Chapter 34 #2
Thomas stood behind Amelia’s bench because sitting seemed impossible.
Amelia sat with Alyson pressed tight to one side and Wat hovering at the other, pretending not to hover.
Edith had wrapped a dry shawl around her shoulders.
Her wet hair had been loosely braided, but loose curls had already begun escaping around her temples, bright against the bruise on her cheek.
She looked exhausted, pale, and more furious than fragile.
Saints preserve him, he had never loved anything the way he loved the sight of her alive and angry.
Pickering began with the false attestation.
Father Martin spoke first. He told them of Father Odo, dead three years past Martinmas. He described the true parish seal of Saint Alphege’s, the church and fish, and set the old wax fragment beside Belmaine’s paper. Even by torchlight, the difference was plain.
“Wax remembers,” Amelia murmured.
Father Martin’s eyes flicked to her with the faintest smile. “Aye, mistress.”
Walter leaned over the table as if the wax had personally offended him. “The hand is different as well. See the slope? A hurried forgery. The letters swell where a confident clerk would thin them.”
One of Pickering’s clerks looked up, intrigued despite himself.
Walter brightened like a hound catching scent. “And the witness names. Nonsense. One is from a lease twenty years old, copied from the wrong roll. The other is no man at all, but a field boundary.”
“A field boundary?” Amelia said.
Walter sniffed. “A poor one.”
Belmaine stood near the hearth between two guards, wrists bound, shoulders squared. He had regained some color and with it, his arrogance.
“You expect royal officers to accept a steward’s vanity over a sealed attestation?”
Walter turned his head.
Amelia leaned toward Wat. “This is where he starts using words as knives.”
Wat whispered, “Who?”
“Walter.”
“Oh.” Wat relaxed. “Good.”
Walter picked up the false document between two fingers as if it smelled.
“I expect royal officers to see that a man who cannot tell a witness from a ditch has committed fraud poorly.”
Hob made a choking sound.
Pickering’s mouth twitched once, then vanished back into severity.
“Enough. The document is suspect. Continue.”
Next came Dame Margaret.
She stood straight, chin lifted, keys at her belt glinting in the firelight.
She gave no drama. That made her worse for Belmaine.
She told the room that Crale had been brought to Belmaine’s house two days prior, that Sir Roger had instructed servants to call him Master Crale and no other name, that a horse had been prepared for Amelia before Belmaine rode to Ashcombe, and that no man in the house had spoken of a grieving husband until Belmaine taught them the story.
Belmaine’s face tightened.
“Margaret,” he said softly, the way a man might call a dog back before it reached the road.
She did not look at him.
“You will remember,” he said, “who protects your dower lands.”
Dame Margaret’s hands folded before her. “Aye. I remember all the things men hold over women because they lack better claims to loyalty.”
The hall breathed in.
Pickering turned to his clerk. “Write that.”
The clerk wrote as if his quill had caught fire.
Joan came next, trembling hard enough that Dame Margaret stood directly behind her with one hand on her shoulder.
The girl spoke of overheard orders, of Belmaine saying Amelia must be moved before dawn, of Father Martin being instructed to counsel her and record obedience, of Crale entering Amelia’s chamber despite being told not to, and of Osric talking of murder.
“She threw ale at him,” Joan added, then clapped both hands over her mouth.
Pickering looked at Amelia.
Amelia lifted one shoulder. “He looked thirsty after his fraud.”
Alyson giggled into the shawl.
Thomas stared at the rafters and silently asked the saints for endurance.
Pickering rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Write the ale, but not the fraud.”
The clerk hesitated.
“Actually,” Pickering said, “write the fraud.”
Crale began to sweat.
Thomas watched him from across the hall.
The man had been placed on a stool near the lower table, with Hob behind him and two guards near the door.
Hob had not touched him since they entered.
He did not need to. He stood there broad and silent, hands resting on his belt, smiling now and again as if imagining several possible futures for Crale and liking them all.
Pickering turned to Crale at last.
“Edmund Crale of Alcester.”
Crale flinched at the sound of his own name spoken properly. “My lord, I was misled.”
“No one has asked you anything yet.”
“I know, but I thought to begin there.”
Huck muttered, “A conscience trying to flee before the door opens.”
Pickering ignored him. “Are you married to Mistress Amelia?”
Crale looked at Belmaine.
Thomas’s hand closed around the back of Amelia’s bench.
Pickering saw the glance. So did everyone else.
“Answer me,” Pickering said.
Crale swallowed. “I was told there would be no harm in it.”
The hall erupted.
Alyson shouted, “Liar!”
Wat shouted something worse.
Edith said, “Wat.”
“He is!”
“I meant mind the cursing in front of the friar.”
Huck waved one hand. “I’ve heard worse.”
“Hush,” Pickering said, and remarkably, everyone did.
Crale’s face had gone shiny with sweat.
“I owed money. To men in Worcester. Bad men. Sir Roger’s man paid the debt. Said I need only claim a woman who had no kin. Said it would never come before a proper court.”
Belmaine’s voice cracked like ice. “You miserable cur.”
Crale lurched to his feet. Hob put one hand on his shoulder and returned him to the stool with gentle violence.
Crale’s words began tumbling now, each one clawing over the next to escape.
“He gave me her name, the color of her hair, the tale of a runaway wife. Said Ashcombe kept her unlawfully. I didn’t write the paper, I can’t read nor write. I didn’t know the priest was dead. I never touched her save when told to take her from the yard.”
“You entered her chamber,” Dame Margaret said coldly.
Crale’s mouth opened.
Amelia held up one finger. “Careful. The ale remembers too.”
That broke something. Hob laughed once. Huck snorted into his cup. One of Pickering’s clerks made a sound and buried his face in the parchment. Even Sir Aymon smiled.
Crale slumped. “Aye. I entered. I meant to frighten her, but that’s all.”
Thomas pushed away from the bench. Amelia’s hand caught his sleeve without looking back.
Thomas stopped, not because the rage had lessened, but because she wished him to.
Pickering looked from Thomas to Amelia’s hand and back again.
“Crale, you will give names. The man who paid you. The inn where you met. The witnesses who never witnessed. Every coin.”
Crale nodded quickly. “Aye. Aye, I will.”
Belmaine laughed then.
“You think this over? A debtor’s confession? A steward’s quibbles? Women chattering about corridors?”
Sir Aymon set down his cup.
Until that moment, his part in the proceedings had been mostly silence. He had sat pale and composed, one hand over his bandaged side, watching with the court-trained patience of a man who had learned that power often preferred to arrive after lesser men had exhausted themselves. Now he stood.
Thomas moved at once. “You should sit.”
“And miss the pleasure? Never.”
Huck sighed. “Nobles are impossible patients.”
Sir Aymon ignored him and faced Pickering. “Master Pickering, I was set upon on the old road near Saint Kenelm’s chapel while carrying letters from the queen’s household.”
The hall went quiet. Royal letters had their own gravity. Men who would argue about stolen grain or forged seals lowered their voices when the queen’s name entered the room.
Sir Aymon continued. “I was beaten, bound, and left for dead. Lord Ashcombe came upon the chapel, fought the men who held me, took two alive, and recovered one packet beneath the broken altar where I had managed to hide it.”
Pickering’s gaze sharpened. “The other letters?”
“Taken. Along with my purse, ring, and a packet bearing Lady Eleanor’s seal.”
“Lady Eleanor?” Walter whispered.
Sir Aymon glanced at Thomas. “The queen’s lady. Her letter named Ashcombe.”
Thomas felt Amelia’s hand tighten on his sleeve.
Pickering’s eyes moved to Belmaine. Belmaine’s face had gone careful. Too careful.
Sir Aymon drew a strip of cloth from inside his tunic, folded around a scrap of murrey wool.
“One of the men wore this beneath a plain cloak. Belmaine’s color. Another had this in his purse.”
He placed a ring on the table.
Belmaine’s signet.