“A wish to be fought and conquered,” said Joscelyn, musingly. “But one that comes to us all in moments of the greatest suffering.”
Then, with a little hesitation, he told Gabriel that the war had robbed him also in cruel fashion, and in listening to what he was willing to tell of his story, the wounded man forgot his own troubles, and the two began a friendship that was to stand them in good stead.
“I owe my life to you,” said Gabriel, gratefully. “To you, and strangely enough, to my Lord Falkland.”
He told of the incident on the previous day and of his amazement that the Secretary of State should be there.
“In truth,” said Joscelyn Heyworth, “I heard from no less a person than Colonel Hampden’s cousin, Cromwell, that my Lord Falkland had ridden about the field more as one that wished to spare life than to take it, and he had heard from others that the Secretary of State intervened several times when the Royalists would have slain the fugitives, and urged that they should have quarter on throwing down their arms.
“But as Secretary he was not bound to fight at all,” said Gabriel.
“No, but ’twas well known that he ever counsels the King to make peace and, like all peacemakers, he is misunderstood and miscalled a coward; therefore, no doubt, he loses no chance to give the lie to those that taunt him, by throwing himself fearlessly into an unnecessary peril. Never has man been in harder case, for he is disliked now by both parties, and very scurvily treated, they say, by the King, who doth not like his plain-speaking and his scrupulous truthfulness.”
“Why did he ever desert the Parliamentary cause to which he was once true?” said Gabriel.
“Colonel Hampden, who hath a great regard for him, says that he distrusted Archbishop Laud’s teaching and his narrow intolerance, but dreaded the narrowness of the extreme Puritans even worse. Being thus in a strait betwixt two parties he, to Colonel Hampden’s great sorrow, cast in his lot with our opponents.”
“May God keep us from all evil passion in our fighting and make us as merciful foes as Lord Falkland has proved,” said Gabriel, sorely perplexed in his mind as he recalled the fiery spirit which had possessed him after he had seen the ghastly death-wound of his Scottish comrade. With what a strange, fierce joy he had hurled himself and his steed against the Royalist pikes, and with what burning heat the blood had coursed through his veins! Yet now the mere remembrance of the awful sights he had seen turned him positively faint.