“Why, yes—because you asked it of me. One seldom speaks of such matters unless compelled.”
“Then, with all submission, I say that faith is for kirk on Sabbaths, for the quietness of a man’s bedchamber; but we’re here in open war. War—I’ve seen it overseas, and have been wounded twice—is a cold, practical affair, your Highness.”
So then the Prince glanced at Sir Jasper and laughed outright, and after that was silent for a while. “My lord Murray,” he said quietly, “faith, mine and Sir Jasper’s, goes into battle with us, goes into every road we take. I’m ashamed, somehow, to speak so plainly of—of what I know.”
“May I speak of what I, too, know?” put in Murray sharply. “It is of war I speak, your Highness. I know the rules of it—know that this hurried march of ours through England can end only in disaster. Retreat in good order, even now, is our only course—retreat to Scotland, where we can gather in the clans that were slow to join us——”
“Retreat?” said the Prince, his head lifted suddenly, his voice ringing with command and challenge. “I never learned the word, at school or afterwards. Retreat? My lord Murray, there’s only one plain rule of war—to ride forward, and plant your blow where the first opportunity serves.”
“That is our rule in Lancashire,” put in Sir Jasper dryly.
Murray glanced at the two of them. He had hoped much from the cold logic that guided his days for him, had been sure that he could persuade the Prince to his own view of the campaign; and these two, resolute in faith and almost gay, were treating him as if he were a stripling with much to learn in life beyond the rules of war and mathematics.
“I say, your Highness, that we’ve hardened troops against us, officered by men who have grown old in strategy——”
“And yet we’re here in spite of them, right through the northern counties, and likely to keep Christmas in London. We’re here, my lord Murray, because zeal laughs at strategy.”
“For all that,” put in Murray dryly, “you’ll not let the pipes be played. They, surely, are musical with faith—your own sort of faith, that bids men forget calculation and all else.”