In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,67
of fatigue and worry. He was staring into the fire and his hand was trembling as it moved against her cheek, and she had the strangest feeling, all of a sudden, that he was not talking about her impending journey to Wales.
“Uncle?”
His eyes lingered on the flames a moment and he was careful to arrange a smile on his face before he looked down at her. “Niece?”
“I do love you, you know. With all my heart.”
“And I you, little kitten. I take comfort in knowing Cardigan is but a day’s ride north of Pembroke. You will not be entirely out of my grasp.”
She returned his smile—not quite so cheerfully—and rested her cheek on his knee again.
“In the meantime, however, you will try to stay out of trouble, will you not? You will try not to give FitzRandwulf and Henry cause to tear their hair out by the roots?”
Ariel sighed. “I always try to stay out of trouble, Uncle. Sometimes, though, it just manages to find me.”
Chapter 9
William the Marshal departed Amboise the following day and Ariel was tempted, even to the last moment be-fore his guard vanished along the forest road, to change her mind and go with him. She was filled with a sudden, inexplicable sense of foreboding that had no reason or cause other than her own uncertainty as to whether she had agreed too quickly to the union with the Welsh prince; if she had been too hasty, too proud, too stubborn … too weak in accepting her uncle’s ultimatum, despite the fact that it had been of her own devising.
What other choice did she have, however? Her uncle had displayed remarkable tolerance and patience where another would simply have had her whipped and sent to De Braose gyved hand and foot in heavy chains. If she had balked, or refused Iorwerth after all the trouble she had caused and all of the trouble this planned foiling of the king’s command would cause …? How could she have refused? How could she have done anything less than agree to put herself into FitzRandwulf’s hands, however abhorrent the thought might be?
And so, well before the grim, ash-colored light of a second dawn rose above Amboise’s battlements, an equally grim, cold group of travellers assembled in the inner court of the bailey. Horses stamped and snorted white funnels of mist into air already laden with frosted crystals; the groomsmen who held the reins shivered through chattering teeth and checked cinches and buckles continuously, if only to keep moving and keep warm. The occasional swirl of wind rippled saddlecloths and caused the scarlet leaves of the ivy that climbed partway up the walls of the keep to shift in blood-red waves. Those with the poorest grip on the vines were torn free and slapped wetly on the cobbles. Others merely shook and spattered dew on the heads of the men who gathered outside the covered entry.
The four knights—FitzRandwulf, Lord Henry, Sedrick of Grantham, and Daffyd ap lorwerth moved to and fro like large gray moths in the uncertain light. At a casual glance, they might be mistaken for pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, for they carried no pennants or shields emblazoned with armorial bearings. Over soft linen shirts and woolen tunics they wore sturdy leather gambesons—sleeved vests made of two thicknesses of cowhide stuffed with fleece and quilted in broad squares. Atop this they wore full suits of chain mail. Their hauberks were sleeved to the wrist and hooded for added protection, their chausses covered their legs from thigh to booted foot. Gypons were dull gray and shaped like a tube, belted at the waist, slitted front and back for riding, and here was the only splash of colour each wore: the red Crusader’s cross was stitched boldly on the gypon, front and back.
Ariel, in her guise as a squire, wore an abbreviated mail byrnie, not much longer than a slitted shirt, over a coarse undertunic padded more for bulk than protection, and certainly not for comfort. Her shirt and hose were of the roughest weave, scratchy and cumbersome. Her shoes were neither leather nor felt, but made of hard wooden soles and cloth cross-straps that had to be wound, like bandages, almost to the knees. A slouched felt hat sat like a flattened pillow on her head, covering and containing all but a few shiny red threads of hair that balked at such an ignoble confinement.
She had her suspicions FitzRandwulf had deliberately ordered the drabbest, bulkiest garments that