“I beseech you by my love that you do not doubt it!” Hesitation gave way before a warmth of reproach. “For a man to know that he has wounded what he would have died to shield—that he has wronged where he would have given his life to honor—that it may be he has lost what is body and soul to him,—what else is that but suffering?”
It was only a very little that her face turned toward him, and he could not see how her downcast eyes were taking fire from his voice. He stood looking at her in despair, until something in the poise of her head taught him a new rune among love’s spells. Drawing softly near her, he spoke in noblest conciliation: “Is it your pride that cannot pardon me, Lady of Avalcomb? Do I seem to sue for grace too boldly because I forget to make my body match the humbleness of my heart? Except in prayer or courtesy, we are not loose of knee, we Angles, but I would stoop as low as I lowest might if that could make you kinder, dear one.” Baring his head, he knelt down at her feet,—and the difference between this and the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey, was the difference between tender jest and tenderest earnest. “Thus then do I ask you to give me back your love,” he said gently,—and would have said more but that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame.
“It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have told me that—that I have no right to be angry with you—” She broke off, as looking into his face she saw something that startled her into forgetfulness of all else. “Why are your cheeks so hollow?” she demanded. “And so gray—as though you had lost blood? Lord, what has come near you?”
He could not conceal the sudden pleasure he got out of her alarm for him, even while he answered as lightly as he could that it was no more than the fatigue of his three days in the saddle; and a lack of food, perhaps, as he had been somewhat pressed for time; and a lack of sleep because of—
But she was a warrior’s daughter, and she would not be put off. Coming close to him, she pulled aside the dusty cloak, hot as a live coal in the glare of the day, and there—behold!—there were blood stains on the breast of his blue kirtle. Forgetful of everything else, she flung her arms around him as though to shield him. “Sebert, you are wounded! What is it?”
Nothing that troubled him very much, apparently, for his haggard face had grown radiant with gladness. Yet he was enough afraid of the reaction to answer her as gravely as possible: “It is Rothgar Lodbroksson, whom I met coming from the City as I was journeying back from my errand in Northampton. Little affection has ever passed between us, and this time something more than usual seemed to have stirred him against me, for—”
“He tried to kill you!” The words were not a question but a breathless assertion as she remembered the Jotun’s last threat.
“He tried to kill me,” the Marshal assented quietly. “And his blade did manage to pierce my mail; he is a giant in strength as in other things. But it cut no more than flesh; and after that, Fortune wheeled not toward him.”
“You slew him!” Her lips were white as she gasped it, but he knew now that it was no love for the Jotun that moved her, and he answered promptly to her unspoken thought: “No, sweet,—for the King’s sake, I spared him. Before this, his men have taken him aboard his ship and England is rid of him.”
Murmuring broken phrases of thanksgiving, she stood holding the cloak she had grasped, but he dreaded too much the moment of her awakening to await its coming inactive. Slipping his arms around her, he began to speak swiftly, the moment her silence gave him an opening.