they jogged forward on the road, and the day grew hot with thunder. the slowness of a walking pace, after months in the saddle, the heat to which they were unused as yet, after the more chilly north, seemed to make a league of every mile. then the storm burst, and out of nowhere a fierce wind leaped at them, driving the rain in sheets before it. the lightning played so near at times that they seemed to be walking through arrows of barbed fire.
"a pleasant way of reaching oxford, after all one's dreams!" grumbled kit.
"oh, it will lift. i'm always gayest in a storm, my lad. the end on't is so near."
the din and rain passed overhead. a league further on they stepped into clear sunlight and the song of soaring larks. here, too, their walking ended, for a carrier overtook them. he had a light load and a strong, fast horse in the shafts; and, if their way of entry into the city of his dreams jarred on kit's sense of fitness, he was glad to have the journey shortened.
the carrier pulled up at the gateway of st. john's, and the wonder of their day began. oxford, to men acquainted with her charm by daily intercourse, is constantly the city beautiful; to these men of yoredale, reared in country spaces, roughened by campaigning on the king's behalf, it was like a town built high as heaven in the midst of fairyland. as they passed along the street, the confusion of so many streams of life, meeting and eddying back and mixing in one great swirling river, dizzied them for a while. then their eyes grew clearer, and they saw it all with the freshness of a child's vision. there were students, absurdly youthful and ridiculously light-hearted, so kit thought in his mood of high seriousness. there were clergy, and market-women with their vegetables, hawkers, quack doctors, fortune-tellers, gentry and their ladies, prosperous, well-fed, and nicely clothed. a bishop and a dean rubbed shoulders with them as they passed. and, above the seemly hubbub of it all, the mellow sun shone high in an over-world of blue sky streaked with amethyst and pearl.
"was the dream worth while?" asked michael, with his easy laugh.
"a hundred times worth while. 'twould have been no penance to walk every mile from yoredale hither-to, for such an ending to the journey."
they went into the high street, and here anew the magic of the town met them face to face. oxford, from of old, had been the cathedral city, the university, the pleasant harbourage of well-found gentry, who made their homes within sound of its many bells. now it was harbouring the court as well.
along the street—so long as they lived, christopher and michael would remember the vision, as of knighthood palpable and in full flower—a stream of cavaliers came riding. at their head, guarded jealously on either side, was a horseman so sad and resolute of face, so marked by a grace and dignity that seemed to halo him, that kit turned to a butcher who stood nearest to him in the crowd.
"why do they cheer so lustily? who goes there?" he asked.
"the king, sir. who else?"
so then a great tumult came to christopher. when he was a baby in the old homestead, the squire had woven loyalty into the bones and tissues of him. through the years it had grown with him, this honouring of the king as a man who took his sceptre direct from the hands of the good god. let none pry into the soul of any man so reared who sees his king for the first time in the flesh.
with michael it was the same. he did not cheer as the crowd did; his heart was too deeply touched for that. and by and by, when the townsfolk had followed the cavalcade toward christ church, the brothers found themselves alone.
"it was worth while," said kit, seeking yet half evading michael's glance.
they shook themselves out of their dreams by and by, and, for lack of other guidance, followed the route taken by the king. the cavaliers had dispersed. the king had already gone into the deanery. so they left the front of christ church and wandered aimlessly into the lane that bordered merton, and so through the grove where the late rains and the glowing sun had made the lilacs and the sweet-briars a sanctuary of beaded, fragrant incense.
from merton, as they dallied in the grove—not knowing where to seek rupert, and not caring much, until the wine of oxford grew less heady—a woman came between the lilacs. her walk, her vivacious body, her air of loving laughter wherever she could find it, were at variance with the tiredness of her face. she seemed like sunlight prisoned in a vase of clouded porcelain.
perhaps something of their inborn, romantic sense of womanhood showed in the faces of the metcalfs as they stepped back to make a way for her. one never knows what impulse guides a woman; one is only sure that she will follow it.
however that might be, the little lady halted; a quick smile broke through her weariness. "gentlemen," she said, with a pretty foreign lilt of speech, "you are very—what you call it?—so very high. there are few men with the king in oxford who are so broad and high. i love big men, if they are broad of shoulder. are you for the king?"
"we are metcalfs of nappa," said kit. "our loyalty is current coin in the north."
the little lady glanced shrewdly at them both, her head a little on one side like a bird's. "are you of the company they call the riding metcalfs? then the south knows you, too, and the west country, wherever men are fighting for the king. gentlemen, you have a battle-cry before you charge—what is it?"
"a mecca for the king!"
she laughed infectiously. "it is not like me to ask for passwords. i was so gay and full of trust in all men until the war came. the times are difficile, n'est pas, and you were unknown to me. what is your errand here?"
"we came to find prince rupert," said kit, blurting his whole tale out because a woman happened to be pretty and be kind. "the north is needing him. that is our sole business here."
"ah, then, i can help you. there's a little gate here—one goes through the gardens, and so into the deanery. my husband lodges there. he will tell you where rupert finds himself."
michael, because he knew himself to be a devil-may-care, had a hankering after prudence now and then, and always picked the wrong moment for it. if this unknown lady had chosen to doubt them, and ask for a password, he would show the like caution. moreover, he felt himself in charge just now of this impulsive younger brother.
"madam," he answered, his smile returning, "our errand carries with it the whole safety of the north. in all courtesy, we cannot let ourselves be trapped within the four walls of a house. your husband's name?"
"in all courtesy," she broke in, "it is permitted that i laugh! the days have been so triste—so triste. it is like picardy and apple orchards to find one's self laughing. you shall know my husband's name, sir—oh, soon! is it that two men so big and high are afraid to cross an unknown threshold?"
michael thrust prudence aside, glad to be rid of the jade. "i've seldom encountered fear," he said carelessly.
"ah, so! then you have not loved." her face was grave, yet mocking. "to live one must love, and to love—that is to know fear."
she unlocked the gate with a key she carried at her girdle, and passed through. they followed her into gardens lush, sweet-smelling, full of the pomp and eager riot of the spring. then they passed into the deanery, and the manservant who opened to them bowed with some added hint of ceremony that puzzled michael. the little lady bade them wait, went forward into an inner room, then returned.
"my husband will receive you, gentlemen," she said, with a smile that was like a child's, yet with a spice of woman's malice in it.
the sun was playing up and down the gloomy panels of the chamber, making a morris dance of light and shade. at the far end a man was seated at a table. he looked up from finishing a letter, and christopher felt again that rush of blood to the heart, that deep, impulsive stirring of the soul, which he had known not long ago in the high street of the city.
they were country born and bred, these yoredale men, but the old squire had taught them how to meet sharp emergencies, and especially this of standing in the presence. their obeisance was faultless in outward ceremony, and the king, who had learned from suffering the way to read men's hearts, was aware that the loyalty of these two—the inner loyalty—was a thing spiritual and alive.
the queen, for her part, stood aside, diverted by the welcome comedy. these giants with the simple hearts had learned her husband's name.
"i am told that you seek prince rupert—that you are lately come from york?" said the king.
he had the gift—one not altogether free from peril—that he accepted or disdained men by instinct; there were no half measures in his greetings. little by little christopher and michael found themselves at ease. the king asked greedily for news of york. they had news to give. every word they spoke rang true to the shifting issues of the warfare in the northern county. it was plain, moreover, that they had a single purpose—to find rupert and to bring him into the thick of tumult where men were crying for this happy firebrand.
the king glanced across at henrietta maria. they did not know, these metcalfs, what jealousies and slanders and pin-pricks of women's tongues were keeping rupert here in oxford. they did not know that charles himself, wearied by long iteration of gossip dinned into his ears, was doubting the good faith of his nephew, that he would give him no commission to raise forces and ride out. the king and queen got little solace from their glance of question; both were so overstrained with the trouble of the times, so set about by wagging tongues that ought to have been cut out by the common hangman, that they could not rid themselves at once of doubt. and the pity of it was that both loved rupert, warmed to the pluck of his exploits in the field, and knew him for a gentleman proved through and through.
"speak of york again," said the king. "london is nothing to me, save an overgrown, dull town whose people do not know their minds. next to oxford, in my heart, lies york. if that goes, gentlemen, i'm widowed of a bride." he was tired, and the stimulus of this hale, red-blooded loyalty from yoredale moved him from the grave reticence that was eating his strength away. "it is music to me to hear of york. from of old it was turbulent and chivalrous. it rears strong men, and ladies with the smell of lavender about them. talk to me of the good city."
so then michael, forgetting where he stood, told the full tale of his journeying to york. and the queen laughed—the pleasant, easy laughter of the french—when he explained the share a camp-follower's donkey had had in the wild escapade.
"you will present the donkey to me," she said. "when all is well again, and we come to praise york for the part it took in holding yorkshire for the king, you will present that donkey to me."
and then the king laughed, suddenly, infectiously; and his queen was glad, for she knew that he, too, had had too little recreation of this sort. they went apart, these two, like any usual couple who were mated happily and had no secrets from each other.
"how they bring the clean breath of the country to one," said charles. "before they came, it seemed so sure that rupert was all they said of him."
"it was i who made you credit rumours," she broke in, pretty and desolate in the midst of her french contrition. "i was so weary, and gossip laid siege to me hour by hour, and i yielded. and all the while i knew it false. i tell you, i love the sound of rupert's step. he treads so firmly, and holds his head so high."
the king touched her on the arm with a deference and a friendship that in themselves were praise of this good wife of his. then he went to the writing-table, wrote and sealed a letter, and put it into michael's hands.
"go, find the prince," he said, "and give him this. he is to be found at this hour, i believe, in the tennis-court. and when you next see the squire of nappa tell him the king knows what the riding metcalfs venture for the cause."
seeing kit hesitate and glance at him with boyish candour, the king asked if he had some favour to request. and the lad explained that he wished only to understand how it came that the riding metcalfs were so well known to his majesty.
"we have done so little," he finished; "and the north lies so far away."
the king paced up and down the room. the fresh air these men had brought into the confinement of his days at oxford seemed again to put restlessness, the need of hard gallops, into his soul.
"no land lies far away," he said sharply, "that breeds honest men, with arms to strike shrewd blows. did you fancy that a company of horsemen could light the north with battle, could put superstitious terror into the hearts of malcontents, and not be known? gentlemen, are you so simple that you think we do not know what you did at otley bridge—at ripley, when the moon shone on the greening corn—at bingley, where you slew them in the moorland wood? it is not only ill news that travels fast, and the prince, my nephew, never lets me rest for talk of you."
to their credit, the metcalfs bore it well. bewildered by this royal knowledge of their deeds, ashamed and diffident because they had done so little in the north, save ride at constant hazard, they let no sign escape them that their hearts were beating fast.
the king asked too much of himself and others, maybe, stood head and shoulders above the barter and cold common sense of everyday. the metcalf spirit was his own, and through the dust and strife he talked with them, as if he met friends in a garden where no eavesdroppers were busy.
they went out by and by, the queen insisting, with her gay, french laugh, that the donkey should be presented to her later on. they found themselves in the street, with its pageantry of busy folk.
"well, kit," asked michael. "we've fought for the king, and taken a wound or so. now we've seen him in the flesh. how big is he, when dreams end?"
"as big as dawn over yoredale pastures. i never thought to meet his like."
"so! you're impulsive, lad, and always were, but i half believe you."
they came again into the high street. it was not long, so far as time went, since these nappa men had fancied, in their innocence, that because a messenger rode out to summon them to skipton, the king and all england must also know of them. now the king did know of them, it seemed. six months of skirmish, ambush, headlong gallops against odds, had put their names in all men's mouths. quietly, with a sense of wonder, they tested the wine known as fame, and the flavour of it had a sweetness as of spring before the languor of full summer comes.
"we were strangers here an hour since," said kit, watching the folk pass, "and now we come from court."
"what did i tell you, babe christopher, when i tried in yoredale to lick your dreaming into shape? life's the most diverting muddle. one hour going on foot, the next riding a high horse. we'd best find the tennis-court before the king's message cools."
a passer-by told them where to find the place. the door was open to the may sunlight, and, without ceremony or thought of it, they passed inside. prince rupert was playing a hard game with his brother maurice. neither heard the metcalfs enter; in the blood of each was the crying need for day-long activity—in the open, if possible, and, failing that, within the closed walls of the tennis-court. the sweat dripped from the players as they fought a well-matched game; then rupert tossed his racquet up.
"i win, maurice," he said, as if he had conquered a whole roundhead army.
"it is all we do in these dull times, rupert—to win aces from each other. we're tied here by the heels. there's the width of england to go fighting in, and they will not let us."
rupert, turning to find the big surcoat that should hide his frivolous attire between the street and his lodging, saw the two metcalfs standing there. he liked their bigness, liked the tan of weather and great hardship that had dyed their faces to the likeness of a mellowed wall of brick. yet suspicion came easily to him, after long association with the intrigues of the court at oxford, and instinctively he reached down for the sword that was not there, just as michael had done when he came dripping from ouse river into york.
"you are prince rupert?" said michael. "the king sends this letter to you."
rupert broke the seal. when he had read the few lines written carelessly and at speed, his face cleared. "maurice," he said, "we need play no more tennis. here's our commission to raise forces for the relief of york."
he was a changed man. since boyhood, war had been work and recreation both to him. in his youth there had been the winter queen, his widowed mother, beset by intrigue and disaster, with only one knightly man about her, the grave earl of craven, who was watch-dog and worshipper. craven, hard-bitten, knowledgeable, with the strength of the grey burnsall fells in the bone and muscle of him, had taught rupert the beginnings of the need for warfare, had sown the first seeds of that instinct for cavalry attack which had made rupert's horsemanship a living fear wherever the roundheads met them. first, he had had the dream of fighting for his mother's honour; when that was denied him he had come into the thick of trouble here in england, to fight for king charles and the faith. and then had come the cold suspicion of these days at oxford, the eating inward of a consuming fire, the playing at tennis because life offered no diversion otherwise. it is not easy to be denied full service to one's king because the tongues of interlopers are barbed with venom, and these weeks of inaction here had been eating into his soul like rust.
the first glow of surprise over, rupert's face showed the underlying gravity that was seldom far from it. the grace of the man was rooted in a rugged strength, and even the charm of person which none denied was the charm of a hillside pasture field, flowers and green grass above, but underneath the unyielding rock.
"maurice, these gentlemen are two of squire metcalf's lambs," he said, "so the king's letter says. for that matter, they carry their credentials in their faces."
"tell us just how the fight went at otley bridge," said maurice, with young enthusiasm. "we have heard so many versions of the tale."
"it was nothing," asserted kit, still astonished to find their exploits known wherever they met cavaliers. "sir thomas fairfax came back one evening from a skirmish to find we held the bridge. he had five-score men, and we had fifty. it was a good fight while it lasted. forty of our men brought back wounds to ripley; but we come of a healthy stock, and not a limb was lost."
rupert had no easy-going outlook on his fellows; his way of life did not permit such luxury. he was aware that rumour had not lied for once—that the magic of the metcalf name, filtering down from yorkshire through many runnels and side-channels, was no will-o'-wisp. two of the clan were here, and one of them had told a soldier's tale in a soldier's way, not boasting of the thirty men of fairfax's they had left for dead at otley bridge.
"i shall be for ever in your debt," he said impassively, "if you will answer me a riddle that has long been troubling me. who taught you metcalfs the strength of cavalry, lightly horsed and attacking at the gallop?"
"faith, we were never taught it," laughed michael. "it just came to us as the corn sprouts or the lark sings. the old grey kirk had something to do with it, maybe, though i yawned through many a sermon about serving god and honouring the king. one remembers these little matters afterwards."
"one does, undoubtedly," said rupert. "now, sir," he went on, after a grave silence, "i have a great desire. i'm commissioned to raise forces for the relief of york, and i want you men of yoredale for my first recruits. they are already busy in the north, you'll say. yes, but i need them here. six-score of your breed here among us, or as many as their wounds permit to ride, would bring the laggards in."
"with you here?" said kit impulsively. "the laggards should be stirred without our help."
"by your leave, they are tiring of me here in oxford. the tales of your doings in the north are whetting jaded appetites. bring your big men south on their white horses, and show the city what it covets. i'll send a horseman to york within the hour."
"that need not be," said michael. "we wasted a whole night in banbury, and your messenger need ride no further than that town, i fancy. the first of our outposts should be there by now."
"you will explain, sir," put in rupert, with grave question.
"it is simple enough. six-score men—and i think all of them will ride, wounded or no—cover a good deal of country, set two miles apart. that was my father's planning of our journey south—a horseman playing sentry, on a fresh horse, at every stage, until we sent news that you were coming to the relief of york."
"thorough!" said rupert. "strafford should be here, and archbishop laud—they understand that watchword."
the prince was housed at st. john's, where rupert had known light-heartedness in his student days. that evening the metcalfs supped there—just the four of them, with little ceremony about the crude affair of eating—and afterwards they talked, soldiers proven in many fights, and men who, by instinctive knowledge of each other, had the self-same outlook on this dizzy world of battle, intrigue, and small-minded folk that hemmed them in. to them the king was england, faith, and constancy. no effort was too hard on his behalf; no east wind of disaster, such as rupert had suffered lately, could chill their steady hope.
"there's one perplexity i have," said rupert, passing the wine across. "why are your men so sure that they can find fresh horses for the asking at each two-mile stage? horses are rare to come by since the war broke out."
so michael explained, with his daft laugh, that a yorkshireman had some occult gift of scenting a horse leagues away, and a stubborn purpose to acquire him—by purchase if he had the money, but otherwise if providence ordained it so.
"has the rider gone to banbury?" he asked.
"yes, two hours since, by a messenger i trust, he is from yorkshire, too—one nicholas blake, who never seems to tire."
kit's eagerness, blunted a little by good fare and ease after months of hardship, was awake again. "blake?" he asked. "is he a little man, made up of nerves and whipcord?"
"that, and a pluck that would serve three usual men."
"i'm glad he has the ride to banbury. it was he who first brought us out of yoredale into this big fight for the king. when last i saw him, he was limping in the middle of skipton high street, with blood running down his coat—i thought he had done his last errand."
"blake does not die, somehow. sometimes, looking at him, i think he longs to die and cannot. at any rate, he rode south last autumn with a letter for me, and i kept him for my own private errands. one does not let rare birds escape."
the next moment rupert, the gay, impulsive cavalier, as his enemies accounted him, the man with grace and foolhardiness, they said, but little wit, thrust the débris of their supper aside and spread out a map upon the table. it was a good map, drawn in detail by himself, and it covered the whole country from london to the scottish border.
"i am impatient for the coming of your clan, gentlemen," he said. "let us get to figures. mr. blake is at banbury already, we'll say, and has found your first outpost. he covers two miles at the gallop, and the next man covers two, and so to knaresborough. how soon can they win into oxford?"
"in five days," said michael, with his rose-coloured view of detail.
prince rupert challenged his reckoning, and the puzzle of the calculation grew more bewildering as the four men argued about it. they had another bottle to help them, but the only result was that each clung more tenaciously to his opinion. maurice said the journey, allowing for mischances and the scarcity of horses, would take eight days at least; kit metcalf hazarded a guess that seven was nearer the mark; and at last they agreed to wager each a guinea on the matter, and parted with a pleasant sense of expectation, as if a horse race were in the running. soldiers must take their recreations this way; for they travel on a road that is set thick with hazard, and a gamble round about the winning chance is part of the day's work.
"i give you welcome here to oxford," said rupert, as he bade them good-night. "since the tale of your exploits blew about our sleepy climate, i knew that in the north i had a company of friends. when the squire of nappa rides in, i shall tell him that he and i, alone in england, know what light cavalry can do against these men of cromwell's."
the metcalfs, when they said farewell, and he asked where they were lodging for the night, did not explain that they had come in a carrier's cart to oxford, without ceremony and entirely without change of gear. they just went out into the street, wandered for an hour among the scent of lilacs, then found a little tavern that seemed in keeping with their own simplicity. the host asked proof of their respectability, and they showed him many guineas, convincing him that they were righteous folk. thereafter they slept as tired men do, without back reckonings or fear of the insistent morrow. once only kit awoke and tapped his brother on the shoulder.
"they'll be here in seven days, michael," he said, and immediately began to snore.
