Page 65 of Hers To Command
Disfigured, his left arm crippled. And his sight…? “Only the right side of his face was hit. The left—”
“Mathilde, I shall be honest with you,” Giselle said, taking hold of her sister’s cold hands, her expression grim. “Sometimes, even if it seems only one eye has been damaged, the other—”
“No!” Mathilde pulled her hands free and backed away. It couldn’t be. He mustn’t be…He was afraid of the dark, and to be always in the dark…
Again her sister took hold of her shoulders. “Mathilde, listen to me,” she said firmly, sounding more like Mathilde than herself. “It may be that just the one eye is affected. It may be that both are fine. I simply do not know. You must have hope, Mathilde. At least he is alive.”
When he awakened and saw the extent of his wounds, or if he was blind, he might wish he were dead.
This was her fault—going to Roald that night, her stupid plan to scare him off, her refusal to listen to Giselle and Cerdic, and most of all, her stubborn and vain pride. If not for her, Henry would be his handsome, merry self, safe and far away from here.
And it wasn’t just Henry who was suffering. “How many others were wounded? How many have died?”
“Twenty wounded, six dead,” said her sister.
Oh, God. She bowed her head, ashamed, horrified, sick to think that things had gone so wrong. She tried to find some reason not to give in to black despair, and thought of her sister’s love. “At least Cerdic wasn’t wounded.”
Her stomach turned when she saw her sister’s expression. “I saw him in the hall,” Mathilde protested. “He didn’t look hurt.”
“Heisn’t, thank the Lord, but of the men who went with him out the postern gate, only he has come back. The others were killed or captured.”
“God forgive me,” Mathilde groaned, staring at her sister with dumbfounded, numb horror. “What have I done?”
Covering her face with her hands, she bent forward as if being pressed down by a great weight and moaned with despair and sorrow and guilt.
“You did what you thought was right,” her sister said softly.
“But I was wrong. So wrong!”
“Would you rather we surrendered Ecclesford without a fight? Do you think there would not have been death and pain and suffering if we had done that? That Roald would be a merciful overlord? No, no, Mathilde,” Giselle urged gently, enfolding her in her comforting embrace. “No one blames you for what’s happened. They rightly blame Roald.”
Mathilde held Giselle tightly as tears slipped out of her closed eyelids. To think she had ever maligned Giselle, in thought or word, bitter about her beauty.
After a long moment, Mathilde drew in a great, shuddering breath and stepped back. “I didn’t ask Ranulf about the battle. Have we won? Will Roald go now?”
Giselle regarded her sister with pity and sympathy. Even after Roald had raped her, Mathilde hadn’t looked so devastated, so distraught and destroyed. “Not yet, but we will,” she said staunchly. “We still have most of the men, and Cerdic and Sir Ranulf.”
But not Henry, Mathilde thought with mute misery.
“I should go below and see what more I can do with the hurt and wounded,” Giselle said. “Will you sit with Henry, and summon me if he wakes?”
“Of course.”
It was the very least she could do for him.
After Giselle had closed the door quietly behind her, Mathilde went to the bed. Kneeling beside it, she took Henry’s limp hand in hers and pressed it to her cheek.
No matter whose fault this conflict was, it had to stop. No more men should be killed or hurt. No building, no castle, no estate was worth so much pain.
Yet Giselle was right, too. If Roald controlled Ecclesford, there would indeed be death and maimings as punishments, hunger and suffering as he gleaned every bit he could from the peasants. He must not win this battle.
How could she stop him without more fighting? Was there not some way she could bring about an end to this without giving up Ecclesford?
There must be, and she would find it.
LATER THAT NIGHT,ten men were gathered around the postern gate of Ecclesford Castle. Half of them dozed fitfully, sitting on the ground, their backs against the wall. The other five were anxiously awake. They were on duty, and Sir Henry would have their hides if they slept, or even dozed off.
“Please open the gate,” said a woman wearing a cloak, the hood raised but not enough to obscure her face as she stepped into the circle of light thrown by a flickering torch stuck in the ground.
