Chapter 35
THOMAS
Belmaine’s hand twitched toward his own belt, where the matching seal had hung before the orchard.
Sir Aymon smiled faintly. “A careless habit.”
Belmaine’s voice went hoarse. “My ring was stolen.”
“From you?” Pickering asked.
“Aye.”
“Reported?”
Belmaine said nothing.
Walter pounced. “I have no note of such report made to the hundred court, nor to Master Pickering’s clerk, nor to any neighboring steward.”
“You would not,” Belmaine snapped. “You are not my steward.”
Walter drew himself up. “I thank God daily.”
Amelia murmured, “Honestly, same.”
Thomas looked down at her. She gave him a look that said what, this is tense and I’m helping.
He nearly smiled.
Pickering tapped the ring with one finger. “The captured men?”
Hob stepped forward. “Held in the stable. One with a split lip, one with a conscience that leaks when poked.”
Pickering looked pained. “Have they spoken?”
“They spoke before you arrived and after I looked at them.”
“Hob,” Thomas said.
“What? I looked.”
Sir Aymon lifted a hand.
“They named Sir Roger’s steward and one of his men. They were to take letters, purse, and ring, then leave me where I would not be found.”
“Lies,” Belmaine said.
Father Martin closed his eyes. “God forgive you, Roger.”
Belmaine rounded on him. “You dare?”
“Aye,” Father Martin said, and his voice shook but held. “At last.”
Pickering turned to his clerks. “Write all.”
The first clerk was already writing as if chased by demons.
Thomas stood very still. If he moved, he would kill Belmaine. The desire stood inside him, hot and clean and simple. It would be easy. Three steps. One hand. Hob would help. Half the yard would look away. Mayhap all of it.
Then Amelia looked up at him. She knew exactly where his mind had gone and sat there bruised, muddy, alive, and trusting him not to become less than what she had believed.
Thomas eased the grip on his sword. The rage did not leave, but it obeyed.
Pickering faced Belmaine.
“Sir Roger Belmaine, I take you into royal custody pending inquiry into attempted murder of a queen’s kinsman, theft of royal correspondence, false testimony, forged ecclesiastical attestation, unlawful seizure of a woman under another lord’s protection, and conspiracy to murder said woman before the claim could be tested. ”
Belmaine’s face twisted. “You overreach.”
Sir Aymon lifted one brow. “No. He begins.”
Belmaine stepped forward. The guards caught him at once.
“You think the king will thank you for siding with a Montfort dog?” he spat.
“Ashcombe followed rebels. His accounts were rotten. His manor half-starved. He sheltered a woman from nowhere and let her meddle where no woman should.”
The words hit the hall like thrown stones. Thomas waited for the old fear to rise. The shame. The knowledge that Belmaine was not wrong about everything, only the things that mattered most.
Before he could speak, Walter stepped forward.
“Aye,” the old steward said.
Thomas turned.
Walter’s face was pale, his shoulders rigid, but his voice carried to every corner of the hall.
“Aye, Ashcombe’s accounts were rotten because a dead bailiff was faithless.
Aye, the manor was thin because Evesham emptied our benches and fields.
Aye, Mistress Amelia put her hands to the rolls.
And by those hands, we found theft, saved rents, ordered harvest, fed workers in the field, and brought enough grain under cover that no child here need starve this winter. ”
Amelia’s eyes widened.
Walter looked at her, stiff as a drawn bow. “She meddled very well.”
Hob whispered, “That’s love from Walter.”
Huck nodded. “Practically a poem.”
Walter ignored them both. “If the crown finds fault in a lord accepting good counsel because it came from a woman, then the crown is more foolish than I have ever accused it of being.”
Pickering’s quill stopped.
Walter seemed to realize, too late, what he had said as his ears turned red.
Master Pickering looked at him over steepled fingers. “Have you often accused the crown of foolishness?”
Walter’s mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
Amelia stood. “Master Pickering, Walter speaks passionately because he loves Ashcombe.”
“Clearly.”
“He has spent weeks trying not to like me. It has been very taxing for him.”
Walter made a wounded sound.
“Yet here he is,” Amelia continued, “telling the truth even though it makes him uncomfortable, which is honestly his least favorite condition.”
Pickering’s eyes narrowed in something suspiciously like amusement.
Walter muttered, “I am often uncomfortable.”
“Yes,” Amelia said. “But this time it’s noble.”
Hob leaned toward Huck. “Noble discomfort. That’s new.”
Pickering held up one hand before the hall could fully unravel. “Enough.”
Pickering’s gaze moved to Thomas.
For months, Master Pickering had looked at Ashcombe as one measured a cracked wall before deciding whether to tear it down. He had seen a former rebel’s holding, thin stores, confused accounts, and too much smoke around Thomas’s name.
Now he saw Belmaine bound in Ashcombe’s hall, the queen’s kinsman alive under Ashcombe’s roof, witnesses gathered beneath Ashcombe’s rafters, accounts corrected, a forged marriage broken, and a household that had somehow become less a failing manor than a shield.
Pickering inclined his head slightly. Not warmth. Not friendship. Recognition.
“Lord Ashcombe,” he said, “for now, my scrutiny turns elsewhere.”
Walter exhaled as if his bones had been holding their breath.
Huck smiled into his cup.
Hob muttered, “For now is better than yesterday.”
Pickering continued. “Your service to Sir Aymon will be reported. Your conduct in bringing forth witnesses rather than vengeance will also be reported.”
Thomas nearly laughed at that. Vengeance had been so close he could still taste it.
“My thanks,” he said.
Sir Aymon stepped nearer. “And mine. Again.”
Thomas inclined his head. “You would have done the same.”
“I might have considered the odds first.”
Amelia sank back onto the bench as if her bones had quietly resigned from duty.
Thomas was beside her before he thought. There were things he needed to say. He could feel them pressing at his throat, blunt, desperate things with no proper shape.
I failed you.
I believed you and still let them take you.
I love you.
Forgive me.
Not here. Not before Pickering and half of Ashcombe pretending not to listen with the enthusiasm of villagers near a scandal.
So he said, “Edith will see to your cheek.”
Amelia stared at him. Then she laughed once, soft and disbelieving. “You are terrible at moments.”
“Aye.”
“Just breathtakingly bad.”
“I know.”
Her expression shifted. The humor stayed, but beneath it came something tender enough to undo him.
“You came,” she said again.
Thomas crouched before her, heedless of mud, wet mail, witnesses, or the way Walter’s eyes nearly fell out of his head.
“I will always come for you.”
The hall went still.
Alyson sniffled loudly.
Hob muttered, “Finally.”
Edith said, “Hush.”
“You hush. I’ve been waiting weeks.”
Thomas ignored them.
Amelia’s eyes filled. This time, one tear escaped, sliding down the unbruised side of her face.
His hand lifted of its own accord. He touched it away with his thumb.
She closed her eyes.
Then Pickering cleared his throat with the ruthless timing of a man born without any wooing in his body.
“If the declaration portion of this evening is complete, I still have prisoners to secure.”
Amelia opened her eyes and began to laugh.
Thomas lowered his head until his forehead touched the edge of the bench, partly because he was tired and partly because if he looked at her laughing through tears, he might do something fully witless before God, crown, and Walter’s fragile nerves.
Edith took control then, as she had been born to do. She clapped once, sharp enough to startle one of Pickering’s clerks into dropping his quill.
“Mald, take those children before they melt into puddles. Wat, don’t argue with me unless you’re longing for barley gruel without honey for three days.”
Wat shut his mouth.
“Alyson, give Amelia room to breathe. No, not that face. She’s not vanishing if you let go of her sleeve.”
Alyson released one tiny fist from Amelia’s gown, though she kept hold of the other with the grim resolve of a jailer.
“Father Martin,” Edith continued, “sit before you fall. Dame Margaret, Joan, move near the hearth. You’ll take hot ale, and no one in this hall will make a face at it unless he wishes to sleep in the stable.”
Hob looked up. “Why are you looking at me?”
“Because you’ve got the face of a man about to speak.”
“I was not.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Friar Huck patted his belly. “A dangerous habit.”
Edith pointed at Thomas. “And you. Sit or I’ll have Amelia scold you, and none of us has strength for that.”
Amelia blinked. “Why am I the weapon?”
“Because you’re effective.”
Walter, perhaps still dazed from having defended her before royal authority and lived, muttered, “She is that.”
Amelia turned to him, and for a moment the hall’s noise softened around them. “Walter.”
He looked as if he would rather face three armed men and an enraged goose than tenderness.
“What?”
“Thank you.”
His mouth compressed. “I spoke only what was true.”
“I know. That’s why it mattered.”
Walter’s face went redder than the coals. “Hrumph.”
It was a distinctive sound, one that managed to convey embarrassment, affection, reproach, and indigestion all at once.
Hob sighed happily. “There it is. The old man’s heart.”
“I have no such thing,” Walter snapped.
“Course not. Just accounts and vinegar.”
“Accounts are useful.”
“So is vinegar,” Huck said. “Keeps things from rotting.”
Amelia’s laugh came easier this time, though she leaned heavily against the table when she did. Thomas saw the tremor move through her fingers.
He stood and lifted her into his arms before she could object.
Alyson gasped. Wat grinned. Edith made a sound of approval. Walter looked toward the rafters as if asking Heaven whether anyone had remembered propriety existed. Hob, traitor that he was, looked pleased enough to burst.