Tears ran with sweat across Rupert’s cheekbones. His blade raged reaping. The Scots broke; the Life-Guards harried them off the hill and across the moor; a hundred lay dead at the feet of Boye.
Rupert reined in on the crest to see how the battle went elsewhere. He stared at wreck.
Swart waves, wherein steel flashed like sea-fire, struggled howling and hammering. Artillery blared; muskets went off point-blank; never did the Puritan drums stop thuttering, and ever their own slogans tolled forth. While his mount shuddered with need of air, Rupert peered through sulfurous twilight and tried to understand what was happening.
The Roundhead left’s destroyed the Royal right, he said at last, in a clenched mind, clapped hands upon our guns and made them Judas to kiss our center, where the Lambs now bleed upon the altar of their loyalty—
“We’ve heavy blows ahead when we be breathed.” The voice near him was hoarse with weariness.
Rupert twisted around in his seat. “Be still,” he gasped, “who can’t so much as keep a hound!” He choked on half a sob.
Will edged his horse away, though not far. “I’ll leave off quackin’, Highness; best I duck.”
Rupert forgot him in the frenzy of regathering his men. It went slowly and ill. Many had scattered across miles in pursuit of the Scots. Those he could find were shaken to their bones by what they saw beneath a rising moon.
They were old comrades to slaughter, even of their fellows. New and terrible to them was the advance of the Independent riders. Their own chief had taught them to spill no time in stopping for a pistol volley. Their way was to charge straight into the thick of the foe, and always they had carried him before them.
Tonight the onset was his. He came in his plain buff jerkin, not at a gallop but a close-knit relentless trot, not hallooing but boulder-silent, no wild band of brothers but the machine which Cromwell had forged.
“For God and for the King!” Rupert clamored. The sound went lonely among cannon. A few followers answered, a few rallied around him.
The Independents broke his line and went to work with sword and ax, killing Cavaliers.
Rupert cut a man from a saddle, and another. He found himself surrounded and slashed his way clear.
Across the heath, by hastening icy light, he saw his troop in rout. Their plate glinted like drops from a splash of quicksilver. The enemy sought after. He skittered off to put together a fresh band, harangue it, and lead it back to fight on.
Again. Again. And then no more.
Over churned mud, smashed gun carriages, sprawling gaping dead, pleading wounded, lifted the thanksgiving chant of the Puritans. The Royal force was broken and the North was theirs.
The moon flew in gray-blue heaven through ragged whitecaps of cloud. Shadows scythed the wold. Rupert and Will sat among the fallen of their last affray. Several hundred yards distant, but aimed toward them across the ruined cropland, came a squadron of Roundhead riders.
“Mesim’twar wise we haul our skins from heare,” panted the dragoon, “while still they may hold wine.”
“And while I yet may hope to bring together men enough that they can cover their retreat… and mine,”
Rupert said.
Nearby stood a high wooden fence. Between its posts and rails he spied a beanfield reaching wan. Past this was a darkling, diminishing confusion which must be Royalists in flight, and past them a maze of hedges and narrow lanes where they could dismount and repel their pursuers by close fire—if first a leader overtook them. He brought his horse around and stuck in spurs. “Once more, thou valiant beast! I wish thee wings!”
The exhausted animal moved forward. There was no spring in the gallop it finally achieved. The fence loomed; Rupert spurred deep; he soared.
He crashed and fell.
In mid-air he kicked free of his stirrups. He hit the ground and rolled among the bean-stakes. Muscles took up more shock than did armor. Bouncing back to his feet, he saw his horse flail about and scream. One leg flopped hideously, snapped across. His companion’s mount had balked at the barrier. The Puritans came on with unwonted speed. Did they know the white plume? An earthquake booming went under hoofs. Metal flashed glacier cold.
Will jumped down. A cloud, briefly covering the moon, made him invisible at a short remove. This close, one could barely see him rip off the King’s tokens and sidle away into night.
“Thou’st left thy blade forgotten, in my back!” Rupert cried after him. “I thought at least thou wert as good a dog, if not as bright, as Boyce that thou let die! Farewell, Will Fairweather—fair-weather friend—”
He stooped, to draw his dagger and give his charger the last mercy. Thereafter he took forth his sword.
The Roundheads overleaped the fence and ringed him in. He looked from saber to saber, pistol to pistol. A craggy-visaged man who must be their captain squinted at him. “This is indeed Prince Rupert of the Rhine,” he breathed.
He straightened. His steel snapped upward in salute. “Your Highness, you will not remember me,” he said.
“I was a humble knight you met at court, that time in youth when you from Holland came to guest his royal Majesty your uncle—who’s still our King, and we his loving subjects who only fight his evil counselors—”
“You are so long of wind you ran me down,” Rupert replied.
“I beg of you, your Highness, that you yield. You shall receive all honor due to you.”
Rupert bit his lip. “Else lie a corpse, or piglike stunned and trussed?” Within their casques, the faces above him and around him strove to hold glee in seemly place. His sword sank, until he handed it hilt foremost up to the captain. “Well, have this of me, then, Sir What’s-Your-Name, until another day.” His head lifted.
“For after all,’tis no disgrace to fall to such as Cromwell. Beneath your buff, you men are Ironsides.”
II
Though lately built, of modern brick and tile, it seemed to belong to an earlier age. Twin battlemented towers flanked its gauntness, and cannon the drawbridge across a moat. Clearly, the owner had foreseen trouble returning to England. Not far away on the right, well preserved but deserted, blurred by time and ivy, Kirkstall Abbey was another remembrance, more peaceful and more sad. Both stood forth sharp upon a tamed terrain. Lawns, arbors, and flowerbeds encompassed the manor, down to the stream in whose sparkle yew and willow mirrored themselves. Behind the house went that row of sheds, stables, mews, and cottages which pertained to the estate of any gentleman. The country around was mostly farmed; besmocked hinds, their wives and children, horses and oxen belonging to the master, could be seen at work in several distant fields. One deserted steading had not yet been torn down, for it was not so very long ago that the last bankrupted yeoman was bought out, the last tenant made into a hired hand, and the common enclosed. Remotely to north, where hills rolled skyward, blue haziness veiled a remnant of wildwood.
In that setting, the future made a deeper mark than the past. From the largest of the sheds a railway ran straight to a stone bridge across the river, and thence vanished southward. Skeletal semaphores, spaced in sight of each other, stood guard along the tracks. To left, Leeds was a cluster of steeples, walls, and roofs, blurred less by the miles between than by the smoke from a dozen tall stacks which begrimed them. A grayness of factories and tenements had begun to sprawl around the old city. The wind bore a hint of iron in motion, stamping and grinding. On the western horizon, trails of fume and soot marked where Bradford lay.
Here, however, July was pure. The morning sun touched small wandering clouds with brilliance and called a thousand different greens out of grass and leaves, golds out of cornfields. The air carried odors of blossom, earth, and growth. All trees were full of birdsong.