Chapter 24 #2
“Mayhap.” Thomas sounded tired. “Mayhap worse. But unless the king himself chooses to look kindly on Ashcombe, none of it helps us.”
The king himself.
The words dropped into Amelia’s mind where they floated, bright and sharp.
Thomas went on, “Belmaine knows it. He can smile, wait, and let the crown’s suspicion do his work for him.”
Hob muttered something.
Thomas’s reply came with an edge in it. “Aye, well. He can wait until the river runs uphill.”
Amelia sat motionless. The linen blurred. Not because she was crying. She wasn’t. The words had blurred because something inside her had shifted.
A little click, a door unlatching. She set the linen down slowly, as if sudden movement might frighten the thought away.
For the past three days she’d been trying to make herself smaller. Less visible. Less dangerous. A quieter woman in a dull grey gown with her hair hidden and her mouth shut before the wrong words slipped out.
But what if hiding was the wrong answer?
What if the only way to save Ashcombe was not to make herself smaller, but to make Belmaine larger in the crown’s eye?
Belmaine the neighbor with too much coin, with extra men on the road, with coffers full beyond honest rents.
Her heart beat faster. Not the foolish, tender beating it did when Thomas walked near.
This was different. Cleaner. A familiar bright rush, the old planner’s flare.
The moment a broken schedule, a missing caterer, an lost room block, and a keynote speaker stuck at O’Hare suddenly became one problem instead of four.
She knew this feeling, trusted this feeling. Amelia drew a scrap of parchment from beneath the linen roll and dipped the quill again.
Belmaine, she wrote. Royalist. Publicly loyal. Too much money. Men on old road. Why?
Thomas: suspect because of Evesham. Needs royal favor. Not rumor. Proof of loyalty.
She stared at the words.
Proof of loyalty.
What counted here?
Not intention or goodness. Goodness was useful only after supper and mostly to people who already loved you.
Service, then. Something visible. Something the crown couldn’t ignore. Something big enough to stand in a hall full of men who liked seals, witnesses, and reasons to pretend mercy was strategy.
Her quill moved.
Who travels the road? King’s men? Queen’s household? Clerks? A lord worth saving? Someone Belmaine watches?
If Belmaine was doing something unlawful along that road, if his deep coffers had a source, if the right person could be made to see it, then Thomas didn’t need Belmaine’s protection. He needed Belmaine exposed.
Not exposed like a shouted accusation. That would only make noise, and noise helped men like Belmaine.
Evidence. That was the word. Evidence was a quieter blade.
She needed accounts. Not Ashcombe’s. Belmaine’s, or as much of them as could be built from rents, purchases, men paid, horses kept, cloth bought, and coin spent where coin should not be.
She needed gossip. Who had passed. Who had been delayed. Who had paid. Who had vanished. Which merchants avoided one stretch of road and why. Which servants drank too freely in taverns. Which reeve’s cousin knew more than he was meant to know.
She needed Hob. Probably. Almost certainly. She didn’t yet know how to ask Hob for help without explaining what she was doing, and she couldn’t explain what she was doing because Thomas would stop her.
She wrote:
First: gather what can be proved.
Second: learn road traffic.
Third: find lawful witness or channel.
Fourth: do not tell Thomas until stopping me is impractical.
She looked at that last line. It was an excellent line. It was also the sort of line that would make Thomas put his hand through a wall.
A small laugh escaped her, breathless and not entirely sane.
Alyson glanced over from the hearth. “Mistress Amelia?”
Amelia folded her hand over the scrap. “Nothing. A very dull linen matter.”
Alyson looked suspicious. “Does linen make you laugh?”
“Only when it’s badly managed.”
Alyson accepted this, perhaps because grown people were often disappointing, and returned to whatever argument she was having with her brother over the ownership of a burnt crust.
Edith, unfortunately, did not return to anything.
She looked at the scrap beneath Amelia’s hand. Then at Amelia. Then toward Thomas.
“No,” Amelia said quietly.
“I did not speak.”
“You were about to.”
“I am always about to,” Edith said. “You knew that when you sat beside me.”
Amelia lowered her voice. “I need more before I tell him.”
“More what?”
“More than a thought. More than a suspicion. He’ll try to protect me from the idea before the idea has boots on.”
Edith considered this. “Likely.”
“That was quick agreement.”
“I know Thomas.”
“So do I.”
The words came out before Amelia could stop them.
Edith’s face softened in a way that made Amelia want to flee to the pantry and inventory turnips until her feelings behaved.
“Aye,” Edith said. “You do.”
Amelia looked down at the parchment again. The plan was not a plan yet. It was bones. Less than bones. A handful of scattered pieces on a table. But bones could be built around.
She knew how to do that, how to take a mess of ridiculous requirements and make the first list, then the second, then the hidden third list no one saw because it contained all the truly dangerous things.
Amelia knew how to work backward from a needed outcome, how to smile at men who underestimated her while writing down every useful thing they said.
She was doing this because Wat had offered her half a stolen apple the day after she arrived, as if he had riches to spare.
Because Alyson tucked her cold hand into Amelia’s sleeve when the hall grew loud.
Because Edith packed her water while complaining about it.
Because Hob called her mistress with a straight face and watched every door when Thomas forgot to watch himself.
Because Walter had begun leaving the accounts where she could reach them, which from Walter was practically a sonnet and possibly a proposal of professional respect.
Because Ashcombe had taken her in when it had every reason not to. Because Thomas had taken her in. Not taken. Chosen. Again and again, in ways that cost him.
He had lied for her. Guarded her. Snarled at boys who stared too long and merchants who asked too much.
He had put water at her place each morning and blankets near her pallet and his body between her and danger in the middle of a market square.
He had refused Fernhill, ten marks, royal comfort, and a quiet wellborn bride because Belmaine had made the bargain out of her absence.
He had chosen her. And she loved him. Which was inconvenient. Also terrifying.
Amelia folded the scrap of parchment into the smallest square she could manage and slid it into her sleeve.
She needed information. The account rolls first. Ashcombe’s would not tell her what Belmaine had, but they might tell her what he should have.
Neighboring lands, rents, customary payments, grazing rights, tithe disputes, market purchases, timber claims. Walter would know half of it and complain through the other half.
Hob would know the road. Edith would know the servants.
The market would know everything, if one asked the right questions badly enough that people corrected you.
Thomas would hear the word plan and immediately try to stand between her and it.
Which was sweet and also infuriating, but that was Thomas.
She would tell him when there was something to tell. Something solid. Something too useful for him to crush beneath all that noble panic.
“All right,” she whispered.
Sometimes, if you built plans carefully enough and hid the dangerous pieces until the proper moment, plans saved exactly what everyone else had already decided was doomed.
She turned the linen inventory over and began taking notes on the back.