Page 74 of Hers To Command
“I’m sorry, Sir Henry. I must change your bandage.”
Giselle. That was Giselle. Where was Mathilde?
Oh, God, it hurt! Someone was moaning.
Him.
Finally the last of the linen was removed. He heard Giselle sigh. “There is no sign of infection, thank God,” she said. “Can you open your eyes?”
His eye must still be there. That was a relief, even though sweat continued to trickle down his body and the pain swamped him like a drowning man in a storm at sea.
“Can you open your eyes?” Giselle repeated.
Could he? He tried. His left eye opened, and he could make out Giselle anxiously bending over him. Yes, it was Giselle—although there was something not right about the way she looked. It was as if she were a person depicted on a tapestry, flat against a surface.
He couldn’t open the other. It was sealed shut with dried blood or pus, or too swollen, perhaps.
“Can you see me?”
He tried to nod, but that hurt too much. He struggled to speak, yet only a croak passed his dry lips.
“Squeeze my hand if you can see me.”
He managed that, and Giselle immediately spoke to someone over her shoulder. “He can see!”
“Thank God. Oh, thank God! If you had been blinded!” Mathilde cried. Suddenly she was beside the bed, her head bowed as she took his right hand in hers and pressed a fervent kiss upon it.
Mathilde. Mathilde was there, despite her aversion to wounds and sickness. Of course she would be there, because he was badly hurt. Maybe dying. If so, he had to tell Mathilde or Cerdic what to do….
In the next moment, Mathilde was beside him on the bed, cradling his aching head between her breasts and helping him to drink the most delicious water he’d ever had in his life.
“Slowly, beloved, slowly,” she whispered as he spluttered a little.
She laid him back down and he felt the bed rise when she stood up. He managed to turn his head to watch her. If he was going to die, he wanted his last sight to be of her.
“Can you move your left arm?” Giselle asked from the other side of the bed.
Still watching Mathilde as she worked with her back to him, he tried to do as Giselle asked—and sucked in his breath at the sharp, stabbing agony.
“I fear the muscle has been torn from the bone. If you are careful, you may regain some use of it, but it will always be weak.”
Someuse of it?Alwaysweak? That was his shield arm. How could he fight if he couldn’t hold a shield? How could he earn money, or hope to win an estate?
What about his right arm?
He attempted to lift it and to his relief, found that he could move it. He was about to feel his face when Giselle grabbed his arm and eased it back down. “You must not touch your cheek. The bones have been broken. I’ve set it as best I could, but you may cause more damage if you touch it.”
His cheekbone was broken? By the blow of the mace. He could guess how the bone would heal; he had seen such wounds before. If he was lucky, his face would be only a little misshapen. If he was unlucky, that side of his face would be like a bowl, permanently indented.
“Your brow was cut. I’ve sewn it shut.”
That would explain all the blood. Such wounds always bled copiously. He would have a scar. A broken cheekbone and a scar and a useless left arm….
But there was more to concern him than his own wounds. “The battle?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Over for now,” Mathilde said, returning with a goblet in her hands. “I’m going to give you some of this to drink, Henry. It will ease the pain and help you to sleep.”
He didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to find out what had happened. “Ranulf…?”
