“However, gentlemen,” he announced to the whole gathering, “I shall reveaclass="underline" the three of us did not seek here to die, but from a quest abroad where we have won some secret strong instrumentalities. I’ll not pretend that they can win the fight.
Quite probably there’s naught will come of them. Yet if we do not try, we spurn God’s grace.”
Slowly his voice grew, till it drowned the cannon: “Whatever happens, let’s not crouch besieged until those dogs around have dug us up. We’re men, I say, not badgers gone to earth. Let’s tighten every sinew we have left and sally forth. Mayhap we can break through and find the sea, and ships to save our King.
Mayhap at least we’ll give the foe a shock that makes him grant us honorable terms by which we may depart alive and free, to amnesty or exile as we choose. Or maybe we’ll be shot to nothingness. Well, what of that? If we do naught, we’re done; while if we fare and fail, we’ll fall together—how better than in battle-brotherhood?”
Maurice cheered. Several men joined in. The younger prince sprang forth, to pace leonine as he responded: “Whate’er thy weapon, Rupert, thou art ours! It was the lack of thee which gutted us. Thou’d’st ne’er have let us creep into a hole; nor, given thee, would we have thought of it. Hear how the troopers shout beyond our tower! The single word of thee is worth a Caesar. And think how it goes flashing down this hill to burst and flame among the enemy. Hell-horrible to him, thy name strikes lame. At dusk, O King, when gunfire’s fallen still, I’ll take some chosen comrades to the plain. A careful few, who lead hoof-muffled horses, can slip past sentinels, in tricky twilight, who are but plow-boys and apprentices stuffed into jerkins. Rupert will recall how he and I, beneath the walls of Breda—No matter now. We’ll scatter far and wide, from house to house and moor to hill to forest, and cry the word: ‘Prince Rupert has returned! That lump-machine of Cromwell’s could not crush him. If ye’d be free, take down your fowling piece, your crossbow, scythe, bill, staff, avenging flail; make haste unto the ancient holy Tor and battle for the right to be yourselves. Though the year falls, the Green Man has returned. The plume of Rupert’s flying for the King!’ ”
Charles himself looked half dismayed; but a spirit had suddenly arisen among his men, and he was borne forth on its wings.
Its ruin lifted like a crag over wan grass, darkling brambles, bushes, and trees. The moon was barely up, to touch with ice the river, the plain, the ditches that vein it and are known as rhines, the remote but weirdly near-looking gray-blue Mendips, and that slow surge of hills called the Island of Avalon, which crests in Glastonbury Tor. The town below huddled mostly in darkness; hostile watchfires ringed the heights with red. Lean clouds coursed here and there among stars which flickered as cold as the whittering wind. Cold likewise were the guns, but bitterns boomed afar in the marshes.
A flame sprang up, became a fire, beat red-blue-yellow, and sang its dry, mysterious song. Four stood between it and the vanished chapel, facing the moon. Three had not changed garb. Rupert held Prospero’s book, Jennifer—in a skirt improvised from a cloak—his staff, King Charles a Bible; Will stood aside, an empty-handed scarecrow.
“So are we gathered,” Rupert spoke into night, “quite alone with God and with what lesser Powers we may raise by casting what small spells we know and dare. I fear they’ll be but few and feeble sprites. Yet must we try it for our fellows’ sake—”
There went a sound of movement, as quiet as possible, underneath the summit.
“—before we join them in their night attack, Sir William and myself.”
“I’ll pray,” Jennifer said in anguish.
Rupert nodded and looked at the King. “My lord,” he asked, “lead us in prayer, ere we draw wand or sword.”
XXIV
Rupert ended his incantation, closed the book, held high the staff, and said into the wind: “Thus be ye summoned, spirits of the land. It is your King who calls you to his aid. If there be meaning in the holy bond between the King, the people, and the land, if there be sacredness in reverence for what is old and good and deeply loved, arise for him upon this judgment night!”
His words blew away. The fire flared once and sank, making the company mere glimmers of red amidst darkness. A cloud engulfed the moon. The stars were hazing out. Only the wind had speech; and its chill gnawed inward. After an endless while, Charles said, “Nothing?”
“No stir, no whisper of a help for us.”
Rupert answered as low.
“Well,’twas a brave attempt. I must admit some seeming pagan aspects troubled me.”
“We’ll die like Christians, surely.” Rupert straighted. “I’ll now go to fetch my horse and harness for the charge we hope in hopelessness may break the ring.” To the girl, his voice most soft: “Hark, Jennifer. If I do not return, forget not my last wishes were for thee. Remember what I’ve planned that thou shouldst do to reach to safety—”
“What’s that without thee?” Her words were muffled by her clinging to him. “Spare me the fear that thou wilt always mourn.”
“Nay, wait,” said another.
King, prince, and maiden looked about; for that was a somehow eerie sound.
“I think we be not finished, us,” Will Fairweather went on, and shambled forward till his ungainly shape caught the coal-glow.
“What’s this about?” Rupert demanded. Will shook his head. “I really dwish I knew.” He spoke in a sleep-walker’s tone. “But zudden-liake, a thing ha’ come on me… nay, through me, liake I war a dudelsack tha wind’s about to play a jig for ghosts on.”
Jennifer held fist to mouth, free hand straining over her man’s. Charles, head of the Protestant Church of England, crossed himself. A minute streamed past before Rupert breathed, “He is transfigured. See. He’s more than man—or else more wholly man, more of this earth than we have soul to let us understand… O Will, what have I done to thee, my friend?”
“The spell thou’st cast was but a fleeting spark,” Charles said, looked into the commoner’s face, and went on his knees. “Yet did it find a waiting torch in him. Because this is his land?”
Will lifted his arms. The fire leaped after them, taller, brighter, till he stood in a beacon radiance. The cloud departed from the moon and the stars grew near and brilliant. He said forth across night: “I am the land.”
For an instant, his human self broke through. “Thou went about it all wrong, General. What do tha land caere for kings or noables or priests or loards protector—any o’ thic lot—zave as tha’ belong in it? Thy brother caeme moare nigh tha mark whan’a called thee tha Green Man. Be thic, naught else. Lucky’twar, liake Charlie yonder zaid, zomebody war heare what tha spell could taeke hoald on in tha right way.”
Thereafter it was more than he who called: “I have the right to raise the land I am. In me alone the mightiness indwells, till I bestow it on my messengers that they may bear my wrath across the world. Mine is the outrage, as mine was the love.
“I am the land, by virtue of the bones of my forefathers which have strengthened it, the flesh which they give back to us in harvest, the patience of their plowing centuries, each blossom time when they went two by two, each hunter’s moon on woods afire with fall, each winter and each sorrow they outlived till humbly they went down to namelessness. Their gnarled old fingers made me what I am—nor wilderness nor iron desert: home—the while my skies and seasons worked on them. Their songs and hearthside tales, my wind and rain, speak each unto the other of our oneness. Though men and trees do die and die and die, the blood, the house, the field, the woods endure, and every babe or lamb or new-leafed branch says forth the immortality we share.