“It’s just an expression,” she said weakly, realizing that she’d just used about six anachronisms in the span of thirty seconds. “I meant... overpriced. Expensive. Costly beyond reasonable measure?”
But the damage was done. The crowd was pressing closer now, muttering about foreign sorcery and demonic commerce practices, and Rachel could feel the situation spiraling beyond her control like a soufflé in an earthquake.
“She questions God’s price for God’s bounty!” someone bellowed from the back of the growing mob. “Blasphemy!”
“She speaks of mechanical devices unknown to Christian men!” Father Clement was really hitting his stride now, his round face red with righteous indignation. “Blenders and highways and compost heaps that speak! The very air grows thick with her unholy words!”
“Unbalanced,” Mistress Caldwell’s dry voice cut through the hysteria like a blade through silk. The apothecary had appeared from somewhere in the crowd, her pale eyes fixed on Rachel with the clinical interest of someone observing a particularly fascinating disease. “Mark well how her humors rage beyond all natural measure. ’Tis obvious she suffers from an excess of choleric temperament, inflamed by foreign influences.”
“Can everyone please just calm down?” Her voice was getting higher with each word, her composure crumbling under the weight of dozens of hostile stares and increasingly creative accusations of supernatural malfeasance. “They’re just carrots! I just wanted to buy some vegetables!”
“Carrots!” Father Clement seized on the word with the enthusiasm of someone who’d just found the smoking gun in a heresy trial. “She names the Lord’s bounty with foreign demon-words! What Christian soul knows such unholy terms?”
“That’s what they’re called!” Rachel shouted, her last shred of diplomatic composure finally snapping. “Root vegetables! Orange! Crunchy! Rabbits love them! It’s a perfectly normal word for perfectly normal food!”
The crowd recoiled as one, several people making frantic signs of the cross while others began backing away with the careful precision of people who’d suddenly realized they were standing way too close to something that might explode.
“Foreign words!” Father Clement was practically vibrating with vindication. “She speaks the tongue of distant demons! Names food by the language of the damned!”
“Oh, for the love of—” Rachel caught herself before she could complete the phrase, which probably would have gotten her burned at the stake on the spot.
“Look, everyone, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not a demon or a witch or whatever. I’m just a person trying to buy vegetables with money, which is literally the most normal thing humans have been doing since the invention of commerce.”
“She speaks of invention!” someone gasped. “As if mortal men could create what God has not provided!”
“Commerce is from the Almighty!” Father Clement added helpfully. “She claims dominion over God’s own designs!”
Rachel’s eye twitched, a sure sign that her patience was approaching critical failure levels. Around her, the crowd continued to mutter and point and generally behave like extras in a particularly low-budget horror movie, while the root vegetable vendor clutched her questionable produce to her chest like they were precious gems from some lord’s treasure coffers.
“You know what?” She said, her voice taking on the dangerous quiet that had once made a particularly arrogant restaurant manager actually apologize for serving her reheated fish. “Keep your overpriced, sad excuse for roots. I’ll grow my own. With modern agricultural techniques that would blow your medieval minds, if you had any minds to blow.”
The gasp that went up from the crowd was audible from three villages over.
“She threatens to blow our minds!” Father Clement’s voice cracked with horror. “With techniques unknown to Christian lands! She would scatter our very thoughts to the wind like chaff!”
“Modern!” Mistress Caldwell stepped forward, her pale eyes glittering with something that looked suspiciously like scientific curiosity. “She claims knowledge of times yet to come. Mark how her humors burn with future sight, inflamed beyond all natural balance.”
“I don’t have future sight,” Rachel said desperately, looking around for some kind of support and finding only hostile faces and religious panic. “I’m just really, really bad at fitting in!”
The crowd was pressing closer now, their muttering growing louder and more agitated. She could smell unwashed wool and fear-sweat, could taste the metallic tang of her own panic as she realized that this had gone way beyond cultural misunderstanding into actual danger territory.
That’s when she heard it—the sound of heavy footsteps moving through the crowd with purposeful authority, followed by a voice that cut through the hysteria like a blade through silk.
“What passes here?”
The crowd parted like the Red Sea as Tristan appeared, his imposing height and breadth making everyone else look suddenly smaller. But this wasn’t the companion who’d been teasing her about vegetable purchasing—this was Lord Greystone in full medieval authority mode, his expression carved from winter frost and his voice carrying the kind of power that made people remember exactly who owned the land they stood on.
“My lord,” Father Clement stammered, clearly caught off guard by Tristan’s sudden appearance and commanding presence. “The foreign woman... she speaks in tongues unknown to Christian lands. Threatens our very minds with her unholy knowledge.”
Tristan’s icy gaze swept over the crowd before settling on Rachel with an intensity that made her pulse quicken despite the circumstances. For a moment, something flickered in his expression—concern, perhaps, or barely suppressed amusement—before his face returned to its mask of aristocratic authority.
“The lady speaks strangely because she is from... very far away,” he said, his voice carrying the kind of calm authority that made people listen whether they wanted to or not. “Her customs are different. Her words sound unfamiliar. But she means no harm to any here.”
“She mocks our prices!” the vegetable vendor protested, though she sounded less certain now that Tristan was involved. “She speaks of demon mills and... and blowing things!”
“She speaks of fairness,” Tristan replied calmly, though Rachel caught the slight tightening around his eyes that suggested he was struggling not to laugh. “Of reasonable commerce. Surely there’s no sin in seeking value for one’s coin?”
The crowd murmured uncertainly, clearly torn between their fear of foreign sorcery and their respect for the lord of Greystone Castle, disgraced or not.
