Hugh Gwyeth: A Roundhead Cavalier

by Beulah Marie Dix

Of the rest of the night Hugh only remembered that his knees were very warm with the fire by which he sat, and his back was cold in spite of his cloak. The flames crackled bravely, and Strangwayes talked nonsense, to which Captain Turner listened in deep and sober approbation. But Hugh, crowded close up to Strangwayes, said nothing, just gazed at the fire and closed his eyes once in a while, till at last he went ignominiously asleep with his head on his friend’s shoulder.

Waking with neck stiff and arm cramped, he found to his delight the east all pale in the dawn, so, slipping the bridle of the bay horse over his arm, he went strolling across the encampment till he could find out Frank and show him his new mount. But Frank, now confident in the possession of The Jade, discovered many flaws in the bay, which he set forth in horseman-like phrases till Hugh went sauntering back again to Strangwayes. At Turner’s fire he found a newcomer, a brown-haired young officer, who had once taken him for a horse-boy, whom Strangwayes now made known to him under the name of George Allestree, guidon in Captain Butler’s dragoons, and serving as a volunteer at Edgehill. Discreetly ignoring their former meeting, Allestree was effusively grateful to Hugh for the use of the bay, which Strangwayes had lent him to ride thither, and altogether proved so pleasant spoken a fellow that Hugh ended by putting out of mind the memory of his previous conduct.

With Allestree and Strangwayes Hugh passed the long day, now talking a bit by the ashes of last night’s fire, then rising to stretch his legs and look to his horse, then back to the fire again, where he ate such rations as were dealt to him and felt rather hungry afterward. It was a day of uncertainty and idleness beneath which lay a tense expectancy; any moment a blow might be struck for the king, yet the moments passed and nothing was done. About noon Turner stalked off to confer with Sir William, but he came back whistling and non-committal; indeed, there was nothing but the old story to tell: his Majesty’s army rested on Edgehill and my Lord Essex’s army was drawn up in the plain below, and each looked at the other, but neither moved to strike.

They were not up in action till mid-afternoon of the next day, when there came word the rebels were retreating, and, right on the heels of that, a definite order for the horse to form in the plain. Once more Hugh scrambled down the slope of Edgehill, but this time his feet were braced in the stirrups, his sword smote against his horse’s flank, and all about him, in loud talk of the victory they were soon to gain, other mounted men were descending. Once more he had sight of ranks of horsemen marshalling for a charge, but now he was himself in the thick of it, and, when the word was passed along, waved his sword with the rest, then galloped forward amidst his comrades. Before him the plain swept into the western sky, where the clouds were shiny with the sun they hid, the wind came sharp in his face, and around him men shouted and horses plunged till his own beast, too, catching the joy of movement, reared up. This was war, Hugh thought, and only for a second recalled it was the same bloody field over which he had tramped not eight and forty hours ago. Then across the plain he saw a cluster of roofs, and, as they spurred faster, made out the windows of the cottages, and men moving in the street. At that the shouting in the ranks about him became a yell of onset, and he, too, rising up in his stirrups, screamed, “For a king, a king!”

Of what followed nothing was quite clear. There were houses, a woman that ran shrieking in front of his horse, and a Roundhead soldier he saw bleeding upon a doorstone. He heard shots to the front, saw some of his side press past him in flight, and after that he was mixed in a confusion of horses and men of both parties. He struck wildly in with his sword, whereat a Royalist dragoon, swinging round in his saddle, cursed him volubly in German and in English as not old enough to be trusted with cutting tools, and crowding past the man he left him still cursing. Then he was wedged into a lane, where was a baggage-wagon with a teamster on it who tried to lash forward his four horses. One Cavalier trooper slashed up at the fellow where he sat, while another was cutting the traces. Up at the far end of the lane was a shouting, “The rebels are coming!” Hugh urged the bay forward to the heads of the leaders, and, bending from the saddle, cut the traces with his sword. Then a ruck of the Royalist troops was about him, and, as men caught at the freed horses, he judged it proper to seize one of them by the bit and hold to him, while the crowd forced him back down the lane, past the wagon and the teamster dead beneath its wheels. From the rear came shots, but there was no facing about in such a throng, so with the rest Hugh swept back at a gallop through Kineton out into the open country.

The pace slackening now, he slipped his sword back into the sheath, and, taking time to look about him, saw some of those who rode near had been cut, but he himself and his two horses were without a scratch. Turning in the saddle to gaze back, he saw other bands of horse come straggling behind them. “Is the fight all over?” he asked a trooper who trotted beside him.

“Over?” swore the fellow. “What more d’ye want?” Then he looked pretty sharply at Hugh, and ended by offering to lead the wagon-horse for him, an offer the boy refused. Next the trooper, assuring Hugh he might have no end of difficulties in maintaining his right in the capture, proposed to give him ten shillings for the beast. What more he would say Hugh never found out, for, as they rode at a slackened pace a little on the flank, a horseman from the rear came charging into them, stared, and cried Hugh’s name. It was Bob Saxon of Gwyeth’s troop, who, scenting a matter of horse-dealing, voluntarily came in, and, falling upon the other man, bepraised the captured horse till he clean talked the fellow out of the field.

“Ten shillings?” Saxon repeated contemptuously to Hugh, “Lord forgive the knave! The beast is worth fifty. Come along with me, sir, and I’ll find you a market.”

They made a great circuit off to the north of the field and about dusk fetched up in a hamlet to the rear of the army, whither Royalist troops were now marching from Edgehill to seek quarters. Saxon gathered some half score of dragoons and a petty officer or two in the street before the village inn, where, with loud swearing and shouting, he showed off to them the captured horse. There followed much chaffering and wrangling, with Saxon’s voice loudest, which ended in the paying of the money and the delivering over of the beast. “Fifty shillings, as I promised you, sir,” Saxon announced, as he told them into Hugh’s hand, with a suggestive look that made Hugh pass him back five for himself.

“You’re a good piece of a gentleman, sir,” the trooper said candidly, as they rode out from the hamlet. “Be you never going to serve under Colonel Gwyeth?”