CHAPTER XVII.PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM.He knew his men. After a rousing charge, and a red lane mown along the track their horses took, he had no control of them; they must pillage as they listed. Before the combat, he could trust their pledge to take no more than an hour to dine, to be prompt at the muster afterwards, as he trusted his own honour.It was an odd hour of waiting. Messengers galloped constantly from the York road, saying there was no speck of dust to show that Newcastle was coming with reinforcements. Rupert's men, with the jollity attending on a feast snatched by unexpected chance, began to reassemble. Two o'clock came, and the heat increasing. Overhead there was a molten sky, and the rye-fields where the enemy were camped showed fiery red under the lash of a wild, pursuing wind.It was not until another hour had passed that Rupert began to lose his keen, high spirits. He was so used to war in the open, to the instant summons and the quick answer, that he could not gauge the trouble of York's garrison, the slowness of men and horses who had gone through months of wearisome inaction. It is not good for horse or man to be stabled overlong out of reach of the free pastures and the gallop.About half after three o'clock some of his company brought in to Rupert a big, country-looking fellow, and explained that they had captured him spying a little too close to the Royalist lines."What mun we do to him?" asked the spokesman of the party, in good Wharfedale speech. "We've hammered his head, and ducked him i' th' horse-pond, and naught seems to serve. He willun't say,Down wi' all Croppies.""Then he's the man I'm seeking—a man who does not blow hot and cold in the half-hour. Your name, friend?""Ezra Wood, and firm for the Parliament.""We hold your life at our mercy," said Rupert, with a sharp, questioning glance. "Tell us the numbers and disposition of Lord Fairfax's army."[image]"'We hold your life at our mercy,' said Rupert.""As man to stark man, I'll tell ye nowt. My mother sat on one stool while she nursed me, not on two."Rupert had proved his man. The pleasure of it—though Ezra Wood happened to be fighting on the other side—brought the true Prince out of hiding. Through fatigue of hurried marches, through anxiety because York's garrison lingered on the way, the old Crusader in him showed."Is Cromwell with your folk?" he asked."He is—staunch in prayer and staunch indeed.""Then go free, and tell him that Prince Rupert leads the right wing of the attack. I have heard much of his Ironsides, and trust to meet them on the left wing."Ezra Wood had no subtleties, which are mistaken now and then for manners. He looked Rupert in the face with a hard sort of deference. "So thou'rt the man they call Rupert?" he said. "Well, ye look it, I own, and I'll carry your message for ye gladly.""And you will return, under safe-conduct, with his answer."About five of the afternoon—all Marston Moor ablaze with a red, unearthly light—the first of the York men came in. Rupert's impulsive welcome grew chilly when he saw that Lord Eythin led them; and Boye, whose likes and dislikes were pronounced, ran forward growling."Whistle your dog off, sir—whistle him off," said Eythin irritably.Rupert, with a lazy smile, watched Boye curvet round Eythin in narrowing circles. "Why should I?" he asked gently. "He never bites a friend."Eythin reddened. Memory of past years returned on him, though he had thought the record drowned in wine and forgotten out of sight. He asked fussily what plans Rupert had made for the coming battle."Monstrous!" he snapped. "Oh, I grant you've a knowledge of the charge, with ground enough in front to gather speed. But what are your cavalry to make of this? You stand to wait their onset, and their horses are heavy in the build."Rupert nodded curtly. "Get your men into line, sir. You are here to fight under orders, not to attend a council of war."As Eythin withdrew sullenly, a sudden uproar came down the wind. Then the shouting, scattered and meaningless at first, grew to a rousing cry of "A Mecca for the King!" Michael glanced at Christopher, and pride of race showed plainly in their faces."Ah," laughed Rupert, "it was so they came when we played pageantry before the King at Oxford. Go bring your folk to me, Mr. Metcalf."They came, drew up with the precision dear to Rupert's heart, saluted briskly. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am proud to have you of my company. Is my Lord Newcastle near Marston yet?"The Squire of Nappa explained that those under Newcastle's command had suffered during the late siege—men and horses were so weak from illness that no zeal in the world could bring them faster than a foot-pace. He knew this, because he had passed them on the road, had had speech of them. Lord Newcastle himself, a man no longer young, had kept a long illness at bay until the siege was raised, and now he was travelling in his coach, because he had no strength to sit a horse."Oh, I had forgotten!" said Rupert. "All's in the losing, if they take overlong. I should have remembered, though, that the garrison needed one night's sleep at least."While they talked, Ezra Wood returned with the trooper sent to give him safe-conduct through the lines and back again. He did not salute—simply regarded Rupert with dour self-confidence. "General Cromwell sends this word to Prince Rupert—that, if his stomach is for fighting, he shall have it filled."Rupert was silent. Cromwell, it seemed, had missed all the meaning of the challenge sent him; war had not taught him yet the nicer issues that wait on bloodshed. He stooped to pat Boye's head with the carelessness that had angered many a council of war at Oxford. Then he glanced at Ezra Wood."There is no General Cromwell. The King approves all commissions of that kind. Go tell Mr. Cromwell that we are waiting for him here."Cromwell, when Ezra Wood returned and found him, was standing in the knee-deep rye, apart from his company. His eyes were lifted to the sky, but he saw none of the signs of brewing storm. He was looking into the heaven that he had pictured day by day and year by year when he rode in the peaceful times about his snug estate in Rutland. Then, as now, he was cursed by that half glimpse of the mystic gleam which hinders a man at times more than outright savagery. Always he was asking more than the bread and meat of life; always he was seeking some antidote to the poisonous self-love, the ambition to be king himself, which was his hidden sore. And now he was praying, with all the simplicity his tricky mind permitted, for guidance in his hour of need.As one coming out of a trance, he listened to Ezra Wood, repeating his message for the fourth time. The light—half false because it was half mystic only—left his face. Its borrowed comeliness passed by. He showed features of surprising plainness—eyes heavy-lidded, thick nostrils, and a jaw broad with misplaced obstinacy."So he is waiting?" he said grimly. "Well, princes must wait these days. We shall seek him by and by."In that queer mood of his—half prayer and half keen calculation—which went before his battles, Cromwell had found a plan of action. He crossed the field with quick, unwieldy steps, found the other leaders, and stated his own view of the attack. As usual, his ruggedness of mind and purpose carried the day; and Rupert, down below, was left to wonder why the enemy did not take advantage of his rash challenge and attack before the main body of his reinforcements came.It was an eerie day—clouds that came packing up, livid and swollen with rain that would not fall—a wind that was cold and scorching hot by turns—a frightened rustle of the leafage in Wilstrop Wood—a rustle that sounded across the flat waste of Marston Moor like the sound of surf beating on a distant shore. Boye kept close to Rupert's side, and whined and growled by turns. He knew his master's restlessness, as four of the afternoon came and still Lord Newcastle had not reached the field.At half-past four the pick of Newcastle's men rode in, and were marshalled into their appointed place between the left wing and the right. Rupert galloped down to give them the good cheer he lacked himself."Welcome, Whitecoats. You look tired and maimed; but they tell me you have sworn to dye those coats of yours a good, deep crimson—your own blood or the Roundheads'."The sound of his voice, his strong simplicity of purpose that burned outward like a fire, lifted their jaded spirits. York was forgotten, and its hardships."For God and the King!" they answered lustily."I need you, gentlemen," said Rupert, and passed on to where Lord Newcastle's coach was standing at the roadside.He was shocked to see the change in Newcastle—the weariness of mind and body palpable, now that an end had come to his guardianship of York."My lord, you have served the King too well," he said, putting a hand on the other's shoulder with instinctive deference to age and great infirmity."Oh, nothing to boast of—a little here and there, to keep our walls secure. Tell me, is there to be a battle to-day? I'm good for a gallop yet, if the battle does not last too long.""There's no chance of it at this late hour. They saw our weakness from the hill, and yet would not attack. They're tired out, I think, as we are.""Good," said Newcastle, with his gentle laugh. "For my part, I shall claim an old man's privilege—to step into my coach and smoke a pipe or two, and then get off to sleep. I shall be ready when you need me.""Would my hound, Boye, disturb you?" asked Rupert, turning after he had said good-night. "I like to have him out of harm's way at these times.""Is he a good sleeper?" demanded Newcastle whimsically."With a friend, the staunchest sleeper that I know."Boye demurred when he was bidden to get inside the coach; but, like Rupert's cavalry, he knew the tone of must-be-obeyed, and scrambled in with no good grace.Near seven of the evening a strange thing happened on Marston Moor. On the hill above there was the spectacle of Parliament men standing with bowed heads as Cromwell sent up fervent prayers. On the moor below, the chaplain of the King's men was reading evensong. Over both armies was a sky of sullen wrath.As the service closed, Lord Eythin protested, with an oath, that now this child's play was over, he proposed to go in search of food."My lord," said Rupert sharply, "wise men do not mock at prayer, in face of what is waiting for us all to-morrow."Eythin, nettled by the hum of approbation, lost his temper. "I was never wise, your Highness, as you know, but wise enough to advise you that this escapade is madness.""We shared another battle, long ago when you were General King." Rupert's voice was icy. "Do you remember it?"The Riding Metcalfs, this once again, were dismayed by the private quarrels, the jealousies, that were threaded through the skein of war. Eythin's insolence of bearing, his subtle incitement to distrust of his commander, asked no less from Rupert; but the pity of it, to bluff Squire Metcalf, single of heart, owing none a grudge except the King's enemies, was hard to bear.From the extreme left of the camp, just as the Royalists were settling down for a brief night's slumber, there came a running yelp, a baying, and a splutter of wild feet. Lord Newcastle had left the window of his coach open when he had smoked his third pipe and found the sleep he needed; and Boye, his patience ended, had leaped out into the freedom that spelt Rupert to him. When he found him, he got to his hind legs, all but knocked down his master in his tender fury, and licked his face with a red and frothy tongue."Boye!" said Rupert. "Oh, down, Boye—you smother me. I was to have a lonely supper, I fancied, and you come. There's all in the world I care for, come to sup with me."From over the hill, where the Parliament men had scarcely finished their devotions, there came a clap of thunder and a light spit of rain."We shall be wet to the skin to-night, Boye, you and I," laughed Rupert. "We've proved my tent, and it is not weather-sound."He had scarcely finished some beef collops, ready for him in his tent, and was cajoling Boye to perform a newly-taught trick of begging for a morsel, when the flap was pulled aside. Michael Metcalf, framed by the red light out of doors, showed bigger even than his wont."They are coming down from the rye-fields," he said, with a reckless laugh. "Let it go how it will, sir, so long as we drive Cromwell out of bounds.""I have promised him as much," said Rupert gravely.CHAPTER XVIII.MARSTON MOOR.Rupert got to horse, and rode through the press and uproar of the camp. Confusion was abroad. To the Cavaliers, though some of them might regard evensong lightly, it meant at least a truce until the next day's dawn; and now they were attacked by an enemy who did not scruple to combine prayer with craftiness. Down from the rye-fields they saw the horsemen and the footmen come, and only Rupert could have steadied them in this black hour."We meet Cromwell's horse," he cried, getting his own men into line this side the little ditch, "and, gentlemen, we owe Cromwell many debts."Stiff and stour it was, that fight at the ditch. The old, stark battles were recalled—Crecy, and Agincourt, and Flodden—for it was all at pitiless close quarters. First they exchanged pistol-shots; then, throwing their pistols in each other's faces with a fury already at white heat, they fell to with sword and pike. Overhead the storm broke in earnest. The intermittent crackle of gunshots, from the sharpshooters lining the hedges, mingled with the bellow of the thunder and that clamour of hard-fighting men which has the wild beast note.Newcastle, asleep in his coach at the far side of the Moor, was roused by the uproar. He did not know what had chanced, but the waking was of a piece with the nightmares that had haunted his brief slumber. His limbs ached, the weariness of York's long siege was on him, but he ran forward, sword in hand, and asked the first man he met what was in the doing. Then he sought for his company and could not find them, except a handful of the gallant Leightons; so he pressed forward, unmounted, crying his name aloud, and asking all who heard him to make up a troop. He gathered drift and flotsam of the running battle—he whose dream had been of a mounted charge, with picked cavalry behind him—and they fought on the left wing with a wild and cheery gallantry.On the right, the Ironsides still faced Rupert's men, and neither would give way. Once, in a lull of the berserk struggle, when either side had withdrawn a little to take breath, a great hound pressed his way through the Royalists and came yelping forward in search of Rupert. He came into the empty space between the King's men and Cromwell's, and a gunshot flashed; and Boye struggled on the sodden ground, turned his head in dying search for Rupert, the well-beloved, and so lay still.From the Ironsides a storm of plaudits crossed a sudden thunder-clap. "There goes the arch-Papist of them all," came a voice drunk with battle.And something broke at Rupert's heart. It was as if he stood alone entirely—as if the world were ended, somehow. "Ah, Boye," he murmured. And then he led a charge so furious that the Ironsides all but broke. It was Cromwell rallied them, and for an hour the fight went forward. The hedge was levelled now, and the ditch filled in by the bodies of the slain. Time after time Rupert found himself almost within striking distance of Cromwell. They were seeking each other with a settled, fervent purpose. And the fight eddied to and fro; and the rain came down in wild, unending torrents.The chance sought by Rupert came to Michael Metcalf, as it chanced. Pushed to one side of the press, he found himself facing a rough-hewn Parliament man in like case, and parried a fierce sword-cut with his pike. Then he drew back the pike, felt it quiver like a live thing in his hands, and drove it through the other's fleshy neck. It was only when the man wavered in saddle, and he had leisure for a moment's thought, that he knew his adversary. A trooper of the Parliament snatched the wounded rider's bridle, dragged his horse safely to the rear, and Michael raised a wild, impulsive shout:"Cromwell is down! A Mecca for the King."Rupert heard the cry, and drew his men a little away, to get speed for the gallop. His crashing charge drove back the Roundheads twenty paces, and no more. They were of good and stubborn fibre, and the loss of Cromwell bade them fight with sullen hardihood. At the end of, it might be, fifteen minutes they had regained a foot or two of their lost ground, and Cromwell, getting his wound bandaged at the thatched cottage up above, asked another wounded Roundhead, who came for the like succour, how it fared."As may be," growled the other. "If so thou'rt not dead, as we fancied, get down and hearten them.""I've a thick throat, and the pike took the fleshy part," said Cromwell, with a deep, unhumorous laugh. "I'll get down."He mounted with some difficulty. Pluck cannot always conquer in a moment great loss of blood and weakness of the body. Once in the saddle, his strength returned to him; but he rode down too late. Rupert's men had followed their old tactics, had retreated again to gain speed for the onslaught, and were driving the enemy before them in hot pursuit.Cromwell, after narrow escape of being ridden down by his own folk, after vain efforts to rally them again, found himself alone. The wound in his throat was throbbing at its bandages. The rain ran down him in rivulets, and the world seemed filled with thunder and the cries of men. Word reached him that Eythin, too, had broken through, and that all Parliament men were bidden to save themselves as best they might. And so he left the field; and the sickness of defeat, more powerful than body-sickness, caught him as he neared the smithy, this side of Tockwith village. A farm-lad, returning from selling a cow at Boroughbridge, found him in the roadway, fallen from his horse, and carried him into the smithy-house. They tended his wound. Within an hour his lusty strength of purpose came to his aid. He asked for meat and ale, and said he must get ready for the road. He was known by this time; but even the blacksmith, Royalist to the core of his big body, would not hinder his going. A man of this breed must be given his chance, he felt."After all," he muttered, watching Cromwell ride unsteadily down the moonlit road, "they say Marston Moor has lost Yorkshire to the Parliament for good and all. Some call him Old Noll, and othersome Old Nick—but he'll do little harm i' these parts now, I reckon.""A soft heart and a big body—they go always fools in company," said his goodwife. "I'd not have let him go so easy, I.""Ay, but ye wod, if I'd been for keeping him. Ye're like a weather-cock, daft wife. When I point south, thou'st always for veering round to north—or t'other way about, just as it chances."Cromwell rode back toward Marston, to find his men. He was kin to Rupert in this—disaster or triumph, he must find those who needed him. At the end of a half-mile he met a rider cantering up the rise. The moonlight was clear and vivid, after the late storm, and the rider pulled his horse up sharply."The battle is ours, General, and I've my Lord Fairfax's orders for you.""The battle is ours?" demanded Cromwell gruffly. "I do not understand.""None of us understand. Fairfax was three miles away, sleeping in a farmstead bed-chamber, when we roused him with the news. It was Leslie's men who broke their centre and drove round Rupert's flank. The thunder was in all our brains, I fancy."Cromwell laughed. All his austerity, his self-pride warring against the humility he coveted, were broken down, as Rupert's cavalry had been. "Then it's for the siege of York again?" he asked."Fairfax says the risk is too great. The Moor is full of our dead, and we're not strong enough. He bids you get your men together and hold Ripley, going wide of Knaresborough—which is a hornet's nest—until further orders reach you. That is my message, General.""Good," said Cromwell, tightening the bandage round his throat. "Where are my men?"He found them—those who were left—in scattered companies. And a lusty roar went up as they saw him ride through the moonlight, swaying on the thick farm-cob that carried him."It's fourteen miles to Ripley, lads, but we'll cover it."On Marston Moor the Royalists had pursued their advantage to the full. Rupert's men and Eythin's had run wild on the ridge-fields up above. And Leslie saw his chance. With his Scots he charged down on the White Coats, weakened by siege before the fight began. They kept their pledge; their coats were dyed with crimson martyrdom—and so they died to a man, resisting Leslie's charge.Leslie himself paused when the work was done. "They were mettled thoroughbreds," he said huskily. "And now, friends, for the ditch that Rupert leaves unguarded."It was so, in this incredible turmoil of storm and fight and havoc, that the battle of Long Marston was lost to the King. Rupert, getting his men in hand at long last, returned to face another hand-to-hand encounter. With the middlewing past sharing any battle of this world, the affair was hopeless. Rupert would not admit as much. The Metcalfs, a clan lessened since they joined in evensong an hour ago, would not admit it. To the last of their strength they fought, till all were scattered save a few of them.Down the rough lane past Wilstrop Wood—a lane pitted deep with ruts—the Royalists fled headlong. And at the far side of the wood, where the lane bent round to a trim farmstead, there was a piteous happening. A child, standing at the gate in wonderment at all the uproar and the shouting, saw a press of gentry come riding hard, and began to open the gate for them, bobbing a curtsey as the first horseman passed. He did not see her. Those behind did not see her, but, pressing forward roughly—pressed in turn by those behind—the weight of them was thrust forward and broke down the gate.After their passing a woman came from the farmsteading, eager to go out and see how it had fared with her husband, a volunteer for Rupert. Under the broken gate she found a little, trampled body; and all her heart grew stony."Lord God," she said, "Thou knows't men make the battles, but the women pay for them."On Marston Moor the Squire of Nappa had found his coolness return when it was needed most. The Prince, and he, and Christopher, their horses killed under them long since, had just won free of a hot skirmish at the rear of their retreating friends, and were left in a quiet backwater of the pursuit."Best get away," he said. "You're needed to see to the aftermath of this red harvest."His sturdy common sense had struck the true note. Rupert had had in mind to die fighting, since all else was lost. And now the little, fluting note of trust came to him through the havoc. He was needed.They came, these three, to the clayey lands—wet and sticky to the feet—that bordered Wilstrop Wood. The storm, tired of its fury, had rent the clouds apart with a last soaking deluge, and the moon shone high, tender as a Madonna yearning to bring peace on earth.A fresh pursuit came near them, and they turned into a field of flowering beans on their left. They heard the pursuit go by. Then they heard a litany of pain come out from Wilstrop Wood, where wounded Cavaliers had taken refuge. And from Marston Moor there was the ceaseless crying—not good to hear—of horses that would never again, in this world, at least, find the stride of a gallop over open fields.To these three, hidden in the bean-field, came an odd detachment from the pity and the uproar of it all. Nothing seemed to matter, except sleep. The heat, and rain, and burden of that bitter hour just ended were no more than nightmares, ended by this ease of mind and body that was stealing over them. It was good to be alive, if only to enjoy this pleasant languor.The Squire of Nappa laughed sharply as he got to his feet. "At my age, to go sleeping in a field of flowering beans! As well lie bed-fellow with poppies. D'ye guess what I dreamed just now? Why, that I was crowned King in London, with Noll Cromwell, dressed as Venus, doing homage to me.""Ah, don't rouse me, father," grumbled Kit. "I'm smelling a Yoredale byre again, and hear the snod kine rattling at their chains."But Rupert, when at last he, too, was roused, said nothing of his dream. It had been built of moons and Stardust—made up of all the matters he had lost in this queer life of prose—and he would share it with no man.When they got to the pastures again—blundering as men in drink might do—the free, light air that follows thunder blew about their wits. It was Rupert who first spoke. He remembered that men in flight were trusting him, were needing a leader."Friends," he said, "I'm for York. Do you go with me?"The noise from Wilstrop Wood, the cries from the Moor, grew small in the hearing as they made their way to a speck of light that showed a half-mile or so in front. Two farm-dogs sprang out on them when they reached the farmstead; but the fugitives knew the way of such, and passed unhindered."Are ye fro' Marston, gentles?" asked the farmer, limping out to learn what the uproar was about. "Ay? Then how has the King sped?""We are broken," said Rupert simply."Well, I'm sorry. Step in and shelter. Ye'd be the better for a meal, by the look o' ye. 'Tis the least I can do for His Majesty, seeing my two rheumy legs kept me fro' riding to his help.""Have you three horses we can borrow, friend?""Nay, I've but two. You're welcome to them; and they're sound-footed, which is more than their master can say of himself."While they snatched a meal of beef and bread, Christopher glanced at the Prince. "I know my way on foot to Ripley, and they may need me there," he said."The fields will be packed with danger, lad. Run at my stirrup, till by good luck we find a third horse on the road to York.""Let him be," growled the old Squire. "There's a lady lives at Ripley. Lovers and drunkards seldom come to harm, they say.""Ah, so!" For a moment there was a glow of tenderness in Rupert's sombre eyes. "It is good to hear the name of lady after the late happenings. Get forward, sir, and guard her."Christopher saw them get to horse and take the track that led to York. Then he fared out into the moonlit pastures, took his bearings, and headed straight for Ripley. The distance was less than twelve miles by the field-tracks; but, by the route he took, it was slow to follow. The clay-lands were waterlogged by the late storm; the hedges to be broken through were high and thorny; but these were not the greatest of his troubles. It had been no velvet warfare, that hour's fight on the Moor. Constantly, as Kit went forward, he heard a groan from the right hand or the left, and stayed to tend a wounded comrade. There was peril, too, from horses roaming, maddened and riderless, in search of the masters they had lost.The first two miles were purgatory, because Kit's heart was young, and fiery, and tender, because he felt the sufferings of the wounded as his own. The flight, on this side of the Moor, went no further; and for the rest of the journey he had only trouble of the going to encounter. He came late to Ripley Castle; and the sentry who answered to his knocking on the gate opened guardedly."Who goes?" he asked."Christopher Metcalf, sick with thirst and hunger."The door was thrown open suddenly. In the ill-lighted hall he saw Ben Waddilove, the old manservant of the Grants, who had ridden—long since, when last year's corn was yellowing to harvest—in charge of Mistress Joan.Marston Moor was forgotten. The troubles of the day and night were forgotten, as sunlight dries the rain. Kit was a lover. "How is the mistress, Ben?" he asked."Oh, her temper's keen and trim. Mistress Grant ails naught. I suppose Marston's lost and won? Well, it had to be, I reckon. Who brought the news to Ripley, think ye?""I couldn't guess, you old fool.""Oh, may be old—but not so much of a fool, maybe. He's in yonder, closeted wi' Lady Ingilby in the parlour. I kenned him at first sight by the lap of his ugly jaw. Come hitherto on the tips of your toes, Master Christopher."The parlour door stood open, and within Kit saw a scene of such amazing oddity that he did not know whether he watched tragedy or comedy in the doing. The hearth was red with crackling logs. At the far end of the table sat Lady Ingilby, a cocked pistol lying close to her right hand; seated opposite her was a thick bulk of a man, with a rusty bandage tied round his neck; between them were four candles, burning with a tranquil flame."So you come, Mr. Cromwell, to quarter yourself here?" Lady Ingilby was saving."I do, madam.""You come alone, knowing we are a house of women and of wounded men? Oh, the courage of you! And even our wounded have left us—not one of them so crippled but the news of Rupert's coming spurred him on to Marston.""The news of Rupert's going will comfort them, maybe," growled Cromwell."He thrashed you handsomely. Oh, we have the news! First, a runner came, telling how Lord Fairfax and the leader of the Ironsides had left the field."Cromwell's quick temper took fire. "You claim a woman's privilege——"No, my pistol's. We talk as man to man. I say that we have the news. And then a second runner came and told us Leslie's Scots had won the battle. And we sorrowed, but not as if it had been you who claimed the victory."The man was dead weary; but her scorn, quiet and assured, roused him. "Am I so hated, then, by your side of this quarrel?""Hated? That is a little word.""Good! Any wayside fool can be loved—it takes a man to earn hatred.""A man of sorts—granted. You will tell me, Mr. Cromwell, what your purpose was in coming to this house. My husband may be lying dead on Marston Field. Perhaps you came, in courtesy, to distract my grief.""I came because Lord Fairfax bade me," said Cromwell bluntly. "We have no courtesy in Rutland, as you know. Mere folly must have bidden me leave my men outside, lest they intruded on you over-roughly.""How many of them did Rupert leave you for a guard?" She was aware of an unexpected courtesy in the man's voice. It seemed no more than smooth hypocrisy."A few within call. They are not gentle.""Nor I. As man to man—I stand for the husband who may return or may not—we are here, we two. You have a body of surprising strength, but it is I who hold the pistol. Believe me, Mr. Cromwell, I have learned your proverb well; I trust in Providence and keep my powder dry."Christopher, watching them from the dusk of the passage, turned away. It did not seem that Lady Ingilby needed him. Yet he turned for a last glance—saw Cromwell's head fall prone on his hands. Weariness had captured him at length. The mistress of Ripley sat with upright carriage, seeing dream-pictures in the glowing fire of logs; and some were nightmares, but a silver thread ran through them—the knowledge that, whether he lived or lay dead, she had her husband's love."She bested him, and proper," chuckled Ben Waddilove. "When he came in, he looked like a man who might well go to sleep for good and all. We'll hope as much—and I was ever a prayerful man, as men go."At the turn of the passage, where a lamp was smoking evilly, Kit saw a ghost come with unsteady step to meet him—a comely ghost, in white, fleecy draperies, a ghost that carried a sputtering candle. After Marston, and the carnage, and the desolate, long journey from the Moor to Ripley here, Christopher was ripe to fancy all beauty an illusion. It was only when he saw the red-brown hair, falling disordered about the whiteness of her gown, that his eyes grew clear."So you have come?" asked Joan Grant. "I did not summon you.""Is that true, Joan?"She would not meet his glance. "Why should I summon you?""Oh, that's for you to know. As we lay in the bean-field—the Prince, and father and I—you came and whispered.""I travelled far, then, and must have galloped home at speed."Old Waddilove, who knew his world, moved down the passage noisily. "For my part," he said, talking to himself, and thinking he only murmured, "I allus said like mun wed like, choose what pranks come between. They're fratching already, and that's a good sign. A varry good sign. There was niver two folks fit for wedlock till they've learned how to fratch. It clears their heads o' whimsies."The draughty passage seemed full of Ben's philosophy. They could hear nothing else, except the steady swish of thunder-rain outside. And Joan laughed, because she could not help it.There was no concealment then. Laughter opens more doors than the high gravity that lover-folk affect."My dear, you know that you came," said Kit."I know that I lay awake, sick with terror for you. I saw you fighting—oh, so gallantly—saw Rupert steal, a broken man, into a field of flowering beans, with only the Squire and you to guard him. And then I fell asleep—as if the bean-scent had stifled me, too—and I dreamed——""Well, Joan?""That you were hindered, somehow. That you came to great honour and forgot me.""And that troubled you?" said Kit adroitly."Oh, till I woke! Then it seemed to matter little. My heart sits on the top of a high tree, Master Christopher, as I told you long ago."All that he had fancied in the gaining seemed lost, all that the suffering and long anxiety of war had taught him. She was dainty, elusive, provocative, just as she had been in Yoredale, before her baptism of fire."Then why were you sick with terror for me?" he asked, as if downrightness served as well with women as with men."Why? Because, perhaps, it is rather cold in the tree-tops, and a heart comes down now and then for a little warmth. I shall bid you good-night, sir. You're in need of rest, I think.""Joan," he said, "I love you very well."She halted a moment. The light from her candle showed Kit a face made up of spring-time in a northern lane. Long battle, long abstention from a glimpse of her, brought the old love racing back at flood. And yet it was a new love, deepened and widened by the knowledge gained between the riding out from Yoredale and the stark misery of Marston Moor."You will let me go," she said at last. "Is it a time for ease of heart, when our men are dead, or dying, or in flight? They have told me how it sped at Marston—and, Kit, what of the King, when the news goes spurring south to him?"What of the King? Their own needs—for one caress, one taste of happiness amid the rout—went by. Their loyalty was not a thing of yesterday; its roots lay thick and thrifty in soil centuries old."God forgive me," said Christopher. "I had forgotten the King."CHAPTER XIX.WILSTROP WOOD.At four of the next morning Lady Ingilby's vigil was ended. There came a Parliament man to the gate of Ripley, asking urgently for General Cromwell. When he was admitted to the dining-chamber, he saw Cromwell with his head still prone upon the table—saw, too, the grim figure of a lady, who turned to level a pistol at his head."Your errand?" asked Lady Ingilby."With General Cromwell. He is needed at Long Marston.""They are welcome to him. He's not needed here."Cromwell shook himself out of sleep. "Who asks for me?" he said, getting to his feet.For the moment he thought he was tenting in the open, with only one eye and ear closed in sleep before the next day's march began. Then he glanced round the parlour, saw Lady Ingilby's grim, contemptuous face. When the Parliament man had whispered his message, word for word, Cromwell, with grim irony, thanked his hostess for the night's hospitality, and asked if he were free to take the road."None more free. On the road, sir, you will meet the democracy whom you befriend—will meet your equals."Humour had some hiding place in Cromwell's soul, after all. As they passed out, the messenger and he, he laughed quietly. "She's of Rupert's breed. They'd make good Parliament men, the two of them, if we could persuade them to our side of the battle."Lady Ingilby opened the parlour window, listened till Cromwell's sharp command had brought his troopers into line, and heard them go on weary horses down the street. Then she went to the hall, in search of cloak and hood, and encountered Christopher."Good morrow, Mr. Metcalf," she said, after the first start of surprise. "One of your clan always comes when I'm most in need of you. My husband—does he lie dead on Marston Moor?""He was alive when we broke Cromwell's Ironsides, for I heard his cheery shout. After that Leslie routed us, and—I do not know.""He may be alive, you think?""Why not? I shared the trouble with him, and I'm here."Impetuous, strong for the deed, and strong for yielding to emotion afterwards, she came and touched him on the shoulder. "My thanks—oh, indeed, my thanks. Only to fancy him alive is peace to me. I need you," she added briskly. "You will take charge of my women-folk here, until I return from—from an errand of mercy.""Let me take the errand.""Ah, but you could not. Only I can do it. Sir, is it no welcome change for you to tend helpless women? You have had your holiday at Marston.""It was a queer merry-making.""But your wounds show to the public eye—wounds of honour. You carry the red badge of knighthood, sir, while I have only a few more grey hairs to show for all these months of waiting.""You cannot go alone," he protested. "The roads will be full of raffish men.""The roads must be as they will. For my part, I have to take a journey. Come, saddle me a horse, sir, by your leave. My grooms were all out with the King's party yesterday."When they crossed to the stables, a shrill cry of welcome greeted them; and, for all the gravity of what was past, Kit could not check a sudden laugh. "Why, 'tis Elizabeth, the good ass that helped Michael into York! We thought to have lost her somewhere between this and Lathom House."Elizabeth came and licked Kit's face; even if he were not Michael, the master well-beloved, he was at least near the rose. And then Kit pushed her aside; it was no time for blandishment.There were two horses only, left behind because unfit for battle. They looked oddly lonesome, with the six empty stalls beside them stretching out into the lights and shadows thrown by the lantern."A man's saddle," said Lady Ingilby briskly. "You'll find it in the harness chamber yonder."Kit, when the livelier of the two horses was ready, understood why she had chosen a man's saddle. It carried a holster; and into this, after looking at the priming and uncocking it with masculine precision, she slipped the pistol that had over-watched Cromwell's slumbers not long ago. And his wonder grew; for, during months of intimacy with Ripley's household, he had learned that Lady Ingilby, at usual times, was motherly, unwarlike, afraid of powder and the touch of sharpened steel.As he led her horse to the mounting-steps at the far side of the stable-yard, the lilt of tired hoofs came up the roadway. Young dawn was busy up the hills, and into the grey and rosy light rode Michael. He was not dressed for a banquet. His clothes were yellow with the clay of Marston Moor, his face disordered by wounds lately dried by the night's east wind. But the soul of him was Michael's—wayward and unalterable."At your service, Lady Ingilby," he said. "I heard a donkey bray just now, and fancied it was Elizabeth, crying over milk spilled at Marston.""It was no white milk, Mr. Metcalf, by the look of you.""The thunder-rain was red in the ditches. It was a good fight, and it's ended. So, baby Kit, we're first to the tryst, we two. I've been wondering, all from Marston hitherto, whether you were dead or living."Christopher found one heartache stanched. The sense that Michael was here, instead of on the wet ground of the Moor out yonder, was vivid happiness. "Elizabeth will be glad," he said indifferently. "She was crying for you not long ago."Then he was urgent that Michael should be left here on guard, and he had his way. He borrowed the other's horse; and, after all, Lady Ingilby was glad to have an escort through the roads."You have news of my husband?" she asked Michael, without hope of any answer that sufficed."None," said Michael, "save that we were in the thick of it—Kit, and he, and I—and I heard a man near me say that Ingilby was fighting as if three men's strength were in his body.""That is no news," said the other drily. "He was ever that sort of man."When they had ridden out, she and Kit, and had come to the hollow where dog-roses and honeysuckle were blooming spendthrift to the warmer air of dawn; she turned in saddle. "Your brother spoke of coming to a tryst. What tryst?""It was this way. Before the relief of York, it was agreed among the Riding Metcalfs that, if the battle sped, Ripley could look to its own needs. If the fight was lost, we were to come soon or syne—those left of us—to guard you."Lady Ingilby reined in—an easy matter with the pensioner that carried her. "In these evil modern times, are there still so many of the elder breed? One here and there I could understand, but not six-score of you.""There are fewer now. We lost a few at Bolton, and Marston Moor was worse. Those who are left will come in. Their word is pledged."The spaciousness of summer on the hills returned to Lady Ingilby. Siege, and hardship, and the red fight at Marston went by. Here was a man who had fought, lost blood and kindred to the cause—a man simple, exact to the promise made."I am glad of your escort, after all," she said. "You were breeked in the olden time, I think.""What is our route?" asked Christopher by and by."To Marston. If my husband is abroad, well. If he's dead or dying, he may need me."It seemed to Kit, through all the perils of the road, through the instant dangers that beset them from the thievish folk who hang upon the skirts of war, that a little, silver light went on ahead, guarding their passage. But he was country-born and fanciful. At Ripley, Michael the careless went indoors and found the old man-servant fidgeting about the hall."Well, Waddilove," he said, throwing himself on the long-settle, and holding his hands to the fire-blaze, "it seems long since I knew you as body-servant to Sir Peter Grant in Yoredale. I've fought and marched, and had my moments—ay, Ben, moments of sheer rapture when we charged—and now I come from Marston, and all's ended, save a thirst that will drink your cellars dry before I slake it."Waddilove did not know "Maister Michael" in this mood of weariness. "Ye used to be allus so light-hearted, come shine or storm," he muttered."That is the worst of a high reputation. One falls to earth, old sinner. I've no jest, no hope, nothing but this amazing thirst. If there's wine left in the Castle, bring it."Ben was literal in interpretation of an order. When he returned, he brought two bottles of Madeira and a rummer-glass."Oh, good!" said Michael, with something of his old laugh. "Fire and wine—I need them." He kicked the logs into a blaze. "It seems odd to need warmth, with midsummer scarce past, but I've brought a great coldness from the Moor. Gentlemen of the King's—men who should be living for him—are lying where they fell. There was no room for a horse's hoofs; one had to trample the loyal dead. Wine, Ben! Pour me a brimmer for forgetfulness."And now Waddilove understood that this gay wastrel of the Metcalfs was on the edge of sickness—not of the body only, or the mind, but of the two. In his eyes there was a fever and a dread. Not knowing what to do—whether wine were friend or adversary—he obeyed the order. Michael drained the glass in one long, satisfying gulp. "One can buy peace so easily—at a price," he said. "Fill again for me, Daniel, and we'll drink confusion to Noll Cromwell."While the wine was between the bottle and the glass, a little lady came into the hall. She had a carrot in her hand, and trouble was lurking in her young, patrician face."Who is this, Ben?" she asked, withdrawing a step or two, as she saw the patched and mud-stained figure on the settle."Michael Metcalf, at your service. No need to ask your servant vouch for me."He had risen. From his great height, shivering and unsteady, he looked down at her."But, sir, you are unlike yourself. Your eyes are wild.""So would your pretty eyes be, Mistress Joan, if you'd shared Marston Fight with me. I've seen a King lose his cause—his head may follow."Joan was aware of some new strength behind the man's present disarray. "Does your love for the King go so deep, then? We thought you light of heart.""Always the same gibe. I have talked with the King, and I know. Our lives were slight in the losing, if we had given him the battle. But we lost it. What matters now, Joan?""This, sir—that the King still needs his gentlemen."Michael stood to attention. She had always bettered his outlook on life, even in his careless days. Now, with every nerve at strain, she showed him a glad, narrow track that went upward, climbing by the ladder of adversity."As for that," he said, with an odd smile, "I thank you for a word in season. It will keep Sir William's cellars from a period of drought."Waddilove, watching the man, could only wonder at his sharp return to self-control. He did not know that, so far as Michael was concerned, Joan Grant brought always the gift of healing."Heartsease, that's for remembrance," said Michael, after a troubled silence, "and carrots, they're for Elizabeth the well-beloved."She caught the sudden hope, the challenge in his glance. Clearly as if he had put the thought into speech, she knew that he clung to the old love, told more than once in Yoredale. He hoped—so wild a lover's fancy can be—that, because she fed his ass with dainties, she did it for the master's sake."Ah, no," she said sharply. "It is not good to play at make-believe. There is trouble at our doors—the King's cause drowning, and men lying dead out yonder. I go to feed Elizabeth, and you, sir, will stay here to guard the house."Michael kicked the logs into a blaze, and watched the flames go up with a steady, thrifty roar. He turned presently, to find Waddilove asking whether he did not need a second brimmer of Madeira."To-morrow, you old fool! For to-night, I've the house to guard. Meanwhile, I've lit a lively fire—all my hopes, Ben, and most of my prayers, have gone scummering up the chimney-stack. I trust they find good weather out o' doors."Christopher and Lady Ingilby, about this time, were nearing Marston Moor. As they reached Tockwith village, and were passing the farmstead where Cromwell had dressed the wound in his neck not long ago, five men rode out at them through the rosy light of dawn. Christopher, with battle still in his blood, shot the first at close quarters—a red and messy business. Then he reined about, with the instinct taught him by Rupert's cavalry, turned again, and charged the four remaining.He found himself in the stour of it; for they were thick-set rogues, and had little to lose in this world or the next. It seemed that they must bear him down, after he had accounted for another of their number with his sword. Then a second pistol-shot rang out, and the man nearest Kit dropped from saddle as a fat, red plum falls from an autumn branch. His horse stampeded, and the two riders left galloped headlong for the woods.Kit returned to find Lady Ingilby with a smoking pistol in her hand. Her voice was tremulous."Sir, if this is to feel as men do—ah, thank the good God I was born a woman. I aimed truly, and—and I have no pride in it."Through the sunrise and the hot, moist scent of flowering hedgerows they made their way down the narrow farm-track which was henceforth to be known as Rupert's Lane. At the ditch and the battered hedgerow where Cromwell's horse had been driven back, a man on foot asked sharply who went there."Lady Ingilby, come to see whether her husband lives or is dead for the King."
CHAPTER XVII.
PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM.
He knew his men. After a rousing charge, and a red lane mown along the track their horses took, he had no control of them; they must pillage as they listed. Before the combat, he could trust their pledge to take no more than an hour to dine, to be prompt at the muster afterwards, as he trusted his own honour.
It was an odd hour of waiting. Messengers galloped constantly from the York road, saying there was no speck of dust to show that Newcastle was coming with reinforcements. Rupert's men, with the jollity attending on a feast snatched by unexpected chance, began to reassemble. Two o'clock came, and the heat increasing. Overhead there was a molten sky, and the rye-fields where the enemy were camped showed fiery red under the lash of a wild, pursuing wind.
It was not until another hour had passed that Rupert began to lose his keen, high spirits. He was so used to war in the open, to the instant summons and the quick answer, that he could not gauge the trouble of York's garrison, the slowness of men and horses who had gone through months of wearisome inaction. It is not good for horse or man to be stabled overlong out of reach of the free pastures and the gallop.
About half after three o'clock some of his company brought in to Rupert a big, country-looking fellow, and explained that they had captured him spying a little too close to the Royalist lines.
"What mun we do to him?" asked the spokesman of the party, in good Wharfedale speech. "We've hammered his head, and ducked him i' th' horse-pond, and naught seems to serve. He willun't say,Down wi' all Croppies."
"Then he's the man I'm seeking—a man who does not blow hot and cold in the half-hour. Your name, friend?"
"Ezra Wood, and firm for the Parliament."
"We hold your life at our mercy," said Rupert, with a sharp, questioning glance. "Tell us the numbers and disposition of Lord Fairfax's army."
[image]"'We hold your life at our mercy,' said Rupert."
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"'We hold your life at our mercy,' said Rupert."
"As man to stark man, I'll tell ye nowt. My mother sat on one stool while she nursed me, not on two."
Rupert had proved his man. The pleasure of it—though Ezra Wood happened to be fighting on the other side—brought the true Prince out of hiding. Through fatigue of hurried marches, through anxiety because York's garrison lingered on the way, the old Crusader in him showed.
"Is Cromwell with your folk?" he asked.
"He is—staunch in prayer and staunch indeed."
"Then go free, and tell him that Prince Rupert leads the right wing of the attack. I have heard much of his Ironsides, and trust to meet them on the left wing."
Ezra Wood had no subtleties, which are mistaken now and then for manners. He looked Rupert in the face with a hard sort of deference. "So thou'rt the man they call Rupert?" he said. "Well, ye look it, I own, and I'll carry your message for ye gladly."
"And you will return, under safe-conduct, with his answer."
About five of the afternoon—all Marston Moor ablaze with a red, unearthly light—the first of the York men came in. Rupert's impulsive welcome grew chilly when he saw that Lord Eythin led them; and Boye, whose likes and dislikes were pronounced, ran forward growling.
"Whistle your dog off, sir—whistle him off," said Eythin irritably.
Rupert, with a lazy smile, watched Boye curvet round Eythin in narrowing circles. "Why should I?" he asked gently. "He never bites a friend."
Eythin reddened. Memory of past years returned on him, though he had thought the record drowned in wine and forgotten out of sight. He asked fussily what plans Rupert had made for the coming battle.
"Monstrous!" he snapped. "Oh, I grant you've a knowledge of the charge, with ground enough in front to gather speed. But what are your cavalry to make of this? You stand to wait their onset, and their horses are heavy in the build."
Rupert nodded curtly. "Get your men into line, sir. You are here to fight under orders, not to attend a council of war."
As Eythin withdrew sullenly, a sudden uproar came down the wind. Then the shouting, scattered and meaningless at first, grew to a rousing cry of "A Mecca for the King!" Michael glanced at Christopher, and pride of race showed plainly in their faces.
"Ah," laughed Rupert, "it was so they came when we played pageantry before the King at Oxford. Go bring your folk to me, Mr. Metcalf."
They came, drew up with the precision dear to Rupert's heart, saluted briskly. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am proud to have you of my company. Is my Lord Newcastle near Marston yet?"
The Squire of Nappa explained that those under Newcastle's command had suffered during the late siege—men and horses were so weak from illness that no zeal in the world could bring them faster than a foot-pace. He knew this, because he had passed them on the road, had had speech of them. Lord Newcastle himself, a man no longer young, had kept a long illness at bay until the siege was raised, and now he was travelling in his coach, because he had no strength to sit a horse.
"Oh, I had forgotten!" said Rupert. "All's in the losing, if they take overlong. I should have remembered, though, that the garrison needed one night's sleep at least."
While they talked, Ezra Wood returned with the trooper sent to give him safe-conduct through the lines and back again. He did not salute—simply regarded Rupert with dour self-confidence. "General Cromwell sends this word to Prince Rupert—that, if his stomach is for fighting, he shall have it filled."
Rupert was silent. Cromwell, it seemed, had missed all the meaning of the challenge sent him; war had not taught him yet the nicer issues that wait on bloodshed. He stooped to pat Boye's head with the carelessness that had angered many a council of war at Oxford. Then he glanced at Ezra Wood.
"There is no General Cromwell. The King approves all commissions of that kind. Go tell Mr. Cromwell that we are waiting for him here."
Cromwell, when Ezra Wood returned and found him, was standing in the knee-deep rye, apart from his company. His eyes were lifted to the sky, but he saw none of the signs of brewing storm. He was looking into the heaven that he had pictured day by day and year by year when he rode in the peaceful times about his snug estate in Rutland. Then, as now, he was cursed by that half glimpse of the mystic gleam which hinders a man at times more than outright savagery. Always he was asking more than the bread and meat of life; always he was seeking some antidote to the poisonous self-love, the ambition to be king himself, which was his hidden sore. And now he was praying, with all the simplicity his tricky mind permitted, for guidance in his hour of need.
As one coming out of a trance, he listened to Ezra Wood, repeating his message for the fourth time. The light—half false because it was half mystic only—left his face. Its borrowed comeliness passed by. He showed features of surprising plainness—eyes heavy-lidded, thick nostrils, and a jaw broad with misplaced obstinacy.
"So he is waiting?" he said grimly. "Well, princes must wait these days. We shall seek him by and by."
In that queer mood of his—half prayer and half keen calculation—which went before his battles, Cromwell had found a plan of action. He crossed the field with quick, unwieldy steps, found the other leaders, and stated his own view of the attack. As usual, his ruggedness of mind and purpose carried the day; and Rupert, down below, was left to wonder why the enemy did not take advantage of his rash challenge and attack before the main body of his reinforcements came.
It was an eerie day—clouds that came packing up, livid and swollen with rain that would not fall—a wind that was cold and scorching hot by turns—a frightened rustle of the leafage in Wilstrop Wood—a rustle that sounded across the flat waste of Marston Moor like the sound of surf beating on a distant shore. Boye kept close to Rupert's side, and whined and growled by turns. He knew his master's restlessness, as four of the afternoon came and still Lord Newcastle had not reached the field.
At half-past four the pick of Newcastle's men rode in, and were marshalled into their appointed place between the left wing and the right. Rupert galloped down to give them the good cheer he lacked himself.
"Welcome, Whitecoats. You look tired and maimed; but they tell me you have sworn to dye those coats of yours a good, deep crimson—your own blood or the Roundheads'."
The sound of his voice, his strong simplicity of purpose that burned outward like a fire, lifted their jaded spirits. York was forgotten, and its hardships.
"For God and the King!" they answered lustily.
"I need you, gentlemen," said Rupert, and passed on to where Lord Newcastle's coach was standing at the roadside.
He was shocked to see the change in Newcastle—the weariness of mind and body palpable, now that an end had come to his guardianship of York.
"My lord, you have served the King too well," he said, putting a hand on the other's shoulder with instinctive deference to age and great infirmity.
"Oh, nothing to boast of—a little here and there, to keep our walls secure. Tell me, is there to be a battle to-day? I'm good for a gallop yet, if the battle does not last too long."
"There's no chance of it at this late hour. They saw our weakness from the hill, and yet would not attack. They're tired out, I think, as we are."
"Good," said Newcastle, with his gentle laugh. "For my part, I shall claim an old man's privilege—to step into my coach and smoke a pipe or two, and then get off to sleep. I shall be ready when you need me."
"Would my hound, Boye, disturb you?" asked Rupert, turning after he had said good-night. "I like to have him out of harm's way at these times."
"Is he a good sleeper?" demanded Newcastle whimsically.
"With a friend, the staunchest sleeper that I know."
Boye demurred when he was bidden to get inside the coach; but, like Rupert's cavalry, he knew the tone of must-be-obeyed, and scrambled in with no good grace.
Near seven of the evening a strange thing happened on Marston Moor. On the hill above there was the spectacle of Parliament men standing with bowed heads as Cromwell sent up fervent prayers. On the moor below, the chaplain of the King's men was reading evensong. Over both armies was a sky of sullen wrath.
As the service closed, Lord Eythin protested, with an oath, that now this child's play was over, he proposed to go in search of food.
"My lord," said Rupert sharply, "wise men do not mock at prayer, in face of what is waiting for us all to-morrow."
Eythin, nettled by the hum of approbation, lost his temper. "I was never wise, your Highness, as you know, but wise enough to advise you that this escapade is madness."
"We shared another battle, long ago when you were General King." Rupert's voice was icy. "Do you remember it?"
The Riding Metcalfs, this once again, were dismayed by the private quarrels, the jealousies, that were threaded through the skein of war. Eythin's insolence of bearing, his subtle incitement to distrust of his commander, asked no less from Rupert; but the pity of it, to bluff Squire Metcalf, single of heart, owing none a grudge except the King's enemies, was hard to bear.
From the extreme left of the camp, just as the Royalists were settling down for a brief night's slumber, there came a running yelp, a baying, and a splutter of wild feet. Lord Newcastle had left the window of his coach open when he had smoked his third pipe and found the sleep he needed; and Boye, his patience ended, had leaped out into the freedom that spelt Rupert to him. When he found him, he got to his hind legs, all but knocked down his master in his tender fury, and licked his face with a red and frothy tongue.
"Boye!" said Rupert. "Oh, down, Boye—you smother me. I was to have a lonely supper, I fancied, and you come. There's all in the world I care for, come to sup with me."
From over the hill, where the Parliament men had scarcely finished their devotions, there came a clap of thunder and a light spit of rain.
"We shall be wet to the skin to-night, Boye, you and I," laughed Rupert. "We've proved my tent, and it is not weather-sound."
He had scarcely finished some beef collops, ready for him in his tent, and was cajoling Boye to perform a newly-taught trick of begging for a morsel, when the flap was pulled aside. Michael Metcalf, framed by the red light out of doors, showed bigger even than his wont.
"They are coming down from the rye-fields," he said, with a reckless laugh. "Let it go how it will, sir, so long as we drive Cromwell out of bounds."
"I have promised him as much," said Rupert gravely.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MARSTON MOOR.
Rupert got to horse, and rode through the press and uproar of the camp. Confusion was abroad. To the Cavaliers, though some of them might regard evensong lightly, it meant at least a truce until the next day's dawn; and now they were attacked by an enemy who did not scruple to combine prayer with craftiness. Down from the rye-fields they saw the horsemen and the footmen come, and only Rupert could have steadied them in this black hour.
"We meet Cromwell's horse," he cried, getting his own men into line this side the little ditch, "and, gentlemen, we owe Cromwell many debts."
Stiff and stour it was, that fight at the ditch. The old, stark battles were recalled—Crecy, and Agincourt, and Flodden—for it was all at pitiless close quarters. First they exchanged pistol-shots; then, throwing their pistols in each other's faces with a fury already at white heat, they fell to with sword and pike. Overhead the storm broke in earnest. The intermittent crackle of gunshots, from the sharpshooters lining the hedges, mingled with the bellow of the thunder and that clamour of hard-fighting men which has the wild beast note.
Newcastle, asleep in his coach at the far side of the Moor, was roused by the uproar. He did not know what had chanced, but the waking was of a piece with the nightmares that had haunted his brief slumber. His limbs ached, the weariness of York's long siege was on him, but he ran forward, sword in hand, and asked the first man he met what was in the doing. Then he sought for his company and could not find them, except a handful of the gallant Leightons; so he pressed forward, unmounted, crying his name aloud, and asking all who heard him to make up a troop. He gathered drift and flotsam of the running battle—he whose dream had been of a mounted charge, with picked cavalry behind him—and they fought on the left wing with a wild and cheery gallantry.
On the right, the Ironsides still faced Rupert's men, and neither would give way. Once, in a lull of the berserk struggle, when either side had withdrawn a little to take breath, a great hound pressed his way through the Royalists and came yelping forward in search of Rupert. He came into the empty space between the King's men and Cromwell's, and a gunshot flashed; and Boye struggled on the sodden ground, turned his head in dying search for Rupert, the well-beloved, and so lay still.
From the Ironsides a storm of plaudits crossed a sudden thunder-clap. "There goes the arch-Papist of them all," came a voice drunk with battle.
And something broke at Rupert's heart. It was as if he stood alone entirely—as if the world were ended, somehow. "Ah, Boye," he murmured. And then he led a charge so furious that the Ironsides all but broke. It was Cromwell rallied them, and for an hour the fight went forward. The hedge was levelled now, and the ditch filled in by the bodies of the slain. Time after time Rupert found himself almost within striking distance of Cromwell. They were seeking each other with a settled, fervent purpose. And the fight eddied to and fro; and the rain came down in wild, unending torrents.
The chance sought by Rupert came to Michael Metcalf, as it chanced. Pushed to one side of the press, he found himself facing a rough-hewn Parliament man in like case, and parried a fierce sword-cut with his pike. Then he drew back the pike, felt it quiver like a live thing in his hands, and drove it through the other's fleshy neck. It was only when the man wavered in saddle, and he had leisure for a moment's thought, that he knew his adversary. A trooper of the Parliament snatched the wounded rider's bridle, dragged his horse safely to the rear, and Michael raised a wild, impulsive shout:
"Cromwell is down! A Mecca for the King."
Rupert heard the cry, and drew his men a little away, to get speed for the gallop. His crashing charge drove back the Roundheads twenty paces, and no more. They were of good and stubborn fibre, and the loss of Cromwell bade them fight with sullen hardihood. At the end of, it might be, fifteen minutes they had regained a foot or two of their lost ground, and Cromwell, getting his wound bandaged at the thatched cottage up above, asked another wounded Roundhead, who came for the like succour, how it fared.
"As may be," growled the other. "If so thou'rt not dead, as we fancied, get down and hearten them."
"I've a thick throat, and the pike took the fleshy part," said Cromwell, with a deep, unhumorous laugh. "I'll get down."
He mounted with some difficulty. Pluck cannot always conquer in a moment great loss of blood and weakness of the body. Once in the saddle, his strength returned to him; but he rode down too late. Rupert's men had followed their old tactics, had retreated again to gain speed for the onslaught, and were driving the enemy before them in hot pursuit.
Cromwell, after narrow escape of being ridden down by his own folk, after vain efforts to rally them again, found himself alone. The wound in his throat was throbbing at its bandages. The rain ran down him in rivulets, and the world seemed filled with thunder and the cries of men. Word reached him that Eythin, too, had broken through, and that all Parliament men were bidden to save themselves as best they might. And so he left the field; and the sickness of defeat, more powerful than body-sickness, caught him as he neared the smithy, this side of Tockwith village. A farm-lad, returning from selling a cow at Boroughbridge, found him in the roadway, fallen from his horse, and carried him into the smithy-house. They tended his wound. Within an hour his lusty strength of purpose came to his aid. He asked for meat and ale, and said he must get ready for the road. He was known by this time; but even the blacksmith, Royalist to the core of his big body, would not hinder his going. A man of this breed must be given his chance, he felt.
"After all," he muttered, watching Cromwell ride unsteadily down the moonlit road, "they say Marston Moor has lost Yorkshire to the Parliament for good and all. Some call him Old Noll, and othersome Old Nick—but he'll do little harm i' these parts now, I reckon."
"A soft heart and a big body—they go always fools in company," said his goodwife. "I'd not have let him go so easy, I."
"Ay, but ye wod, if I'd been for keeping him. Ye're like a weather-cock, daft wife. When I point south, thou'st always for veering round to north—or t'other way about, just as it chances."
Cromwell rode back toward Marston, to find his men. He was kin to Rupert in this—disaster or triumph, he must find those who needed him. At the end of a half-mile he met a rider cantering up the rise. The moonlight was clear and vivid, after the late storm, and the rider pulled his horse up sharply.
"The battle is ours, General, and I've my Lord Fairfax's orders for you."
"The battle is ours?" demanded Cromwell gruffly. "I do not understand."
"None of us understand. Fairfax was three miles away, sleeping in a farmstead bed-chamber, when we roused him with the news. It was Leslie's men who broke their centre and drove round Rupert's flank. The thunder was in all our brains, I fancy."
Cromwell laughed. All his austerity, his self-pride warring against the humility he coveted, were broken down, as Rupert's cavalry had been. "Then it's for the siege of York again?" he asked.
"Fairfax says the risk is too great. The Moor is full of our dead, and we're not strong enough. He bids you get your men together and hold Ripley, going wide of Knaresborough—which is a hornet's nest—until further orders reach you. That is my message, General."
"Good," said Cromwell, tightening the bandage round his throat. "Where are my men?"
He found them—those who were left—in scattered companies. And a lusty roar went up as they saw him ride through the moonlight, swaying on the thick farm-cob that carried him.
"It's fourteen miles to Ripley, lads, but we'll cover it."
On Marston Moor the Royalists had pursued their advantage to the full. Rupert's men and Eythin's had run wild on the ridge-fields up above. And Leslie saw his chance. With his Scots he charged down on the White Coats, weakened by siege before the fight began. They kept their pledge; their coats were dyed with crimson martyrdom—and so they died to a man, resisting Leslie's charge.
Leslie himself paused when the work was done. "They were mettled thoroughbreds," he said huskily. "And now, friends, for the ditch that Rupert leaves unguarded."
It was so, in this incredible turmoil of storm and fight and havoc, that the battle of Long Marston was lost to the King. Rupert, getting his men in hand at long last, returned to face another hand-to-hand encounter. With the middlewing past sharing any battle of this world, the affair was hopeless. Rupert would not admit as much. The Metcalfs, a clan lessened since they joined in evensong an hour ago, would not admit it. To the last of their strength they fought, till all were scattered save a few of them.
Down the rough lane past Wilstrop Wood—a lane pitted deep with ruts—the Royalists fled headlong. And at the far side of the wood, where the lane bent round to a trim farmstead, there was a piteous happening. A child, standing at the gate in wonderment at all the uproar and the shouting, saw a press of gentry come riding hard, and began to open the gate for them, bobbing a curtsey as the first horseman passed. He did not see her. Those behind did not see her, but, pressing forward roughly—pressed in turn by those behind—the weight of them was thrust forward and broke down the gate.
After their passing a woman came from the farmsteading, eager to go out and see how it had fared with her husband, a volunteer for Rupert. Under the broken gate she found a little, trampled body; and all her heart grew stony.
"Lord God," she said, "Thou knows't men make the battles, but the women pay for them."
On Marston Moor the Squire of Nappa had found his coolness return when it was needed most. The Prince, and he, and Christopher, their horses killed under them long since, had just won free of a hot skirmish at the rear of their retreating friends, and were left in a quiet backwater of the pursuit.
"Best get away," he said. "You're needed to see to the aftermath of this red harvest."
His sturdy common sense had struck the true note. Rupert had had in mind to die fighting, since all else was lost. And now the little, fluting note of trust came to him through the havoc. He was needed.
They came, these three, to the clayey lands—wet and sticky to the feet—that bordered Wilstrop Wood. The storm, tired of its fury, had rent the clouds apart with a last soaking deluge, and the moon shone high, tender as a Madonna yearning to bring peace on earth.
A fresh pursuit came near them, and they turned into a field of flowering beans on their left. They heard the pursuit go by. Then they heard a litany of pain come out from Wilstrop Wood, where wounded Cavaliers had taken refuge. And from Marston Moor there was the ceaseless crying—not good to hear—of horses that would never again, in this world, at least, find the stride of a gallop over open fields.
To these three, hidden in the bean-field, came an odd detachment from the pity and the uproar of it all. Nothing seemed to matter, except sleep. The heat, and rain, and burden of that bitter hour just ended were no more than nightmares, ended by this ease of mind and body that was stealing over them. It was good to be alive, if only to enjoy this pleasant languor.
The Squire of Nappa laughed sharply as he got to his feet. "At my age, to go sleeping in a field of flowering beans! As well lie bed-fellow with poppies. D'ye guess what I dreamed just now? Why, that I was crowned King in London, with Noll Cromwell, dressed as Venus, doing homage to me."
"Ah, don't rouse me, father," grumbled Kit. "I'm smelling a Yoredale byre again, and hear the snod kine rattling at their chains."
But Rupert, when at last he, too, was roused, said nothing of his dream. It had been built of moons and Stardust—made up of all the matters he had lost in this queer life of prose—and he would share it with no man.
When they got to the pastures again—blundering as men in drink might do—the free, light air that follows thunder blew about their wits. It was Rupert who first spoke. He remembered that men in flight were trusting him, were needing a leader.
"Friends," he said, "I'm for York. Do you go with me?"
The noise from Wilstrop Wood, the cries from the Moor, grew small in the hearing as they made their way to a speck of light that showed a half-mile or so in front. Two farm-dogs sprang out on them when they reached the farmstead; but the fugitives knew the way of such, and passed unhindered.
"Are ye fro' Marston, gentles?" asked the farmer, limping out to learn what the uproar was about. "Ay? Then how has the King sped?"
"We are broken," said Rupert simply.
"Well, I'm sorry. Step in and shelter. Ye'd be the better for a meal, by the look o' ye. 'Tis the least I can do for His Majesty, seeing my two rheumy legs kept me fro' riding to his help."
"Have you three horses we can borrow, friend?"
"Nay, I've but two. You're welcome to them; and they're sound-footed, which is more than their master can say of himself."
While they snatched a meal of beef and bread, Christopher glanced at the Prince. "I know my way on foot to Ripley, and they may need me there," he said.
"The fields will be packed with danger, lad. Run at my stirrup, till by good luck we find a third horse on the road to York."
"Let him be," growled the old Squire. "There's a lady lives at Ripley. Lovers and drunkards seldom come to harm, they say."
"Ah, so!" For a moment there was a glow of tenderness in Rupert's sombre eyes. "It is good to hear the name of lady after the late happenings. Get forward, sir, and guard her."
Christopher saw them get to horse and take the track that led to York. Then he fared out into the moonlit pastures, took his bearings, and headed straight for Ripley. The distance was less than twelve miles by the field-tracks; but, by the route he took, it was slow to follow. The clay-lands were waterlogged by the late storm; the hedges to be broken through were high and thorny; but these were not the greatest of his troubles. It had been no velvet warfare, that hour's fight on the Moor. Constantly, as Kit went forward, he heard a groan from the right hand or the left, and stayed to tend a wounded comrade. There was peril, too, from horses roaming, maddened and riderless, in search of the masters they had lost.
The first two miles were purgatory, because Kit's heart was young, and fiery, and tender, because he felt the sufferings of the wounded as his own. The flight, on this side of the Moor, went no further; and for the rest of the journey he had only trouble of the going to encounter. He came late to Ripley Castle; and the sentry who answered to his knocking on the gate opened guardedly.
"Who goes?" he asked.
"Christopher Metcalf, sick with thirst and hunger."
The door was thrown open suddenly. In the ill-lighted hall he saw Ben Waddilove, the old manservant of the Grants, who had ridden—long since, when last year's corn was yellowing to harvest—in charge of Mistress Joan.
Marston Moor was forgotten. The troubles of the day and night were forgotten, as sunlight dries the rain. Kit was a lover. "How is the mistress, Ben?" he asked.
"Oh, her temper's keen and trim. Mistress Grant ails naught. I suppose Marston's lost and won? Well, it had to be, I reckon. Who brought the news to Ripley, think ye?"
"I couldn't guess, you old fool."
"Oh, may be old—but not so much of a fool, maybe. He's in yonder, closeted wi' Lady Ingilby in the parlour. I kenned him at first sight by the lap of his ugly jaw. Come hitherto on the tips of your toes, Master Christopher."
The parlour door stood open, and within Kit saw a scene of such amazing oddity that he did not know whether he watched tragedy or comedy in the doing. The hearth was red with crackling logs. At the far end of the table sat Lady Ingilby, a cocked pistol lying close to her right hand; seated opposite her was a thick bulk of a man, with a rusty bandage tied round his neck; between them were four candles, burning with a tranquil flame.
"So you come, Mr. Cromwell, to quarter yourself here?" Lady Ingilby was saving.
"I do, madam."
"You come alone, knowing we are a house of women and of wounded men? Oh, the courage of you! And even our wounded have left us—not one of them so crippled but the news of Rupert's coming spurred him on to Marston."
"The news of Rupert's going will comfort them, maybe," growled Cromwell.
"He thrashed you handsomely. Oh, we have the news! First, a runner came, telling how Lord Fairfax and the leader of the Ironsides had left the field."
Cromwell's quick temper took fire. "You claim a woman's privilege——
"No, my pistol's. We talk as man to man. I say that we have the news. And then a second runner came and told us Leslie's Scots had won the battle. And we sorrowed, but not as if it had been you who claimed the victory."
The man was dead weary; but her scorn, quiet and assured, roused him. "Am I so hated, then, by your side of this quarrel?"
"Hated? That is a little word."
"Good! Any wayside fool can be loved—it takes a man to earn hatred."
"A man of sorts—granted. You will tell me, Mr. Cromwell, what your purpose was in coming to this house. My husband may be lying dead on Marston Field. Perhaps you came, in courtesy, to distract my grief."
"I came because Lord Fairfax bade me," said Cromwell bluntly. "We have no courtesy in Rutland, as you know. Mere folly must have bidden me leave my men outside, lest they intruded on you over-roughly."
"How many of them did Rupert leave you for a guard?" She was aware of an unexpected courtesy in the man's voice. It seemed no more than smooth hypocrisy.
"A few within call. They are not gentle."
"Nor I. As man to man—I stand for the husband who may return or may not—we are here, we two. You have a body of surprising strength, but it is I who hold the pistol. Believe me, Mr. Cromwell, I have learned your proverb well; I trust in Providence and keep my powder dry."
Christopher, watching them from the dusk of the passage, turned away. It did not seem that Lady Ingilby needed him. Yet he turned for a last glance—saw Cromwell's head fall prone on his hands. Weariness had captured him at length. The mistress of Ripley sat with upright carriage, seeing dream-pictures in the glowing fire of logs; and some were nightmares, but a silver thread ran through them—the knowledge that, whether he lived or lay dead, she had her husband's love.
"She bested him, and proper," chuckled Ben Waddilove. "When he came in, he looked like a man who might well go to sleep for good and all. We'll hope as much—and I was ever a prayerful man, as men go."
At the turn of the passage, where a lamp was smoking evilly, Kit saw a ghost come with unsteady step to meet him—a comely ghost, in white, fleecy draperies, a ghost that carried a sputtering candle. After Marston, and the carnage, and the desolate, long journey from the Moor to Ripley here, Christopher was ripe to fancy all beauty an illusion. It was only when he saw the red-brown hair, falling disordered about the whiteness of her gown, that his eyes grew clear.
"So you have come?" asked Joan Grant. "I did not summon you."
"Is that true, Joan?"
She would not meet his glance. "Why should I summon you?"
"Oh, that's for you to know. As we lay in the bean-field—the Prince, and father and I—you came and whispered."
"I travelled far, then, and must have galloped home at speed."
Old Waddilove, who knew his world, moved down the passage noisily. "For my part," he said, talking to himself, and thinking he only murmured, "I allus said like mun wed like, choose what pranks come between. They're fratching already, and that's a good sign. A varry good sign. There was niver two folks fit for wedlock till they've learned how to fratch. It clears their heads o' whimsies."
The draughty passage seemed full of Ben's philosophy. They could hear nothing else, except the steady swish of thunder-rain outside. And Joan laughed, because she could not help it.
There was no concealment then. Laughter opens more doors than the high gravity that lover-folk affect.
"My dear, you know that you came," said Kit.
"I know that I lay awake, sick with terror for you. I saw you fighting—oh, so gallantly—saw Rupert steal, a broken man, into a field of flowering beans, with only the Squire and you to guard him. And then I fell asleep—as if the bean-scent had stifled me, too—and I dreamed——"
"Well, Joan?"
"That you were hindered, somehow. That you came to great honour and forgot me."
"And that troubled you?" said Kit adroitly.
"Oh, till I woke! Then it seemed to matter little. My heart sits on the top of a high tree, Master Christopher, as I told you long ago."
All that he had fancied in the gaining seemed lost, all that the suffering and long anxiety of war had taught him. She was dainty, elusive, provocative, just as she had been in Yoredale, before her baptism of fire.
"Then why were you sick with terror for me?" he asked, as if downrightness served as well with women as with men.
"Why? Because, perhaps, it is rather cold in the tree-tops, and a heart comes down now and then for a little warmth. I shall bid you good-night, sir. You're in need of rest, I think."
"Joan," he said, "I love you very well."
She halted a moment. The light from her candle showed Kit a face made up of spring-time in a northern lane. Long battle, long abstention from a glimpse of her, brought the old love racing back at flood. And yet it was a new love, deepened and widened by the knowledge gained between the riding out from Yoredale and the stark misery of Marston Moor.
"You will let me go," she said at last. "Is it a time for ease of heart, when our men are dead, or dying, or in flight? They have told me how it sped at Marston—and, Kit, what of the King, when the news goes spurring south to him?"
What of the King? Their own needs—for one caress, one taste of happiness amid the rout—went by. Their loyalty was not a thing of yesterday; its roots lay thick and thrifty in soil centuries old.
"God forgive me," said Christopher. "I had forgotten the King."
CHAPTER XIX.
WILSTROP WOOD.
At four of the next morning Lady Ingilby's vigil was ended. There came a Parliament man to the gate of Ripley, asking urgently for General Cromwell. When he was admitted to the dining-chamber, he saw Cromwell with his head still prone upon the table—saw, too, the grim figure of a lady, who turned to level a pistol at his head.
"Your errand?" asked Lady Ingilby.
"With General Cromwell. He is needed at Long Marston."
"They are welcome to him. He's not needed here."
Cromwell shook himself out of sleep. "Who asks for me?" he said, getting to his feet.
For the moment he thought he was tenting in the open, with only one eye and ear closed in sleep before the next day's march began. Then he glanced round the parlour, saw Lady Ingilby's grim, contemptuous face. When the Parliament man had whispered his message, word for word, Cromwell, with grim irony, thanked his hostess for the night's hospitality, and asked if he were free to take the road.
"None more free. On the road, sir, you will meet the democracy whom you befriend—will meet your equals."
Humour had some hiding place in Cromwell's soul, after all. As they passed out, the messenger and he, he laughed quietly. "She's of Rupert's breed. They'd make good Parliament men, the two of them, if we could persuade them to our side of the battle."
Lady Ingilby opened the parlour window, listened till Cromwell's sharp command had brought his troopers into line, and heard them go on weary horses down the street. Then she went to the hall, in search of cloak and hood, and encountered Christopher.
"Good morrow, Mr. Metcalf," she said, after the first start of surprise. "One of your clan always comes when I'm most in need of you. My husband—does he lie dead on Marston Moor?"
"He was alive when we broke Cromwell's Ironsides, for I heard his cheery shout. After that Leslie routed us, and—I do not know."
"He may be alive, you think?"
"Why not? I shared the trouble with him, and I'm here."
Impetuous, strong for the deed, and strong for yielding to emotion afterwards, she came and touched him on the shoulder. "My thanks—oh, indeed, my thanks. Only to fancy him alive is peace to me. I need you," she added briskly. "You will take charge of my women-folk here, until I return from—from an errand of mercy."
"Let me take the errand."
"Ah, but you could not. Only I can do it. Sir, is it no welcome change for you to tend helpless women? You have had your holiday at Marston."
"It was a queer merry-making."
"But your wounds show to the public eye—wounds of honour. You carry the red badge of knighthood, sir, while I have only a few more grey hairs to show for all these months of waiting."
"You cannot go alone," he protested. "The roads will be full of raffish men."
"The roads must be as they will. For my part, I have to take a journey. Come, saddle me a horse, sir, by your leave. My grooms were all out with the King's party yesterday."
When they crossed to the stables, a shrill cry of welcome greeted them; and, for all the gravity of what was past, Kit could not check a sudden laugh. "Why, 'tis Elizabeth, the good ass that helped Michael into York! We thought to have lost her somewhere between this and Lathom House."
Elizabeth came and licked Kit's face; even if he were not Michael, the master well-beloved, he was at least near the rose. And then Kit pushed her aside; it was no time for blandishment.
There were two horses only, left behind because unfit for battle. They looked oddly lonesome, with the six empty stalls beside them stretching out into the lights and shadows thrown by the lantern.
"A man's saddle," said Lady Ingilby briskly. "You'll find it in the harness chamber yonder."
Kit, when the livelier of the two horses was ready, understood why she had chosen a man's saddle. It carried a holster; and into this, after looking at the priming and uncocking it with masculine precision, she slipped the pistol that had over-watched Cromwell's slumbers not long ago. And his wonder grew; for, during months of intimacy with Ripley's household, he had learned that Lady Ingilby, at usual times, was motherly, unwarlike, afraid of powder and the touch of sharpened steel.
As he led her horse to the mounting-steps at the far side of the stable-yard, the lilt of tired hoofs came up the roadway. Young dawn was busy up the hills, and into the grey and rosy light rode Michael. He was not dressed for a banquet. His clothes were yellow with the clay of Marston Moor, his face disordered by wounds lately dried by the night's east wind. But the soul of him was Michael's—wayward and unalterable.
"At your service, Lady Ingilby," he said. "I heard a donkey bray just now, and fancied it was Elizabeth, crying over milk spilled at Marston."
"It was no white milk, Mr. Metcalf, by the look of you."
"The thunder-rain was red in the ditches. It was a good fight, and it's ended. So, baby Kit, we're first to the tryst, we two. I've been wondering, all from Marston hitherto, whether you were dead or living."
Christopher found one heartache stanched. The sense that Michael was here, instead of on the wet ground of the Moor out yonder, was vivid happiness. "Elizabeth will be glad," he said indifferently. "She was crying for you not long ago."
Then he was urgent that Michael should be left here on guard, and he had his way. He borrowed the other's horse; and, after all, Lady Ingilby was glad to have an escort through the roads.
"You have news of my husband?" she asked Michael, without hope of any answer that sufficed.
"None," said Michael, "save that we were in the thick of it—Kit, and he, and I—and I heard a man near me say that Ingilby was fighting as if three men's strength were in his body."
"That is no news," said the other drily. "He was ever that sort of man."
When they had ridden out, she and Kit, and had come to the hollow where dog-roses and honeysuckle were blooming spendthrift to the warmer air of dawn; she turned in saddle. "Your brother spoke of coming to a tryst. What tryst?"
"It was this way. Before the relief of York, it was agreed among the Riding Metcalfs that, if the battle sped, Ripley could look to its own needs. If the fight was lost, we were to come soon or syne—those left of us—to guard you."
Lady Ingilby reined in—an easy matter with the pensioner that carried her. "In these evil modern times, are there still so many of the elder breed? One here and there I could understand, but not six-score of you."
"There are fewer now. We lost a few at Bolton, and Marston Moor was worse. Those who are left will come in. Their word is pledged."
The spaciousness of summer on the hills returned to Lady Ingilby. Siege, and hardship, and the red fight at Marston went by. Here was a man who had fought, lost blood and kindred to the cause—a man simple, exact to the promise made.
"I am glad of your escort, after all," she said. "You were breeked in the olden time, I think."
"What is our route?" asked Christopher by and by.
"To Marston. If my husband is abroad, well. If he's dead or dying, he may need me."
It seemed to Kit, through all the perils of the road, through the instant dangers that beset them from the thievish folk who hang upon the skirts of war, that a little, silver light went on ahead, guarding their passage. But he was country-born and fanciful. At Ripley, Michael the careless went indoors and found the old man-servant fidgeting about the hall.
"Well, Waddilove," he said, throwing himself on the long-settle, and holding his hands to the fire-blaze, "it seems long since I knew you as body-servant to Sir Peter Grant in Yoredale. I've fought and marched, and had my moments—ay, Ben, moments of sheer rapture when we charged—and now I come from Marston, and all's ended, save a thirst that will drink your cellars dry before I slake it."
Waddilove did not know "Maister Michael" in this mood of weariness. "Ye used to be allus so light-hearted, come shine or storm," he muttered.
"That is the worst of a high reputation. One falls to earth, old sinner. I've no jest, no hope, nothing but this amazing thirst. If there's wine left in the Castle, bring it."
Ben was literal in interpretation of an order. When he returned, he brought two bottles of Madeira and a rummer-glass.
"Oh, good!" said Michael, with something of his old laugh. "Fire and wine—I need them." He kicked the logs into a blaze. "It seems odd to need warmth, with midsummer scarce past, but I've brought a great coldness from the Moor. Gentlemen of the King's—men who should be living for him—are lying where they fell. There was no room for a horse's hoofs; one had to trample the loyal dead. Wine, Ben! Pour me a brimmer for forgetfulness."
And now Waddilove understood that this gay wastrel of the Metcalfs was on the edge of sickness—not of the body only, or the mind, but of the two. In his eyes there was a fever and a dread. Not knowing what to do—whether wine were friend or adversary—he obeyed the order. Michael drained the glass in one long, satisfying gulp. "One can buy peace so easily—at a price," he said. "Fill again for me, Daniel, and we'll drink confusion to Noll Cromwell."
While the wine was between the bottle and the glass, a little lady came into the hall. She had a carrot in her hand, and trouble was lurking in her young, patrician face.
"Who is this, Ben?" she asked, withdrawing a step or two, as she saw the patched and mud-stained figure on the settle.
"Michael Metcalf, at your service. No need to ask your servant vouch for me."
He had risen. From his great height, shivering and unsteady, he looked down at her.
"But, sir, you are unlike yourself. Your eyes are wild."
"So would your pretty eyes be, Mistress Joan, if you'd shared Marston Fight with me. I've seen a King lose his cause—his head may follow."
Joan was aware of some new strength behind the man's present disarray. "Does your love for the King go so deep, then? We thought you light of heart."
"Always the same gibe. I have talked with the King, and I know. Our lives were slight in the losing, if we had given him the battle. But we lost it. What matters now, Joan?"
"This, sir—that the King still needs his gentlemen."
Michael stood to attention. She had always bettered his outlook on life, even in his careless days. Now, with every nerve at strain, she showed him a glad, narrow track that went upward, climbing by the ladder of adversity.
"As for that," he said, with an odd smile, "I thank you for a word in season. It will keep Sir William's cellars from a period of drought."
Waddilove, watching the man, could only wonder at his sharp return to self-control. He did not know that, so far as Michael was concerned, Joan Grant brought always the gift of healing.
"Heartsease, that's for remembrance," said Michael, after a troubled silence, "and carrots, they're for Elizabeth the well-beloved."
She caught the sudden hope, the challenge in his glance. Clearly as if he had put the thought into speech, she knew that he clung to the old love, told more than once in Yoredale. He hoped—so wild a lover's fancy can be—that, because she fed his ass with dainties, she did it for the master's sake.
"Ah, no," she said sharply. "It is not good to play at make-believe. There is trouble at our doors—the King's cause drowning, and men lying dead out yonder. I go to feed Elizabeth, and you, sir, will stay here to guard the house."
Michael kicked the logs into a blaze, and watched the flames go up with a steady, thrifty roar. He turned presently, to find Waddilove asking whether he did not need a second brimmer of Madeira.
"To-morrow, you old fool! For to-night, I've the house to guard. Meanwhile, I've lit a lively fire—all my hopes, Ben, and most of my prayers, have gone scummering up the chimney-stack. I trust they find good weather out o' doors."
Christopher and Lady Ingilby, about this time, were nearing Marston Moor. As they reached Tockwith village, and were passing the farmstead where Cromwell had dressed the wound in his neck not long ago, five men rode out at them through the rosy light of dawn. Christopher, with battle still in his blood, shot the first at close quarters—a red and messy business. Then he reined about, with the instinct taught him by Rupert's cavalry, turned again, and charged the four remaining.
He found himself in the stour of it; for they were thick-set rogues, and had little to lose in this world or the next. It seemed that they must bear him down, after he had accounted for another of their number with his sword. Then a second pistol-shot rang out, and the man nearest Kit dropped from saddle as a fat, red plum falls from an autumn branch. His horse stampeded, and the two riders left galloped headlong for the woods.
Kit returned to find Lady Ingilby with a smoking pistol in her hand. Her voice was tremulous.
"Sir, if this is to feel as men do—ah, thank the good God I was born a woman. I aimed truly, and—and I have no pride in it."
Through the sunrise and the hot, moist scent of flowering hedgerows they made their way down the narrow farm-track which was henceforth to be known as Rupert's Lane. At the ditch and the battered hedgerow where Cromwell's horse had been driven back, a man on foot asked sharply who went there.
"Lady Ingilby, come to see whether her husband lives or is dead for the King."