Part 13

"By your leave," said Kit, "the siege is raised. Rigby has gone to Bolton-le-Moors, to hide there. He has what are left of his three thousand men, and fifteen hundred others. The town is strong."

"Good, sir!" Fire--deep, glowing fire--showed in Rupert's eyes. "Lady Derby is a kinswoman of mine; and if Rigby is in Bolton, I know where to find the fox she loathes."

A big, tired figure of a man pushed his way through the soldiery. "I heard someone speak of Lady Derby?" he said.

Prince Rupert touched him on the shoulder. "_I_ did, friend," he said, with a quiet laugh. "There's none so touchy as a husband who chances to be his wife's lover, too. My Lord Derby, this is Mr. Metcalf, known otherwise as the White Knight. He brings news that Rigby the fox has slunk into Bolton. Best put our hounds in and drive him out of cover."

"Give me the assault," said Lord Derby drily.

"I cannot. Your name glamours Lancashire. I will not have you risk all in driving a red fox into the open."

Derby yielded to the discipline engrained in him, but with a bad grace. The Prince, himself eager for the assault, but ashamed to take a leadership which on grounds of prudence he had refused the other, asked for volunteers. When these were gathered, the whole force marched on Bolton and halted within five hundred yards of the stout walls. Then the assaulting party came forward at the double.

"Not you, Mr. Metcalf," said Rupert, detaining Christopher as he ran forward to join in any lively venture. "We cannot spare you."

What followed was a nightmare to the lookers-on. They saw the volunteers reach the wall and clamber up--saw a fierce hand-to-hand struggle on the wall-top, and the assault repulsed. And then they saw the victors on the rampart kill the wounded in cold blood.

Some pity, bred of bygone Stuart generations, stirred Rupert. Wrath and tears were so mingled that his voice was harsh. "I give you freedom, Derby, to lead the next attack."

Without pause or word of thanks, Lord Derby got his own company together.

"We fight for my wife, who holds Lathom well," he said to his men.

Then they ran to the attack. Kit, looking on, was astonished to see that Prince Rupert, who had talked of prudence where lives of great men were concerned, was running with the privates of Lord Derby's company. So he, too, ran.

The fight on the wall was bitter, but the King's men prevailed. Over the bodies of their friends, massacred against all rules of war, they leaped into the town. The first man Lord Derby met was a groom, lately in his service at Lathom, who had gone over to the enemy. The man struck a blow at him with the clubbed end of a musket, and Derby parried it, and gave the rogue a better death than he deserved--at the sword's point.

They pressed forward. Once they were hemmed in--six of them--after a fierce rally of the garrison had swept the Royalists aside. One of the six was Prince Rupert; and Kit Metcalf felt the old Yoredale loyalty stir in his veins--a wildness and a strength. He raised a deep-bellied cry of "A Mecca for the King!" cut down the thick-set private who was aiming a blow sideways at Rupert's head, and then went mad with the lust of slaying. Never afterwards could he recall that wonderful, swift lunacy. Memory took up the tale again at the moment when their comrades rallied to their help and thrust back the garrison.

Three of the six were left--the Prince, and Kit, and a debonair, grey-eyed gentleman whose love-locks were ruddied by a scalp-wound. The three went forward with the rest; and, after all was done, they met again in the market-square.

"You, my White Knight?" said the Prince, touching Kit on the arm. "Are you touched? No more than the gash across your cheek? I'm glad of that. Captain Roger Nowell here tells me that I should be lying toes up to the sky if your pike had not been handled nicely. For my part, I saw nothing but Roundhead faces leering at me through a crimson mist."

The instinctive, boyish romance came back to Christopher. He had always been a hero-worshipper, and turned now to the grey-eyed gentleman, who was bandaging his head with a strip torn from his frilled shirt. "You are of the Nowells of Reed Hall?" he asked.

"I am, sir--a queer, hot-headed lot, but I'm one of them."

"My nurse reared me on tales of what your folk did in days gone by. And at Lathom they told me of your sorties. Sir, they thought you dead in your last effort to break through the lines, to bring relief in. They will be glad."

The Prince and Nowell glanced at each other with a quick smile of sympathy. Here, in the reek and havoc of the street, was a simple-minded gentleman, fresh as dawn on the hills that bred him--a man proved many times by battle, yet with a starry reverence for ancient deeds and ancient faith.

"May your nurse rest well where she lies," said Roger Nowell, the laughter in his grey eyes still. "In spite of a headache that throbs like a blacksmith's anvil, I salute her. She reared a man-child. As for those at Lathom, I share their gladness, I admit. A bandaged head is better than none at all."

Then all was bustle and uproar once again. Men came bringing captured colours to the Prince; and in the middle of it Lord Derby found them.

"Welcome, Derby," said the Prince, "though, for the first time since I knew you, you wear the favours of both parties."

"Be pleased to jest," laughed the other. "For my part, I know my wife will soon be seeing me at Lathom."

"But, indeed, you wear both favours--rebel blood on your clothes, and a warmer crimson running from your thigh."

Derby stooped to readjust the bandage. Sickness of body was nothing. Long battle for the King who did not trust him was forgotten, as a service rendered freely, not asking for return. "It is permitted, these bleak days, that a man ask grace to love his wife and hurry to her side?"

"Get home to Lathom, but not just yet. I have a gift for that brave wife of yours."

Through the uproar came other zealots, bringing captured colours in, until seven-and-twenty were gathered in the market-square.

"These speak for the strength of the attack on Lathom," said Rupert, his voice lifted for all men to hear. "Take them to Lady Derby as a token of my high regard. Tell her that it is easy for men to charge at speed and win their battles, but hard for women to sit behind crumbling walls and hold the siege. If I were my Lord Derby, I should be proud of such a wife."

"Your Highness would," assented Derby with sharp, humorous simplicity. "I have husbanded her, and know her mettle."

Again the ebb and flow of the battle scarcely ended swept across their talk. A hot-headed band of Cavaliers was bringing fifteen prisoners through at the double.

The captain of the Royalist band, drunk with the wine of victory, laughed stridently. "To the ramparts with them. Give them short shrift on the walls! Measure for measure, say I, and curse these psalm-singing butchers."

Through the laughter of the troop came Rupert's voice, harsh and resonant. "Who are these, Captain Sturgis?"

Sturgis saluted. He had heard that voice more than once in the thickest of the onset, while Rupert was winning his spurs as a leader of light cavalry. The wine of victory left him. "A few crop-headed folk, your Highness," he said lamely. "We proposed to make them a warning to other butchers of Cromwell's following."

"Captain Sturgis, I am sorry. We have shared many fights, and yesterday you were a gentleman of the King's."

There was silence in the market-place; and presently Sturgis saluted Rupert with extreme precision. "To-morrow, by your leave, I shall report myself. I shall spend a sleepless night."

Rupert laughed pleasantly. "There's no need to waste a night's sleep, Sturgis. It was a madness, and it has left you, that is all."

Then all again was uproar as men pressed up and down the street, some with prisoners, others hurrying to slake their thirst at a convenient tavern.

"Where's Rigby?" asked Lord Derby suddenly "I have a long account to settle with him."

A jolly yeoman caught the question as he went by. "Gone away, like the fox on a hunting morn. I had a thrust at him myself just now, but missed him; and he leaped the ramparts where we broke it at the coming-in."

"So!" growled Derby. "The fox will give us sport another day."

"My lord," said the Prince, his voice grave and full of courtesy, "I give you twenty-seven standards, captured from Rigby's forces. I give you a hundred of my men as a guard of honour. Eat and drink, and then get forward to Lathom, where your wife awaits you. Let the red fox skulk until a more convenient date."

"And you?"

"I stay on here for a while. It seems to be my business these days to batter walls down, and to stay on afterwards to build them up again. This town is worth defending for the King. Tell Lady Derby that my march to the relief of York will go by way of Lathom, if I may claim her hospitality."

Kit Metcalf found himself among the hundred chosen to accompany Lord Derby; and he was glad, for in Oxford--with its deep, unconquerable love of attaching mystic glamour to a person or a cause--the Lady of Lathom had grown to be a toast drunk silently, as if she were above and beyond the noise of praise.

That evening, as the sundown reddened over Lathom House--the sultry, rain-packed heat aglow on broken battlements--they came through the camp deserted lately by Colonel Rigby. A sentry challenged them; and Lord Derby laughed as any boy might do.

"A Stanley for the King! Have I been away so long, Thornthwaite, that you do not know your lord?"

The master, as usual, had the keener vision. In the clear light he had recognised the sentry as one old in service to his household. They passed through; and in the courtyard Lady Derby was standing near the captured mortar, talking of ways and means with one of her captains.

To Kit, looking on, it was like fairyland come true. Lady Derby heard her husband's step, glanced up, and ran to meet him.

"My lord--my dear, dear lord, have you come back?"

"Ay, like a bridegroom, wife."

They forgot the onlookers, forgot turmoil and great hardship. There comes seldom to any man and wife so fine a forgetting. It was well, Kit thought, to carry three wounds to his knowledge--and some lesser ones that did not count--to have seen these two with the red halo of the sundown round them.

"The Prince sends me with the twenty-seven standards, wife, that beleaguered you."

"Oh, my thanks; but, my lord, he sends me you. What care have I for standards?"

*CHAPTER XV.*

*TWO JOLLY PURITANS.*

Three days later Rupert came in, after seeing to the needs of Bolton. He came for rest, before pushing on to York, he asserted; but his way of recreation, here as elsewhere, was to set about the reconstruction of battered walls. Christopher Metcalf, raw not long ago from Yoredale, wondered, as he supped with them that night, why he was privileged to sit at meat with these gentles who had gone through fire and sword, whose attire was muddied and bloodstained, for the most part, but who kept the fire of loyalty like a grace that went before and after the meat they ate hungrily. He was puzzled that Lord Derby toasted him, with the smile his own father might have given him--was bewildered when the men rose to the toast with a joyous roar.

"The young Mecca for the King--the White Knight for the King!"

All he had dreamed in Yoredale was in the doing here. Kit was unsteadied by it, as if wine were mounting to his head.

"My thanks, gentlemen," he said. "Be pleased to nickname me. For my part, I feel like the ass Michael rode to York--patient and long-suffering, but no knight at all."

"How did Michael ride to York?" asked Derby, with a gust of laughter.

So then Kit told the tale, losing his diffidence and pointing the narrative with dry, upland humour.

"Good, Mr. Metcalf," said Lady Derby. "I have not laughed since my lord rode out, until to-day. Where is this Michael who rode to York?"

"With the rest of the good Metcalfs," said Rupert. "I left the whole fine brood to guard Lathom from without. They go north with me in two days' time. You shall see them--six-score on their white horses." A shadow crossed his face; the so-called failing of the Stuart temperament was his, and he counted each man lost as a brother to be mourned for.

"Why the cloud on your face, Prince?" asked Lady Derby.

"There are only five-score now. When we counted our dead at Bolton, there were some gallant Metcalfs lying face upward to their God."

A sickness came to Christopher. He turned aside, and longed for the mother who had sheltered his young days. Bloodshed and wounds he had foreseen; but to his boy's view of life, it seemed incredible that any of the jolly Yoredale clan should die--should go out for ever, beyond reach of hand-grip.

"Was my father with the slain--or Michael?" he asked by and by.

"Neither, lad." Rupert came and touched him on the arm. "Oh, I know, I know! The pity of one's dead--and yet their glory--it is all a muddle, this affair of war."

It was on the second morning afterwards, while Rupert was getting his army in readiness for the march on York, that Lady Derby saw Christopher standing apart, the new sadness in his face.

"You are thinking of your dead?" she said, in her brisk, imperative way. "Laddie, do you not guess that the dead are thinking, too, of you?"

"They rest where they lie," he said, stubborn in his grief.

"Oh, go to kirk more often, and learn that they know more than we do. These twenty Yoredale men, they are not dead--they watch you from the Heights."

"My lady," said Christopher, with a smile made up of weariness, "I am a plain man of my hands, like all my folk. I have no gift for dreams."

"Nor I," she agreed. "When wounds conquer all your pride of strength--when you are laid by, and weak as a little child--ask yourself if I spoke dreams or living truth."

He glanced once at her. There was an odd look about her, a light in her eyes that he could not understand.

He forgot it all when he joined his folk to ride behind Rupert for the relief of York. The high adventure was in front, like a good fox, and his thoughts were all of hazard and keen blows. They crossed the Lancashire border; and, when Kit learned that the route lay through Skipton-in-Craven, his heart warmed to the skirmish that his fancy painted. He was looking backward to that crashing fight--the first of his life--when the White Horsemen drove through the Roundhead gun-convoy and swirled down to battle in the High Street. He was looking forward, as a boy does, to a resurrection of that fight, under the like conditions.

Instead, he found the business of market-day in full swing. The Castle was silent. Lambert's guns, away on Cock Hill, were dumb. Farmers were selling ewes and cattle, were standing at inn doors, wind and wine of the country in their honest faces.

"What is all this?" asked Rupert of a jolly countryman.

"Skipton Fair--naught more or less. There's a two days' truce, or some such moonshine, while either side go burying their dead. For my part, I've sold three heifers, and sold 'em well. I'm content."

Rupert had had in mind to go into the Castle, and snatch a meal and an hour of leisure there while he talked with the Governor. He could not do it now. Punctilio--the word spelt honesty to him--forbade it. He glanced about and saw Kit close beside him.

"Knock at the gate, Mr. Metcalf, and bid Sir John Mallory come out and talk with me."

The drawbridge was down in accordance with the truce, and Kit clattered over it on his white horse. He knocked at the gate, and sent Prince Rupert's message forward. In a little while Mallory came out, a pleasant gentleman, built for hard riding and all field sports, whom Providence had entrusted with this do-nothing, lazy business of sitting behind walls besieged.

"The Prince commands you, Sir John," said Kit, with great precision.

Formality was ended on the instant; for Mallory clapped him on the shoulder and laughed like a boy let loose for play. "By the Lord Harry, I'm glad to get out of doors--and for Rupert, of all men."

In the great sweep of roadway that mounted to the Castle gate--the grey, comely church beside it--Prince Rupert met Mallory with hand outstretched.

"Well done, friend! If it had not been a day of truce, I had hoped to come indoors and crack a bottle with you. As matters stand, we hope to slake our thirst at a more convenient time."

"There's no hindrance, your Highness. Lambert, who besieges us, is doubtless entertaining friends at the Quaker meeting-house in this good town. Why should you not accept the warmer sort of hospitality we Cavaliers affect?"

"Oh, a whim. I can tell you in the open here--No Man's Ground--what I came to tell you. It would not be fair to hide my news behind closed gates."

Mallory glanced sharply at him. Rupert's fury in attack, his relentless gallop through one battle after another---the man's whole record--had not prepared him for this waywardness of scruple. The next moment Rupert's face was keen and hard.

"We ride for York, Sir John," he said, "and I give you the same errand I shall give Knaresborough's garrison later on. Keep Lambert busy. Sortie till these Roundheads have no rest, day or night. Turn siege into attack. The Lady of Lathom has taught us what a slender garrison may do."

"Does she hold out still?" asked the other eagerly. "We have so little news these days."

"She has captured twenty-seven standards, friend, and is rebuilding her walls in preparation for the next siege."

"God be thanked!" said Sir John, lifting his hat. "There are so few great ladies in our midst."

"And so few great gentlemen, Mallory. Nay, friend, do not redden because I praise you to your face. We know Skipton's story."

Lambert was not at the Quakers' meeting-house, as it chanced. He was on Cock Hill, passing the time of inaction away by looking down on the Castle that had flouted him so often. His thrifty mind was busy with new methods of attack, when he saw Rupert with his advance-guard come up the High Street. The light--a strong sun beating down through heavy rain-clouds---showed a clear picture of the horsemen. By the carriage of their heads, by the way they sat their horses, Lambert knew them for Cavaliers. As he was puzzling out the matter--loth to doubt Sir John Mallory's good faith--a man of the town came running up.

"The truce is broken, Captain Lambert. Here's a rogue with love-locks--they say he's Prince Rupert--come with a press of horsemen. He's talking with Sir John Mallory fair in front of the Castle gateway."

Lambert's temper fired. What he had seen accorded with the townsman's view. Something quixotic in the man's nature, that always waited on his unguarded moments, bade him go down and ask the meaning of it all. It seemed to him that his faith in all men would go, root and branch, if Sir John Mallory were indeed less than a simple, upright gentleman. He reached the High Street, and made his way through the press of soldiery and townsfolk till he reached the wide space, in front of church and Castle, where the Prince stood with Mallory.

"Sir John," he said very coldly, "I come to ask if you break truce by free will or compulsion."

"By compulsion, sir," said Rupert, with a quick smile. "I ride too fast for knowledge of each town's days of truce. Sir John here came out at my request, to talk with me. You are Captain Lambert, I take it? Ah, we have heard of you--have heard matters to your credit, if you will permit an adversary so much freedom."

Lambert yielded a little to the other's easy charm; but it was plain that the grievance rankled still.

"Well, then, I'll give you punctilio for punctilio, sir," went on Rupert. "The King's needs are urgent I could not wait--truce or no, I had to give my orders to Sir John here. To be precise, I urged him to harry you unceasingly. I told him that we were pressing forward to the relief of York. Is honour satisfied? If not, name a convenient hour for hostilities to open. My men are here. Yours are on the hill yonder, where your guns look down on us."

Lambert's humour, deep-hidden, was touched at last. "Press on to York, by your leave. Mallory, I'm in your debt. I doubted your good faith just now."

"That was unwise, Lambert. Eh, man, the troubled days will soon be ended--then, if we're both alive, come sup with me as of old."

Kit, when they took the road again, was bewildered a little by the shifting issues of this madness known as civil war. The Prince, Lambert, and Sir John--three men conspicuously survivals from Crusading days--had talked in the High Street of honour and punctilio---had shown the extreme courtesy of knights prepared to tilt against each other in the ring at any moment---and all this with the assault of Bolton and the red havoc of it scarcely ended, with rough fights ahead, and York's garrison in piteous need of succour.

"Why so moody, li'le Christopher?" asked Michael, riding at his brother's bridle-hand.

"I fancied war was simple, and I'm losing myself among the mists, somehow."

"An old trick of yours. Mistress Joan taught it you. There was a lady, too, in Knaresborough, who gave you lessons in the pastime."

"But this Captain Lambert is besieging Skipton, and Mallory defends it, and one asks the other to sup with him when the affair is over. That is not stark fighting, Michael."

"Why not, lad? Lambert's cannon will thunder just as merrily when the truce is ended. The world jogs after that fashion."

It was when they were pressing on to York the next day--after a brief night's sleep in the open and a breakfast captured by each man as best he could--that the Prince rode back to the white company of horses that carried the Metcalf clan. He reined about on finding Michael.

"You found your way into York once for me, sir. You will do it a second time. Bid them be ready. Tell them we travel as quickly as may be, and sorties from their three main gates, when the moment comes, will be of service."

"My thanks for the errand. May I ask a second boon, your Highness?"

"Oh, I think one would grant you anything in reason. A man with your merry eyes is privileged."

"I had a sutler's donkey with me in the first attempt. She brought me luck, undoubtedly--we had the like temperament, she and I--but we lost her during these forced marches. Can I have Christopher here to share the venture?"

Kit reddened, then laughed the jest aside. And the Prince, as he looked at these two, so dissimilar and yet so full of comradeship, thought of his own brother Maurice, and wished that he were here.

"Ay, take him with you," he said; "he will steady your venture. And, gentlemen, take your route at once."

"You heard what he said?" asked Christopher, after the Prince had spurred forward to the main body. "I shall steady your venture. There's a counter for your talk of donkeys, Michael."

Michael said nothing. As one who knew his brother's weakness, he waited till they were well on their way to York, and had reached a finger-post where four cross-roads met.

"We might go by way of Ripley," he hazarded, pointing to the left-hand road.

"Why, yes," said Kit unguardedly. "It is the nearest way, and the road better--

"The road even viler, and the distance a league more. I said we _might_ take the Ripley way. In sober earnest, we go wide of Mistress Joan."

"Who spoke of Joan Grant?"

"Your cheeks, lad, and the note in your voice. Nay, no heat. D'ye think the Prince gave us this venture for you to go standing under yon Ripley casement, sighing for the moon that lives behind it? York would be relieved and all over, before I steadied you."

"You've no heart, Michael."

"None, lad; and I'm free of trouble, by that token."