knees and their nights counting sins.
At least the pilgrim’s hall was dry, and, when Sedrick scrounged wood to build a fire, it would be warm. In the meantime, the air was rank with the smell of sodden wool and wet armour. Ariel stood shivering off to one side and watched in forlorn silence as the men divested themselves of their hauberks and chausses, then shrugged their heavy gambesons blissfully aside. She was just as wet and dank-smelling as the others. In their three full days of travel, she had not had an opportunity to undress completely or to steal a decent wash. Her skin flamed with rashes in a dozen places, some of them too private to earn even the briefest reprieve from a good scratching.
Not once since leaving Chateau d’Amboise had anyone deigned to inquire after her comfort. Henry had undoubtedly assumed she would complain if she had cause. Sedrick and Dafydd had already seen her travel from Pembroke to Normandy with ease and would not suppose this travail would pose any greater hardships. It would not occur to them that she had chosen her own clothes on the initial journey, or that none of them had been coarse or confining, none encrusted with filth or infested with lice. She had worn soft chamois leggings and fine linen camlet next to her skin. She had not been strapped and buckled into garments designed to make the simple task of tending to body functions an exercise in frustration. The hose alone were a nightmare. A maid had initially helped bind her into the innumerable leather points that held the hose snug to the tops of her thighs, seemingly with an easy twist of the fingers. But the art of unfastening and tying them properly again had eluded Ariel, and her handiwork had begun to sag more obviously and more comically each passing day. And the byrnie … ! Buckles that were double-looped and twice bound? They were impossible contraptions, invented by the French and fostered on the Normans in the true spirit of vindictiveness.
“Do you require assistance, my lady?” Robin asked, pausing beside her. He had helped Eduard with his heavy suit of mail and was sucking avidly on a finger torn open on a rough link.
“No. Thank you. I can manage,” she said, pushing back on the brim of her hat. It was heavier than normal with the rain it had absorbed and persisted in sending drops steadily down her nose.
“I have a spare tunic and an extra pair of hose—both very clean,” he assured her. “They would be a good deal drier and warmer if you would care to take lend of them.”
“N-no,” she said, giving her hat another shove. “I would not want to put you to any trouble.”
“It would be no trouble,” he insisted.
“Go and fetch them, Robin,” Eduard said, coming up behind them. “I will help Lady Ariel with her buckles.”
She waited until Robin was gone before she turned and scowled up at FitzRandwulf. “If I needed—or wanted—your help, I would ask for it.”
She had blurted out words very like his own and she saw the memory of them register as a dark flicker in his eyes. At the same time, and for the first time in their brief and stormy acquaintance, she thought she saw a trace of genuine admiration soften the stern shape of his mouth.
“Lift your arms,” he ordered quietly.
Ariel’s gaze flicked past his shoulder, but Henry had gone with one of the monks to see to the provisioning of their horses; Sedrick and Dafydd were preoccupied with lighting the fire. Watching the small frown form across her brow, Eduard countered with an exasperated sigh.
“Do you feel you have to prove yourself the equal of every man you meet, or is it just me you have chosen to plague to death?”
Ariel was taken aback. “I have not chosen to do any such thing.”
“No? You just decided to use my head for target practice this afternoon?”
“You were … being uncommonly rude and beastly to me.”
“You were uncommonly deserving. Had you truly been my squire, you would be shy a few layers of skin on your backside for disobeying me. And for flinging the arrow …?” He shook his head and clucked his tongue softly. “Now, unless you prefer to have the buckles on your armour rust permanently closed, I would suggest you lift your arms and allow me to loosen them.”
Ariel chewed on her lip and raised her arms slowly above her head.