Through that night Blake did not sleep or ask for slumber. The nightingales were tireless, as if their throats would break unless they eased them. The Metcalf riders were tireless, too. At longer and at longer intervals they came in from the north, their horses showing signs of stress. Two miles from outpost to outpost was a trifling distance; but, before the last of that night's company joined the muster here at Banbury, he had travelled forty miles.
Blake lay, his face to the moonlight, and could not stifle memory. The sleepy fragrance, the scent of moist earth and flowering stuff, took him, as by sorcery, to a walled garden in Knaresborough and a summer that had been, and the end of blandishment. There had been no nightingales—it lay too far north, that garden, to tempt them—but a stronger song had stirred him. And there had been the same lush smell of summer, the same hovering of bats across the moon's face.
It was as if she sat beside him again—they two listening to the ripple of Nidd River far below—and her voice was low and tender as she chided him for love-making. There had been other meetings—stolen ones and brief—and all the world a-maying to Blake's view of it.
He would not let the dream go—played with it, pretended he had not learned long since what it meant to love a light-of-heart. Her face, of the kind that painters dote on when they picture maiden innocence, the shifting play of light and colour in her eyes, the trick she had of making all men long to be better than they were—surely he could rest this once from many journeyings, and snatch another stolen meeting, there in Knaresborough, with all the roses blowing kisses to them.
As he lay there, the two Metcalfs who were sentrying their little camp grew tired of pacing to and fro, each on his own short beat, and halted for a gossip. Blake did not heed them until they began to talk of Knaresborough, of Michael's dash into the Castle, of a Mistress Bingham he had met there.
"Michael met his match for once," laughed one sentry. "You know his gift of finding the finest eyes in England housed under every other woman's brows? Well, Mistress Demaine plays a good game at hearts, too, they say. Michael was touched in earnest this time. Oh, the jest of it!"
"It would be a better if they began by playing, and ended with the silken noose. Can you picture Michael wedded—Michael, with cut wings and drooping comb, seeking no more for fairest eyes?"
Blake left his dreams as if they scorched him. So Mistress Bingham had been two years ago; so she would be, doubtless, when the King had come to his own again, and had reigned long, and passed on the crown. There is a stability about inconstancy, Blake realised.
He got to his feet, crossed to where the sentries stood, and yawned. "Gentlemen," he said, "I cannot sleep for hunger; and there will be others in my case before the night ends. Can I borrow two of your company to make up a forage-party?"
One of the sentries pointed to a distant belt of wood, high up against the sky. "When dawn rides over the trees yonder, our watch is ended. We'll join you, Mr. Blake, if only because you have the most diverting laugh I ever heard, except Michael's when he's seen a pair of pretty eyes."