“Ye didn’t know they were thieves and freebooters?” Sedrick scoffed. “Ye thought they would show ye the way home on the blunt of an arrow?”
“Aye, well, they might have called themselves bowmen, but there was not one of them who could bung the side of a cart at more than ten paces.”
Eduard smiled faintly. “Should I presume, then, it was your skill that nearly carried away my ear?”
The boy hawked and spat. “If I’d wanted your ear, my lord, or the nail on your little finger, I could have had it. Even with a great bloody piece of lumber and iron like that,” he added, indicating the crossbow clutched in the dead man’s hands.
He was not bragging but making a simple statement of fact, and while Eduard debated whether to be amused or annoyed, Ariel de Glare came up behind them. Having overheard the latter part of the exchange, and understanding enough of the Saxon tongue to follow the gist of the insult, she cast about her with a heavy sigh.
“Would that your own aim had been better, FitzRandwulf, then we would not have the need to waste valuable time explaining these rogues to the local warden.”
Sedrick and Dafydd, still on horseback, turned their heads toward her in unison, their helms creaking ominously with the movement. Sparrow sucked in enough air to give a fair impression of a beetle about to explode, while Eduard directed the far less kindly force of his unvisored eyes on her, skewering her as neatly as his arrow had skewered the outlaw’s arm. She realized her blunder at once, of course, letting a name slip when so many precautions had been taken to guard against easy identification. Of secondary import, but equally remiss on her part, was the fact that she had not retrieved her hat or made any attempt to conceal the shocking red proof that she was a woman in squire’s clothing.
“Since you seem to be so concerned with waste,” Eduard said evenly, “perhaps you could busy yourself by retrieving my arrowhead.”
Ariel glanced down at the body. From the depth of the shaft, she judged the tip to be lodged between the knuckles of the villain’s spine. Freeing it would probably require some digging and cutting … a job worthy of making the strongest of stomachs turn in revulsion. She looked up at Henry, but saw no mercy in his frown. Sedrick, who could usually be counted on for a soft heart, merely shook his head and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. There was no appealing to Sparrow, who would have emblazoned the scene on a tapestry had he been in possession of needle and thread. Robin was off chasing down the rouncies and Dafydd’s protest was choked back on a cold glance from FitzRandwulf’s steely gray eyes.
She drew a calming breath and stared down at the body again. If the Bastard was hoping to humiliate her by seeing her weep or run from the task with her stomach spilling into her hands, he was sorely ignorant of the De Clare bloodlines. Squaring her shoulders, she dropped down onto one knee and gave the shaft of the arrow a half-hearted tug, feeling her gorge lurch into her throat as the steel tip grated on two discs of bone.
Eduard observed for a moment, then turned back to their prisoner.
“Well, Alan, son of Tom, yeoman of the Dale of Sherwood, think you you could find your way back to England without joining company with any more unlucky villains?”
The youth looked over suspiciously.
“Moreover, if we felt inclined to let you keep your eyes and tongue as well as your life, could you give your word not to make me regret denying the carrions another corpse to feed upon?”
“You would let me go free?”
“I see no benefit in keeping you. Nor, as has been so sagely pointed out to me, have we the time or energy to waste in finding the local justicar and making endless explanations.”
“Would it not be easier just to shoot him?” Sparrow asked.
“Aye, Puck, it would. And we will if he feels we cannot trust his word … and his silence.”
If the young giant read more into FitzRandwulf’s generous offer than was intended, or if he began to suspect these knights and their “squire” were reluctant to draw any more attention to themselves, he wisely kept silent.
“Well? Do we have your word?”
“Aye. If you will take it, then you shall have it.”
“Go then. I give you your life … and whatever coin you can trade for a fine, twice-tempered arrowhead. It should be more than enough to buy you your way home.”
The lad glanced down at the arrow stuck in his arm. The fletching dangled by a splinter, which he snapped off and flung aside. With the faintest grunt to mark its passage through, he grasped the barbed arrowhead and pulled the shortened length of ashwood out the back of his arm, gripping it tight for a moment while a shudder of pain passed through him.
“The one debt will be enough to repay,” he said, placing the bloodied shaft with its valuable steel tip in Eduard’s hand. “And repay it I will, my lord. You have my word on that as well.”
The erstwhile outlaw touched his hand to a greasy forelock before turning and ambling off down the gully. Although his arm must have been screaming with pain, a thin and merrily whistled tune drifted back through the trees as he made his way into deeper shadows.
“You are just letting him walk away?”
Eduard took a firmer grip on his patience before he responded to the disbelieving accusation. Ariel had worked the arrowhead free and was standing behind FitzRandwulf with the dripping trophy clutched in her hand.
“I thought we had made enough corpses for one day.”
“But … he knows who you are.”
“So he does. Not, however, because of anything I have said or done.”
“He is a murderer; he admitted as much. And a thief. And a traitor to the king.”
Eduard folded his arms across his chest. “A traitor, is he? For speaking ill of his sovereign? For choosing to boast openly of his contempt for our good king’s methods of winning loyalty. What of the others who have chosen not to obey the king’s will—indeed, who have gone to extraordinary lengths to defy him outright? Are you suggesting there should be one set of laws for those who wear peasant’s rags and another for those who wear ermine? If so, my lady—” He reached up and took Dafydd’s longbow out of his hands and thrust it into hers. “By all means, exact your justice. See, he is still well within range. If you so strongly disagree with my decision, feel free to remedy it yourself.”
With a parting look of disgust, Eduard started walking back toward the river. He had gone no more than ten broad paces when he heard Henry’s warning shout, followed almost instantly by the distinct twanging of a bowstring. He leaped to one side a split second before a lick of hot air shot past him and thonk-ed into a tree.
For an inordinately long, throbbing minute, no one moved. Eduard gaped at the tall, slender woman who still stood with her feet braced apart and her body at right angles to the humming longbow.
“There are many things I may indeed be tempted to remedy, sirrah,” she said through her teeth, “beginning with your manners. A mistake was made; I will be the first to admit it. It was made the moment I trusted myself into your care.”
Ariel cast the bow aside and stormed past the dumbstruck knight, unmindful of the dirt and leaves she kicked up in her anger. Eduard stared intently after her, his face ruddy, his eyebrows drawn together in a single, unbroken line. A small vein in his temple was beating furiously. His fists curled and uncurled, and there was a distinctly menacing gleam in his eyes.
Lord Henry leaned forward and draped his forearm over the front of his saddle. “In case I neglected to mention it, my sister tends to react poorly to anyone who treats her as if her head is filled with nothing but twattle and birdsong. It makes for an unfortunate lesson for any man who tries to tame her.”
“Be assured I have no wish to tame her,” Eduard replied tautly. “Only to severely hamper her abilities to walk and talk. As for warnings, you would do well to issue one to her, for the next time she dares to raise a weapon to me … it will be the last.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When the sun set t
hat evening it pulled a heavy layer of cloud across the skies behind it, blotting out the sunset, shrouding the forest in a chilling mist. FitzRandwulf had decided, with so many dead bodies littering the road behind them, it would be best to keep riding well into the darkness, but when the mist became a fog and the fog a heavy downpour too solid to see past a horse’s nose, they followed the sound of a droning monastery bell and begged shelter under the roof of the almonry.
Sedrick had refused to leave the perfectly good and fully cooked haunch of venison behind, and it was partly due to the savoury aroma accompanying them that they were readily admitted so late after dark. The monks accepted their explanation of having come across poachers in the woods, and were in solemn agreement that it would have been a waste to leave such a fine roast to rot.
It was deemed best to keep Ariel’s gender hidden from the monks, thereby relieving the good fathers of any responsibility they might feel to mention there had been a woman travelling in the company of the knights. Since it would have seemed odd to request a separate sleeping cubicle for a mere squire, Ariel found herself sequestered in the same large pilgrim’s hall offered as shelter for the men.
The hall was long and narrow, the stone walls holding in a dampness that was unrelieved by the two tallow candles supplied by the spartan monks. A double row of low pallets lined each side of the chamber; over their heads, the arched beams of the roof glowed like the yellowed ribs of some decaying skeleton. There were only two windows, neither more than slits in the wall, and a single vaulted doorway, the height of which would have made Sparrow seem tall.
Sparrow, by his own choice, elected to remain in the forest for the night, preferring the company of owls, he claimed, to pointy-faced doomsayers who spent their days toiling on their 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. The movement caused the flattened bulk of her hat to slide forward over her brow again, leaving only one clear green eye free to glare up at him as he began working on the row of swollen leather straps.
“I do not deliberately set forth to prove myself the equal of every man,” she insisted sullenly.
“No,” he agreed. “I warrant you already know you are better than most.”
The single green eye narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means … I have seen you wield a sword and would not be too hasty to place a wager against you. As for your bow arm, I have only seen one other woman with a steadier hand.”
Ariel glanced sidelong at him, expecting to see a mouth curved with mockery, trembling with mirth, but neither was evident, and she was perplexed into acknowledging a tiny shudder of pleasure at the compliments. Not that she wanted compliments from this beast. A compliment might require a friendly word in turn.
“How can you be certain it was not sheer luck that guided my arrows this afternoon?”
“I cannot speak for Lord Dafydd’s bow, but I made mine myself, and if luck was the only thing guiding your hand, you most likely would have taken off all your fingers and shot your own foot in the process of drawing it.”
Another welter of heat flooded her belly and trickled down into her limbs. When she found the strength to look up at him again, the smoky gray eyes were waiting.
“Unfortunately,” he mused, “the same cannot be said about your skill in the cooking and spicing of meat.”
Ariel lowered her lashes quickly. She was wise enough to hold her tongue and not attempt to deny the charge of tampering, although she found she was a disconcerting flush away from returning his grin.
“You have a knack of pricking my temper, my lord,” she said finally.
“I would hazard to say we seem determined to prick each other’s,” he amended.
Ariel drew a very slow, very cautious breath, aware that his hands had paused in their duties and were resting against the side of her breast. It was ridiculous to regard it as a deliberate liberty, w
hat with the outer shell of chain mail, the inner vest of cuir-bouilli, and the rough woolen shirt standing as barriers between her flesh and his. Yet it did not stop her skin from constricting and pulling tight across her chest as if she suddenly wore two bright circles of fire.
Compliments, smiles, intimacy. What next? she wondered. And why was it affecting her so? Why, for instance, was she having difficulty keeping her eyes from straying to the loosely opened vee of his shirt? And why, each time they did, was she having no difficulty remembering how each bulge and slab of satiny muscle had looked sheathed in river water and gleaming under the soft flare of lantern light?
His hands started to move again and her lashes fluttered slightly with the relief. When the last buckle was unclasped, he straightened and studied her profile a moment before giving way to the urge to pluck the sorry felt hat off her head. The long rope of her hair uncoiled like a snake down her back, the colour muted by the dampness and shadows but still an unsettling enough contrast to the drab browns and grays of their surroundings to hold Eduard’s attention longer than was comfortable for either of them.
As it happened, he was having no difficulty remembering the wild, silken tangle of it gilded in moonlight, cloaking her shoulders in a mass of fire and silk.
Eduard cleared his throat and grasped the lower edge of the byrnie. Ariel aided him in maneuvering the parted flaps over her head, and, when rid of the burden, was rid of a pent-up sigh as well. He helped her remove the thickly padded vest of boiled bullhide next, granting a respite that prompted her to roll her neck this way and that, to stretch her spine and curl her shoulders forward and back in glorious freedom.
Eduard could hardly be blamed for taking advantage of her closed eyes and innocently sensual movements. Having become accustomed to seeing her muffled in bullhide and chain mail, he had almost forgotten the ethereal beauty of the woman he had met on the ramparts of Amboise. The recalled vision of her hair had stirred other memories, although now it was not the wind molding her clothes to the shape of her body, but the dampness making them cling to the round thrust of her breasts. The shirt, rough as it was, could not conceal the smallness of her waist or the whiteness of the skin revealed by the deeply slitted neckline. Even a monk, sworn to resist any and all such temptations, would have felt a distinct desire to peel away the wet cloth and explore what lay beneath.
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