The girl answered, 'If your head ached as mine does now and again when I remember my men who are dead; if your head ached as mine does....' She stopped and gave a peal of laughter. 'Why, child, your face is like a startled moon. You have not stayed days enough here to have met many like me; but if you tarry here for long you will laugh much as I laugh, or you will have grown blind long since with weeping.'
Katharine said, 'Poor child, poor child!'
But the girl cried out, 'Get you gone, I say! In the Lady Mary's room you shall find my old knight babbling with the maidens. Send him to me, for my head aches scurvily, and he shall dip his handkerchief in vinegar and set it upon my forehead.'
'Let me comb thy hair,' Katharine said; 'my hand is sovereign against a headache.'
'No, get you gone,' the girl said harshly; 'I will have men of war to do these errands for me.'
Katharine answered, 'Sit thee down. Thou wilt take my letter; I must ease thy pains.'
'As like as not I shall scratch thy pink face,' Cicely said. 'At these times I cannot bear the touch of a woman. It was a woman made my father run with the Marquis of Exeter.'
'Sweetheart,' Katharine said softly, 'I could hold both thy wrists with my two fingers. I am stronger than most men.'
'Why, no!' the girl cried; 'I may not sit still. Get you gone. I will run upon your errand. If you had knelt to as many men as I have you could not sit still either. And not one of my men was pardoned.'
She ran from the room with a sidelong step like a magpie's, and her laugh rang out discordantly from the corridor.