Chapter 37
THOMAS
Three days after Sir Aymon de Sauveterre departed Ashcombe with Pickering’s sworn notes, Belmaine’s signet, and enough outrage to fuel three royal inquiries, Thomas discovered peace could be nearly as unsettling as danger.
A man could put his back to a wall, count blades, watch hands near belts, listen for hooves on the road, and endlessly pace.
Peace sat in the hall at dawn while Edith bullied the household into eating porridge thick enough to mortar a wall.
Peace sounded like Alyson arguing that if Amelia was allowed honey in hers, then justice demanded the same for all small children.
And peace was Wat carrying two cups of small beer without spilling either and looking so proud of himself that Hob pretended not to notice when the boy added three new swear words to a retelling of Osric falling in the mud.
And peace was Amelia sitting near the hearth with a bruise fading yellow along one cheek, her hair braided over one shoulder because Edith claimed her hair had been through enough and deserved order. She held a cup of willow-bark tea in both hands as if it were poison.
“It tastes like an angry tree,” she said.
Edith folded her arms. “Drink it.”
“I have questions about the evidence behind this remedy.”
“You have a bruise. This will help.”
“I also have taste buds.”
“Not if you keep talking.”
Amelia looked at Thomas. “Are you hearing this?”
“Aye.”
“And?”
He looked from her to Edith, then back again. “I have survived Evesham, Belmaine, and Walter. I am not choosing death by Edith before supper.”
Hob thumped his cup on the table. “Wise.”
Walter, seated two places down with a roll tucked beneath his elbow because the man trusted no table without parchment on it, sniffed. “I do not see how accounts compare to war or Belmaine.”
“No,” Amelia said. “You wouldn’t.”
Friar Huck spread honey on a heel of bread with the absorbed devotion of a man conducting holy rites. “The willow will help. The honey would help more.”
Edith glared at him.
He added another smear. “Spiritually.”
Thomas watched Amelia’s mouth curve despite the weariness in her face, and the tight place beneath his ribs eased. Not gone. Never gone.
The sight of Belmaine’s handprint on her cheek had carved itself into him. Even now, with her beneath his roof, with Crale’s lie broken and Pickering’s scrutiny turned toward Belmaine’s house, Thomas found himself watching the doors, listening for riders.
Counting the distance between Amelia and every man who entered the hall.
She noticed. Then again, Amelia noticed everything except the way the whole of Ashcombe had quietly remade itself around her. Or mayhap she noticed that too and pretended not to because it frightened her more than Belmaine had.
On the first day after the reckoning, she had slept until noon. On the second, she had tried to return to the accounts, only for Walter to clear his throat and say, with all the warmth of wet stone, that the figures could wait until her “wits were less bruised.”
Amelia had stared at him.
Walter had stared back.
Hob had murmured that miracles were becoming common as pigeons, and Walter had thrown a quill at him.
Now, on the third morning, Thomas had almost begun to believe they might be granted a little time.
A foolish belief.
The horn sounded from the gate.
Every voice in the hall stopped. Amelia’s cup paused halfway to her mouth.
Thomas was on his feet before the echo died.
Hob reached for his axe. Edith set down the porridge ladle.
Walter gathered the nearest rolls to his chest. Alyson slid off the bench and pressed herself against Amelia’s side, while Wat stepped in front of both of them with a knife in one hand and a face fierce enough to shame grown men.
Thomas looked at him. “Put that down.”
“It’s not sharp.”
“That does not improve matters.”
Wat lowered it, but only a little.
Hob’s mouth twitched. “He has spirit.”
Thomas crossed the hall and stepped out into the yard.
The morning was cold and colorless, mist clinging low near the outer wall, silvering the churned mud and beading on the horses’ manes. Four riders waited at the gate. Not Belmaine’s colors or Pickering’s sober clerks.
The lead man wore a blue cloak darkened at the hem with travel, and the badge pinned near his shoulder bore the small crowned leopard Thomas had seen once before on the packet Sir Aymon had carried against his heart.
Royal household, of the Queen’s service.
Behind him, Walter made a sound that was half relief, half terror. “My lord.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Aye.”
“Then why do you look as if you might hit someone?”
“I find it useful to be prepared.”
The rider dismounted when the gate opened.
He was older than Thomas first thought, his beard cut close, dark hair threaded with gray beneath a travel cap.
He moved like a man accustomed to carrying messages into uncertain places and leaving with his skin intact by not giving anyone time to decide otherwise.
“Lord Ashcombe?” he called.
Thomas stepped forward. “Aye.”
The man bowed. Not deep, but properly. “From Lady Eleanor’s household, with a message and gift by command of the queen.”
Edith appeared in the hall doorway with Amelia beside her.
The rider drew a sealed letter from his satchel. Walter took one involuntary step, then stopped, face pinched with the pain of not snatching the parchment from another man’s hand.
Thomas accepted the letter and turned it over. The seal was whole.
“Read it,” Thomas said, handing it to Walter.
Walter looked momentarily overcome. Then he cleared his throat, broke the seal with reverence, and began.
The queen, through her lady, thanked Baron Thomas Ashcombe for his service upon the old road, for the rescue of Sir Aymon de Sauveterre, kinsman and trusted servant, and for the return of certain letters whose loss might have caused trouble far beyond one manor’s bounds.
Belmaine’s treachery would be pursued. Ashcombe’s loyalty, demonstrated in deed rather than noise, had been carried to ears that mattered.
Thomas heard only pieces. Royal favor. Not pardon, mayhap, but protection. Recognition. A rope cut before it tightened.
Walter’s voice trembled near the end. “In gratitude, and in hope that Lord Ashcombe shall wield both sword and judgment in loyal defense of land and crown, Her Grace sends this token.”
The rider turned. One of his men stepped forward carrying a long wrapped bundle.
Thomas’s eyes went to Amelia as she stood near the hall steps with Edith behind her, Wat and Alyson pressed close, one hand at the hollow of her throat. Her green eyes were steady, curious as the rider unwrapped the bundle.
The cloth fell away to reveal a sword. Newly forged and bright as winter. The blade clean and keen, the crossguard simple but finely worked. The grip was dark leather bound in silver wire.
And set into the hilt, where the blade met the guard, was a sapphire fat as a robin’s egg.
Blue fire caught the weak sun.
Beside him, Amelia let out a gasp.
Thomas forgot the yard. Forgot the queen’s rider, the letter, Walter’s breathing beside him, and Hob’s low curse somewhere near the stable.
There was only Amelia, all the color draining from her face as if the sword had reached across the yard and stabbed her in the heart.
The rider was still speaking. “…the stone came from old stores held by the queen’s goldsmith. Fine work. An inscription may be added if you wish, or left plain.”
Thomas barely heard him.
The sapphire flashed again. Amelia swayed, and he caught her before she hit the ground.
“I’m fine,” she said.
No one believed her.
Not even the mule, which had wandered close enough to look personally disappointed by everyone involved.
Thomas’s jaw tightened. “You are not.”
Hob’s gaze moved from her face to the blade and back. His humor faded. Walter had gone still too, the queen’s letter hanging from his hand, forgotten. He knew enough of Amelia now to understand when she had found a problem too large for one of her lists.
The queen’s rider frowned. “Is the gift displeasing?”
“No,” Amelia said too quickly. “Not at all. It’s very beautiful.” She swallowed, then added with the brittle brightness of a woman building a ladder out of lies, “The meal did not agree with me this morning. Apologies.”
Thomas accepted the sword long enough to feel the weight.
Fine balance. Good steel. The hilt was cold, the sapphire seemed colder.
Amelia’s eyes fixed on it as if she recognized it. As if she had known it longer than any of them.
Thomas handed the blade to Hob, hilt first. “To the solar.”
The rider hesitated. “My lord?”
“Carefully,” Thomas said. “To the solar.”
Not to the hall or to the armory.
Hob took it, and even he looked sobered when the weight settled in his hands. “Fine blade.”
“Aye,” Thomas said. “Go.”
Amelia’s gaze followed the sword until the solar door swallowed it.
More words followed.
Thanks. Honor. Instructions that Sir Aymon’s safe arrival had been received with gratitude and that Lady Eleanor would remember Ashcombe’s service.
Walter recovered enough to ask three precise questions, all of which the rider answered. Edith ordered hot ale and bread for the riders because royal messengers might carry favor, but they still had stomachs.
Friar Huck murmured something about providence and then looked sharply toward the solar, as if the bees had whispered through stone.
Thomas let the words pass around him like smoke.
When the riders were taken into the hall, he turned to Amelia.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Do not lie to me.”
A red curl had slipped free near her cheek, the end damp from mist and bright against the fading bruise. She looked as she had in the stables months ago, when she had asked him what year it was.
“The sword frightens you,” he said.
Her eyes flicked to the solar. “No.”
“Amelia.”
She was shaking. He saw it in the small tremble of her hands before she folded them into the sleeves of Edith’s old gown.
Thomas lowered his voice. “Come.”
“Where?”
“To the solar.”
Her face changed. “No.”
The word came out too quickly.
Men led the riders’ horses to the stable.
Edith’s voice carried from the hall as she ordered bread cut thick and ale warmed properly.
Alyson asked whether the queen had sent any sweets, and Wat said queens probably had better things to do than send sweets, and Alyson replied that seemed a dreadful misuse of power.
But between Thomas and Amelia, the world had narrowed to one word.
No.
“Why?” he asked.
She looked at him.
He saw the battle in her face. The instinct to protect a secret.
Ask me, she had said after the reckoning.
So he did.
“Why does that sword frighten you?”
Her throat moved. For a moment he thought she might answer.
Then Walter appeared at Thomas’s shoulder with the letter clutched in both hands and the expression of a man about to combust from contained information.
“My lord,” Walter said. “This must be secured in the coffer and copied at once. The implications are considerable.”
Thomas did not take his eyes from Amelia. “Later.”
Walter blinked. “Later?”
“Aye.”
“But the queen’s seal—”
“Will remain sealed to the page for another hour.”
Walter looked as if Thomas had suggested they store holy relics in a pigsty.
Amelia seized the interruption like a drowning woman grabbing a floating plank.
“Walter’s right. The queen’s favor is important. Ashcombe matters.”
“So do you,” Thomas said.
Walter made a strangled sound.
Amelia’s eyes widened.
Thomas had not meant to say it before Walter and a mule with opinions. He had not meant to say it at all. Words kept escaping him lately, which was an unsettling habit and likely Amelia’s fault.
Her face softened, then folded in on itself. That frightened him more than the swaying had.
“I know,” she said quietly.
Thomas reached for her hand, and when she took his, her fingers were chilled.
“Solar,” he said. “Now.”
They crossed the yard together, and Thomas felt every eye pretend not to watch.
Walter came with them until Edith caught his sleeve.
“Let them be,” she said.
“This concerns Ashcombe.”
“So does breathing, and yet you manage not to supervise every breath in the yard.”