CHAPTER X

IN THE TRAIL OF THE BATTLE

It was long past the noon hour, as the westward bent of the sun showed, when the two boys panted up the northern pitch of the rough Edgehill. From the manor house to the field they had come at their best pace, running at first even up the hillsides, till sheer lack of breath made them somewhat moderate their speed. A couple of miles out from the house, as they headed aimlessly, with only a vague notion that somewhere to the west the battle would be joined, they came up with a body of foot alongside which they marched clear to the southern verge of the hill. Coming thither, they at last heard the rumor that, while the foot would be massed in the centre for the fight, the Prince with the mounted men, among whom served Sir William’s troop, would hold the right wing. Thereupon they forsook the foot soldiers and, heading to the northward, plunged down a steep pitch and across an open bit of ground, where they got entangled in a body of pikemen and were nearly ridden down by some straggling dragoons, and so came breathless up the last hillside. There upon the high ridge, whence for miles they could see the low country spreading away toward Kineton and right beneath them the mustering squadrons, they made a moment’s halt.

“Below here to the right our men are,” Frank gasped, without breath enough to shout. “If I only had The Jade.”

“’Twill be the enemy far over yonder in the plain, where I can just make out black things to move,” said Hugh. “There look to be a many of them.”

“There’ll be fewer ere night,” Frank replied.

“Sure, we’ll scarce give battle so late in the day?”

“There’s time enough ’twixt now and sundown to trounce them roundly,” Frank answered cheerfully. “Come, let us go down and seek our people.”

They had gone barely a rod along the brow of the hill, when right behind them, deadened till now by the yielding turf, sounded the galloping of a horse. Glancing over his shoulder, Hugh got sight of a rider spurring in their steps with no evident intention of swerving, so he caught Frank by the arm and jerked him to one side, none too soon, for the horse’s nose almost grazed the boy’s shoulder. “Look how you ride!” Hugh shouted angrily. The horseman never deigned to look at him, but, with his dark face set to the front and the ends of his scarlet sash fluttering, shot by and disappeared down the hillside.

“Curse him!” Frank sputtered, “’twas a coward’s trick; ’twas like him.”

“Like who?”

“’Tis Philip Bellasis, a son of my Lord Bellasis. I pray his comb be cut some fine morning.”

“The Lord Bellasis who is of the king’s council?” Hugh asked, as they tramped along the hilltop, with ears alert now for more reckless riders behind them.

“Ay, a scurvy civilian,” Frank said, with extra swagger; “we of the army have no love for them nor they for us. Why, his influence came near losing my father his independent command. He would have lumped us in with my Lord Carnavon’s horse. Well, we’ll show to-day who’ll save the kingdom, meddling lawyers like Bellasis or soldiers like ourselves.”

Then conversation ceased, for reaching a gully in the hillside they gave all their thoughts to descending it, and slipped and scuffled in the dry bed till Frank had wrenched his ankle and Hugh had a torn coat-sleeve to his credit. The gully ending in a small stream, they followed it down through a copse of bare bushes that snapped against the face, and so came out upon the open plain. Not an eighth of a mile distant, sitting ready with their backpieces gleaming and their carabines slung across their shoulders, they could see the ranks of horsemen. In the open betwixt the boys and the ordered troops messengers were spurring to and fro, and now and again, in small groups or man by man, stray horsemen straggled by. One such they came upon by the brook, as he was patching a broken girth, and Hugh, pausing to lend his aid, asked him what news there was in the field. “Why does not the battle begin at once?” Frank urged, and, when the man answered the troops were but waiting the word to fall on, he caught Hugh’s arm and bade him come forward quickly to seek their regiment.

At that the trooper struck in: “Best keep out o’ the press, sir. You’ll be trampled to pieces there with small good to the king or to yourself. Better bear off to the northward out of harm’s way.”

“But I am here solely to get in harm’s way,” Frank protested; and, when Hugh, taking the advice, made for a log bridge to cross the stream, followed grumblingly.

Once over, with the intention of taking their final stand at the extreme right of the line of waiting horsemen, they pressed northward across the uneven plain. They were sliding down the bank to a shallow hollow, when the thud, thud of hoofs warned them to look to the westward and there, over a slight rise in the ground, a belated troop came at a smart trot. Pressing back against the bank Hugh watched the crowded columns approach, the bespattered breasts of the horses, their tossing heads, and above the waving manes the white faces of the riders. As the head of the column came close upon him his eyes rested on its leader, and he saw he was a man of middle height with reddish hair, who rode in his shirt with neither cuirass nor helmet. Then the troop was sweeping past, black, red, and gray horses straining at a trot, and men with steady faces and silent lips, among whom, looking closer, Hugh recognized some he knew.

But he only gazed without speaking till the last horse had swung down the hollow, and Frank, who had been cheering mightily, settled his hat on his head again, with an excited, “A brave troop, was it not, Hugh?”

“It was my troop,” Hugh answered. “Did you not note? ’Twas my father led them.”

“Oh, ay, to be sure,” replied Frank, making for the opposite side of the hollow. “I scarce remembered him, and, to my thinking, he has used you so knavishly that he does not merit to dwell in any gentleman’s remembrance, and—Hark, there!”

Both halted a moment as from far off on the left came the dull boom, boom of cannon. From far to the front an answering crash sounded. “They’re falling to it,” Frank cried. “Briskly, Hugh!”

One last spurt that sent the blood beating to the temples and turned the breath hot in the throat, and they were stumbling up the little hillock for which they had headed. Still, before and on the left, the cannon were pounding, and there came, too, in long, undistinguishable shouts, the noise of men cheering. The withered grass of the hillside wavered before Hugh’s eyes with the very weariness of running, yet he found strength in him to pull off his hat and breath to pant out: “For a king!”

Then, coming over the brow of the hill, he had sight of the rough plain stretching off to the gray west, and across it saw the long ranks of horsemen sweeping forward. A gleam of cuirasses and helmets, a glimpse of plunging horses and waving swords, a flutter of banners; they had charged onward, and only the echo of their shouts still lingered and was lost in the throb of cannon. Now first Hugh realized his throat was near cracked with cheering and his arm ached with waving his hat; so he paused breathless, with his eyes still fastened on the brown dust-cloud toward the west. There came a touch on his arm, and putting out his hand he grasped Frank’s wrist. Young Pleydall was gasping for breath with a choke like a half sob. “If we had only been with them!” he broke out.

“My father is there,” Hugh said, half aloud. He did not tell Frank what he was thinking: that, after all, he would rather have a father who, even if he did despise and reject his son, was striking good blows over yonder, than an indulgent parent like Master Nathaniel Oldesworth, who could bear to sit idle at home.

“What if your father is there?” Frank panted in retort. “It does not better matters for us. They’re hard at it. Listen to the muskets yonder. Come, let us go thither.”

Hugh gave one glance to the west, where even the dust-cloud had faded in the distance, and to the south, where a slight swelling of the plain hid the sight of conflict; it was from there the tantalizing noise of firing came. “’Tis not in human endurance to stay here and not know how the day is going,” he burst out, and led the way down into the plain. They struck toward the brook they had crossed, and followed its course northwestward, almost in the track the Royalist horse had taken.

“They’ve all passed out of sight,” Frank said as he pressed forward, half on the run. “They must have driven the rebels clean into Kineton.”

“Hark to the southward!” Hugh answered.

“They will only be shooting down stragglers,” Frank replied confidently. “The day’s ours. No living thing could stand up against such a charge. Was it not brave? I tell you, Hugh, war is the grandest—”

There the words died away on Frank’s lips, as a few paces before them near the brookside he caught sight of a dark, motionless thing. “’Tis not—” he faltered, and made a movement as if he had half a mind to fetch a circuit about the place.

“Come along,” Hugh said firmly, though he felt the heart contract within him. “If he be alive, we must help him.” Walking forward deliberately, he halted a step from the object,—a common trooper, he now saw, and by his colors one of the king’s men. He lay on his back with his hands clinched above his head, and the blood bubbling out through a bullet wound in his throat, but he still breathed in short, rattling gasps. Perceiving that, Hugh ran to the margin of the brook, and, dipping his hat full of water, splashed it over the man’s face; he remembered afterward what a dull, dogged face it was under the pain that was distorting the brows and lips. He raised the man’s head up against his arm. “Fetch more water, Frank,” he bade; then, as the boy turned, it seemed something caught and clicked in the trooper’s throat, and his head slipped down from Hugh’s arm. Hugh suffered him to sink to the ground, and was kneeling beside him, half dazed with the awesomeness of what had happened, when Frank came stumbling back. “What!” the younger lad cried; “is he—”

“He is gone,” Hugh answered simply. He got up, and walking to the brook lay down on the brink and drank; the chill of the soggy turf beneath him and the cold water he gulped down seemed to wash away something of the horror he had just seen. He rose fairly steadied. “Shall we go forward, Frank?” he asked. “There’ll be more such to see.”

“Yes, let us,” Frank said, rather subdued, and so, passing the body of the trooper, they went on down the brook.

The farther they advanced, the more ill sights there were to see: horses that lay dead or sprawled with disabling wounds yet struggled to rise, men with gashed bodies or blackened faces, who were beyond aid, and others, bleeding with wounds, who had crawled to their feet and were heading for the rear. One horse, a roan, Frank persuaded Hugh, for The Jade’s sake, to shoot with his pistol; but after that Hugh, sparing his scant supply of ammunition, refused to carry on such work. But they tried to aid the wounded men, who came ever more frequently, and with them one or two of another sort, unhurt but riding too hastily to pause to speak. “The cowardly knaves!” Frank cried. “If I find one of our troop turning tail so, hang me if I do not recommend him for a flogging.”

But just then there came a white-faced horseman, who, reining up at their call, gladly gave them what tidings he could, which were vague enough, only the king’s men had swept the rebel horse from off the earth, and chased the rest of the army away, and there had been great fighting, and a scurvy Roundhead bullet had broke his leg. Would one of the young gentlemen reach him a drink of water? He could not dismount. Hugh filled the man’s steel cap at the brook, and then he rode slowly away.

Farther on, where the conflict had been hotter, they passed more bodies, and just the other side of the brook, which they leaped at a narrow turn, came upon one lying face down whose long hair gave him to be a gentleman. Hugh had bent to see if by any chance he still lived, when Frank thrust by him. “Do you not know that head-piece with a nick in it?” he cried. “’Tis Ned Griffith.”

At that they had him over on his back and found he was breathing, in spite of a great gash in his shoulder that had sheered through the cuirass. Tearing off his armor, they splashed water over him till the young fellow revived enough to blink his eyes open, groan, and shut them again. “Live?” said Frank, pouring another capful of water over him. “Do you think a man will die who can fetch a groan like that?”

Griffith’s eyes slowly opened again. “You youngsters?” he asked feebly. “Was it the whole troop rode over me?”

Hugh laid open his coat, and, with a certain grim thankfulness that what he had unwillingly seen now enabled him without physical shrinking to help a friend, bandaged his hurt. “We must carry him to the rear,” he finally ordered Frank. “You take his legs, and I’ll manage his head.”

They lifted up Ned Griffith, who hung limp and heavy in their hands, and set their faces toward the dark hill whence the king’s army had charged forth. The walk out into the field had gone briskly enough, but there seemed no end to the return journey. Again and again they had to lay the injured man down while they recovered breath; but though wounded stragglers passed them, they saw none who could aid them, so of necessity they lifted up their burden once more and struggled on. Sometimes Frank panted out a grumbling complaint, but Hugh made no reply, for his eyes were on the wounded man’s white face and parted lips, and he found himself wondering how his father was faring in the battle, and what might have befallen Dick Strangwayes.

Of a sudden Frank, letting Griffith’s boots come to the ground abruptly, began shouting with all his strength to a brace of loiterers. “Men of our troop,” he explained to Hugh, “and not much wounded, Heaven be thanked for’t! They can convey Ned to a surgeon, if such a one is in the field, and we’ll back to see more.”

Relinquishing their charge on such terms, they set their faces again to the field of battle. It was now drawing toward sundown, and the fire to the south had slackened. “Mark my words, the war is ended,” Frank lamented; “and we have had no part in it, only to tramp about and look on those others have killed.”

Hugh must acknowledge to himself it had been a grim afternoon’s work, so with some hope of brisker adventures he followed willingly, as his companion headed southerly toward the clearer line of a road. “Maybe we’ll find our troop if we walk toward Kineton,” Frank suggested. “And we could ride back with them.”

“Yes, they should have taken some horses from the rebels by this,” Hugh replied, with a nod toward a corpse with an orange sash that lay on the edge of the roadway. He stubbornly told himself it was only another monument to the Royalist fighting quality, and tried to believe he had nearly deadened sympathy in him and calloused his senses to the horror of what he must endure if he would follow this life he had chosen.

They faced westward and tramped along the road, but what with ruts and mire it proved heavier walking than the fields. “Faith, I’m weary of this,” Frank grumbled. “How much farther to Kineton?”

“Let’s bear off on the other side,” suggested Hugh, peering through the gathering twilight. “Yonder’s a bit of a hollow and it may be easier going.”

They crossed a piece of open level, and, holding this the quickest way, jumped down the slight pitch at its farther edge. As they recovered footing, they perceived close before them in the lee of the bank two bodies lying motionless, one of which seemed that of an officer by its better clothes and of a rebel by its orange sash. It was the first officer of Essex’s army they had yet noted among the dead, and, with a sudden fear that it might be one of his own kindred, Hugh bent over the corpse. Finding, to his relief, that the face was strange to him, he was turning away, when his eyes chanced to rest upon the other body, that of a hulking common foot soldier. As he gazed he thought to see a slight tremor pass over it, so, stepping to the man as he lay on his face, he shook him by the shoulder.

At the touch the fellow suddenly scrambled to his knees. “Don’t kill me, master,” he whined. “Give me quarter.”

Hugh had started back a step or two and pulled out his pistol; the man was not even scratched, he perceived, but had feigned dead. Then he noted a basket-hilted sword with a leathern baldric that had been concealed beneath him as he lay, and he noted, too, that not only did the dead officer wear no sword, but his pockets had been turned inside out. “So that’s your trade, is it?” Hugh cried. “Robbing the dead of your own party, eh?”

“I’ll never do so no more,” whimpered the fellow. “Don’t ’ee shoot.”

The craven tone of the creature harked back to something in Hugh’s memory; he leaned a little forward and studied the man’s bearded, low-browed face, then drew back with his pistol cocked. “I remember you,” he said. “Are you ready to pay back the two shillings and sixpence you took from me on the Nottinghamshire crossroad?”

“Is this the padder?” Frank struck in. “Put a bullet through him, Hugh.”

“Don’t ’ee shoot me, master,” the other begged. “I did not kill ’ee then, and I might ha’.”

“I am not going to shoot you,” Hugh replied, “but you can give me over that sword to pay for what you owe me. And remember, this pistol I hold now is in good order,” he added, for he half suspected the fellow was plucking up courage as he discovered it was only two lads, not a whole troop, had come upon him. So he stood back warily out of the plunderer’s reach, while Frank, who was viewing the whole proceeding happily like a holiday sport, took up the booty and passed it over to him. Hugh gathered the baldric about the sword in his left hand, a little hurriedly, for it was beginning to dawn on him that he and Frank had strayed pretty far, and where one live rebel was there might be others. Just then, over in the plain, he got sight of a straggling horseman or two, so he turned upon Frank with a quick order: “Clamber up the slope there and make for the road briskly.”

He heard behind him the boy’s quick retreating step, but his eyes were still fixed on the scowling rebel, whom he thought well to cover with his pistol. “Sit where you are,” he commanded the man, “and offer to play me no slippery tricks if you value your skin.” Thus speaking, he backed toward the bank, which he ascended slantingly, so as to keep an eye on the fellow. But, chancing to look beyond him, he saw one of the horsemen was already heading in his direction, so he turned and fair ran for the roadway, where Frank was halting for him. “Run,” he called to the boy; “’tis a hornets’ nest here.”

Without staying for farther questions, Frank took to his heels down the road toward Kineton, and Hugh, after one glance to the right where he saw no stragglers of his own party, ran after him. At each stride he gained on him, for Frank’s boots and cuirass encumbered the youngster; capture was possible, it flashed through Hugh’s head, and with it came the reflection that it would be discreditable to be taken in the act of plundering a private of foot, for others might not see the justice of the case as clearly as he had seen it. Then he found wit to think only of the hoof-beats that were now sounding on the roadway behind him, louder and louder, and, looking at Frank stumbling on before him, he thought what an ill return it would be for all Sir William’s kindness to let harm come to the boy. So he halted short and faced back; close behind him was one trooper with a yellow sash and somewhat in his rear came three others. How long the horse’s head looked, Hugh reflected dazedly, and would the man slash down at him with his sword and make such a gash as he had seen upon Ned Griffith? Then there was no space for reflection or remembrance, only the horse’s head grazed by him, he saw the man lean forward in his saddle, and, thrusting up his pistol with the muzzle aimed under the man’s upraised arm, he fired. The sword grazed down weakly across his shoulder, the edge slipping harmlessly over the stout buff; then the sword fell to the roadway, the horse clattered forward a pace or two, and the rider reeled headlong from the saddle. The horse went galloping away down the road with the stirrups beating against his flanks.

A shout from behind brought Hugh to his senses. He ran forward, got a fleeting sight of the rebel trooper, who lay outstretched on his back in the roadway with a grayish shade gathering on his face, then came up with Frank and caught him by the arm. “Off the road, quick!” he panted. “They’ll ride us down.”

They went headlong over the low embankment and struggled blindly forward into the field. Hugh had jammed his pistol into his belt, wondering how many seconds it would take him to draw his sword clear for a final stand, when Frank reeled up against him, crying: “My ankle! I’ve wrenched it again.” With that he pitched down at Hugh’s feet, and Hugh, clapping his hand to the hilt of the sword, stood over him and faced about. Then he saw the rebel horsemen had drawn rein in the roadway and were watching them but not following, behind him he heard horses coming, and Frank, suddenly scrambling to his feet, began shouting. “King’s men! Hurrah!”

Hugh turned about in time to see a little squad of eight or ten horsemen with scarlet scarfs come riding out of the twilight and pull up alongside them. There was something familiar in the broad shoulders of the leader and the gruff voice in which he began: “’Tis happy for you, gentlemen, that we—”

“Corporal Ridydale, have you forgot me?” Hugh interrupted breathlessly, going up to the man’s stirrup.

“Forgot you, sir?” Ridydale made answer, “Lord, no, sir. Jump up behind me. ’Tis not a healthy place hereabouts for men of our color.—Here, Rodes, take t’other young gentleman up behind you.”

After delaying long enough to slip his new baldric over his shoulder, Hugh scrambled up behind Ridydale, and the little squad headed across the field toward Edgehill. How had the battle gone, Hugh asked, as soon as he had recovered breath; and Ridydale told him the Prince and Colonel Gwyeth had hunted the rebels clear beyond Kineton. “The knaves banged our troop some deal, but we had brave plundering in the town,” the corporal ended. “‘How has the day gone in the rest of the field?’ I know not; we have done our part.”

“Colonel Gwyeth had no hurt?” Hugh broke in.

“No thanks to him that he hasn’t, the madman!” Ridydale answered. “He would fight in his shirt, for he swore these fellows were too paltry for a gentleman to guard against. So he laid off his armor ere he rode into the fight. Now that, sir, is the temper the gentlemen of your house have ever been of, and ’tis the only fitting temper.”

It looked like the beginning of their usual disagreement, so Hugh kept silent, the more willingly since he found himself tired so that even talking required exertion. He leaned rather heavily against Ridydale, and watched the field, that looked gray in the deepening twilight, slip by them, and, when he shut his eyes, still saw the field with the trampled bodies of men and writhing chargers. Then, of a sudden, their horse pulled up. “I take it we’ll rendezvous here,” he heard the corporal say. “Perchance you’ll bide with us till the colonel comes, sir?”

“No,” Hugh said hurriedly, slipping down from the horse. “Thank you, Ridydale. We’d have been in a bad way but for you.”

Then he stumbled away with Frank across the hummocky plain, which darkness made all the more treacherous, and, scrambling up the hill to the broad summit, toiled about among the scattered troops that were straggling back. “I am clean spent” his companion said sorrowfully. “I would not be a foot soldier for all the gold in the kingdom. Where think you my father is, Hugh?”

“We’ll try to find him,” Hugh answered, with what cheerfulness he could summon, and turned aside to ask a friendly-looking soldier if he knew where Sir William Pleydall’s troop was stationed. The man did not know, and, indeed, in the confusion and darkness no one seemed to know anything; so the two boys could only tramp up and down, Frank expostulating crossly and Hugh too utterly weary to respond, till at last they got sight of a figure that looked familiar in the dusk. Running thither they found it was Major Bludsworth, whereupon Frank nearly hugged him. “I never was so glad to see you before, sir,” he cried. “Where is my father, and when are we going to have anything to eat?”

Bludsworth took Frank by the arm, and half carried him a rod or so to a small fire beneath a bank about which Sir William and a little knot of his officers were standing. “Here’s a runaway in quest of you, Sir William,” he announced brusquely.

“Francis, you here?” Sir William asked, with some displeasure.

“Prithee, do not be angry, sir,” Frank protested, “I’ve had a gallant day of it. And I have not had the least hurt. And Hugh here killed a man, sir. And has Dick Strangwayes brought back my Jade?”

“The beast is unscathed,” answered Sir William, drawing Frank to him with a hand on his shoulder. “And another time you may as well ride in on her back at the start and done with.”

“Master Strangwayes has come out safe, then?” Hugh’s eagerness made him strike in.

“No hurt at all, his usual fortune,” Sir William replied, before he turned away to one of those beside him.

Hugh had to check his questions on his tongue’s end, and wait and look about in the hope each instant that Dick might come tramping to the fire. But the minutes ran on, Frank had settled himself by the blaze, and Sir William had no time to heed a boy’s concerns, so Hugh must finally take courage and, going to Bludsworth, ask of Dick’s whereabouts. “Young Strangwayes?” replied the major. “Why, he has gone back to the house we quartered at; some one had to convey Cornet Griffith thither.”

“Well, he’s left the road behind him,” Hugh answered stoutly, and, turning from the fire, faced into the black of the night.

At first, what with the foot and horse soldiers and camp followers to be met, the gleam of the bivouac fires on either hand, and the tumult of the army all about him, it was brisk enough journeying. But, as he passed out from the circle of the encampment and the bustle around him subsided, he found his riding-boots felt heavy and the going was far slower than it had been that morning. It was dark overhead, so he stumbled, and once his new sword tripped him. He put his hand to the hilt so as to strike up the blade, and then as he trudged he fell to wondering what manner of man the sword had belonged to, and he thought on the trooper with the wound in his throat, and the many faces of dead men. When a branch snapped in a copse to his left he halted short with his heart thumping, then told himself he was a fool and tried to whistle as he walked. But there came on him a desire to look back over his shoulder, and the echo of his whistle made his blood thrill unpleasantly. There was a thicket he must pass through, he remembered, before he reached the manor house; he dreaded it long, and, when he came to it, clinched his hands tight and walked slowly, while the gray face of the trooper he had himself slain dazzled up and down before his eyes. Half through the thicket he broke into a run, and, with not even will enough left in his tired body to restrain himself, plunged heavily across the open to the door of the hall, where there was light. He stumbled against the door, which resisted, and, in a panic he could not comprehend, he shook it.

“Gently, gently,” came a voice that calmed him. The door swung open, and in the candlelight that shone within he saw Dick Strangwayes, with his cuirass and helmet off, his coat hanging unfastened, and the same old half-laughing look in his eyes, while his lips kept sober.

Hugh pitched in headlong and blindly griped his friend in his arms. “Dick, Dick,” he burst out, “I have found you. And, Dick, I—I killed a man to-day.”

“Is that all?” Strangwayes drawled with one arm about him. “Why, I killed three.”