Epilogue #2
Not proof, exactly. Something older and less interested in being believed.
From outside came a muffled thump. Then Gaz screamed. Not shouted. Screamed.
It was high, pure, and carried through hundreds of years of masonry like a soprano discovering her range.
Bree jumped so hard she nearly dropped the brochure. Linda grabbed her arm. Maureen, the guide, froze with one hand lifted toward the effigy.
Deck’s voice came from the passage. “Gaz?”
“A rat!” Gaz shrieked from the tower. “There was a rat the size of a raccoon!”
Deck appeared in the chapel doorway, rain on his dark hair, mouth pressed flat in heroic restraint. “It was not the size of a raccoon.”
“It had shoulders!”
“I don’t think rats have shoulders.”
“This one did! It looked at me like it knew things!”
Bree said, “I cannot believe Amelia missed this.”
Linda made a sound dangerously close to laughter.
A moment later, Gaz stumbled into view beyond the chapel door, muddy to one knee, cream jumper ruined, hair damp and standing up in blond tufts. He clutched one hand to his chest like a Victorian widow whose smelling salts had failed.
“I found a corner,” he said defensively.
Bree blinked. “You found a corner?”
“I was looking in it.”
“Gaz, the castle is made of corners.”
“I was being thorough.”
“You were screaming at the wildlife.”
Deck leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “He knocked over the sign.”
“It attacked me first.”
“The sign?”
“The rat.”
Maureen, who had clearly worked at Ashcombe long enough to handle Americans, school groups, and footballers with endorsement deals, said gently, “Perhaps we should all remain out of the restricted areas.”
Gaz opened his mouth.
Bree pointed at him. “Do not argue with the lady who knows where the medieval toilets were.”
Gaz closed his mouth.
Maureen blinked once, then continued as if this were a perfectly normal part of her tour.
“As I was saying, the inscription gave us quite a stir. We’d always known there was a Lady Ashcombe, but earlier records were damaged. The cleaning made it legible at last.”
“Is there more?” Bree asked.
“A little. Thomas Ashcombe had been thought unmarried until the records were reexamined. Then we found references to his wife in manor rolls and one chapel record. Amelia, no family name listed. Described only as having come from afar.”
Linda let out a small sound.
“She was involved in the household accounts,” Maureen said, “which was unusual enough to be noted by one rather cranky steward. There are references to improved well practices, linen stores, care of children after the war, and some years later, a famous honey-tithe dispute with the friary that had apparently involved three abbots, two angry reeves, and far too many bees. She was clever, had red hair, was stubborn, and rather particular about clean water.”
Bree laughed through her tears. “That’s her.”
Deck came to stand behind Bree, his hand settling gently at the small of her back. He had learned, during one year of being married to Bree, that sometimes the wisest thing a man could do was provide warmth, vertical stability, and no commentary whatsoever.
Gaz hovered in the doorway, trying to look respectful and brave while keeping one eye on the passage in case the rat returned with reinforcements.
“There’s also the legend of the sword,” Maureen said.
Bree’s shoulders tightened.
“The Ashcombe Sword. It was said to have chosen Thomas Ashcombe after Evesham, then to have vanished from time to time. Local stories claim it returned whenever Ashcombe most needed it. Very romantic nonsense, naturally.”
“Sure,” Bree said faintly. “Naturally.”
“The old plaque in the tower says the lord who carried it could not be parted from what he loved.”
Linda closed her eyes.
Bree wiped her face with a ruined tissue, which was no longer a tissue so much as damp confetti. “Do you have another one?”
Linda reached into her purse and produced a packet.
Bree stared at it.
“What?” Linda said.
“That was very Amelia of you.”
Linda almost smiled. “She trained us well.”
They stood there while tourists came and went in soft waves. Footsteps whispered over stone. Rain blurred the chapel windows until the outside world became a watercolor of grey and green.
Bree read the inscription again and again until the words sank beneath the shock.
Beloved wife.
Not lost, then. Not vanished into nothing.
Amelia had landed somewhere. Somewhen. She had eaten, argued, organized, loved, probably bossed everyone within reach, and somehow convinced the Middle Ages to wash its hands more often. She had not simply disappeared from Bree’s life. She had entered another one.
Linda reached for Bree’s hand.
“She was happy,” Bree said.
Linda looked at the stone lord beside Amelia. “I think so.”
“He looks grumpy,” Bree said, wiping her cheeks. “Amelia was so beautiful that she couldn’t stand guys who fawned all over her. A medieval lord must have been perfect for her.”
Linda made a soft, broken sound that might have been a laugh. “He definitely wouldn’t have fawned.”
“No. He probably brooded. Very intensely. Near a wall.”
“Amelia would’ve made a list of his flaws.”
“Then alphabetized it.”
“And married him anyway,” Linda whispered.
After a while, Maureen returned with a small brochure.
“I thought you might like this,” she said. “It has a photograph of the effigies before the restoration and one of the sword plaque in the tower. The gift shop has proper copies, but this one’s less glossy.”
Linda took it with trembling hands. “Thank you.”
“There’s one more thing.” Maureen hesitated. “You mentioned your daughter’s name was Amelia Quinn.”
Linda squeezed Bree’s hand. “Yes.”
“It may be nothing, but during the restoration they found faint marks around Lady Amelia’s folded hands. Not part of the original carving. Someone scratched them in later, perhaps. We can’t make all of it out.”
Maureen’s voice softened. “But one word is clear.”
Bree’s heart stopped.
“What word?”
“Quinn.”
The chapel tilted as Bree stared at Amelia’s stone hands. Not touching Thomas’s but almost.
And beneath them, hidden for centuries, her name.
Not the name the manor rolls had given her. Not Lady Ashcombe. Her name. Their name. A thread tied across time.
Amelia, you impossible, over-prepared lunatic.
Bree pressed the tissue to her mouth and laughed.
Linda reached out again, stopping just shy of the stone. “I hope you were deliriously happy, my darling.”
Rain tapped softly at the chapel windows. Somewhere beyond the door, Gaz muttered something about medieval rodents having unnatural confidence, and Deck murmured something low in response.
Bree looked at the carved lady beside her lord. Amelia’s stone face was worn soft by centuries, but that little tilt remained at her mouth, as if she knew something no one else in the room had quite managed to figure out yet.
Had she been afraid?
Had she missed them?
Maybe she’d stood beneath these same stones in another life, with her hair down her back and a grumpy medieval lord beside her, and thought of Bree and her mother every time thunder rolled over Ashcombe.
Bree hoped so. No, she believed so.
Because Amelia had not vanished into nothing. She had fallen through time and become beloved there. Somehow, she had left her name beneath her hands for the people who loved her to find.
Bree wiped her cheeks, took Linda’s hand, and let herself breathe.
For the first time in a year, the hurt didn’t feel like an endless room with no doors.
“Goodbye, Amelia,” she whispered. “You better have made him work for your love.”
Beside her, Linda laughed. A small laugh, a bit broken, but real.
Outside, the rain softened over Ashcombe, washing the old stones silver, and somewhere in the ruined tower, the wind moved through the empty place where a sword had once waited.
Not gone.
Not lost.
Only carried home.
* * *
Thank you so much for reading!