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swords unsheathed and held at rest in their gloved hands. To a man they towered over her, their gazes by turn doubtful, fierce, and dangerous.
    This was what her people had confronted. No matter how bravely they had fought with their clubs, axes, and sticks, they were no match for these well-armed warriors whose sole purpose was war and death. With an ache of sadness so intense that it stilled her breath in her lungs, she knew the fates of the men of Amesbury—indeed all of Saxon England—had been sealed before they ever met the Norman army on the battlefield. Her vision had seen all, and she had been powerless to prevent it.
    She glanced up at those fierce warriors turned toward her and experienced something of the emotion that Harold’s beleaguered Saxons must have felt. As she slowly walked toward the cot she had a sense of time moving out of itself, of events unfolding that she was being drawn into but could not yet see, much less prevent. Except for gray eyes that watched her with an intensity as if he could see inside her.
    “Your skills are greatly needed by the one who lies here gravely wounded.”
    “A Saxon brought to heal the Norman conqueror who has slain her people?” she replied and could not keep the bitterness from her voice.
    “A healer who wishes to save the lives of her people,” he said in a tone that had lost none of its menace or promise.
    The light inside the tent seemed to close round them, one defiant, the other determined, the certainty of his words like tiny blades that sliced away at her resolve.
    “Yea, milord,” she replied no less bitter, “I will do what I can. The rest is up to God.”
    “God has already done his part.”
    There was no attempt to disguise his contempt, and Vivian wondered what might account for such coldness of heart in a man who had shown such compassion at the abbey.
    “The rest is up to you, and you will not fail.”
    She knelt by the cot and looked with pity upon the man who lay there, shrunken by fever and loss of blood. He seemed no more than a skeleton already except for the pale skin that clung to his bones.
    “Bring the lamp closer,” she told Rorke. “I must see what must be done.”
    There was another who stepped to the opposite side of the cot, the young knight, Stephen of Valois. As she reached to draw back the leather tunic that covered the injured man’s chest, Stephen’s hand closed over her wrist.
    “If he dies,” he warned, “I will personally see that your life is ended.”
    Through the contact of his hand about her wrist, Vivian sensed a much deeper pain and the fierce, warring emotions that reflected in the expression at his face. She sensed a deep, silent anger, an aching need for some long-denied love, and the conflicted emotion of intense hatred, as if they fought each other within him.
    Her heart ached, for she recognized the longing within him, that same longing she had felt her entire life to know the mother that had borne her but not raised her. And she sensed something more, glimpsed in the shadow of his thoughts that he attempted to keep hidden from everyone, including himself—the man who lay on the cot was his father!
    “Let her help him, my young friend,” Rorke FitzWarren said beside her, his own hand gentle at the younger man’s shoulder. Still, Stephen of Valois did not release her. Instead his fingers tightened about her wrist with a brutal strength that threatened to snap slender bones.
    Trust me , she spoke silently to him, willing him to feel the truth of her thoughts. I will not let him die .
    She sensed his inner struggle as he tried to understand the thoughts that moved through his, as if someone had spoken to him. She felt his resistance, fighting her, pushing her thoughts back from his own. He was a fierce warrior, but in his heart she sensed the greater fierceness of his love for the man who lay between them. Eventually, those fingers loosen about her wrist, and, though they left marks at her skin, she felt