She looked wonderingly at Jeffray, remembering him at last as the gentleman who had ridden by when Dan and David were fighting in the mist by the Queen’s Circle. The sight of the blood trickling across his forehead roused her from such reveries to womanly pity. She flashed a glance at Dan, and bade him give her the scarf he wore about his neck. With this she bound up Jeffray’s head, smoothing back his hair with her strong brown hands.
“Take him up,” she said to Dan; “we must carry him home to Mother Ursula.”
Dan was swinging his stick and watching Bess holding Jeffray’s head in her lap with a sullen jealousy that he could not dissemble. He obeyed the girl, however, and lifted Jeffray as though he had been a child. Bess picked up the fallen sword, and taking Jeffray’s mare by the bridle, pointed to the path that led towards the hamlet.
Old Ursula held up her hands when Dan appeared at her cottage door with Jeffray still unconscious in his arms. Bess told her foster-mother all that had happened, not deigning to spare Dan shame in the telling of it. They laid Jeffray on the settle before the fire, and sent in haste for Isaac, who knew all the gentry by sight who lived within ten miles of the Beacon Rock.
Isaac, sleek and authoritative, cursed Dan when he recognized the Squire of Rodenham.
“Dan ’ll swing for it,” quoth Ursula, with an unloving glance at her nephew.
“Bah, there’s no great harm done. Get him to bed, dame, and when he wakes see that you put the youngster in a good temper.”
Isaac beckoned his son away, Ursula hobbling off to drag clean sheets from the linen-press. Calling Bess, who was watching Jeffray, she bade her fetch a new blanket and the best quilt from the oak chest on the stairs. Isaac had taken Jeffray’s mare, and, still rating Dan, stabled her in the byre where Ursula kept her cows.
The old woman pattered into her bedroom on the ground floor, dragged the clothes from the four-poster, while Bess came in bearing a new blanket and a patch-work quilt of many colors. Between them they spread the clean sheets, stripped off Jeffray’s clothes, and put him to bed there in his shirt. Ursula made a stew of friar’s-balsam, and after tearing soft linen into strips, washed Jeffray’s wound and bound up his head. Then she went out to speak with Isaac in the kitchen, leaving Bess alone to watch by the bed.
