In the morning John Paul was roused by Andy; he helped the Colonel dress and led him out of the room. Both of them endeavored to be quiet, to avoid waking Lydia. There was no place for women in a fight like this, they silently agreed. She woke anyways, but kept her eyes closed and pretended to sleep.
The sun was starting to rise already when they met Henry a few miles down the road; streaks of pink were beginning to cut through the black sky. Andrew laid out a selection of weapons; pistols, sabres, rapiers. No one asked where he'd gotten them, though they seemed well-used.
John Paul hoped against hope that the boy would choose pistols. He was a good enough shot himself, and it would not tax him overmuch, but it was too much to hope for, he knew. The choice would have to be one of the swords. Henry examined the entire table, even picking up one of the pistols as if to tease John Paul with hope.
But eventually he picked up the long, slender rapiers and gave it an experimental thrust. "This one," he announced.
John Paul was helped to his feet; there would be no cane for him, here, and he knew that the fight could not last very long if he were to have any chance at all. He took the blade in his hand and then pushed himself up and away from Andy, who dashed out of the way. The fight was underway.
Henry resisted his temptation to immediately rush in; John Paul hated him for that. If only he'd been the same fool he'd been before. He knew the score here; Henry only had to wait a few moments and then John Paul would lose all by himself; he hadn't the energy to stay upright for more than a few minutes. The only answer, then, was to force things.
As John Paul thought it, he took a heavy step forward and made a thrust at Henry's thigh; it was knocked away easily, but he had expected that, and at the last moment dipped the point of his blade. He could see the opening in Henry's side. All he had to do was lift the point and ram it through the meat of his nephew's exposed arm as his blade sailed by.
But his hand wouldn't bring the blade around fast enough. He made the attempt, but Henry slapped it away. He kept the tip on target this time and made a quick riposte. John Paul saw it all happen, as if in slow-motion. All of it was better fencing than Henry had ever shown him. There was some small degree of pride in the fear that struck him. He'd done this, taught Henry the first thing about fighting with a blade. And now Henry used it against him.
He pushed back with his feet and leaned away from the thrust that threatened to poke a hole in his chest. Henry left the point there, threatening, as he stepped forward to press the point against his uncle's chest. John Paul brought his weapon around in a wide arc and knocked it off-line, but his move had been too big and he was out of position to make a response.
Henry took another step toward him and started to thrust again, and again John Paul stepped back and tried to slap it away. Henry dipped the blade and let John Paul's fly past in a too-wide arc.
John Paul was too tired to keep his hands in a good position. He had, he saw, vastly overestimated the time that he had to win this fight; his movements were too vigorous, even as they were not quick enough to defeat his nephew.
He had to pray for a miracle, then; whatever happened from then on, he would be at a sore disadvantage. He had, he guessed, a scant few movements of his blade before he passed out completely. Henry saw the exhaustion on his face and made a testing thrust.
John Paul saw it coming, but couldn't do anything to stop it. He was going to die, he realized. Not some day; not in a matter of days or weeks. Henry would jam a length of steel through his shoulder, and then his throat, and he'd be dead.
In his last moments, some animal instinct caused his left hand to come around and grab the blade. John Paul could feel the blade digging into his fingers, but he gripped it as tight as he could in the hopes that he would manage to keep it held for just a few moments; just long enough to make his last play. He brought the tip of his own blade up and pointed it at Henry's chin and pushed it up.
He felt, a moment too late to stop, Henry pulling his blade free. He wouldn't have time to push the blade home and win the fight before Henry deflected the thrust. He had lost.
John Paul took a desparate step forward and fell onto his nephew, dropping the pair of them in a massive tangle of blades and limbs. His vision was dimming; he could only make out general shapes and colors.
He pulled his sword-arm back and readied the point, feeling for Henry's face, and when he had found it he pushed the blade point forward until he couldn't any more, and Henry stopped struggling.
John Paul, unable to support the weight of his body, slumped down onto his nephew. He could hear, very lightly, that the young man was still breathing. Somehow John Paul had made some error in his final assault, and the boy hadn't been killed outright. He could see, from this distance, that the wound was ugly and in his neck.
That he would die, then, was not in question, but in those last few moments Henry tried to speak.
"Uncle," he whispered. He could tell that it was as loud as his nephew could speak.
"What is it," John Paul gulped down air as best he could, but it seemed the air wouldn't come into his lungs. "My boy?"
"Damn you for a fool," his nephew replied between shallow breaths. "You must have known."
"It was Simon," John Paul protested.
"It was never Simon, you damned fool," Henry said softly, and then he died.
John Paul rolled off the limp body of his nephew and tried to breathe. His breaths were coming slow and hard. He could feel a hurt in his chest where he'd thought that he had turned Henry's blade away. A red spot was spreading out of it, and it hurt when he took a breath. Andy came rushing up and knelt over John Paul, checking his wound.
Whatever he found, he wrapped John Paul's arm around his neck and hefted him up into something approximating a standing position. The Colonel tried to take a step, leaning hard on his old friend, but his feet wouldn't move properly. He went limp and let Andrew carry him. By the time they were back to the road, a scant hundred meters, Andy saw, the colonel was unconscious.
Andy returned to find Lydia standing on the porch with a lantern, waiting for them. She panicked when she saw John Paul draped so over his friend's shoulder. She guided Andy immediately into a bedroom, where they laid him down and she pressed a compress against the wound in his chest.
She could see his chest moving up and down as he breathed, but that was the only indication she could find that he had not already passed on; he could not be roused. He'd opened his eyes for a few minutes that evening, said a few words, and passed out once again.
Lydia sat in the front room reading. John Paul watched her reading instead of looking at the book laying open in his own lap. He had recovered well in the months that passed afterward. Between his divided attention and her mild way of acting, he almost hadn't noticed it. She was very decidedly not saying something, though. He could only ignore it for so long before the wound would begin festering.
“Lydia, what is it?”