"Where do you expect to find Cromwell?"
"I left him at Queensferry in Fife, cutting off the enemy's victual. This would force the Stuart either to fight or go southward, for he has completely exhausted the North, and it seems he has taken the south road. But it is incredible that this move is either unexpected or unwelcome to our General. Once before, he put himself between England and the Scots, and 'how God succoured,' that is not well to be forgotten. Those were his words, and you will notice, that it is 'how God succoured,' not how Cromwell succeeded. With him it is always, The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle;" and Cluny's voice rose and his words rang out sharply to the clatter of the horse's hoofs on the stone pavement.
Then he turned to Jane. "Darling Jane! My Jane!" and kissing her, he said boldly to Mrs. Swaffham, "I ask your favour, madame. Jane has this hour promised to be my wife."
"Jane has then been very forward," answered Mrs. Swaffham with annoyance, "and both of you very selfish and thoughtless. While your mother England's heart is at her lips, in this dread extremity, you two must needs talk of love and marrying. I am grieved. And Jane's father has not been spoken to, and he is first of all. I can say neither yea nor nay in the matter."
"But you will surely speak for us. Give me a kind word, madame, ere I go." And she could not resist the youth's beauty and sweet nature, nor yet the thought in her heart that it might perhaps be his last request. If he should be slain in battle, and she had refused the kind word, what excuse would quiet her self-reproach? Then she looked kindly at him, and the thought of the young prince David going out to meet the uncircumcised Philistine who had defied the armies of the living God, came into her heart; and she drew down his face to hers and kissed and blessed him, saying, as Saul said to David, "Go, and the Lord be with thee."
Then he leaped into the saddle, and the horse caught his impatience and shared his martial passion, and with a loud neigh went flying over the land. Silently the two women watched the dark figure grow more and more indistinct in the soft, mysterious moonshine, until at length it was a mere shadow that blended with the indistinctness of the horizon.
"Thank you, dear mother," said Jane softly, and the mother answered, "In these times who dare say good-bye in anger? But let me tell you, Jane, you cannot now think of yourself first. England is at the sword's point; your father and brothers are living on a battle-field; your lover is only one of thousands fighting for the truth and the right, and his life is England's before it is yours. God and country must be served first, eh, my dear?"
"Yes, mother. First and best of all."
"When Neville has done his duty, he will come for you. He can no more bear to live without you than without his eyes. I see that."
Before Jane could reply, they heard the men and women coming from the harvesting. They were singing as they trailed homeward, their harsh, drawling voices in the night's silence sounding tired and pathetic and bare of melody. Jane slipped away to the music in her own heart, closing within herself that Love whose growth had been sweet and silent as the birth of roses.
CHAPTER V
SHEATHED SWORDS
"The peaceful cities
Lulled in their ease and undisturbed before are all on fire.
The thick battalions move in dreadful form
As lowering clouds advance before a storm;
Thick smoke obscures the field, and scarce are seen,
The neighing coursers and the shouting men;
In distance of their darts they stop their course,
Then man to man they rush, and horse to horse.
The face of heaven their flying javelins hide
And deaths unseen are dealt on every side.
… the fields are strewed
With fallen bodies, and are drunk with blood."
It will be well now to recall the positions which Charles Stuart and Cromwell, with their armies, occupied. The royalist defeat at Dunbar occurred on September the third, A.D. 1650, and Charles, after it, sought shelter in the fortress of Stirling Castle, where he remained until he went to Perth. Here, on January the first, 1651, he was crowned King of Scotland, and then he assumed the command of Captain-General of the Scotch forces, having under him the Duke of Hamilton and David Leslie. At this time the Scotch army had become purely royal and malignant, the Kirk having done its part had retired, leaving the King to manage his own affairs. During the winter, which was long and severe, Charles and his army could do nothing; but when fine weather came and they understood that Cromwell would march to Perth, the Scotch army went southward, fortifying itself on the famous Torwood Hill, between Stirling and Falkirk.
This long winter had been one of great suffering to General Cromwell. After making himself master of the whole country south of Forth and Clyde, he had a severe illness, and lay often at the point of death. In the month of May two physicians were sent by Parliament from London to Edinburgh to attend him, but ere they arrived, the Lord Himself had been his physician and said unto him, Live! He took the field in June, throwing the main part of his army into Fife, in order to cut off the enemy's victual. This move forced the hand of Charles Stuart. His army was in mutiny for want of provisions, the North country was already drained, he durst not risk a battle – but the road into England was clear.
Cromwell himself had gone northward to Perth, and on the second of August he took possession of that city; but while entering it was told that Charles Stuart, with fourteen thousand men, had suddenly left Stirling and was marching towards England. Cromwell was neither surprised nor alarmed; perhaps, indeed, he had deliberately opened the way for this move by going northward to Perth, and leaving the road to England open. At any rate, when Charles reached the border he found Harrison with a strong body of horse waiting for him, while Fleetwood with his Yorkshiremen lay heavy on his left flank, and Lambert with all the English cavalry was jogging on, pressing close the rear of his army. For in Lambert's ears was ringing night and day Cromwell's charge to him, —
"Use utmost diligence! With the rest of the horse and men I am hastening up, and by the Lord's help, I shall be in good time."
Charles had taken the western road by Carlisle, and it was thought he would make for London. He went at a flying speed past York, Nottingham, Coventry, until he reached the borders of Shropshire, summoning every town he passed, but hardly waiting for the thundering negatives that answered his challenge; for the swift, steady tramp of Cromwell's pursuit was daily drawing nearer and nearer. Reaching Shrewsbury, he found the gates shut against him, and his men were so disheartened that the King with cap in hand entreated them "yet a little longer to stick to him." For all his hopes and promises had failed, there had been no rising in his favour, no surrender of walled towns, and the roads between Shrewsbury and London were bristling with gathering militia. So Charles turned westward to Worcester, a city reported to be loyal, where he was received with every show of honour and affection. Here he set up his standard on the ill-omened twenty-second of August, the very day nine years previous, on which his father had planted his unfortunate standard at Nottingham.
Meanwhile Cromwell was following Charles with a steady swiftness that had something fateful in it. He had taken Perth on the second of August; he left it with ten thousand men on the third; he was on the border by the eighth; he was at Warwick on the twenty-fourth, where he was immediately joined by Harrison, Fleetwood and Lambert. Such swiftness and precision must have been prearranged, either by Cromwell or by Destiny. It was to be the last battle of the Civil War, and Cromwell knew it, for he had beyond the lot of mortals that wondrous insight, that prescience, which, like the scabbard of the sword Excalibur, was more than the blade itself – the hilt armed with eyes. There