enough to roast an ox. Something that was named beef--though the
garrison knew it for cold roast dog--was on the table. There was a
steaming bowl of hot-pot, and none inquired what went to strengthening
the stew of honest peas and lentils. But there was wine left, as at
York, and across the board hale good fellows, and good fellows who were
not hale at all, pledged Christopher and Michael.
It was a moment of sheer triumph for these two, for no healthy man can
resist the praise of soldiers approving tried soldiers in their midst.
When the toasting was done, a man in sober garments rose, lifting his
glass with a queer contralto chuckle.
"To the King, gentlemen, and to all good sorties on His Majesty's
behalf. For myself, as Vicar of the parish, I have no part in politics.
I take no sides in this vexed question of King and Parliament." He let
the ripple of mirth go past him, and maintained his gravity. "As a man,
the case is different. As a man, you understand, I drink to His
Majesty, and confusion to all Cropheads!"
When the toasts were ended, there was much chatter of what was doing in
the outer world. The Metcalfs, coming from the open country, were like
a news-sheet to these prisoned loyalists. They had to tell all that was
afoot in the north, so far as they had learned the to-and-froing during
their last months of adventure in the saddle, till at last Christopher
remembered the errand they were riding on to-day.
"Gentlemen, it is time we took horse again," he said, with all the
Metcalf downrightness. "York is a bigger town than yours, and we've her
safety in our keeping."
He glanced up, sure that his brother would back the protest. He saw
Michael at the far end of the room, preening his feathers under the kind
eyes of a lady who palpably admired him. And a little chill took him
unawares, as if the season were mid-winter, and some fool had let the
wind in through an open door.
"So two men keep the safety of all York," laughed one of the garrison.
"There's a fine Biblical sound about it, Vicar."
"So much to the good, then," said the Vicar quietly. "To my mind, those
days are here again, and King Charles righting the good fight. Hey, my
masters, you're deaf and blind to the meaning of this trouble." He
turned to Christopher with a touch of deference that came pleasantly
from an old man to a young. "How do you hold York's safety?" he asked.
"What is your errand?"
"To find Rupert for them."
"And you're riding, two of you, to search England for him?"
"That is our errand, sir."
"Ah, that is faith! I wish good luck to your horses' feet."
"We need Rupert as much as York needs him," said Phil Amory. "It's a
far cry, though; from here to Oxford."
"To Oxford?" echoed Kit, with sharp dismay. "We thought to find him in
Lancashire."
"The last news we had," said the Vicar--"true, it is a month old by
now--was that they kept Rupert in Oxford, making peace between the rival
factions, attending councils--playing maid-of-all-work there, while the
North is hungry for his coming. Why, his name alone is meat and drink
to us."
"So they said in York, sir."
"Ay, and so they say wherever men have heard his record. Without fear,
with a head on his shoulders and a heart in the right place--undoubtedly
you ride on a fine errand. If I were younger, and if my cloth
permitted, I would join you in the venture."
Christopher, seeing his brother still intent on dalliance, went down the
room and tapped him on the shoulder. "We get to saddle, Michael," he
said.
Michael, for his part, was astounded at the lad's air of mastery. He
was aware, in some vague way, that dalliance of any kind was a fool's
game, and that the man with a single purpose assumes command by a law of
Nature.
"I dandled you on my knee, li'le Christopher, not long ago," he said,
with his easy laugh.
"My thanks, Michael. I stand higher than your stirrup now, and York
needs us."
Michael had an easy-going heart and a head that was apt to forget
important matters; but he rose now, obedient to the baby of the Metcalf
clan. He paused to kiss the lady's hand, to murmur a wish that he might
live to see again the only eyes worth looking into; and then he was a
man of action once again, keen for the ride.
Miss Bingham rose and swept them a grave curtsey. Then she glanced at
Christopher. "If you have a fault, sir--and all paragons have--it is a
seriousness that reminds one of the Puritan."
She had drawn blood. It flamed in his cheeks for a moment, then died
down. "I'm neither paragon nor Puritan--and no ladies' man," he added,
with a touch of downright malice.
"So much is obvious. You lack practice in the art, but you will learn
in time."
Kit, in some odd way, felt youthful and ashamed. This girl, little older
than himself, disdained his singleness of purpose, his fervour for the
cause. "Oh, I leave that to Michael," he said, clumsily enough.
She was tired of warfare and the siege, and bore Kit a grudge because he
had interrupted the diverting game of hearts that she and Michael had
been playing. "You are riding to find Rupert?" she asked, her voice
like velvet. "He's the Prince to you--a paragon indeed--no ladies' man.
Sir, when you find him, ask how it fares with the Duchess of Richmond,
and see if his face changes colour."
"It is not true," said Kit passionately.
"How downright and fatiguing boys are! What is not true, sir?"
"All that you left unsaid."
Michael clapped him on the shoulder. "Good for you, li'le Kit! All
that women say is enough to drown us; but what they leave unsaid would
sink a navy."
"Go, find your Prince," said Miss Bingham, with the same dangerous
gentleness; "but, on your honour, promise to remind him of the Duchess.
I should grieve to picture such a gallant without--oh, without the grace
women lend a man."
"Michael, we're wasting a good deal of time," said Kit, disliking this
girl a little more. "There'll be time enough for nonsense when we've
brought Rupert into York."
Michael stood irresolute for a moment, divided, as his way was, between
the separate calls of heart and head. And into the midst of his
irresolution a guest intruded rudely. There had been a steady
cannonading of the town, as reprisal after the sortie, and one among the
lumbering iron balls crashed through the wall of the dining-chamber,
near the roof, passed forward and brought down a heavy frame--known as a
"bread-creel" in the north here--on which oat-cakes were spread out to
dry. With fuel scarce, they had learned to make kitchen and
dining-chamber one. The cannon-ball buried itself in the masonry
beyond. The bread-creel missed Miss Bingham's pretty head by a foot or
so. One end of it struck Kit on the shoulder, reopening a new wound;
the other tapped Michael on the skull, and put dreams of Rupert out of
mind for many a day.
The men at the far end of the hall ran forward. They found Michael lying
prone. One cross-piece of the creel was broken, where it had
encountered his tough head, and all about the floor was a drift of the
brittle oat-cake that had been drying overhead a moment since.
"A queer beginning for their ride," said young Phil Amory.
Michael opened two devil-may-care eyes between one forgetting and the
next. "Life's like that, my lad. One never knows."
They carried him to an inner room, and Miss Bingham watched Amory and
another trying to stanch Kit's wound.
"You're clumsy at the business," she said, putting them aside. With
deft hands she fastened a tourniquet above the wound, and dressed it
afterwards. Then she brought him wine; and, when a tinge of colour
returned to his face, she crossed to the window and stood there,
watching the red flare of cannonry that crossed the April sunlight.
"My thanks, Miss Bingham," said Kit, following her.
"Oh, none are needed! I am a little proud of my nursing skill, learned
here in Knaresborough. Believe me, I would have done as much for any
trooper."
"Still, any trooper would find grace to thank you."
Her eyes met his. There was blandishment in them, withdrawal, enmity.
Men were a game to her. Spoiled and flattered, accustomed to homage
that had never found her heart, she thought men heartless, too, and the
game a fair one.
"Thanks mean so little. Would you have had me watch you bleed to death?
Is there no one in the world who would have missed you?"
"I do not know," said Kit, with a thought of Yoredale and the light in
Ripley Castle.
"Ah, there's another secret out! She has flouted my dear Puritan."
"I will not have that name! There was never a Metcalf yet but stood for
the King."
The cannonade outside grew louder, and Miss Bingham looked out again at
the red spurts of flame. "A painter should be here," she said, turning
at last. "My six-foot Puritan, what a picture it would make--the blue
April sky, and the little tufts of cloud, fleecy as lambs'-wool, and the
outrageous crimson flaring from the guns! Will they contrive to hit the
Castle again, think you? It is time their marksmanship improved."
"I was thinking of Prince Rupert," he said stubbornly. "If Michael
cannot ride with me, I must go alone."
Miss Bingham's heart was touched at last. This man, who could scarce
stand from loss of blood, disdained her coquetry, and had one
purpose--to find Rupert for the raising of the siege at York. Selfless,
reliant in the midst of weakness, he saw the one goal only.
He bade her farewell, and asked Amory to find his horse for him. "But,
sir, it is death to sit a saddle," protested the other. "Your
wound----"
"It must heal or break again. That is the wound's concern. Mine is to
find Rupert, as I promised."
Amory glanced quietly at him and wondered at the hardness of the man.
"How will you get through the besiegers? Their cannon are pretty busy,
as you hear."
"I had forgotten the besiegers. I must leave my horse, then, and find a
way out on foot."
He got half-way to the outer gate, his weakness palpable at every step.
Then his foot tripped against a cannon-ball that had fallen yesterday.
He fell on his right shoulder, and the wound reopened in grim earnest.
Miss Bingham was the most troubled, maybe, of all the Knaresborough
garrison during the week that followed. By all past knowledge of
herself Michael should have been her chief concern. He was so gay and
likeable, as he recovered slowly from his head-wound; his tongue was so
smooth, his heart so bendable to the lightest breeze of a woman's
skirts. Yet she found herself constantly at Kit's bedside, fighting the
evil temper that had mastered him. He was consumed with rebellion
against this weakness that kept him abed, and his persistent cry was
that Rupert needed him, and would know that he had failed. He was still
so young to the world that he believed all England knew what the Riding
Metcalfs were doing for their King.
On the fourth day, to ease his trouble, Miss Bingham lied. She said
that Michael was hale and well again, and had gone out in search of
Rupert. Kit took the news quietly, and she slipped away to see that his
noon-day meal was ready. When she returned with the tray, she found
Christopher up and dressed. He was fumbling at the buckle of his
sword-belt with all a sick man's impatience.
"What are you doing, sir?" she cried, in frank dismay.
"Getting ready for the road. Michael is too easy-going to be trusted
single-handed; and York, I tell you, needs the Prince."
"It will see him none the sooner if you die by the roadside now, instead
of waiting till you're healed."
"But Michael--you do not know him. He means so well and dares so much;
but the first pretty face that looks out o' window draws him."
"To be frank, he is in no danger of that kind," said Miss Bingham
demurely. "He lies in the next room and talks to me as Colonel Lovelace
might--deft flattery and homage and what not. I thought all Cavaliers
were smooth of tongue, as he is--until I met my Puritan."
"You said that he had gone to seek Rupert."
"Oh, I said. What will not women say? Their tongues are wayward."
"For my part, give me men," said Kit, with blunt challenge.
The end of that escapade was a high fever, that taxed Miss Bingham's
skill and the patience that was foreign to her. Michael, too, in spite
of all his gaiety, saw death come very close to his bedside. It was not
the blows they had taken here in Knaresborough that had knocked their
strength to bits. In the months that had passed since the riding out
from Yoredale, each had taken wounds, time and time again, had tied any
sort of bandage round them, and gone forward to the next sharp attack.
They were proud of their tough breed, and had taken liberties with a
strength that was only human, after all. And now they were laid by in a
backwater of life, like riddled battleships in need of overhauling.
It was when Kit was in that odd half-way land between great weakness and
returning strength that a sudden turmoil came to him. His memory of
Joan Grant grew weak and fugitive. With him day by day was Miss
Bingham, who had forgotten long since how to pick a quarrel. The beauty
of an experience new to her spoiled life gave warmth and colour to a
face that had once been merely pretty.
On one of these afternoons--a spurt of rain against the windows, and the
sullen roar of guns outside--he lay watching her as she sat by the
bedside, busy with a foolish piece of embroidery. She was very near,
had nursed him with devotion, had smoothed his pillow many times for
him.
"Agnes," he said, "what will you say to me when my strength comes back,
and I've brought Rupert into York?"
So then she knew that battle is not only for the men. She met her
trouble with a courage that surprised her. "I--I should bid my Puritan
go seek the lady who once flouted him. Oh, boy, you're in a dream!
When you wake, remember that I nursed you back to health."
Two days later Kit was so far recovered that he was allowed to move
abroad; and, while his strength was returning, the Vicar was his close
companion. Something in Kit's bearing--dour hardihood half concealing
some spiritual fire that burned beneath it--had attracted this parish
priest since the lad's first coming. He showed him the comely
parsonage, with its garden sloping to the wide bosom of the Nidd; talked
of the town's beauty and antiquity--topics dear to him. Then, one
afternoon, near gloaming, he led him up the steep face of the cliff to
St. Robert's cell.
What is sown in the time between great sickness and recovery--good or
ill--is apt to abide with a man, like impressions of the earlier
childhood. And Kit, until he died, would not forget this hermitage,
carved out of the solid rock that bottomed the whole town of
Knaresborough. Without, facing the world that St. Robert had known, was
his coat-of-arms, as if daring gossip to deny his record in the stress
of battle. Within was a narrow chamber, roofed and floored by rock; at
one end an altar, at the side a bed of stone--that, and the water
dripping from the walls, and a strange sense of peace and holiness, as
if a spirit brooded round about the place.
"Here is peace, sir," said Kit, a quick fire glowing in his eyes.
"Ah, yes. You would feel it, I was sure. I bring few guests to this
sanctuary."
Kit glanced at him. The kindly smile, the trust and friendship of the
parson's voice, brought back Yoredale and a flood of memories. When
they went out into the dusk again, a red flare spurted from the Castle
battlements, and in return there came the din of Roundhead cannon, and
Kit's face hardened suddenly.
"True," said the Vicar, touching his arm. "Such as you must go through
blare and gunshot before they tame their bodies. Good luck to you, lad,
and strike shrewdly for the King."
The next day Kit was so far recovered that he would not stay under the
same roof with Miss Bingham; Memories of Joan, who was far away, warred
with his liking for this maid, who came less often to cajole and tease
him back to health. It was easier to go out and rough it in the honest
open. He was haunted, moreover, by the mystery and calm of that stone
cell, where a dead man had left his living presence.
Michael had been fit for the road three days before, but would not leave
his brother, since he had promised him the venture. And, moreover, Miss
Bingham was kind again, after a season of indifference and neglect.
The old question was revived--by what means they should get through the
besieging force. "There is only one way, obviously," said Michael, with
his rollicking laugh. "We must go horsed. Will not Phil Amory lead a
sortie?"
"Phil Amory will," agreed the youngster cheerily. "These rogues have
been pelting us long enough with cannon-balls."
The Governor assented willingly. Hazard in the open was healthy for
these high-mettled lads, who were pining under the inaction of the
siege. "You shall go as you came, gentlemen," he said, with his grave
smile. "One good turn deserves another."
They waited till one of the sentries on the battlements sent word that
the besiegers were at their mid-day meal. He added that words had
passed between himself and three of their men, who had shouted that
pluck was dead in Knaresborough.
"Ah!" said Phil Amory.
They mounted--forty of the garrison and the two Metcalfs--and the gate
opened for them. It was Kit--a free man again, with the enemy close in
front--who lifted the first battle-cry.
"A Mecca for the King!" he roared, and his horse went light under him,
as if it trod on air.
The besiegers ran hurriedly to their horses. Some mounted, others had
no time. Into the thick of them crashed the sortie, and the work was
swift and headlong in the doing. Through the steam and odours of the
interrupted meal the attack crashed forward, till the sortie party,
breathless, with a queer glee fluting at their hearts, found themselves
at the far side of the town.
"You made a lane for us once," said Phil Amory. "Now we've made a lane
for you. There's no time for farewells, friends--put spurs to your
horses and gallop."
He gave Michael no time for the protest ready to his lips, but turned
about, and, with a bugle-cry of "Knaresborough for the King!" dashed
through the enemy again. The Metcalfs waited till they saw the gate
close on the forty who had hacked a way to liberty for them, and Michael
half hoped they would be needed, because Miss Bingham was sheltered by
the Castle walls.
"We have the road to Rupert, now," said Kit.
"So we have, lad."
"Then why look back at Knaresborough? You're in a dream, Michael."
"The prettiest eyes in England set me dreaming. I've good excuse."
So Kit, a little sore on his own account, and with a heartache hidden
somewhere, grew serious as only the very young can do. "There is Rupert
waiting for us," he snapped.
"Ah, true, grave brother. Let's get to Oxford, and the Duchess of
Richmond will cure me of this folly, maybe. There, lad, not so fiery!
It's no crime that a duchess should have pleasant eyes. Even princes
must warm themselves at the hearth just now and then."
"What route to take?" asked Kit by and by, coming down from his pedestal
of high, romantic gravity.
"We'll go by the sun so far as the winding roads will let us. Oxford
lies south-west. Chance and the sun, between them, shall decide; but we
had best keep free of towns and garrisons."
"Undoubtedly," growled Christopher. "There would be the finest eyes in
England glancing at you through the lattices."
In this odd way the brothers, different in experience and outlook, but
bound together by some deep tie of affection, took up the hazard of a
ride that was to end, they hoped, at Oxford. There was a fine, heedless
simplicity about it all, a trust in open country and the sun's guidance,
that was bred in the Metcalf men.
*CHAPTER VIII.*
*HOW THEY SOUGHT RUPERT.*
They had not gone seven miles before they heard, wide on their
bridle-hand, the braying of a donkey. It was not a casual braying, but
a persistent, wild appeal that would not be denied.
"Brother calls to brother," said Michael, with his diverting obedience
to superstition. "One of his kind helped me into York. We'll see what
ails him."
They crossed a strip of barren moor, and came to a hollow where some
storm of wind and lightning had long since broken a fir coppice into
matchwood. And here, at the edge of the dead trunks and the greening
bracken, they found five of their kinsmen hemmed in by fourteen
stiff-built rascals who carried pikes. On the outskirts of the battle a
donkey was lifting her head in wild appeal.
With speed and certainty, Michael and his brother crashed down into the
fight. The surprise, the fury of assault, though two horsemen only
formed the rescue-party, settled the issue. And in this, had they known
it, the Metcalfs were but proving that they had learned amid country
peace what Rupert had needed years of soldiery to discover--the worth of
a cavalry attack that is swift and tempestuous in the going.
"We thought you far on the road to Prince Rupert," said the Squire of
Nappa, cleaning his sword-blade on a tuft of grass.
"So we should have been, sir, but we happened into Knaresborough. Kit
here swooned for love of a lady--on my faith, the daintiest lass from
this to Yoredale--and I could not drag him out until--until, you
understand, the elder brother stepped in and made havoc of a heart that
Kit could only scratch."
"Is this true, Christopher?"
"As true as most of Michael's tales. We fell ill of our wounds, sir,
that was all."
The donkey had ceased braying now, and was rubbing a cool snout against
Michael's hand. "Good lass!" he said. "If it hadn't been for your gift
of song, and my own luck, there'd have been five Metcalfs less to serve
His Majesty."
The old Squire pondered a while, between wrath and laughter. "That is
true," he said, in his big, gusty voice. "I always said there was room
in the world, and a welcome, for even the donkey tribe. Kit, you look
lean and harassed. Tell us what happened yonder in Knaresborough."
Kit told them, in a brief, soldierly fashion that found gruff approval
from the Squire; but Michael, rubbing the donkey's snout, must needs
intrude his levity.
"He forgets the better half of the story, sir. When we got inside the
Castle, the prettiest eyes seen out of Yoredale smiled at him. And the
lad went daft and swooned, as I told you--on my honour, he did--and the
lady bound his shoulder-wound for him. A poor nurse, she; it was his
heart that needed doctoring."
"And it was your head that needed it. She made no mistake there,
Michael," said Squire Metcalf drily.
When the laughter ceased, Kit asked how they fell into this ambush; and
the Squire explained that a company of Roundheads had come in force to
Ripley, that they had roused a busy hive of Metcalfs there, that in the
wild pursuit he and four of his clan had outdistanced their fellows and
had found themselves hemmed in. And in this, had he known it, there was
a foreshadowing of the knowledge Rupert was to learn later on--that with
the strength of headlong cavalry attack, there went the corresponding
weakness. It was hard to refrain from undue pursuit, once the wine of
speed had got into the veins of men and horses both.
"We're here at the end of it all," laughed the old Squire, "and that's
the test of any venture."
"Our gospel, sister," said Michael, fondling the donkey's ears, "though,
by the look of your sleek sides, you've thrived the better on it."
The Squire took Kit aside and drew the whole story from him of what he
hoped to do in this search for Rupert. And he saw in the boy's face
what the parish priest of Knaresborough had seen--the light that knows
no counterfeit.
"So, Kit, you're for the high crusade! Hold your dream fast. I've had
many of them in my time, and lost them by the way."
"But the light is so clear," said Kit, tempted into open confidence.
"Storms brew up, and the light is there, but somehow sleet o' the world
comes drifting thick about it. You go to seek Rupert?"
"Just that, sir."
"What route do you take?"
"Michael's--to follow the sun and our luck."
"That may be enough for Michael; but you sleep in Ripley to-night, you
two. You need older heads to counsel you."
"Is Joan in the Castle still?" he asked, forgetting Knaresborough and
Miss Bingham.
"Oh, yes. She has wings undoubtedly under her trim gown, but she has
not flown away as yet. We'll just ride back and find you quarters for
the night."