Chapter 7 #2
“And this note here says four sacks went to repair old debt owed to the miller.”
He leaned closer. “That is what the hand says.”
“But the miller’s mark is wrong.”
Thomas blinked. “The mark?”
“This one.” She tapped the parchment. “He makes it like this on the other notes.” She drew a shape in the air with the tip of her finger. “A sort of crooked hook, yes? But this one turns the other way. And the pressure is different. See how the ink pools? It was done slowly, by someone copying it.”
He took the roll, because surely she could not be right.
She was right.
Damnation.
She reached for another note. “And here. Same thing. Three hens owed by Widow Maud, marked paid, but then marked owed again on this second list. Also, and I’m sorry, but why are all the sums arranged as if the person writing them hated everyone who might ever need to read them?”
“Wexford said it discouraged idle hands from meddling where they ought not.”
“Convenient.”
Thomas looked at the piles again. They had been irritating a moment ago. Now they looked like a nest of vipers.
“You have been in my solar less time than it takes Hob to find his boots.”
“Hob loses his boots?”
“Often.”
“I like Hob.”
“You would.”
She gave him a look, then bent over the rolls again as he adjusted his tunic.
The door opened before Thomas could decide whether to be impressed, annoyed, or deeply suspicious.
Walter stepped in, all bones and disapproval beneath a dark wool tunic that had seen better years.
His white hair stood in wisps around his head, his narrow face pinched by years of service and the conviction that the world had gone poorly since everyone stopped listening to him first. He held another roll beneath one arm and a wax tablet in his hand.
He stopped when he saw Amelia leaning over the table, his mouth tightening.
“My lord,” he said.
There were sermons less reproachful.
“Walter.”
“I did not know Mistress Quinn had been summoned to the accounts.”
“She was not summoned.”
Amelia straightened, a pleasant smile on her face. “I wandered in.”
Walter’s gaze moved from her face to the tally stick in her hand and back again. “So I see.”
The air in the chamber cooled.
Thomas had known Walter since he was a boy.
The man had served his father, and before that his grandfather.
He knew every field boundary, every family grievance, every spring that dried too soon and every tenant who paid late but always paid in the end.
He could reckon seed and rents and days owed in labor without blinking.
He had kept Ashcombe breathing after Evesham with nothing but stubbornness, a sour temper, and a spine that refused to bend.
He was also a man who believed order was the only thin wall between survival and ruin, and Amelia was disorder and a woman to boot.
“Mistress Quinn believes Wexford was dishonest,” Thomas said.
Walter’s gaze sharpened into something near outrage. “Mistress Quinn knows much of dead bailiffs after three days beneath our roof?”
Amelia looked up from the roll. “No. But I’m good with numbers, and these are lying.”
Walter’s mouth thinned until it nearly disappeared beneath his nose. “Numbers do not lie.”
“People using them do.”
Thomas nearly choked on a laugh.
Walter turned his reproachful glare on him.
Thomas coughed into his fist. “Show him.”
Amelia hesitated. For a moment, something uncertain crossed her face, something that reminded Thomas she had no place here, no standing, no right to correct an old steward before the lord of the manor.
A woman alone in a house that was not hers.
A runaway wife, by gossip. A faery, according to the lads.
Then she seemed to gather herself and pointed to the tally.
“The south field. Twelve sacks cut. Eight stored. Four supposedly sent to the miller. But the miller’s mark here does not match his mark there.”
Walter took the roll as if he expected it to bite.
“And here,” she said, finding another note.
“Widow Maud’s hens. Paid, then owed again.
Here as well. Two days’ labor from Rob Miller marked against his rent, then charged as unpaid.
And unless I’m misunderstanding your system, which is entirely possible because it looks like someone threw the village into a bag and shook it, several tenants have been charged twice. ”
Walter bent closer.
Thomas watched as Walter’s expression did not change, but one hand tightened around the roll.
Amelia noticed. The woman noticed everything except when she was about to say something that could get her dragged before a priest.
“I’m not saying you did it,” she said gently.
Walter’s head snapped up. “I should think not.”
“I’m saying someone counted on no one having enough time to compare one list with another.”
Walter’s nostrils flared. “Wexford kept the rolls. He had the tallies split and matched, stood before me and swore the barns held less because of spoilage.”
Amelia looked at Thomas. “Did they?”
Thomas thought of the barn. The grain bins. The tight faces of the men who had counted them twice and still come away with too little.
“Some spoiled,” he said. “Not so much as this says.”
Walter looked as if he had swallowed vinegar. “He was a faithless cur.”
“He is dead,” Thomas said.
“So are many better men,” Walter snapped, then seemed to remember himself. “Forgive me, my lord.”
Thomas reached for the cup of small beer and found it empty, which was further proof that God had chosen to test him this morning.
“How bad?” he asked.
Amelia pressed both palms to the table. “I need to see everything.”
“No,” Walter said.
Thomas looked at him.
Walter bowed his head, but the movement had iron in it. “My lord, she is a stranger.”
“I am aware.”
“She is a woman with no kin to vouch for her, no family known to us, and no husband present despite the tales. She speaks strangely, and now she is to be given the manor’s rolls?”
Amelia’s cheeks went pink, but she held her tongue.
Thomas did not know why that annoyed him. Mayhap because he had already grown used to her not holding her tongue at all.
“Do you think she made Wexford steal from us before she arrived?” Thomas asked.
Walter’s jaw worked. “Nay.”
“Do you think she marked the miller’s sign wrong?”
“Nay.”
“Do you think I have any better way of finding what the man did before Michaelmas comes and Master Pickering starts sniffing around Ashcombe like a hound after blood?”
Walter’s gaze dropped to the rolls.
That was answer enough.
Thomas leaned back in his chair, which creaked beneath him in a manner he did not appreciate. “Then she sees the rolls.”
Walter drew himself up. “My lord, if folk hear she has her hands in the accounts, there will be talk.”
“There is already talk. Perkin thinks my horse was chosen by faeries to carry messages between worlds.”
Amelia made a small sound.
Thomas looked at her. “Do not laugh.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m absolutely not.”
Her mouth was trembling.
Saints.
The freckles across her nose stood out in the candlelight, a neat scatter over pale skin, and Thomas, who had taken blows to the head with less damage, found himself thinking they looked like the white blaze down Galahad’s face.
His favorite warhorse.
He had compared a woman to a horse, found the likeness pleasing, and was now wondering if the Almighty had decided the accounts were not punishment enough.
He looked away so quickly his neck cracked.
The accounts still lay in ruins before him, Walter still looked as though propriety had been stabbed through the heart, and Amelia stood there with ink on her finger, trying not to laugh.
Thomas had meant to keep her busy and out of trouble.
Saints help him, he had begun to suspect she was going to be trouble precisely because she was useful.