*CHAPTER X.*
*THE RIDING IN.*
Through the quiet lanes Blake, the messenger, rode out to Banbury.Nightingales were singing through the dusk; stars were blinking at himfrom a sky of blue and purple; a moth blundered now and then against hisface. He understood the beauty of the gloaming, though he seemed tohave no time to spare for it. Prince Rupert had sent him spurring witha message to the big rider of a white horse, who was to be foundsomewhere on the road leading from the north to Banbury; and thepassword was "A Mecca for the King." That was his business on the road.But, as he journeyed, a strange pain of heart went with him. Thenightingales were singing, and God knew that he had forgotten love-songslong ago, or had tried to.
Spring, and the rising sap, and the soft, cool scents of eventide aremagical to those climbing up the hill of dreams; to those who haveceased to climb, they are echoes of a fairyland once lived in, but nowseen from afar. It had all been so long ago. Skirmish and wounds, andlonely rides in many weathers, should have dug a grave deep enough formemories to lie in; but old ghosts rose to-night, unbidden. If it hadbeen his sinning, he could have borne the hardship better; he had theold knightly faith--touched with extravagance, but haloed by the FurtherLight--that all women are sacrosanct. If he had failed--well, men wererough and headstrong; but it was she who had stooped to meaner issues.And it was all so long ago that it seemed absurd the nightingales shouldmake his heart ache like a child's.
Fame was his. The Metcalfs, big on big horses, had captured the fancyof all England by their exploits in the open. Yet Blake, themessenger--riding alone for the most part, through perils that had nomusic of the battle-charge about them--had his own place, his claim toquick, affectionate regard wherever Cavaliers were met together. Theylaughed at his high, punctilious view of life, but they warmed to theknowledge that he had gone single-handed along tracks that asked forcomrades on his right hand and his left. But this was unknown to Blake,who did not ask what men thought of him. It was enough for him to godoing his journeys, carrying a heartache till the end came and he wasfree to understand the why and wherefore of it all.
It was a relief to see the moonlight blinking on the roofs of Banbury ashe rode into the town. There were no nightingales here; instead, therewas the hum and clamour of a Roundhead populace, infuriated by the newsthat two Cavaliers had broken prison in the early morning and had lockedthe gaoler in.
Blake found his bridle seized roughly, and it was doubtful for a momentwhether he or his high-spirited mare, or the two of them, would come togrief.
"Well, friend?" he asked of the burly Puritan who held the bridle.
"Your business here?"
"To sell cloth. I come from Oxford, and have done much business therewith the Court."
"Then why come selling wares in Banbury? Court fashions find no favourhere."
"Cloth is cloth," said Blake impassively, "and I've some remnants goingcheap."
A woman in the crowd pressed forward. "How much the yard?" she asked.
With his tired knowledge of the world, he named a price that made thewoman ask eagerly for a sample. "I have no samples. The cloth itselfwill come in by carrier to-morrow. I'm tired and hungry," he said,smiling at the man who held his rein. "Perhaps you will direct me to alodging for the night?"
"Was there great stir among the sons of Belial in Oxford?" asked hiscaptor, with a shrewd sideways glance.
"They were like bees in a busy hive," assented Blake cheerily.
"You learned something, maybe, of their plans?"
"I did, friend."
"That might be worth free lodging to you for the night, and a supper ofthe best. What did you learn?"
"Why, that they planned to buy a good deal of my cloth. That's how Imeasure a man--with the eye of a merchant who has cloth to sell. You,sir--your clothes are of the shabbiest, if you'll pardon my frankness.Will you not come to the tavern to-morrow, after the carrier has broughtmy bales, and let me show you some good broadcloth--cloth of a sobercolour, suited to the pious habits you profess? To-day I clothe aCavalier, to-morrow a gentleman who fights on the Parliament side--amerchant knows no niceties of party."
Blake had thrust home. This man, named gentle for the first time in hisbusy life as tradesman, traducer of the King's good fame, and the primestirabout of anarchy in Banbury, was filled with a heady, spuriouspride. This merchant had sold cloth to the dandies of the Court,perhaps to the King himself, and now it was his turn. There were men ofthis odd, cringing habit among the sterner Roundhead stuff, and Blakeknew them as a harpist knows the strings he plays on.
The end of it was that he was directed to a comfortable tavern, wasgiven, though he scarcely seemed to ask for it, the password thatensured him the freedom of the streets, and parted from his captor withan easy-going reminder that the cloth should reach Banbury about nine ofthe next morning.
The password was useful to him more than once. It saved much troublewith soldiery who held him up at every turn. It saved appeal to thepistol he carried in his holster; and that would have meant the rousingof the town, and odds against him that would put his whole errand intojeopardy.
He halted once only, at the front of the tavern which had beenrecommended to him. An ostler was standing at the door, chewing a strawand waiting for some fresh excitement to stir these strenuous days.Blake slipped a coin into his hand, and explained that, about nine ofthe next morning, a townsman would come asking for a merchant who hadcloth to sell.
"You will explain, ostler, that I am called away on business--businessconnected with the two Cavaliers who broke gaol last night. Explain,too, that I hope to return to your town in a few days' time. Thetownsman's name was Ebenezer Fear-the-Snare--I remember it because ofits consuming drollery."
With a cheery nod and a laugh that might mean anything, Blake left theother wondering "what devilment this mad fellow was bent on," and rodeout into the beauty of the summer's night that lay beyond the outskirtsof Banbury. Here, again, the nightingales assailed him. They could notrest for the love-songs in their throats; and ancient pain, deep wherethe soul beats at the prison-house of flesh, guided his left hand on thereins until, not knowing it, he was riding at a furious gallop. Then hechecked to a sober trot.
The land was fragrant with the warmth of wet soil, the scent of flowersand rain-washed herbage. The moon shone blue above the keen white lightof gloaming, and the road ahead stretched silver, miraculous, like somehighway of the old romance that was waiting for the tread of kings andknights, of ladies fair as their own fame.
Old dreams clambered up to Blake's saddle and rode with him--wildheartaches of the long ago--the whetstone of first love, sharpening thepower to feel, to dare all things--the unalterable need of youth tobuild a shrine about some woman made of the same clay as himself. Theywere good dreams, tasted again in this mellow dusk; but he put them byat last reluctantly. He had a live ambition before him--to bring acompany of riders, bred in his own stiff Yorkshire county, for theCavaliers of Oxford to appraise.
He slackened pace with some misgiving. The two Metcalfs, when he badefarewell to them in Oxford, had been so sure that one of their kinsmenwould have reached the outskirts of Banbury, would be waiting for him.The horseman, they had explained, would not approach the town tooclosely, knowing its fame as a place of Parliament men who watchednarrowly all Oxford's incoming and outgoing travellers; but Blake hadtravelled three miles or so already, and he grew impatient for a sightof his man.
Through the still air and the complaint of nightingales he heard thewhinny of a horse. His own replied. The road made a wide swerve herethrough the middle of a beech wood. As he rounded it and came into theopen country, he saw a broken wayside cross, and near it a horsemanmounted on a white horse as big and raking in the build as its rider.
"A Mecca?" asked Blake, with the indifference of one traveller whopasses the time of day with another.
"Nay, that will not serve," laughed the
other. "Half a sixpence is asgood as nothing at all."
"A Mecca for the King, then, and I was bred in Yorkshire, too."
The freemasonry of loyalty to one King, to the county that had reared aman, is a power that makes all roads friendly, that kills suspicion andthe wary reaching down of the right hand toward a pistol-holster.
"How does Yoredale look," went on Blake, with a little, eager catch inhis voice, "and the slope of Whernside as you see it riding over thetops from Kettlewell?"
"Bonnie, though I've not seen either since last year's harvest. ThisKing's affair of ride and skirmish is well enough; but there's no timeto slip away to Yoredale for a day and smell the wind up yonder. AreKit and Michael safe?"
"They are in Oxford, accepting flattery with astounding modesty."
"They've found Prince Rupert? The Metcalfs--oh, I touch wood!--keep abee-line when they know where home lies."
"That is no boast, so why go touching wood? I tell you the King knowswhat your folk have done and hope to do. The Prince is raising cavalryfor the relief of York, and will not rest until you Metcalfs join him.How soon can your company get south?"
The horseman thought the matter over. "It will take five days and ahalf," he said at last.
"Good for you!" snapped Blake. "Even your brother Christopher, with thestarry look o' dreams about his face, was sure that it would take sevendays. I wager a guinea to a pinch o' snuff that you're not in Oxford infive days and a half."
"That is a wager?"
"I said as much, sir."
"Then lend me the pinch of snuff. I emptied my box in waiting for you,and was feeling lonely."
Blake laughed as he passed his box over. There was an arresting humourabout the man, a streak of the mother-wit that made the Metcalf clan athome in camp or city. "I'll see you to the next stage," he said,reining his horse about--"that is, if you care for an idle man'scompany. I've nothing in the world to do just now."
The other only nodded, touched his horse sharply with the spur, andBlake found himself galloping with a fury that, even to his experienceof night adventures, seemed breakneck and disastrous. At the end of amile their horses were in a lather; at the end of two they had to checka little up the rise of a hill. On the top of the hill, clear againstthe sky, they saw a horseman sitting quiet in saddle. They saw, too,that his sword was out, and naked to the moonlight.
"They saw, too, that his sword was out, and naked to themoonlight."]
"A Mecca!" panted Blake's companion.
"Cousin does not slay cousin," said the man on the hill-top, rattlinghis sword into the sheath again. "Have they found Rupert?" The secondrider was given his errand briefly and without waste of breath. Then heflicked his horse, and Blake was tempted to follow him, too. There wassomething uncanny, some hint of mystery and deep, resistless strengthabout this picketing of the road north. Blake had a quick imagination;he saw this chain of riders, linking York with Oxfordshire, spurringthrough a country fast asleep--only they and the moon and thenightingales awake--until, kinsman passing the message on to kinsman ateach two-miles stage, the last rider came in with his tale of "Boot andsaddle."
Indeed, Blake urged his mare to follow the second horseman; but she wasreluctant, and was sobbing under him after the headlong gallop.
"I had forgotten. She has carried me from Oxford already," he said,turning to his companion.
"She's a good little mare," said Metcalf, with instinctive judgment ofall horseflesh. "She will have time to rest if you're minded to sharethe waiting time with me."
"Your five days and a half?" laughed the other, as they returned at aquiet pace to their first meeting-place. "Yes, I shall stay, if only toclaim my wager. It is not in human power for your company to muster inthe time."
"It is a game we have played often during these last months. LordFairfax, in the north, swears there's witchcraft in it, because we havecarried news from York to Skipton, from Skipton into Lancashire, whilesingle messengers were spurring half-way on the road."
"_I_ am a messenger of the lonely sort," put in Blake--with a touch ofspleen, for he was tired. "Well, I propose to see what comes of your newway of galloping."
"The first that comes"--Metcalf yawned and stretched himself with an airof complete strength and bodily content--"will be my Cousin Ralph, whotook the message on just now. When he has passed it on, he rideshitherto. We may expect him in a half-hour or so."
Blake, himself something of a mystic, who rode fine errands by help ofno careful planning, but by intuition, was interested in this man, whostood for the Metcalf thoroughness, in detail and in hot battle, thathad made their name alive through England. He learned, here in themoonlight, with the _jug-jug_ of nightingales from the thickets on theirright, and the stir of moths about their faces, how carefully the oldSquire had planned this venture. The clan was a line of single linksfrom Oxford to the north, so long as the message needed to be carriedswiftly; but afterwards each messenger was to ride back along the routeto Banbury, until the company mustered on its outskirts grew big enoughto hold attack from the town in check.
As they talked, and while Metcalf was pushing tobacco--borrowed, likethe snuff, from Blake--into the bowl of a clay pipe, there came a littlesound from up the road. It was a rhythmical, recurrent sound.
"That is my Cousin Ralph," said Metcalf unconcernedly.
The music grew louder by degrees, till the din of nightingales was lostin the rat-a-tat of hoofs.
"The first to the tryst," laughed Blake, as the new-comer dismounted andpicketed his horse close to their own. "We have a wager that your folkwill not be in Oxford within five days and a half."
"For my part," said Ralph, "I have a hunger that eats inwards. Have youfound nothing for the larder, cousin, all this time of waiting?"
Will Metcalf had, as it happened. Near sundown he had set twotraps--simple contrivances of looped wire--in a neighbouring rabbitburrow; and, a little while before Blake rode out from Banbury, he haddismounted to find a coney in each snare.
"We shall do well enough," said Will.
Again Blake was astonished by the downrightness of these people. Ralph,who had not tasted food since noon, was sure that his cousin would havemade due provision. Methodically they sought for a likely hollow,screened from the rising wind, gathered brushwood and fallen branches,and made a fire. While it was burning up, they skinned and cleaned therabbits.
"Gentlemen," said Blake, while their meal was in the cooking, "do yougive no homage to the god known as chance? All is planned out, fromhere to York; but I've travelled the night-roads--have them by heart, asa man knows the whimsies of his wife. Suppose some of your men werethrown badly, or killed by Roundheads, how would it fare with themessage up to York?"
Ralph Metcalf turned the rabbits with nice regard for the meal overdue.Then he glanced up. "If there was a gap of four miles, instead of two,the rider would gallop four. If he found another dead man at the nextstage, he would gallop six."
So then Blake laughed. "We are well met, I think. I was jealous ofyour clan, to be candid, when I was told their speed put us poornight-riders to shame. Yet, friends, I think we carry the sameloyalty."
Their meal was scarcely ready when again there came the fret of distanthoof-beats. Another giant joined their company. In face and sturdinesshe was like the rest; but he happened to be six-foot-four, while hiskinsmen here were shorter by two inches. He, too, was hungry.
"That's good hearing," said Ralph. "I was puzzling how to carve tworabbits into three, but it's easy to split them into twice two."
"Half a coney to feed my sort of appetite?"
"Be content. If it had not been for Will here we'd have had no food atall."
The newcomer drew a bottle from the pocket of his riding-coat. "Iforget whether I stole it or paid honest money. It's a small bottle,but it will give us the bite of the northern winds again."
When they had ended this queer supper, and had borrowed from the storeof tobacco that to Blake was
better than a meal, they fell into silence.The languorous beauty of the night wove its spell about them; and thefourth Metcalf, when he rode in presently, jarred them roughly out ofdreams. The newcomer, as it happened, had contrived to snatch supperwhile he waited, six miles further north, to take on the message. Hedid not ask for food; after picketing his horse, he just wrapped himselfin the blanket hastily unstrapped from saddle, turned over once or twicein a luxury of weariness, and snored a litany to the overarchingheavens.
Through that night Blake did not sleep or ask for slumber. Thenightingales were tireless, as if their throats would break unless theyeased them. The Metcalf riders were tireless, too. At longer and atlonger intervals they came in from the north, their horses showing signsof stress. Two miles from outpost to outpost was a trifling distance;but, before the last of that night's company joined the muster here atBanbury, he had travelled forty miles.
Blake lay, his face to the moonlight, and could not stifle memory. Thesleepy fragrance, the scent of moist earth and flowering stuff, tookhim, as by sorcery, to a walled garden in Knaresborough and a summerthat had been, and the end of blandishment. There had been nonightingales--it lay too far north, that garden, to tempt them--but astronger song had stirred him. And there had been the same lush smellof summer, the same hovering of bats across the moon's face.
It was as if she sat beside him again--they two listening to the rippleof Nidd River far below--and her voice was low and tender as she chidedhim for love-making. There had been other meetings--stolen ones andbrief--and all the world a-maying to Blake's view of it.
He would not let the dream go--played with it, pretended he had notlearned long since what it meant to love a light-of-heart. Her face, ofthe kind that painters dote on when they picture maiden innocence, theshifting play of light and colour in her eyes, the trick she had ofmaking all men long to be better than they were--surely he could restthis once from many journeyings, and snatch another stolen meeting,there in Knaresborough, with all the roses blowing kisses to them.
As he lay there, the two Metcalfs who were sentrying their little campgrew tired of pacing to and fro, each on his own short beat, and haltedfor a gossip. Blake did not heed them until they began to talk ofKnaresborough, of Michael's dash into the Castle, of a Mistress Binghamhe had met there.
"Michael met his match for once," laughed one sentry. "You know hisgift of finding the finest eyes in England housed under every otherwoman's brows? Well, Mistress Demaine plays a good game at hearts, too,they say. Michael was touched in earnest this time. Oh, the jest ofit!"
"It would be a better if they began by playing, and ended with thesilken noose. Can you picture Michael wedded--Michael, with cut wingsand drooping comb, seeking no more for fairest eyes?"
Blake left his dreams as if they scorched him. So Mistress Bingham hadbeen two years ago; so she would be, doubtless, when the King had cometo his own again, and had reigned long, and passed on the crown. Thereis a stability about inconstancy, Blake realised.
He got to his feet, crossed to where the sentries stood, and yawned."Gentlemen," he said, "I cannot sleep for hunger; and there will beothers in my case before the night ends. Can I borrow two of yourcompany to make up a forage-party?"
One of the sentries pointed to a distant belt of wood, high up againstthe sky. "When dawn rides over the trees yonder, our watch is ended.We'll join you, Mr. Blake, if only because you have the most divertinglaugh I ever heard, except Michael's when he's seen a pair of prettyeyes."
A half-hour later they kicked the fresh sentries out of sleep. ThenBlake and they went up the pasture-lands on foot. It was a good nightfor foraging; every pitfall of the ground, every farmstead sleeping inthe bosom of its guardian trees, showed clear in the dawn-light. Andnone of the three men had qualms about the business, for the Banburycountry, through and through, was traitorous to the King.
They returned two hours later in high spirits. The Metcalfs asked for agood deal of feeding, after a night in the open had set a razor-edge toappetite; and the scouting-party had commandeered a farmer's horse andgig to bring their booty into camp.
"Who goes there?" snapped the sentries, running to meet this intrusionon the night's quiet.
"A Mecca, lad," laughed the driver, "bringing fowls and cheese, and goodhome-cured bacon--ay, and a little barrel of rum that nearly bounced outo' the gig when I came to a rutty place in the road."
"'Twould have been a pity to have lost the rum. Where are Blake andyour cousin Nicholas?"
"Oh, following! The gig would not hold us all. As for Blake, he has fewcares in life. Not one to have his heart touched by a woman--he. Helaughs by habit, till you're forced to laugh with him."
The White Horses Page 10
