Chapter 32
THOMAS
Thomas had let Belmaine leave Ashcombe with Amelia because the law had stood between them like a drawn blade, and because one wrong move would have given the bastard exactly what he wanted.
He had endured it for as long as he could, then Crale’s smug face, the fear in Amelia’s eyes, and Belmaine’s hand closing around her arm had burned through every careful thought he possessed, leaving only one truth behind.
Ashcombe could not be saved by surrendering the woman who had saved it first.
So Thomas rode for Belmaine’s house with murder in his heart and Friar Huck’s honey cake crushed inside his tunic.
The cake had been given to him at the gate, thrust into his hand by the friar with the grave solemnity of a man passing along a holy relic instead of a slightly lopsided lump of flour, honey, spice, and stubborn optimism.
“For the road,” Huck had said.
Thomas had looked at him. Huck had looked back, round face damp beneath his hood, rain shining on his tonsure and beard. “A man rides better with food in him.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re furious. That isn’t the same thing.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Then chew quickly.”
Hob, already mounted beside him, had made a sound that might have been a cough if one were generous and had never met Hob.
Thomas had taken the cake because refusing it would have required speech, and speech was one more thing he had no patience for.
He had tucked it away, gathered Galahad’s reins, and ridden through Ashcombe’s gate before anyone else could try to feed him, bless him, advise him, or tell him what he already knew. He’d let her down.
Amelia was with Belmaine. The thought rode before him, beside him, behind him, inside his ribs where breath ought to have been.
Amelia in Belmaine’s house, with Crale’s false claim wrapped around her throat like a rope.
Amelia with no kin, no standing, no way to make a court believe what she was unless Thomas found a way to tear the lie open before every witness who mattered.
He had sworn to bring her back.
He had also sworn, in the silence of his own soul, that he could not lose Ashcombe to save her unless there was no other way.
That was the sin of it. That thought. That ugly, necessary thought that kept pace with the soldier who wanted only to put steel through Belmaine’s soft, well-fed middle and be done.
A younger Thomas would have cut down every man who kept her from him, taken her up before him, and left judgment to God and their bodies for the crows.
That Thomas had been easier to understand.
This one had widows in his hall, children beneath his roof, fields that would need sowing when spring came, tenants whose lives were tied to Ashcombe’s stones whether they liked it or not.
He could not spend a manor’s future on anger, no matter how clean and satisfying it felt.
The old track unfurled beneath Galahad’s hooves, slick with rain and leaves.
Hedgerows pressed close on either side, blackthorn and hazel clawing at cloak and stirrup.
Beyond them, the fields lay low and wet beneath a pewter sky, the stubble dark with weather, the ditches running brown.
The air smelled of mud, horse sweat, soaked wool, and the faint sour sweetness of apples fallen somewhere nearby and left to rot.
Hob rode at his right, broad shoulders hunched beneath a dark cloak, his beard dripping steadily onto his chest.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” Hob said.
“I’m going to get her.”
“I know.”
“Belmaine will use the law until law fails him, and then he’ll use whatever filth comes next.”
“I know that too.”
Thomas tightened his hand around the reins. Galahad’s ears flicked back, offended by the grip, and Thomas forced his fingers to ease. “There has to be another way.”
Hob glanced at him.
The words had come out without permission, dragged up by the rain and the road and the memory of Amelia standing in the solar with ink on her fingers, finding sense where Thomas had seen only ruin. She would say there was always another angle. Another route. Another list to make.
Saints preserve him, he wished she were here.
“Another way than what?” Hob asked.
“Than Belmaine’s choices.”
Hob spat into the mud. “Belmaine’s choices are a piss-poor set.”
“Aye.”
“Lose Ashcombe, lose the woman, or let him make you dance to his tune.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened. “I don’t dance.”
“I have seen you at Yuletide after Edith’s plum wine. You shuffle rather well.”
Thomas would have laughed on any other day. On this day the sound stuck behind his breastbone, where fear had made itself a nest.
They rode on. Rain ran down Thomas’s neck beneath the edge of his mail coif.
His cloak, good dark wool when they left Ashcombe, had already gone heavy and cold across his shoulders.
Beneath it he wore a plain linen shirt, a padded aketon, mail that needed mending at one sleeve, his sword at his hip, dagger at his belt, and enough fury to warm half the county if fury were as useful as firewood.
The road dipped into a hollow where the trees crowded closer, their branches knitting overhead until the gray day thinned into something almost dusk-like. Galahad slowed before Thomas asked it of him.
The horse’s ears went forward. His neck arched. His breath blew white in the damp air.
Hob saw it too and eased his axe free.
Thomas lifted a hand.
Rain ticked from leaf to leaf. Water moved somewhere to the left, running down a hidden ditch. A crow called once, harsh and annoyed, then flapped from the branches above them with all the moral judgment of Edith discovering boys in her pantry.
Then came the sound. A low groan, almost swallowed by mud and rain. Thomas was out of the saddle before the second one came.
Galahad stamped, but held. Good horse. Better sense than half the men Thomas had commanded and nearly all the lords he had known.
Thomas drew his sword and moved toward the sound, pushing through a screen of bramble and wet hazel. Thorns caught his cloak and tugged, as if the hedgerow itself wished to slow him. He tore free and found the ditch.
At first he saw only mud, dead leaves, and dark water sliding sluggishly between banks. Then the mud moved.
A man lay half in the ditch, one shoulder twisted beneath him, his boots sunk in the muck, his cloak tangled around his bound wrists.
The cloak was fine wool, dark blue beneath the filth, lined with fur now soaked into rat-tailed misery.
His tunic had been good once, cut for a man who served in halls where candles were plentiful and rushes were changed before they stank.
One glove remained on his right hand, the cuff embroidered in silver thread.
The other hand was bare, the fingers blue with cold.
Blood ran from a cut above his brow into one eye. His belt was empty where a sword should have hung.
Thomas crouched. “Can you hear me?”
The man’s lips moved. French came first, slurred and bitter. Then English, pulled through clenched teeth.
“Letters.”
Hob shoved through the brush behind him. “Saints. That’s no hedge-knave.”
“No,” Thomas said.
The man dragged one clear eye open. It was brown, bloodshot, furious, and very much alive. Fury was useful. Fury kept men breathing when sense had already gone to find a warm hearth.
“Name,” Thomas said.
The man swallowed. “Sir Aymon de Sauveterre.”
Hob went still. “Bloody hell.”
Thomas knew the name. Not well, but enough.
He was of the Queen’s household. A knight attached to men and women whose displeasure traveled farther than most armies.
There had been whispers that the queen’s people rode through the shire gathering reports after Evesham, sorting loyalty from treachery with knives made of parchment.
“Sir Aymon de Sauveterre,” Thomas repeated.
“In service,” the man rasped, “to my lady queen.”
Hob looked at Thomas. Thomas looked at the road beyond the hollow, the road that led to Belmaine.
No.
His whole body rejected the delay. He had no time to bind wounds, chase letters, weigh seals, or curry favor with a queen who might or might not remember a muddy road in Worcestershire when Ashcombe stood beneath the axe.
Amelia was waiting. She would be frightened.
Aymon’s bound hands twitched. “Packet. Taken.”
Thomas swore, low and vicious.
Hob leaned over the ditch. “Who took it?”
“Three men. Mayhap four. One with a split ear.” Aymon coughed, grimaced, and spat blood into the mud. “One wore murrey beneath his cloak. Gold stitching. Turned inside out, as if I was blind.”
Belmaine’s colors.
The road narrowed around Thomas until there was only breath, rain, and mud.
Belmaine had not merely forged a husband for Amelia. He had put hands on a queen’s man and meant to make use of whatever he carried. Against Pickering. Against Ashcombe. And against anyone who could be shoved in the proper direction.
“There has to be another way,” Thomas had said.
And here it lay, bleeding in a ditch at his feet.
He hated it, hated that salvation had the timing of a drunk at a church door.
A twig snapped beyond the bend as Thomas rose slowly.
Hob’s grin appeared, unpleasant and brief beneath his rain-dark beard. “Company.”
“Stay with him.”
“Gladly. I’ve always wanted to meet the queen’s kin in a ditch.”
“Try not to charm him.”
“I make no promises.”
Thomas stepped back onto the road as three men came out of the trees near the broken stones of Saint Kenelm’s chapel.
The chapel had been roofless since Thomas was a boy, its low walls hunched among yews and nettles, saints long gone from the empty window spaces and sheep using the nave when weather turned foul.
Today the place looked less holy than watchful.
The first man carried a sword badly. That made him dangerous in the way fools with sharp things were dangerous.
The second had a cudgel and a leather packet shoved beneath one arm.
The third was broad through the shoulders, his left ear split from lobe to crown and healed white against the red of his skin.
They stopped when they saw Thomas in the road.