Joan glanced at her in simple wonderment. She had no key that unlocked the tired, wayward meaning of this woman who had played many games of chess with the thing she named her heart.
The Metcalfs, meanwhile, had gone forward at a heady pace. As of old, one purpose guided them, and one rough master-mind had leadership of their hot zeal. They encountered many piteous sights by the wayside—stragglers from Marston, Knaresborough, York—but the old Squire checked his pity.
"It's forrard, lads, forrard!" he would roar from time to time, as they were tempted to halt for succour of the fallen.
His instinct guided him aright. When they came through the dust of thirsty roads and the dead heat of a thunderstorm that was brewing overhead, to the high lands overlooking Norton Conyers, they caught a glint below them of keen sunlight shining on keen steel.
"It's always my luck to be just in time, with little to spare," said Blake, the messenger, who was riding at the Squire's bridle-hand. "D'ye see them yonder?"
Metcalf saw a gently-falling slope of pasture between the Roundheads and themselves, with low hedges separating one field from another. "Tally-ho, my lads!" he laughed. "I'll give you a lead at the fences—a Yoredale sort of lead."
The Parliament men checked their horses, gaped up at the sudden uproar, and had scarce braced themselves for the encounter when the Metcalfs were down and into them. The weight of horseflesh, backed by speed, crashed through their bulk, lessening the odds a little. Then it was hack, and counter, and thrust, till the storm broke overhead, as it had done at Marston, but with a livelier fury. They did not heed it. Time and again the yell of "A Mecca for the King!" was met by the roar of "God and the Parliament!" And Squire Metcalf, in a lull of the eddying battle, found the tart humour that was his help in need.
"Nay, I'd leave half of it out, if I were ye, after what chanced in Wilstrop Wood. Fight for Parliament alone, and all its devilries."
That brought another swinging fight to a head; and the issue shifted constantly. The lightning danced about the men's armour. The thunder never ceased, and the rain lashed them as if every sluice-gate of the clouds were opened.
Very stubborn it was, and the din of oaths and battle-cries leaped out across the thunder-roar, stifling it at times.