Chapter 34
THOMAS
By the time they brought Belmaine back to Ashcombe, the rain was coming down in long silver sheets.
It ran from the edge of Thomas’s mail, soaked through the torn place in his sleeve, gathered along his jaw, and dripped from his chin into the mud.
Every inch of him ached from the ride, the fight, the fury he had not spent, and the terror that had only just begun loosening its claws from his ribs.
Galahad moved beneath him with the steady, offended patience of a warhorse who had carried his master through worse.
Amelia rode before him. Not because propriety approved. Propriety could go drown itself in the ditch.
She sat sideways across the saddle, wrapped in his cloak, one hand curled in the wet wool near his wrist and the other tucked against her middle.
Her hair had come loose almost entirely, red curls escaping from beneath her ruined wimple in damp, wild spirals.
The linen had slipped sideways, the pins gone or useless, and one bright curl clung to her throat like a little banner of rebellion.
Mud streaked the hem of her gown. Rain darkened the green wool until it looked nearly black.
A bruise marked one cheek where Belmaine had put his hand on her.
Every time Thomas saw it, something inside him went quiet and dangerous.
He should have killed Belmaine.
Behind them came the prisoners under guard. Belmaine rode with his hands bound before him, his fine cloak dark with rain, his face set in a mask of insulted nobility that fooled no one who had watched that mask crack in the orchard.
Edmund Crale rode between two of Hob’s men, hunched in the saddle and pale as old milk.
Osric had been lashed belly-down over a packhorse for the first mile after trying to spit at Hob.
He had since been permitted to sit upright, though Hob had tied his reins short and kept him near enough to regret breathing too loudly.
Master Pickering rode ahead with Sir Aymon, Walter, and Friar Huck, the escheator’s clerks clustered miserably behind them, trying to shield wax tablets and parchment beneath their cloaks.
The road from Belmaine’s house to Ashcombe had turned to muck.
Hooves sank deep. Cart ruts brimmed with brown water.
The hedges dripped. Somewhere in the distance, the bell at Ashcombe’s chapel tolled Vespers, the sound slow and muffled by rain, as if even God had pulled his cloak up around his ears.
Amelia shifted in front of him. Thomas tightened his arm around her without meaning to. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s not mortally wounded, which feels like an important distinction.”
His jaw flexed. “Do not jest.”
“I’m not jesting. I’m triaging.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“It means organizing the damage so I don’t think about it all at once.”
He had no answer to that as the rain slid down his face.
He wanted to put his mouth against her hair, close his eyes, and breathe until the fact that she was alive settled into his bones.
He wanted to wrap both arms around her and hold on until his heart remembered its proper work.
Instead he kept one hand on the reins, the other around her, and watched the road for trouble, because wanting comfort had never stopped the world from drawing a blade.
Her fingers tightened briefly on his cloak. “I know why you let them take me.”
Thomas stared over Galahad’s ears at the slick brown ribbon of road. “Do you?”
“Because if you’d drawn steel in the yard, Belmaine would’ve had exactly what he wanted. A rebel baron stealing another man’s alleged wife in front of the crown’s clerk.”
“Alleged.”
“That’s the important word.”
“I should’ve found another way before he took you beyond the gate.”
“You did find one.”
“Too late.”
She was silent for several strides. The road dipped, and Galahad picked his way around a place where a shallow stream had crossed the track.
“Thomas.”
He looked down. Her face was tipped up toward him, pale beneath rain and weariness, the bruise a shadow against her skin. Her green eyes clear.
“You don’t get to decide that saving me only counts if you did it before you made a mistake.”
His throat closed.
She turned forward again, as if she had merely commented on the weather.
He wanted to say something worthy of her. What came out was, “I’ll do better.”
It sounded too small, mayhap it was.
But Amelia’s hand moved over his wrist, cold fingers pressing once.
“Good,” she said. “Because I’m not getting kidnapped again.”
Behind them, Friar Huck sneezed so loudly one of the clerks nearly dropped his tablet.
Hob called, “God bless you, friar, though if you shake rain over me again, I’ll feed your horse to the geese.”
“My horse has committed no sin,” Huck said.
“Give him time.”
Ashcombe’s gates appeared through the rain like a thing remembered from a dream.
The old stones rose dark and wet above the road, patched in places where mortar had crumbled and Thomas had forced too few men to do too much work.
Smoke lifted from the kitchen roof and was beaten low by the weather.
Men stood along the wall with cloaks over their heads and bows in their hands.
As the party approached, the gate opened.
The whole yard was waiting. Not in order. Ashcombe had never done order well unless Amelia or Edith bullied it into submission.
People crowded beneath the stable eaves, around the well, under the kitchen overhang, and anywhere else the rain struck less hard.
Edith stood at the front with both hands planted on her hips, her apron soaked, her face worried.
Wat and Alyson stood pressed to her sides, each clutching her skirts.
Mald held a lantern. Perkin had a sprig of rowan tucked into his cap, because apparently fear and habit traveled together.
The reeve stood near Walter’s old table, pulled out under a leather awning as if the entire bailey had become a court and the rain had been invited to give testimony.
When Galahad passed beneath the gate, Alyson broke free.
“Amelia!”
Wat followed with a word Edith would have skinned Hob for teaching him if she hadn’t been too busy running after both children.
Thomas dismounted first and lifted Amelia down. He meant to set her on her feet and let go.
His hands refused. For one heartbeat he simply held her in the rain while Ashcombe watched.
Then Alyson hit Amelia’s skirts like a small, damp arrow and wrapped both arms around her waist. Wat stopped short, his chin wobbling with the effort not to do the same. Amelia reached out with one arm and dragged to her.
“I’m fine,” she said into their wet hair.
“No, you’re not,” Alyson wailed.
“I’m mostly fine.”
“You look awful,” Wat said.
Amelia laughed, the sound catching halfway. “Thank you, sweetheart. That’s exactly the kind of thing a woman loves to hear after an abduction.”
Wat looked alarmed. “I mean in a brave way.”
Hob swung down from his horse. “That’s not better, lad.”
“It isn’t?” Wat asked.
“No.”
“Oh.” He looked up at Amelia. “You look awful in a pretty way?”
Huck crossed himself. “Saints defend us, he’s doomed.”
Edith reached Amelia and touched her face with the back of one hand, gentler than Thomas had ever seen her touch anything except dying men.
“Who struck you?”
“Belmaine.”
Edith turned.
Belmaine, who had just been pulled from his horse by two Ashcombe men, took one look at Edith’s face and stepped backward despite the ropes on his wrists.
Wise man.
Master Pickering raised a hand. “No one is to strike anyone else until I have recorded who has already done so.”
Edith did not look away from Belmaine. “Does stabbing count?”
“Yes,” Pickering said.
“Pity.”
Hob sighed. “I already asked.”
The yard, which had been holding itself too tight, released one ragged breath. Not laughter exactly. Not ease. But enough.
Thomas looked at Pickering. “Where?”
“The hall,” the escheator said. “Dry walls, witnesses, a table, and mayhap something that is not rainwater running down my neck.”
Edith snapped her fingers. “Mald, hot ale. Joan, come with me. Dame Margaret too. You both look like drowned cats.”
Dame Margaret, who had ridden in the rear beside Father Martin, stiffened. Her gown was sodden at the hem, her veil limp, but she still managed to look like a woman accustomed to giving orders, not taking them. “I am not accustomed to being ordered in another house.”
“You are in mine now,” Edith said. “Move.”
Dame Margaret looked at Amelia.
Amelia gave a faint shrug. “It’s easier if you do what she says.”
Joan hurried toward Edith at once.
Dame Margaret lasted three breaths longer, then followed.
The hall received them in heat, smoke, and the smell of wet wool.
The rushes had been swept as well as could be managed, fresh ones laid near the hearth, though every boot and hem dragged in mud enough to make Edith mutter darkly under her breath.
Torches burned along the walls. The trestle tables had been pulled together near the fire.
Walter’s rolls, Father Martin’s wax, the false attestation, several purses, two recovered letters, and three knives taken from Belmaine’s men were laid out with grim care.
It looked less like a court than the aftermath of a market stall being struck by lightning.
Pickering took the center place at the table because men like him always found the center by instinct.
His clerks flanked him, one drying tablets by the fire, one preparing fresh parchment and ink.
Sir Aymon sat to Pickering’s right with a cup of mulled wine and the expression of a man determined not to admit he should have been in bed.
His bandage was fresh, though blood had already seeped through one edge.
Friar Huck hovered near him with honeyed wine and moral disapproval.
“You’ll drink,” Huck said.
“Are all friars so bossy?”
“No. Some are useless.”
Sir Aymon took the cup.