How I Had Word With My Lady, Joan Brandon

"And his lady's nursing!"

"What, hath she been with me in my sickness, Adam?" I questioned when the doctor had departed.

"Night and day, Martin, as sweet and patient with you as any angel in heaven, and you cursing and reviling her the while in your ravings--"

"Oh, God forgive me! Where is she now, Adam?"

"With my Lady Joan--"

"How?" I cried. "Was this Joanna nursed me?"

"Why, truly, Martin. Could she have better employ?" But hereupon I fell to such fury that Adam turned to stare at me, pen in hand.

"Lord love you, Martin," said he, pinching his chin, "I begin to think that skull o' yours is none so hard, after all--"

"And you," quoth I bitterly. "Your wits are none so keen as I had judged 'em. You are grown a very credulous fool, it seems!"

"Ha--'tis very well, shipmate!"

"For here you have Joanna--this evil creature stained by God knoweth how many shameful crimes--you have her beneath your hand and let her come and go as she lists, to work such new harms as her cunning may suggest--either you disbelieve my statements, or you've run mad, unless--"

"Unless what, Martin?"

"Unless she's bewitched you as she hath full many a man ere now."

Adam blenched and (for the first time in my remembrance) his keen eyes quailed before mine, and over his bronzed face, from aggressive chin to prominent brow, crept a slow and painful red.