Colonel Greatheart

by H. C. Bailey

Colonel Stow swung down and carried her into his quarters. "Indeed, I can walk," she said, stirring in his arms, but he took no heed and she gave him his way. He set her down in that chair by the fire from which he had faced her father and stood over her. It was strange to him that she asked nothing. Her gray eyes were intent upon him.

  "I will fetch your father, child."

  "Yes."

  Colonel Stow went out. A sergeant was sent on the errand. In the mellow light he met the minister eye to eye.

  "It is dawn, sir. We are ready," said the minister calmly.

  Colonel Stow was some while in speaking. "There is no need. I have found a better way. Sir, Colonel Rich will murder no men of mine. I have rescued them all, and Colonel Rich's regiment is broken."

  "Verily, the Lord reigneth. He is clothed with majesty," cried the minister. "O, sir, you have re-moved our reproach. You have been His instrument to-night to chasten them that dared do evil in His name."

  "Sir, the best is that you are safe. I will ask one thing of you now. Ride to General Fairfax with a letter from me to tell him Colonel Rich's manner of war and give him your own tidings of that you know."

  "I will do it heartily. Nay, then, but is not this a cunning way to do me a kindness?"

  "And if it were! Why, may I do nothing for you? But in truth, sir, consider, for the honor of your own cause as for the safety of my men, it is fit he hear the truth from one he can trust."

  "You say well. O, sir, you are too good a man for your cause. The Lord needs such as you. Nay, but who am I to judge? It may be He has His work for you here."

  "Which of us sees clear?" said Colonel Stow, and there was some bitterness in his tone. "But I have more tidings, sir. With what purpose, God knows, but I found your daughter in our surprise of Colonel Rich, and to save her from worse, brought her here. She is not hurt."

  "My daughter?" the minister gasped in astonishment.

  "Come and see."

  The girl rested at her ease. Her cloak was put off and the gentle light revealed the dainty fulness of her womanhood. She had tried to set some order in her hair, but it was wayward still, a wild cloud of gold. Life had come to her round cheeks again. Her dark eyes told of peace. Her bosom swayed slow.

  Colonel Stow stood with his hand clenching upon the door while he looked and her father passed before him.

  She started up, dawn breaking in her eyes. She was in her father's arms. "Sweet heart," he said, and his voice shook. "Sweet heart." She hid her face in his shoulder. "Why, and how came you here?"

  "I am his prisoner," she murmured.

  "But what gave you to his hands? You were not seeking to be a prisoner, sweet heart?"

  She gave a strange little wild laugh. Then she looked up, thrusting the hair from her brow. "No, no truly. I was trying for you," and she told the story of her night. "And you—why, I suppose you were safe all the while, since 'twas Colonel Stow."

  The minister turned to Colonel Stow, who stood by grave and pale. Colonel Stow made a gesture. "Tell her."

  "I fell into the hands of a true man, child," said her father, caressing her hair.

  The girl smiled, and trembling a little, held out her hand to Colonel Stow. He looked down at her grave and intent and under his eyes she began to blush. His brow darkened, too. He took her hand, and bowing, held his lips to it long.

  "That at least—I have that," he muttered. Then with calm precision, "You must need rest, as we do all. Make these quarters yours. Before noon, I must send you back to General Fairfax." He saluted and was gone.

  The minister, looking down at his daughter, saw her eyes grow dull and weariness draw over all her face. "Nay, you are worn out, child," he said, and led her to the settle.

  "I do not know," she said listlessly.

  He made her lie down with her cloak rolled for a pillow, and himself went out to take the good news to his fellows. But her cheeks were wet before she slept.

  An hour before noon the minister came to wake her. She rose with misty, dreamful eyes. "What is it?" she murmured. "Yes, I remember"… The noise of the mustering regiment was borne through the window.… 'Where is he?"

  "Child, he sets me free and you, nay, and hath given me two of my friends to be our guard back to the army."

  "Is that all?" she said.

  "Why, what more could we ask or hope? Verily, he hath been most generous unto us."

  "O, yes," said the girl, and laughed a little. "O, yes."

  Her hood was close drawn over her eyes as they rode away. She did not see Colonel Stow with his sword at the salute.

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  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The King Turns

  WITH his kerchief tight about his arm and a bloody scrap of his shirt bound over his forehead, Captain Vere came back to Sir Thomas Fairfax. He had hardly told his tale, amid exclamations from the lieutenant general, before Colonel Rich was announced, who entered with rolling eyes, crying, "Sharp arrows of the mighty! Yea, very coals of juniper! O, my threshing and the corn of my floor!"

  "Stop your fooling," the lieutenant general thundered. "Make your excuse!"

  "I find, sirrah, you have your deserts?" quoth Fairfax.

  "Yea, verily, I have lien among the pots. The earth mourneth and fadeth away. The inhabitants thereof—"

  "Where is your regiment?"

  "Even as chaff from the threshing floor which—"

  Fairfax raised his voice. "Guard! Guard!" and when the sergeant came in a hurry, "Take his sword, take him away."

  "Break their teeth, O God!" Colonel Rich ejaculated and was hurried out.

  "Look to your hurts, Dick," said Fairfax to his nephew, and when he, too, was gone turned to Cromwell. "So much for zeal!"

  "You have me upon the hip, sir."

  And seeking a cool head, troubled by no godly fervor, they pitched upon Colonel Royston and sent him with his dragoons to the outposts, and slept sound. Truly, in the two armies they could hardly have found a man less fanatic or more devoted to the right rules of war.

  On the next day the minister came with this letter:

  To the Right Honorable Sir Thomas Fairfax, General of the Army of the Parliament:

  At Faster's Booth, Thursday.

  Sir—There is in your army a Colonel Rich, which, taking my men prisoners in open fight, threatened after to hang them. To which I answered I would hang him two for one. I have not been constrained to this, having broken Colonel Rich tonight. This is to advise you that if others of your commanders attempt the like, we shall answer them according to the custom of war, but I have no fear that Sir Thomas Fairfax will put us to such necessity.

  Your Excellency's servant,

  J. STOW.

  Then the minister told his tale, and Sir Thomas Fairfax swore and was not reproved. "By God, sir, the man outdoes us on all counts!" he cried. "We are dunces to him in tactics and in chivalry. Who is he, this J. Stow?"

  And the minister told what he knew.

  "Faith, I am heartily sorry for him. It must be gall to a good soldier to stomach the King's strategies." Fairfax laughed grim. "And I could use a score of him. Why could he not come to us?"

  "Sir, I was granted enlightenment in last night's watches. The Lord designs true men to fight against His cause lest we that be His champions should sink in the wanton pride of our own natural sin."

  Fairfax clapped him on the shoulder. "By my soul, sir, it is a refreshment to hear a preacher declare a man honest who will not listen to him. So this J. Stow was a friend once of our Colonel Royston, eh? And we have matched friend for friend. There should be some pretty fighting in that."

  "Colonel Royston hath gone something beyond me," said the minister. His simplicity could not explain the wife.

  But fighting between the friends there was none. The King's army was hurried suddenly out of reach. Rupert had his own way for nearly three days and made as far northward as he could. His hope lay in the border counties, where the men were a hundred years or more behind the south and east, were
still half soldiers in their daily life and thought a Puritan mad. He had not come much beyond Daventry when my Lord Digby brought forth a new plan as clear as Euclid and the King listened and tarried. The Eastern Counties, said my Lord Digby, were the great magazine of Puritan strength. To take that magazine was to strike the Puritans with palsy. Why, then, it was plain the army must march eastward at once. Quod erat demonstrandum.

  So the campaign was changed and Rupert swore to the King's face they would all be damned for it and got nearly to blows with my Lord Digby and went off to drink himself drunk. The thing was plain folly to a soldier's eye, no less than driving a weak army against the strongest rampart of the foe. Not Cæsar himself could have snatched success out of it. Rupert did not try. He threw up the game. He surrendered to despair. The army was let go its own way, and soon was a mere scattered horde of brigands. The ingenious Digby had no power to control the reckless troopers, and Rupert sulked and soaked in his tent.

  Tidings of it came to Fairfax and he made what haste he could. He might have flung his cavalry at the midst of the thin cloud of the foe and ended it with one charge. But he could hardly believe that the army was as ill ordered as his spies said, and he came cautiously. He had met Rupert fighting before, and he lingered for more strength. But at last, as Rupert sat by his wine in a tavern of Daventry, the news came that the Puritan outposts were close in sight. He roused himself from the kindly stupor that eased the pain of his despair, and set men galloping with fierce orders to draw the army together.

  He was in time. The best of the scattered regiments could still obey him, and they mustered, heavy with spoil, in the old fortress of turf that crowns Borough Hill. The King was brought from his hawking in Fawsley Park, and with the Puritan full in sight and the peril of battle instant, Rupert had his way with him. They should march north again. It was the last chance, for they were outnumbered nearly two to one. So they made off by Market Harborough. But Fairfax was following hard.

  In the twilight of a summer's evening, Ireton dashed into the village of Naseby and caught a score of Rupert's horsemen at ease in their inn. By midnight Rupert knew that their vanguard was upon him. There was no choice but to fight.

  It was over high ground, treeless, broken with furze and rabbit holes, that the battle was set in the morning. The Puritans were posted upon a hill whose long open slope should spend the force of the fiercest horsemen. Their footmen were hidden behind the brow; their horsemen were upon either wing. In the like order, pikemen and musketeers in the midst, Rupert's horse on the right, Sir Marmaduke Langdale's on the left, the royal army came on. But the King lingered with a reserve of horse and foot some way behind the chance of battle.

  No man ever denied the Cavaliers a relish for fight. They came with good heart enough, steadfastly, like a moving wall of men, blue and green and white, pointed with a gray gleam of steel, and as they marched on with the wind that held their banners straight against the foe, the Puritans came forward over the brow of the hill a sturdy block of scarlet. They were singing:

  I in the Lord do put my trust;

  How is it, then, that ye

  Say to my soul, Flee as a bird

  Unto your mountains high?

  For, lo, the wicked bend their bow,

  Their shafts on string they fit,

  That those who upright are in heart,

  They privily may hit.

  Then Rupert, away on the right in his red montero cap, very sparkish as was his habit in battle, set his horsemen to the trot, and with a thunderous roar of "Queen Marie!" they charged.

  The June sunshine was broken with dense white clouds. The earth quaked to the boom of the guns. But Fairfax had no faith in his raw artillerymen, and he was right. The guns' target was the skylarks, and the Royalist footmen were within musket range before they had much to endure.

  Rupert fell upon the Puritan horsemen where Ireton, the commissary general, had command, and to say truth had not his men in hand. For some regiments broke ground to meet the Cavaliers and fired too soon; some hung back, and Rupert, coming on at the best of his speed with squadrons locked knee to knee, crashed upon them in one mass, with one storm of pistol shots, and broke them utterly and hurled on in the chase. He was over the hill crest with the Puritans in wild rout before him; he was drunk with the spirit of the charge and mad himself as the wildest trooper, as the youngest horse, and he sped on after the rout careless of the main battle.

  Soon all his men were scattered, ranging wide over the moor in a hundred little forays. Here and there a colonel cried the rally and trumpets blared, but the most of them took no heed. Colonel Stow got a grip of the best of his squadrons. "By my faith, gentlemen, this is the way to lose battles," said he, and they formed again, and resting their blown horses, came slowly back to the main battle. Not without pain. There was a long hedge, parting the moor from tilled fields. While Rupert surged by, Colonel Royston, whose dragoons, ill mounted little men, could not stand the shock of a charge, took ground there, and the bushes were lined with shot. As the Cavaliers came back, they were taken by a flank fire.

  Upon the other wing the Puritans had been happier. Cromwell held his troopers till Sir Marmaduke Langdale's horsemen were weary with toiling up hill, then crashed down on them and in one sharp shock broke all their strength. The charge was hardly won before his trumpets were sounding the recall and the sternly schooled troopers turned from executing the enemies of the Lord to form upon their standards. Three regiments Cromwell spared to press the pursuit; with the rest he turned to the main battle.

  There was a mad mêlée. The King's musketeers advancing had waited to fire but one volley before they fell on with sword and butt, They charged with the pikemen and the lines were locked in conflict. With blind hacking and hewing, with sheer thrusting, breast upon breast in the press, the reeking, panting companies strove, and the fortune of the fight swayed to and fro. In the full of the gay June sunshine they were wrapped with an acrid cloud of powder smoke and dust and the reeling standards rose out of it weirdly. Skippon was struck down in the midst. The left of the Puritans gave round and there the King's men flung themselves upon the second line. If Rupert had been at hand, Naseby fight could have had another end. But for Rupert, there were only the few squadrons with Colonel Stow, and though they charged their best, they were not weight enough to turn the issue. While they drew off, weary and spent, Colonel Royston mounted his dragoons and ventured them upon the broken ranks. They made no bad charge of it, and Colonel Stow brought only a remnant to where the King lingered with the reserve.

  Before that Cromwell had come upon the infantry. Hardly supporting an equal fight, the King's men were in no case to bear the shock of a hundred score Ironside troopers. Through the wall of pikes before them they could not break. Against the swarm of heavy horsemen they could not stand. They were smitten like corn under the scythe. Whole regiments were struck with panic and cast down their arms and screamed for quarter, until but one stood unbroken. Then Fairfax, who had hacked and hewed like a common trooper all the fight through, came with his regiment upon their front. Cromwell charged them from the rear. The sturdy ranks went down in ruin. The army was all undone. The King had no footmen left.

  And Rupert? Rupert's horsemen were overspread half a dozen miles, each little party hunting its own prey. Rupert himself, with not much more than a troop, bore down on Naseby village a mile away, where Fairfax's train of baggage waited. Then the captain of the baggage guard, seeing one in habit like the general, in a red montero, as the general had, took him for Fairfax, and rode out to ask the fortune of the day. "So well that I'll give you quarter," cried Rupert. The Puritan with an objurgation out of scripture galloped back to his men and they welcomed Rupert with a volley. He had not enough men to hand for a charge. So at last he drew rein and thought of a rally. It was a life too late. When his horsemen began to straggle back into the battle there was but one army left.

  And the King? When Cromwell turned upon the footmen, the King had still his
reserves to cast into the fight, had still the squadrons that had won back with Colonel Stow, shattered but daring yet. There was more than one man about him who cried with Colonel Stow, "Charge, sir, i' God's name, charge for your cause!" and the little brigade was ready. King Charles rode out to share their desperate fortune, to dare for his own doom. But as he came, he saw on the hill above Cromwell's troopers storm deathly in the charge, and he faltered. Then a faithful courtier, my Lord Carnwath, snatched his bridle, crying, "Will you go to your death?" and the King, whose army was smitten before his eyes, gave himself to a savior. "Files by the right!" cried my Lord Carnwath, and the King's guard bore him away.

  Colonel Stow looked after him with a crooked smile. "There goes the worst friend the King ever had," he said.

  So through the fall of that summer day the King rode hard in flight, and behind him men who cared more for his honor than he, spent themselves to save him. While the King, scathless of any mark of fight, sat down to dine in Leicester, some few scattered troops of his horse turned and turned again in desperate charge to stay the surge of Cromwell's pursuit. Utterly weary, bleeding and out of heart, they hurled themselves upon the Ironside ranks, desperate in their soldierly honor as the Puritans in their faith. They did their part. They saved their King while they cursed him. But when night fell there was hardly a man of them could call to his fellow.

  Reeling in the saddle of a stumbling horse, Colonel Stow drew rein in the dark. He had no man left to company him. All his regiment were spent and dead. He staggered to the shelter of a hedge and lay with the blood stiff upon his wounds.

  In a comfortable chamber at Loughborough, King Charles wrote a letter to his wife complaining of the conduct of his army.

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  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Lucinda is Again an Inspiration

  Slowly, by devious roads, the King and his guard won back to Oxford. Thither, difficultly, came a thousand or two of desperate, broken men, and a while after, the bulk of Rupert's horse. Sir Thomas Fairfax concentrated upon Thame, and made ready for a siege. Save in the very clash of battle, he was always leisurely. In truth there was little need of haste. The war was fought and lost. The end was sure. Only a few ingenious minds, like my Lord Digby, could think other. And no men ever called Sir Thomas Fairfax ingenious.