battle. It is my own considered judgment--and, more, the King's orders,
which I carry, are explicit on that point."
So Newcastle heaved a sigh of relief. The King commanded, and that
decided the matter. For himself, he was so glad to be free of wakeful
nights and anxious days, so willing to hand over the leadership he had
carried well, that imminent battle was in the nature of recreation.
Rupert had mapped out his plans with a speed as headlong and unerring as
his cavalry attacks. The rebel army was encamped on the high ground
bordering Marston Moor. He would take the route at once, and my Lord
Newcastle must follow with the utmost expedition. He could wait with
his men, before giving battle, until the garrison of York joined forces
with him. Even united, they would be outnumbered; but they were used to
odds. They must this day sweep treason out of the North, once for all,
and send good news to the King.
Rupert carried them with him. He was on fire with victories won, with
faith in victories to come. The one man unmoved was Eythin, who,
disappointed in himself and all things, had long since kennelled with
the cynics.
"The higher one flies, the bigger the drop to ground," he muttered.
"Ay," said Michael, who was standing close beside him, "but the man who
never dares to fly--he lives and dies an earthworm."
"I shall cross swords with you for that pleasantry," drawled Eythin.
"Here and now, then," snapped Michael.
Rupert, who never forgot the record of friend or enemy, interposed.
"Gentlemen, I am in command. You may kill each other afterwards, if
Marston Moor does not dispatch the business without further trouble.
Mr. Metcalf," he added, "you will ride with me--and your brother. It is
as well to keep spark from gunpowder just now, and Lord Eythin has work
to do in York."
When they set out along the dusty road, the brothers mounted on horses
going riderless about the late Roundhead camp, Rupert would have them
trot beside him, and chatted pleasantly. They could not understand the
quiet deference and honour given them at every turn of these
rough-riding days. But Rupert understood. Into the midst of jealousies
at Oxford--petty rivalries of man against man, when the crown and
soldiers' lives were in the losing--had come the Riding Metcalfs, honest
and selfless as God's sunlight, brave to fight well and to be modest.
The day grew insufferably hot. Rupert's promise of good weather proved
him no true prophet. Any farmer could have told him what was meant by
the stifling heat, the steely sky, the little puffs of wind that were
hot and cold by turns.
"A lover's wind," said Rupert lightly, as a fiercer gust met them up the
rise of Greet Hill. "It blows east and west, twice in the same minute."
"It blows for a big storm, your Highness," Kit answered, in all
simplicity. "The belly of the hills is crammed with thunder."
"Let it break, then, if it must. Meanwhile, our clothes are dry. And,
talking of lover's weather, Master Christopher, I was entrusted with a
message to you from Knaresborough. I met a lady there, as we passed
through--a pretty lady, well-gowned and shod in spite of these
disastrous times--and she asked me if a little six-foot youth of the
Riding Metcalfs were still alive."
"But who should ask for me in Knaresborough?"
"Were there so many, then? I begin to doubt you, my White Knight."
It was later, as they neared Marston, that the Prince drew Christopher
aside. He seemed to have a queer tenderness for this lad to whom life
showed a face of constancy and trust. "I told Miss Bingham you were in
rude health; and I break confidence, maybe, when I tell you that her
eyes filled with tears. Well, forget her till after this day's work is
done."
Kit answered nothing, and showed instinctive wisdom. Miss Bingham was
no more than a pleasant ghost who had nursed his weakness, and
afterwards had sat beside him on the ferry-steps that dipped to the
waters of Nidd River. His thoughts lately had been all of battle and of
high endurance; but now, as he remembered Joan Grant and the way of her,
and the primroses that had starred the lanes of his wooing time in
Yoredale, he knew that he must do well at Marston Moor.
The dust and swelter of the ride grew burdensome. Boye, the hound, ran
beside his master with lolling tongue.
"Never look so woebegone," laughed Rupert, leaning from saddle to pat
the brute's head. "We're to have a glorious day, Boye, and you the luck
of it."
Kit had first realised at Oxford how deeply Boye was embroiled in this
war of King and Parliament. To the Royalists he was their talisman, the
touchstone of success. To the enemy he was a thing accursed, the evil
spirit harbouring the body of a dog; they had essayed to shoot and
poison him, and found him carrying a charmed life. Their unkempt fancy
ran so wild as to name him the worst Papist of the Stuart following,
because he went often with Rupert to kirk, and showed great reverence in
a place holy to his master. Christopher recalled how the Prince had
laughed once when a friend had told him what the Roundhead gossip was.
"It's an odd charge to lay against a dog," he had said, "that he's a
better Catholic than they."
And now, with battle close ahead and the big deed in the making, Rupert
had found leisure to see Boye's hardship and to cheer him forward on the
dusty road. He caught Christopher's glance of wonder--as, indeed, he
saw most things in these days of trouble--and smiled with disconcerting
humour.
"After all, Master Christopher, I've found only three things to love in
my hard life--loyalty to the King, and my brother Maurice, and the good
Boye here. Love goes deep when its bounds are set in such a narrow
compass."
He said nothing of his fourth love--the high regard he had for the
Duchess of Richmond--the love that had so little of clay about it, so
much of the Pole Star's still, upleading glamour. Instead, he bustled
forward on the road; and about noon the vanguard of his army found
itself on Marston Moor. It was a wild country, clumps of bog and gorse
and heather islanding little farmsteads and their green intaken acres.
On the slopes above, wide of Tockwith village, they could see the smoke
of camp fires and the passing to and fro of many Roundheads, hefty in
the build.
"They were ever good feeders," said Rupert lightly.
His whole face was changed. The lines of weariness were gone. The
surety of battle near at hand was stirring some vivid chord of
happiness. It was a sane happiness, that sharpened brain and eye. The
country was so flat that from the saddle he could see the whole range of
this battlefield in prospect. He marked the clumps of
intake--bean-fields white with flower, pastures browned by the drought,
meadows showing fresh and green after last week's ingathering of the
crop. He saw Wilstrop Wood beyond, and the ditch and ragged fence half
between Wilstrop and the hill on which the Parliament men were eating a
good dinner for the first time in many months.
"My right wing takes position this side the ditch," said the Prince at
last, pointing to a gap in the hedge where a rough farm-lane passed
through it. "Now that is settled, gentlemen, I'm free of care. Mr.
Metcalf," he added, turning to Michael, "go find your kinsmen and bid
them join me. It is the only honour I can give them at the moment; and
the King's wish--my own wish--is to show them extreme honour."
Christopher remained in close attendance on the Prince. The most
surprising matter, in a nine months' campaign of surprises, was Rupert's
persistent memory for the little things, of grace and courtesy, when
battle of the starkest kind was waiting only for the arrival of Lord
Newcastle and the garrison of York.
"They'll not be here within the hour," said Rupert, "and this is a
virgin country, so far as food goes. My men shall dine."
*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."
[Illustration: "'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."