Saraband for Two Sisters

Angelet and I saw each other frequently. She would come to the farmhouse more often than I went to her because of the children. She adored them. Arabella was growing up to be like me-self-willed and determined to get what she wanted. Lucas was too young to show what he would be like; but he was a sweet cherubic infant. Poor Angelet! How she would have longed to have had children and would have been a better mother than I suspected. How perverse of nature to have made me, the sensualist, the mother while giving Angelet the qualities needed to rear them. Strangely enough the children adored me. As soon as Lucas could toddle he would cling to my skirts and look unhappy if his hand were disengaged. They were of course fond of their Aunt Angelet, but I was the center of their lives. When Lucas was a year old Phoebe came to tell me that Thomas Greer, one of the farm workers, had asked for her and she would marry him if I gave my consent. I said it was ideal and she could still work with me after she was married. The only difference being that she would live in his cottage instead of sleeping in the house. So Phoebe married and almost immediately became pregnant.

Angelet and I were anxious as to what was happening in Cornwall, although there were reports that that part of the country was firmly in the hands of the Royalists. There was no news of course because it was not easy to get messages from one side to another of a country plagued by civil war.

So we waited and hoped for news. Snatches of it came to us from time to time but it went on as before-first one side was victorious and then another; and there was no sign of the end of the war.

It was July of ‘44. Lucas was a year and five months old and Arabella was three.

The day began like any other. The sky, though, was leaden and there was a stillness in the air. I had not seen Angelet that day and I had busied myself with the care of the children and wondered whether what corn there was could be safely brought in. In the days before the war we had been concerned with the weather-now there was a greater enemy-the Royalist Army for us, the Parliamentary one for Angelet. Luke was well known among his enemies as a man who There was much talk now of a man called Oliver Cromwell, who had joined the Army as a captain, and he was clearly one to be reckoned with. Luke spoke of him in glowing terms. He was reorganizing the Army. It was no longer going to be a straggling mob of men who had no weapons and no skills-little but their fervent belief in the right. Belief in the right there must be, but skill too. “Captains must be good honest men,” Cromwell was quoted as having said, “and then good honest men will follow them. A plain russet-coated captain who knows what he is fighting for and loves it I would rather have than what you call a gentleman and nothing else.” Such words were inspiring, and all over the country those who believed gave themselves up to the task of turning themselves into soldiers.

Luke had gone off with his troop. The months passed and we were at war in earnest, and none of us could guess what the outcome would be.

Those dreary years of war, how sickening they were! What a snare it was, for it could bring little good to either side. Much of the country was laid waste; we lived in a state of agonizing expectation during the first months and then we were lulled to something near indifference. Much of the corn was ruined; the Puritans were destroying many ancient treasures because they believed that beauty in itself was evil and that no man should look on something and find it entrancing-architecture, statuary, paintings-for if it gave pleasure it was evil.

When I heard of such destruction I was ardently Royalist; when I thought of Court extravagances and the stubborn nature of the King I was for the Parliament; but more often I had the inclination to curse them both.

I was thinking of Richard, who was in constant danger. Each day I feared that there would be news of his death or capture. There was Luke, too, who had trained his troop and gone off to fight. It was possible that one day these two would be in the same deadly battle.

“How stupid it is,” I cried, “to fight and kill to settle differences.”

‘What other way is there?” asked Angelet.

“We have words, have we not? Why don’t we use them?”

“They would never agree. They have tried words and failed.” Yes, Luke had tried with his pamphlets, but Luke could never see more than one side of this argument. Nor could Richard.

So we waited and lived our lives when the days were long and there were few visitors and the talk was all of war-how this side was winning and then shortly after how it was losing. How Cromwell and Fairfax would soon find their heads on London Bridge; how the King would soon have no throne. And all the time we waited for news.