Rupert got to horse, and rode through the press and uproar1 of the camp. Confusion was abroad. To the Cavaliers, though some of them might regard evensong lightly, it meant at least a truce2 until the next day's dawn; and now they were attacked by an enemy who did not scruple3 to combine prayer with craftiness4. Down from the rye-fields they saw the horsemen and the footmen come, and only Rupert could have steadied them in this black hour.
"We meet Cromwell's horse," he cried, getting his own men into line this side the little ditch, "and, gentlemen, we owe Cromwell many debts."
Stiff and stour it was, that fight at the ditch. The old, stark5 battles were recalled—Crecy, and Agincourt, and Flodden—for it was all at pitiless close quarters. First they exchanged pistol-shots; then, throwing their pistols in each other's faces with a fury already at white heat, they fell to with sword and pike. Overhead the storm broke in earnest. The intermittent6 crackle of gunshots, from the sharpshooters lining7 the hedges, mingled8 with the bellow9 of the thunder and that clamour of hard-fighting men which has the wild beast note.
Newcastle, asleep in his coach at the far side of the Moor10, was roused by the uproar. He did not know what had chanced, but the waking was of a piece with the nightmares that had haunted his brief slumber12. His limbs ached, the weariness of York's long siege was on him, but he ran forward, sword in hand, and asked the first man he met what was in the doing. Then he sought for his company and could not find them, except a handful of the gallant13 Leightons; so he pressed forward, unmounted, crying his name aloud, and asking all who heard him to make up a troop. He gathered drift and flotsam of the running battle—he whose dream had been of a mounted charge, with picked cavalry14 behind him—and they fought on the left wing with a wild and cheery gallantry.
On the right, the Ironsides still faced Rupert's men, and neither would give way. Once, in a lull15 of the berserk struggle, when either side had withdrawn16 a little to take breath, a great hound pressed his way through the Royalists and came yelping17 forward in search of Rupert. He came into the empty space between the King's men and Cromwell's, and a gunshot flashed; and Boye struggled on the sodden18 ground, turned his head in dying search for Rupert, the well-beloved, and so lay still.
From the Ironsides a storm of plaudits crossed a sudden thunder-clap. "There goes the arch-Papist of them all," came a voice drunk with battle.
And something broke at Rupert's heart. It was as if he stood alone entirely—as if the world were ended, somehow. "Ah, Boye," he murmured. And then he led a charge so furious that the Ironsides all but broke. It was Cromwell rallied them, and for an hour the fight went forward. The hedge was levelled now, and the ditch filled in by the bodies of the slain19. Time after time Rupert found himself almost within striking distance of Cromwell. They were seeking each other with a settled, fervent20 purpose. And the fight eddied21 to and fro; and the rain came down in wild, unending torrents22.
The chance sought by Rupert came to Michael Metcalf, as it chanced. Pushed to one side of the press, he found himself facing a rough-hewn Parliament man in like case, and parried a fierce sword-cut with his pike. Then he drew back the pike, felt it quiver like a live thing in his hands, and drove it through the other's fleshy neck. It was only when the man wavered in saddle, and he had leisure for a moment's thought, that he knew his adversary23. A trooper of the Parliament snatched the wounded rider's bridle24, dragged his horse safely to the rear, and Michael raised a wild, impulsive25 shout:
"Cromwell is down! A Mecca for the King."
Rupert heard the cry, and drew his men a little away, to get speed for the gallop26. His crashing charge drove back the Roundheads twenty paces, and no more. They were of good and stubborn fibre, and the loss of Cromwell bade them fight with sullen27 hardihood. At the end of, it might be, fifteen minutes they had regained28 a foot or two of their lost ground, and Cromwell, getting his wound bandaged at the thatched cottage up above, asked another wounded Roundhead, who came for the like succour, how it fared.
"As may be," growled29 the other. "If so thou'rt not dead, as we fancied, get down and hearten them."
"I've a thick throat, and the pike took the fleshy part," said Cromwell, with a deep, unhumorous laugh. "I'll get down."
He mounted with some difficulty. Pluck cannot always conquer in a moment great loss of blood and weakness of the body. Once in the saddle, his strength returned to him; but he rode down too late. Rupert's men had followed their old tactics, had retreated again to gain speed for the onslaught, and were driving the enemy before them in hot pursuit.
Cromwell, after narrow escape of being ridden down by his own folk, after vain efforts to rally them again, found himself alone. The wound in his throat was throbbing31 at its bandages. The rain ran down him in rivulets32, and the world seemed filled with thunder and the cries of men. Word reached him that Eythin, too, had broken through, and that all Parliament men were bidden to save themselves as best they might. And so he left the field; and the sickness of defeat, more powerful than body-sickness, caught him as he neared the smithy, this side of Tockwith village. A farm-lad, returning from selling a cow at Boroughbridge, found him in the roadway, fallen from his horse, and carried him into the smithy-house. They tended his wound. Within an hour his lusty strength of purpose came to his aid. He asked for meat and ale, and said he must get ready for the road. He was known by this time; but even the blacksmith, Royalist to the core of his big body, would not hinder his going. A man of this breed must be given his chance, he felt.
"After all," he muttered, watching Cromwell ride unsteadily down the moonlit road, "they say Marston Moor has lost Yorkshire to the Parliament for good and all. Some call him Old Noll, and othersome Old Nick—but he'll do little harm i' these parts now, I reckon."
"A soft heart and a big body—they go always fools in company," said his goodwife. "I'd not have let him go so easy, I."
"Ay, but ye wod, if I'd been for keeping him. Ye're like a weather-cock, daft wife. When I point south, thou'st always for veering33 round to north—or t'other way about, just as it chances."
Cromwell rode back toward Marston, to find his men. He was kin11 to Rupert in this—disaster or triumph, he must find those who needed him. At the end of a half-mile he met a rider cantering up the rise. The moonlight was clear and vivid, after the late storm, and the rider pulled his horse up sharply.
"The battle is ours, General, and I've my Lord Fairfax's orders for you."
"The battle is ours?" demanded Cromwell gruffly. "I do not understand."
"None of us understand. Fairfax was three miles away, sleeping in a farmstead bed-chamber, when we roused him with the news. It was Leslie's men who broke their centre and drove round Rupert's flank. The thunder was in all our brains, I fancy."
Cromwell laughed. All his austerity, his self-pride warring against the humility34 he coveted35, were broken down, as Rupert's cavalry had been. "Then it's for the siege of York again?" he asked.
"Fairfax says the risk is too great. The Moor is full of our dead, and we're not strong enough. He bids you get your men together and hold Ripley, going wide of Knaresborough—which is a hornet's nest—until further orders reach you. That is my message, General."
"Good," said Cromwell, tightening36 the bandage round his throat. "Where are my men?"
He found them—those who were left—in scattered37 companies. And a lusty roar went up as they saw him ride through the moonlight, swaying on the thick farm-cob that carried him.
"It's fourteen miles to Ripley, lads, but we'll cover it."
On Marston Moor the Royalists had pursued their advantage to the full. Rupert's men and Eythin's had run wild on the ridge-fields up above. And Leslie saw his chance. With his Scots he charged down on the White Coats, weakened by siege before the fight began. They kept their pledge; their coats were dyed with crimson38 martyrdom—and so they died to a man, resisting Leslie's charge.
Leslie himself paused when the work was done. "They were mettled thoroughbreds," he said huskily. "And now, friends, for the ditch that Rupert leaves unguarded."
It was so, in this incredible turmoil39 of storm and fight and havoc40, that the battle of Long Marston was lost to the King. Rupert, getting his men in hand at long last, returned to face another hand-to-hand encounter. With the middlewing past sharing any battle of this world, the affair was hopeless. Rupert would not admit as much. The Metcalfs, a clan41 lessened42 since they joined in evensong an hour ago, would not admit it. To the last of their strength they fought, till all were scattered save a few of them.
Down the rough lane past Wilstrop Wood—a lane pitted deep with ruts—the Royalists fled headlong. And at the far side of the wood, where the lane bent43 round to a trim farmstead, there was a piteous happening. A child, standing44 at the gate in wonderment at all the uproar and the shouting, saw a press of gentry45 come riding hard, and began to open the gate for them, bobbing a curtsey as the first horseman passed. He did not see her. Those behind did not see her, but, pressing forward roughly—pressed in turn by those behind—the weight of them was thrust forward and broke down the gate.
After their passing a woman came from the farmsteading, eager to go out and see how it had fared with her husband, a volunteer for Rupert. Under the broken gate she found a little, trampled46 body; and all her heart grew stony47.
"Lord God," she said, "Thou knows't men make the battles, but the women pay for them."
On Marston Moor the Squire48 of Nappa had found his coolness return when it was needed most. The Prince, and he, and Christopher, their horses killed under them long since, had just won free of a hot skirmish at the rear of their retreating friends, and were left in a quiet backwater of the pursuit.
"Best get away," he said. "You're needed to see to the aftermath of this red harvest."
His sturdy common sense had struck the true note. Rupert had had in mind to die fighting, since all else was lost. And now the little, fluting49 note of trust came to him through the havoc. He was needed.
They came, these three, to the clayey lands—wet and sticky to the feet—that bordered Wilstrop Wood. The storm, tired of its fury, had rent the clouds apart with a last soaking deluge50, and the moon shone high, tender as a Madonna yearning51 to bring peace on earth.
A fresh pursuit came near them, and they turned into a field of flowering beans on their left. They heard the pursuit go by. Then they heard a litany of pain come out from Wilstrop Wood, where wounded Cavaliers had taken refuge. And from Marston Moor there was the ceaseless crying—not good to hear—of horses that would never again, in this world, at least, find the stride of a gallop over open fields.
To these three, hidden in the bean-field, came an odd detachment from the pity and the uproar of it all. Nothing seemed to matter, except sleep. The heat, and rain, and burden of that bitter hour just ended were no more than nightmares, ended by this ease of mind and body that was stealing over them. It was good to be alive, if only to enjoy this pleasant languor52.
The Squire of Nappa laughed sharply as he got to his feet. "At my a............