For many weary weeks Kenric remained a helpless invalid in his castle,
tended by his gentle mother and by old Janet the nurse. His wounds were
of small account; but the six days spent in the noisome dungeon of
Breacacha had weakened him and given him a fever, which was slow to
leave him. His mind was strangely disturbed, and he talked wildly, and
at random, fancying he was fighting against countless hosts of pirate
Norsemen, and declaring deliriously that his Thirsty Sword would give
him no rest, so great was its lust for blood. And once when Ailsa
Redmain had come over with Allan from Kilmory, the young king began to
laugh wildly, and to say how he had just been over to Colonsay to
massacre many hundreds of children, and how the good men of Galloway had
tried to stop him, and that for their interference he had thrown them
all into dark dungeons, giving each of them a skeleton for a plaything.
But later, when his reason had returned, Ailsa came more often, and the
two would sit for hours together, talking of the boats that could be
seen from the window sailing on the blue waters of Rothesay Bay, of the
dark hills of Loch Striven beyond, and of the trees across in the forest
of Toward that were brown and gold in the autumn sunlight. Of all his
nurses, Kenric loved best that Ailsa should thus come to him, for she
was as a very gentle and sweet sister, and never did the Gaelic words
sound so musical as when spoken by her rosy lips; never did sunlight
shine more brightly than the light that shone in her beautiful eyes.
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