"Never look so woebegone," laughed Rupert, leaning from saddle to pat the brute's head. "We're to have a glorious day, Boye, and you the luck of it."
Kit had first realised at Oxford how deeply Boye was embroiled in this war of King and Parliament. To the Royalists he was their talisman, the touchstone of success. To the enemy he was a thing accursed, the evil spirit harbouring the body of a dog; they had essayed to shoot and poison him, and found him carrying a charmed life. Their unkempt fancy ran so wild as to name him the worst Papist of the Stuart following, because he went often with Rupert to kirk, and showed great reverence in a place holy to his master. Christopher recalled how the Prince had laughed once when a friend had told him what the Roundhead gossip was. "It's an odd charge to lay against a dog," he had said, "that he's a better Catholic than they."
And now, with battle close ahead and the big deed in the making, Rupert had found leisure to see Boye's hardship and to cheer him forward on the dusty road. He caught Christopher's glance of wonder—as, indeed, he saw most things in these days of trouble—and smiled with disconcerting humour.
"After all, Master Christopher, I've found only three things to love in my hard life—loyalty to the King, and my brother Maurice, and the good Boye here. Love goes deep when its bounds are set in such a narrow compass."
He said nothing of his fourth love—the high regard he had for the Duchess of Richmond—the love that had so little of clay about it, so much of the Pole Star's still, upleading glamour. Instead, he bustled forward on the road; and about noon the vanguard of his army found itself on Marston Moor. It was a wild country, clumps of bog and gorse and heather islanding little farmsteads and their green intaken acres. On the slopes above, wide of Tockwith village, they could see the smoke of camp fires and the passing to and fro of many Roundheads, hefty in the build.
"They were ever good feeders," said Rupert lightly.
His whole face was changed. The lines of weariness were gone. The surety of battle near at hand was stirring some vivid chord of happiness. It was a sane happiness, that sharpened brain and eye. The country was so flat that from the saddle he could see the whole range of this battlefield in prospect. He marked the clumps of intake—bean-fields white with flower, pastures browned by the drought, meadows showing fresh and green after last week's ingathering of the crop. He saw Wilstrop Wood beyond, and the ditch and ragged fence half between Wilstrop and the hill on which the Parliament men were eating a good dinner for the first time in many months.
"My right wing takes position this side the ditch," said the Prince at last, pointing to a gap in the hedge where a rough farm-lane passed through it. "Now that is settled, gentlemen, I'm free of care. Mr. Metcalf," he added, turning to Michael, "go find your kinsmen and bid them join me. It is the only honour I can give them at the moment; and the King's wish—my own wish—is to show them extreme honour."
Christopher remained in close attendance on the Prince. The most surprising matter, in a nine months' campaign of surprises, was Rupert's persistent memory for the little things, of grace and courtesy, when battle of the starkest kind was waiting only for the arrival of Lord Newcastle and the garrison of York.
"They'll not be here within the hour," said Rupert, "and this is a virgin country, so far as food goes. My men shall dine."