she apologized by way of a compliment. “Eduard tells me your own colouring is nothing shy of spectacular.”
With Ariel’s startled glance, FitzRandwulf cleared his throat and snatched up Robin by the sleeve of his hooded jerkin, ushering him out the door. “Come along, Henry, and help gather up the rest of the armour. Ladies … as swift as swift can?”
“Before you can blink an eye,” Marienne promised, already shaking the folds—and dust—out of the chainse that would replace Eleanor’s long tunic.
“What am I to do with this?” the princess asked, pulling Ariel’s thoughts back to reality. In her hands she held a leather belt, strung with over forty rawhide strips.
Since it was the very article that had given Ariel so much grief on the journey through Normandy, she felt expert enough to offer instruction.
“It is worn thus, Highness,” she explained, buckling it firmly around Eleanor’s waist. “These ties are called points and are used to bind the hose snugly to the limbs.”
“So many?” Eleanor exclaimed. “Can not just one or two suffice?”
“Men … especially knights are all vain creatures,” Ariel announced grimly, catching up the first leg of the hose Marienne assisted the princess into. While she began to attach the points to the corresponding ring of eyelets woven into the top of each stocking, she kept talking, if only to keep her mind off the next and most dangerous stage of the rescue. “God and all the saints forbid there should be a wrinkle or a sag to mar the bold thews of such a fellow’s thighs. For a woman to bare an ankle, it would cause the earth to tremble and monks to prostrate themselves by droves. But a man—ho! The tighter the hose, the shorter the tunic … the more likely he is to strut and stretch and boast of his wares. Why, I have even known my brother to pad himself with wads of linen for the benefit of winning a particular maiden’s eye.”
Eleanor’s lips trembled with a smile. “Did he succeed?”
Ariel paused and thought back. “As it happened, halfway through the evening, the wadding shifted and started to creep down toward his knee. He had the maiden swooning, but not for the reasons he intended.”
A small choking sound sent Ariel’s gaze flying upward. Her expression changed from concern to relief to shared amusement when she saw that Eleanor was laughing. Marienne was laughing too—and fighting tears again, blessing Ariel with silent thanks for prompting what had been the first time the princess had laughed since the fiasco at Mirebeau.
Chapter 23
A gray and sinister dawn was seeping through the teeth of the outer battlements as FitzRandwulf’s party assembled in the courtyard. Few of the lower windows showed any signs of light; most were still shuttered against the wind and the rain that came and went in waves, sweeping across the bailey, soaking and resoaking everything in its path. The walls were silvered with it and the gutters overflowed, sending swift rivulets of water running through the cracks and crevices in the cobbles.
Ariel walked into the circle of horses and hissing torchlights, looking neither to the right where Henry was conferring with Brevant, nor to the left where Eduard and Sedrick were rearranging their saddle packs with exaggerated care as they kept a close watch on the doors and windows that opened on to the bailey. Ariel was more conscious of the two cloaked and hooded figures who followed steadfastly behind her. So engrossed was she in worrying how Eleanor would cope with the uneven cobbles, she stubbed her toe on one and nearly launched herself headlong into her palfrey. The princess did not miss a step, however. She kept her head tilted forward and a hand grasped around a fold of Marienne’s cloak, gauging each footfall to precisely match her maid’s.
Six grumbling, grousing guardsmen stood in a huddle beating their arms for warmth and cursing in unbroken waves over Jean de Brevant’s lack of concern that none of them had laid their heads on their cots more than an hour. The captain had insisted the ruse was still necessary, to give the appearance of leaving Gorfe under protection of Gisbourne’s guard, otherwise the sentries on duty at the gates might question the reason why only he accompanied them.
Collectively, they looked as nondescript as when they had ridden through half of Normandy, yet their swords were within easy reach. They all wore their helms and carried their shields slung across their backs on leather straps, rubbing an