Chapter 11 #2
Battle required one kind of strength. Peace, Thomas was discovering, required another. At that moment he found he much preferred battle.
Belmaine turned the full warmth of his attention back on Thomas. It was worse than his interest in Amelia.
“Walk with me, Ashcombe,” he said, lowering his voice to the register of a friend. “I came not to gawp at your walls, whatever the temptation, but to do you a kindness. You’ll not like it, so let me say it plainly.”
A kindness from Roger Belmaine usually came with a hook in it.
Still, hospitality had rules, and neighbor had duties to neighbor, even when one neighbor had all the sincerity of a fox offering to watch the hens.
Thomas could not turn him out, not with witnesses, not with the crown already sniffing around any man who had ridden behind Montfort.
So Thomas walked as they crossed the yard toward the low wall beyond the hall, where one could see the fields, the fresh-cut stubble, the stacked sheaves, and the barn finally full enough to let a man breathe.
The yard smelled of straw, horse sweat, ash from the kitchen fire, and the sweet dust of barley stacked in the barn.
Somewhere a hammer rang against iron. A pair of geese waddled past the well with the certainty of creatures who believed the manor had been built for their convenience.
Beyond the wall, the stubble fields shone gold in the sun, every acre hard won.
Belmaine clasped his hands behind his back and gazed over it all as if it were already his.
“You have done well,” he said. “Better than expected.”
“By whom?”
Belmaine laughed. “Do not be prickly. It makes you look guilty.”
Thomas stopped.
Belmaine took another step before turning back, his brows raised in mild surprise.
The yard lay behind them, but not far enough.
Walter lingered near the well, pretending not to watch.
Hob stood with Belmaine’s men and held a cup of ale as if considering whether it was better used as drink or weapon.
Wat had crept close to the hall door until Edith’s hand emerged and pulled him back by the collar.
“You speak freely for a guest,” Thomas said.
“I speak freely as a friend.”
“We are not friends.”
“No.” Belmaine’s smile thinned. “But we are neighbors, and neighbors can be more useful than friends. Friends weep over a body. Neighbors know where the land boundaries lie after the body cools.”
Thomas stared at him.
Belmaine spread his hands. “You see? Plain speech. You always preferred it, if memory serves.”
“My memory of you is poor.”
“Then allow me to improve it.” Belmaine turned back to the fields.
“There are men at court who have not forgotten which banner you followed. As usual, the king wants gold. A forfeited manor is gold that needs no thanking, no bargaining, and no waiting upon a reluctant purse. A man so placed as you needs friends near the throne.”
Belmaine continued, his voice mild enough that a man passing by might think they spoke of oxen or weather. “He needs to be seen as loyal. Ordered. Settled.”
Thomas had expected it, and still his belly tightened.
“A good harvest helps,” Belmaine said. “A mended wall and rents paid at Michaelmas will help more. But none of it changes memory. A man may bring in every sheaf in Worcestershire and still be remembered for riding under the wrong banner.”
“Is that why you came? To bring me court gossip?”
“To bring you a rope before others bring a noose.”
Thomas almost admired that.
Belmaine had always enjoyed himself most when pretending cruelty was wit.
“There are doors,” Belmaine said, “that open only by marriage. My family is not without unwed daughters.”
Thomas turned his head.
Belmaine smiled. “Nieces, cousins. Girls of good blood, good training, and no unfortunate habit of appearing from nowhere.”
The words struck exactly where he meant them to strike.
Thomas kept his voice flat. “Take care.”
For a heartbeat Belmaine’s smile slipped. Not much. A twitch. A hesitation. A man remembering something he preferred safely buried.
Thomas saw it because Blackmere still walked beside him some days, not only before dawn when the keep was quiet, but in the eyes of men who had survived it and in the eyes of men who had only heard the tale.
Belmaine recovered quickly, but not before Thomas saw the fear, small and old and real.
“There now,” Belmaine said, summoning the smile again. “You do understand.”
Thomas didn’t move.
“She is fetching,” Belmaine continued, softer now. “Unusual. Men will speak of such a woman. Some kindly, some not. A suspect baron does himself no favors keeping a strange beauty under his roof without clear place or purpose.”
“She has both.”
“Does she?”
Thomas thought of Amelia in the field, laughing with Alyson, her hair full of straw. Amelia bent over the rolls, finding waste and errors. And Amelia looking at him as if he were more than a sword and less than the ruin he feared himself to be.
“She is under my protection,” Thomas said.
“Protection is a generous thing. Dangerous too, when given to the wrong woman.”
Thomas’s hand found the hilt of his sword before he could stop it.
He made himself loosen his grip.
“No insult meant,” Belmaine said, with a little bow of his head. “I speak as one concerned for you. For Ashcombe. You are a hard man, Thomas, but hard men break when pressure is put in the proper place.”
The bastard smiled. “I can help. A marriage into a house above suspicion would do more to keep Ashcombe in Ashcombe hands than ten new walls.”
“How generous.”
Belmaine laughed softly. “That almost sounds friendly.”
Belmaine studied him, then glanced toward the hall.
“Think on it. There is no haste, though I would not leave matters too long. Men at court grow hungry when they smell weakness.”
His gaze moved again to the doorway Amelia had disappeared through.
Thomas saw red so quickly he almost welcomed it.
Belmaine’s voice dropped. “A widow with no people of her own is a vulnerable creature. Such things have a way of being claimed by men bold enough to put out a hand.”
The world sharpened around Thomas. The hens scratching in the dust. The creak of Belmaine’s gloves. Hob’s low warning rumble somewhere behind him. The faint clatter from the kitchen where someone had dropped a pot.
Once, men had crossed roads to avoid him.
Once, his name alone had been enough.
Now a smiling court favorite rode into Ashcombe, laid claim to the future, and looked at Amelia as if she were another prize to be gathered.
Thomas found he preferred those times. Steel was simpler than politics.
He had not yet drawn his sword. That seemed important. He made certain of it by taking his hand from the hilt one finger at a time.
“Mistress Quinn is under my protection,” Thomas said.
“So you have said.”
“Then you have no need to speak of her again.”
Belmaine’s smile remained exactly where it was, which made Thomas want to remove it with his fists.
“As you wish, Ashcombe.”
He turned back toward the yard with the ease of a man who believed he had done exactly what he came to do.
Which, curse him, he had. By the time they reached the horses, Belmaine’s smile had regained all its warmth. He accepted a cup of ale from Hob and praised it loudly enough for the yard to hear.
“Good brew,” he said. “Ashcombe has not lost all its gifts.”
Hob’s expression suggested he would like to gift Belmaine the cup through his teeth.
Thomas shook his head once.
Belmaine’s men mounted. Fine cloaks. Fine horses. He turned his gelding toward the gate, then paused as if a thought had only just come to him.
“Do give my regards to Mistress Quinn,” he said. “A singular woman. One does not often see such fiery hair.”
Thomas stood in the clean autumn morning and watched the dust of Belmaine’s going rise behind the horses. The barn was full. The barley was in. The wall might hold. Yet every bit of good had gone out of the day.
“He was pleasant,” Hob said.
Thomas looked at him.
Hob shrugged. “In the way a boil is pleasant afore it bursts.”
Walter approached from the well, his face gray beneath its usual disapproval. “My lord.”
“I know.”
“You do not know what I would say.”
“You would say Belmaine has friends at court, that he is royalist to the bone when it profits him, that his daughters, nieces, and every other woman bred in that nest come with chains hidden in their sleeves, and that I must think of Ashcombe before I think of my temper.”
Walter blinked.
Hob looked delighted. “Saved you a speech.”
Walter ignored him. “He is dangerous.”
“Aye.”
“And he has noticed Mistress Quinn.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
Walter saw it. The old man saw more than Thomas liked and approved of less than half.
“That,” Walter said carefully, “may prove dangerous as well.”
Hob’s good humor faded. “He forgets himself.”
Thomas looked at him.
Hob spat into the dust. “Men who were not at Blackmere often do.”
Silence followed. Not long, but long enough for the words to settle in the yard like ash. Walter looked away first, his mouth pressed thin. He had not been at Blackmere, but he had seen enough of what came home from it.
Hob had been there. He remembered the rain, the mud, the breach, the screams, and the awful press of men and horses and iron.
Hob remembered dragging Thomas from a heap of bodies while Thomas fought him because there were still men beyond the line and a dead man had no business leaving his soldiers.
The ones who had been there remembered. The ones who had not spoke boldly.
Thomas turned toward the hall. Amelia stood in the shadow just inside the doorway.
He did not know how long she had been there. Long enough, by the look on her face.
She was not frightened. Not exactly. Angry, rather, with her green eyes fixed on the gate where Belmaine had vanished and her mouth gone flat in a way Thomas was coming to recognize. It meant she had tucked away every soft thing and brought out the steel she pretended not to own.