Part 12

Beyond the hillock a besieging army of three thousand men slept in security, save for the hundred who kept guard about the mortar. These five-score men were wakeful; for Colonel Rigby--a weakling cloaked in self-importance--had blustered round them an hour ago, had assured them that Lady Derby was the Scarlet Woman, known otherwise as Rome, and with quick invective had threatened them with torture and the hangman if they allowed this second mortar to go the way its predecessor had taken weeks ago. He had sent an invitation broadcast through the countryside, he explained, bidding folk come to see the mortar play on Lathom House to-morrow.

Through the dusk of the moonlight Kit and the rest crept forward. Quick as the sentry shouted the alarm, they were on their feet. They poured in a broadside of musketry at close range, then pressed forward, with swords, or clubbed guns, or any weapon that they carried. It was not a battle, but a rout. In ten minutes by the clock they found themselves masters of the field. The mortar was theirs, and for the moment they did not know what to do with it. From behind came the sleepy roar of soldiery, new-roused from sleep by the retreating guardians of the mortar, and there was no time to waste.

One Corporal Bywater, a big, lean-bodied man, laughed as he touched Kit on the arm. "Had a wife once," he said. "She had her tantrums, like yond mortar--spat fire and venom with her tongue. I cured her with the help of a rope's end."

Bywater, remembering the previous escapade, had lashed two strong ropes about his body, in readiness for this second victory. The cordage, as it happened, had saved him from a death-wound, struck hurriedly by a Parliament man. He unwrapped it now with a speed that seemed leisurely. Rigby's soldiery, from the moonlit slopes behind, buzzed like a hornet's nest. There was indeed no time to waste.

Christopher Metcalf was not tired now, because this hazard of the Lathom siege had captured his imagination. His soul was alert, and the travel-stained body of him was forgotten. Captain Chisenhall detached fourteen of the sortie party to drag the mortar into Lathom House. The rest he sent forward, raised a sudden shout of "For God and the King!" and went pell-mell into the first of Rigby's oncoming men. Though on foot, there was something of the dash of cavalry in this impetuous assault, and for a while they drove back the enemy; then weight of numbers prevailed, and Kit, his brain nimble, his heart singing some old pibroch of the hills his forefathers had tilled, entrenched his men on the near side of the earthworks Rigby had built to protect his mortar. There was some stark, in-and-out fighting here, until the Roundheads began to deploy in a half circle, with intent to surround Kit's little company. Then he drew back his men for a score yards, led a last charge, and retreated to the Lathom gateway in time to see the mortar dragged safely into the main courtyard.

When the gate was closed, and Kit came out of the berserk madness known as war, he saw the Lady of Lathom in the courtyard.

"But, indeed, sir, you've done very well," said she, moving through the press of men to give him instant greeting.

"It was pastime." Kit's voice was unsteady yet, his head swimming with the wine that drips, not from red grapes, but from the sword that has taken toll of human life. "We brought the mortar in."

"You did, friends. Permit me to say good-night. I have need to get to my knees, thanking God that he sends so many gentlemen my way."

After she was gone, and the men were gathered round the peat fire in the hall, Kit was aware that he was at home. All were united here, as the Metcalfs were united. Private jealousies were lost in this need to defend Lathom for the King. Captain Chisenhall was here, stifling a yawn as he kicked the fire into a glow, Fox, and Worrall and Rawstorn, and others whose faces showed old with long service to this defence of Lathom--the defence that shone like the pole star over the descending night that was to cover kingship for a while.

They asked news of the Riding Metcalfs; and that, in turn, drew them to talk of Lathom's siege. They told him of Captain Radcliffe, who had led twelve sorties from the house, and had spread dismay among the enemy until they feared even the whisper of his name.

"I was never one for my Lady Derby's prayerful view of life," said Rawstorn, his gruff voice softening, "but Radcliffe was on her side. He'd slip away before a sortie, and we knew he was praying at the altar of the little chapel here. Then he would come among us, cracking a jest; but there was a light about his face as if the man were glamoured."

"I know that glamour, too," said Kit, with his unconquerable simplicity. "There's a cracked bell rings me in on Sabbath mornings to our kirk in Yoredale."

"What do you find there, lad?" asked a rough elder of the company.

"Strength undeserved, and the silver sheen of wings."

So then they were silent; for they knew that he could fight and pray---two qualities that men respect.

It was the big-jowled elder who broke the silence. "Say, laddie, can you drink?" he growled.

"A bucketful, if I'm not needed on this side of the dawn."

Comfort of the usual kind might be lacking here at Lathom, but the cellar was well filled. And Kit, as the wine passed round, learned the truth that comes from unlocked tongues. They talked of the siege, these gallants who had kept watch and ward; they told how Lady Derby had trained her children not to whimper when cannon-shot broke roughly into the dining-hall; they told how Captain Radcliffe, his head erect, had gone out for the thirteenth sortie, how they had warned him of the ill-omen.

"Oh, he was great that day," said Rawstorn. "'If I were Judas, I should fear thirteen,' said he. 'As the affair stands, I'm stalwart for the King.' He was killed in an attack on the east fort; and when we sortied and brought his body in, there was a smile about his lips."

Little by little Christopher pieced together the fragments of that long siege. Lady Derby's single-mindedness, her courage and sheer charm, were apparent from every word spoken by these gentlemen who drank their liquor. The hazards of the men, too--the persistent sorties, the give-and-take and pathos and laughter of their life within doors--were plain for Kit to understand. At Oxford and elsewhere there had been spite and rancour, jealousy of one King's soldier against another. Here at Lathom there was none of that; day by day of every month of siege, they had found a closer amity, and their strength had been adamant against an overpowering force outside their gates.

Kit learned much, too, of Colonel Rigby, who commanded the attack. A hedge-lawyer by training--one who had defended night-birds and skulkers of all kinds--he had found himself lifted to command of three thousand men because Sir Thomas Fairfax, a man of sound heart and chivalry, grew tired of making war upon a lady. Rigby enjoyed the game. He cared never a stiver for the Parliament, but it was rapture to him to claim some sort of intimacy with the titled great by throwing cannon-balls and insults against my Lady Derby's walls.

"As for Rigby," said the man with the big jowl, "I wish him only one thing--to know, to the marrow of him, what place he has in the thoughts of honest folk. Mate a weasel with a rat, and you'll get his breed."

Captain Chisenhall, who had been pacing restlessly up and down the hall, halted in front of Kit. "It was a fine device of yours, to entrench on this side of their own earthworks. I never had much head myself, or might have thought of it. But, man, you're spent with this night's work."

"Spent?" laughed Kit. A sudden dizziness took him unawares, and their faces danced in a grey mist before his eyes. "I was never more wide-awake. D'ye want another sortie, gentlemen? Command me."

With that his head lolled back against the inglenook. He roused himself once to murmur "A Mecca for the King!" then slept as he had done on far-off nights after harvesting of hay or corn in Yoredale.

"There's a game-pup from over the Yorkshire border among us," laughed Chisenhall. "Let him sleep. Let me get up to bed, too, and sleep. Of all the toasts I ever drank--save that of the King's Majesty--I like this last bumper best. Here's to the kind maid, slumber, and good night to you, my friends."

The next morning, soon after dawn, Kit stirred in sleep. Through the narrow mullions great, crimson shafts of light were stealing. A thrush outside was recalling bygone litanies of mating-time. Sparrows were busy in the ivy. It was so like Yoredale and old days that he roused himself, got to his feet, and remembered what had chanced last night. He had slept hard and truly, and had profited thereby. His bones were aching, and there was a nagging cut across his face; for the rest, he was ready for the day's adventure.

Last night, when he returned from battle, the moonlight had shown him only a littered courtyard, full of men and captured cannonry. He could not guess where the most valiant of cock-throstles found anchor for his feet; and, to settle the question, he went out. The song greeted him with fine rapture as he set foot across the doorway; and in the middle of the yard he saw the trunk of a big, upstanding walnut-tree. Three-quarters of the branches had been shot away, but one big limb remained. At the top of the highest branch a slim, full-throated gentleman was singing to his mate.

"Good Royalist!" said Kit. "Go singing while your branch is left you."

His mood was so tense and alert, his sympathy with the throstle so eager, that he started when a laugh sounded at his elbow. "I knew last night a soldier came to Lathom. He is a poet, too, it seems."

The wild, red dawn--sign of the rainiest summer known in England for fifty years--showed him Lady Derby. The lines were gone from her face, her eyes were soft and trustful, as a maid's eyes are; it did not seem possible that she had withstood a year of siege.

"I was just thanking God," she explained, "that picked men come my way so often. There are so many Rigbys in this world, and minorities need all their strength."

She was so soft of voice, so full of the fragrance which a woman here and there gives out to hearten roughened men, that Kit began to walk in fairyland. So had Captain Chisenhall walked long since, Rawstorn and the other officers, the private soldiery, because the Lady of Lathom was strong, courageous, and secure.

"How have you kept heart so long?" asked Kit, his boy's heedless pity roused afresh.

"And you, sir--how have you kept heart so long?" she laughed.

"Oh, I was astride a horse, plying a sword or what not. It was all easy-going; but for you here----"

"For me there was the bigger venture. You have only one right hand for the spear. I have control of scores. My dear soldiery are pleased to love me--I know not why--and power is sweet. You will believe, sir, that all this is pastime to me."

Yet her voice broke. Tired folk know tired folk when they are climbing the same hill of sadness; and Kit touched her on the arm. "Rough pastime, I should call it," he said, "and you a woman."

She gathered her courage again. Laughter played about her charitable, wide mouth.

"You're in love, Mr. Metcalf--finely in love, I think, with some chit of a girl who may or may not deserve it. There was a reverence in your voice when you spoke of women."

Kit's face was red with confession of his guilt. "There's none else for me," he said.

"Ah, then, I'm disappointed. This zeal last night--it was not for the King, after all. It was because some woman tempted you to do great deeds for her own pretty sake.'

"We've been King's men at Nappa since time began," said Kit stubbornly. "My father has sounded a trumpet from Yoredale down to Oxford. All England knows us stalwart for the King."

Lady Derby allowed herself a moment's happiness. Here was a man who had no shams, no glance forward or behind to see where his loyalty would take him. There was nothing mercantile about him, and, in these muddled times, that was so much to be thankful for.

"Believe me," she said very gently, "I know your breed. Believe me, too, when I say that I am older than you--some of the keen, blue dawn-lights lost to me, but other beauties staying on--and I ask you, when you meet your wide-eyed maid again, to put it to the question."

"I've done that already."

Again laughter crept round Lady Derby's mouth. "I meant a deeper question, sir. Ask her whether she had rather wed you and live at ease, or see you die because the King commands."

"She would choose death for me--I should not love her else."

"One does not know. There are men and women who have that view of life. They are few. Put it to the question. Now I must go indoors, sir, to see that breakfast is readying for these good men of mine. Pluck is a fine gift, but it needs ample rations."

Kit watched her go. He was amazed by her many-sidedness. One moment tranquil, fresh from her dawn-prayers; the next a woman of the world, giving him motherly advice; and then the busy housewife, attentive to the needs of hungry men. Like Strafford, whose head was in the losing, she was in all things thorough.

He went up to the ramparts by and by. The sentry, recognising him as one who had shared the sortie over-night, saluted with a pleasant grin. Kit, as he looked down on the trenches, the many tokens of a siege that was no child's play, thought again of Lady Derby, her incredible, suave courage. Then he fell to thinking of Joan, yonder in the North. She, too, was firm for the cause; it was absurd to suggest doubt of that. Whether she cared for him or no, she would be glad to see him die in the King's service.

He was in the middle of a high dream--all made up of gallop, and a death wound, and Joan weeping pleasant tears above his prostrate body--when there came a sharp, smoky uproar from the trenches, and a bullet plucked his hat away.

"Comes of rearing your head against the sky," said the sentry impassively; "but then they're no marksmen, these whelps of Rigby's."

Another bullet went wide of Kit, a third whistled past his left cheek; so that he yielded to common sense at last, and stooped under shelter of the parapet. The besiegers then brought other artillery to bear. A harsh, resonant voice came down-wind to them:

"Hear the news, you dandies of Lady Derby's! Sir Thomas Fairfax has routed your men at Selby. Cromwell is busy in the east. Three of our armies have surrounded your Duke of Newcastle in York. Is that enough for my lady to breakfast on, or would you have further news?"

The sentry--old, taciturn, and accustomed through long months to this warfare of the tongue--bided his time. He knew the habits of these spokesmen of Rigby's. When no answer came from the ramparts, further taunts and foul abuse swept upward from below. Still there was no reply, till the man, in a fierce rage of his own making, got up and showed head and shoulders above the trench. The sentry fired, without haste.

"One less," he growled. "It's queer to see a man go round and round like a spinning top before he tumbles out of sight."

"Was his news true?" asked Kit, dismayed by the tidings.

"Ah, that's to prove. Liars speak truth now and then. Stands to reason they must break into truth, just time and time, by chance."

Kit left the rampart presently, and found a hungry company of men at breakfast.

"Why so grave, Mr. Metcalf?" laughed Lady Derby, who was serving porridge from a great bowl of earthenware. "You are hungry, doubtless. There's nothing else brings such gravity as yours to a man's face."

"I was thinking of last night's sortie," said Kit.

"So that hunger, too, grows on you as on my other gentlemen? But, indeed, we propose to rest to-day. Even we have had enough, I think."

He told them the news shouted from the trenches. Rough-riding, zeal, and youth had given him a persuasiveness of his own. "The news may be true or false," he said, looking down at them from his full height; "but, either way, it will put heart into the enemy. By your leave, we must harass them."

He had his way, and, knowing it, sat down to a breakfast that astonished all onlookers.

"I find many kinds of admiration for you, sir," drawled Captain Chisenhall, "but especially, I think, for your gift of feeding that fine bulk of yours."

"I'm just like my own homeland in Yoredale," assented Kit; "it needs feeding if strong crops are to follow."

That night they made three sorties on the trenches, five on the next, and for a week they kept the pace. A few of the garrison were killed, more were wounded, but speed and fury made up for loss of numbers, and Colonel Rigby sent a messenger galloping to Manchester for help in need. The besiegers, he explained, were so harassed that they were dropping in the trenches, not from gun-fire, but from lack of sleep.

The sentries on the walls had no chance nowadays to pick off orators who rose from cover of the trenches to shout ill tidings at them. From their vantage-ground on the ramparts they could hear, instead, the oaths and uproar of a disaffected soldiery who voiced their grievances.

On the seventh morning, an hour before noon, a man came into Lathom, wet from the moat, as Kit had been on his arrival here. He told them that Prince Rupert, the Earl of Derby with him, had crossed the Cheshire border, marching to the relief of Lathom.

"So," said Captain Chisenhall, "we'll give them one last sortie before the frolic ends."

Lady Derby smiled pleasantly. "That is your work, gentlemen. Mine is to get to my knees, to thank God that my husband is so near to me."

When they sortied that night, they found empty trenches. The moonlight showed them only the disorder--a disorder unsavoury to the nostrils--that attended a forsaken camp. One man they found with a broken leg, who had been left in the rear of a sharp retreat. He had been bullied by Rigby, it appeared, and the rancour bit deeper than the trouble of his broken limb. He told them that Rigby, and what were left of his three thousand, had pushed down to Bolton, and he expressed a hope--not pious--that all the Cavaliers in England would light a bonfire round him there.

When they gathered for the return to Lathom, the futility about them of hunters who have found no red fox to chase, Kit saluted Captain Chisenhall. "My regards to Lady Derby," he explained; "tell her I'm no longer needed here at Lathom. Tell her that kin calls to kin, and where Rupert is, the Metcalfs are. I go to warn them that Rigby lies in Bolton."

"Good," said Chisenhall. "Rigby has lied in most parts of the country. Go hunt the weasel, you young hot-head."

When they returned, Lady Derby asked where Kit Metcalf was, and they told her. "Gentlemen," she said, with that odd, infectious laugh of hers, "I have no favourites, but, if I had, it is Kit Metcalf I would choose to bring Prince Rupert here. There's the light of youth about him."

"There is," said Chisenhall. "I lost it years ago, and nothing else in life makes up for it--except a sortie."

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*A STANLEY FOR THE KING.*

Christopher Metcalf had learned the way of hazard, the need to say little and hear all. As he rode from Lathom House through the summer's dawn, the land was full of blandishment. Last night's heavy rain had brought keen scents to birth--of primrose and leafage in the lanes, of wallflowers in the homestead gardens that he passed. Scents tempt a man to retrospect, and he wondered how it was faring with Joan--remembered the nearness of her and the fragrance, as they roamed the Yoredale hills together in other springs.

He put blandishment aside. There was no before or after for him--simply the plain road ahead. Wherever he found a countryman to greet, he drew rein and passed the time of day, and got into talk with him. Before he had covered six miles, he learned that Rigby, with the three thousand men withdrawn from the siege of Lathom, had in fact retreated behind the walls of Bolton, and that the town was strongly fortified. A mile further on his horse cast a shoe, and, while he waited at the door of a wayside smithy, he joined a company of gossips seated on the bench outside.

"Thanks be, the Lady o' Lathom is safe," said a grey old shepherd.

"A rare game-bird, she," assented the jolly yeoman on his left.

"Ay. She's plucked a few fine feathers from Rigby. Rigby? I mind the time when he was skulking in and out--trying to find wastrel men who'd pay him to prove black was white in court. And now he calls himself a Captain."

"Well, he's as he was made, and of small account at that," said the yeoman. "The man I blame is Colonel Shuttleworth. One o' the gentry, he, and likeable. There's no good comes, say I, when the gentry forget their duty to their King. They go to kirk each Sabbath, and pray for the King's health--well, they mean it, or they don't mean it, and there's no middle way."

Kit felt at home. These men were of the country stock he knew by heart. "Friends," he said, "I'm a stranger here in Lancashire. Who is Colonel Shuttleworth?"

"Oh, just a backslider!" The yeoman's face was cheery by long habit, even when he condemned a man. "He's sent fifteen hundred men to help Rigby garrison the town of Bolton. The likes of him to help the likes of Rigby--it makes us fancy the times are upside down."

Kit Metcalf, when his horse was shod, rode forward swiftly. A league this side of Bolton, where the track climbed steep between banks of ling and bilberry, he saw a man striding a white horse. Man and horse were so big that they blotted out a good part of the sky-line; so he knew that there was a kinsman waiting for him.

"Yoi-hoi!" yelled Kit. "A Mecca for the King."

The horseman shielded his eyes against the sun as he watched the up-coming rider. Then a laugh that Kit remembered floated down-wind to him.

"Why, Michael, what are you doing here?" he asked, as he drew near.

"To be frank, I was yawning just before you came. I've been waiting since daybreak for some messenger from Lathom. And at the end of it you come, white brother of the Metcalf flock--you, who have the luck at every turn."

"I had luck this time--fifteen sorties since I saw you last. Michael, you should have been there with us. We brought their mortar in----"

"Good," drawled Michael. "You had the luck. For my part, I've been sitting on a horse as thirsty as myself for more hours than I remember. Let's get down to camp and a brew of ale there."

"And afterwards we sortied--sortied till we drove them into hiding, like rabbits. The Lady of Lathom welcomed us home each night, her eyes on fire."

"No doubt, brother. The tale will warm me by and by. Meanwhile I don't care a stiver what fire shone in my lady's eyes--blue, or grey, or black. Give me honest ale, of the true nut-brown colour."

"You're a wastrel, Michael," laughed the younger brother, glad to pass badinage again with one of his own folk.

"I am, my lad, and know it. There's luck in being a wastrel--folk expect nothing from a man. He goes free, while such as you--babe Kit, if you guessed how prisoned up you are! They look for sorties, gallops against odds, moonshine of all sorts every day you live. You've a nickname already in Oxford. They name you the White Knight."

"Oh, be done with banter," snapped Christopher. "There's little knighthood about me. Let's get down to camp and see the colour of that ale of yours."

When they came to the heathery, rising land wide of Bolton, and the sentry had passed them forward, Kit found himself face to face with Prince Rupert once again.

"The White Knight brings news," Michael explained in his off-handed way.

"Pleasant news?" the Prince asked. "Is Rigby dead, or the siege raised?"