Part 19

"It was this way. My uncle would have me near him at Marston. We were with Rupert on the right wing, and were close behind one of the Riding Metcalfs--I know not which, for they're all big men and as like as two peas in a pod--and saw him cut Cromwell through the throat. We were together when we broke the Roundheads and pursued too far. It was when we came to the ditch again, and found Leslie there with his Scots, that I lost Sir Reginald. I took a wound or two in the stampede that followed, and was laid by in a little farmstead near Wilstrop Wood. The good-wife was kind to me--said she had lost a bairn of her own not long since, trampled down by flying horsemen at the gate."

"Ay, lad; but why d'ye not get forward with your news of Sir Reginald?"

"Because I cannot trust myself to speak of him without some folly in my throat. Give me time, sir--give me time. I got about again in a day or two, and stumbled home somehow to Norton Conyers. And I--I met a black procession--all like a nightmare, it was--journeying to the kirkyard. So I joined them; and one man nudged another, and asked who this was coming in his tatters to the burial without mourning-gear. And I pointed to my wounds and laughed. 'Mourning-gear enough,' said I. 'Mourners go in blood and tatters since Marston.' And then, they tell me, I fell, and lay where I fell. That was all I knew, till I got up next day with all my limbs on fire."

There was silence among those looking on--a deep and reverent silence. This youngster, out of battle and great pain, had captured some right-of-way to the attention of strong men.

"When I was about again, they told me how it chanced. Sir Reginald took a mortal hurt at Marston, but rode with the best of his strength to Norton Conyers. He found Lady Graham at the gate, waiting for news of him; and he stooped from saddle, so they say, and kissed her. 'I could not die away from you, wife,' he said."

"Ay," growled the Governor, "he was like that--a hard fighter, and a lover so devout that his wife had reason to be proud."

"She tried to help him get from horse; but he shook his head. 'The stairs are wide enough,' was all his explanation. Then he rode in at the main door and up the stair, and bent his head low to enter the big bed-chamber. He got from the saddle to the bed, lay with his eyes on fire with happiness, and so died."

"A good ending," said the Squire of Nappa roughly, because he dared not give his feelings play. "What I should call a gentleman's ending--leal to King and wife. Oh, you young fool, no need to make a tragedy about it!"

Graham answered gamely to the taunt that braced him. "As for that, sir, tragedy is in the making, if no help comes to Norton Conyers. We had word this morning that a company of Roundheads was marching on the Hall--the worst of the whole brood--those who robbed the dead and dying in Wilstrop Wood."

It was not the Governor of Knaresborough who took command. Without pause for thought of precedence, Squire Metcalf lifted his voice.

"A Mecca for the King, and bustle about the business, lads!"

The road no longer showed like a meeting-place where idle gentry foregathered to pass the time of day. The Governor, with some envy underlying all his admiration, saw the Metcalfs swing into line behind their leader.

"Our horses are fresh," explained the Squire over shoulder, with a twinge of punctilio. "Do you follow, sir, and guard the women-folk."

"I shall guard them," said the Governor, laughing quietly.

Miss Bingham saw Joan watching the dust swirl and eddy in the wake of the Riding Metcalfs, saw that the girl's face was petulant and wistful. "He did not pause to say good-bye," she said, with gentlest sympathy.

"I did not ask him to."

"But, indeed, men are fashioned in that mould. I am older than you, child."

"So much is granted," said Joan sharply.

"And women are fashioned in their mould, too, with feet of velvet and the hidden claws. Yes, I am older. You drew blood there."

"Miss Bingham, I am in no mood for petty warfare of our sort. Our men have done enough, and they are riding out again. We women should keep still tongues, I think, and pray for better guidance."

"How does one pray? You're country-bred and I am not." The voice was gentle, but the sideways glance had venom in it. "It comes so easily to you, no doubt--scent of hay, and church bells ringing you across the fields, and perhaps _he_ will meet you at the stile, to share the self-same book--is that what prayer means?"

"No," said the Governor, interposing bluntly. "Ask Lady Derby what prayer means--she who has made Lathom House a beacon for all time. Ask Ingilby's wife, who held Ripley for the King's wounded--ask Rupert----"

"The Prince--is he, too, among the listeners to church bells?" asked Miss Bingham airily.

"To be precise, he is. I talked yesterday with one who was at York when Rupert came to raise the siege. The Prince was spent with forced marches, dead-weary, soul and body. He had earned his praise, you would have thought; but, when they cheered him like folk gone mad, he just waited till the uproar ceased, and bared his head. 'The faith that is in me did it, friends, not I,' he said, and the next moment he laughed, asking for a stoup of wine."

"He cared for his body, too, 'twould seem," murmured Miss Bingham.

"A soldier does, unless by birth and habit he's an incorrigible fool. I've even less acquaintance than you with prayer; but I've seen the fruits of it too often, child, to sneer at it."

"To be named child--believe me, sir, it's incense to me. Miss Grant here was persuading me that I was old enough to be her mother. I was prepared to kneel at the next wayside pool and search there for grey hairs."

"Search in twenty years or so--time enough for that. Meanwhile, we have to follow these hot-headed Metcalfs, and discipline begins, Miss Bingham."

"Oh, discipline--it is as tedious as prayer."

The Governor cut short her whimsies. "The tedium begins. This is no ballroom, I would have you understand."

Miss Bingham sighed as their company got into order. "Why are not all men of that fashion?" she asked languidly. "It is so simple to obey when one hears the whip, instead of flattery, singing round one's ears."

Joan glanced at her in simple wonderment. She had no key that unlocked the tired, wayward meaning of this woman who had played many games of chess with the thing she named her heart.

The Metcalfs, meanwhile, had gone forward at a heady pace. As of old, one purpose guided them, and one rough master-mind had leadership of their hot zeal. They encountered many piteous sights by the wayside--stragglers from Marston, Knaresborough, York--but the old Squire checked his pity.

"It's forrard, lads, forrard!" he would roar from time to time, as they were tempted to halt for succour of the fallen.

His instinct guided him aright. When they came through the dust of thirsty roads and the dead heat of a thunderstorm that was brewing overhead, to the high lands overlooking Norton Conyers, they caught a glint below them of keen sunlight shining on keen steel.

"It's always my luck to be just in time, with little to spare," said Blake, the messenger, who was riding at the Squire's bridle-hand. "D'ye see them yonder?"

Metcalf saw a gently-falling slope of pasture between the Roundheads and themselves, with low hedges separating one field from another. "Tally-ho, my lads!" he laughed. "I'll give you a lead at the fences--a Yoredale sort of lead."

The Parliament men checked their horses, gaped up at the sudden uproar, and had scarce braced themselves for the encounter when the Metcalfs were down and into them. The weight of horseflesh, backed by speed, crashed through their bulk, lessening the odds a little. Then it was hack, and counter, and thrust, till the storm broke overhead, as it had done at Marston, but with a livelier fury. They did not heed it. Time and again the yell of "A Mecca for the King!" was met by the roar of "God and the Parliament!" And Squire Metcalf, in a lull of the eddying battle, found the tart humour that was his help in need.

"Nay, I'd leave half of it out, if I were ye, after what chanced in Wilstrop Wood. Fight for Parliament alone, and all its devilries."

That brought another swinging fight to a head; and the issue shifted constantly. The lightning danced about the men's armour. The thunder never ceased, and the rain lashed them as if every sluice-gate of the clouds were opened.

Very stubborn it was, and the din of oaths and battle-cries leaped out across the thunder-roar, stifling it at times.

"The last shock, Meccas!" cried the Squire. "Remember Wilstrop Wood."

In the harsh middle of the conflict, the Squire aimed a blow at the foremost of the Roundheads who rode at him. His pike dinted the man's body-armour, and the haft snapped in two. Little Blake rode forward to his aid, knowing it was useless; and, with a brutish laugh, the Roundhead swung his sword up.

And then, out of the yellow murk of the sky, a friend rode down to the Squire's aid--rode faster than even Blake had done on the maddest of his escapades. Kit, unpressed for the moment after killing his immediate adversary, saw a blue fork of flame touch the uplifted sword and run down its length. The Roundhead's arm fell like a stone dropped from a great height, and lightning played about horse and rider till both seemed on fire. They dropped where they stood, and lay there; and for a moment no man stirred. It was as if God's hand was heavy on them all.

The Squire was the first to recover. "D'ye need any further battle, ye robbers of the dead?" he asked.

Without further parley they broke and fled. Panic was among them, and many who had been honest once in the grim faith they held saw wrath and judgment in this intervention.

The Metcalfs were hot for pursuit, but their leader checked them. "Nay, lads. Leave the devil to follow his own. For our part, we're pledged to get to Norton Conyers as soon as may be."

His kinsmen grumbled at the moment; but afterwards they recalled how Rupert, by the same kind of pursuit, had lost Marston Field, and they began to understand how wise their headstrong leader was.

The sun was setting in a red mist--of rain to come--when they reached Norton Conyers; and an hour later the Governor of Knaresborough rode in with the mixed company he guarded. The men of his own garrison, the women-folk of Knaresborough and Ripley, odds and ends of camp followers, made up a band of Royalists tattered enough for the dourest Puritan's approval.

"Where is li'le Elizabeth?" asked Michael plaintively. "For my sins, I forgot her when the Squire told us we were hunting the foxes who raided Wilstrop Wood."

"Who is Elizabeth?" snapped the Governor, in no good temper.

"Oh, a lady to her hoof-tips, sir--loyal, debonair, a bairn in your hands when she loves you, and a devil to intruders." He turned, with the smile that brimmed out and over his Irish mouth. "Meccas all, the Governor asks who Elizabeth is. They knew in Oxford, and praised her grace of bearing."

A lusty braying sounded through the lessening thunder-claps, and a roar of laughter came from Michael's kinsmen.

"Twins are never far apart, if they can help it," said Christopher. "It is daft to worry about Elizabeth, so long as Michael's safe."

From long siege on land there comes to men something of the look that manners have whose business is with besieging seas. The Governor's eyes were steady and far away. He seemed bewildered by the ready laughter of these folk who had ridden in the open instead of sitting behind castle walls. But even his gravity broke down when Elizabeth came trotting through the press, and look about her, and found Michael. She licked his hands and face. She brayed a triumph-song, its harmony known only to herself.

"One has not lived amiss, when all is said," said Michael. "You will bear witness, sir, that I have captured a heart of gold."

The Governor stopped to pat Elizabeth, and she became an untamed fury on the sudden, for no reason that a man could guess.

"I--I am sorry, sir," Michael protested.

"Oh, no regrets! She is a lady to her hoof-tips, as you said, and my shins are only red-raw--not broken, as I feared."

It was well they had their spell of laughter in between what had been and what must follow. When they came to Norton Conyers, it was to find the mistress dull with grief, and hopeless. All she cared for lay buried, with pomp and ceremony enough, in the kirkyard below. She was scarcely roused by the news that fire and rapine would have raided the defenceless house if the Riding Metcalfs had not come on the stroke of need.

"I thank you, gentlemen--oh, indeed, I thank you. But nothing matters very much. He waits for me, and that is all."

She was past argument or quiet persuasion. They ate and drank their fill that night, because they needed it--and their needs were the King's just now--and on the morrow, when they had cursed their wounds, and prayed for further sleep, and got up again for whatever chanced, they found Graham's widow still intractable. They told her that the safety of many women-folk was in her hands.

"I trust them to you," she said. "There's an old nurse of mine lives up in a fold of the hills yonder. They will not find me there, and I care little if they do. Meanwhile, I shall get down each night and morning to pray for the soul of a gallant gentleman who has unlocked the Gate"--her eyes were luminous with a temperate fire--"unlocked it a little ahead of me. He has left it on the latch."

The Squire bent to her hand. "Madam," he said, his roughness broken up, as honest moorland soil is broken when it is asked to rear pleasant crops--"madam, I've a wife in Yoredale, I. She carries your sort of heart, I think. Of your charity, pray for her till I come."

"I shall pray, sir."

And so the Riding Metcalfs went from Norton Conyers, with an added burden of women-folk, but with a sense of rosemary and starshine, as if they had tarried for a while in some wayside Calvary.

*CHAPTER XXII.*

*MISS BINGHAM.*

It was no usual comradeship that held between the Royalists who gathered in one company after Marston Moor was lost to the King. They travelled through vile roads--roads broken up by incessant rains--they camped wherever they found a patch of drier ground for the night's sleep. But never for a moment did they lose the glamour that attached to the person of King Charles. Like a beacon-light, the thought of the half-vanquished Stuart went steadily in front of them. Their strength lay in this--that, whether death or life arrived, they knew the venture well worth while.

The life had a strange savour of its own. The Nappa Squire, the late Governor of Knaresborough and his officers, Lady Ingilby--all had known the weight of harsh responsibility so long as the King's cause was alive in the North. The cause was dead now. There was no need to be at strain, sleeping or waking, with the sense that it rested with each of them to keep the monarchy secure. There was asked of them only a haphazard and stimulating warfare, of the sort dear to all hillmen.

Scarborough Castle fell, and when the news was brought--they were dining at the moment in a wooded dell between Beamsley and Langbar--the Governor lifted his hat with pleasant gravity.

"God rest the gentlemen of Scarborough. They have earned their holiday, as we have."

Michael was busy with the stew-pot, hanging gipsy-wise on three sticks above a fire of gorse and fir-cones. "It's hey for Skipton-in-Craven," he said with a cheery smile. "I aye liked the comely town, and now the King will know that she was the last in all the North to stand for him."

"Maybe Skipton has fallen, too, by this time," chided the Squire. "You were always one for dreams, Michael."

Michael was silent till the meal was ended. Then he mowed a swath of thistles with his sword, and brought the spoil to Elizabeth, tethered to a neighbouring tree. She brayed at him with extreme tenderness.

"Now that we're well victualled, friends," he said lazily, "who comes with me to hear how it fares with Skipton?"

The Governor did not like the venture--the hazard of it seemed too great--but Squire Metcalf did.

"How d'ye hold together at all, Michael?" roared the Squire. "So much folly and such common sense to one man's body--it must be a civil war within yourself."

Michael glanced at Joan Grant with an instinct of which he repented instantly. "It is, sir. Since I was born into this unhappy world, there has been civil war inside me. I need an outlet now."

"You shall have it, lad."

"And you call this common sense?" asked the Governor, with good-tempered irony.

"Ay, of the Yoredale sort. A blow or two in Skipton High Street--who knows what heart it might give the garrison?"

"I must remind you that we have women-folk to guard, and our wounded."

"But, sir, this is a Metcalf riding, all like the olden time. We never meant your Knaresborough men to share it."

Yet some of the Knaresborough men would not be denied; and the Governor, as he saw the sixty horsemen ride over and down to Beamsley-by-the-Wharfe, wished that his private conscience would let him journey with them. He stood watching the hill-crest long after they had disappeared, and started when a hand was laid gently on his arm.

"It is hard to stay?" asked Lady Ingilby.

"By your leave, yes. Why should these big Metcalfs have all the frolic?"

"Ah, frolic! As if there were naught in life but gallop, and cut and thrust, and----sir, is there no glory in staying here to guard weak?"

The Governor was in evil mood. He had seen the King's cause go, had seen Knaresborough succumb, had watched the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime drift down the stream of circumstance like a straw in a headlong current.

"Lady Ingilby," he said wearily, "there is no longer any glory anywhere. It has gone from the land."

"It is here among us. Till we were broken folk, I did not know our strength. None but the Stuart, friend, could have kept us in such friendliness and constancy. Oh, I know! I saw you glance round for your horse when the Metcalfs went--saw your struggle fought out, sir--and, believe me, you were kind to stay."

They finished their interrupted meal at leisure; and it was not till about four of the clock that Miss Bingham, who had strayed afield to pick a bunch of valley lilies, came running back to camp. The two men in pursuit blundered headlong into the enemy before they saw their peril; and they found scant shrift.

Miss Bingham, thoroughbred beneath her whimsies, halted a moment to regain her courage. "These are but outposts, sir," she said. "From the hill-top I could see a whole company of Roundheads."

"Their number," asked the Governor--"and are they mounted?"

"More than our own, I think, and they go on foot."

"And half of us wounded. Come, gentlemen, there's no time to waste."

His weariness was gone. Alert, masterful, almost happy, he bade the women get further down the hill, out of harm's way. He gave his men their stations--little knots of them cowering under clumps of gorse and broom--until the land seemed empty of all human occupation. Only Elizabeth, the wayward ass, lifted up her voice from time to time, after finishing the last of the thistles Michael had given her. And suddenly, as they waited, the Governor let a sharp oath escape him.

"This comes of letting women share a fight. In the name of reason, why is Miss Bingham running up the hill again?"

They peered over the gorse, saw the tall, lithe figure halt, clearly limned against the sky-line. They heard her voice, pitiful and pleading.

"Parliament men, I am alone and friendless. Will you aid me?"

A steel-capped Roundhead showed above the hill-crest. "There are plenty to aid such a comely lass as thee," he said, his rough Otley burr cutting the summer's silence like a blunt-edged knife.

"Then follow quickly."

The Governor laughed gently as he watched Miss Bingham turn and race down the hill. "A rare plucked one, she," he muttered, "kin to Jael, I fancy, wife of Heber the Kenite."

She passed close by him on her breathless run down hill and joined the women-folk below. And the next moment the red havoc of it began. The Roundheads saw their leader race forward, and followed in close order. Down the slope they poured, and every clump of gorse spat out at them with a red and murderous fire. Then the Knaresborough men were up and into them, and when their leader got back to Otley with the remnants of his men, he protested that "he'd fancied, like, they'd ta'en all the hornets' nests i' Yorkshire, but some few thrifty wasps were breeding still."

"Why do you laugh?" said Lady Ingilby, when the Governor came down to tell her all was well.

"Because luck is as skew-tempered as the jackass braying yonder. Have the Metcalfs had such frolic out at Skipton, think ye? And I was keen to ride with them--Miss Bingham, I owe you reparation. When I saw you move up the hill yonder, I cursed you for a woman."

"That was unwise, sir. As well curse Elizabeth because she is a donkey, and yearns for absent friends; or the jack-snipe, because his flight is slanting; or any of us who are made as we are made."

"We thought you light of heart, child, in the old days at Knaresborough. Yet none of us could have planned a neater ambush."

"It was my old pastime, after all. How often you've chided me for luring men into folly. Oh, what wise and solemn discourses you have given me, sir, on the unwisdom of it!"

"There was wisdom in it this time. But for the ambush, we could not have faced the odds."

For the next hour she busied herself with bandaging the men's hurts; then, with a restlessness that had been growing on her since the Metcalfs went, she climbed the hill again. Only Blake saw her go. Unrest had been his comrade, too, since he found himself sharing this odd gipsy life with the woman he asked least to meet on this side or the other of the grave.

He followed with reluctance and a smile at his own folly. She was standing on the hill-crest, one hand shading her eyes, as if she looked for some one to arrive.

"Does he come, Miss Bingham?" asked Blake.

She turned with a fury that died away and left her helpless. There was derision, heart-ache, pity, in Blake's mobile face.

"Is all forgot, then, Mr. Blake? There was a time in Knaresborough, at the ferry-steps, when you thought kindly of me."

"There was. I ask you for some explanation of the madness. To my shame, the memory came and weakened me years after--when I found myself in Oxford, to be precise, and heard the nightingales. Answer the riddle. How can a thing so slight and empty hinder a grown man?"

"You are bitter, unforgiving."

"Neither. I've ridden too many evil roads to remember bitterness. It is simply that I'm tired and filled with wonder. Tell me why Oxford and the nightingales opened an old wound afresh."

"It goes back to Eve's days, I think," murmured Miss Bingham.

Demureness, coquetry, the hint of tears and laughter in her eyes--all should have disarmed Blake.

"Ay, find other shoulders for the blame," he said impassively.

"As Adam did."

Again the easy insolence failed her at need. She was aware that no nimbleness of tongue could help her now. Blake stood there like some judge whose bias against the prisoner at the bar was hardening.

"After all, you owe me gratitude," she went on hurriedly. "If it had not been that I'm fickle--oh, I admit as much--you would not stand where you stand now. I remember you so well--gay, easy-going, with a tongue that made one half believe your flattery. And now? You're Blake the rider--little Blake--Blake who never tires. I see men lift their heads when your name is mentioned, and hear their praise. Did I do so ill at Knaresborough, to set you on the road?"