ladydom--a King Charles sort o' lass, every inch of her, all pricked out
with airs and graces. The lad seemed fair daft about her, judging by
his looks."
"Thanks, friend," said Drinkwater grimly. "See you, lad, you can go
free to kiss her at the gate to-night, if you'll tell us what Lady
Ingilby knows by now."
Kit was young to the pillory, young to his fine regard for Joan Grant.
An intolerable pain took hold of him as he heard her name bandied
between Drinkwater and the rabble. "You lout," he said, and that was
all. But the quietness of his loathing pierced even Drinkwater's thick
hide.
Joan meanwhile had got to the Castle and had been welcomed by her aunt
with something near to effusiveness.
"I've been so lonely, child," Lady Ingilby explained. "If one doesn't
happen to care for one's husband, it is fitting he should go to the
wars; but if one does--ah, if one cares!"
A little later Joan explained that she had met a mad neighbour of hers
sitting on a bench in front of the Ripley inn. The man had showed no
care at all for his own safety, but had been zealous that she should
carry a message for him.
Lady Ingilby's face grew harder as she listened to the message, but
still her unconquerable humour stayed with her. "So they know me as
'that termagant.' Good! I'm making this house a training-school for
Cavaliers. I stay at home while my husband rides for the King; but I,
too, am riding. Joan, the suspense would kill me if I had no work to do.
Sometimes he sends word that he is hale and busy down in Oxfordshire,
and always he calls me sweetheart once or twice in these ill-written,
hasty letters. At my age, child, to be sweetheart to any man!"
Something of the spoiled days slipped away from Joan as she breathed
this ampler air. The aunt who had been a little cold, austere, in
bygone years was showing her true self.
"What of your mad neighbour?" asked Lady Ingilby, repenting of her
softer mood. "You did not leave him on the bench, surely, tied hand and
foot? You cut the ropes?"
"The villagers would not allow it--and, indeed, why should I regret? He
was rough with me--cold and uncivil."
"There, child! Never wave the red flag in your cheeks. Folk see it,
like a beacon fire. You're in love with the madman. No denial, by your
leave. I'm old and you are young, and I know my world."
"He is uncouth and rude. I hate him, aunt."
"That proves it to the hilt. I'll send out a rescue-party. Men who
have no care for their own lives are precious these days."
"You have no need," said Miss Grant. "I forgave him for his roughness."
"Tut, child! Forgiveness won't untie his hands."
"But I sent word, too, to his kinsmen, who are near."
"So!" laughed Lady Ingilby. "How fierce your loathing burns, you babe
just come from the nursery!"
On the moor guarded by the High Cross the Squire of Nappa was pacing lip
and down, halting now and then to watch his kinsfolk as they slept
beside their horses. He envied them their slumber, would have been glad
to share it after the turmoil of the last two days, but, under all
casual temptation to lie down and sleep, he knew that he was glad to be
awake--awake, with the free sky overhead and the knowledge that so many
Metcalfs needed him.
"We ought to do well for the King," was his constant thought. "If we
fail, 'twill not be for lack of wakefulness on my part."
As dusk went down the hill, and on the edge of dark a big moon strode
above the moor's rim, he heard the faint sound of hoofs. None but ears
sharpened by a country life could have caught the sound; but the Squire
was already handling his pike. As the rider drew nearer, his big horse
scattering stones from the steep drift of shale, Metcalf gripped the
shaft of his weapon and swung it gently to and fro.
The moon's light was clear now, and into the mellow gold of it the
horseman rode.
"Who goes there?" roared the Squire, lifting his pike.
It was a quavering voice that answered. "Be ye going to fight Ben
Waddilove? I'm old and home-weary, and we were lads together."
The Squire's laugh should have roused his company. "Why, Ben, I came
near to braining you! What brings you here so far from Nappa?"
"Oh, Miss Joan! She's full of delicate, queer whimsies. Told me, she
did, I had to ride up the moor, as if my knees were not raw already!
Said li'le Christopher, your son, was sitting on a bench in Ripley, tied
hand and foot by Roundhead folk. So he is. I saw him there myself."
Without pause or hesitation, the Squire turned to his sleeping kinsfolk.
Some he shook out of slumber, and kicked others to attention. "We're
for Ripley, lads!" was all his explanation.
With astonishing speed they unpicketed their horses and got to saddle.
The discipline of farm and field, out yonder at Nappa, had not gone for
naught. They knew this rough-tongued Squire who meant to be obeyed.
Ben Waddilove tried to keep pace with them as they skeltered down the
moor, but gave it up at last. "Nay," he muttered, "I'm not so young as I
was. I'll just be in at the death, a bit later on."
Drinkwater and his lambs were tiring of their prisoner, who would not
speak, would not budge or accept a price for liberty, when a trumpet
call rang down the village street.
"A Mecca for the King!" roared the Squire, his voice like a mountain
burn in spate.
When all was done, and Kit's hands loosened, the lad knew his weakness
and the galling pains about his limbs. He lifted his head with the last
rally of his strength.
"Sir, where is Drinkwater?" he asked his father.
"Dead, my lad. He ran against my pike."
"That's a pity. I wanted you to--to tell him, sir, that I had the last
laugh, after all."
*CHAPTER V.*
*THE LADY OF RIPLEY.*
They carried Christopher into the tavern, and the Squire thrust the
gaping onlookers from the room and shut the door. He thought the lad
was dying.
Kit lay on the lang-settle. The dancing firelight showed the pallor of
his face, the loose, helpless surrender of limbs and body.
"I cared for the lad too much, maybe," growled the Squire. "He was
littlish, as we Metcalfs go, and a man's heart yearns, somehow, about
the baby of a flock."
For two hours he watched, and then Kit stirred. "The louts bandied
Joan's name about," the lad murmured.
"Ay, so they did. Get up and fight, lad Christopher--for Joan."
Kit obeyed the summons with a promptness that dismayed the Squire. He
got to his feet, looked about him, and moved across the floor; then his
legs grew weak under him, and he tottered to the settle.
"Tell her it doesn't matter either way," he said. "Tell her I'm for the
King, as all the Metcalfs are."
He slept that night like a little child; and the Squire, watching beside
him, returned to his own childhood. The bitterness of fever was over.
Kit would live, he thought.
Pansy was early astir next morning, and moved among the servants of the
Castle with an aloofness that enraged the women, with a shy, upward
glance of her Puritan eyes that enthralled the men. She was demure and
gentle; and when a lad came into the yard with his milking-cans, and
said that there had been a bonnie fight in the village overnight, Pansy
asked him how it had fared with Master Christopher.
"Oh, he?" said the lad, his eyes big and round at sight of her. "He was
ready to die last night; but he's thought better of it, so they say."
Pansy did not take the news to her mistress, whose moods were not to be
reckoned with these days, but to the lady of the house. Already she had
learned, with her quick instinct for character, that Lady Ingilby and
she had much in common.
"The Riding Metcalfs are in Ripley, by your leave," she said, with
downcast eyes.
"I'm vastly glad to hear it. Miss Grant has told me of their loyalty.
Well?"
"Master Christopher lies wounded in the tavern--he that carried the
message so well. It seems a shame that he should stay there with only
men to nurse him."
"Ah, Master Christopher! I've heard of him, Why do you bring the news
to me, girl, instead of to your mistress?"
"Because, my lady, she's deep in love with him, and does not know it.
I'd as lief meet a she-wolf in the open as talk of him to the mistress."
The other laughed whole-heartedly. It was the first real laugh she had
found since her husband left her for the wars. "You've a head on your
shoulders, child, and a face rather too pretty for the snares of this
world. I thank you for the news."
An hour later Lady Ingilby went out, alone and on foot, into Ripley
street. There was a press of Metcalfs about the roadway--brawny men who
had slept beside their horses wherever they could find room about the
fields, and who had gathered for the next day's call to action.
"Is the Squire of Nappa here?" asked Lady Ingilby.
"He's indoors," said Michael, with his graceless ease of bearing,
"tending Christopher, the darling of our company."
"Go in and tell him that Lady Ingilby commands."
When the Squire came out, a little dizzy with his vigil, and altogether
glad that Kit had so far slept off his weakness as to ask for breakfast,
he saw a lady with a high, patrician nose and keen, grey eyes, who
smiled at him.
"Sir, I come to inspect your company. In my husband's absence I
undertake his duties."
"Madam," he answered with rough grace, "my men are honoured. The King
may have better soldiers, but has he six-score to set side by side with
mine for height and girth?"
He bade his men get to horse--as many of them as the street afforded
room for--and marshalled them briskly into line. Lady Ingilby was
astounded by the discipline they showed. It was as if their leader
scarcely needed to give an order; their readiness seemed to go with the
command, as if one brain guided the whole company.
She took the salute with lively satisfaction. "You dwarf our houses,
Metcalfs. I never guessed how low the inn roof is. You are all for the
King? Good! That was a lusty roar."
They faced each other, the cavalry and the slim, straight lady whose
husband was at the wars. And the Nappa men answered her laugh; and from
this day forward they were comrades, she and they, and she could command
them anything.
"Undoubtedly prayers are answered, if one prays long enough," she said,
in her odd, imperative way. "There's been a siege of Ripley Castle, a
stealthy siege, and I've needed men about me."
"We are free for your service," said the Squire. "Indeed, we were in
fear of idleness, after doing what was asked at Skipton yesterday."
"There's no speed of attack in this venture." She read the man's need
for blows and the gallop, and would not tempt him into a promise rashly
given. "You will understand, Mr. Metcalf, that my house is a hospital
just now. Whenever a Cavalier takes wounds too hard for him, he drags
himself to Ripley. The countrymen all know my mind; and, when they find
a lame dog of the King's, they bring him to my gate. The garrison of my
good castle, I tell you frankly, is made up of women and sick men."
"But we're no nurses," protested the Squire, with laughable simplicity.
"You'd have six-score other ailing men if you shut us up indoors."
Lady Ingilby laughed, for the second time since her husband rode for the
King. "We could not house you, sir. If there's scarce room for you in
Ripley's street, you would overfill the castle. I have other work for
you."
"In the open?"
"Ah, your eagerness! Yes, in the open. Keep our gates safe from
without, sir. There are few hale men among the garrison, and these are
wearied out with sleeplessness. Prowling companies of Roundheads come
this way, giving us no rest. They know Sir William Ingilby is with the
King, they know I keep open house here for Cavaliers----"
"Bid your household rest," the Squire broke in. "There are six-score of
us here--judge for yourself whether we're big enough to guard you."
"Big enough," she assented, with a brisk, friendly nod. "But how to
feed your company, sir?" she added, returning to the prose of
housewifery.
"We feed ourselves," laughed the Squire. "It seemed a fat country as we
rode through. Mutton--and corn for our horses--wherever these are,
there's a meal for us."
Kit had left his half-finished breakfast at the sound of Lady Ingilby's
voice outside. It was not her quality, or the courage she was showing
under hardship, that stirred his pulses. As she turned to go in at the
tavern door, saying she must see the wounded man, Christopher himself
crossed the threshold.
"My faith, sir," she said tartly, "you should be in your bed, by the
look of you. You can scarce stand."
"Miss Grant is with you?" he asked, a sudden crimson in his cheeks.
"Oh, yes. The most wonderful maid that ever came to Ripley--her eyes
like stars--she feeds on thistledown."
"You are pleased to jest," he said, aloof and chilly.
"Not so hasty, by your leave. You've a message for this girl who sups
on moonbeams?"
Some kindness in her voice arrested Kit. "Tell her that I wish her very
well."
"I shall tell her nothing of the kind, my lad. D'ye want to win her?
Then I shall tell her you were thinking of the wars--that, when I asked
if you had any message, you seemed to have forgotten her. I shall make
much of that ugly scar across your face--taken yesterday, by the look of
it--and hazard that you may live a week, with some good luck to help
you."
"You've no heart," he said, the Metcalf temper roused.
"An older heart than yours--that is all. I have lived through your sort
of moonlight, and found the big sun shining on the hill-top. My man
went out to the wars, and I--I would not have him back just yet for all
the gold in Christendom. Absence is teaching me so much."
"I need her. You do not understand."
"Tut-tut! You'll have to wait till you've proved your needing." She
looked at the Castle front, saw a star of light flicker and grow clear
in a window on the left. "That is her room, Sir Love-too-well," she
said, with the gentlest laugh. "When you are weary of guarding the
Castle, glance up and picture her yonder, sipping dew, with all the
fairies waiting on her."
"I thank you," said Kit, with childish gravity. "I shall know where to
look when all else in Ripley seems drab and tawdry."
Lady Ingilby beckoned Squire Metcalf to her side. "Your son is no
courtier, Mr. Metcalf," she said tartly.
"He was not bred that way. I licked him into shape."
"And yet he is a courtier. He loves well. Only, by your leave, defend
my gate against all women from the Yoredale country. I've Joan Grant
here, and her maid Pansy, and between them they're turning our men's
wits. Two pretty women can always outflank a troop of horse."
The Riding Metcalfs had a busy season between October of that year and
the next year's spring. So far as history-making went, the Civil War was
quiet enough. Pym, with his sane strength, died as Christmas was
nearing, and left the Parliament in a muddle of divided leadership. The
King summoned a Parliament at Oxford, but nothing fruitful came of it.
Yet in Yorkshire the Metcalfs found work enough to do. Loyal to their
pledge, they always left some of their number to guard Ripley Castle;
the rest of them went harrying Puritans wherever they could find them.
Sometimes they made their way to Skipton, creating uproar and a
diversion of the siege; at other times they paid minute and embarrassing
attention to Otley, for, of all the Parliament's officers, they detested
most the Fairfaxes, who, as old Squire Mecca had it, should have learnt
better manners from their breeding.
Kit was divided between two allegiances now. One was owing unalterably
to the light which Lady Ingilby had shown him shining from Joan's upper
room. The other was Prince Rupert's. Through all the muddled rides and
skirmishes and swift alarms of that hard winter, the Metcalfs had heard
constantly the praises of two men sung--Rupert's and Cromwell's. Rupert
had succeeded in the raising of a cavalry troop that already, rumour
said, was invincible; Cromwell was building up his Ironsides, grim and
heavy, to meet the speed and headlong dash of Rupert's men. Gradually,
as the months went on, Kit shaped Prince Rupert to the likeness of a
hero--a little less than saint, and more than man. Whenever he came home
to Ripley, he roamed o' nights, and looked up at Joan's window, and
shaped her, too, to the likeness of a maid too radiant for this world.
He was in the thick of the high dreams that beset an untrained lad; but
the dreams were building knighthood into the weft and woof of him, and
no easy banter of the worldlings would alter that in years to come.
Joan played cat's-cradle with his heart. She would flout him for a day,
and meet him at the supper-board thereafter with downcast eyes and
tender voice; and Squire Metcalf would suppress his laughter when Kit
confided to him that women were beyond his reckoning.
Soon after dawn, on a day in late April, Kit stole out for a glance at
the left wing of the Castle, where Joan's window grew ruddy in the
sunlight. Rain was falling, and a west wind was sobbing up across the
sun. And suddenly he fancied that women were not beyond his reckoning.
They were April bairns, all of them--gusty and cold, warm and full of
cheer, by turns. He remembered other Aprils--scent of gilly-flowers in
the garden far away in Yoredale, the look of Joan as she came down the
fields to greet him--all the trouble and the fragrance of the days when
he was giving his heart to her, not knowing it.
He felt a sharp tap on his shoulder. "Day-dreaming, Kit?" laughed the
Squire of Nappa. "Oh, she's there, my lad, safe housed. I was about to
knock on the gate, but I fancy you'd best take my message to Lady
Ingilby."
Kit was glad to take it, glad to be nearer by the width of the courtyard
to that upper window. Women--who, for the most part, are practical and
ruled by household worries--must laugh often at the men who care for
them with true romance.
When the gate was unbarred, and he had passed through, a kerchief
fluttered down--a little thing of cambric, ladylike and foolish. Kit
did not see it. His glance had roved to the upper window, and there,
framed by the narrow mullions, was Joan's face.
"You do not care to pick it up," she said with a careless laugh. "How
rough you are, you men of Yoredale."
Kit saw the favour lying at his feet, and pinned it to his hat. When he
glanced up again, the window overhead was empty, and Lady Ingilby,
standing at his side, was bidding him good-morrow.
"I have urgent news for you," he said, recovering from confusion.
"Not so urgent but a kerchief could put it out of mind. But come
indoors, lest a snowstorm of such favours buries you. You'll have many
such storms, I hazard--you, with your big laugh and your air of
must-be-obeyed."
When they had come into the oak-parlour, and Lady Ingilby had seen that
the door was close-shut against eavesdroppers, Kit gave his message.
"A man rode in an hour ago from York. The garrison there is near to
famine. They're besieged by three armies--Lord Fairfax at Walmgate Bar,
my Lord Manchester at Bootham Bar, and the Scots at Micklegate. My
father sends me with the message, and asks if you can spare the Riding
Metcalfs for a gallop."
"Six-score to meet three armies?"
"If luck goes that way."
She stood away from him, looking him up and down. "My husband is of
your good breed, sir. I gave him to the King, so I must spare my
six-foot Metcalfs to the cause."
Joan Grant came into the parlour. Kit, seeing the filtered sunlight
soft about her beauty, thought that the world's prime miracle of
womanhood, a thing dainty, far-away, had stepped into the room.
"Can I share your secrets?" she asked diffidently.
"I've none," said Kit, with a sudden laugh. "I carry your kerchief,
Joan--at least, my hat does, whenever I wear it in the open, for men to
see."
Again she was aware of some new self-reliance, some ease of speech and
carriage that had been absent in the Yoredale days. A few months of
peril had accomplished this; she asked herself, with a queer stab of
jealousy, what a year of soldiery would do.
"I dropped the kerchief by chance, sir," she said coldly. "You will
return it."
"By and by, when it has been through other chance and mischance. Lady
Ingilby, you shall be judge between us. Is the kerchief mine?"
The older woman laughed. "Yours--when you've proved your right to wear
it. Meanwhile, it is a loan."
"Women always forsake each other at the pinch," said Joan, with a gust
of temper.
"To be sure, girl. Our men-folk are so often right, in spite of their
absurdities. This venture toward York, Mr. Metcalf? You propose to
ride against three armies--a hundred and twenty of you?"
"No, by your leave. We hope to get near the city in one company, and
then decide. If York is leaguered by regiments, there'll be an outer
rim of Metcalfs, waiting their chance of capturing news going in or
coming out."
"Good! I begin to see how strong you are, you clan of Metcalfs. You
are one, or two, or six-score, as need asks. I think you are well
advised to go to York."
Joan Grant turned from the window. Her aloofness and disdain were gone.
"Would you not stay to guard our wounded here?" she asked.
The mellow sunlight was busy in her hair. Her voice was low and
pleading. Kit was dizzied by temptation. And Lady Ingilby looked on,
wondering how this man would take the baptism.
"We fight where the King needs us most--that is the Metcalf way," he
said at last.
"If I asked you not to go? Of course, I care nothing either way. But
suppose I asked you?"
With entire simplicity and boyishness, Kit touched the kerchief in his
hat. "This goes white so far as I can guide it."
"Ah," said Lady Ingilby. "The King should hear of you, sir, in days to
come."
When he had gone, Joan came to her aunt's side. "He--he does not care,
and I would we were home in Yoredale, he and I. I was free to flout him
there."
"Never trust men," said Lady Ingilby, with great cheeriness. "He does
not care, of course--no man does when the battle music sounds."
"But he--he was glad to wear my kerchief."
"It is the fashion among our Cavaliers. That is all. He would not care
to take the field without a token that some poor gentlewoman was dying
of heart-break for his wounds."
Joan found her dignity. "My own heart is sound," she protested.
"Then don't accuse it, child, by protests."
"I'm so glad that he's gone--so glad!" She crossed to the window again,
looked out on the sunlit street. "How drab the world is," she said
pettishly. "There'll be snow before night, I fancy; it grows chilly."
"The world's drab," assented Lady Ingilby. "What else does one expect at
my years? And our six-foot Metcalf will forget you for the first pretty
face he meets in York."
"Is he so base? Tell me, is he so base?"
"No; he forgets--simply, he forgets. Men do."
Without, in Ripley street, there was great stir of men and horses
getting ready for the York road. Lady Ingilby, hearing the tumult of it,
crossed to the window, and her heart was lighter by twenty years as she
watched the cavalcade ride out.
"The White Horses, and six-score giants riding them! They'll make
history, girl. The pity is that not all of those six-score will sit a
saddle again. They have the look of men who do not care how and when
they die, so long as King Charles has need of them."
"Kit will return," said Joan, in a chastened voice.
"That is good hearing. How do you know it, baby-girl?"
"Because I asked him to return. Just to nurse his wounds would
be--Paradise, I think."
The Metcalf men were a mile on the York road by now. Michael, the
reputed black sheep and roysterer of the clan, rode close beside
Christopher, and chattered of a face he had seen at an upper window of
the Castle.
"A face to lead a man anywhere," he finished, "Hair like wind in the
rusty brackens."
Kit touched the favour in his hat. "It is she I fight for, Michael--for
the King and Joan."
"Are you always to have luck, just for the asking?" growled Michael.
"This time, yes, unless brother fights with brother."
For a moment they were ready to withdraw from their kinsfolk and settle
the issue in some convenient glade. Then Michael yielded to the queer,
jealous love he had learned, long since in Yoredale, for this lad.
"Oh, we'll not quarrel, Kit. There'll be another face for me at the
next town we ride through. There are more swans than one, and all turn
geese in later life."
Squire Mecca, hearing high words from the rear, rode back to learn what
the uproar was about. "So you're at your brawling again, Michael?" he
roared.
"No, sir. I was wishing Kit good luck for the lady's favour he is
wearing in his hat."