he knew his men. after a rousing charge, and a red lane mown along the track their horses took, he had no control of them; they must pillage as they listed. before the combat, he could trust their pledge to take no more than an hour to dine, to be prompt at the muster afterwards, as he trusted his own honour.
it was an odd hour of waiting. messengers galloped constantly from the york road, saying there was no speck of dust to show that newcastle was coming with reinforcements. rupert's men, with the jollity attending on a feast snatched by unexpected chance, began to reassemble. two o'clock came, and the heat increasing. overhead there was a molten sky, and the rye-fields where the enemy were camped showed fiery red under the lash of a wild, pursuing wind.
it was not until another hour had passed that rupert began to lose his keen, high spirits. he was so used to war in the open, to the instant summons and the quick answer, that he could not gauge the trouble of york's garrison, the slowness of men and horses who had gone through months of wearisome inaction. it is not good for horse or man to be stabled overlong out of reach of the free pastures and the gallop.
about half after three o'clock some of his company brought in to rupert a big, country-looking fellow, and explained that they had captured him spying a little too close to the royalist lines.
"what mun we do to him?" asked the spokesman of the party, in good wharfedale speech. "we've hammered his head, and ducked him i' th' horse-pond, and naught seems to serve. he willun't say, down wi' all croppies."
"then he's the man i'm seeking—a man who does not blow hot and cold in the half-hour. your name, friend?"
"ezra wood, and firm for the parliament."
"we hold your life at our mercy," said rupert, with a sharp, questioning glance. "tell us the numbers and disposition of lord fairfax's army."
"as man to stark man, i'll tell ye nowt. my mother sat on one stool while she nursed me, not on two."
rupert had proved his man. the pleasure of it—though ezra wood happened to be fighting on the other side—brought the true prince out of hiding. through fatigue of hurried marches, through anxiety because york's garrison lingered on the way, the old crusader in him showed.
"is cromwell with your folk?" he asked.
"he is—staunch in prayer and staunch indeed."
"then go free, and tell him that prince rupert leads the right wing of the attack. i have heard much of his ironsides, and trust to meet them on the left wing."
ezra wood had no subtleties, which are mistaken now and then for manners. he looked rupert in the face with a hard sort of deference. "so thou'rt the man they call rupert?" he said. "well, ye look it, i own, and i'll carry your message for ye gladly."
"and you will return, under safe-conduct, with his answer."
about five of the afternoon—all marston moor ablaze with a red, unearthly light—the first of the york men came in. rupert's impulsive welcome grew chilly when he saw that lord eythin led them; and boye, whose likes and dislikes were pronounced, ran forward growling.
"whistle your dog off, sir—whistle him off," said eythin irritably.
rupert, with a lazy smile, watched boye curvet round eythin in narrowing circles. "why should i?" he asked gently. "he never bites a friend."
eythin reddened. memory of past years returned on him, though he had thought the record drowned in wine and forgotten out of sight. he asked fussily what plans rupert had made for the coming battle.
"monstrous!" he snapped. "oh, i grant you've a knowledge of the charge, with ground enough in front to gather speed. but what are your cavalry to make of this? you stand to wait their onset, and their horses are heavy in the build."
rupert nodded curtly. "get your men into line, sir. you are here to fight under orders, not to attend a council of war."
as eythin withdrew sullenly, a sudden uproar came down the wind. then the shouting, scattered and meaningless at first, grew to a rousing cry of "a mecca for the king!" michael glanced at christopher, and pride of race showed plainly in their faces.
"ah," laughed rupert, "it was so they came when we played pageantry before the king at oxford. go bring your folk to me, mr. metcalf."
they came, drew up with the precision dear to rupert's heart, saluted briskly. "gentlemen," he said, "i am proud to have you of my company. is my lord newcastle near marston yet?"
the squire of nappa explained that those under newcastle's command had suffered during the late siege—men and horses were so weak from illness that no zeal in the world could bring them faster than a foot-pace. he knew this, because he had passed them on the road, had had speech of them. lord newcastle himself, a man no longer young, had kept a long illness at bay until the siege was raised, and now he was travelling in his coach, because he had no strength to sit a horse.
"oh, i had forgotten!" said rupert. "all's in the losing, if they take overlong. i should have remembered, though, that the garrison needed one night's sleep at least."
while they talked, ezra wood returned with the trooper sent to give him safe-conduct through the lines and back again. he did not salute—simply regarded rupert with dour self-confidence. "general cromwell sends this word to prince rupert—that, if his stomach is for fighting, he shall have it filled."
rupert was silent. cromwell, it seemed, had missed all the meaning of the challenge sent him; war had not taught him yet the nicer issues that wait on bloodshed. he stooped to pat boye's head with the carelessness that had angered many a council of war at oxford. then he glanced at ezra wood.
"there is no general cromwell. the king approves all commissions of that kind. go tell mr. cromwell that we are waiting for him here."
cromwell, when ezra wood returned and found him, was standing in the knee-deep rye, apart from his company. his eyes were lifted to the sky, but he saw none of the signs of brewing storm. he was looking into the heaven that he had pictured day by day and year by year when he rode in the peaceful times about his snug estate in rutland. then, as now, he was cursed by that half glimpse of the mystic gleam which hinders a man at times more than outright savagery. always he was asking more than the bread and meat of life; always he was seeking some antidote to the poisonous self-love, the ambition to be king himself, which was his hidden sore. and now he was praying, with all the simplicity his tricky mind permitted, for guidance in his hour of need.
as one coming out of a trance, he listened to ezra wood, repeating his message for the fourth time. the light—half false because it was half mystic only—left his face. its borrowed comeliness passed by. he showed features of surprising plainness—eyes heavy-lidded, thick nostrils, and a jaw broad with misplaced obstinacy.
"so he is waiting?" he said grimly. "well, princes must wait these days. we shall seek him by and by."
in that queer mood of his—half prayer and half keen calculation—which went before his battles, cromwell had found a plan of action. he crossed the field with quick, unwieldy steps, found the other leaders, and stated his own view of the attack. as usual, his ruggedness of mind and purpose carried the day; and rupert, down below, was left to wonder why the enemy did not take advantage of his rash challenge and attack before the main body of his reinforcements came.
it was an eerie day—clouds that came packing up, livid and swollen with rain that would not fall—a wind that was cold and scorching hot by turns—a frightened rustle of the leafage in wilstrop wood—a rustle that sounded across the flat waste of marston moor like the sound of surf beating on a distant shore. boye kept close to rupert's side, and whined and growled by turns. he knew his master's restlessness, as four of the afternoon came and still lord newcastle had not reached the field.
at half-past four the pick of newcastle's men rode in, and were marshalled into their appointed place between the left wing and the right. rupert galloped down to give them the good cheer he lacked himself.
"welcome, whitecoats. you look tired and maimed; but they tell me you have sworn to dye those coats of yours a good, deep crimson—your own blood or the roundheads'."
the sound of his voice, his strong simplicity of purpose that burned outward like a fire, lifted their jaded spirits. york was forgotten, and its hardships.
"for god and the king!" they answered lustily.
"i need you, gentlemen," said rupert, and passed on to where lord newcastle's coach was standing at the roadside.
he was shocked to see the change in newcastle—the weariness of mind and body palpable, now that an end had come to his guardianship of york.
"my lord, you have served the king too well," he said, putting a hand on the other's shoulder with instinctive deference to age and great infirmity.
"oh, nothing to boast of—a little here and there, to keep our walls secure. tell me, is there to be a battle to-day? i'm good for a gallop yet, if the battle does not last too long."
"there's no chance of it at this late hour. they saw our weakness from the hill, and yet would not attack. they're tired out, i think, as we are."
"good," said newcastle, with his gentle laugh. "for my part, i shall claim an old man's privilege—to step into my coach and smoke a pipe or two, and then get off to sleep. i shall be ready when you need me."
"would my hound, boye, disturb you?" asked rupert, turning after he had said good-night. "i like to have him out of harm's way at these times."
"is he a good sleeper?" demanded newcastle whimsically.
"with a friend, the staunchest sleeper that i know."
boye demurred when he was bidden to get inside the coach; but, like rupert's cavalry, he knew the tone of must-be-obeyed, and scrambled in with no good grace.
near seven of the evening a strange thing happened on marston moor. on the hill above there was the spectacle of parliament men standing with bowed heads as cromwell sent up fervent prayers. on the moor below, the chaplain of the king's men was reading evensong. over both armies was a sky of sullen wrath.
as the service closed, lord eythin protested, with an oath, that now this child's play was over, he proposed to go in search of food.
"my lord," said rupert sharply, "wise men do not mock at prayer, in face of what is waiting for us all to-morrow."
eythin, nettled by the hum of approbation, lost his temper. "i was never wise, your highness, as you know, but wise enough to advise you that this escapade is madness."
"we shared another battle, long ago when you were general king." rupert's voice was icy. "do you remember it?"
the riding metcalfs, this once again, were dismayed by the private quarrels, the jealousies, that were threaded through the skein of war. eythin's insolence of bearing, his subtle incitement to distrust of his commander, asked no less from rupert; but the pity of it, to bluff squire metcalf, single of heart, owing none a grudge except the king's enemies, was hard to bear.
from the extreme left of the camp, just as the royalists were settling down for a brief night's slumber, there came a running yelp, a baying, and a splutter of wild feet. lord newcastle had left the window of his coach open when he had smoked his third pipe and found the sleep he needed; and boye, his patience ended, had leaped out into the freedom that spelt rupert to him. when he found him, he got to his hind legs, all but knocked down his master in his tender fury, and licked his face with a red and frothy tongue.
"boye!" said rupert. "oh, down, boye—you smother me. i was to have a lonely supper, i fancied, and you come. there's all in the world i care for, come to sup with me."
from over the hill, where the parliament men had scarcely finished their devotions, there came a clap of thunder and a light spit of rain.
"we shall be wet to the skin to-night, boye, you and i," laughed rupert. "we've proved my tent, and it is not weather-sound."
he had scarcely finished some beef collops, ready for him in his tent, and was cajoling boye to perform a newly-taught trick of begging for a morsel, when the flap was pulled aside. michael metcalf, framed by the red light out of doors, showed bigger even than his wont.
"they are coming down from the rye-fields," he said, with a reckless laugh. "let it go how it will, sir, so long as we drive cromwell out of bounds."
"i have promised him as much," said rupert gravely.
