"Good," said Cromwell, tightening the bandage round his throat. "Where are my men?"
He found them—those who were left—in scattered companies. And a lusty roar went up as they saw him ride through the moonlight, swaying on the thick farm-cob that carried him.
"It's fourteen miles to Ripley, lads, but we'll cover it."
On Marston Moor the Royalists had pursued their advantage to the full. Rupert's men and Eythin's had run wild on the ridge-fields up above. And Leslie saw his chance. With his Scots he charged down on the White Coats, weakened by siege before the fight began. They kept their pledge; their coats were dyed with crimson martyrdom—and so they died to a man, resisting Leslie's charge.
Leslie himself paused when the work was done. "They were mettled thoroughbreds," he said huskily. "And now, friends, for the ditch that Rupert leaves unguarded."
It was so, in this incredible turmoil of storm and fight and havoc, that the battle of Long Marston was lost to the King. Rupert, getting his men in hand at long last, returned to face another hand-to-hand encounter. With the middlewing past sharing any battle of this world, the affair was hopeless. Rupert would not admit as much. The Metcalfs, a clan lessened since they joined in evensong an hour ago, would not admit it. To the last of their strength they fought, till all were scattered save a few of them.
Down the rough lane past Wilstrop Wood—a lane pitted deep with ruts—the Royalists fled headlong. And at the far side of the wood, where the lane bent round to a trim farmstead, there was a piteous happening. A child, standing at the gate in wonderment at all the uproar and the shouting, saw a press of gentry come riding hard, and began to open the gate for them, bobbing a curtsey as the first horseman passed. He did not see her. Those behind did not see her, but, pressing forward roughly—pressed in turn by those behind—the weight of them was thrust forward and broke down the gate.
After their passing a woman came from the farmsteading, eager to go out and see how it had fared with her husband, a volunteer for Rupert. Under the broken gate she found a little, trampled body; and all her heart grew stony.
"Lord God," she said, "Thou knows't men make the battles, but the women pay for them."
On Marston Moor the Squire of Nappa had found his coolness return when it was needed most. The Prince, and he, and Christopher, their horses killed under them long since, had just won free of a hot skirmish at the rear of their retreating friends, and were left in a quiet backwater of the pursuit.