Chapter 18
AMELIA
It was the storm that did it. Storms were how all of this had started, after all, and storms, apparently, were how the universe intended to keep making its little announcements.
Not subtle announcements, not a polite tap on the shoulder or a memo slipped under the door.
No, storms came crashing down from the sky as if God himself had upended a barrel over England and then decided the thunder could use drums.
This one rolled up the valley after dark, the first real gale of autumn, and it found every weakness in Ashcombe’s patched roof. By midnight, the hall had begun to drip in six places. Amelia knew because she had counted them.
There was the steady plink near the screens passage where someone had set out a cracked bowl.
The mean little patter beside the second trestle table.
The slow, fat drop near the hearth that hissed whenever it struck warm stone.
Two leaks near the wall hangings that had already made the faded green banner sag with damp, and one sneaky leak above the rushes that had not been noticed until a sleeping dog stood, shook himself violently, and sprayed everyone within ten feet.
The wind pressed against the shutters hard enough to make them rattle in their iron fittings.
Rain blew beneath the doors in fine silver threads.
Smoke from the banked fire sulked low beneath the rafters, refusing to rise properly, and the whole hall smelled of wet wool, old ashes, dog, damp rushes, spilled ale, and the sour ghost of the evening’s stew.
No one else seemed troubled by this.
That, Amelia had discovered, was one of the many differences between her century and Thomas’s. In her century, a leaking roof was a homeowner’s insurance claim, three panicked calls, an estimate, a tarp, and at least one man named Dave scratching his nose, and saying, “Well, that’s not ideal.”
In this century, a leaking roof was something you put bowls beneath the worst of, shifted the bedding if you had to, and got on with being grateful the whole thing hadn’t collapsed on your head.
Amelia lay in the loft above the hall and tried to be medieval about it.
She failed. The wool blanket scratched her chin.
The straw-stuffed mattress beneath her smelled faintly of lavender, sheep, and damp.
Around her, the sleeping women and girls of the household breathed in uneven rhythm, wrapped in blankets and shadows.
Somewhere below, a man snored with the grim determination of a saw working through oak.
Alyson, sleeping tucked beside Wat on a pallet near the hearth, muttered once, then quieted.
Thunder cracked so close the stones seemed to flinch.
Amelia opened her eyes.
“Nope,” she whispered to the dark. “Absolutely not sleeping through that.”
For a while she lay still and listened to the rain batter the roof, to the wind worrying at Ashcombe like a dog at a bone, to the old castle answering in groans, creaks, rattles, and little sighs of shifting timber and stone.
It was strange how alive a medieval building sounded in a storm.
Her apartment back home had been all sealed windows and white noise, traffic far below, pipes knocking politely inside walls someone else maintained.
Ashcombe breathed around her. A drop landed on her forehead.
Another drop gathered in the dark, fattened, and fell onto her nose.
“Betrayal,” she muttered.
She rolled away, gathered her blanket, and sat up. Her hair had escaped its braid during the night and now hung in a loose red tangle over one shoulder, because apparently even her hair had decided this century was lawless. She shoved it back, found the pins by touch, and braided it down her back.
Below, the hall was dim, lit only by the banked fire and one small rushlight guttering near the high table.
Most of the household slept in the shadowed warmth, bodies curled beneath cloaks and blankets, boots lined near benches, dogs sprawled like dropped rugs.
The long tables had been pushed aside for the night.
Cups, bowls, a heel of bread, and one forgotten onion sat on a sideboard, relics of supper left to face the storm alone.
Amelia only meant to climb down and move her pallet away from the leak. That was the plan.
Plans, she had learned, had a short life expectancy at Ashcombe.
Halfway down the ladder, she saw him. Thomas sat alone near the hearth.
Not at the high table where the lord of the manor belonged, not on the bench where men gathered to talk after supper, but on a low stool beside the dying fire, his forearms braced on his knees, a clay jug at his elbow and a cup dangling loose from one hand.
He wasn’t dressed for sleep. His dark tunic was unlaced at the throat, and his hair was damp from the rain.
He wore no sword, which made him look oddly more dangerous rather than less, as if removing the blade had only revealed the man beneath it.
The firelight cut his face into shadow and bronze.
It caught the hard bridge of his nose, the dark stubble on his cheeks, the deep hollows beneath his eyes.
He stared into the coals with a stillness Amelia had come to recognize.
There was quiet, and then there was Thomas quiet.
This was the second kind. The shut-down kind. The kind he wore like mail.
Amelia stopped with one hand on the ladder.
She should go back. There was no version of propriety in 1265 where an unwed woman climbed down from the sleeping loft in the middle of the night to sit alone with the lord of the manor while half the household slept and rain covered every small sound.
Walter would have a seizure. Edith would narrow her eyes.
Hob would pretend not to notice while noticing so hard the walls might crack.
Belmaine, if he ever heard of it, would turn it into a weapon before breakfast.
Also, Thomas would likely tell her to go. The sensible thing, the planned thing, was to pretend she hadn’t seen him. She could climb back up, relocate two feet to the left, and spend the rest of the night not sleeping while rain dripped on someone else.
Thunder rolled over the roof, long and low.
Amelia climbed down. The ladder creaked beneath her foot.
A dog lifted its head, blinked at her, decided she was not carrying food, and went back to sleep.
She crossed the rushes carefully, avoiding the puddles she knew about and discovering one she did not with the cold shock of wet against her toes.
“Great,” she whispered. “Perfect. Love that.”
Thomas turned. His eyes found her in the firelight. For a moment he looked as if he had traveled far from the hall and her movement had called him back unwillingly.
“Mistress Quinn.”
His voice was low and rough from disuse or wine, scraped down to the bone.
She stopped near the edge of the hearth light, suddenly aware of herself in a way that made her wish for about fifteen more layers.
She wore a plain linen shift beneath her kirtle, because she had learned quickly that medieval sleeping arrangements required more clothing than modern ones.
Over that she had wrapped a faded wool cloak, the hem dragging a little because it had been made for a taller woman.
Her hair was loose. Her feet were bare. Her dignity, as usual, was limping along bravely several paces behind.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
His gaze lifted briefly toward the roof, where another leak struck a bowl with a plink that sounded almost smug. “No one could sleep through this.”
“The snoring man by the second table is giving it a noble effort.”
A faint ghost of expression crossed his face, then vanished.
She should leave. Instead she picked up an empty wooden bowl from the sideboard, placed it beneath the new drip near the hearth, and sat down across from him on the opposite bench.
Thomas watched her do it, but didn’t tell her to leave. That was the first surprise.
The storm filled the silence between them. Rain beat hard against the shutters. The fire shifted, one charred log collapsing inward with a sigh and a brief flare of sparks.
Thomas lifted the cup and drank. Amelia folded her hands inside the cloak. “Is it bad wine or are you angry at it?”
His eyes came back to her.
“What?”
“You looked like you were punishing the cup.”
For a breath, she thought he would dismiss her. Instead he looked down at the cup.
“It is bad wine.”
“Ah. So justified.”
He turned it in his hand. The cup looked small between his fingers, which were scarred and blunt and marked by old cuts.
Hands that knew swords, reins, stone, rope, and all the hard things a lord insisted on carrying himself because asking for help would apparently kill him.
He rubbed his thumb slowly along the rim.
“It was raining at the end,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her now.
“At Evesham,” he said. “Not at first. At first the sky was close and hot and full of smoke. But at the end, there was rain much like this.”
She held very still, the way you did when something wounded had come near enough to touch but might bolt if you breathed too loudly.
“I didn’t know that,” she said softly.
He huffed once, not quite a laugh. “Why would you?”
The coals glowed red between them. In that low, flickering light, Thomas seemed both larger and more worn than he did by day. Alone with bad wine and a storm, his ghosts gathered close enough that Amelia could almost feel them watching.
“There was a storm that morning,” he said. “Black as night at noon, the old men said ’twas an omen.”
He rolled the cup between his palms. “They were right.”
The wind struck the hall doors with a hollow boom. Someone sleeping near the wall stirred, cursed softly, and settled again.