Neither Marlowe nor Eleanor made answer, but Gyll Croyden, who now had joined the group, replied, laughing: “Ay, that have we both. Master Ralph Contempt and Towaye snared us cunningly, but a wench’s wit outdid them, and, alas! a wench’s hair.”
She stroked her close-cut curls dolefully.
Vytal staggered to his feet, and, facing Marlowe, questioned him like a judge of the Inquisition: “Wherefore didst thou not make this known to me?”
The poet met his gaze unflinchingly. “I thought—”
“Thought!” The word was repeated in a frigid, biting tone. “Thought! ’Twas not your right to think. The daughter of our governor was in jeopardy.”
“Yes, captain, and our colony also. I deemed it advisable not to pit one duty against another. On coming ashore after the battle I would have told you, but you had swooned.”
Vytal looked at him in silence; then, finally sinking down again to a sitting posture, “You were right, Kyt,” and his eyes met Eleanor’s—“’Twas for our colony.”
“I pray you rest,” she said. “Your strength is spent.”
But he sat bolt-upright and made as if to rebuckle his sword-belt in a dazed, automatic way. “Nay, madam; it is unimpaired.”
At about this time a solitary man, far to the southward, struck inland from the shore. It was Frazer, returning from a defeat to what he believed was to be the scene of a conquest which should retrieve it.