"Metcalfs, well done—oh, well done! I am proud of my living—and my dead."
"God rest their souls, wife. They have harvested their corn."
As the weeks passed on, and grief and wounds alike were healing, a new disquiet stole in and out among the men quartered in Nappa's hospitable house and outbuildings. They were idling here. If Marston Moor had killed the cause in the north, there was battle doing further south.
The Squire's wife watched it brewing, this new menace to all that was left of her happiness. She knew, that it was idle to resist or to persuade. She had bred men-sons for the King's service, and must abide by it.
Joan Grant was younger to experience. First-love was hindering her vision of what her man must do before he came to his kingdom; and she quarrelled openly with Christopher, as they came home together through the gloaming August fields.
"So you are weary of me in a month?" she said, halting at the stile. "Ah, the pity of it. It was here—or have you forgotten?—that I bade you climb high if you would find my heart. And you climbed and—and found it, and now you talk of battle—only of battle and the King."
All his world seemed to fail him—the will to ride out again until there was no more asked of him but to return and claim her—the certainty that she would be the first to give God-speed to his errand—all were drowned in this storm of tears and petulance that broke about him. Yet he remembered the sword that had stood, its point in the woodland stream, its hilt against the clear, blue sky above. He did not waver this time, for his love was no beguilement, but a spur that urged him forward.
"I go," he said roughly.
"And if you lose me in the going?"
"Then I lose you—there's no choice."