Chapter 13
AMELIA
Amelia had been stuck in the thirteenth century long enough to figure out three things with absolute certainty.
First, no one at Ashcombe believed in breakfast as a civilized event.
Second, wool was itchy and heavy.
Third, if she did not introduce this household to the concept of washing hands before meals, she was going to lose her mind, her appetite, or possibly both before Michaelmas.
She’d accepted, more or less, that she was never going to taste coffee again or have access to dental floss, hot showers, fitted cotton percale sheets, nor would she hear the hum of a refrigerator when her apartment was quiet.
The sword that had dragged her here didn’t exist yet, which meant there was no way home, and no amount of standing in the tower and swearing would make the universe apologize.
She had also accepted, with only a moderate amount of private screaming, that Lord Thomas Ashcombe had offered her a home and his protection, and that she had gladly accepted.
Protection, in this century, meant shelter, food, clothing, and the annoyance of being talked about by everyone from the stableboys to the laundress as if she were either a tragic runaway wife or a supernatural being.
What she had not accepted, was watching Wat plunge both hands into a bowl of porridge after helping muck out the stable.
“No,” she said, before she could stop herself.
Wat froze.
His sister, Alyson, who sat beside him on the bench with her legs swinging and a smear of honey already shining on her chin, blinked up at Amelia with wide, solemn eyes.
Around them, the hall paused in the slow way a large animal paused when it scented something odd on the wind.
Edith stood at the hearth, sleeves rolled to her elbows, a wooden spoon in one hand and a look on her face that suggested she already regretted Amelia staying at the castle.
Smoke curled above the central fire and tangled in the rafters, carrying with it the smell of oat pottage, yesterday’s rushes, baking bread, and the sharp sour tang of the ale that men drank in the morning as if it were a perfectly reasonable substitute for water.
Wat looked down at his hands, then at the porridge, then back at Amelia. “What?”
“You need to wash your hands first.”
He frowned. “I washed.”
“When?”
“Yestereve.” A bit of sun-streaked hair fell across one eye, making him look like a small pirate.
Alyson nodded, as if this were proof of great moral discipline.
Amelia closed her eyes for one second. “Before eating.”
Wat blinked at her.
A man down the table snorted into his cup. Hob, who had been tearing into a hunk of bread with his teeth, lowered it and turned his head with interest.
“Before eating,” Amelia repeated, because apparently this was the hill she had chosen to die on, and honestly, given the other available hills in medieval England, it wasn’t the worst.
“Hands get dirty and can make people sick. So you wash before you touch food.”
Edith’s brows rose. “Dirt makes people sick?”
“Yes.”
“Not rain, bad air, or God’s temper?”
“Those too, probably,” Amelia said, because she knew when not to pick a theological fight before breakfast. “But also dirt.”
Walter, seated near the high table with a roll of parchment he had brought to breakfast like a man determined to make meals depressing, made a reproachful little sound. “Mistress Quinn, folk have eaten with the same hands God gave them since Adam.”
“And Adam didn’t have access to soap either, which may explain a lot.”
Wat leaned closer to Alyson and whispered, loudly enough for half the hall to hear, “Is this another faery rule?”
Amelia pointed at him. “It’s a very ordinary rule.”
Hob’s beard twitched. “How many ordinary rules have you, mistress?”
“More than you want to hear before breakfast.”
“I doubt that.”
“You should not say that to a woman with a list.”
Thomas, who had entered the hall silently enough that Amelia only noticed him when the air at the far end seemed to alter around his scowl, stopped beside the high table.
He wore a dark tunic belted at the waist, boots still muddy from the yard, and a leather bracer on one forearm.
His hair was damp at the ends, as though he had already been outside long enough to make morning feel lazy, and he was freshly shaved.
His gaze moved from Amelia to Wat’s suspended hands to the untouched bowl of porridge.
“What has happened?”
“Mistress Amelia says Wat’s hands will kill him,” Alyson reported.
“I did not say that.”
Thomas looked at Amelia, one perfect brow arched.
She lifted her chin. “I said he should wash before he eats.”
His expression didn’t change, which meant, she was learning, that he was either amused, irritated, thinking, or all three at once. With Thomas, the human face was apparently a fortress with one tiny window, and she had not yet been given the key.
At last he looked at Wat. “Wash.”
Wat’s mouth dropped open. “My lord?”
“You heard me.”
“But I washed yestereve.”
“Then you have practice.”
A muffled laugh moved through the hall like wind through wheat.
Wat flushed, slid off the bench, and marched toward the water bucket near the door with the wounded dignity of a boy being sent to his execution.
Alyson followed, not because she had been told to but because she found Wat’s suffering fascinating.
Amelia tried very hard not to look triumphant, and failed.
Thomas noticed. His eyes narrowed slightly, and one corner of his mouth almost moved.
“You are pleased with yourself,” he said under his breath as he passed her.
“I’m concerned for public health.”
“I do not know what that is.”
“That’s because you don’t wash enough.”
Hob choked on his ale.
Thomas stopped.
For a moment, Amelia wondered if one could be exiled from a medieval castle for suggesting its lord had dirty hands.
Probably. Men had declared wars for less.
She was fairly certain one European conflict had started because somebody married the wrong cousin, which seemed like the sort of thing people should have anticipated would happen if they kept all the cousins in rotation.
But Thomas merely looked down at his hands.
They were, in fairness, cleaner than most. Large, bronzed from the sun, scarred across the knuckles, the nails cut short, with a faint line of dirt at the edge of one thumb. Capable hands. Soldier’s hands. Hands that knew rope, reins, sword, stone, and the weight of lifting someone up from the mud.
Her brain, which should have been focused on germs, wandered somewhere reckless and had to be hauled back by the collar.
Thomas held up both hands. “Will I live?”
It was so dry, so unexpected, that she almost laughed.
“Maybe,” she said. “But I’d feel better if you washed before touching the bread.”
The hall went still again, but this time it was a delighted stillness, the kind that came before a dog realized someone had thrown a bone into the rushes.
Thomas looked at her for one long heartbeat.
Then he walked to the bucket.
The hall erupted.
Not loudly. No one was stupid enough to hoot at their lord while he was within striking distance, but laughter trembled behind cups, shoulders shook, and even Walter stared down at his roll with his mouth pinched as if holding back amusement were a matter of castle security.
Thomas washed with the grim composure of a man enduring a siege.
Alyson watched him with shining approval. “You did it very well, my lord.”
“High praise,” Amelia murmured.
With a single look from Thomas, the rest of the hall scrambled to line up and wash their hands. It was too bad they only had lye soap, Amelia would have gladly given up chocolate for a single bar of lavender soap.
He took the drying cloth from Wat, who now looked far more cheerful about the entire situation, and shot Amelia a glance over the linen.
“How were you raised, Mistress Quinn, that you command lords before breakfast?”
“Carefully,” she said. “And with clean hands.”