Hauberk
The principal armour for the torso and arms during this period is the hauberk. Like all mail, this was made out of thousands of steel links, each overlapped and rivetted, and each generally connected to four other links.
My hauberk includes mittens and as suggested earlier the palms of these mittens are leather and are stitched to the surrounding mail. The centre of these palms are slit, and this is an authentic method of enabling the hands to be freed to do intricate work. While fine linen gloves are known from sources dating from the mid 1250's, mail gloves (with individual fingers) are a later invention, first seen from around 1300.
The head is covered by a mail hood which is directly attached to the hauberk. Slightly later periods clearly show seperate mail hoods, but these would appear to be unusual in our era. This hood (which is shown in place in the next picture) rests on the padded coif. A tie above the brow helps hold the mail coif in position, and the throat slit, which enables the mail to be thrown back, is doubly protected by the presence of an aventail which covers the chin and rises up to be tied to the browband.
For further head protection under the final layer provided by the heaume, there are examples of metal skullcaps worn between the coif and mail, called cervellieres.