They say it was a shocking sight,
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that you know must be
After a famous victory.
--Southey.
Never, perhaps, had the hopes of Waller’s army been higher than on the
morning of the 13th July as they encompassed the town of Devizes, the
attack upon which had been fixed for that evening. Throughout the march
from Bath they had been able to harass the rear of Hopton’s army: they
had intercepted a convoy of ammunition coming from Oxford; and though
Prince Maurice’s convoy had contrived to escape, they held Hopton and
all his foot cooped up in Devizes with no match and very little powder.
While still suffering terribly from the effects of the explosion, the
brave Royalist General had the wit to devise on his sickbed a plan for
supplying match. He ordered the townsfolk to give the ropes which held
up the sacking of their beds, and these, when boiled in resin, served
very well for the emergency. Still, he was heavy-hearted, for he knew
that the unfortified town could not long withstand such an attack as
Waller was like to make, and in great suffering of body and anxiety of
mind he lay musing over the dire misfortunes which had followed this
army of the West.
The hours passed slowly by, and at length early in the afternoon he was
roused by the approach of quick footsteps.
“Sir, sir,” cried Captain Nevill, eagerly, “we are, I trust, saved.
Prince Maurice hath returned from Oxford bringing fresh troops under my
Lord Wilmot. They are massed on Roundway Down.”
“Massed where?” cried Hopton, still somewhat deaf from his accident.
“A mile off, on Roundway Down,” shouted Captain Nevill.
“Then, for the time, Devizes is saved,” said Hopton, with a sigh of
relief, “for Sir William Waller will assuredly draw off his troops and
give the Prince battle at the foot of the down.”
Such, indeed was Waller’s intention, but his plans were frustrated by
the over-eagerness of his friend, Sir Arthur Hazlerigg. Remembering the
gallant behaviour of the “Lobsters” at Lansdown and the terror they
had struck into the hearts of the Royalists, he charged gallantly, but
rashly, up the slippery and precipitous hill. The Royalists bore down
upon them with crushing force, and, to the dismay of Waller and his
troops on the plain below, the whole regiment thus sharply repulsed tore
frantically down the hill.
It was the most appalling sight Gabriel had ever seen; the maddened
horses, forced down perilous heights “where never horse went down or up
before,” fell by scores, crushing their riders, and, to his horror, he
saw his friend Major Locke first wounded in the thigh by a musket ball,
and then thrown headlong to the ground with his horse on the top of him.
The sight of this was more than he could endure, for he knew only too
well the horrible agony the Major would undergo. Receiving a word of
permission from Waller, he set spurs to his horse, and rode in hot haste
to the rescue, hoping to bring his friend to shelter. But by the time he
had dragged him from beneath the horse and had contrived to lift him
on to his own beast, he found, to his utter dismay, that the whole
of Waller’s cavalry had been put to flight. The terrible sight of the
destruction of Hazlerigg’s regiment had filled the men with panic,
and, seeing that they were hemmed in on the side of Devizes by Hopton’s
steadily advancing Cornishmen, they broke and fled in the wildest
disorder.
To rejoin his routed comrades was for the present impossible; already
they were riding pell-mell back to the west, hotly pursued by the
Royalists, and all he could do was to try to find some sort of shelter
for his wounded friend. Leading his horse cautiously along the side of
the down, and supporting the Major as well as he could in the saddle, he
gradually drew off from the scene of the disaster. At any moment, as he
well knew, they might be seen by the enemy and shot down; but at length,
thanks to the general absorption in the pursuit, he succeeded in gaining
a little hollow scooped out of the hillside, where, sheltered by a few
stunted trees he had the good fortune to find one of the rude huts used
by shepherds in the lambing season.
“You shall rest here,” he said, helping Major Locke to dismount.
“Then, later on, when the coast is clear I will try to get you to less
comfortless quarters.”
“You have saved my life, lad,” said the Major, sinking down on to the
mud floor of the hut with a groan. “The plungings of my poor Whitefoot
would soon have crushed me to death. Now, an’ you love me, help me out
of this armour.”
“Alas! ’twas the heavy armour that proved the death of many of our
comrades,” said Gabriel, relieving the Major from his cumbrous burden.
“The weight was too much for them to remount quickly if once unhorsed.”
Taking the orange scarf from his waist, he succeeded in bandaging
the Major’s wound; then unrolling the cloak which was fastened on his
saddle, he made the injured man fairly comfortable, and having secured
his horse to a tree hard by, sat down and tried to form some plan for
the future.
“Have you no water?” groaned the Major. “I am half mad with thirst.”
“There is not a drop,” said Gabriel; “but when dusk comes I will go out
and reconnoitre. We must get you out of this filthy hut as soon as may
be. I will fetch you water, and make some plan for your removal.”
The waiting seemed long, but at length, when all seemed quiet and
twilight was coming on, Gabriel stole cautiously forth on his dangerous
errand. At a distance he judged to be about a mile from the hollow
he saw lights burning in a house, and since it lay in the opposite
direction to Devizes, and away from the western quarter in which
Waller’s flying cavalry had been pursued by the foe, he thought it might
be possible to get safe shelter there for the wounded Major. He dared
not, however, risk moving him until he had made sure, and hurrying
across the open down, through a cornfield, and into a deep lane which
led to a main road, he found on approaching nearer that the lights burnt
in the windows of a substantial farmhouse.
Should he risk the chance of encountering Royalists, who would instantly
make him prisoner? There was nothing whatever to indicate whether the
house contained friends or foes. On the other hand, it was impossible to
linger, or it would grow too dark to find his way back to Major Locke’s
hiding-place. He must put a bold face on it and knock.
In response he heard the heavy bolts withdrawn, and the door was slowly
opened by an old, grey-haired man, who peered suspiciously at the
stranger standing in the gloom of the porch.
“I have come to crave water and, if possible, linen for a sorely
wounded man,” said Gabriel, his heart sinking a little as he noticed the
severity of the old man’s face. It was certainly not the face of one who
cultivated the virtues of compassion and tender-heartedness.
“As grim an old fellow as I ever clapped eyes on,” he reflected,
ruefully. “There’ll not be much help here.”
“Before I say ay or no to that I will hear who thou art for,” said the
master of the house, sternly.
“Surely you would not refuse a cup of water to a wounded man whether he
were friend or foe,” said Gabriel.
“Ay, that would I in good sooth, if the wounded man was one of the
Amalekites, a foe to the truth,” said the veteran, with a gleam of
indignant zeal in his hard eyes.
Gabriel gave a sigh of relief; he had not lighted on a fiery Royalist
who would hand him over as a prisoner, but upon one of those stern and
uncompromising Puritans who literally applied every word of the Old
Testament to the troubles of their own day.
“Nay, we are not what you call Amalekites,” he replied, biting his lip
to keep back a smile; “we were both in Sir William Waller’s army. An’
you could give shelter to my friend, Major Locke, you would be doing a
good deed, and he will be well able to recompense you.”
“I cannot take him in now--the women-folk be all abed and asleep, and we
be hard-working folk; but bring him at dawn to-morrow and my wife will
tend him before she sets about her business in the dairy.”
Gabriel thanked him heartily, and gladly accepted half a loaf of rye
bread which the farmer proffered with the flagon of water.
“Now if you could but spare me a bit of linen I should have better hope
of bringing my wounded friend here in safety,” he said, glancing round
the great kitchen to which he had been led.
“The women-folk would ha’ known what to give thee, sir,” said the
farmer, in perplexity, “but beshrew me I can’t tell where----”
He broke off with an exclamation of relief, and crossing the room took
down a long roller towel on which the household were wont to wipe their
hands, apparently without much preliminary washing.
“Here, sir, use this,” he said. And Gabriel, treasuring up the story
to amuse his father when next they met, but too well-seasoned a warrior
after his nine months’ campaign to be in the least dainty, accepted the
towel with genuine gratitude, and returned to his friend as fast as the
fading light and the perplexities of the way would allow.
The Major was so much exhausted by the dressing of his wound that he
fell asleep directly he had refreshed himself with the water and the rye
bread. Gabriel, not daring to close his eyes lest he should sleep after
daybreak, paced to and fro outside the hut, and thought sadly enough
over the tragedy he had seen enacted that day. Now and then on the soft
summer wind the distant sound of groans reached his ear, for many of the
victims still lay as they had fallen on the hill side, and several times
the piercing shriek of a wounded horse made him shudder.
He resolved that as soon as he had left the Major in safekeeping at
the farmhouse, his best plan would be to rejoin Waller, who, in all
probability, would make in the first instance for Bristol, and try
to reorganise his shattered army. But as he thought of the desperate
condition of the Parliamentary forces, and of the extraordinary conduct
of Lord Essex in permitting the reinforcements from Oxford to escape him
when, with his whole army, he was lying idle at Reading, his heart
was sorely troubled; for it seemed to him that the Cause was being
overborne, and that evil was like to triumph.
With a sigh, he stretched himself for a time on the sheep-cropped grass
of the steep little hollow, watching the stars and the swaying of the
branches in the group of trees hard by. The sight brought to his
mind certain long-familiar words about one in olden days who had been
troubled by the near approach of an overwhelming army, which threatened
to ruin his country--
_And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of
the wood are moved with the wind.. . . Then said the Lord to Isaiah, “Go
forth now to meet Ahaz.... and say unto him, ‘Take heed, and be quiet;
fear not, neither be faint-hearted._’”
And therewith he fell to thinking of the strange rise and fall of
nations, and of the things which make a nation truly great. How
transitory was all earthly glory and dominion--how eternal the glory of
truth and righteousness, and the joy of struggling to right wrong!
Thus the night wore away; and at daybreak he saddled his horse, and,
rousing Major Locke, helped him with great difficulty to mount. Then,
slowly and carefully, he guided Harkaway along the slippery down, and,
skirting the cornfield, came out into the lane below. The hedges rose
high on either side, cutting off all view of the surrounding country;
but as they paced slowly round the last turning and came into sight of
the main road, a sound of tramping feet made Gabriel pause. Undoubtedly
soldiers were approaching, and he cautiously led Harkaway into a shady
nook, where they could see but were little likely to be seen.
For a minute his heart beat high with hope, for he was certain that the
men wore orange scarves; then, with a pang, he saw that many had been
stripped of their buff coats, while, from their dejected bearing, it was
only too evident that they were prisoners.
“’Tis Sir William Waller’s foot soldiers,” whispered the Major, “they
are marching them to Oxford.”
“Shall we turn back?” questioned Gabriel.
“Nay, lie low here in the shadow, they will never notice us,” said the
Major.
The words had only just been uttered when, to their consternation,
Harkaway, catching sight of the horses ridden by a couple of officers,
whinnied loudly.
“The very beast we stand in need of,” said one of the officers, with a
laugh, “and right willing to come with us, me-thinks.”
Setting spurs to their horses the two young fellows swooped down upon
the little group in the lane, and Gabriel, seeing that escape was
hopeless, stood his ground.
“By your leave, sir,” he said, as one that he afterwards learnt to be
Captain Tarverfield, snatched at Harkaway’s bridle, “I do but carry a
sorely injured friend to the farm hard by, and you are welcome to the
horse then.”
They laughed, boisterously.
“Nay, but you will have to join our merry company yonder, my worthy
Roundhead,” said the elder of the two. “Short hair and a well-bred
accent mark you out as a traitor. ’Tis idle to pretend that you are a
Cavalier’s serving-man.”
“I make no pretence, sir,” said Gabriel, angrily. “I do but ask you, out
of common humanity, to let a wounded man pass.”
“Oh! Lord Harry Dalblane knows naught of humanity,” said Captain
Tarverfield, laughing.
“So it seems,” said Gabriel, with bitterness.
“You must come out of this hole, and see what our Colonel has to say
about it,” said Lord Harry, gripping Gabriel firmly by the arm and
following his companion, who led Harkaway out to the main road. “Here,
by good fortune, he comes. Sir, an’ it please you to call a halt, we
have taken two more prisoners, and a horse that is well worth having.”
Gabriel, looking up in the dim light, gave a start of dismay when he
perceived that the Colonel was Major Locke’s deadly foe.
“Why, Harry! you are worth your weight in gold,” exclaimed Norton, with
a chuckle of satisfaction. “You have taken the two men I most desired to
have.”
“’Twas the horse that I desired,” said Lord Harry, studying Harkaway’s
points with the keen eye of one who made the training of horses the
chief interest of life. “And this prating Puritan here vows that it must
first carry this wounded gentleman to a farm hard by.”
“Nay, but Major Locke is coming to Oxford with me,” said Norton, with
a laugh. “I’ll give him excellent safe quarters there in the
Castle--surely a better place for you, Squire, than a mere farm.”
“I shall scarce reach Oxford,” said the Major, faintly.
“Sir,” broke in Gabriel, “Major Locke is grievously wounded in the
thigh; a thirty-mile ride will be his death.”
“Well, an he cannot ride perchance you would prefer that he should
walk,” said Norton, mockingly. “But rest assured, Mr. Harford, that to
Oxford he will have to go. I warned you at Wells that I am a man that
was never yet baulked. You robbed me of my ride with the fair Helena,
and I shall solace myself with this journey with her father.”
There was a gleam of such devilish cruelty in his eyes, as he glanced at
Major Locke to see how he was taking this, that Gabriel’s wrath could no
longer be restrained.
“You have him now at your mercy,” he said, “and the tender mercies of
the wicked are cruel; but be assured that, in another world, for every
brutal deed and word you will have to pay to the uttermost farthing.”
Norton laughed till his merriment infected Lord Harry, but Captain
Tarverfield looked grave and ill at ease.
“You hear him, gentlemen,” said Norton, still chuckling. “Methinks he
had best be dubbed Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher. To-night, Lieutenant,
you shall have an excellent opportunity for a sermon, but at present I
will trouble you to hold your tongue and to tender me your sword.”
With great enjoyment he noted the spasm of pain that passed over his
captive’s face as he reluctantly obeyed. Then, signing to one of his men
to come forward, the Colonel gave sharp and peremptory orders:
“Strip the prisoner.”
And in a minute the man had robbed Gabriel of helmet and gorget, buff
coat and vest.
“Stay,” said Captain Tarverfield, who had watched with some compunction
the prisoner’s keen suffering under this degradation. “Though it is
lawful to strip an officer Colonel, you would surely leave the preacher
his shirt to serve as surplice.” Norton laughed, gaily.
“True. And since he is so devoted a friend to Major Locke we will rope
them together, the one mounted and the other afoot. And you had better
keep up the pace, Mr. Harford, or your own horse will kick you on.”
The prisoner, by a supreme effort, stifled a smart retort, and began to
consider how best to spare the Major when they were bound together. By
the time the cavalcade moved forward again the rosy glow of sunrise
was making the whole countryside beautiful, and in the sore battle that
Gabriel was waging with his own nature--in the manly effort to bring his
own character and conduct into accord with the high ideal he held, the
sight of the rising sun brought him no small comfort. None knew better
than a single-hearted Puritan how to wage that strenuous inner warfare
which makes men truly great, and the conflict was to Gabriel as real as
any visible struggle. As he marched now he fought as he had done on many
a battle-field to the well-known battle psalm:
Let God arise, and scattered
Let all His en’mies be;
And let all those that do Him hate
Before His presence flee.