A Midsummer Tempest

I

Throughout that sullen day, cannon had spoken from time to time between the confronting armies.

Otherwise there was no move of war. First Rupert waited for the Yorkshiremen; afterward he waited for morning, aware that meanwhile hunger, and memory of the defeats he had already dealt them, would gnaw his enemies for him.

But as evening drew in, clouds massed blue-black across heaven. A wind hooted bleak beneath, snickering in the whins. The gloom flared and banged. Now God lets loose His own artillery, went through Rupert. Across its noise came a sound nearly as deep and more harsh. The drumfire of a Roundhead hymn replies. They seem to think the storm’s a sign to them.

He touched spurs to horse and trotted along the ranks of his cavalry and musketeers till he found the man he wanted. “This breeze is full of battle smells. Hoy, chaplain!” he called; the wind fretted his words. “Let prayers be said.” On the way back, he added wryly, “We’ve done what else we can.”

As he took station again, his dog snuffed his boot and offered him a somehow forlorn tail-wagging. He leaned over to rumple the great white head. “So, Boye,” he murmured, “so, so, be easy, good old friend.

Three years of strife have not yet seen us beaten.” An inner pain touched him. Although at Aylesbury I dared not attack, and in withdrawing lost four hundred men to snow and flood—foul weather, then and now.

The service began. He rested helmet on saddlebow. Its white plume, his emblem, fluttered dimly in murk, vivid when lightning spurted. He barely made out the text of the brief sermon. “…the Lord God of gods, He knoweth and Israel shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, save us not this day.”—words from the book of warrior Joshua. Most of his mind prowled the field of coming combat.

He personally headed the Life-Guards on the far left, his flank warded by hedges and a ditch. Goring’s riders poised on his right. Breastplates gleamed in a fitful glow, manes tossed, lances and muskets lifted stark. Beyond, cannon crouched like long beasts, slow-matches whipped well-nigh to torches in the hands of their masters. Further on, the white garb of the Yorkshire Lambs made a cloudy-faint mass beneath their pikes. Byron’s and the Irish horse, and reserves to rearward, were formless bulks. Rupert’s gaze sought from them to his foes. They occupied a gently rising hill, planted in rye that had been almost ready for the sickle when Englishman came trampling to make war on Englishman. Along with rebel rode Covenanting Scot; Rupert himself faced the Presbyterian cavalry. To their left were Fairfax’s foot, and left of those the Independent horse. Spies had reported that there the anchor of the Puritan line was a troop led by one Oliver Cromwell… Rupert could see little through the murk. That fewer rebels than Royalists owned armor made them doubly hard to number. Against what sunset glimmer remained, the roofs of Marston village were limned more clear than they.

He shivered. “This waiting ought to suit the Roundhead well,” he muttered unthinkingly: “cold game for colder soul.”

“You’ll dwarm’em up,” drawled a South country voice.

Turning, Rupert recognized the scarecrow figure hunched on an equally lank steed. “Hush, Will, attend the service,” he warned. All at once he realized: “No,’tis done.”

The dragoon chuckled. “Zo now you can heat tha shot at pleasure, my loard—theirs, I mean, for thoase ball-pates’ull glow red from tha breath o’ Hot Rupert, tha Dragon Prince, as I hear their scribblers ha’ named ye in their landlubbers’ broadzides.” In both armies cannon flashed and boomed, muskets winked and cracked. Through the whistling chill Rupert caught drifts of bitter smoke, shouts of officers, oaths of men, sometimes a jagged scream out of a wounded animal. “Thou talkest overmuch,” he said. “I know not why I tolerate thee near me, save that thou’rt good with my pets.”

The soldier shrugged. “Tha guns talk moare an’ louder, my loard. How they do argue, an’ what a harsh logic they chop! I dwould I could zay, instead, they’re ballin’ each other; but no, that’d bring forth pieces on earth’gainst men like good Will, an’ mesim we been a-pistoled enough.” He un-slung a leather bottle from his belt and reached it over. “If you do want dwarmth, your Highness, heare, stoke yourzelf from a Puritan househoald where lately zoroe of us made requisition. Fear not,’tis indeed a hellfiere preachment, but zafely decanted; for we’d hard ridin’ ahead of us, an’ thought that whilst tha spirits war for swillin’, tha flasks war weak.”

“No,” Rupert said. “To thy post, clown.” A moment longer the commoner leaned toward his general, as if to memorize those features before too late.

Though tall, he must look upward, for Rupert stood six feet four in height, with breadth in an athlete’s proportion. Bared, the prince’s black locks fell past a weather-beaten face to the shoulders. He did not also follow the Cavalier fashion in beards but went clean-shaven. That made him look older than he was, the sternness became so clear to see. Otherwise his countenance was brown eyes beneath level brows, straight high-bridged nose, full mouth, cleft chin. A tinge of Dutch accent rough-ened his speech.

Impatiently, he lifted his helmet and coif and buckled them back on. The soldier withdrew into the dusk.

Rupert glanced down at his dog. “See well to Boye,” he called.

Heaven opened bombardment. For minutes rain cataracted, hail rattled on iron and skittered across ground, lightning etched the armies in molten white and thunder roared damnations on drowned guns.

The squall passed. It had ripped the clouds apart.

A weird greenish half-light seeped from sky and horizon. And the men were moving.

Rupert’s saber flew free. He raised his chosen war cry, “For God and for the King!” and heard it echoed many thousandfold. In a surf of shouts and hoofbeats, he and the Life-Guards charged.

Through rye that flowed like water—up the hill—at the rain-wet riders ahead! As he galloped, he flickered an eye to the right. He saw a dash paralleling his, and the enemy’s lumbering trot downward to meet it.

Dismay flashed: Byron, that fool, has left our strongest point and gone to call upon a willing host—

—He shocked against the Scots. Pistols spat. He paid no heed, nor did his followers. Swords sparked on armor, ripped flesh and half-seen tartans. Mass shoved at him, around him; braced in the stirrups, he crammed on into it. Steel dinned, men yelled, beasts snorted and neighed, now and then a trumpet rang.

Bloody swayed the pennons of King and Parliament.

Here Rupert could not oversee the action. Yet between helmets and maddened faces he glimpsed signs he knew how to read. To rightward, Goring’s men thrust on like mine. At times like this, that lame and boastful scoundrel shines forth in such a way that I could love him as if he were my brother… O Maurice, are you alike at war this very night?

Through and through the Covenanters scorched the Royalists. For an instant, as they met the reserves beyond, they paused.

A white shape bounded baying past Rupert’s left foot, “Boye!” he shouted. “Thou’st’scaped the grooms?

Come here, Boye, Boye!” From the dour array before him, little fire-tongues uttered spite. His dog leaped once, writhed in falling, struck trampled mire, and lay still. The attack passed over the body.

Tears ran with sweat across Rupert’s cheekbones. His blade raged reaping. The Scots broke; the Life-Guards harried them off the hill and across the moor; a hundred lay dead at the feet of Boye.

Rupert reined in on the crest to see how the battle went elsewhere. He stared at wreck.

Swart waves, wherein steel flashed like sea-fire, struggled howling and hammering. Artillery blared; muskets went off point-blank; never did the Puritan drums stop thuttering, and ever their own slogans tolled forth. While his mount shuddered with need of air, Rupert peered through sulfurous twilight and tried to understand what was happening.

The Roundhead left’s destroyed the Royal right, he said at last, in a clenched mind, clapped hands upon our guns and made them Judas to kiss our center, where the Lambs now bleed upon the altar of their loyalty—

“We’ve heavy blows ahead when we be breathed.” The voice near him was hoarse with weariness.

Rupert twisted around in his seat. “Be still,” he gasped, “who can’t so much as keep a hound!” He choked on half a sob.

Will edged his horse away, though not far. “I’ll leave off quackin’, Highness; best I duck.”

Rupert forgot him in the frenzy of regathering his men. It went slowly and ill. Many had scattered across miles in pursuit of the Scots. Those he could find were shaken to their bones by what they saw beneath a rising moon.

They were old comrades to slaughter, even of their fellows. New and terrible to them was the advance of the Independent riders. Their own chief had taught them to spill no time in stopping for a pistol volley. Their way was to charge straight into the thick of the foe, and always they had carried him before them.

Tonight the onset was his. He came in his plain buff jerkin, not at a gallop but a close-knit relentless trot, not hallooing but boulder-silent, no wild band of brothers but the machine which Cromwell had forged.

“For God and for the King!” Rupert clamored. The sound went lonely among cannon. A few followers answered, a few rallied around him.

The Independents broke his line and went to work with sword and ax, killing Cavaliers.

Rupert cut a man from a saddle, and another. He found himself surrounded and slashed his way clear.

Across the heath, by hastening icy light, he saw his troop in rout. Their plate glinted like drops from a splash of quicksilver. The enemy sought after. He skittered off to put together a fresh band, harangue it, and lead it back to fight on.

Again. Again. And then no more.

Over churned mud, smashed gun carriages, sprawling gaping dead, pleading wounded, lifted the thanksgiving chant of the Puritans. The Royal force was broken and the North was theirs.

The moon flew in gray-blue heaven through ragged whitecaps of cloud. Shadows scythed the wold. Rupert and Will sat among the fallen of their last affray. Several hundred yards distant, but aimed toward them across the ruined cropland, came a squadron of Roundhead riders.

“Mesim’twar wise we haul our skins from heare,” panted the dragoon, “while still they may hold wine.”

“And while I yet may hope to bring together men enough that they can cover their retreat… and mine,”

Rupert said.

Nearby stood a high wooden fence. Between its posts and rails he spied a beanfield reaching wan. Past this was a darkling, diminishing confusion which must be Royalists in flight, and past them a maze of hedges and narrow lanes where they could dismount and repel their pursuers by close fire—if first a leader overtook them. He brought his horse around and stuck in spurs. “Once more, thou valiant beast! I wish thee wings!”

The exhausted animal moved forward. There was no spring in the gallop it finally achieved. The fence loomed; Rupert spurred deep; he soared.

He crashed and fell.

In mid-air he kicked free of his stirrups. He hit the ground and rolled among the bean-stakes. Muscles took up more shock than did armor. Bouncing back to his feet, he saw his horse flail about and scream. One leg flopped hideously, snapped across. His companion’s mount had balked at the barrier. The Puritans came on with unwonted speed. Did they know the white plume? An earthquake booming went under hoofs. Metal flashed glacier cold.

Will jumped down. A cloud, briefly covering the moon, made him invisible at a short remove. This close, one could barely see him rip off the King’s tokens and sidle away into night.

“Thou’st left thy blade forgotten, in my back!” Rupert cried after him. “I thought at least thou wert as good a dog, if not as bright, as Boyce that thou let die! Farewell, Will Fairweather—fair-weather friend—”

He stooped, to draw his dagger and give his charger the last mercy. Thereafter he took forth his sword.

The Roundheads overleaped the fence and ringed him in. He looked from saber to saber, pistol to pistol. A craggy-visaged man who must be their captain squinted at him. “This is indeed Prince Rupert of the Rhine,” he breathed.

He straightened. His steel snapped upward in salute. “Your Highness, you will not remember me,” he said.

“I was a humble knight you met at court, that time in youth when you from Holland came to guest his royal Majesty your uncle—who’s still our King, and we his loving subjects who only fight his evil counselors—”

“You are so long of wind you ran me down,” Rupert replied.

“I beg of you, your Highness, that you yield. You shall receive all honor due to you.”

Rupert bit his lip. “Else lie a corpse, or piglike stunned and trussed?” Within their casques, the faces above him and around him strove to hold glee in seemly place. His sword sank, until he handed it hilt foremost up to the captain. “Well, have this of me, then, Sir What’s-Your-Name, until another day.” His head lifted.

“For after all,’tis no disgrace to fall to such as Cromwell. Beneath your buff, you men are Ironsides.”