The pounding was growing louder. Christina’s hands trembled as she wrapped strips of cloth around the wounded man’s leg. As a healer, it was her job to help her patients in any way she could, and today, in the midst of a futile battle, she needed to show them strength and hope for tomorrow. If the injured men saw that she was terrified by Lord Brandon’s advancing army, then what hope would they have?
“Tina, we have to go!” her younger sister whined from behind her.
“I told you to leave me and go,” Christina snapped with an impatient glance over one shoulder. Tilde’s nose was wrinkled in disgust at the smell in the makeshift infirmary.
“Father wants you to come with us. He says we can’t leave without you,” the girl retorted with a disapproving frown on her pinched face.
A kitchen boy, laden with bandages, dashed up behind Tilde and accidentally brushed against her.
“Oh!” her sister screeched, flailing her skinny arms. The boy’s load slipped from his grasp. “Tina, your filthy little helper assaulted me! I expect him to be whipped!”
Christina scooped up several rolls of cloth as they skittered across the stone floor. The distraction gave her time to get her temper in check before saying something in front of the injured men that she might regret.
“Tilde, look around,” Christina said in the calmest voice she could manage. “We’re surrounded by scores of men fighting for their lives. This used to be our father’s great hall, but we needed a place to treat our injured soldiers, so here they are. Lord Brandon has already overthrown our outer defenses, and now he’s bashing down the gate. Do you really think anyone will waste time whipping a servant for you? A servant, for that matter, who bumped into you only because he was hurrying to save men’s lives? When was the last time you did anything more useful than fixing your hair?”
Christina turned back to the injured man, and the silence behind her suggested the level of Tilde’s outrage. Probably standing with her hands on her hips and tears welling up in her eyes, she thought with a sigh. What would happen if Tilde flew into one of her tantrums in the middle of the busy, crowded room? Having the girl kicking, screaming, and throwing everything in sight was the last thing anyone here needed.
After an anxious moment, she heard her sister marching out of the hall. There’s the first thing that’s gone right all day.
Christina finished binding the leg wound of the man lying on the dining table before her.
“You’re going to be fine,” she murmured to him. “Now stay still or the bleeding will start again.”
The man managed a pained smile on his battle-stained face.
Pushing back a strand of blond hair from her forehead, Christina watched as two servants carefully lifted the blanket the man was lying on to move him off the table, while two more servants deposited another man in his place. She began to clean the new patient’s head wound while praying that these men would be given the chance to heal from their injuries.
Everyone knew that Lord Brandon’s victims always suffered before they died. Countless stories were told of how his armies battled across the known world, laying waste to homes and villages as they went. Christina’s father, Sir John, had told his children that no quarter was ever given by Lord Brandon. He was known by many names in the lands he conquered—from the Murderer of Moscow, to the Sorrow of Sicily, to the Horror of Hamburg. There were only two ways to survive a fight with his forces: flee or win. Lord Brandon was undefeated in battle, so fleeing was exactly what Christina’s father intended to do. He and his family were supposed to have escaped the castle hours ago, before Lord Brandon’s army reached the castle gate. However, events conspired to keep the family in Ellsworth Castle longer than was safe.
Meanwhile, Christina’s stepmother, Lady Edmund, and her half-sister, Tilde, spent the day gathering up small, valuable items from around castle. Sir John and Lady Edmund intended to sell them while the family was “in exile,” as Christina’s stepmother called their abandonment of the castle. There were more valuables than anyone realized because it took far longer to assemble them than planned.
Christina refused to abandon the injured men who needed her help. The men had been hurt while defending her family on her father’s orders. She felt they deserved some loyalty. She was all too familiar with the horrific tales surrounding Lord Brandon, also known as the Blood of Berlin, but she still found it hard to believe anyone would be so cruel as to murder the injured and their healers. She clung to the hope that Lord Brandon retained some shred of humanity, and he would not simply plunge his sword through her chest when he arrived.
Christina cringed when she heard the lumbering footfalls of her father approaching behind her.
“Tina, leave that man. We’re going.” Sir John Edmund ordered.
“Father, I already told you a dozen times. I must stay where I can do some good. You go.”
Sir John caught his daughter’s arm, causing her to drop the man’s head she was bandaging. It landed with a thump on the hard table.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Christina exclaimed. She wrenched her arm free of her father’s grip and used her fingertips to gently probe the injured man's head for further damage.
“Don’t be foolish; I can’t leave you behind,” Sir John snapped. “If Brandon gets his hands on you, he’ll have a valuable hostage. And where will I be then? I’d have to spend what little money I have ransoming you so no one could say I don’t care about family. You’re coming with us if I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you!”
Christina turned to her father to argue when a deep thud made the room shudder. Tilde scurried in, clinging to her gaunt, hawk-faced mother. Screaming and sobbing, they threw their arms around Sir John.
“Husband, we must go now! They’ve breached the gate!” the older woman pleaded.
Panic-stricken, Sir John, Lady Edmund, and Tilde began howling, wringing their hands, and cursing fate for abandoning them to unspeakably horrible deaths. Christina’s heart pounded in her chest, but she knew she must appear brave for her patients. The poor men were already injured and helpless, some of them dying, and all of them in great pain. In moments, they would be taken prisoner by the most notoriously cruel lord in the kingdom. Before sunset, he was likely to have slit all of their throats—or worse.
Christina would not allow herself to compound her patients’ suffering by behaving like a coward. She schooled her features and addressed her family in the firmest voice she could muster.
“If you wish to go, go now. This is your only chance. Don’t wait for me. My place is with the injured.”
Sir John’s jowly face turned from panicked white to furious red. His eyes bulged. He raised a hand and took a step toward her.
“I am your father and you will obey me or suffer the consequences!” he thundered.
Christina steeled herself for her father’s blow, but he would not change her mind.
Before Sir John’s palm could strike her, the kitchen boy who had been helping tend the injured stepped between them.
“Sir John,” the boy named Joseph panted. “Quickly, the enemy is still fighting at the front gate! If we go now, you can get out through the stables and escape into town before they realize you’ve gone.” The boy began pushing Sir John toward a servant’s entrance at the opposite end of the hall. Lady Edmund and Tilde followed, nudging the portly knight from behind.
Relief washed over Christina. Yes, she was in a dire situation, surrounded by dozens of men screaming for her aid as she awaited the imminent arrival of a man who was known far and wide for creative and brutal methods of killing his prisoners. But at least her family would not be badgering her.
Christina’s relief was premature. Just as Sir John and the others reached the narrow servant’s door, Tilde let out a shriek.
“Oh no, my ring!” she cried, grabbing her mother’s arm.
“What ring, my love?” Lady Edmund asked in that sickly-sweet tone she always adopted when speaking to her daughter, even if it meant having to pause in her own terrified wailing.
“The one Sir Robert gave me when he was here. He said he would come back for it, and I must have it to show him. I promised.”
Christina was occupied with cleaning and bandaging a sword slice that nearly took off a soldier’s ear. The man kept silent throughout the painful procedure. She spoke in a low voice to him.
“Sir Robert never gave Tilde the ring. She stole it off his finger when he was passed out drunk at my father’s supper table. Sir Robert as much as called Tilde a thief, but she just giggled like a fool and acted as if it was a great joke between the two of them. He promised to return with the magistrate if he heard about any other goods missing from visitors to Ellsworth Castle.”
The story did its job. The soldier chuckled as Christina applied the last of his dressing.
“Where is Sir Robert’s ring?” Lady Edmund asked.
“It must be up in my chamber. I forgot it. What would Sir Robert think if I let his pretty gift fall into Lord Brandon’s filthy hands?” Tilde twisted her hands and looked pleadingly at her mother. “I must retrieve it.”
With that, Tilde spun on her heel and darted upstairs to her bedchamber.
“Young lady, get back here!” Sir John bellowed in her wake. “We’re fleeing for our lives, and you’re after some cheap bauble? Everyone knows Sir Robert sold all of his family’s decent jewels to pay his gambling debts!”
Lady Edmund tried to soothe her husband, but he just got redder and bellowed louder. The rhythmic thudding continued to vibrate through the castle. Christina didn’t know which was worse, her father’s shouts or the sound of Lord Brandon’s approach. She wished they would both just leave and allow her to tend her patients in peace.
Tilde came barreling back into the great hall a few minutes later. She held one hand aloft, Sir Robert’s ring wrapped around her bony thumb.
“I have it!” she cried, just as a massive blow shook the castle. This one was followed by a crash and a barrage of shouts and screams.
Joseph, who had been trying to lead Sir John to safety, said aloud what everyone already knew. “It’s too late. They’ve gotten in.”
“We can still go!” Sir John insisted. This time he tried to push his wife and daughter through the door.
“No, you can’t, Sir John,” said a brown-haired man lying on a blanket near the door. Christina recognized him as one of Ellsworth Castle’s guards. His face was smeared with blood, as was the front of his tunic, but his eyes were alert. “If you had a head start, you might have been able to reach the village before Lord Brandon’s men caught up to you. In the confusion, you might even have been able to blend in and escape. But now that his men are in, they will be swarming the castle, including the servant’s quarters and stables. You and the ladies can’t outrun Lord Brandon’s soldiers.”
Tilde and Lady Edmund began to wail. They clung to one another, as if each believed the other could save her.
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