*CHAPTER XIII.*
*THE LADY OF LATHOM.*
All folk, even grey and pampered servants, obey the ring of true commandin a man's voice; and after Kit had waited for what seemed a week to hisimpatience, a great lady came down the stair and halted at a littledistance from him, and looked him up and down. Her face was lined withtrouble; there were crows'-feet about her eyes; but she was dressedfastidiously, and her head was erect with challenge.
"Well, sir?" she asked sharply. "You rob me of sleep for some goodreason, doubtless. Sleep? You could have asked no dearer gift. But theKing himself commands, you say?"
"'Well, sir?' she asked sharply. 'You rob me of sleep forsome good reason doubtless?'"]
Kit faced her ill-temper, and she liked him for it.
"My lady," he said, "Prince Rupert bids me tell you that he comes yourway, for the relief of Lathom. He bids me tell you that Lathom Househas lit a fire of loyalty from one end to the other of your county."
"So Rupert comes at last?" she asked eagerly.
"As soon as he can gather forces. Meanwhile, he sends me as his deputy,and that's one more sword-arm at your service."
Again she looked him up and down; and smiled. "I like big men. Theyhelp to fill this roomy house I'm defending for my husband and theKing--for the King and my husband, I should say, if I were not a betterwife than courtier."
Kit, for his part, could not take his eyes away from her. Two women ofthe breed he had seen before, and two only--the Queen, with couragegloved by French, disarming courtesy, and the downright mistress ofRipley Castle. As Lady Derby stood there, the traces of her twelvemonths' Calvary were apparent, because she had been roused suddenly fromsleep, and pride had not asserted full control as yet. Under her tiredeyes the crows'-feet showed like spiders' webs; her face was thin anddrawn; and yet there was a splendour about her, as if each day of eachweek of hardship had haloed her with grace. She was, in deed as inname, the great lady--so great that Kit felt dwarfed for a moment. Thenhis manhood returned, in a storm of pity to protect this woman.
"Go sleep again," he said. "I was wrong to rouse you with my news."
She laughed, low and pleasantly, like a breeze blowing through arose-garden. "I slept with nightmares. You are forgiven for rousing mewith news that Rupert comes."
Then she, too, saw how weary this Riding Metcalf was, and touched him onthe arm with motherly admission of his tiredness. "You need food andwine, sir. I was thoughtless."
The grey old servant, standing like a watch-dog on the threshold, caughther glance, and came in by and by with a well-filled tray.
"Admit that we are well-provisioned, Mr. Metcalf. The siege has leftsome niceties of the table lacking, but we do well enough."
She nibbled at her food, intent on keeping his riotous appetite incountenance. By the lines in his face, by the temperate haste withwhich he ate and drank, she knew him for a soldier older than his years.
"Tell me how it sped with your riding from the North?" she asked.
"It went bonnily--a fight down Skipton Raikes, and into themarket-place. Then to Ripley, and running skirmishes; and, after that,the ride to Oxford. I saw the King and Rupert, and all the prayers Iever said were answered."
"Oh, I'm tired here, waiting at home with gunshots interrupting everymeal. Tell me how the King looked."
"Tired, as you are--resolute, as if he went to battle--and he bade megive you the frankest acknowledgment of his regard."
"Ah, he knows, then--knows a little of what we've done at Lathom?"
"He knows all, and Rupert knows."
On the sudden Lady Derby lost herself. Knowledge that the King praisedher, sheer relief that the Prince was marching to her aid, came likerain about her, breaking up the long time of drought. Then she driedher eyes.
"I, too, have fought," she explained, "and have carried wounds. Now,sir, by your leave, are you rested sufficiently? Well, then, I need youfor a sortie by and by."
From the boy's laughter, his sharp call to attention, she knew againthat he was of the soldier's breed.
"Weeks ago--it seems years by now--this Colonel Rigby who besieges usplanted a mortar outside our gates. Our men sallied and killed many,and brought the mortar in."
"Good," said Kit. "I saw it as I came through the courtyard, andwondered whether you or they had put it out of action."
"My folk put it out of action. And now they've brought up anothermortar. We dare not let it play even for a day on crumbling walls.There's to be a sortie within the hour. One of my officers is dead, andtwo are wounded. Sir, will you lead a company for me?"
"Luck always comes my way," assented Kit.
"But you do not ask what strength you have to follow you?"
"What strength you can give me. I am at your service."
When Lady Derby mustered all she could spare from her slender garrison,Kit found himself the leader of twenty men, some hale enough, othersstained with the red-rust that attends on wounds.
"Friends," he said, "the moon is up, and there's light enough to guideus in the open."
They liked him. He wasted no speech. He was mired with travel of wetroads, and his face was grey and tired, but they knew him, for they hadseen other leaders spur them to the hazard.
Some went out through the main gate of Lathom, and waited under shadowof the walls. Others joined them by way of little doors, unknown to theadversary. They gathered, a battered company, led by officers halfdrunk with weariness, and ahead they saw the moonlight shining on themortar, reared on its hillock.
Beyond the hillock a besieging army of three thousand men slept insecurity, save for the hundred who kept guard about the mortar. Thesefive-score men were wakeful; for Colonel Rigby--a weakling cloaked inself-importance--had blustered round them an hour ago, had assured themthat Lady Derby was the Scarlet Woman, known otherwise as Rome, and withquick invective had threatened them with torture and the hangman if theyallowed this second mortar to go the way its predecessor had taken weeksago. He had sent an invitation broadcast through the countryside, heexplained, bidding folk come to see the mortar play on Lathom Houseto-morrow.
Through the dusk of the moonlight Kit and the rest crept forward. Quickas the sentry shouted the alarm, they were on their feet. They pouredin a broadside of musketry at close range, then pressed forward, withswords, or clubbed guns, or any weapon that they carried. It was not abattle, but a rout. In ten minutes by the clock they found themselvesmasters of the field. The mortar was theirs, and for the moment theydid not know what to do with it. From behind came the sleepy roar ofsoldiery, new-roused from sleep by the retreating guardians of themortar, and there was no time to waste.
One Corporal Bywater, a big, lean-bodied man, laughed as he touched Kiton the arm. "Had a wife once," he said. "She had her tantrums, likeyond mortar--spat fire and venom with her tongue. I cured her with thehelp of a rope's end."
Bywater, remembering the previous escapade, had lashed two strong ropesabout his body, in readiness for this second victory. The cordage, asit happened, had saved him from a death-wound, struck hurriedly by aParliament man. He unwrapped it now with a speed that seemed leisurely.Rigby's soldiery, from the moonlit slopes behind, buzzed like a hornet'snest. There was indeed no time to waste.
Christopher Metcalf was not tired now, because this hazard of the Lathomsiege had captured his imagination. His soul was alert, and thetravel-stained body of him was forgotten. Captain Chisenhall detachedfourteen of the sortie party to drag the mortar into Lathom House. Therest he sent forward, raised a sudden shout of "For God and the King!"and went pell-mell into the first of Rigby's oncoming men. Though onfoot, there was something of the dash of cavalry in this impetuousassault, and for a while they drove back the enemy; then weight ofnumbers prevailed, and Kit, his brain nimble, his heart singing some oldpibroch of the hills his forefathers had tilled, entrenched his men onthe near side of the earthworks Rigby had built
to protect his mortar.There was some stark, in-and-out fighting here, until the Roundheadsbegan to deploy in a half circle, with intent to surround Kit's littlecompany. Then he drew back his men for a score yards, led a lastcharge, and retreated to the Lathom gateway in time to see the mortardragged safely into the main courtyard.
When the gate was closed, and Kit came out of the berserk madness knownas war, he saw the Lady of Lathom in the courtyard.
"But, indeed, sir, you've done very well," said she, moving through thepress of men to give him instant greeting.
"It was pastime." Kit's voice was unsteady yet, his head swimming withthe wine that drips, not from red grapes, but from the sword that hastaken toll of human life. "We brought the mortar in."
"You did, friends. Permit me to say good-night. I have need to get tomy knees, thanking God that he sends so many gentlemen my way."
After she was gone, and the men were gathered round the peat fire in thehall, Kit was aware that he was at home. All were united here, as theMetcalfs were united. Private jealousies were lost in this need todefend Lathom for the King. Captain Chisenhall was here, stifling ayawn as he kicked the fire into a glow, Fox, and Worrall and Rawstorn,and others whose faces showed old with long service to this defence ofLathom--the defence that shone like the pole star over the descendingnight that was to cover kingship for a while.
They asked news of the Riding Metcalfs; and that, in turn, drew them totalk of Lathom's siege. They told him of Captain Radcliffe, who had ledtwelve sorties from the house, and had spread dismay among the enemyuntil they feared even the whisper of his name.
"I was never one for my Lady Derby's prayerful view of life," saidRawstorn, his gruff voice softening, "but Radcliffe was on her side.He'd slip away before a sortie, and we knew he was praying at the altarof the little chapel here. Then he would come among us, cracking ajest; but there was a light about his face as if the man wereglamoured."
"I know that glamour, too," said Kit, with his unconquerable simplicity."There's a cracked bell rings me in on Sabbath mornings to our kirk inYoredale."
"What do you find there, lad?" asked a rough elder of the company.
"Strength undeserved, and the silver sheen of wings."
So then they were silent; for they knew that he could fight andpray---two qualities that men respect.
It was the big-jowled elder who broke the silence. "Say, laddie, can youdrink?" he growled.
"A bucketful, if I'm not needed on this side of the dawn."
Comfort of the usual kind might be lacking here at Lathom, but thecellar was well filled. And Kit, as the wine passed round, learned thetruth that comes from unlocked tongues. They talked of the siege, thesegallants who had kept watch and ward; they told how Lady Derby hadtrained her children not to whimper when cannon-shot broke roughly intothe dining-hall; they told how Captain Radcliffe, his head erect, hadgone out for the thirteenth sortie, how they had warned him of theill-omen.
"Oh, he was great that day," said Rawstorn. "'If I were Judas, I shouldfear thirteen,' said he. 'As the affair stands, I'm stalwart for theKing.' He was killed in an attack on the east fort; and when we sortiedand brought his body in, there was a smile about his lips."
Little by little Christopher pieced together the fragments of that longsiege. Lady Derby's single-mindedness, her courage and sheer charm,were apparent from every word spoken by these gentlemen who drank theirliquor. The hazards of the men, too--the persistent sorties, thegive-and-take and pathos and laughter of their life within doors--wereplain for Kit to understand. At Oxford and elsewhere there had beenspite and rancour, jealousy of one King's soldier against another. Hereat Lathom there was none of that; day by day of every month of siege,they had found a closer amity, and their strength had been adamantagainst an overpowering force outside their gates.
Kit learned much, too, of Colonel Rigby, who commanded the attack. Ahedge-lawyer by training--one who had defended night-birds and skulkersof all kinds--he had found himself lifted to command of three thousandmen because Sir Thomas Fairfax, a man of sound heart and chivalry, grewtired of making war upon a lady. Rigby enjoyed the game. He cared nevera stiver for the Parliament, but it was rapture to him to claim somesort of intimacy with the titled great by throwing cannon-balls andinsults against my Lady Derby's walls.
"As for Rigby," said the man with the big jowl, "I wish him only onething--to know, to the marrow of him, what place he has in the thoughtsof honest folk. Mate a weasel with a rat, and you'll get his breed."
Captain Chisenhall, who had been pacing restlessly up and down the hall,halted in front of Kit. "It was a fine device of yours, to entrench onthis side of their own earthworks. I never had much head myself, ormight have thought of it. But, man, you're spent with this night'swork."
"Spent?" laughed Kit. A sudden dizziness took him unawares, and theirfaces danced in a grey mist before his eyes. "I was never morewide-awake. D'ye want another sortie, gentlemen? Command me."
With that his head lolled back against the inglenook. He roused himselfonce to murmur "A Mecca for the King!" then slept as he had done onfar-off nights after harvesting of hay or corn in Yoredale.
"There's a game-pup from over the Yorkshire border among us," laughedChisenhall. "Let him sleep. Let me get up to bed, too, and sleep. Ofall the toasts I ever drank--save that of the King's Majesty--I likethis last bumper best. Here's to the kind maid, slumber, and good nightto you, my friends."
The next morning, soon after dawn, Kit stirred in sleep. Through thenarrow mullions great, crimson shafts of light were stealing. A thrushoutside was recalling bygone litanies of mating-time. Sparrows were busyin the ivy. It was so like Yoredale and old days that he rousedhimself, got to his feet, and remembered what had chanced last night.He had slept hard and truly, and had profited thereby. His bones wereaching, and there was a nagging cut across his face; for the rest, hewas ready for the day's adventure.
Last night, when he returned from battle, the moonlight had shown himonly a littered courtyard, full of men and captured cannonry. He couldnot guess where the most valiant of cock-throstles found anchor for hisfeet; and, to settle the question, he went out. The song greeted himwith fine rapture as he set foot across the doorway; and in the middleof the yard he saw the trunk of a big, upstanding walnut-tree.Three-quarters of the branches had been shot away, but one big limbremained. At the top of the highest branch a slim, full-throatedgentleman was singing to his mate.
"Good Royalist!" said Kit. "Go singing while your branch is left you."
His mood was so tense and alert, his sympathy with the throstle soeager, that he started when a laugh sounded at his elbow. "I knew lastnight a soldier came to Lathom. He is a poet, too, it seems."
The wild, red dawn--sign of the rainiest summer known in England forfifty years--showed him Lady Derby. The lines were gone from her face,her eyes were soft and trustful, as a maid's eyes are; it did not seempossible that she had withstood a year of siege.
"I was just thanking God," she explained, "that picked men come my wayso often. There are so many Rigbys in this world, and minorities needall their strength."
She was so soft of voice, so full of the fragrance which a woman hereand there gives out to hearten roughened men, that Kit began to walk infairyland. So had Captain Chisenhall walked long since, Rawstorn and theother officers, the private soldiery, because the Lady of Lathom wasstrong, courageous, and secure.
"How have you kept heart so long?" asked Kit, his boy's heedless pityroused afresh.
"And you, sir--how have you kept heart so long?" she laughed.
"Oh, I was astride a horse, plying a sword or what not. It was alleasy-going; but for you here----"
"For me there was the bigger venture. You have only one right hand forthe spear. I have control of scores. My dear soldiery are pleased tolove me--I know not why--and power is sweet. You will believe, sir, thatall this is pastime to me."
Yet her voice broke. Tired folk know tired folk when
they are climbingthe same hill of sadness; and Kit touched her on the arm. "Roughpastime, I should call it," he said, "and you a woman."
She gathered her courage again. Laughter played about her charitable,wide mouth.
"You're in love, Mr. Metcalf--finely in love, I think, with some chit ofa girl who may or may not deserve it. There was a reverence in yourvoice when you spoke of women."
Kit's face was red with confession of his guilt. "There's none else forme," he said.
"Ah, then, I'm disappointed. This zeal last night--it was not for theKing, after all. It was because some woman tempted you to do greatdeeds for her own pretty sake.'
"We've been King's men at Nappa since time began," said Kit stubbornly."My father has sounded a trumpet from Yoredale down to Oxford. AllEngland knows us stalwart for the King."
Lady Derby allowed herself a moment's happiness. Here was a man who hadno shams, no glance forward or behind to see where his loyalty wouldtake him. There was nothing mercantile about him, and, in these muddledtimes, that was so much to be thankful for.
"Believe me," she said very gently, "I know your breed. Believe me,too, when I say that I am older than you--some of the keen, bluedawn-lights lost to me, but other beauties staying on--and I ask you,when you meet your wide-eyed maid again, to put it to the question."
"I've done that already."
Again laughter crept round Lady Derby's mouth. "I meant a deeperquestion, sir. Ask her whether she had rather wed you and live at ease,or see you die because the King commands."
"She would choose death for me--I should not love her else."
"One does not know. There are men and women who have that view of life.They are few. Put it to the question. Now I must go indoors, sir, tosee that breakfast is readying for these good men of mine. Pluck is afine gift, but it needs ample rations."
Kit watched her go. He was amazed by her many-sidedness. One momenttranquil, fresh from her dawn-prayers; the next a woman of the world,giving him motherly advice; and then the busy housewife, attentive tothe needs of hungry men. Like Strafford, whose head was in the losing,she was in all things thorough.
He went up to the ramparts by and by. The sentry, recognising him asone who had shared the sortie over-night, saluted with a pleasant grin.Kit, as he looked down on the trenches, the many tokens of a siege thatwas no child's play, thought again of Lady Derby, her incredible, suavecourage. Then he fell to thinking of Joan, yonder in the North. She,too, was firm for the cause; it was absurd to suggest doubt of that.Whether she cared for him or no, she would be glad to see him die in theKing's service.
He was in the middle of a high dream--all made up of gallop, and a deathwound, and Joan weeping pleasant tears above his prostrate body--whenthere came a sharp, smoky uproar from the trenches, and a bullet pluckedhis hat away.
"Comes of rearing your head against the sky," said the sentryimpassively; "but then they're no marksmen, these whelps of Rigby's."
Another bullet went wide of Kit, a third whistled past his left cheek;so that he yielded to common sense at last, and stooped under shelter ofthe parapet. The besiegers then brought other artillery to bear. Aharsh, resonant voice came down-wind to them:
"Hear the news, you dandies of Lady Derby's! Sir Thomas Fairfax hasrouted your men at Selby. Cromwell is busy in the east. Three of ourarmies have surrounded your Duke of Newcastle in York. Is that enoughfor my lady to breakfast on, or would you have further news?"
The sentry--old, taciturn, and accustomed through long months to thiswarfare of the tongue--bided his time. He knew the habits of thesespokesmen of Rigby's. When no answer came from the ramparts, furthertaunts and foul abuse swept upward from below. Still there was noreply, till the man, in a fierce rage of his own making, got up andshowed head and shoulders above the trench. The sentry fired, withouthaste.
"One less," he growled. "It's queer to see a man go round and roundlike a spinning top before he tumbles out of sight."
"Was his news true?" asked Kit, dismayed by the tidings.
"Ah, that's to prove. Liars speak truth now and then. Stands to reasonthey must break into truth, just time and time, by chance."
Kit left the rampart presently, and found a hungry company of men atbreakfast.
"Why so grave, Mr. Metcalf?" laughed Lady Derby, who was servingporridge from a great bowl of earthenware. "You are hungry, doubtless.There's nothing else brings such gravity as yours to a man's face."
"I was thinking of last night's sortie," said Kit.
"So that hunger, too, grows on you as on my other gentlemen? But,indeed, we propose to rest to-day. Even we have had enough, I think."
He told them the news shouted from the trenches. Rough-riding, zeal, andyouth had given him a persuasiveness of his own. "The news may be trueor false," he said, looking down at them from his full height; "but,either way, it will put heart into the enemy. By your leave, we mustharass them."
He had his way, and, knowing it, sat down to a breakfast that astonishedall onlookers.
"I find many kinds of admiration for you, sir," drawled CaptainChisenhall, "but especially, I think, for your gift of feeding that finebulk of yours."
"I'm just like my own homeland in Yoredale," assented Kit; "it needsfeeding if strong crops are to follow."
That night they made three sorties on the trenches, five on the next,and for a week they kept the pace. A few of the garrison were killed,more were wounded, but speed and fury made up for loss of numbers, andColonel Rigby sent a messenger galloping to Manchester for help in need.The besiegers, he explained, were so harassed that they were dropping inthe trenches, not from gun-fire, but from lack of sleep.
The sentries on the walls had no chance nowadays to pick off orators whorose from cover of the trenches to shout ill tidings at them. Fromtheir vantage-ground on the ramparts they could hear, instead, the oathsand uproar of a disaffected soldiery who voiced their grievances.
On the seventh morning, an hour before noon, a man came into Lathom, wetfrom the moat, as Kit had been on his arrival here. He told them thatPrince Rupert, the Earl of Derby with him, had crossed the Cheshireborder, marching to the relief of Lathom.
"So," said Captain Chisenhall, "we'll give them one last sortie beforethe frolic ends."
Lady Derby smiled pleasantly. "That is your work, gentlemen. Mine isto get to my knees, to thank God that my husband is so near to me."
When they sortied that night, they found empty trenches. The moonlightshowed them only the disorder--a disorder unsavoury to thenostrils--that attended a forsaken camp. One man they found with abroken leg, who had been left in the rear of a sharp retreat. He hadbeen bullied by Rigby, it appeared, and the rancour bit deeper than thetrouble of his broken limb. He told them that Rigby, and what were leftof his three thousand, had pushed down to Bolton, and he expressed ahope--not pious--that all the Cavaliers in England would light a bonfireround him there.
When they gathered for the return to Lathom, the futility about them ofhunters who have found no red fox to chase, Kit saluted CaptainChisenhall. "My regards to Lady Derby," he explained; "tell her I'm nolonger needed here at Lathom. Tell her that kin calls to kin, and whereRupert is, the Metcalfs are. I go to warn them that Rigby lies inBolton."
"Good," said Chisenhall. "Rigby has lied in most parts of the country.Go hunt the weasel, you young hot-head."
When they returned, Lady Derby asked where Kit Metcalf was, and theytold her. "Gentlemen," she said, with that odd, infectious laugh ofhers, "I have no favourites, but, if I had, it is Kit Metcalf I wouldchoose to bring Prince Rupert here. There's the light of youth abouthim."
"There is," said Chisenhall. "I lost it years ago, and nothing else inlife makes up for it--except a sortie."