It was the big-jowled elder who broke the silence. "Say, laddie, can you drink?" he growled.
"A bucketful, if I'm not needed on this side of the dawn."
Comfort of the usual kind might be lacking here at Lathom, but the cellar was well filled. And Kit, as the wine passed round, learned the truth that comes from unlocked tongues. They talked of the siege, these gallants who had kept watch and ward; they told how Lady Derby had trained her children not to whimper when cannon-shot broke roughly into the dining-hall; they told how Captain Radcliffe, his head erect, had gone out for the thirteenth sortie, how they had warned him of the ill-omen.
"Oh, he was great that day," said Rawstorn. "'If I were Judas, I should fear thirteen,' said he. 'As the affair stands, I'm stalwart for the King.' He was killed in an attack on the east fort; and when we sortied and brought his body in, there was a smile about his lips."
Little by little Christopher pieced together the fragments of that long siege. Lady Derby's single-mindedness, her courage and sheer charm, were apparent from every word spoken by these gentlemen who drank their liquor. The hazards of the men, too—the persistent sorties, the give-and-take and pathos and laughter of their life within doors—were plain for Kit to understand. At Oxford and elsewhere there had been spite and rancour, jealousy of one King's soldier against another. Here at Lathom there was none of that; day by day of every month of siege, they had found a closer amity, and their strength had been adamant against an overpowering force outside their gates.
Kit learned much, too, of Colonel Rigby, who commanded the attack. A hedge-lawyer by training—one who had defended night-birds and skulkers of all kinds—he had found himself lifted to command of three thousand men because Sir Thomas Fairfax, a man of sound heart and chivalry, grew tired of making war upon a lady. Rigby enjoyed the game. He cared never a stiver for the Parliament, but it was rapture to him to claim some sort of intimacy with the titled great by throwing cannon-balls and insults against my Lady Derby's walls.
"As for Rigby," said the man with the big jowl, "I wish him only one thing—to know, to the marrow of him, what place he has in the thoughts of honest folk. Mate a weasel with a rat, and you'll get his breed."
Captain Chisenhall, who had been pacing restlessly up and down the hall, halted in front of Kit. "It was a fine device of yours, to entrench on this side of their own earthworks. I never had much head myself, or might have thought of it. But, man, you're spent with this night's work."
"Spent?" laughed Kit. A sudden dizziness took him unawares, and their faces danced in a grey mist before his eyes. "I was never more wide-awake. D'ye want another sortie, gentlemen? Command me."
With that his head lolled back against the inglenook. He roused himself once to murmur "A Mecca for the King!" then slept as he had done on far-off nights after harvesting of hay or corn in Yoredale.