Chapter 25 #3
Thomas watched her climb the stair. She moved carefully, one hand on the rail, her loosened veil trailing down her back. At the turn she paused, not quite looking over her shoulder before she disappeared above.
The hall seemed colder without her.
Hob had gone at last, half-supporting Col, who had insisted he was not drunk while wobbling toward a wall. The remaining dogs slept under the benches. The fire had burned low. Cups stood abandoned, trenchers scraped clean, and the remaining wax from the honeycomb stuck to the table.
Huck settled beside Thomas with the ease of a man who had no appointment with haste.
“She is a good woman.”
Thomas looked toward the stair. “You do not know where she came from, none of us do.”
“No.” Huck followed his gaze. “But I have learned that where a soul has been is less important than what it does when it arrives.”
Thomas blew out a breath.
“She fed a frightened child honey,” Huck said. “She corrected Walter without shaming him, which I had thought impossible. She laughed at Hob’s French, as God intended. And she looks at you as if she has seen the worst of you and still wishes to remain.”
Friar Huck drained the last of his mead and stood with a small grunt, knees cracking.
“Tell Edith the goose was excellent, the bread better, and the honey was used with appropriate reverence. I’ll return before winter closes the roads.”
Thomas rose with him and walked him out.
The night had sharpened while they sat inside.
Frost covered the yard, catching along the trough and the edges of wagon ruts.
The stars were bright above the black line of the walls.
Huck’s mule, patient as a saint and twice as long-suffering, waited near the stable with the empty kegs tied in the small cart.
Huck clasped Thomas’s shoulder, firm and brief.
“Watch your gates,” he said.
Thomas’s attention sharpened. “Why?”
Huck’s round face had lost its feast softness. In the starlight, he looked older, more priest than beekeeper, more man who had heard confessions than man who had spent the evening arguing over honeycomb.
“Men have been asking questions.”
“Belmaine’s men?”
“Mayhap. Men in murrey and gold riding farther than they need to ride, and servants who pay too readily for ale they do not drink.”
Huck glanced toward the gate. “Questions about your red-haired lady. About who came through Ashcombe’s gate after Evesham. About whether you have sent letters. About whether you ride to Worcester.”
Thomas looked toward the dark road. The good warmth of the feast thinned inside him.
“How do you know?”
Huck’s mouth quirked. “I am a friar with mead. People confess even when they do not intend to.”
“What did they ask exactly?”
“Nothing clean enough to hold. Enough to watch.”
“Aye,” Thomas said. “I’ll watch.”
“I know.” Huck clambered up on the cart with surprising ease for a man of his size. “That is not what worries me.”
“What does?”
“That you may watch the road so hard you miss the heart beside your own fire.”
Thomas had no answer for that.
The gate creaked shut behind the friar and his mule, and Ashcombe settled once more into darkness.
Thomas went back inside. The hall was nearly dead quiet now, the feast reduced to embers, crumbs, honey-sticky boards, and the faint sour-sweet smell of spilled mead. He stood by the hearth and listened to the house.
A log shifted in the hearth as a dog sighed.
Somewhere above, in the loft, Amelia hummed. Very softly. Half a song, not one he knew. The tune wandered, rose, caught itself, and fell again.
Thomas stayed where he was until the humming stopped, then he went to his chamber, but as usual, sleep avoided him.
He lay on his back beneath the rough wool blanket and stared at the dark beams overhead, tasting honey and mead at the back of his throat.
The feast should have comforted him. The barn was full enough, people had laughed and made merry.
For one evening Ashcombe had been more than hunger, repairs, and winter’s slow approach.
At some hour when the night had deepened and the last voices had long since gone quiet, Thomas rose.
He didn’t know what woke him. Not a sound, not precisely. A change, a feeling in the dark, like a soldier’s knowledge that the world had shifted by a hair. He crossed to the narrow window and looked out.
Ashcombe lay black beneath the moonless sky. The yard was a darker shape within the walls. Beyond the gate, the road ran pale for a short distance before vanishing between the hedges. Farther still, where the ridge lifted east and the old Worcester road cut along the high ground, a light moved.
Small and distant. A torch, perhaps or a lantern. It appeared between two trees, vanished, then appeared again, bobbing once as if carried by a rider or a man on foot. Too late for honest traffic. Too careful for a drunken traveler. It moved north along the ridge, then disappeared into the dark.
Thomas watched, not wanting to call it an omen, but Huck’s warning sat in his mind.
Men in murrey and gold riding farther than they need to ride. Questions asked. A purse opened.
Thomas watched the place where the light had vanished until his eyes ached. Then he reached for his cloak.