Chapter 3
THOMAS
Thomas Ashcombe wanted three things that morning, and the sound of screaming was not among them.
More than anything, he wanted his horse and the green track that followed the Avon south of the village, where a man could ride for an hour without anyone asking him to decide something.
Since Evesham, every conversation seemed to begin with a problem and end with Thomas being expected to solve it.
Walter wanted decisions. Hob wanted men.
Edith wanted flour. The villagers wanted roofs, fences, seed grain, justice, answers, and occasionally miracles, and while Thomas had managed one victory on a battlefield, he had yet to discover how that qualified him to mend every broken thing within ten miles of Ashcombe.
And he wanted, though he would sooner have admitted to dancing naked in the chapel than spoken the thought aloud, for the inside of his skull to be quiet. Just for an hour.
The dead had a way of following him these days. Not ghosts. Thomas did not believe in ghosts.
Memories were burden enough.
A strip of red cloth hanging from a washing line became a fallen banner. A shout from the yard became a man screaming beneath a horse. Some mornings he woke reaching for a sword before he remembered he was home and not standing ankle-deep in mud while men died around him.
Home.
The word sat oddly these days.
Ashcombe still stood, but only just. The eastern wall wore a patchwork of new timber where the old stone had failed.
Half the cottages in the village needed repair before winter.
Three widows depended on grain from stores already stretched thin.
Even the weather seemed determined to test them, grey clouds hanging low over the valley as though considering whether to drown what little remained.
The morning smelled of damp stone, horse, woodsmoke, and fresh-cut timber. Somewhere near the kitchens a woman was scolding a boy. Hob was arguing with one of the masons. A dog barked near the gatehouse.
Normal sounds.
Living sounds.
Then the screaming started.
Not the ordinary racket of the stables, nor the outraged protest of a horse objecting to poor treatment, but the stableboys. Three of them by the sound. Shrill enough to wake saints and loud enough to suggest either fire or stupidity.
Given experience, Thomas put his money on stupidity.
The sound had him moving before conscious thought caught up, old battlefield habits taking command.
His hand found the hilt at his hip as he crossed the bailey at a dead run, mud sucking at his boots while the half-mended east wall flashed past on his left.
By the time he reached the stable, his pulse had quickened and every sense was alert for trouble.
The door crashed open beneath his shoulder.
“Bloody hell,” he barked. “What is the matter with you?”
The three stableboys stood pressed against the far stalls in a terrified knot.
They pointed. Thomas followed their gaze to see a woman in the hay.
For one awful heartbeat his stomach dropped. Dead. Another one.
The old certainty struck hard and fast. Another body. Another face. Another person he had failed to save. Then she coughed.
The sound exploded from her, followed by a groan and a sharp intake of breath that lifted her chest.
Alive. Thank the saints.
Thomas let his hand ease from the sword as he looked properly. And discovered the boys' terror might not be entirely unreasonable.
The gown was the first problem. It was blue, the color of a robin’s egg.
The fabric caught the light in strange ways, shimmering like water beneath a summer sky, and it ended scandalously above her knees.
Below it were bare legs and the most ridiculous shoes he had encountered in thirty-four years of life.
The heels were narrow spikes scarcely thicker than nails. No horse would tolerate such nonsense. Neither should a woman.
Her hair provided the second problem. It was a deep fox-red, brighter than any village girl's, pinned up in some complicated arrangement that appeared to be losing a battle with reality. Curls escaped everywhere, tumbling around her face and shoulders as though they had simply given up.
Then she started talking.
“…okay,” she muttered. “Okay. I’m okay. That was definitely not ideal.”
Thomas frowned. The accent was wrong. Not foreign exactly. English, perhaps, but twisted into sounds he had never heard before.
“I’m fine. Probably. People faint all the time. It’s a thing. Maybe dehydration. Maybe stress or too much to drink. At least I’m still in England.”
England?
The word sounded familiar and strange in her mouth.
Her eyes blinked open. Green. The color of emeralds.
They found the rafters first, then the loft, then the horses, then the three stableboys who looked ready to flee for France, and finally Thomas standing over her with one hand still resting on his sword.
Every trace of color vanished from her face.
“Oh,” she whispered.
A long pause followed.
“Oh no.”
Behind him, Perkin made a noise like a dying goose.
“She come out of the air, my lord.”
Thomas didn’t look away from the woman.
“What?”
“Out of nothing,” Perkin insisted. “There was a light and a clap like thunder and then she were just there.”
The youngest boy crossed himself.
“She’s a faery.”
The woman stared at him. The boy stared back. A horse snorted. For one absurd moment nobody spoke. Then the woman pointed.
“Did he just say faery?”
Perkin crossed himself again.
Thomas closed his eyes briefly as his head started aching again.
Exactly what the morning required.
“Hold your tongue, Perkin.”
“But my lord—”
“Hold it.”
The boy snapped his mouth shut.
When Thomas looked back at the woman, he found her watching him with wide, frightened eyes.
That was the thing that caught him. Not the gown made of liquid silk. Not the strange speech. Not even the absurd shoes.
Fear. Real fear. Not the practiced fluttering of ladies accustomed to being rescued. Not tears summoned for effect. This was bone-deep bewilderment.
Against his better judgment, something in him softened. Women did not fall from the sky. He knew that.
Yet the crushed straw beneath her suggested a hard landing, and there was no door save the one behind him, no place for her to hide, no explanation that satisfied either reason or experience.
The sensible part of him wanted answers while the tired part wanted his horse.
The part that still remembered how frightened people looked after a battle wanted a blanket, a chair, and something warm to drink.
Thomas disliked that third part.
“Get up,” he said.
The words came out gruffer than intended.
She didn’t move. Instead she scrambled backward until her shoulders struck the stall boards, those ridiculous shoes skidding uselessly in the straw.
“Okay,” she said quickly. “Hi. Hello. This is not the tower. Before anyone does anything dramatic, I’m going to need somebody to tell me where I am.”
The stableboys exchanged alarmed looks.
The woman took a breath. “And maybe why everyone appears to be attending the world's most committed medieval reenactment. Because that was not on the list of wedding festivities.”
Thomas blinked.
“Pardon?”
She stared back. “You know. Costumes?”
The silence stretched. Perkin looked terrified. The woman looked confused.
Thomas, who had survived Evesham, buried friends, rebuilt walls, settled disputes, and somehow become responsible for an entire manor, found himself completely defeated by one small red-haired woman in a blue gown.
Saints preserve him. Trouble had arrived at Ashcombe, and, God help him, it was wearing freckles.