Chapter 17
Seventeen
HARPER
Snow arrived at Thames Castle three days before Christmastide.
Not the violent winter storms that rolled off the river hard enough to rattle shutters and send servants hurrying for more rushes. This snow came quietly, feathering across the battlements at dawn while the castle still slept beneath layers of wool and smoke and war-weariness.
I stood at the narrow window in my chamber watching white gather along the courtyard stones and felt something strange and aching settle inside my chest.
The castle looked beautiful. Not the kind of cinematic grandeur Hollywood loved to paste onto medieval England with soaring music and impossible lighting.
Thames looked real beneath the snow. Smoke curled from chimneys into a pearl-grey sky.
Stable boys stamped through drifts carrying feed.
Someone in the kitchens had already started the morning fires because the scent of baking bread drifted faintly upward through the cold.
Homey.
The realization startled me enough that I stepped back from the window.
Eight months ago I’d had central heating, grocery delivery apps, and a tiny apartment in Boston with a radiator that hissed like an offended cat every November.
Now I was standing barefoot on medieval rushes wondering whether the kitchens had enough cinnamon for Christmas pastries.
Time travel, apparently, destroyed perspective first.
A knock sounded at my door before I could spiral further into existential crisis.
“Enter,” I called.
The maidservant Agnes pushed inside carrying folded wool in her arms. “Lady Harper,” she said, already moving toward the bed.
“The Baron’s lady sister has sent greenery for the hall. She says if the garlands are not hung before sunset the servants will complain all twelve days.”
I blinked. “The servants complain about holiday timing?”
“They complain about everything.” Agnes looked scandalized I’d needed this explained. “That is why God invented holidays. So people may complain festively.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Agnes paused. Over the months her fear of me had faded from outright suspicion into cautious affection. The first week at Thames she’d crossed herself every time I used unfamiliar words. Last week she’d smuggled extra honey cakes into my chamber because she thought I looked tired.
“Your hair is curling again,” she observed critically. “The damp air does it.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“It suits you.”
Agnes gave me the sort of look usually reserved for children and mildly concussed soldiers. “Wear the green wool today,” she ordered. “The one Geoffrey likes.”
Then she exited before I could recover enough dignity to object.
The great hall smelled like pine boughs, beeswax, roasted meat, and woodsmoke by midday.
Someone had woven ivy through the rafters.
Evergreen branches framed the dais while servants hurried back and forth carrying trenchers, candles, winter apples, and enough bread to feed a minor kingdom.
Musicians tuned pipes near the hearth while several children belonging to retainers darted recklessly between tables under increasingly futile adult supervision.
The castle felt alive in a way it hadn’t since before Rochester.
War still hung over everything. Men still carried injuries. Riders still arrived mud-streaked with news from the south. But Christmastide had wrapped itself stubbornly around Thames, warm and golden as candlelight against stone. And somehow, I had become part of it.
“Lady Harper!”
I turned as the steward nearly collided with me while balancing account rolls beneath one arm.
“We require your judgment.”
“That sentence continues alarming me every time someone says it.”
“The grain stores from Reading,” he said urgently. “The Baron says we are to preserve double winter reserve as you advised, but the kitchen insists that amount will spoil before Candlemas.”
Three months ago no one at Thames would have cared what I thought about grain preservation. Now the steward was chasing me across the hall over storage disputes.
I followed him toward the side tables where the Baron stood speaking with Geoffrey and Aldwin over an open account ledger.
The Baron glanced up as I approached. “You were correct about the roads,” he said without preamble.
It took me a second to follow the conversational leap. “The snow?”
“The southern routes became impassable two weeks earlier than expected. Several neighboring holdings failed to stock properly before the freeze.” His mouth flattened slightly. “They are now paying absurd prices for winter grain.”
“But Thames isn’t,” Geoffrey said quietly.
The stores had been Harper’s idea, they all liked to say now.
Not really my idea. Medieval people understood winter perfectly well. I’d simply recognized what prolonged instability and damaged roads would do to supply chains because I came from a century that turned logistics into religion.
“We’ll have enough until spring,” I said.
“More than enough,” the Baron corrected.
Aldwin leaned against the table beside Geoffrey, arms folded. He looked healthier than he had in months. Less exhausted. The scar along his jaw had faded from angry red into pale silver.
“You were right about Beaumont,” he said abruptly.
The hall noise seemed to dim slightly around us. A month earlier Beaumont had ridden north with several men seeking to join a border campaign.
Aldwin had intended to go with them.
I had asked him not to. Not prophecy. Not certainty. Just instinct shaped from remembered history and political patterns and one deeply unpleasant feeling I couldn’t explain.
Three weeks later Beaumont’s company had been ambushed crossing frozen ground near Durham. Very few survived.
“I was lucky,” Aldwin said.
“No,” the Baron said quietly. “You listened.”
A strange silence settled briefly over the table.
Then Geoffrey rescued us all by saying, “Harper also prevented the kitchens from poisoning half the household with spoiled fish last month.”
“I did not prevent poisoning,” I protested.
“You identified rotten barrels before anyone else.”
“Because they smelled like death.”
“The cook remains convinced this is supernatural.”
“I remain convinced your cook should stop storing fish beside the heating stones.”
The Baron made a rough sound suspiciously close to laughter before catching himself.
That startled me more than the snow had.
* * *
By evening the hall glowed gold beneath hundreds of candles.
Music filled the air. Servants carried platters of roast boar glazed in honey and mustard alongside trenchers piled high with winter vegetables, fresh bread, stewed apples, and thick slices of cheese. Someone passed cups of mulled wine heavy with cloves and cinnamon.
Cinnamon. The scent alone nearly wrecked me.
Because suddenly I remembered Christmases in Boston.
Storefront windows glowing against the snow.
Crowded cafés. My mother humming along to old Bing Crosby songs while burning gingerbread because she always forgot the timer.
For one sharp heartbeat the homesickness hit hard enough to steal my breath.
Geoffrey noticed immediately. He leaned slightly closer beside me at the high table. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” I smiled too quickly. “Just… Christmas.”
He studied me carefully. “You miss your home.”
The hall blurred slightly around the edges.
“Yes,” I admitted softly.
He was quiet a moment. Then, without drawing attention to it, he shifted his hand beneath the table until his fingers brushed lightly against mine.
Warm.
Steady.
My heart did something deeply unhelpful inside my chest.
Across the hall several servants had begun singing while children chased one another around the hearth with evergreen branches like tiny festive barbarians.
Aldwin lost an argument with a seven-year-old over a honey cake. The Baron pretended not to notice and quietly slid the child a second one.
I stared at the scene before me. At the candles glowing against stone walls, and at Geoffrey beside me. At the sound of laughter echoing through Thames Castle despite war, winter, and uncertainty.
And for the first time since arriving in 1215, I realized something terrifying.
If the psalter decided to call me home tomorrow…
Leaving would break my heart.
* * *
Later that night snow fell harder beyond the battlements.
Most of the hall had drifted toward sleep, musicians half-dozing near the fire while servants cleared trenchers and empty cups.
I stood alone near the great hearth warming my hands when Geoffrey appeared beside me carrying two cups of mulled wine.
“You disappeared,” he said.
“I was helping Agnes rescue an overcooked pie from becoming a tragedy.”
“A noble service.”
“I like her,” I admitted. “Even though she still thinks my old clothes are cursed.”
Geoffrey smiled.
The firelight caught the gold in his dark hair while snow moved softly beyond the narrow windows.
“You belong here now,” he said quietly.
The words landed somewhere dangerously deep inside me.
I looked up at him slowly. “Do I?”
“Yes.”
The hall behind us glowed warm as midsummer despite the snow outside. Evergreen garlands hung from the beams. Beeswax candles flickered against ancient stone. Somewhere in the kitchens someone laughed loudly enough to scandalize half the saints painted in the chapel.
And standing there beside Geoffrey, wrapped in warmth and candlelight and the impossible ache of belonging, I realized the most dangerous thing of all.
A part of me had already chosen.