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“What are they?” Hugh asked her.

“Blankets made for them before their birth. They were swaddled in them, carried in them. They’ve slept with them every night of their lives, except during this pilgrimage, and they’re the only things I managed to secure from Jagger Castle when we were thrown out.”

Hugh had heard of things like this, but his warrior mind could scarcely comprehend. “You saved their blankies?”

“It’s their own link to their former lives. Their one contiguous link to their babyhood. It gives them security.”

“They’re too old for things like that.”

She turned her head and looked at him with a comprehension that made him shudder. “You’re too old to suckle, too but when you were ill, you certainly seemed to enjoy it.”

She walked away before he subdued his chagrin enough to shout, “It’s not the same thing at all.”

She just waved a mocking hand, and he knew he’d lost. The boys would keep their blankies.

“I ain’t takin’ ye across tonight.” The ragged peasant faced Hugh’s whole troop with exasperation. “Are ye mad? ’Tis time fer sleep, not fer travel.”

Edlyn agreed with him wholeheartedly, but she could see Hugh took his criticism personally and ill. For some reason, Hugh wanted to get as far away as possible from the abbey, and he wanted to do it quickly. But faced with the River Avon swollen with spring floods, he had no choice but to use the ferry to move men and horses. The ferryman wasn’t having any of it, and she followed the conversation in this rough English as closely as she could.

“Th’ master wishes t’ go across now.” Wharton clearly expected that the ferryman would see the good sense in getting this knight and his retinue faraway from his pitiful house of mud and twigs.

The scrawny, cantankerous ferryman didn’t seem concerned with the knight, or his men, or how they could render their malice on his belongings. Mimicking Wharton, he said, “Th’ master’ll have t’ wait.”

“There’s time before the light fades entirely to get us across, and it would be in your good interest to do it.” Hugh sat tall in the saddle and used his deepest, most commanding voice, but it was still a threat.

The boil on the ferryman’s cheek darkened to crimson. “Aye, ye’ll get across in th’ light, an’ I’ll have t’ come back in th’ day. I’d not do it fer th’ prince if he came abeggin’.”

Part of the problem, as Edlyn saw it, was that Hugh didn’t like having a common old peasant challenge him in front of his new wife and his men. Challenges were for knights and noblemen. Peasants did as they were told—except for this one. Unused to riding, Edlyn had dismounted to ease the cramps in her legs. Now, as she removed her riding gloves, she sidled closer. She didn’t like the nature of this confrontation.

Wharton eased a coin out of the hem of his surcoat. “There’s an extra shilling in it fer ye’t do it now.”

“Nay!” The ferryman hobbled toward his hut. “Just settle yerselves down an’ I’ll take ye in th’ morning.”

Edlyn saw the exact moment Hugh lost his temper. He dismounted with swirl of his cloak, marched up to the ferryman, swung him around by his arm, and glared, a warrior at his most ferocious. “You’ll take us now.”

The ferryman thrust his face right back at Hugh. “I’ll take ye in th’ mornin’…if I’m feelin’ charitable.”

Hugh fumbled for his knife, and Edlyn ran. Grabbing Hugh’s arm, she murmured in Norman French, “Would you kill an old man for this?”

Hugh answered her in the same language. “Nay, but I’d sure frighten him a bit.”

The old man showed his canniness when he answered Hugh in his rough English, “Ye can’t frighten me. I’ve fended off greater men than ye.”

“I’m sure you have.” Edlyn interposed herself between the stubborn dolts.

Hugh tried to shove her aside. “Woman, mind your needle and let me manage this.”

She used his impetus and her weight to bring Hugh around to face her. “How? By hurting him? He’s not going to yield, and in the morning we’ll have a ferry, all the light we want, and no ferryman to take us across. By the saints, Hugh, some things can be handled without violence!”

If his most docile bitch had nipped at him, Hugh couldn’t have looked more astonished. Edlyn turned her back on him and threaded her arm through the old man’s. Speaking slowly, wrapping her tongue around the unfamiliar English words, she said, “Come. I’m chilled with the onset of night, and you’ve got a fire. Would you object if a mere woman warmed herself there?”

“Not at all.” The ferryman, who smelled like dung and reached no taller than her shoulder, patted her hand and shot a smug glance over his shoulder at the astonished and horrified men of the troop. “It has been many a night since I’ve had such a pretty lady sittin’ at me fire.”

“I can hardly believe that.” She smiled into his face and ignored the rank breath that bathed her. “A handsome man like you.”

He responded well to that kind of teasing, if only to annoy Hugh.

“What’s Mama doing?” she heard Allyn ask from the cart where he rode.