Rupert, with a lazy smile, watched Boye curvet round Eythin in narrowing circles. "Why should I?" he asked gently. "He never bites a friend." Eythin reddened. Memory of past years returned on him, though he had thought the record drowned in wine and forgotten out of sight. He asked fussily what plans Rupert had made for the coming battle. "Monstrous!" he snapped. "Oh, I grant you’ve a knowledge of the charge, with ground enough in front to gather speed. But what are your cavalry to make of this? You stand to wait their onset, and their horses are heavy in the build." Rupert nodded curtly. "Get your men into line, sir. You are here to fight under orders, not to attend a council of war." As Eythin withdrew sullenly, a sudden uproar came down the wind. Then the shouting, scattered and meaningless at first, grew to a rousing cry of "A Mecca for the King!" Michael glanced at Christopher, and pride of race showed plainly in their faces. "Ah," laughed Rupert, "it was so they came when we played pageantry before the King at Oxford. Go bring your folk to me, Mr. Metcalf." They came, drew up with the precision dear to Rupert’s heart, saluted briskly. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am proud to have you of my company. Is my Lord Newcastle near Marston yet?" The Squire of Nappa explained that those under Newcastle’s command had suffered during the late siege—men and horses were so weak from illness that no zeal in the world could bring them faster than a foot-pace. He knew this, because he had passed them on the road, had had speech of them. Lord Newcastle himself, a man no longer young, had kept a long illness at bay until the siege was raised, and now he was travelling in his coach, because he had no strength to sit a horse. "Oh, I had forgotten!" said Rupert. "All’s in the losing, if they take overlong. I should have remembered, though, that the garrison needed one night’s sleep at least." While they talked, Ezra Wood returned with the trooper sent to give him safe-conduct through the lines and back again. He did not salute—simply regarded Rupert with dour self-confidence. "General Cromwell sends this word to Prince Rupert—that, if his stomach is for fighting, he shall have it filled." Rupert was silent. Cromwell, it seemed, had missed all the meaning of the challenge sent him; war had not taught him yet the nicer issues that wait on bloodshed. He stooped to pat Boye’s head with the carelessness that had angered many a council of war at Oxford. Then he glanced at Ezra Wood. "There is no General Cromwell. The King approves all commissions of that kind. Go tell Mr. Cromwell that we are waiting for him here."