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Page 267
had to be driven or sometimes carried aboard. One man had wrestled himself free and had fallen between the ship and the dock and been crushed. Several had ended in the water, needing to be caught with grappling hooks and hauled aboard with ropes. He glanced at the ladies whom Simon was approaching. Birth showed. They were not afraid.
The man-at-arms was quite wrong. The gentle ladies were merely trained not to display their fear in inappropriate ways. They were just as frightened as the meanest maidservant, and for the same reason. None of them, except Alinor, had been aboard a ship before or away from a restricted number of dwellings. In the normal course of events, the ladies of the Queen of England would have made innumerable trips across the narrow sea. Sometimes the Queen would have accompanied her husband to visit his domains in Normandy and Anjou; sometimes she would have gone to her own provinces, like Provence. But the situation had not been normal. Queen Alinor had been a prisoner. Although she was allowed some freedoms, crossing the sea to her own domains was naturally enough not one of them. Thus, her ladies had also been restricted in their movements.
Now, as Simon approached, they vented their nervousness in excited questions about the ship, about the sea, about sailing. Simon did not attempt to free himself from several pairs of clinging hands, but his smile was a stiff formality.
"You should ask Lady Alinor," he replied. "I have crossed some four or five times, but I know little of the sea or of sailing. I can assure you that the ship is sound and the sailors experienced. If such things can make us safe, we will be. Well, Lady Alinor, what have you to say of sailing?"
"That it is a greater joy in the hot days of summer than now," Alinor got out, thanking God that her voice had not broken as she feared it would.
"Have you been sailing often?" one of the youngest

 
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