"It is all we do in these dull times, Rupert—to win aces from each other. We're tied here by the heels. There's the width of England to go fighting in, and they will not let us."
Rupert, turning to find the big surcoat that should hide his frivolous attire between the street and his lodging, saw the two Metcalfs standing there. He liked their bigness, liked the tan of weather and great hardship that had dyed their faces to the likeness of a mellowed wall of brick. Yet suspicion came easily to him, after long association with the intrigues of the Court at Oxford, and instinctively he reached down for the sword that was not there, just as Michael had done when he came dripping from Ouse river into York.
"You are Prince Rupert?" said Michael. "The King sends this letter to you."
Rupert broke the seal. When he had read the few lines written carelessly and at speed, his face cleared. "Maurice," he said, "we need play no more tennis. Here's our commission to raise forces for the relief of York."
He was a changed man. Since boyhood, war had been work and recreation both to him. In his youth there had been the Winter Queen, his widowed mother, beset by intrigue and disaster, with only one knightly man about her, the grave Earl of Craven, who was watch-dog and worshipper. Craven, hard-bitten, knowledgeable, with the strength of the grey Burnsall fells in the bone and muscle of him, had taught Rupert the beginnings of the need for warfare, had sown the first seeds of that instinct for cavalry attack which had made Rupert's horsemanship a living fear wherever the Roundheads met them. First, he had had the dream of fighting for his mother's honour; when that was denied him he had come into the thick of trouble here in England, to fight for King Charles and the Faith. And then had come the cold suspicion of these days at Oxford, the eating inward of a consuming fire, the playing at tennis because life offered no diversion otherwise. It is not easy to be denied full service to one's king because the tongues of interlopers are barbed with venom, and these weeks of inaction here had been eating into his soul like rust.
The first glow of surprise over, Rupert's face showed the underlying gravity that was seldom far from it. The grace of the man was rooted in a rugged strength, and even the charm of person which none denied was the charm of a hillside pasture field, flowers and green grass above, but underneath the unyielding rock.
"Maurice, these gentlemen are two of Squire Metcalf's lambs," he said, "so the King's letter says. For that matter, they carry their credentials in their faces."
"Tell us just how the fight went at Otley Bridge," said Maurice, with young enthusiasm. "We have heard so many versions of the tale."
"It was nothing," asserted Kit, still astonished to find their exploits known wherever they met Cavaliers. "Sir Thomas Fairfax came back one evening from a skirmish to find we held the bridge. He had five-score men, and we had fifty. It was a good fight while it lasted. Forty of our men brought back wounds to Ripley; but we come of a healthy stock, and not a limb was lost."
Rupert had no easy-going outlook on his fellows; his way of life did not permit such luxury. He was aware that rumour had not lied for once—that the magic of the Metcalf name, filtering down from Yorkshire through many runnels and side-channels, was no will-o'-wisp. Two of the clan were here, and one of them had told a soldier's tale in a soldier's way, not boasting of the thirty men of Fairfax's they had left for dead at Otley Bridge.