him.
“Godspeed and good riddance,” Gregory said as Bottom disappeared into the distance.
I waved.
“As I was saying—”
“Good evening.” A soft, gentle voice behind me interrupted Gregory. I turned to see who it was. A small, tonsured woman dressed in a monk’s garb bowed to us both. A rosary swung from her waist. She smiled. “I’m Brother Helene. I understand that you are going to replace Sir Dedham at the front. If you will come with me, I will take you to his quarters, and thence to the armorer, who will no doubt wish to take some measurements.”
“Brother Helene?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Shouldn’t that be Sister?”
She looked surprised. “No, I am a monk, not a nun.”
“But . . .” I looked at Gregory. He shrugged. “OK, moving on. Thanks for the offer to show me around, but I’m going to take Gregory over to Ethan’s side and show him around.”
“Oh, you can’t do that,” she said in her breathy voice. She sounded like Marilyn Monroe about to burst into “Happy Birthday.” “They are the enemy.”
“I know that, but I was over there a few days ago, and—”
“And I’m afraid that I must ask the thief to leave now. He is not allowed within the confines of our encampment. I understand from the squires that accommodations are to be had in the fornicatresses’ camp. That’s to the northwest, just beyond the curve of the stream,” she said helpfully. “They always appear happy to see men.”
My hackles rose. I hadn’t, until that moment, known that it was possible for people to have actual hackles, but I swear that I felt a tingling between my shoulder blades that paired nicely with the ire that burned hot and fast. “Gregory is not going to sleep with prostitutes!” I said loudly.
Gregory looked thoughtful until I whapped him on the arm.
“Isn’t he?” Brother Helene’s eyes opened very wide as she looked him over. “I don’t see why he couldn’t. Is he diseased? The whores usually don’t mind that unless it’s leprosy, and then they tend to use . . . specialists.”
Gregory rolled his eyes.
“He’s not diseased, and he doesn’t need a specialist. He doesn’t want to be with prostitutes.”
“He looks virile enough,” she said mildly, then added, “Oh! He is a sodomite? I’ve heard—this isn’t from firsthand knowledge, mind you—that there is a camp for those who favor man-minx entertainment a few miles to the south. Evidently they used to be located with the whores, but there was a falling-out over the decorating of the tents, and the male harlots struck out on their own.”
“He does not want man-minxes!” I protested. “And he’s totally virile. He’s the most virile person I know.”
“Thank you, sweet,” Gregory said with a smug little smile.
“He’s virile from here to the moon, but that doesn’t mean he’s on the prowl for some nooky, either male- or female-based.”
“That’s not quite true, but I agree with the sentiment,” he said, pinching my behind.
“Sad,” Brother Helene said, giving him one last look. “I’m sure the strumpets of both genders will regret that decision, but that does not affect the fact that he cannot stay here. Now, if you will come with me, Lady Gwen, I will show you to your quarters.”
She took hold of my arm with surprising strength and tugged me forward. “I really need to go see my mothers—”
“I will take you to your quarters, and you will then see the armorer!” she said in a voice that had shifted from sexy to one that wouldn’t be out of place in a demonic demonstration of dark arts.
“You are not at all monklike,” I told her as she hauled me off down one of the aisles. “Monks are supposed to be nice.”
“We don’t like to be crossed,” she growled. “I have a job to do, and no one, certainly not you, is going to stop me from completing it in the manner I see fit.”
I looked back over my shoulder, waving my free hand at Gregory. “I guess I’m going to see my tent now.”
“And the armorer,” he added with a little twist of his smile. “I will find you later.”
“Not here you won’t!” Brother Helene said loudly, grunting slightly when I tried to dig in my heels. She just jerked me forward until I had no choice but to walk or be dragged. “I will see to it that the guards have orders to remove you should you venture into the camp again. If you do not stop struggling, Lady Gwen, you will force me to render you insensible so that I might easily deliver you to your quarters.”
“Oh!” I gasped, glaring at her when she gave my arm a hard yank. “You are so mean! I’m going to report you to whoever is in charge of monks around here.”
“That would be Brother Anselm, and he’s busy right now with a village of insurgents who are fighting Lord Aaron’s rule.”
“Busy as in tending to their wounds, and helping the innocent people, and providing comfort and all that stuff that one normally thinks of monks doing rather than being a bully, like some people I could name?”
She made a face. “Of course not. Brother Anselm is helping to capture the insurgents, and hunting down those who have taken to the woods in order to avoid justice. He is quite adept at the art of extracting information from unwilling subjects.”
“Great. The head monk is an expert torturer. This place is just so weird.”
“Here is your tent. You may leave your mail inside. I will find a squire to attend it and you. Be ready to visit the armorer in ten minutes.”
She departed before I could voice my intentions to do otherwise, and after a brief consideration of the sort of antics that monks got up to in Anwyn, I decided to get the armor appointment out of the way so I could go find my mothers.
“My arm is bruised in three different spots,” I told Brother Helene exactly ten minutes later when she reappeared.
She
“Fine, but you can be sure that I’m going to tell Doug or Aaron if I can’t fight because my arm is too sore.”
“Doug?”
“Yeah. The head knight dude.”
“Ah. Him.” She proceeded down the aisle.
I followed, walking a bit easier now that the heavy mail was no longer on me and I’d had a quick wash with an ewer of water that was waiting in the tent. I hadn’t any fresh clothing to change into, but figured I’d address that issue once I was done seeing my moms. “What do you call him?”
“I prefer not to say. The king’s warriors do not share their names, as you know.”
“Because they can be defeated that way, yes, I remember, but everyone knows my name, and I’m now one of his warriors.”
“You are an outsider brought in to fight. You are not the same as one of Lord Aaron’s trusted guard.”
“Pfft.” I pretended that I wasn’t the teeniest bit hurt at not being one of the elite squad, and focused my attention on the surroundings.
The people in Aaron’s camp looked the same as those in Ethan’s camp across the stream—they bustled, they talked and laughed and sang little ditties to themselves. Horses were escorted hither and yon, and a plethora of young men and women scampered about, obviously running errands for their elders. There were no dogs to be seen, but I did spy a few cats lounging around in the sunshine. Almost everyone wore black tunics with gold designs on the front, the designs varying from person to person. Most were animals, although some were runic and other devices.
The next hour was spent talking to a very nice middle-aged woman with yellow hair and piercings in a number of visible locations (and I suspected just as many that weren’t visible), who deftly took my measurements, then circled me silently for three minutes before she said, “I know what’ll do for you.”
She disappeared into her tent, which stood alongside a makeshift forge, and emerged with a couple of
