"You have heard, lady," he said.
"Oh, yea, yea! Alas, poor Leonard!" she cried.
"The Saints grant him recovery."
"Methought you would be glad to hear you were like to be free from
such a yoke. Were you rid of him, you, of a Yorkist house, might win
back your lands, above all, since, as you once told me, you were a
playmate of the King's sister."
"Ah! dear master, speak not so! Think of him! treacherously wounded,
and lying moaning. That gruesome oil! Oh! my poor Leonard!" and she
burst into tears. "So fair, and comely, and young, thus stricken
down!"
"Bah!" exclaimed Lambert. "Such are women! One would think she
loved him, who flouted her!"
"I cannot brook the thought of his lying there in sore pain and
dolour, he who has had so sad a life, baulked of his true love."
Master Lambert could only hold up his hands at the perversity of
womankind, and declare to his Clemence that he verily believed that
had the knight been a true and devoted Tristram himself, ever at her
feet, the lady could not have been so sore troubled.
The next day brought Brother Kit back with an earnest request from
the Infirmarer and the Sub-Prior that "Master Groats" would come to
the monastery, and give them the benefit of his advice on the wounds
and the fever which was setting in, since gun-shot wounds were beyond
the scope of the monastic surgery.
To refuse would not have been possible, even without the earnest
entreaty of Grisell; and Lambert, who had that medical instinct which
no training can supply, went on his way with the lay brother.
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