Chapter 33
AMELIA
The orchard beyond the chapel house lay in a cold tangle of wet grass, black branches, and apples gone soft with rot beneath their feet, the whole place smelling of mud, bruised fruit, and the sort of bad decisions men made when they thought no one would live long enough to contradict them.
Rain sifted down in a fine, needling mist, silvering the air and slicking Amelia’s hair where it had come loose from the wimple.
The linen hung askew now, more strangled laundry than respectable head covering, and several damp red curls had escaped down her neck as if they too had decided the whole medieval modesty situation was not worth the bother.
Her cheek throbbed where Belmaine had struck her.
Mud clung to the hem of her gown and sucked at her shoes with every step.
The broken pottery shard pressed against the inside of her wrist, and the lump of wax Father Martin had given her sat tucked in her other sleeve like a tiny red heart, fragile and absurdly important.
Osric had one hand clamped around her arm.
The red-faced man walked on her other side with his cudgel drawn.
Belmaine followed a few paces behind, his fine cloak catching on wet brambles and his temper showing in the hard rhythm of his tread.
From the front of the manor came shouting. Then steel rang against steel, bright and vicious through the wet air.
Thomas.
The sound pulled through Amelia’s chest like a rope.
Osric jerked her forward hard enough to make her stumble. “Walk.”
“I am walking, you overgrown ham.”
He shook her once. “Quiet.”
“People keep trying that. It never takes.”
They reached the low orchard wall, mossy and slick with rain.
Beyond it lay a narrow cart track churned with wheel ruts, then open meadow sloping toward a stand of ash trees whose bare branches clawed at the mist. A rider could vanish there quickly.
A body could vanish there too, if no one knew where to look and the man doing the killing had enough money to make everyone else suddenly remember urgent business elsewhere.
Absolutely not.
Something inside Amelia went very calm.
Not peaceful. Not brave in any storybook way.
Osric was stronger. He expected her to pull away, to dig in her heels, to claw at his hand and make herself easy to drag.
So she didn’t. Instead, she stepped closer.
He frowned, thrown off balance by obedience arriving late and wearing a suspicious little hat.
“Now,” he said, “that’s better.”
“That’s one interpretation.”
Amelia dropped her weight, twisted toward him, and drove the point of her elbow into the soft place below his ribs, exactly where Hob had once told her men disliked being reminded they possessed insides.
Osric grunted, and his grip loosened. She caught his wrist with both hands, pivoted as hard as her muddy feet would allow, and used every ounce of his forward motion against him. For one glorious, impossible second, Osric flew. Not far, but enough.
He hit the mud flat on his back with a wet, breathless sound that would’ve made Edith drop a pie, swear, and ask Amelia to do it again so she might enjoy it properly.
The red-faced man stared.
Amelia stared too, because honestly, the class had been six years ago in a fluorescent-lit gym next to a nail salon, and she’d been half convinced the instructor had let her win.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “It worked.”
Osric wheezed in the mud like a bellows with hurt feelings.
The red-faced man lunged. Amelia yanked the pottery shard from her sleeve and slashed at his hand. He cursed and jerked back, more startled than wounded, which was fine because startled was still better than grabbing.
She snatched the nearest thing she could find, a fallen apple branch half-buried in wet leaves, and swung with all the dignity of a woman batting a raccoon away from a garbage can.
The branch cracked against his shoulder and broke in half.
He looked at the sad stick left in her hand.
She looked at it too.
“Well,” she said, “that was disappointing.”
His face went ugly, and he came for her again.
Then hooves thundered through the orchard gap.
Galahad burst through the rain, grey hide dark with wet, white blaze sharp as lightning against the gloom.
Thomas rode low in the saddle, sword already drawn, cloak streaming black behind him, his mail soaked beneath his surcoat and his face set in a fury so cold it seemed to burn the mist from the air.
He looked larger than life and far too real, all scarred jaw, dark hair plastered to his brow, hard hands on the reins, and murder held in check by the thinnest thread of discipline.
Behind him came Hob, broad and grim on a bay horse with an axe in his hand, and two Ashcombe men whose shoulders carried the sort of intent that did not require translation in any century.
Thomas didn’t slow.
The red-faced man turned, perhaps deciding a hostage was safer than a fight.
Bad decision. Amelia lifted her half-branch again because apparently optimism had survived the day.
He grabbed for her. Then Thomas was there.
He came off Galahad before the horse had fully stopped, boots hitting the mud with a hard splash, sword flashing in the rain.
The red-faced man barely had time to raise his cudgel before Thomas struck it aside, drove his shoulder into the man’s chest, and sent him staggering back.
A second blow turned the cudgel from threat into firewood.
The third put the man face-first into the mud with the finality of a door being barred for the night.
Hob arrived laughing, which was somehow comforting and deeply alarming. He caught Osric by the back of his tunic just as the man tried to crawl away and planted one muddy boot between his shoulder blades.
“Going somewhere?”
Osric groaned.
“Didn’t think so.”
Belmaine froze near the orchard wall, his hand half-lifted as if he’d meant to give an order and had belatedly noticed the day had stopped taking requests.
Thomas turned toward Amelia and for one breath, the whole world narrowed to him.
Rain ran down his face. His dark hair clung to his brow, his scar stood pale along his jaw, and water dripped from the edge of his mail in little silver threads.
His chest rose hard beneath the soaked surcoat, and he looked like the answer to every foolish prayer she had refused to say because sensible women did not put hope in storms, swords, or battle-scarred lords with a talent for arriving late and looking devastating while doing it.
His gaze took her in. The loose hair. The torn wimple. The mud up her skirts. The pottery shard in her hand. Osric flat on his back. The red mark Belmaine’s hand had left across her cheek.
His face changed, lit with a terrible, bright wonder, as if she had cracked the world open and something holy had climbed out in muddy shoes, damp linen, and a temper.
Then his gaze found her cheek and the wonder vanished.
“Who struck you?”
Amelia swallowed. “Thomas.”
“Who?”
Belmaine moved. Thomas’s sword came up without him even looking away from Amelia. “Do not.”
Belmaine stopped.
“Who?” Thomas repeated, and there was no thunder in his voice, which made it worse. Thunder spent itself. This was iron.
“Belmaine.”
Thomas turned then.
She had seen him angry, annoyed, grim, battle-worn, protective, jealous, and quiet in ways that hurt more than shouting. She had watched him in the lists, in the hall, in the yard with Galahad, in the chapel shadow when grief sat on his shoulders like another cloak.
She had never seen him like this. This was the warrior from Evesham, the one stories tried to soften because people preferred their heroes polished after the blood dried. This Thomas didn’t rage or bluster. He simply looked at Belmaine as if deciding where the man would fall.
Belmaine’s voice shook only a little. “You have attacked my men on my land.”
“You struck her.”
“She is a runaway wife being restored to lawful order.”
“She threw your man into the mud,” Hob said cheerfully.
Amelia lifted one hand. “For the record, one was inside on stone. I don’t want my work misrepresented.”
Hob looked delighted. “One on stone too?”
“Collapsed in a heap at his feet.”
“Saints preserve us.”
Thomas glanced down at her.
Even with everything, the corner of his mouth twitched. That tiny twitch nearly broke her.
Belmaine’s face darkened. “This is absurd.”
“No,” Thomas said. “This is finished.”
“By what authority?”
Thomas stepped between Belmaine and Amelia, but not so far that she couldn’t see the line of his shoulder, the white grip of his hand around the sword, the way his whole body had become a shield. The rain softened around them, a hush of mist and dripping branches, while the orchard held its breath.
Near the chapel house door, Dame Margaret stood with Joan half-hidden behind her and Father Martin at her side. All three had followed. All three had seen too much for Belmaine’s comfort.
Good. Let the whole house watch.
Thomas lifted his sword, not to Belmaine’s throat, but near enough that the meaning needed no translation.
“By mine.”
“You have no authority over another man’s wife.”
“She is not his wife.”
“You cannot know that.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened. “I know her.”
Belmaine gave a thin, cruel smile. “How touching. The king’s men may enjoy that admission.”
Father Martin stepped forward as every face turned toward him.
The priest looked pale in the rain, his plain dark robe damp at the shoulders and his tonsured head shining with mist, but his ink-stained hands were steady and his voice carried clear as a chapel bell.
“The attestation is false.”
Belmaine turned purple.
Father Martin lifted one hand. “Father Odo of Saint Alphege’s has been dead these three years. The seal is false, the hand is not his, and the witness names are not men of that parish.”
“That is a grave accusation,” Belmaine said.
“Aye,” Father Martin said. “I make it gravely.”