‘Yes, Luke. I am here. I shall always be here while you want me.’
‘It was good … was it not …?’
I put my lips close to his ear and said: ‘It was good.’
‘There is the boy. Little Lucas. Love him …’
‘He is my son, Luke … mine and yours …’
‘Such happiness …Perhaps it was sinful …’
‘Never, never!’ I cried vehemently. ‘How could it be when it brought us Lucas?’
He smiled.
‘The cause is won,’ he said. ‘It was worthwhile … everything … and you, Bersaba …’
‘Yes, Luke. I am here.’
‘I loved you. Perhaps it was wrong …’
‘It was right … absolutely right. And I love you, Luke.’
‘Stay with me,’ he said.
And I did until he died.
So I was a widow, and my hatred of the war intensified. It seemed I had deeply cared for him because I was beside myself with grief.
‘What do I care who wins if only they will stop.’
I mourned for Luke and I was thinking of Richard, who was in the thick of the fight.
Angelet came over to mourn with me.
‘My poor, poor Bersaba. I can understand so well. You see, there is Richard.’
‘Yes,’ I said ironically, ‘there is Richard.’
‘But we must not let the children see our grief.’
She was right. They were our salvation.
Poor Ella, this was her greatest tragedy. She had loved her brother and they had always been together. But she had her belief in the rightness of the cause to sustain her.
‘He lost his life at Marston Moor,’ she said, ‘but he lost it fighting for the right and that battle is going to prove decisive.’
And Richard? I thought. What of Richard?
Angelet wanted us to go to her that Christmas, but I would not, for I could not ask Ella to spend Christmas in a Royalist household when her brother had been killed by them.
‘And you, Bersaba?’ she asked.
‘I care not for either side,’ I answered, ‘and you are my sister. I think I care more for people than ideas. I doubt not there are faults on both sides and we cannot expect Utopia whoever wins. I don’t know what I prefer—the mismanagement of the King or the strictures of the Parliament—perhaps the former, for I am no Puritan. But we cannot say until we have experienced it. No, I care only that they stop this senseless war, this killing of families.’
‘Oh, Bersaba, you are right. You always are. You are so clever. I would those in high places could take your advice.’
I laughed at her. ‘Nay, I am as foolish as the rest,’ I said.
I said that she should come to the farm for Christmas so that we could all be together, and later on in the year when the spring came I would bring the children over to Far Flamstead for a few days. I said I would bring Phoebe with me and that would mean having her young Thomas, for in these times I could not separate them … even if she had someone to leave him with.
‘You should have a new maid now that Phoebe is married and has a baby,’ said Angelet.
‘No one could serve me as Phoebe does. I shall keep her as long as I can. The children will be delighted to come to Flam-stead. They are real little Royalists, I believe.’
So it was arranged.
Richard came home in May. I did not see him and he stayed only a few days. Angelet came to Longridge after he left. She looked radiant and I supposed that was due to his visit.
‘I did not suggest that you come to see him, Bersaba,’ she told me. ‘I should have, of course, if he had stayed longer. He is very uneasy. He says that things are not going well for the King’s army. Men like Fairfax and Cromwell are making soldiers of their followers and their religious fervour gives them something which the professional soldier lacks. That’s what he said. When are you coming to Flamstead? You promised to bring the children, you know.’
So it was arranged and a few days later I with the children and Phoebe went to Far Flamstead.
I was in the enclosed rose garden with the children, Angelet and Phoebe when one of the servants came running out to us, his face set and tense so that I knew before he spoke that some further calamity had overtaken us.
He cried: ‘One of the hands from Longridge is here, mistress. He’s put out terrible.’
I was filled with foreboding. I was still shocked from that night when they had brought home the dying Luke. I knew that anything could happen, and we must not be surprised how terrible it might be. Now I knew that something was happening at the farm and I secretly thanked God that my children were safe at Flamstead.
I recognized the man at once. He was Jack Treble, one of the farm workers.
When he saw me he shouted: ‘They have come, mistress. They be at the farm. They have laid it to waste, mistress. I hid myself and got away. It be finished, mistress … finished.’
I said: ‘Be calm, Jack. Tell me what happened.’
‘It was the Cavaliers, mistress. They come and I heard them shouting that it was the home of Luke Longridge, the pamphlet man, and that they would teach him a lesson.’
‘Oh God,’ I cried out involuntarily, ‘he has already had his lesson.’
‘Reckon they did know it, mistress. They laid waste the place … and they be … dead, mistress … them as tried to stop them …’
‘Mistress Longridge?’ I began.
‘I wouldn’t know, mistress. I was hid there in the shrubbery … close to the ground … not daring to move … never knowing whether they’d find me like. I dursn’t move. I heard ’em … The noise were shocking and the cries, mistress. There be terrible slaughter there of them that tried to protect the farm. They be gone now, though. It happened this morning … I lay there a good half-hour, mistress, not daring to come out lest they should see me and put an end of me. Then I came here … I walked. There were no horses left. They took the horses … They took everything they could lay their hands to.’
I said: ‘I shall go back.’
Angelet had joined me. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t go back. What if they’re there?’
‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘I have to find Ella.’
They tried to stop me. Poor Phoebe was in a panic. Her Thomas Greer would have been there.
‘Why didn’t he come with Jack Treble?’ she kept saying, and the tragic answer to that seemed clear enough.
Of one thing I was determined. I was going to Longridge.
Angelet insisted on coming with me and I could not dissuade her, so together we set out, taking with us two of the grooms.
What desolation met our eyes. Was this Longridge Farm? It stood there—as though boldly defying the intruder—but when one grew near the destruction was obvious. Before the shell of the house lay the bodies of two of the farm workers. I recognized Thomas Greer and I went to him at once. He was dead. My poor, poor Phoebe!
Ella was lying on the farmhouse floor among the wreckage. In her hand was an axe. She must have tried to defend her home. Poor brave Ella! How futile she would be against those soldiers!
The cask of ale was turned on its side and its contents had run all over the kitchen floor; they had broken everything they could, the beams had been torn down—only the walls of the house still stood.
I knelt by Ella and a wild anger filled me. I hated them all—all those who had killed first Luke and then Ella. I wanted no more of this conflict.
How can anything matter when it is achieved through this, I cried, and I felt sick with my pain and anger.
I could not mount the stairs, for they had been torn up. There was a hole in the ceiling through which a bedpost hung. This farmhouse, the home of Longridges for generations, had been destroyed in a single day.