Now he was being flattered and asked about his successes on the tourny circuits.
“My triumphs are nowhere near as outstanding as your own, sir, and extremely modest compared to my father’s.”
“Nevertheless, you buckled on your spurs when you were seventeen; an admirable achievement by any measure.” The marshal paused and glanced beside him. “I do not believe you have made the acquaintance of my nephew, Henry de Glare. Henry … bare a hand to the only man I might be inclined to bet against you in a match.”
Henry moved forward and extended a greeting, noting the steady eye that met his.
“FitzRandwulf,” he murmured amiably. “I confess my uncle’s reservation intrigues me. Perhaps when there is more time for such things, we could put his faith—or lack of it—to the test?”
Eduard smiled tightly. An uncle and a brother to appease. Lord Henry’s hair was not the same fierce red as his sister’s, it was more of a brassy gold, but there was a distinct resemblance in the general character of the face—most notably in the stubborn cut of the jaw. Shoulders almost as broad as his own bespoke a comfortable strength, as did the fighter’s eye for instinctively gauging an opponent’s potential at first glance. De Glare would be no easy conquest in the lists or in hand combat, nor did he appear any more likely than his famous uncle to see humour in a case of misdirected insults against his sister.
The two knights eased the intensity of their handclasp, but not their mutual wariness of each other.
A disturbance further along the hall ended any further speculations. Servanne d’Amboise had returned from seeing the children tucked safely abed and her arrival was the signal for the cooks and servers to begin the final preparations for laying on the banquet. She had donned a gown of blue baudekin, a cloth from faraway Syria which combined azure silk and gold thread so that the folds shimmered and glowed with each step as though the copper rays of the sun had been caught and imprisoned in it. A girdle sparkling with jewels encircled her waist, and around her neck, a chain studded with sapphires and diamonds. Her long blonde hair had been divided into two gleaming plaits and bound within a woven crespine, over which she wore a thin, plain circlet of hammered gold.
Walking by her side, their arms linked, was Alaric’s wife, Lady Gillian FitzAthelstan, very obviously heavy with child and descending the stairs with the slow, careful steps of a woman unused to such imbalance. Her skin wore a healthy tan, attesting to her preference for remaining out-of-doors in all weathers. It also camouflaged the faintly visible initial that had been branded into her cheek. The mark of a thief was so faded by the years as to be hardly noticeable—indeed, Alaric, Randwulf, and Servanne had grown so accustomed to seeing it, they would not even have acknowledged it by description if pressed. Nor, for that matter, would any of the knights or men-at-arms in residence at Amboise. They had far too much respect for the beauty of Gil’s bow arm, for most of them had been trained to shoot both the longbow and the crossbow under her expert tutelage.
“Ahh,” said William the Marshal. “And there walks the bane of my life; the curse of my old age; the true test of mettle the likes of which I was never forced to meet in battle.”
His remarks, delivered with a heartfelt sigh, were directed toward the young woman who followed closely behind Gil and Servanne. At first glance she looked demure and complacent enough to suit the exalted company. Her tunic was a muted nutmeg brown, drawn tight at the neck and wrists with bands of green braiding. Her hair, that glorious abundance of fire tamed by little else, was confined within the folds of a modest linen wimple, its colour only hinted at in the glint of thick auburn lashes that framed her eyes.
Those eyes, as green as the emerald clasp she wore at her throat, roved from one end of the great hall to the other, clearly awed by the rich trappings and barely able to conceal her excitement at being there.
The small party consisting of Lady Ariel, her brother, Lord Sedrick, and Dafydd ap Iorwerth, had left Pembroke and sailed on board one of her uncle’s ships to the tiny port town of Fecamp, on the coast of Normandy. They had ridden quickly and without mishap directly to Rouen, only