Part 10

As they talked, and while Metcalf was pushing tobacco--borrowed, like the snuff, from Blake--into the bowl of a clay pipe, there came a little sound from up the road. It was a rhythmical, recurrent sound.

"That is my Cousin Ralph," said Metcalf unconcernedly.

The music grew louder by degrees, till the din of nightingales was lost in the rat-a-tat of hoofs.

"The first to the tryst," laughed Blake, as the new-comer dismounted and picketed his horse close to their own. "We have a wager that your folk will not be in Oxford within five days and a half."

"For my part," said Ralph, "I have a hunger that eats inwards. Have you found nothing for the larder, cousin, all this time of waiting?"

Will Metcalf had, as it happened. Near sundown he had set two traps--simple contrivances of looped wire--in a neighbouring rabbit burrow; and, a little while before Blake rode out from Banbury, he had dismounted to find a coney in each snare.

"We shall do well enough," said Will.

Again Blake was astonished by the downrightness of these people. Ralph, who had not tasted food since noon, was sure that his cousin would have made due provision. Methodically they sought for a likely hollow, screened from the rising wind, gathered brushwood and fallen branches, and made a fire. While it was burning up, they skinned and cleaned the rabbits.

"Gentlemen," said Blake, while their meal was in the cooking, "do you give no homage to the god known as chance? All is planned out, from here to York; but I've travelled the night-roads--have them by heart, as a man knows the whimsies of his wife. Suppose some of your men were thrown badly, or killed by Roundheads, how would it fare with the message up to York?"

Ralph Metcalf turned the rabbits with nice regard for the meal overdue. Then he glanced up. "If there was a gap of four miles, instead of two, the rider would gallop four. If he found another dead man at the next stage, he would gallop six."

So then Blake laughed. "We are well met, I think. I was jealous of your clan, to be candid, when I was told their speed put us poor night-riders to shame. Yet, friends, I think we carry the same loyalty."

Their meal was scarcely ready when again there came the fret of distant hoof-beats. Another giant joined their company. In face and sturdiness he was like the rest; but he happened to be six-foot-four, while his kinsmen here were shorter by two inches. He, too, was hungry.

"That's good hearing," said Ralph. "I was puzzling how to carve two rabbits into three, but it's easy to split them into twice two."

"Half a coney to feed my sort of appetite?"

"Be content. If it had not been for Will here we'd have had no food at all."

The newcomer drew a bottle from the pocket of his riding-coat. "I forget whether I stole it or paid honest money. It's a small bottle, but it will give us the bite of the northern winds again."

When they had ended this queer supper, and had borrowed from the store of tobacco that to Blake was better than a meal, they fell into silence. The languorous beauty of the night wove its spell about them; and the fourth Metcalf, when he rode in presently, jarred them roughly out of dreams. The newcomer, as it happened, had contrived to snatch supper while he waited, six miles further north, to take on the message. He did not ask for food; after picketing his horse, he just wrapped himself in the blanket hastily unstrapped from saddle, turned over once or twice in a luxury of weariness, and snored a litany to the overarching heavens.

Through that night Blake did not sleep or ask for slumber. The nightingales were tireless, as if their throats would break unless they eased them. The Metcalf riders were tireless, too. At longer and at longer intervals they came in from the north, their horses showing signs of stress. Two miles from outpost to outpost was a trifling distance; but, before the last of that night's company joined the muster here at Banbury, he had travelled forty miles.

Blake lay, his face to the moonlight, and could not stifle memory. The sleepy fragrance, the scent of moist earth and flowering stuff, took him, as by sorcery, to a walled garden in Knaresborough and a summer that had been, and the end of blandishment. There had been no nightingales--it lay too far north, that garden, to tempt them--but a stronger song had stirred him. And there had been the same lush smell of summer, the same hovering of bats across the moon's face.

It was as if she sat beside him again--they two listening to the ripple of Nidd River far below--and her voice was low and tender as she chided him for love-making. There had been other meetings--stolen ones and brief--and all the world a-maying to Blake's view of it.

He would not let the dream go--played with it, pretended he had not learned long since what it meant to love a light-of-heart. Her face, of the kind that painters dote on when they picture maiden innocence, the shifting play of light and colour in her eyes, the trick she had of making all men long to be better than they were--surely he could rest this once from many journeyings, and snatch another stolen meeting, there in Knaresborough, with all the roses blowing kisses to them.

As he lay there, the two Metcalfs who were sentrying their little camp grew tired of pacing to and fro, each on his own short beat, and halted for a gossip. Blake did not heed them until they began to talk of Knaresborough, of Michael's dash into the Castle, of a Mistress Bingham he had met there.

"Michael met his match for once," laughed one sentry. "You know his gift of finding the finest eyes in England housed under every other woman's brows? Well, Mistress Demaine plays a good game at hearts, too, they say. Michael was touched in earnest this time. Oh, the jest of it!"

"It would be a better if they began by playing, and ended with the silken noose. Can you picture Michael wedded--Michael, with cut wings and drooping comb, seeking no more for fairest eyes?"

Blake left his dreams as if they scorched him. So Mistress Bingham had been two years ago; so she would be, doubtless, when the King had come to his own again, and had reigned long, and passed on the crown. There is a stability about inconstancy, Blake realised.

He got to his feet, crossed to where the sentries stood, and yawned. "Gentlemen," he said, "I cannot sleep for hunger; and there will be others in my case before the night ends. Can I borrow two of your company to make up a forage-party?"

One of the sentries pointed to a distant belt of wood, high up against the sky. "When dawn rides over the trees yonder, our watch is ended. We'll join you, Mr. Blake, if only because you have the most diverting laugh I ever heard, except Michael's when he's seen a pair of pretty eyes."

A half-hour later they kicked the fresh sentries out of sleep. Then Blake and they went up the pasture-lands on foot. It was a good night for foraging; every pitfall of the ground, every farmstead sleeping in the bosom of its guardian trees, showed clear in the dawn-light. And none of the three men had qualms about the business, for the Banbury country, through and through, was traitorous to the King.

They returned two hours later in high spirits. The Metcalfs asked for a good deal of feeding, after a night in the open had set a razor-edge to appetite; and the scouting-party had commandeered a farmer's horse and gig to bring their booty into camp.

"Who goes there?" snapped the sentries, running to meet this intrusion on the night's quiet.

"A Mecca, lad," laughed the driver, "bringing fowls and cheese, and good home-cured bacon--ay, and a little barrel of rum that nearly bounced out o' the gig when I came to a rutty place in the road."

"'Twould have been a pity to have lost the rum. Where are Blake and your cousin Nicholas?"

"Oh, following! The gig would not hold us all. As for Blake, he has few cares in life. Not one to have his heart touched by a woman--he. He laughs by habit, till you're forced to laugh with him."

*CHAPTER XI.*

*BANBURY CAKES.*

At Oxford, there was expectation threading the routine of Court life. The fine light of devotion to lost causes--causes lost because they were ever too high for mean folks' understanding--had cradled this good city. Chivalry, the clean heart and the ruddy, fervid hope, had built her wonderland of colleges and groves and pleasant streets. Men of learning, of passionate fervour for the things beyond, had lived and died here; and such men leave about the place of their bodily sojourn a living presence that no clash of arms, no mire of human jealousies, can overcome.

For this reason, all Oxford awaited the coming of the Metcalfs. They in the north--men well content, not long ago, to follow field-sports and the plough--were different in breed and habits from these folk in the comely city. But, in the matters that touch dull workaday into a living flame, they were of the same company--men who hoped, this side or the other of the veil, to see the Standard floating high above life's pettiness. And, for this reason, Oxford waited the Metcalfs' coming with an expectancy that was oddly vivid. The gamesters of the Court wagered heavily as to the hour of their arrival. Grave dons, who happened to be interested in the mathematics more in favour at the sister University, drew maps of the route from Banbury to York, calculated the speed of messengers spurring at the gallop north, and the return pace of riders coming south on horses none too fresh. These had recourse to algebra, which seemed only to entangle the argument the more.

Queen Henrietta Maria and the ladies of the Court made no calculations. Michael and Christopher were here, big, wind-browned men, who seemed unaware that they had done anything worth praise; and the Queen, with her French keenness of vision, her late-learned English view of life, knew that two gentlemen had come to Oxford, men made in the image of chivalry, ready to live or die with gallantry.

So the two brothers were spoiled outrageously, until, on the second day, Kit was despatched alone to Lathom House in Lancashire.

"Take all the quieter byways," said Rupert, as he saw him get to saddle. "Tell the Lady of Latham to hold out a little longer. And tell her from me, _Well done_!"

Rupert sighed as he turned away. He was fretting to be at Shrewsbury, raising his company for the relief of York; but he was kept in Oxford here by one of those interminable intrigues which had hampered him for months past. The older men whose counsel the King trusted--Culpepper, Hyde, and the rest--were jealous of Rupert's conspicuous genius for warfare. The younger men were jealous of the grace--a grace clean-cut, not foppish, resolute--which endeared him to the women of the Court. He was accused of treachery at Bristol, of selling his honour for a sum of gold; it was said that he dallied here in Oxford for reasons known to the Duchess of Richmond. No lie was too gross to put in circulation, by hint, or question, or deft innuendo. Day by day, hour by hour, men were dropping poison into the King's ear and the Queen's; and at the Councils, such as this that kept him here just now, he saw across the table the faces of men obstinately opposed to him. Whatever he suggested was wrong because he was the spokesman; whatever was in blunt contradiction to his view of the campaign was applauded. The Duke of Richmond, his friend and ally, was with him, and one or two younger men who had no gift of speech in these times of stress. For the rest, he was alone, a man of action, with his back to the wall in a battle of tongues.

He carried himself well enough even to-day, when the meeting was more stormy than usual. His dignity was not a cloak, but an inbred strength that seemed to grow by contact with adversity.

"So, gentlemen," he said, at the close of the Council, "you have had your way so far as talk goes. Now I have mine. I hold a commission from the King to raise forces for the relief of sundry garrisons. I shall relieve those garrisons in my own way. Meanwhile, you may hold Councils without number, but I would recommend tennis to you as a healthier pastime."

They watched him go. "The d--d young thoroughbred!" spluttered Culpepper. "We'll get a bit between his teeth, one of these days, and teach him discipline."

Rupert made his way across the High Street, a curious soreness at his heart. Discipline? He had learned it in his teens--the self-restraint, the gift of taking blows and giving them with equal zest. But this new school he was passing through was harsh, unlovely. There was York, waiting for relief; there was Lathom House, defended with courage unbelievable by Lady Derby and a handful of hard-bitten men; there were twenty manors holding out in hope of the succouring cavalry who did not come; and he was kept here to attend a Council, to listen to veiled jealousy and derision, when all he asked for was a horse under him and grace to gather a few thousand men.

As he neared Christ Church, intent on seeking audience of the King, and stating frankly his own view of his enemies, he encountered Michael Metcalf crossing hurriedly from a side street.

"Well, sir?" he asked, with a sense of friendship at sight of a man so obviously free of guile. "Have they done wagering in Oxford as to the hour your kinsmen ride in?"

"I think the play runs even faster. Some learned dons have brought the heavy guns of algebra to bear on it, and all the town is waiting for their answer to the riddle."

"All's topsy-turvy," laughed the Prince. "If dons have taken to giving the odds on a horserace, where will Oxford end? But you were hurrying, and I detain you."

Michael explained that the King had commanded his presence at the Deanery; and the other, after a brief farewell, turned on his heel. After all, his own business with the King could wait until this reigning favourite in Oxford had had his audience.

Just across the way was Merton, where the Queen's lodging was. Rupert had had his fill of disillusion and captivity here in the loyal city; he was human, and could not hide for ever his heartache to be out and doing, lest it ate inward with corrosion. He crossed to Merton, asked for the Queen, and was told that she had gone out a half-hour since to take the air. The Duchess of Richmond was within, he learned in answer to a second query.

The Duchess was stooping over a table when he was announced. She added a few quick strokes to the work she was engaged on, then rose.

"You, my Prince?" she said, with frank welcome. "You come from the Council? I hoped that you would come. Were they as always?"

"My lord Cottington's gout was at its worst, and he in the same mood as the disease. Digby's mouth was more like a Cupid's bow than ever, and he simpered well-groomed impertinences. How I loathe them, Duchess."

"You would."

She turned for a moment to the window, looked out on the May sunlight and the dancing leaves. All the vigour of their loyalty to the King--her husband's and her own--all the dreams they had shared of monarchy secure again, and rebellion trampled underfoot, were summed up in Rupert's person. He had done so much already; he was resolute to go forward with the doing, if the curs of scandal and low intrigue would cease snapping at his heels.

She turned from the window. "My Prince," she said, touching his arm with the grace that gives courage to a man, "you do well to come here for sanctuary between the pauses of the battle. If you knew what my husband says of you, if you guessed the many prayers I send you----"

The keen, happy smile broke through from boyhood's days. "Duchess," he said very simply, "I am well rewarded. What were you busy about when I intruded?"

She showed him her handiwork. "One must do something these dull days," she explained, "and it was you who taught me this new art of etching. Am I an apt pupil?"

Rupert looked at the work with some astonishment. The art was in its infancy, and difficult; yet she had done very well, a few crudities apart. The etching showed a kingfisher, triumphant on a rock set in midstream; at its feet lay a half-eaten grayling.

"It is not good art, because it is an allegory," she explained, with the laughter that had been oftener heard before the troubled days arrived. "You, my Prince, are the kingfisher, and the grayling the dull-witted fish named Parliament."

At the Deanery Michael was in audience with the King, whose imagination had been taken captive by the exploits of the Riding Metcalfs, by the stir and wonderment there was about the city touching the exact hour of their coming. Michael, because wind and hazard in the open had bred him, carried himself with dignity, with a reverence rather hinted at than shown, with flashes of humour that peeped through the high gravity of this audience. He explained the wagering there was that York would be relieved, spoke of the magic Rupert's name had in the north. At the end of the half-hour the King's face was younger by ten years. The distrust of his nephew, wearing faith away as dropping water wears a rock, was gone. Here, by God's grace, was a gentleman who had no lies at command, no private grudge to serve. It was sure, when Michael took his farewell, that the commission to raise forces for the relief of York would not be cancelled.

The King called him back, bade him wait until he had penned a letter. The letter--written with the sense that his good angel was looking over his shoulder, as Charles felt always when his heart was free--was a simple message to his wife. He had not seen her for a day, and was desolate. He could not spare time to cross the little grove between this Merton, because he had letters still unanswered but hoped to sup there later in the day. He was a fine lover, whether of Church, or State, or the wife who was lavender and heartsease to him; and, after all, they are three kingly qualities.

He sealed the letter. "You will be so good as to deliver it into the Queen's hand, Mr. Metcalf; there may be an answer you will bring."

Michael, when he knocked at the gate of Merton, was told the Queen was abroad. He said that he would wait for her return; and, when the janitor was disposed to question, he added that he came direct from the King, and, if he doubted it, he would pitch him neck and crop into the street. He was admitted; for the janitor, though sturdy, was six inches shorter.

When he came into the room--that would have been gloomy between its panelled walls, if it had not been for the sunlight flooding it with gold and amber--he saw Rupert and the Duchess of Richmond standing near the window. Sharp, like an east wind from Knaresborough, where he had marked time by dalliance with pretty women, he heard Miss Bingham's voice as she bade him, when he came to Oxford, ask Rupert how the Duchess of Richmond fared.

Michael did not need to ask. With a clean heart and a conscience as easy as is permitted to most men, he saw these two as they were--loyal woman helping loyal man to bind the wounds that inaction and the rust of jealousy had cankered.

"By your leave," he said, "I have a letter for the Queen."

"It will be safe in my hands, Mr. Metcalf."

The Prince was surprised by the other's gravity, his air of perplexity. "I would trust all I have to you," said Michael, "all that is my own. But this letter is the King's, and he bade me give it to the Queen herself. I can do no less, believe me."

"Sir," said Rupert coldly, "you risk your whole advantage here at Court--make me your enemy for life, perhaps--because you stand on a punctilio the King himself would not ask from you."

The Duchess watched the faces of these men. Michael had been the laughter-maker in the midst of disastrous days; his gift of story, his odd susceptibility to the influence of twenty pairs of bright eyes in a day, had made him a prime favourite. Now he was as hard and simple-minded as his brother Christopher. She approved the man in his new guise.

"I stand on the strict command the King gave me," said Michael quietly. "Sir, how could a man do otherwise?"

Rupert turned suddenly. "Duchess," he said, "we stand in the presence of a man. I have tried him. And it always clears the air, after Councils and what not, to hear the north wind sing. I wish your clan would hurry to the muster, sir, if they're all as firm as you are for the King."

An hour later the Queen returned, read the letter, penned a hasty answer. "Ah, it is so good to see you, Monsieur Metcalf, so good! You have the laughter ready always--it is so good to laugh! There is--what you call it?--too much salt in tears, and tears, they fall so quick if one allows it. Now, you will tell me--before you take my letter--when does your big company ride in? Some say to-day, others two, three days later. For myself, I want to see your tall men come. They will make light the King's heart--and he so _triste_--ah, _croyez-vous_ that he is _triste_!"

With her quick play of hands and features, her pretty broken English, the air of strength and constancy that underlay her charm, the Queen touched Michael with that fire of pity, admiration, selfless love, which never afterwards can be forgotten. She had bidden him laugh, lest for her part she cried. So he made a jest of this ride of the Metcalfs south. He drew pictures, quick, ludicrous pictures, of men calculating this queer game of six-score men travelling fast as horseflesh could bring them to the loyal city. He explained that he alone had the answer to the riddle, because he was unhampered by Christopher's obstinacy on the one hand, by the grave algebra of dons on the other. All Oxford had been obsessed by the furious gallop of horsemen north between stage and stage. They could reach York in fifteen hours. It was the return journey, of units gathering into companies, of companies resting their horses when need compelled, that fixed the coming of the White Horses into Oxford. And the last of these--the one mustered nearest York--was of necessity the one that guided the hour of coming.

In the north ride, speed and road-dust under the gallop; in the canny muster toward the south, a pace of tiresome slowness.

"How long since we came in, Christopher and I?" asked Michael.

"Six days," said Rupert. "They's been leaden days for me, and so I counted them."

"Then look for our folk to-morrow, somewhere between dawn and sunset."

On the northern road, beyond Banbury, there had been a steady muster of the Metcalfs day by day. Blake, the night-rider, watched the incoming of these northern men--each day a score of them, big on their white horses--with wonder and a keen delight. Those already mustered were so sure of the next day's company; and these, when they rode in, carried the same air of buoyancy, of man-like hardihood and child-like trust.

A new, big dream was stirring round Blake's heart. Six days ago he had lain awake and heard two sentries talk of Miss Bingham, of the coquetry she practised still in Knaresborough, and his old wound had opened. He had staunched the bleeding with prompt skill; and now his heart was aching, not for fripperies over and done with, but for the thing that Oxford was to see, if all went well. He had ridden out to spur the first Metcalf forward with his message to the north. He would bring this gallant company into the city--he, small of body, used only to the plaudits of barn-owls and farmhouse dogs as he galloped over hill and dale on lonely errands--he would come into the full sunlight of Oxford's High Street with the stalwarts he had gathered in.