"The truce is broken, Captain Lambert. Here’s a rogue with love-locks—they say he’s Prince Rupert—come with a press of horsemen. He’s talking with Sir John Mallory fair in front of the Castle gateway."
Lambert’s temper fired. What he had seen accorded with the townsman’s view. Something quixotic in the man’s nature, that always waited on his unguarded moments, bade him go down and ask the meaning of it all. It seemed to him that his faith in all men would go, root and branch, if Sir John Mallory were indeed less than a simple, upright gentleman. He reached the High Street, and made his way through the press of soldiery and townsfolk till he reached the wide space, in front of church and Castle, where the Prince stood with Mallory.
"Sir John," he said very coldly, "I come to ask if you break truce by free will or compulsion."
"By compulsion, sir," said Rupert, with a quick smile. "I ride too fast for knowledge of each town’s days of truce. Sir John here came out at my request, to talk with me. You are Captain Lambert, I take it? Ah, we have heard of you—have heard matters to your credit, if you will permit an adversary so much freedom."
Lambert yielded a little to the other’s easy charm; but it was plain that the grievance rankled still.
"Well, then, I’ll give you punctilio for punctilio, sir," went on Rupert. "The King’s needs are urgent I could not wait—truce or no, I had to give my orders to Sir John here. To be precise, I urged him to harry you unceasingly. I told him that we were pressing forward to the relief of York. Is honour satisfied? If not, name a convenient hour for hostilities to open. My men are here. Yours are on the hill yonder, where your guns look down on us."
Lambert’s humour, deep-hidden, was touched at last. "Press on to York, by your leave. Mallory, I’m in your debt. I doubted your good faith just now."
"That was unwise, Lambert. Eh, man, the troubled days will soon be ended—then, if we’re both alive, come sup with me as of old."
Kit, when they took the road again, was bewildered a little by the shifting issues of this madness known as civil war. The Prince, Lambert, and Sir John—three men conspicuously survivals from Crusading days—had talked in the High Street of honour and punctilio—-had shown the extreme courtesy of knights prepared to tilt against each other in the ring at any moment—-and all this with the assault of Bolton and the red havoc of it scarcely ended, with rough fights ahead, and York’s garrison in piteous need of succour.