"By your leave," he said, "I have a letter for the Queen."
"It will be safe in my hands, Mr. Metcalf."
The Prince was surprised by the other's gravity, his air of perplexity. "I would trust all I have to you," said Michael, "all that is my own. But this letter is the King's, and he bade me give it to the Queen herself. I can do no less, believe me."
"Sir," said Rupert coldly, "you risk your whole advantage here at Court—make me your enemy for life, perhaps—because you stand on a punctilio the King himself would not ask from you."
The Duchess watched the faces of these men. Michael had been the laughter-maker in the midst of disastrous days; his gift of story, his odd susceptibility to the influence of twenty pairs of bright eyes in a day, had made him a prime favourite. Now he was as hard and simple-minded as his brother Christopher. She approved the man in his new guise.
"I stand on the strict command the King gave me," said Michael quietly. "Sir, how could a man do otherwise?"
Rupert turned suddenly. "Duchess," he said, "we stand in the presence of a man. I have tried him. And it always clears the air, after Councils and what not, to hear the north wind sing. I wish your clan would hurry to the muster, sir, if they're all as firm as you are for the King."
An hour later the Queen returned, read the letter, penned a hasty answer. "Ah, it is so good to see you, Monsieur Metcalf, so good! You have the laughter ready always—it is so good to laugh! There is—what you call it?—too much salt in tears, and tears, they fall so quick if one allows it. Now, you will tell me—before you take my letter—when does your big company ride in? Some say to-day, others two, three days later. For myself, I want to see your tall men come. They will make light the King's heart—and he so triste—ah, croyez-vous that he is triste!"
With her quick play of hands and features, her pretty broken English, the air of strength and constancy that underlay her charm, the Queen touched Michael with that fire of pity, admiration, selfless love, which never afterwards can be forgotten. She had bidden him laugh, lest for her part she cried. So he made a jest of this ride of the Metcalfs south. He drew pictures, quick, ludicrous pictures, of men calculating this queer game of six-score men travelling fast as horseflesh could bring them to the loyal city. He explained that he alone had the answer to the riddle, because he was unhampered by Christopher's obstinacy on the one hand, by the grave algebra of dons on the other. All Oxford had been obsessed by the furious gallop of horsemen north between stage and stage. They could reach York in fifteen hours. It was the return journey, of units gathering into companies, of companies resting their horses when need compelled, that fixed the coming of the White Horses into Oxford. And the last of these—the one mustered nearest York—was of necessity the one that guided the hour of coming.
In the north ride, speed and road-dust under the gallop; in the canny muster toward the south, a pace of tiresome slowness.