“None,” she sighed. “You have been so long unconscious that I was losing hope of ever hearing your voice again.”
I became aware of a dull ache on the right side of my head. I put up my hand, and withdrew it moist. She saw the action.
“One of the horses must have struck you with its hoof after you fell,” she explained. “But I was more concerned for your other wound. I withdrew the sword with my own hands.”
That other wound she spoke of was now making itself felt as well. It was a gnawing, stinging pain in the region of my left shoulder, which seemed to turn me numb to the waist on that side of my body, and render powerless my arm. I questioned her touching my three adversaries, and she silently pointed to three black masses that lay some little distance from us in the snow.
“Not all dead?” I cried.
“I do not know,” she answered, with a sob. “I have not dared go near them. They frighten me. Mother of Heaven, what a night of horror it has been! Oh, that I had taken your advice, Messer Boccacloro!” she exclaimed in a passion of self-reproach.
I laughed, seeking to soften her distress.
“To me it seems, that whether you would or not, you have been compelled to take it, after all. Those fellows lie there harmless enough, and I am still—as I urged that I should be—your only escort.”
“A nobler protector never woman had,” she assured me, and I felt a hot pearl of moisture fail upon my brow.
“You were wise, at least, to journey with a Fool,” I answered her. “For fools are proverbially lucky folk, and to-night has proven me of all fools the luckiest. But, Madonna,” I suggested, in a different tone, “should we not be better advised to attempt to resume, this interesting journey of ours? We do not seem to lack horses?”