CHAPTER XVII.
PRAYER, AND THE BREWING STORM.
He knew his men. After a rousing charge, and a red lane mown along the track their horses took, he had no control of them; they must pillage as they listed. Before the combat, he could trust their pledge to take no more than an hour to dine, to be prompt at the muster afterwards, as he trusted his own honour.
It was an odd hour of waiting. Messengers galloped constantly from the York road, saying there was no speck of dust to show that Newcastle was coming with reinforcements. Rupert's men, with the jollity attending on a feast snatched by unexpected chance, began to reassemble. Two o'clock came, and the heat increasing. Overhead there was a molten sky, and the rye-fields where the enemy were camped showed fiery red under the lash of a wild, pursuing wind.
It was not until another hour had passed that Rupert began to lose his keen, high spirits. He was so used to war in the open, to the instant summons and the quick answer, that he could not gauge the trouble of York's garrison, the slowness of men and horses who had gone through months of wearisome inaction. It is not good for horse or man to be stabled overlong out of reach of the free pastures and the gallop.
About half after three o'clock some of his company brought in to Rupert a big, country-looking fellow, and explained that they had captured him spying a little too close to the Royalist lines.
"What mun we do to him?" asked the spokesman of the party, in good Wharfedale speech. "We've hammered his head, and ducked him i' th' horse-pond, and naught seems to serve. He willun't say, Down wi' all Croppies."
"Then he's the man I'm seeking—a man who does not blow hot and cold in the half-hour. Your name, friend?"
"Ezra Wood, and firm for the Parliament."
"We hold your life at our mercy," said Rupert, with a sharp, questioning glance. "Tell us the numbers and disposition of Lord Fairfax's army."