Chapter 15
AMELIA
By the time the men paused for water, ale, and snacks, Amelia had been adopted.
There was no formal ceremony. No certificate or welcome packet, no awkward team-building exercise where everyone had to share a fun fact.
It happened in the old way, which meant Hob handed her a cup of small beer, Osbern asked if she wanted to see Hugh get knocked into the dust, and a wiry man named Martin declared that since she had made them all wash like monks, she must learn something useful in return.
“I already know many useful things,” Amelia said.
Martin grinned. He was missing one tooth on the side, and his brown hair stuck out from his head as if a bird had considered nesting in it and then thought better of the neighborhood. “Do you know how to curse a man so his ears curl?”
“I’ve worked corporate events.”
The men stared.
She reconsidered. “Not in words you would understand.”
“Then you need better words,” Osbern said.
Hob leaned against the rail, utterly delighted. “The lady requires instruction.”
“I do not require instruction in profanity.”
“Everyone requires instruction in profanity,” Hob said. “A man who says otherwise has only been poorly taught.”
Alyson clapped her hands. “I know a curse.”
“No,” Wat and Amelia said at the same time.
Alyson’s lower lip pushed out. “It is a very little one.”
“That is how they start,” Hob said gravely. “Then one day you wake and call the reeve a pox-rotted sack of eel guts before Prime.”
Amelia stared at him.
Hob looked back, innocent as a saint in a stained-glass window.
“Is that one?” she asked.
“A good one,” Osbern said. “Not my finest.”
“Your finest made Father Aldred drop his cup,” Martin said.
“He was not meant to be behind me.”
“He was in the chapel.”
“Then he had God to comfort him.”
Amelia should have left. Should have taken her wax tablet and gone to Edith, who would be horrified or secretly amused, likely both.
Instead she stayed at the rail with the children pressed close, the warm sun on her veil, dust settling on the hem of her green gown, and half a dozen battle-hardened men gleefully debating which words were too crude for a woman who had already survived small beer, Thomas’s scowls, and Walter’s account rolls.
It was ridiculous.
It was wonderful.
“All right,” she said, because she had never been a coward about continuing education.
“Teach me one that won’t get me thrown out of the hall.”
Hob thought. The effort appeared painful. At last he said, “Clotpole.”
Amelia blinked. “Clotpole?”
“A fool,” Martin said.
“A thick-headed fool,” Osbern corrected.
“A man whose wits have gone wandering and not come home,” Hob said.
“That’s useful,” Amelia admitted.
“Goat-brained lout,” Martin offered.
She smiled. “Also useful.”
“Dung-souled hedgepig,” Osbern said, with the solemnity of a priest offering communion.
Amelia blinked. “I’m sorry. Dung-souled what?”
“Hedgepig.”
“That feels very specific.”
“It is for a man who has earned specificity,” Hob said.
Wat’s face lit with wicked joy. “Dung-souled—”
“No,” Amelia said.
“But you said it.”
“I’m an adult.”
Wat looked skeptical. “Are you?”
“More or less.”
Alyson frowned. “What is pole?”
“No one answer that,” Amelia said quickly.
Hob’s shoulders shook.
They gave her others, because once men discovered an audience, restraint went the way of clean rushes.
Some were ordinary enough. Witless dolt, goat-brained lout, hedge-born fool.
Some involved bodily functions described with enthusiasm and alarming poetry.
Several were in French, which Osbern delivered with the solemnity of a courtly troubadour and which Amelia repeated badly enough to make every man within earshot howl.
“Put your tongue behind your teeth,” Osbern instructed.
“I am trying.”
“Nay, you’re murdering it.”
“My limited French is doing its best.”
Thomas, returning from speaking with Walter near the stables, stopped dead.
“What,” he said, “is happening?”
Every man at the rail immediately acquired the blank, virtuous expression of boys caught near a broken window.
Amelia held the wax tablet against her chest. “Language lessons.”
His eyes narrowed.
“In French,” she added.
Osbern coughed.
Thomas looked at Hob. “What kind of French?”
Hob scratched his beard. “Useful French.”
“For trade,” Martin said.
“For diplomacy,” Osbern said.
“For when one meets a Frenchman,” Wat supplied, too eager and too guilty.
Thomas’s gaze moved slowly to Amelia.
She smiled brightly. “Bonjour.”
The corner of his mouth twitched despite his obvious effort to look forbidding. “That is not all they taught you.”
“No.”
“What else?”
“I’m not sure I should say it in front of the children.”
Wat made a disgusted sound. “We taught you.”
“A troubling point in your moral development.”
Thomas crossed his arms.
Amelia had the sudden, unfortunate realization that he was doing it on purpose.
Not the scowl. That was natural. But standing there with his arms folded, sleeves pushed up, sword belt at his waist, the front of his shirt still damp from exertion, making the entire yard feel slightly smaller because he occupied it with such unreasonable authority.
He knew. Maybe not all of it, not the full effect of those forearms, that scar, and that voice, but he knew enough.
Men were annoying in every century.
Hob cleared his throat. “Mistress Amelia asked for a mild curse.”
Thomas looked heavenward, as if asking whether surviving Evesham had been worth this.
“And you gave her one?”
“Aye.”
“Which?”
“Clotpole,” Amelia said.
Thomas’s eyes came back to hers.
For one breath, nothing happened, then he laughed.
Not loudly and not for long. But it was real, a low, startled sound dragged from somewhere deep, and every man in the yard went quiet as if the sun had risen twice.
Amelia felt it like warmth under her ribs.
Thomas seemed to realize what had escaped him. The laugh vanished. His expression shut down, or tried to, but the damage had been done. The men had heard. The children had heard. Amelia had heard.
Hob looked at the sky, smiling like an old wolf.
Thomas pointed at him. “Not a word.”
“I am silent as the grave, my lord.”
“Graves make fewer smug faces.”
“A flaw in graves, mayhap.”
Thomas shook his head and looked back at Amelia, and there was something softer in his eyes now, though his voice remained stern enough to herd sheep. “Do not let these men teach you anything you cannot say before Edith.”
“That limits the curriculum.”
“It should.”
“Edith knows things,” Hob said. “I learned half my best words from Edith.”
Thomas’s mouth flattened. “That does not surprise me.”
At that exact moment Edith appeared at the edge of the yard, carrying a covered basket over one arm and wearing the expression of a woman who had sensed her name being misused from fifty paces away.
“What in Saint Mildred’s blistered left foot have you lot done now?”
Silence fell as Amelia turned slowly.
Hob closed his eyes as if receiving a blessing. “There,” he said softly. “That is scholarship.”
Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose.
Alyson whispered, awed, “Blistered left foot.”
“No,” Amelia, Edith, Wat, and Thomas said together.
Edith looked at the men, at Thomas, at Wat’s guilty face, and finally at Amelia as she set the basket on the rail and lifted the cloth. The smell of warm barley cakes drifted out, buttery and faintly sweet with honey. Every man in the yard leaned closer.
Edith slapped Martin’s hand without looking. “Wash first.”
Amelia beamed.
The men groaned.
Thomas looked at her. She looked back. Neither of them said a word, which somehow made it worse.
One by one the men went to the bucket, grumbling in a chorus that quickly turned comic. Osbern scrubbed as if removing sin. Martin declared his hands were now too pure for honest work. Hob washed last and held up both enormous paws for inspection.
“Well?” he demanded.
Amelia took her role seriously. “Better. But I’m concerned about the left thumb.”
“My left thumb has seen war, mistress.”
“My condolences to the thumb. Wash it again.”
The garrison loved that.
Apparently, all it took to win over armed men in 1265 was accusing one of their strongest warriors of insufficient thumb maintenance.
When the cakes had been distributed and Alyson had fallen into a blissful silence with honey on both cheeks, Hob nodded toward the lists. “Tell us, Mistress Amelia, do women fight where you come from?”
The question was casual. Too casual.
Amelia felt Thomas’s attention sharpen from several feet away.
She should have answered carefully. Women do not generally take the field, or some other vague and period-appropriate evasion. She had been getting better at not telling the truth sideways. Most days.
But she was warm, tired, sticky with honey, and beginning to feel dangerously safe.
“Some do,” she said.
Martin laughed. “With what? Kitchen knives?”
“Sometimes.”
That only delighted them more.
Osbern leaned on the rail. “Do they ride to battle in your land?”
“Not usually.”
“How then?”
“With training.” She shrugged. “There are classes. I took one once, learned how a small woman throws a big man.”
Martin doubled over first. Osbern clutched the rail. Wat collapsed onto the ground as if wounded. Even Hob, Hob who had seen battle and famine and Thomas in a temper, laughed so hard he had to brace one hand on the post.
Alyson, not entirely sure why everyone was laughing, but unwilling to be left out, giggled into her cake.
Amelia was starting to understand why Thomas scowled and stomped about.
“Oh,” she said. “So that’s the reaction we’re having.”
Hob wiped his eyes. “Forgive me, mistress. You took a class.”
“Yes.”
“In throwing big men.”
“Yes.”
“With what? Faery magic?”
“Leverage.”
“Leverage,” Osbern wheezed, as if she had said dragon feathers.
Thomas hadn’t laughed.
Amelia glanced at him and found him watching her with an unreadable expression, arms still crossed, head slightly tilted. Not mocking. Not exactly believing either. Assessing. That was worse.
“Let me understand,” Hob said when he could speak again. “A little thing like you was taught to throw a man like me.”