So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture. Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched off, leaving us two alone.
"Did the Princess know of this?" I managed to ask, and I believe this was my first intelligible question.
Marc'antonio paused before answering. "She knew that you were to be hurt, but not the manner of it. It was she that brought you the file, by stealth. Why did you not use it, and escape?"
"She brought me the file?" I knew it already, but found a fierce satisfaction in the words. "And she—and you—tried to use it upon my chain here and deliver me: I forced you to that, my friends! As for using it myself, you heard what I promised her, yesterday, before her brother came."
"I heard you talk very foolishly; and now you have done worse than foolishly. I do not understand you at all—no, by the Mother of God, I do not! You had the whole night for filing at your chain: and it would have been better for you, and in the end for her."
"And for you also, Marc'antonio."
He was silent.
"And for you also, Marc'antonio?" I repeated it as a question.
"Your escape would have been put down to me, Englishman. I had provided for that," he answered simply.
"Forgive me," I muttered, thrown back upon sudden contrition. "I was thinking only that you must feel it a punishment to be left alone with me. I had forgot—"