She raised her face to look at the frightened valet and said soothingly,

“Your Master will live. He is only unconscious. Will you fetch me some clean linen handkerchiefs and I will bind up his head?”

“God be thanked!”

There was no mistaking the fervent relief in the man’s voice or the sincerity of his tone.

He darted away to find the handkerchiefs and, having made a pad, Carina managed to bind it in place without too much difficulty.

“What happened?” she asked, as she tied a knot above the man’s left ear.

“He hit me,” the valet said. “He didn’t mean it. He often does it when he be in his cups. The pain made me a bit mad for the moment. I gave him a shove and he tumbled over. When I saw him a-bleedin’, I thought he was a goner.”

Carina glanced up at the mark on the man’s cheekbone, which she could see quite clearly would be a livid bruise the following day.

She knew that he was speaking the truth and she looked down to the stout body of the man lying on the floor and wondered how he could be such a bully as to hit someone so much smaller than himself.

“Shall we get him onto his bed?” the valet asked timidly.

Carina glanced to the far end of the room where there were two openings, both of which she could see led into small confined bedrooms.

Where they were, she thought, must have been often used for celebrating the Mass when the Priests were in hiding and the other rooms would have been sleeping chambers. Perhaps in Cromwellian times there would have been more than one Priest finding sanctuary in a large Castle like this.

She considered that it would be impossible for the valet and herself to carry such a very big man across the room and into the bedchamber.

“I think we had better leave him as he is,” Carina said. “Put a pillow under his head and – cover him with a blanket. He may feel weak later from loss of blood.”

The valet brought a pillow and very gently they raised the man’s bandaged head. As if the softness of the pillow and the warmth of the blanket they put over him roused him a little, he grunted, gave a deep snore and seemed to settle himself more comfortably.

“He be alive! He be really alive!” the valet ejaculated as if earlier he had not believed Carina.

“He will be quite all right,” Carina said. “But in future don’t let him drink so much.”

As she spoke, she looked at a half-empty bottle of brandy on the table.

The valet shrugged his shoulders.

“What else be there for him to do?” he asked. “He can’t live long.”

“How do you know?” Carina asked.