently, when the first moments of reunion were over, when Christian had come for Little Moll and departed again with the unwilling child in tow, and the door had closed behind them, Anne turned for what was in truth her first long look at Thomas. He looked ill, but then he so often looked ill. And she saw that he carried his wounded shoulder somewhat higher than the other, which in some indefinable way added to his scarecrow aspect, his Don Quixote aspect, and made him all the more dear. The dearness of him twisted under her heart. ‘Thomas — your shoulder — how is it?’
‘Well and truly knit up at last,’ he said. ‘I am a sound man again, and ready for the next thing.’
‘The next thing. Captain General of the New Model Army. It is a great thing that they ask you to do.’
‘I shall have magnificent seconds to stand with me; Sir Philip Skippon for my General of Foot, and for my General of Horse —’ He turned to look down into the fire, his hand touching hers. ‘Well, that post remains open for a while.’
She looked at him quickly. ‘But you know who it will be? Who, Thomas?’
‘Can you not guess?’
‘General Cromwell,’ she said after a moment, and then checked. ‘But his own Self-Denying Ordinance —’
‘Will have to be stretched a little, to allow room for a special exemption. Manchester and Essex and the rest, even my father who is a better soldier than most of them, they can go, but the country needs Noll Cromwell.’
‘Do you suppose he knew that?’
‘I — think so. But I also think that if he had not known it, he would have worked for the Self-Denying Ordinance none the less.’
But Anne had not at that moment much interest to spare for General Cromwell, all her thoughts were for Thomas. ‘But you, Thomas. When do you take up the appointment?’
‘I am to go before the House tomorrow at noon, to be formally possessed of my Command, and — I gather, to receive the thanks of the Committee.’
‘What will it be like?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I shall be conducted into the House by four Members. Mr. Speaker Lenthal will then live up to his title by delivering a long speech.’ There was a weary amusement in his voice. ‘Possibly something about Agamemnon or the Ancient Romans; he is somewhat given to classical allusion. He will then announce that out of their trust and experience of his valour and sense of duty, they have thought fit to confer on General Sir Thomas Fairfax the great trust of commanding their armies in chief. He will give him hearty thanks in the name of the House for services past, and encourage him to render more in the future, promising him their care, aid and support in all things. (God! That’s a story that has been heard often enough before!) And that’s all.’ His gaze flashed up from the fire, full into Anne’s face. ‘And General Sir Thomas Fairfax, having expressed all the proper sentiments, will come away to make ready for his first and most deadly struggle — with the half of the Parliament of this country who do not wish the army altered from its old form, or who wish it altered only to make of it an instrument for forcing their own narrow ideologies on all men.’
The sudden savage bitterness in his voice shocked Anne; she had scarcely ever heard him bitter before. ‘What — does all that mean, my dear?’
He shrugged his sound shoulder. ‘Do you think it is just that I am tired and jaundiced? I’m both, but it isn’t that, Nan.’ He reached behind him for the carved arm of the chair in which she had been sitting earlier, and sat down, stretching his booted legs wearily to the fire. Anne hesitated a moment, the sweetness of coming together, the first lovely moments of reunion had escaped her, had escaped both of them; the mood was all wrong, but at least he was not shutting her out. She spread her skirts and sank down on to the rug beside him, her arm across his knee.
‘Tell me, Thomas.’
His face was turned to the fire again. ‘Nearly three years ago, we rose to fight for a number of things — freedom from illegal taxation among them; but among them also the freedom of our souls — a finer England. It all amounted to a Cause that was very well worth dying for. We had a sense of Cause, at the outset, even those of us who could give no name to it — something that we saw shining on the skyline...’
He was fumbling, unable to find the words he wanted, for the thing that had no words. Anne said very softly, ‘Your grandfather called it Civitas Dei.’
‘Civitas Dei.’ He seemed to be turning the words over in his mind, testing them for their truth. ‘Aye. A city not made with hands. I suppose we were fools; so many men have dreamed that dream before. It is all gone now, we’ve lost it somewhere along the way. And so we fight for the lesser of two evils — and sometimes I wonder if it is indeed the lesser.’ He moved abruptly, leaning forward in his chair, his hand hanging from relaxed wrist across his knee in the way that she knew so well. ‘The power of the extreme Presbyterians has waxed so appallingly great since we made our alliance with the Scots. They have the majority in Parliament and the support of the Scots Commissioners and the City of London — And given free rein they’d bring in a worse tyranny than Laud’s.?
?? His face seemed to tighten, setting into papery lines of strain even while she watched it. ‘Do you know, Anne, if the King would but take their Covenant and adopt their form of bigotry in place of his own, they would forgo all that we have fought for, tomorrow — all that so many of us have died for... By God’s mercy, their leaders are but third rate politicians, no match for Cromwell and the rest of the Independents. But it’s a sorry thing — a sad and sorry thing that we should have split into warring factions, we who were brothers fighting God’s war at the first.’
For a while he was silent, staring into the fire as though he saw in the glowing heart of it, the lost vision. It was very quiet in the room, no sound but the flutter of the flames on the hearth and the soft continuous hush of the rain across the windows. Then, in a changed tone, as though trying to shake off the mood of bitter despondency that had darkened his home coming, he said: ‘Aye well, thank God I’m not a politician. It is for me to build an army — a fighting instrument such as England has not seen before — and command it afterward ... And thank God again at least I am to be allowed, subject to approval, the appointing of my own officers.’
‘You have good officers to your hand for the choosing,’ Anne said, thinking of old comrades in arms; Colonel Alured, little leathery Captain Hodgson; so many more.
‘Aye,’ Fairfax said, ‘But not the ones that you are thinking of. I have had to leave most of my old officers behind. They petitioned to come with me — good lads, good loyal lads — but they are still needed in the north. I have brought Charles D’Oyley, however, to Captain my Lifeguard.’
‘I saw him when you rode up. It was so good to see him, and the Nun Appleton lads behind — like the old days back again... Do you know, for a moment I looked for White Surrey, forgetting that you would be riding post. I suppose you have left him to be brought on after you?’
There was a little pause, and then Thomas said, ‘I left him, but not to be brought on after me. He’s getting old, Nan, too old for hard campaigning. I sent him home to Nun Appleton, into honourable retirement, and brought Maia south in his place.’
Maia, the chestnut mare that he had bought so soon before the war. Anne did not look up from the fire. She understood. The Rider of the White Horse had become something of a legend; and it was a legend that belonged to the dales, and must be left there. Ahead lay the Commander-in-Chief of a great army — an army such as England had not seen before; but the early days were gone by. The courage of little armies, of men armed with weavers’ beams and a sharp-shooter in a church tower ridiculously gambesoned with woolsacks. Something — a kind of youth — was over and would not come again. For her, too, it was a phase of life that was done with, a story that was told. The riding with Thomas, the drawing together in a subtle bond of shared experience, the sense of ever present danger, that had once given wings to their feeling for each other. All that was over — gone with the Rider of the White Horse.
Kneeling in the firelight with her arm on Thomas’s knee, she bade good-bye to it; letting it go freely, without reproach, without straining to hold it back, in gratitude for so much that was left.
She ought to be hustling Thomas off to get rid of his wet boots and change into whatever he had with him until his travelling chest arrived, before it was time for supper. She ought to be going up to see Moll safe in bed. She arranged three more fircones on the fire, finding each its natural settling place, watching as the crocus-coloured flames danced up and each curled-back scale became a petal of fire. Flame-flowers, she thought, flowers of the Spirit with fire in their petals as the pigeons had had fire in their wings; and was glad that she had saved the fircones to burn when Thomas came home; and continued to sit on her heels in the amber firelight, resting lightly, undemandingly, against Thomas’s knee, where he sat with his buff coat flung open, weary legs outstretched towards the warmth, and the steam wisping up from his boots.
‘Something smells like honey,’ he said presently.
Anne lifted her head a little, and sniffed, catching the same frail sweetness above the thick masculine smell of wet leather. ‘It is the snowdrops — there on the table. Moll picked them this morning in Saint Pancras Fields to honour your home-coming, before the rain began.’
He turned his head towards the table that was behind her as she knelt, reached out for the Venice goblet, and sat holding it for a few moments, then set it down. ‘Yes, the snowdrops have their sweetness this year, too.’
So he also remembered that night, three snowdrop times ago. Suddenly, for one wing-beat of time, she was back again at Nun Appleton, standing with Thomas before the hearth in the Great Parlour, on the night when the news that made war certain had come north. And seeing Thomas as he had been then, she looked up and saw him as he was now, and realized the change that those three years had wrought in him. His eyes were different, more guarded, his mouth less mobile, stern at the deeply-etched corners, where it had never been stern before. His whole dark face with the corded scar seaming it from jaw to temple, was harder and more formidable than it had used to be. In a way he was more like William; William whose death had scarred something within him as deeply and irrevocably as an unknown sword at Marston Moor had scarred his cheek.
And for the moment she knew the feeling that Moll had known when he entered the room, of looking at a stranger.
Then he turned from the fire and caught her gaze upon him, and smiled, the old swift leaping smile that lit and sweetened his whole face, and set his hand under her chin to tip back her head and look into her eyes. ‘It is good to come back to a wife and a daughter, and a fire, and snowdrops on the table, out of the wind and the rain.’ And then, as though reading her look, ‘Even though it be such a different Thomas, who comes to them — and a different home, and certainly a different Nan to come home to ... Love me still, Nan. I should be very lonely without your love.’
If you enjoyed The Flowers of Adonis you might be interested in Blood and Sand by Rosemary Sutcliff, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Blood and Sand by Rosemary Sutcliff
1
In the swiftly gathering dusk, the lime-washed walls of El Hamed glimmered palely under the fronded darkness of its date palms. From the doorway of the headman’s house, now taken over by Colonel MacLeod as the headquarters of his motley command, light spilled out over the once jewel-bright Colours planted in their stands of lashed muskets before the threshold.
Between the low wall of the village and the nearest of the irrigation channels the lights of the camp fires were beginning to strengthen. Camp fires of the 78th Highlanders and beyond them the 35th Foot and De Rolle’s Foot beyond again. The night of April 20th, 1807 and away southwards, masked by the tamarisk scrub and the slight lift in the land between, the Turkish forces gathered about their own camp fires, waited also for dawn and the fighting that dawn would bring.
Round one of the fires, just below the village gateway and scarcely clear of the turbaned gravestones of the village dead, the best part of the Highlanders’ Grenadier company were gathered. They had eaten their evening meal and fallen to their own affairs and pastimes: here a little clump of heads bent together over a greasy pack of cards, there a man playing dice by himself, left hand against right; a man singing softly for his own ear and no one else’s, his gaze on the fire and his hands linked around his up-drawn knees, another doing his mending and yet another writing a letter with frowning concentration, leaning forward, the page tipped to catch the flame-light; one deep in conversation with a stray dog, the kind that always hung about an army camp; one who always suffered from religion on the eve of battle, reading his Bible. Most of the others silent or talking together idly as they readied their equipment for the morning. And among these, Donald MacLeod — no relation to his colonel — and Thomas Keith sat companionably together.
Donald, an extremely large fair young man from the island of Lewis who combined the position of company drummer with that of medical orderly in the usual way of such matters, had stripped dow
n his drum and was now reassembling and making it ready for tomorrow’s action.
Beside him Thomas Keith, almost as long-limbed but of a much slighter build, was as dark as the other was fair, with an almost Spanish darkness inherited from a Highland foremother, though he himself was from Edinburgh; a bony-faced young man with harsh angles at cheek and jaw, a wide mouth that was surprisingly mobile despite the un-boyish straightness of the lips; light grey eyes, level-set, and black-fringed with lashes that would have been the envy of any girl.
Just now, with a face of absorbed tenderness, he was cleaning his rifle.
It was one of the new Baker rifles, a marksman’s weapon, normally only issued to certain regiments of the Light Brigade, and his possession of it, in place of one of the heavy muskets still issued to the Grenadier companies, testified to his skill as a shot, a skill which he had acquired to some extent even before he had run away to join the army three years ago.
His hands busy with the rod and oily rag, his mind went back over those years to his seventeen-year-old self, to the scene in the parlour over his father’s shop on the night that had begun it all. The night his father had told him that, with Grandfather not two months cold in his grave, he had sold Broomrigg.
Almost everything that he had and was, Thomas knew that he owed to his grandfather. Grandfather who at sixteen had been out with his father, following Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and had spent upwards of twenty exiled years in the French army, returning pardoned at last to marry the heiress of Broomrigg. Grandfather who out of the gathered skills of those exile years had taught him sword-play and the handling of firearms and better French than the visiting master at Leith Academy could do. Grandfather who had talked Father into apprenticing him to Mr Sempill, the gunsmith, instead of keeping him with his elder brother Jamie at the watchmaking. Grandfather who had taught him to ride on Flambeau.