at oxford, there was expectation threading the routine of court life. the fine light of devotion to lost causes—causes lost because they were ever too high for mean folks' understanding—had cradled this good city. chivalry, the clean heart and the ruddy, fervid hope, had built her wonderland of colleges and groves and pleasant streets. men of learning, of passionate fervour for the things beyond, had lived and died here; and such men leave about the place of their bodily sojourn a living presence that no clash of arms, no mire of human jealousies, can overcome.
for this reason, all oxford awaited the coming of the metcalfs. they in the north—men well content, not long ago, to follow field-sports and the plough—were different in breed and habits from these folk in the comely city. but, in the matters that touch dull workaday into a living flame, they were of the same company—men who hoped, this side or the other of the veil, to see the standard floating high above life's pettiness. and, for this reason, oxford waited the metcalfs' coming with an expectancy that was oddly vivid. the gamesters of the court wagered heavily as to the hour of their arrival. grave dons, who happened to be interested in the mathematics more in favour at the sister university, drew maps of the route from banbury to york, calculated the speed of messengers spurring at the gallop north, and the return pace of riders coming south on horses none too fresh. these had recourse to algebra, which seemed only to entangle the argument the more.
queen henrietta maria and the ladies of the court made no calculations. michael and christopher were here, big, wind-browned men, who seemed unaware that they had done anything worth praise; and the queen, with her french keenness of vision, her late-learned english view of life, knew that two gentlemen had come to oxford, men made in the image of chivalry, ready to live or die with gallantry.
so the two brothers were spoiled outrageously, until, on the second day, kit was despatched alone to lathom house in lancashire.
"take all the quieter byways," said rupert, as he saw him get to saddle. "tell the lady of latham to hold out a little longer. and tell her from me, well done!"
rupert sighed as he turned away. he was fretting to be at shrewsbury, raising his company for the relief of york; but he was kept in oxford here by one of those interminable intrigues which had hampered him for months past. the older men whose counsel the king trusted—culpepper, hyde, and the rest—were jealous of rupert's conspicuous genius for warfare. the younger men were jealous of the grace—a grace clean-cut, not foppish, resolute—which endeared him to the women of the court. he was accused of treachery at bristol, of selling his honour for a sum of gold; it was said that he dallied here in oxford for reasons known to the duchess of richmond. no lie was too gross to put in circulation, by hint, or question, or deft innuendo. day by day, hour by hour, men were dropping poison into the king's ear and the queen's; and at the councils, such as this that kept him here just now, he saw across the table the faces of men obstinately opposed to him. whatever he suggested was wrong because he was the spokesman; whatever was in blunt contradiction to his view of the campaign was applauded. the duke of richmond, his friend and ally, was with him, and one or two younger men who had no gift of speech in these times of stress. for the rest, he was alone, a man of action, with his back to the wall in a battle of tongues.
he carried himself well enough even to-day, when the meeting was more stormy than usual. his dignity was not a cloak, but an inbred strength that seemed to grow by contact with adversity.
"so, gentlemen," he said, at the close of the council, "you have had your way so far as talk goes. now i have mine. i hold a commission from the king to raise forces for the relief of sundry garrisons. i shall relieve those garrisons in my own way. meanwhile, you may hold councils without number, but i would recommend tennis to you as a healthier pastime."
they watched him go. "the d—d young thoroughbred!" spluttered culpepper. "we'll get a bit between his teeth, one of these days, and teach him discipline."
rupert made his way across the high street, a curious soreness at his heart. discipline? he had learned it in his teens—the self-restraint, the gift of taking blows and giving them with equal zest. but this new school he was passing through was harsh, unlovely. there was york, waiting for relief; there was lathom house, defended with courage unbelievable by lady derby and a handful of hard-bitten men; there were twenty manors holding out in hope of the succouring cavalry who did not come; and he was kept here to attend a council, to listen to veiled jealousy and derision, when all he asked for was a horse under him and grace to gather a few thousand men.
as he neared christ church, intent on seeking audience of the king, and stating frankly his own view of his enemies, he encountered michael metcalf crossing hurriedly from a side street.
"well, sir?" he asked, with a sense of friendship at sight of a man so obviously free of guile. "have they done wagering in oxford as to the hour your kinsmen ride in?"
"i think the play runs even faster. some learned dons have brought the heavy guns of algebra to bear on it, and all the town is waiting for their answer to the riddle."
"all's topsy-turvy," laughed the prince. "if dons have taken to giving the odds on a horserace, where will oxford end? but you were hurrying, and i detain you."
michael explained that the king had commanded his presence at the deanery; and the other, after a brief farewell, turned on his heel. after all, his own business with the king could wait until this reigning favourite in oxford had had his audience.
just across the way was merton, where the queen's lodging was. rupert had had his fill of disillusion and captivity here in the loyal city; he was human, and could not hide for ever his heartache to be out and doing, lest it ate inward with corrosion. he crossed to merton, asked for the queen, and was told that she had gone out a half-hour since to take the air. the duchess of richmond was within, he learned in answer to a second query.
the duchess was stooping over a table when he was announced. she added a few quick strokes to the work she was engaged on, then rose.
"you, my prince?" she said, with frank welcome. "you come from the council? i hoped that you would come. were they as always?"
"my lord cottington's gout was at its worst, and he in the same mood as the disease. digby's mouth was more like a cupid's bow than ever, and he simpered well-groomed impertinences. how i loathe them, duchess."
"you would."
she turned for a moment to the window, looked out on the may sunlight and the dancing leaves. all the vigour of their loyalty to the king—her husband's and her own—all the dreams they had shared of monarchy secure again, and rebellion trampled underfoot, were summed up in rupert's person. he had done so much already; he was resolute to go forward with the doing, if the curs of scandal and low intrigue would cease snapping at his heels.
she turned from the window. "my prince," she said, touching his arm with the grace that gives courage to a man, "you do well to come here for sanctuary between the pauses of the battle. if you knew what my husband says of you, if you guessed the many prayers i send you——"
the keen, happy smile broke through from boyhood's days. "duchess," he said very simply, "i am well rewarded. what were you busy about when i intruded?"
she showed him her handiwork. "one must do something these dull days," she explained, "and it was you who taught me this new art of etching. am i an apt pupil?"
rupert looked at the work with some astonishment. the art was in its infancy, and difficult; yet she had done very well, a few crudities apart. the etching showed a kingfisher, triumphant on a rock set in midstream; at its feet lay a half-eaten grayling.
"it is not good art, because it is an allegory," she explained, with the laughter that had been oftener heard before the troubled days arrived. "you, my prince, are the kingfisher, and the grayling the dull-witted fish named parliament."
at the deanery michael was in audience with the king, whose imagination had been taken captive by the exploits of the riding metcalfs, by the stir and wonderment there was about the city touching the exact hour of their coming. michael, because wind and hazard in the open had bred him, carried himself with dignity, with a reverence rather hinted at than shown, with flashes of humour that peeped through the high gravity of this audience. he explained the wagering there was that york would be relieved, spoke of the magic rupert's name had in the north. at the end of the half-hour the king's face was younger by ten years. the distrust of his nephew, wearing faith away as dropping water wears a rock, was gone. here, by god's grace, was a gentleman who had no lies at command, no private grudge to serve. it was sure, when michael took his farewell, that the commission to raise forces for the relief of york would not be cancelled.
the king called him back, bade him wait until he had penned a letter. the letter—written with the sense that his good angel was looking over his shoulder, as charles felt always when his heart was free—was a simple message to his wife. he had not seen her for a day, and was desolate. he could not spare time to cross the little grove between this merton, because he had letters still unanswered but hoped to sup there later in the day. he was a fine lover, whether of church, or state, or the wife who was lavender and heartsease to him; and, after all, they are three kingly qualities.
he sealed the letter. "you will be so good as to deliver it into the queen's hand, mr. metcalf; there may be an answer you will bring."
michael, when he knocked at the gate of merton, was told the queen was abroad. he said that he would wait for her return; and, when the janitor was disposed to question, he added that he came direct from the king, and, if he doubted it, he would pitch him neck and crop into the street. he was admitted; for the janitor, though sturdy, was six inches shorter.
when he came into the room—that would have been gloomy between its panelled walls, if it had not been for the sunlight flooding it with gold and amber—he saw rupert and the duchess of richmond standing near the window. sharp, like an east wind from knaresborough, where he had marked time by dalliance with pretty women, he heard miss bingham's voice as she bade him, when he came to oxford, ask rupert how the duchess of richmond fared.
michael did not need to ask. with a clean heart and a conscience as easy as is permitted to most men, he saw these two as they were—loyal woman helping loyal man to bind the wounds that inaction and the rust of jealousy had cankered.
"by your leave," he said, "i have a letter for the queen."
"it will be safe in my hands, mr. metcalf."
the prince was surprised by the other's gravity, his air of perplexity. "i would trust all i have to you," said michael, "all that is my own. but this letter is the king's, and he bade me give it to the queen herself. i can do no less, believe me."
"sir," said rupert coldly, "you risk your whole advantage here at court—make me your enemy for life, perhaps—because you stand on a punctilio the king himself would not ask from you."
the duchess watched the faces of these men. michael had been the laughter-maker in the midst of disastrous days; his gift of story, his odd susceptibility to the influence of twenty pairs of bright eyes in a day, had made him a prime favourite. now he was as hard and simple-minded as his brother christopher. she approved the man in his new guise.
"i stand on the strict command the king gave me," said michael quietly. "sir, how could a man do otherwise?"
rupert turned suddenly. "duchess," he said, "we stand in the presence of a man. i have tried him. and it always clears the air, after councils and what not, to hear the north wind sing. i wish your clan would hurry to the muster, sir, if they're all as firm as you are for the king."
an hour later the queen returned, read the letter, penned a hasty answer. "ah, it is so good to see you, monsieur metcalf, so good! you have the laughter ready always—it is so good to laugh! there is—what you call it?—too much salt in tears, and tears, they fall so quick if one allows it. now, you will tell me—before you take my letter—when does your big company ride in? some say to-day, others two, three days later. for myself, i want to see your tall men come. they will make light the king's heart—and he so triste—ah, croyez-vous that he is triste!"
with her quick play of hands and features, her pretty broken english, the air of strength and constancy that underlay her charm, the queen touched michael with that fire of pity, admiration, selfless love, which never afterwards can be forgotten. she had bidden him laugh, lest for her part she cried. so he made a jest of this ride of the metcalfs south. he drew pictures, quick, ludicrous pictures, of men calculating this queer game of six-score men travelling fast as horseflesh could bring them to the loyal city. he explained that he alone had the answer to the riddle, because he was unhampered by christopher's obstinacy on the one hand, by the grave algebra of dons on the other. all oxford had been obsessed by the furious gallop of horsemen north between stage and stage. they could reach york in fifteen hours. it was the return journey, of units gathering into companies, of companies resting their horses when need compelled, that fixed the coming of the white horses into oxford. and the last of these—the one mustered nearest york—was of necessity the one that guided the hour of coming.
in the north ride, speed and road-dust under the gallop; in the canny muster toward the south, a pace of tiresome slowness.
"how long since we came in, christopher and i?" asked michael.
"six days," said rupert. "they's been leaden days for me, and so i counted them."
"then look for our folk to-morrow, somewhere between dawn and sunset."
on the northern road, beyond banbury, there had been a steady muster of the metcalfs day by day. blake, the night-rider, watched the incoming of these northern men—each day a score of them, big on their white horses—with wonder and a keen delight. those already mustered were so sure of the next day's company; and these, when they rode in, carried the same air of buoyancy, of man-like hardihood and child-like trust.
a new, big dream was stirring round blake's heart. six days ago he had lain awake and heard two sentries talk of miss bingham, of the coquetry she practised still in knaresborough, and his old wound had opened. he had staunched the bleeding with prompt skill; and now his heart was aching, not for fripperies over and done with, but for the thing that oxford was to see, if all went well. he had ridden out to spur the first metcalf forward with his message to the north. he would bring this gallant company into the city—he, small of body, used only to the plaudits of barn-owls and farmhouse dogs as he galloped over hill and dale on lonely errands—he would come into the full sunlight of oxford's high street with the stalwarts he had gathered in.
there's no stimulus so fine as a dream nurtured in good soil. blake went foraging by day, taking his share of other camp work, too; and, when his sleep was earned o' nights, he lay watching the stars instead and pictured this good entry into oxford. the dream sufficed him; and, unless a man can feel the dream suffices, he might as well go chewing pasture-grass with other sleepy cattle.
on the sixth evening, when a grey heat-mist was hiding the sun an hour before his time, the last of the metcalfs came in, the old squire of nappa at their head. and blake put a question to the squire, after they had known each other half an hour—a question that none of the others had known how to answer, though he had asked it often. "we have had excursions and alarms from banbury, sir—a few skirmishes that taught them the cost of too great inquisitiveness—and i asked your folk why we gathered here, instead of skirting a town so pestilent."
"they did not tell you," chuckled the squire, "because they could not, sir. i am used to asking for obedience. my lads learn the reason later on. but you shall know. i shall never forget, mr. blake, that it was you who brought me in my old age to the rarest frolic i ever took part in."
he explained, with a jollity almost boyish, that banbury was notorious in northern gossip as a hotbed of disloyalty, its folk ever on the watch to vex and hinder oxford. so he proposed to sweep the town as clean as might be before riding forward.
soon after dawn the next day, men and horses rested, they set about the enterprise. the sentry posted furthest north of banbury ran back to give word that the camp was astir; the soldiers and townsmen, not knowing what was in the mind of this company that had been gathering on its borders these six days past, got to arms and waited. and then they heard a roar, as it were of musketry, as the metcalfs gave their rally-call of "a mecca for the king!"
there was no withstanding these men. they had more than bulk and good horses at their service. the steadfastness that had brought them south, the zeal that was like wine in their veins, made them one resistless whole that swept the street. then they turned about, swept back again, took blows and gave them. the banbury men were stubborn. they took the footman's privilege, when matched against cavalry, of trying to stab the horses; but the metcalfs loved the white horses a little better than themselves, and those who made an essay of the kind repented it.
at the end of it squire metcalf had banbury at command. "we can breakfast now, friends," he said, the sweat streaming from his jolly face. "i told you we could well afford to wait."
his happy-go-lucky prophecy found quick fulfilment. not only was the place rich in the usual good food dear to the puritans, but it happened that the wives of the town had baked overnight a plentiful supply of the cakes which were to give banbury its enduring fame. "they're good cakes," laughed the squire of nappa. "eh, lads, if only banbury loyalty had the same crisp flavour!"
