Chapter 32 #2
One heartbeat. Two. The man with the packet smiled.
“Ride on, friend.”
Thomas said nothing.
The smile faltered.
The split-eared man narrowed his eyes. “Ashcombe.”
There it was. Recognition. Not surprise. They had known whose road this was, whose ruin might be blamed, whose neck might fit the noose if a queen’s man died in a ditch near land held by a former Montfort lord.
Thomas’s rage turned cold. Hot anger was noisy. Cold anger had better aim.
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you,” Thomas said.
The man with the sword glanced at the packet. Fool.
Split-ear spat in the mud. “Road’s closed, my lord.”
Hob stepped out from the hedge behind Thomas, axe in hand, mud to his knees and joyless amusement on his face. “That’s a shame. We were enjoying the mud.”
The swordman shifted. “There’s two of them.”
Hob looked around with exaggerated concern. “Saints, he can count. We’re undone.”
Thomas went for the packet first, because Amelia had taught him, curse her bright clever eyes, that paper could be sharper than steel.
He closed the distance before the swordman finished lifting his blade.
The man’s swing came wide and careless. Thomas turned it aside, stepped inside his reach, and slammed the guard of his sword into the man’s mouth.
Teeth broke. The man dropped with a wet cry.
The packet-man bolted toward the chapel.
Thomas went after him. Mud sucked at his boots.
Rain slicked the stones. The man stumbled over a root, caught himself, and twisted with a knife in hand.
Thomas caught his wrist, turned it hard, and drove him back against the chapel wall.
Old stone bit beneath Thomas’s shoulder. The man’s breath left him in a grunt.
“Where is the rest?” Thomas asked.
The man snarled.
Thomas struck him once in the belly.
The snarl became a wheeze.
Behind them, Hob’s axe rang against steel. Once. Twice. Then came the dull thud of wood against bone, followed by Hob saying, “Lie down, you great turnip,” in the tone of a man correcting a child with jam on his face.
Thomas did not look away from the man pinned beneath his forearm.
“The letters,” he said.
The man’s eyes flicked toward the chapel altar.
“Oh, you daft bastard,” Hob called from the road. “You looked.”
Thomas dragged the man away from the wall, shoved him face-first into the mud, and put a knee in his back. The man cursed, thrashing.
“Bind him,” Thomas said.
Hob lumbered over, breathing hard but looking pleased in the grim way Hob looked pleased when violence had been tidy. “With what? My good humor?”
“The cord from his cloak.”
“Seems a waste of fine cord.”
“It has already tied itself to poor company.”
Hob snorted and bent to the work.
Thomas went into the chapel. The place smelled of wet stone, nettles, old sheep, and the faint, sour ghost of extinguished candles.
Rain fell through the empty roof and pattered against broken flagstones, gathering in shallow pools where leaves had blown in and stuck.
The altar was cracked down the middle, one half tilted lower than the other as if the whole chapel had grown weary and leaned toward the earth.
He found the second packet beneath it, wrapped in oilcloth and shoved deep into a hollow where a desperate man’s bound hands might have hidden it.
When he drew it out, the seal was smeared with rain but unbroken.
The queen’s mark.
Thomas stood in the roofless chapel with rain on his hair, blood on his sleeve, and a royal packet in his hand.
For one breath, he thought of Ashcombe. Not the stones. Not the title. The place.
Edith in the kitchen, threatening lads with ladles and tenderness in equal measure.
Walter bent over the rolls, muttering as if parchment had insulted his lineage.
Wat carrying water with his chin up like a knight before battle.
Alyson licking honey from her thumb when she thought no one watched.
Friar Huck and his bees and his mead and his entirely inappropriate belief that honey cake could mend the world.
And Amelia. With ink on her fingers, mud on her hem, red curls refusing every pin, asking questions no one else thought to ask. Amelia telling him there were always moving pieces, always another way to arrange the chaos if one could only bear to look at all of it at once.
He had looked at Ashcombe and seen a battlefield.
She had looked and seen a life worth saving.
Thomas tucked the packet beneath his cloak and returned to the road.
Sir Aymon had managed to sit up with Hob’s help, though judging by both their faces, neither man had enjoyed the process.
Aymon’s dark hair clung to his brow, and mud streaked one cheek like war paint.
His nose had the straight, proud shape of a man who had been born to be obeyed and had taken the ditch as a personal slight.
“You are Ashcombe,” Aymon said.
“I am.”
Aymon’s gaze moved to the three men bound or groaning in the mud. “The queen was told you were dangerous.”
“She heard correctly.”
“She was also told you might be useful.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Aymon’s mouth curved despite the blood at its corner. “My ribs are inclined to optimism.”
Hob gave him a considering look. “You may live after all.”
“I had intended to.”
“Good. Makes carrying you less troublesome.”
Aymon looked offended. “I can ride.”
Thomas crouched before him. “Can you breathe without bleeding more than you speak?”
“That is an uncharitable question.”
“It is a useful one.”
“Then no,” Aymon admitted, with the air of a man granting a minor diplomatic concession.
Hob grunted. “He’s highborn. They all answer plain questions sideways.”
Thomas pulled the packet from beneath his cloak and held it where Aymon could see.
Relief cut through the man’s battered pride. “Saints.”
“One packet,” Thomas said. “The other?”
The man with the broken mouth groaned from the mud. Hob nudged him with one boot.
Thomas walked over and crouched. The man tried to shrink backward, which was difficult with both wrists bound and half his face swelling.
“The rest,” Thomas said.
The man’s eyes watered. “We gave one on.”
“To whom?”
No answer. Thomas set one hand on the man’s broken wrist. The answer came at once, high and panicked.
“Belmaine’s man. Osric. He said Sir Roger would know how to use it.”
Aymon closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.
“If Sir Roger Belmaine has the other packet, he holds letters naming payments made to men who have been troubling the king’s roads and intercepting royal messages. One letter concerns Pickering. One concerns Ashcombe.”
Thomas looked down at the man in the mud. “Against me?”
“Aye,” the man whimpered. “Against you. Against Pickering. Against anyone Sir Roger needed pushed.”
Thomas stood. There it was. Not rumor. Not suspicion. Proof. Belmaine had not merely tried to take advantage of royal suspicion. He had fed it, bought it, dressed it, and sent it walking through Thomas’s gate in the shape of Edmund Crale.
Thomas looked toward the road. The track bent south through dripping trees, toward Belmaine’s fresh limewash, tidy gate, and whatever room held the woman who had turned his home into something perilously close to hope.
Aymon struggled to rise. “The packet must reach Master Pickering.”
“It will.”
“Now.”