‘She took her knife to me,’ growled the wounded man, who had risen to his feet, and showed bleeding fingers.
‘Ay, for meddling with a royal falcon,’ broke in Jean. ‘’Tis thou, false loon, whose craig should be raxed.’
Happily this was an unknown tongue to the foresters, and Sir Patrick gravely silenced her.
‘Whist, lady, brawls consort not with your rank. Gang back doucely to my leddy.’
‘But Skywing! he has her jesses,’ said the girl, but in a lower tone, as though rebuked.
‘Sir ranger,’ said Sir Patrick courteously, ‘I trust you will let the young demoiselle have her hawk. It was loosed in ignorance and heedlessness, no doubt, but I trow it is the rule in England, as elsewhere, that ladies of the blood royal are not bound by forest laws.’
‘Sir, if we had known,’ said the ranger, who was evidently of gentle blood, as he took his foot off the jesses, and Jean now allowed David to remount her.
‘But my Lord Duke is very heedful of his bustards, and when Roger there went to seize the bird, my young lady was over-ready with her knife.’
‘Who would not be for thee, my bird?’ murmured Jean.
‘And yonder big fellow came plunging down and up with his sword—so as he was nigh on being the death of poor Roger again for doing his duty. If such be the ways of you Scots, sir, they be not English ways under my Lord Duke, that is to say, and if I let the lady and her hawk go, forest law must have its due on the young man there—I must have him up to Fotheringay to abide the Duke’s pleasure.’