"Yes, by God's help, at least while you live; but dost thou think thou art so ill, dear mother?--it is but fancy."
"Nay, I feel I am daily, hourly, drawing nearer my end, as if the lamp of life were burning more and more dimly. Morning after morning I rise weaker from my bed, and mortal strength seems slowly and surely forsaking me. But it will be but a short parting; thou must pray that we may live for ever together. God will grant it for His dear Son's sake."
And the mother and son knelt down to pray.
It was too true, the English lady of Aescendune was slowly declining--passing away, drawing nearer daily to the bright land where her lost Edmund had gone before.
It was a complaint which no one understood, although a Jewish physician, whom her husband in his anxiety consulted, prescribed a medicine which he said would ensure her recovery in a few weeks. This medicine the baron--for to such rank had Hugo de Malville been raised, on his accession to the lands of Aescendune--this medicine he would always administer with his own hand. Sometimes Wilfred was standing by, and noticed that, dropped in water, it diffused at first a sapphire hue, but that upon exposure to the air, that of the ruby succeeded.
Oh, those days of anxiety and grief--those days when the loved patient was so manifestly loosing her hold upon life, although sometimes there would come a tantalising change for the better, and bring back hopes never to be realised.
The boyish reader will easily imagine what Wilfred had to bear all this time from his Norman companions, from whose society there was no escape--with whom he had to share not only the very few hours allotted to study, but those of recreation also. Study, indeed, meant chiefly the use and practice of warlike weapons, the learning of the technical terms of chivalry, and the acquirement, it may be, of sufficient letters to spell through a challenge.
So thoroughly was war the Norman instinct, that every occupation of life was more or less connected with it; and the only recreation which varied the hours of fencing, jousting, tilting, etc., was the kindred excitement of the chase, pursued with the greatest avidity amongst the wooded hills around Aescendune.
Wilfred was not backward either in mimic war or in love of the chase; but he was growing taciturn and sullen, scarcely ever speaking, save when spoken to, and even in the latter case he generally replied with brief and curt words.
Hence it may be easily guessed that he was not popular.