Chapter 27
THOMAS
The mill report lied. Col and Hob had said the wheel was sound, and Thomas had believed them, because Col and Hob were competent men who had never lied to him in their lives.
But Col and Hob had examined the wheel, not the sluice. And the sluice was the problem.
Thomas discovered this at dawn when the miller’s boy came pounding through the gate with mud to his knees, leaves in his hair, and the expression of a child who’d been sent to deliver bad news.
The sluice gate had slipped in the night. Half the millpond had poured itself into the lower meadow, the wheel wouldn’t turn properly, and the mill couldn’t grind.
He’d been standing near the stable with one hand on Cygnet’s neck and his mind somewhere along the Worcester road when the boy arrived.
Amelia heard the commotion and came outside wrapped in her cloak, the hood fallen back from her face, her hair pinned up thoroughly, not a curl escaping anywhere. It gave her a severe look that didn’t suit her at all.
She took one look at the miller’s boy and said, “Is it the sluice?”
The boy blinked, still bent over with both hands braced on his knees. “Aye, mistress.”
“I thought it might be,” she said. “I looked at the channel ledger two days ago, and the gate’s been running shallow on the south side since August.”
Thomas turned his head.
“What? Walter told me all about mills.” She looked back at him with a calm that suggested she had not just explained his own mill to him before dawn.
“The channel ledger,” he repeated.
She waved a hand in the air. “It’s in the mill room. Right of the door. Small leather thing with the red tie.”
He was quite certain he’d never looked at anything in the mill room to the right of the door. He had, apparently, been trusting in the ancient masculine hope that mills worked because men with flour on their beards said they did.
“Come, then,” he said.
Amelia lifted both brows. “Was that an invitation or an order?”
“A summons.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It’s more efficient.”
“It’s certainly bossier.”
“It’s barely dawn,” Thomas said. “My supply of grace is low.”
“Your supply of grace has never been what one would call abundant.”
Cygnet snorted.
Amelia pointed at the horse. “See? She agrees with me.”
“She’s hungry.”
“That is how most rebellions begin.”
Despite himself, Thomas almost smiled.
Then the miller’s boy groaned softly and reminded them all that the lower meadow was flooding.
They set out at once. The mill sat at the bend of the Avon a quarter-mile south of the village, where the river curved close beneath a stand of willows and the current ran quick and cold over the stones.
The building itself was sound, with low stone walls, a patched but sturdy thatch roof, flour dust in the cracks of the door, and the great wheel hunched at its side like an old beast settling in for winter.
Fog sat low in the valley, pale and stubborn, softening the fields until the hedgerows became dark smudges and the river appeared and vanished by turns.
The sluice was worse than reported.
Thomas crouched by the gate and looked. The timber had split along a joint, subtly enough that the first glance missed it.
A thread of separation followed the grain, barely wider than a knife cut.
Under repeated pressure, it had worked open until the gate couldn’t seal.
Simple. Fixable. Three hours of work with dry timber, proper wedges, and patience.
Patience was unfortunate. Thomas had spent his in the night and had yet to find where it had gone.
“I can hold the far post if you wedge from this side,” Amelia said.
“You do not need to.”
“You need two sets of hands.”
She was already kneeling beside the channel, cloak tucked up out of the worst of the mud with brisk practicality, her brown wool gown dark at the hem. The morning mist clung to the little wisps of hair at her temple. A sensible woman would have stayed in the hall where it was warm.
“It’s dirty work,” he said.
She looked down at the churned bank, the wet boards, and the water going where it should not. “Yes, thank you, I had gathered that from the dirt.”
“You’ll ruin your gown.”
“This gown has survived smoke, geese, turnip duty, and Alyson with honey on both hands. I think it’s already made peace with its fate.”
“It’s cold.”
She scowled at him, crossing her arms. “I noticed.”
“You could wait in the mill.”
“I could also learn to embroider swans and speak politely about sheep. Neither seems likely.” She held out one hand. “Tell me where to brace.”
Thomas considered ordering her back. He also considered the long history of his success in ordering Amelia anywhere she hadn’t already decided to go.
“Here.”
She settled at once, hands firm around the damp wood, one knee in the mud, the other foot planted hard against the stone. “Like this?”
“Aye. Hold steady when I drive the wedge.”
“I’m an excellent holder of things.”
“I have noticed.”
She glanced at him. “Have you?”
The question was light. The air was not.
Thomas looked down at the wedge in his hand. It was a perfectly ordinary piece of wood, which was more than could be said for anything happening inside his chest.
“The post,” he said.
“Of course,” Amelia said. “The post.”
The miller, Godwin, joined them once he had roused himself from the mill room with a lantern, a mallet, and a wool cap pulled down to his bushy brows.
He was a compact man of fifty with a beard gone white from both age and occupation, and he greeted the broken sluice with language that would have made Edith raise one interested eyebrow.
“God’s teeth and the devil’s own backside,” Godwin snarled, peering into the split timber. “Who set this peg? A blind goat with palsy?”
Amelia’s head came up.
Godwin froze, then cleared his throat so hard Thomas thought he might shake flour from his lungs. “Beg pardon, mistress.”
“I’ve heard much worse,” Amelia said, grin tugging at her mouth. “But that one had style.”
Godwin looked horrified.
Thomas didn’t tell him she’d also said worse, mostly under her breath and usually at Walter.
Godwin crouched and jabbed one thick finger toward the damaged board. “Christ’s bones, see there. The grain’s opened like an old widow’s purse, and the south cheek’s dropped half a finger.”
Amelia leaned closer. “That is…very specific.”
“Aye, and very ill-behaved.” Godwin reached for the mallet. “By Saint Dunstan’s tongs, I told Col last winter this gate had a wicked look to it.”
“Timber can have a wicked look?” Amelia asked.
“Everything can have a wicked look if it means to cost a man sleep.”
Thomas glanced at her. “There. You’ve found kin.”
Her mouth twitched. “I do admire a man with standards.”
Godwin, having decided that either Amelia was not offended or that offense was less urgent than the mill trying to drown his meadow, planted his boots and spat into the mud.
“Devil gnaw that peg. Hold it there, mistress, if you please. Nay, not there, unless you mean to lose a finger and gift it to the Avon.”
Amelia moved her hand immediately. “Good to know.”
Thomas’s gaze dropped to her fingers before he could stop it.
Small hands. Clever hands. Hands that had reordered his accounts, soothed Alyson’s tears, dragged Ashcombe closer to survival one day at a time.
He shouldn’t have noticed the pale crescent moons at the base of her nails, or the mud caught beneath one cuff, or the way cold had pinked the end of her nose.
He noticed everything.
They worked through the morning. It was the sort of labor Thomas understood.
Direct. Honest. Timber, water, pressure, leverage.
Things that could be seen, braced, wedged, struck.
He liked problems that were simple. A split board did not smile across a hall and call itself neighbor.
A sluice did not watch from the ridge in murrey and gold.
A mill gate did not make an offer of marriage with rot hidden inside it.
He wedged while Godwin hammered and Amelia held.
It turned out she was good at holding. Not stubborn merely, though she had that in quantities that ought to have been taxed.
She had a way of giving her whole attention to a task.
He’d seen it in the accounts room, in harvest fields, in the hall when Alyson asked questions no one had the patience left to answer.
Now she stood ankle-deep in mud on the bank of the Avon, cloak pinned back, cheeks pink with cold, fingers whitening around the timber, and held exactly where he told her to hold.
She watched and was quiet while he worked.
He was irrationally grateful for that. Then, when he needed a sliver more room, she gave it without being asked.
When the post shifted, she leaned her weight and steadied it.
When Godwin cursed again, this time something about the “pox-ridden hinge and the mother who birthed it,” she said, “That was a new one,” with such thoughtful appreciation that the miller nearly dropped the mallet.
“Do not remember that one,” Thomas said.
“I’ll remember whatever I like.”
“You’ll give Edith ideas.”
“Edith already has ideas.”
Godwin crossed himself. “Aye, my lord. That she does.”
By the time the fog began to lift, the new wedge had seated cleanly, the split joint had been drawn tight, and the gate held.
Godwin went inside to start the wheel.
For a moment there was nothing but the river, the drip of water from the sluice, the creak of damp wood, and Amelia breathing beside him as she stood at the bank’s edge, watching the wheel.
Mud streaked her cloak. A smear of green river weed clung to one sleeve where she had caught herself on the bank.
One curl had escaped at last, a bright, unruly coil slipping free near her cheek, damp from the mist and shining like it had trapped a stray thread of sunrise.