I stood, joints cracking. “Do you need my help, Master?”

He looked me up and down, saw the cut on my arm, the slump in my bones, the muck and the filth.

“Busy day for everyone, it seems.” When I didn’t answer, he waved me back to the ground. “Not tonight, Rowe,” he said softly. I sat as ordered, gladly.

The few King’s Men who’d suffered only cuts and scrapes had dressed their own wounds, so Tom and I were the last to be seen. The surgeon looked us over, put a half dozen stitches in Tom’s leg, and three in my arm. He offered us the poppy. Tom took it; I didn’t.

Sally tended to Tom while the surgeon worked on me. She wiped his wounds clean with a damp cloth as he lay in the dirt, drifting off to sleep. When the surgeon left, and Sally had finished, she nudged him. “Time for bed.”

Tom curled up on the ground. “M’already in bed.”

She laughed. “Go on, now, go on.”

“Mn. Wait for Christophmrr.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. He would ache like the devil in the morning. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be if he slept all night on the ground. I poked him until he sat up. “Go inside. Take Bridget. Come on, if you fall asleep, I won’t be able to carry you.”

“Mnngln,” he grumbled, but he staggered off to our quarters, Bridget cupped in his hands, bumping into the wall along the way.

“I should go, too,” I said.

“You can’t sleep like that,” Sally said. “Let me look at you.”

She tried to help me take off my shirt, but my arm hurt too much to lift. “Just cut it off,” I said. “It’s ruined, anyway.”

Sally used a knife to split it from collar to hem, then drew a breath when she saw the damage underneath. My arm was bloody where I’d been cut, flesh bound together by the stitches, and I had scrapes all over my shoulder, chest, and back. Everything else was bruised and swollen, angry red splotches covering my skin.

“Christopher,” Sally said, dismayed.

“At least no one shot me this time.”

“What happened out there?”

I bowed my head and sighed. “I fell off a horse.”

She leaned in close, dabbing my skin with cold water. It helped dull the pain. A little.

“Everyone keeps talking about you to me,” I said.

“Oh?” Sally wiped the dirt away. After a moment, she asked, “What are they saying?”

I didn’t answer. She cleaned me up and wrapped a bandage around my arm.

“You should take the poppy,” she said.

“I’ll be fine.”

She looked into my eyes, searching. Then she leaned in and kissed me softly on the cheek.

Sally stayed there, her head against mine, her breath warm on my neck. I wanted her to stay like that forever.

One of the King’s Men woke and moaned. She went to him. I trudged up to bed.