"Is there not an ordinance against Papists?" was the answer, hurled harsh and rough through the turmoil. "To the sword with the enemies of God!"
It was done.
Midday had not yet been reached; the whole awful fight had hardly occupied three hours, and now the King had fled with his broken troops, and from among the baggage wagons, the stuffs, the clothes, the food, the hasty tents, the Puritans drove into the open the wretched Irish women, wild creatures, full of a shrieking defiance and foul cursing, pitiful too in their rags and dirty finery, their impotence, their despair.
Some were young enough and fair enough, but smooth cheeks and bright eyes and white arms worked no enchantment here; sword and bullet made short shrift of them and their knives and curses.
"In the name of Christ!" cried one, clinging half-naked to an Ironside captain.
"In the name of Christ!" he repeated fiercely, and dispatched her with his own hand.
Then that too was over; the last woman's voice shrieking to saint and Madonna was quieted; the last huddled form had quivered into stillness on the profaned earth, the carbines were shouldered, the swords sheathed, and the Puritans turned back with their captured colours and standards, such plunder as could be met with, and the King's secret cabinet, recklessly left in his carriage, and full, as the first glance showed, of secret and fatal papers.
The dial on the church front at Naseby hamlet did not yet point to twelve; across the graves lay Ireton's men and Rupert's Cavaliers, their blood mingling in the daisied grass; the copper ball which had overlooked a day of another such sights beyond the sea, still gleamed against a cloudless sky, and above it, in the purer, upper air, the lark still poured forth his immutable song which the living were as deaf to as the dead.