Chapter 26 #2
From the kitchen doorway, Edith folded her arms. She was wearing a dark blue gown with her sleeves rolled, and the look of a woman who had been waiting for permission to unleash herself upon the world.
“Mistress Bell came to warn us that men have been asking whether Amelia casts shadows.”
Mistress Bell flushed. “I did not say I believed it.”
“No,” Edith said. “But you hurried here to share the rumors.”
Wat whispered, “I’ve seen her shadow.”
Alyson nodded solemnly. “It’s much smaller than Lord Thomas.”
Thomas didn’t look away from Mistress Bell. “What men?”
She swallowed.
Amelia almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Being the focus of Thomas Ashcombe’s displeasure looked about as pleasant as being invited to hug a trebuchet mid-launch.
“Riders, my lord. They asked near the ford. I did not speak to them myself.”
“Murrey and gold,” Amelia said.
Thomas’s face changed. Not much. His face didn’t make many expressions unless one counted scowling in various dialects. But the air around him seemed heavier, and Amelia knew at once that she had been right.
Belmaine.
“Who else has heard this?” Thomas asked.
Mistress Bell looked down at the salt. “Some in the village. A few at Lowmere. The miller’s wife said naught to me, but she’d heard. And old Mother Cresswell made the sign against enchantment when her name was spoken.”
“Perfect,” Amelia muttered. “I’ve become a neighborhood craft project.”
Thomas’s eyes flicked to her.
“Not helping?” she asked.
“Nay.”
“Noted.”
Mistress Bell’s face crumpled a little around the edges. “I did not come to cause hurt.”
“Intent is a pretty veil,” Edith said. “But it doesn’t warm the person left standing in the cold.”
The rebuke landed as Mistress Bell dipped her head.
Thomas took one step closer, his voice low and flat.
“Mistress Quinn eats at my table, works beneath my roof, and is under my protection. Any man with questions about her may bring them to me.”
Mistress Bell looked as if the thought of doing so had all the appeal of climbing into a wolf’s mouth to count its teeth.
“Aye, my lord.”
“And any woman with questions,” Edith said.
Thomas looked at her.
Edith lifted her chin. “What? Women do half the damage. More, if the men are slow.”
Mistress Bell’s blush deepened as Amelia pressed her lips together.
Thomas didn’t even crack a smile, but she caught the tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth. It steadied her in a way that annoyed her. She didn’t want steadiness from him. Not when every inch of him looked ready to stand between her and the world until the world either backed down or lost a limb.
That sort of thing was dangerous to a woman trying very hard to remain sensible.
A gust of colder wind pushed through the open door, bringing with it the smell of wet leaves, mud, and horse. Behind Mistress Bell, the yard lay grey beneath the low sky, men carrying arms full of firewood, a cart creaking near the barn, chickens scratching with purpose near the well.
Then Friar Huck came through the doorway carrying a covered basket, his walking staff, and the look of a man who had gone out into the village, heard enough nonsense for one morning, and returned with reinforcements.
“Good,” he said. “Everyone’s gathered.”
Thomas closed his eyes, muttering under his breath as the children leaned closer, hoping to pick up a new curse or two.
Amelia looked at the friar. “Do I want to know why that sounds ominous?”
“Probably not,” Huck said cheerfully. “But you shall.”
His habit was damp at the hem and flecked with burrs from the road. There was a leaf stuck in his beard. He smelled faintly of rain, smoke, and beeswax, which was not a combination Amelia had ever expected to find comforting and now did. He set the basket on the nearest table and lifted the cloth.
Inside sat two small jars of honey and a round loaf so fresh that steam still clung to the split in its crust.
Alyson gasped as if he had unveiled treasure from a dragon’s hoard.
“Honey?” she whispered, going up on her tiptoes.
“For medicinal purposes,” Huck said.
Wat’s eyes narrowed. “What medicine?”
“The kind that keeps mouths too full for foolish talk.”
Edith made a satisfied sound. “A worthy cure.”
Huck glanced at Mistress Bell, and his weathered face gentled in a way that was somehow more devastating than Thomas’s scowl.
“Mistress Bell, I’m told men have taken to asking whether our Amelia sits properly in God’s world.”
Mistress Bell clutched the salt. “I only carried warning.”
“Aye. And warning may be kindness if it doesn’t stop there.” Huck pulled the stopper from one of the honey jars. “So I carried one too.”
Thomas’s gaze sharpened. “You heard?”
“I hear many things. Bees hear more.”
“Huck.”
The friar sighed. “Fine, not the bees. Mostly widows, boys at wells, and men who think a habit makes me deaf.”
He dipped a finger into the honey, tasted it, then nodded as if Winifred had performed up to standard.
“I visited six households this morning,” he said.
“And what,” Amelia asked carefully, “did you say?”
Huck looked at her with such kind mischief in his eyes that she braced herself.
“I told them I have eaten at this table, prayed beside this woman in the chapel after harvest, and she held a cross without bursting into flame, fainting, cursing, vanishing, turning blue, or doing anything else likely to trouble sound doctrine.”
Amelia blinked. “That’s a very specific list.”
“I prepared it on the road.”
“I can tell.”
A sound that might have been laughter moved through the nearest servants.
Huck spread honey on a slice of bread with the care of a man anointing a king.
“I also told them a faery would not sit in God’s house, would not spend her days arguing with a steward over cartloads of grain, and would not willingly mend household linens, as no creature of enchantment would submit to such tedious mortal doings. ”
From the kitchen doorway, Edith said, “Linen humbles all.”
“Amen,” Huck said.
Walter, who had entered the hall at exactly the wrong moment with a roll beneath one arm, stopped dead and looked personally injured. “Are the household linens being discussed without my count?”
“No,” Amelia said. “They’re being used as theological evidence.”
Walter looked as if he might need to sit down.
Huck continued as though this were entirely ordinary.
“I told them Mistress Amelia is the most sensible woman in three parishes, that the children love her, the stores are better kept for her presence, the harvest came in easier under her lists, and that anyone claiming otherwise had best bring evidence sharper than the coin in his pocket.”
Everyone was listening now.
“You named Belmaine,” Thomas said.
“Not directly.” Huck’s face remained serene. “I named the coin. Coin is its own sermon when it appears in the wrong purse.”
Amelia felt the words settle over the room like a cloak.
The defense was simple. God-fearing and useful.
Not mystical. Not a plea for kindness from people frightened by what they didn’t understand.
Friar Huck had given them something solid.
Amelia in the chapel, with the grain, and mending, counting, and working.
A woman whose oddness could be outweighed, if not erased, by what she did.
It was exactly the right defense. Too bad she hadn’t thought of it.
“Friar Huck,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Thank you.”
He waved one hand, as if publicly fighting gossip with theology, bees, and carefully aimed suspicion were merely part of an ordinary day.
“You are God’s creature, same as the rest. Anyone with eyes can see what you do here.”
He pointed the honey knife at Thomas.
“And anyone with sense can see what it costs him when someone tries to take that from him.”
Thomas made a strangled sound as heat blasted up from her throat to the top of her head.
“Huck,” Thomas said.
“What? I did not say love. I said cost.”
Hob, who had appeared from nowhere in the manner of large men who enjoyed gossip more than they admitted, leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Best let him have his precision, my lord. Friars get troublesome when cornered.”
“Everyone in this house is troublesome,” Thomas said.
Alyson, who had been staring fixedly at the honey bread, whispered, “May I be troublesome too?”
“Not until you wash,” Amelia said automatically.
Huck beamed. “There. A woman of Christian discipline.”
Wat rolled his eyes. “She says wash for everything.”
“Because washing is good for everything.”
“It doesn’t help with sums.”
Amelia grinned. “It helps me feel better when doing them.”
Walter made a small approving noise before he caught himself.
Mistress Bell had gone quiet near the doorway, the salt still wrapped in her hand. Amelia looked at her and knew it wasn’t malice, not exactly, but the weakness of a person who would carry whatever story made her feel important until someone stronger put a different story in her hands.
So Amelia gave her one.
“Tell them,” she said as Mistress Bell looked up.
“If folk ask. Tell them I’m not a faery. Tell them I’m useful, terribly dull about lists, and extremely annoying about cleanliness.”
Hob snorted.
“And tell them,” Amelia added, before she could think better of it, “that if I had any magic whatsoever, Walter would be less difficult.”
Walter drew himself up. “I beg your pardon.”
“You may beg all you like. It won’t change the accounting.”
Huck laughed so hard his shoulders shook.
Even Mistress Bell smiled, though it was small and uncertain.
Thomas watched Amelia across the room, his eyes unreadable except for the warmth tucked somewhere beneath the steel. It was the look he wore when she said something he wished she wouldn’t say in public, but liked too much to stop her.
It made her knees shake.
Mistress Bell dipped her head. “I’ll tell them.”
“Good,” Edith said. “And if you hear more talk, you’ll bring it here clean, not wrapped in salt and shame.”
With a nod, Mistress Bell slipped out into the grey morning with her salt and her new story, and for a moment the hall was quiet.
Then Alyson whispered, “May I have honey bread now?”
“Wash,” Amelia said.