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ried still. "Your head does not hurt? You were not struck there?" |
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"There is nothing wrong with my head," Walter replied, "but I have no idea how I came here or what I am doing in this chamber." |
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"You rode in with Lord Pembroke, he crying aloud to all that you had saved him. The chamber is Sir Ralph's. The earl bade you lie here." |
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"Bade me?" Walter started to lift his left hand to his head, gasped, and desisted. He used his right hand instead to feel around, but there were no soft spots in his skull, not even tender ones. It was, apparently, not a blow on the head that had wiped out his memory of the latter part of the battle. |
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He began to shrug away the problem, and another pang in his left shoulder made him crane his neck to look at it. What he could see of the flesh was a beautiful medley of dark blue and purple, splotched with maroon. The rest of his body was patched with similar bruises, and here and there a cut that had been sewn, but the only spot that rivaled the depth and variety of the color on his shoulder was his left knee. That, Walter remembered. Gingerly, he stretched and bent it; he needed to set his teeth over a howl of pain, but the knee moved as ordered. And when he got out of bed, it supported him, although under violent protest. |
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With Dai's help, Walter got dressed and limped out into the hall. The first person he saw was Richard, and he gasped with shock. The earl's face was a horror, nose and mouth swollen out of all proportion, scabbed, and even more fancifully colored than his own shoulder and knee. Walter rushed forward and would have fallen flat on his face when his knee gave way if Dai had not kept pace and caught him. |
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"Are you all right, my lord?" Walter cried, and then bit his lips when Richard glared at him. It would be cruel to laugh, Walter knew, because Richard would be tempted to laugh, too, and that would wreak further havoc on his torn lips. "Sorry," Walter said. "A stupid question. I could have killed Dai when he asked me if I were hurt. I hurt all over. But it is the strangest thing. I do not remember anything after that captain who was leading your horse was shot." |
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"De Guisnes," said Gilbert Bassett, who was sitting beside Richard at the table. "It was Baldwin de Guisness himself. King Henry left him in charge of Monmouth. We were fools |
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