Lady Whitburn let her kneel down by the bed, and guided her hand to the aching thigh.

“Soft! Soft! Good! Good!” muttered Bernard presently. “Go on!”

Grisell had acquired something of that strange almost magical touch of Sister Avice, and Bernard lay still under her hand. Her mother, who was quite worn out, moved to her own bed, and fell asleep, while the snores of the Baron proclaimed him to have been long appeased. The boy, too, presently was breathing softly, and Grisell’s attitude relaxed, as her prayers and her dreams mingled together, and by and by, what she thought was the organ in Wilton chapel, and the light of St. Edith’s taper, proved to be the musical rush of the incoming tide, and the golden sunrise over the sea, while all lay sound asleep around her, and she ventured gently to withdraw into her own room.

That night was Grisell’s victory, though Bernard still held aloof from her all the ensuing day, when he was really the better and fresher for his long sleep, but at bed-time, when as usual the pain came on, he wailed for her to rub him, and as it was still daylight, and her father had gone out in one of the boats to fish, she ventured on singing to him, as she rubbed, to his great delight and still greater boon to her yearning heart. Even by day, as she sat at work, the little fellow limped up to her, and said, “Grisly, sing that again,” staring hard in her face as she did so.

CHAPTER XI
BERNARD

I do remember an apothecary,—
And hereabouts he dwells.

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

Bernard’s affection was as strong as his aversion had been. Poor little boy, no one had been accustomed enough to sickly children, or indeed to children at all, to know how to make him happy or even comfortable, and his life had been sad and suffering ever since the blight that had fallen on him, through either the evil eye of Nan the witch, or through his fall into a freezing stream. His brother, a great strong lad, had teased and bullied him; his father, though not actually unkind except when wearied by his fretfulness, held him as a miserable failure, scarcely worth rearing; his mother, though her pride was in her elder son, and the only softness in her heart for the little one, had been so rugged and violent a woman all the years of her life, and had so despised all gentler habits of civilisation, that she really did not know how to be tender to the child who was really her darling. Her infants had been nursed in the cottages, and not returned to the castle till they were old enough to rough it—indeed they were soon sent off to be bred up elsewhere. Some failure in health, too, made it harder for her to be patient with an ailing child, and her love was apt to take the form of anger with his petulance or even with his suffering, or else of fierce battles with her husband in his defence.

The comfort would have been in burning Crooked Nan, but that beldame had disposed of herself out of reach, though Lady Whitburn still cherished the hope of forcing the Gilsland Dacres or the Percies to yield the woman up. Failing this, the boy had been shown to a travelling friar, who had promised cure through the relics he carried about; but Bernard had only screamed at him, and had been none the better.

And now the little fellow had got over the first shock, he found that “Grisly,” as he still called her, but only as an affectionate abbreviation, was the only person who could relieve his pain, or amuse him, in the whole castle; and he was incessantly hanging on her. She must put him to bed and sing lullabies to him, she must rub his limbs when they ached with rheumatic pains; hers was the only hand which might touch the sores that continually broke out, and he would sit for long spaces on her lap, sometimes stroking down the scar and pitying it with “Poor Grisly; when I am a man, I will throw down my glove, and fight with that lad, and kill him.”

“O nay, nay, Bernard; he never meant to do me evil. He is a fair, brave, good boy.”