Suddenly the old nurse screamed that I was hurt. And indeed, I now felt a most sharp pain through my shoulder where, it seems, had struck a bolt discharged by some Carleton archer. My doublet was covered with blood; and I felt a most unmanly giddiness. It was over in a flash; but my mother, pale as a ghost under the torchlight, had seized me by one arm while Dame Franklin grasped the other, fearing forsooth lest I fall from the battlements to the moat below. Between them, I made my way down to the hall where they led me to a couch, they all the while mumbling and weeping and forgetting our glorious victory which had all my thoughts.
Soon old Marvin had drawn the arrow and dressed the hurt with the simples he had at hand. ’Twas my first wound, and, truth to tell, as Marvin plucked the bolt away my stomach was none too well at ease, and the room and all its folk swung slowly round and round. Yet when I heard him declare to my lady mother that the young master was now a man in his own right and a worthy son of the Mountjoys, I closed my eyes to the dizzying hall with its dancing armor suits and its nodding pictures of my long dead forbears, and soon slumbered, well content.
For two hours and more I slept as one drugged. When my eyes opened, the hall had ceased its swinging, and my mother sat by my couch and did hold my hand in both of hers as she was wont to do long, long ago when I was but a child. Dame Franklin, in a chair near by did slumber deeply and with most comical groans and snores. Just then returned old Marvin, fresh from new labors in the moat. He and Alan had again cleared away all the contrivings of our enemies; and he was in high feather at our victory.
“Lady Mountjoy,” he said, making due obeisance, “we have beaten the wolf-pack full soundly. The Old Wolf himself is sore stricken, if not dead; and the others will gladly crawl to their holes. Sir Dickon will have a merry tale and true to tell my lord when he comes from the Scottish war.”
“Say’st thou so, good Marvin?” quoth my mother in reply. “Dost think we have smitten them so they will give over all their evil design?”
“My word upon it, Lady. We have beaten off all their strokes, killed a score and more of their men, and gi’en to the Old Wolf himself some measure of his just deserts. The morning will show their camp fires cold and the woods and fields of Mountjoy deserted by the whole wolf-pack. Ere three days have passed thou shalt walk abroad with thy women and without fear of any Carleton, lord or churl.”
These goodly words were to me better than physic; and the smile which my lady mother gave to me was a fair guerdon for any service. Soon I slept again and dreamed of riding my white mare on the banks of Tarleton Water on a day most fair to see. But I wakened to a gray and frosty dawn and to things far other than my dreams. My mother had just returned from the ramparts. The besiegers were still at their posts, and their camp fires burned brightly. She had made out messengers speeding along the road to Teramore, but of a breaking of the siege could see no signs around the camps of our enemies.
When she brought this news to me, I spurned the quilted robes and the silken coverlet which she had laid over me, sat up on the couch and asked for boots and cross-bow. She was deeply frightened at this, fearing my giddiness had returned and that I knew not what I said. But Marvin, coming into the hall just then, did say that my wound was too slight a thing to keep a fighting man in his bed; and thus aided I had my way, and soon was on the ramparts again.
[CHAPTER II—THE TAPPING ON THE DUNGEON WALL]
As before, the siege went on, the sole variance being the absence of the gray-bearded horseman from the groups of knights and squires who made the circuit of the sentry-posts. Days and weeks went by, and they made no further assaults, but so closely were the siege lines drawn that, without wings no creature could enter or leave the castle. It was evident that the Carleton men hoped to starve us into submission. We smiled at this when we thought of the loads of grain and salted meats which had been brought into the storerooms in the first week of my father’s absence, and which would be enough to feed all our little garrison for a year. A well of most sweet water in the courtyard had never been known to run dry; so we had little cause for fear of either hunger or thirst.