A Knyght Ther Was by Robert Young

Author:Robert Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

IV

ROWENA NEARLY THREW A fit when Mallory rode into the rec-hall. “Oh, fair knight, ye be sorely wounded indeed!” she cried, helping him down from his rohorse. “Certes, an ye bleed so much ye may die!”

Mallory’s head was throbbing, and he saw two damosels that hight Rowena instead of only one. “I’ll be all right after I lie down for a while,” he said. “And don’t worry about the bleeding—it’s almost stopped.”

He took a step in the direction of his bedroom office, staggered and would have fallen if she hadn’t caught his arm. Her strength astonished him: for all the lightness of his armor, it still lent him an over-all weight of some two hundred and ten pounds; and yet the shoulder which she provided for him to lean on did not give once all the way to his bedside. She had his pauldrons, breastplate, and arm-coverings off in no time flat. His cuisses, greaves, and sollerets followed. The last he remembered was lying there in his under garments and his chain-mail vest with three faces swimming in the misted sea of his vision, each of them invested with the peculiar beauty that concern, and concern alone, can grant.

“How is mammakin’s little man now?” the rent-a-mammakin asked, applying soothing sedasalve to the boy Mallory’s swollen ear.

“He hit me, mammakin,” the boy Mallory sobbed. “Just because I wouldn’t tell him that ‘G’ stands for ‘Geography’. I hate geography! I hate it, hate it, hate it!”

“Nasty old rent-a-robogogue! Mammakin sent him away. He was an old model that got rented out by mistake. Is mammakin’s little man’s ear all right now?”

The boy Mallory sat up. “I want my real—” he began.

The man Mallory sat up. “I want my real—” he began.

“I have great joy of thy swift recovery, fair sir,” Rowena said.

She was perched on the edge of his bed, applying a cool and soothing ointment to his ear. On the table by the bed lay a basin of water, and on her lap lay a pink tube. He grabbed the tube, looked at the label. Sedasalve. He sighed with relief. “Where did you find it?” he asked.

“La! fair sir, when ye did seem no longer on live I did run both toward and forward in the castle seeking a magical salve whereby I might succor ye, whereupon I did come to a white box in the chapel wherein lay many magical tubes of diverse colors and natures whereof I did choose one and—”

Mallory was incredulous. “You chose a tube at random?” he demanded. “Good Lord, it might have contained a counteragent that could have killed me!”

“The ... the letters thereon seemed of a magical nature, fair knight. And ... and the color was seemly.”

“Well anyway it was the right one.” He looked at her. Could she read? he wondered. He was tempted to ask her, but refrained for fear of embarrassing her. “In that same white box,” he said, “you will find a big bottle filled with round red pellets. Would

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