Take Courage (47 page)

“There will be another for me for 1647, coming presently,” said John.

“Why does it say the Parliament and City of London gave you the medal, Father?” asked Sam.

“They had the medal struck, and paid for the gold,” explained John, “but my General said who were to receive the medals. Now, lads, to bed with you!”

Their heads were buzzing so with battles and medals and certificates that they went off in silence, their eyes quite dazed; John took their faces between his hands and kissed them very tenderly, and bent and did the like with Chris as he lay fast asleep in my arms.

While I was busy with Chris upstairs, I heard John moving about below, looking out at the weather, barring the door, and performing all such last small duties as householders use at night, which I had perforce done myself these last four years; it was very comfortable to hear him. When I came down, he was sitting by the fire, gazing into its embers thoughtfully; the look of peace on his tired face showed me what it meant to him to be here, quiet and at ease by his own fireside, and I was moved by it. I picked up the gold medal which lay on the table, and turned it over, examining it, and John came and stood behind me and looked over my shoulder.

“Meruisti
—thou hast deserved well, husband,” I said to him: “Canst now take an honourable leisure.”

“Thou too, Penninah,” said John gruffly. “Thou hast been the pillar of this house these past four years; now I will ease the burden from thy shoulder.”

Yes, john and i were then truly husband and wife, close to each other, and loving each other dearly, not with the rapture of youth, but with the strong firm love of those who have been tried in the fires of life, who have seen much sorrow and know that life doth not keep the level of perfection, but yet hath many good and noble moments all the same. By day our love was a warmth on the hearth and a strong tower of protection about our children; at night we lay awake long hours together, telling over all our griefs and joys. I told over and over my pains and hardships, the siege and the sack and the time of our penury, finding ever some fresh detail which John had not heard; John told of cold and hunger and fever, rain and wind and snow, battles and marchings and unremitting toil, danger on the field and intrigue in the council, Sir Thomas at the bar of the House, at City banquets, in the cold dim light of an early morning surprise, and over the sickbed of his so often ailing little Moll. We told and re-told, and suffered it all again in the telling; and then we made all well with love.

John had brought, besides considerable arrears of his pay, a hundred pounds in gold home with him—a great sum, paid to him, he told me proudly, for extra service in the Army, by the General's especial command. With this he set everything moving at The Breck again. He bought seed and tools and yarn and beasts; again we saw sheep cropping our slopes marked in reddle with The Breck brand; again our ground was sown with peas and parsnips, carrots and mustard, and a great field of oats; again we had cows and fowls, and a maid in the kitchen, and the looms clacking upstairs. John paid Will back his loan, and he lent money
to Isaac Baume and took no interest, and he made an inventory of all that was stolen in the sack, both at The Breck and at all the other houses round.

“My General would find it intolerable,” he said, “that we in Bradford should lose thus by our devotion to the cause.”

He disentangled the school finances, too, and set it going again with a good master.

There was a sureness and confidence in all John's acts now that had never shown in him before; he had seen so much, been with so many great personages, that doubtless Bradford seemed a small affair to him—not that he despised it, but simply knew that he could well manage all that, and was not afraid. He bought back much of our furniture, which had found its way into neighbouring Royalist houses; the Royalists were glad to sell, as they had sequestration fines to pay, and since John had much to do with assessing these local fines, they were eager to please him. Sometimes they even offered him our own furniture as presents, pretending they were sorry for the injustice done; but this John always refused, paying instead a just price, very coldly and stiffly. Some of our things he never found; alas, our cradle was one of these. I was very sorry, because I should soon have a use for it again—but then I reflected that it was as well; this new child of ours should belong not to the past, with its strifes and blunders, but to the future, to this new time of freedom and peace.

The cloth trade was still very bad, for though all the soldiers were coming back from the wars now very shabby, and everyone wanted clothes—we ourselves were quite in rags—no one had any money to pay for them. But by the end of the year this was partly remedied, for money was sent down from Parliament to pay the soldiers' arrears, so they had something to spend, and trade began slowly to move again. John was one of the committee who had to settle this matter, get the officers' accounts allowed and arrears for army service paid, and he was busy for months, preparing accounts and visiting local captains. I remember just after Christmas this year there was a very big meeting
at Bradford of this committee; the people in Bradford stared in amazement to see their streets so brisk and busy with all these officers and men, for what with the war and the plague, Bradford had been very quiet for long enough. It seemed the committee and some of the greatest of the officers were to dine together, and I asked John if he wished to invite them to The Breck. But he would not, for I was near my time and he did not wish to put the toil of it on me; so they dined at an inn in the town instead.

I wished greatly that my child might be a girl, for I thought her companionship would be sweet to me, and very agreeable to her father; but the Lord who knoweth all things ordained it otherwise. He gave us our little Abraham, the cleverest of all our children, who will, Thomas and Sam both tell me, bring great lustre on our family name by his mathematical abilities. He was ever a sweet, gracious child, strongly resembling Thomas in look and air, being dark, with a high forehead; but he had more piercing eyes than Thomas, and there was a half-smile about his lips and a strength in his face, as if he knew some great secret and lived by it—which indeed I suppose he did, for his understanding of the stars, his making of instruments to plot their course, is to me a thing very strange and wonderful. He had from childhood the most exquisite neat penmanship, and could draw figures and diagrams of singular beauty; indeed his little fingers were the nimblest, most delicate, most skilful that I ever saw, both with a pen and every other kind of tool. As a child he loved to add columns of figures for John; indeed sometimes of an evening when John came in and sat by the hearth and wished to play with the child, the greatest pleasure he could give him was to set him sums to do in his head. In health Abraham has never been so strong as the other three; I suppose I had eaten too little for so long before I conceived him that he suffered by it. He was ever more suited to the great world than Sam or even Thomas, though it is hard to say why; whether it was because of this that he and Chris were very friendly, or whether he learned his ways from Chris, they two being
nearer in age to each other than to their elders, I do not know.

The time of Abraham's birth was a very bright time in my life. We had peace, we were all well; we were at home together, all troubles past, all sins forgiven. True, the King escaped—but he was caught again; and there were some slight dissensions between the Army and the Parliament, and also some discomforts in the Army itself, which John frowned over; but these seemed little or nothing, and would soon disappear, I thought, when the nation came to a settlement. In quiet and confidence, with the war over and a settlement in sight, we had a merry Christening feast for my last child. We asked Will and Eliza over from Adel, and the Baumes, and Mrs. Hodgson (the Captain not being returned yet from the war, but still fighting under Colonel Lambert); and I asked old Giles Ferrand—John frowned a little when he heard this, but did not deny me; Giles however smiled and made me a bow but declined politely. Will baptized our babe very solemnly and well, and then we had such a dinner! Goose and beef and fowl and mutton and ham—Sam ate and ate till he nigh burst himself, being a growing lad, with a sharp appetite for years unsatisfied, so that I could not blame him. Then after we had eaten our fill, John rose up, rather pale and smiling strangely, and said:

“Friends: it is not our way to make profane toasts an excuse for indulgence, as the Royalists do, but this day I think we may drink a health.”

Then he moved from the table, and strode over to the mantel, where Sir Thomas's boots stood, one each side; and he poured sack into one of the boots and said:

“I give you the Lord General of the Parliament's Forces, who under God's Providence has freed this land.”

Then he drank the toast from the boot, and passed it round, and we all drank, smiling a little at the boot and Sam's excited face, but in sober gladness and thankfulness to Almighty God, and gratitude to Sir Thomas Fairfax.

“Let us pray,” said Will suddenly, and we all stood up and bowed our heads.

“We thank Thee, Lord,” said Will, “for this Thy great mercy of peace which Thou hast granted us; we bring before Thee in grateful remembrance those who are absent from us, still engaged in Thy service, those who have suffered therein in mind, body or estate, those who will nevermore return. Grant this child peace in his time, O Lord,” said Will, stretching out his hand to where Abraham lay in his new cradle, “and grant that he may never forget Thee, the source of all good things, nor those who, under Thee, secured this blessing of peace for our land.”

We said “Amen,” and sat down, much moved, and not able to speak for a moment. Then Isaac Baume began to ask to see John's medal again, which indeed none in our neighbourhood could see often enough. John, colouring a little and lowering his eyes, drew it out of his pocket—I had made a small case for it of stitched leather, and he carried it on him always—and let it go round the table, hand to hand, Thomas translating for those who needed it.

“Post hac meliora
,” said Isaac Baume, mispronouncing the words, poor man, very vilely. “
Post hac meliora
,” he repeated, and from sheer joy he wept openly: “After this a better day.”

“Amen,” said John, very firm and strong, and I echoed him with all my heart: after this a better day.

IN THE SPRING after Abraham's birth the Royalists rose up again, and there was bitter fighting in Wales and Kent. But this did not trouble me much, apart from a general compassion for the suffering caused, for I felt sure that Lord Fairfax (as he now became, old Ferdinando dying), and Lieutenant-General Cromwell, would soon dispose of it. It amazed me, however, to hear rumours that the Scots were about to invade England on the King's behalf; I could not understand this.

“But it is not four years since the Scots fought for
us
at Marston Moor, John,” I objected to my husband. “Last year they surrendered the King to Parliament. And what of the Solemn League and Covenant? Are we not Presbyterians now, as they?”

“Why, they think we are not. They are fighting to deliver the King from sectaries,” said John gloomily. “If you would read your brother's pamphlet, you would have a better understanding of the matter.”

I made a slight grimace, at which John smiled, for indeed we both found dear Will nowadays rather over-pompous, over-given to theological choler, and his sermons apt to be tedious, though always honest and well-meaning.

“'Tis not of his own composing,” said John reassuringly, handing me the pamphlet from the window-sill. “There are some forty West Riding ministers have signed it.”

I sighed but dutifully took the pamphlet, which I had hitherto avoided reading in spite of Will's hints on the matter, and at odd moments during the next few days I studied it. It seemed these forty ministers were eagerly awaiting the proper setting-up of Presbyterian Church
government in Yorkshire—in Lancashire the Presbyterian system was already quite established. Meanwhile, said these ministers, of whom our Will was one, they wished to make a serious and emphatic protest against the soul-damning errors, heresies and blasphemies, which of late had come in like a flood upon our nation. They gave the names of some of these heresies, but in truth I had never heard of most of them, and was obliged to seek enlightenment from John.

“Why, in truth,” said he, “in some of our regiments now there are almost as many kinds of Independents as there are Corporals. Any man who has a turn for talking makes himself into a preacher, collects a half-dozen soldiers about him, and calls himself
one of the gifted brethren
and his audience
a gathered Church
. Your Sarah's Denton is one such: a loudmouthed bawling fellow with a great conceit of himself.”

“But where is the harm, John?” I asked, puzzled by his rancorous tone.

These
gathered Churches
, said John, had no connection with any other Church; each congregation, however small, ruled itself and made its own laws—it was this independence which made the Presbyterians so wrathful, including these forty ministers and Will.

“You fought for freedom in religion, John,” said I.

“We fought for a just and free religious order,” said John sternly. “But these men wish for no order at all.”

“But you cannot oppress them, John,” I argued.

“Oppress them! They are not likely to be oppressed with Cromwell at their head,” said he. “But hearken, Penninah, before you waste your pity on them—these sectaries, who clamour so for total freedom, are the bitterest of all against the Royalists; they demand execution where others would agree to imprisonment or composition, and scoff at all notion of treating with the King, calling him the Chief Delinquent and the Man of Blood. Not that I hold a brief for the King,” concluded John gruffly: “for of all men living he is surely the least to be trusted and the most forsworn.”