Chapter 39 #2
Walter looked ready to faint, fight, or ask for the parchment.
Possibly all three.
The messenger withdrew a packet from within his cloak, the wax seal wrapped in a fold of oiled cloth to keep the rain from it. He held it out with both hands.
Thomas accepted it.
“Read it,” Thomas said, passing the packet to Walter.
Walter’s hands trembled as he received it. The old steward broke the seal with a reverence so profound Amelia half expected him to genuflect. His eyes moved over the first lines.
Then stopped. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Amelia leaned closer. “Walter?”
He swallowed. Once. Twice.
Thomas’s voice dropped. “Walter.”
Walter lifted his head.
“My lord,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Ashcombe is pardoned.”
For one breath, no one moved. The words seemed too large to fit inside the yard. Then sound broke.
Not cheering, not yet. Something rougher.
A gasp through dozens of throats. A sob from somewhere near the kitchen doorway.
Hob’s muttered oath. Huck’s whispered prayer.
Edith saying, “Thank God,” with all the force of a woman who had been arguing with Him for weeks and could finally approve His answer.
Walter kept reading, louder now, his voice strengthening as joy took hold of him in the only form he trusted. That of official wording.
“In recognition of faithful service rendered upon the old north road, and in gratitude for the rescue and protection of Sir Aymon de Sauveterre, kinsman and servant to Her Grace, and for the recovery of letters whose loss might have injured crown and realm, Thomas Ashcombe is received into the king’s peace.
His lands, rents, rights, and liberties are confirmed to him and to his lawful heirs, free of forfeiture upon the former suspicion attached to the late rebellion, so long as he holds faith with crown and realm. ”
Thomas stood as if the words had struck him harder than a blade.
Ashcombe pardoned. Lands confirmed. Rights and liberties. Lawful heirs.
Amelia felt the world tilt, not with magic this time, but with relief.
Ashcombe was saved and Thomas was saved. Not merely reprieved. Saved in ink, wax, and royal authority. The noose that had hung over this place since Evesham had been cut.
A laugh escaped her, wild and breathless.
Thomas turned to her. His face was unreadable for one terrible heartbeat, and then all the soldier-stillness cracked.
Not fully. Thomas was still Thomas, built of stone, scars, and an unreasonable fondness for enduring things silently.
But his eyes changed. The bleakness that had lived there since she’d first known him loosened its grip.
He looked younger. No, not younger. Less alone.
The messenger cleared his throat. “There is more, my lord.”
Everyone went silent again as Thomas turned back.
“More?”
“Aye, my lord.” The messenger looked toward his men and nodded.
Two riders dismounted and went to the packhorse behind them. From its panniers, they lifted a small iron-bound chest.
The chest was set before Thomas. The messenger produced a key.
“By Her Grace’s gratitude for Sir Aymon de Sauveterre, who departed Ashcombe three days past and spoke warmly of your care, your honor, and your household’s service, this is sent for the repair and keeping of Ashcombe.”
He turned the key. The lid opened. Gold and silver gleamed.
Coins. Cups. Small ingots. A folded chain. Enough bright metal to catch the gray daylight and throw it back into every stunned face around the yard.
Alyson gasped. “Treasure.”
Hob crossed himself. “Saints alive.”
Huck whispered, “That will buy a great many bees.”
“Huck,” Edith said.
“What? It will.”
Walter looked down into the chest and made a small, broken sound that would have been embarrassing if everyone else had not been too stunned to notice.
Amelia stared. Not because she cared overmuch for gold.
In her old life, numbers had lived on screens and in budgets and bank accounts, tidy little columns that behaved until they didn’t.
But here, coin meant roofs repaired before winter.
Seed grain. Paid men. Sound walls. Oxen.
Salt. Wool. Shoes for Wat and Alyson. Time to breathe.
Thomas looked into the chest as if he did not trust it.
The messenger went on. “Sir Aymon also sends his thanks. He said to tell you he has ridden from finer halls with fewer honest men in them.”
Hob’s chest expanded dangerously.
“He said that?” Hob asked.
The messenger’s mouth twitched. “He did.”
Hob nodded as if personally responsible for all honesty south of the Avon.
The messenger continued. “And he said Friar Huck’s mead is to blame if he sings poorly upon the road.”
Huck beamed. “Praise comes in many forms.”
Thomas looked from the letter to the chest, then to the people gathered in the yard. His people. Wet-eyed, hollow-cheeked in places, half-starved by worry and winter before it had even arrived. People who had followed him when he had not known how to lead anything but men into battle.
His hand found Amelia’s.
“This was not mine alone,” Thomas said.
Walter made a faint sound of protest at the legal imprecision.
Thomas ignored him.
“Ashcombe stands because all of you held it. Because you harvested when your backs were breaking. Because you kept accounts, mended roofs, guarded gates, fed children, buried the dead, and rose the next morning to do the next necessary thing.”
His voice roughened.
“And because my betrothed saw what I could not.”
Amelia’s breath caught.
Thomas turned, and in front of everyone, lifted her hand.
“You did it,” she whispered.
His mouth brushed her hair. “We did.”
“No. You saved Sir Aymon. You chose another way. You saved Ashcombe.”
His arms tightened. “You showed me there was another way to choose.”
She drew back enough to look at him.
Thomas’s face was solemn, but there was light in his eyes now. Real light. No sapphire. No storm. Just the impossible brightness of a man who had been handed back his home and had finally let himself believe he might keep it and the woman standing in it.
“Lord Ashcombe,” she said softly, “you’re smiling.”
His brow lowered. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“How unfortunate.”
“Devastating, actually.”
He bent his head and kissed her.
It was not the wild kiss in the tower after the portal closed. Not the kiss that had tasted of storm, fear, and seven hundred years tearing itself apart.
This was different.
This was a kiss in daylight, with cheering around them, with Ashcombe safe beneath their feet, with the future no longer a blade at their throats.
His mouth was warm and sure, still careful enough for the children and the friar, but only just. Amelia’s fingers curled into his tunic. The yard roared louder.
Alyson shouted, “Again!”
“Hush,” Edith said, but she was laughing.
Thomas lifted his head, his forehead resting briefly against Amelia’s.
Behind them, Walter rose unsteadily, one hand still clutching the pardon.
“There will need to be copies. Several copies. The coffer must be secured. The chest inventoried. Witnesses gathered. The language concerning heirs is of considerable importance.”
“Walter,” Edith said.
“What?”
“Let them breathe.”
He looked offended. “Breathing has never required neglecting documentation.”
The messenger laughed and that seemed to give everyone permission to be ridiculous.
The chest was carried into the hall with the reverence usually reserved for relics and pies.
Walter walked beside it muttering about counts, seals, storage, and armed watch.
Hob assigned two men to guard it and then stood too close himself, as if the chest might grow legs and stroll off to Belmaine’s house.
Huck suggested a blessing and a feast in the same sentence, which proved again that he understood efficient ministry.
Edith took command. Within moments, the household moved like a kicked anthill.
Bread appeared. Cheese. Apples. Onions. Ale.
The last of the good smoked ham Edith had claimed did not exist. Someone found the dried cherries.
Someone else found a second jug of mead Huck insisted had been waiting for an occasion of “appropriate spiritual magnitude.” The rushes were changed. Candles lit. Tables dragged into place.
Ashcombe did not prepare a feast. Ashcombe exploded into one. By late afternoon, the hall glowed.
Smoke curled beneath the rafters. Dogs skulked hopefully under the tables.
Someone struck up a song, then another. The hall filled with voices, laughter, cups striking wood, children darting where they’d been told not to dart, and the rich, bodily relief of people who had lived long enough to celebrate.
Amelia sat beside Thomas at the high table. Beside her betrothed. The thought fluttered every time she touched it.
Thomas Ashcombe, who had looked like a wall with a sword the first day she met him, now sat with one hand resting openly over hers on the bench between them.
He still looked formidable. The blue tunic did nothing to soften the width of his shoulders, the scar at his jaw, or the pale watchfulness of his eyes.
But there was something new in him, a looseness, a warmth that surfaced whenever Alyson climbed halfway over Hob to demand more honeyed apples or Walter accidentally complimented Amelia and looked personally betrayed by his own tongue.
“You look happy,” Amelia said softly.
Thomas looked down at their joined hands. “I am.”
He leaned close enough that the warmth of him brushed her shoulder. “I find myself thinking about how a man survives wanting his betrothed during a feast.”
Heat rushed up Amelia’s neck.
Hob, unfortunately seated near enough to hear with the ears of a battlefield scout and the morals of a raccoon, grinned into his cup.
Amelia pointed at him. “No.”
“I said nothing.”
“You thought loudly.”
Walter chose that moment to approach with a folded parchment.
“No,” Amelia said.
Walter stopped. “You don’t know what this is.”
“It’s parchment. During a celebration. Therefore no.”
“It concerns the children.”