But she didn’t.
“We’ll torch the keep,” he said and rose. Mary raced to Chandra and pressed the blood-soaked cloth to the wound.
“Nay, don’t,” she said, looking up at Robbie Durwald. “Don’t fire the keep.”
“I’ll do whatever I wish to do,” Durwald said, and turned toward his men.
Chandra felt his movement away from her. She felt the pain deep in her shoulder, but she also felt more determined than she ever had in her life. She felt for her sword, clutched her fingers around the grip, and lurched to her feet. She was on him in an instant, her sword going through his side. He yelled and whirled about, his men staring, not believing that the girl was even alive.
It was what Jerval saw when he and Mark burst into the Great Hall. Chandra was jerking her sword out of a man’s back even as he was turning, his knife raised.
He saw blood covering her.
He meted out death even as his howls of rage filled the Great Hall of Oldham.
It was Mark who gave Robbie Durwald his deathblow.
Chandra stood there, panting, her sword in one hand, its tip bloody, her other hand pressed against her shoulder, blood everywhere, so red against her white face, and he couldn’t believe it. She was smiling.
“I knew you would come,” she said. “Thank you, Jerval. It was close, very close.”
He was striding toward her when she collapsed where she stood.
“I’m going to strangle you,” he said, his mouth against her cheek. “Aye, the instant you’re well again, I’m going to strangle you.”
She tried to smile, but it was difficult. She’d lost a lot of blood, she knew, and she knew that most men wounded as she’d been easily bled their lives away. But he wouldn’t let her die. She knew that as well.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You were supposed to be safe, holding Mary’s hand, reassuring her.” He was speaking more to himself than to her, and she realized it even though the pain was building now and it was hard to hold on, to keep the pain at bay so she could see him clearly and hear his words.
“Thirsty,” she whispered.
He held her head up and put the goblet to her lips. She drank slowly, so slowly. He wiped water from her chin.
“There is a healer here at Oldham. Her name is Agnes. She has sworn to me that you will live. You’ve been very sick for three days now.”
“Is Mary all right?”
“Aye, she is fine. When I am not with you, she is. You have but to lie still and mend. I have sent Prince Edward and Princess Eleanor on their way. They are sorry that you were wounded.”
“Will you go to the Holy Land with them?”
He was silent a moment. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “First you must get well again. Then we will see.”
“I want to go too,” she said. Then her eyes closed and she slept.
He thought of her fighting Robbie Durwald, her life bleeding away, and—and what? he wondered. It was his fault that he’d left her unprotected at Oldham. Yet it was her fault that she’d even come with him, sneaking in with his men. And he knew to his bones that she would never waver, she would never back down, she would always fight.
He sighed. He had no idea what he would do.
“Aye, it is a good sleep,” Agnes
said, coming up to stand beside the bed. “The lass is strong, stronger than most men I’ve tended. She’ll live to give ye gray hair.”
“I think she already has,” Jerval said.
It was three nights later, in the deepest part of the night, when Jerval awoke to her moan.