Newcastle, asleep in his coach at the far side of the Moor, was roused by the uproar. He did not know what had chanced, but the waking was of a piece with the nightmares that had haunted his brief slumber. His limbs ached, the weariness of York's long siege was on him, but he ran forward, sword in hand, and asked the first man he met what was in the doing. Then he sought for his company and could not find them, except a handful of the gallant Leightons; so he pressed forward, unmounted, crying his name aloud, and asking all who heard him to make up a troop. He gathered drift and flotsam of the running battle—he whose dream had been of a mounted charge, with picked cavalry behind him—and they fought on the left wing with a wild and cheery gallantry.
On the right, the Ironsides still faced Rupert's men, and neither would give way. Once, in a lull of the berserk struggle, when either side had withdrawn a little to take breath, a great hound pressed his way through the Royalists and came yelping forward in search of Rupert. He came into the empty space between the King's men and Cromwell's, and a gunshot flashed; and Boye struggled on the sodden ground, turned his head in dying search for Rupert, the well-beloved, and so lay still.
From the Ironsides a storm of plaudits crossed a sudden thunder-clap. "There goes the arch-Papist of them all," came a voice drunk with battle.
And something broke at Rupert's heart. It was as if he stood alone entirely—as if the world were ended, somehow. "Ah, Boye," he murmured. And then he led a charge so furious that the Ironsides all but broke. It was Cromwell rallied them, and for an hour the fight went forward. The hedge was levelled now, and the ditch filled in by the bodies of the slain. Time after time Rupert found himself almost within striking distance of Cromwell. They were seeking each other with a settled, fervent purpose. And the fight eddied to and fro; and the rain came down in wild, unending torrents.
The chance sought by Rupert came to Michael Metcalf, as it chanced. Pushed to one side of the press, he found himself facing a rough-hewn Parliament man in like case, and parried a fierce sword-cut with his pike. Then he drew back the pike, felt it quiver like a live thing in his hands, and drove it through the other's fleshy neck. It was only when the man wavered in saddle, and he had leisure for a moment's thought, that he knew his adversary. A trooper of the Parliament snatched the wounded rider's bridle, dragged his horse safely to the rear, and Michael raised a wild, impulsive shout:
"Cromwell is down! A Mecca for the King."
Rupert heard the cry, and drew his men a little away, to get speed for the gallop. His crashing charge drove back the Roundheads twenty paces, and no more. They were of good and stubborn fibre, and the loss of Cromwell bade them fight with sullen hardihood. At the end of, it might be, fifteen minutes they had regained a foot or two of their lost ground, and Cromwell, getting his wound bandaged at the thatched cottage up above, asked another wounded Roundhead, who came for the like succour, how it fared.
"As may be," growled the other. "If so thou'rt not dead, as we fancied, get down and hearten them."
"I've a thick throat, and the pike took the fleshy part," said Cromwell, with a deep, unhumorous laugh. "I'll get down."
He mounted with some difficulty. Pluck cannot always conquer in a moment great loss of blood and weakness of the body. Once in the saddle, his strength returned to him; but he rode down too late. Rupert's men had followed their old tactics, had retreated again to gain speed for the onslaught, and were driving the enemy before them in hot pursuit.