The Prince, following his glance, saw Goldstein plucking his horse into a trot. “I prefer to wait,” he said lazily. “It is a skirmish of this sort I hoped for.”
“And your Highlanders? We’re in the open without a wall to set our backs to. You dare not leave your Highlanders.”
“True, I dare not.” He glanced wistfully at the down-riding men, as if death in the open were easier to him just now than life. “It is retreat once more? Dear God, I must have sinned, to have this sickness put on me!”
“Our horses are fresh. We’ll give them Tally-Ho, your Highness.”
Through the darkness and the trouble of his soul, through the wish to die here and now and lie in forgetfulness of Derby and retreat, the Prince caught up some tattered remnants of the Stuart courage. It was easy to wait, sword ready, for the oncoming; but it was hard to gallop from an enemy he loathed. Yet from the discipline of that long peril shared with his men, since they came on the forlorn hope from Scotland, the strength that does not fail returned to Prince Charles Edward. He set his mare—Nance Demaine’s mare—to the gallop; and Sir Jasper rode keen and hard beside him; and Goldstein found his heavy horse slip and lurch under him, as all his company did while they blundered in pursuit. Goldstein followed headlong. Three of his troopers came to ground in galloping down a greasy slope, and their leader, if he had been a worse horseman, would have shared the same fate. As it was, he kept forward, and at a bend of the road saw, half a mile ahead, the company of MacDonalds who kept the rear of the Stuart army.
“Well, it’s not to-day we catch him,” he snapped, reining up and facing the ill-tempered men behind him. “We can bide our time.”
“Aye, we’ve been biding a good while,” growled a weather-beaten trooper. “Whichever way his back’s turned, this cursed Pretender always slips out of reach.”
“The money’s on his head, you fools!” snapped Goldstein. “You’ll mutiny against God or man, but not against thirty thousand pounds, if I know your breed. There’s to-morrow; we shall catch him soon or late, while this mood is on him to ride behind his army.”
They were sobered by this hint of money. For they were men who plied for hire, and only hire. And that night they encamped on the outskirts of Manchester, where the Prince’s army lay, and dreamed they were rich men all. And the next morning they were almost cheerful, this ragged cavalry of Goldstein’s, because the day’s hunt was up, and because their view of the Rising was narrowed to each man’s share of the blood-money when they took Prince Charles Edward, dead or alive.
Up at Windyhough, in Lancashire, this same red dawn had shone through the open window of Rupert’s bedchamber, rousing him from uneasy slumber. He had gone to the casement, and was looking out at the grim majestic moors. Line after line the rugged spurs and knolls strode up from the night mists into the crimson and purple that gained in splendour every moment. Of a truth, it was a man’s land; and the thought goaded Rupert into deep and passionate self-pity, as it had always done. Over the hills yonder his father rode beside the Stuart—men going on a manly errand. Perhaps they had fought their big battle already, were hastening to a London eager to receive the conquerors. And he? He was playing at the defence of a house remote from any chance of action. And there was Nance, waiting for him to prove himself, growing cold and contemptuous because each new day found him still Rupert the Dreamer, inept, irritable, a burden to himself and others.