Claire scooted closer to him, feeling an absurd little tendril of nervousness about it, despite their five years of marriage and very recent declarations of love. It felt practically adolescent, letting their arms brush, just letting their knees knock together.
She took a bracing breath and put her head on his shoulder like it was the most wanton, perverse thing she’d ever even considered. She felt a flock of birds burst in her chest when he draped an arm over her shoulders; she felt it scatter and beat when he rested his cheek against the top of her head.
“Ah,” he said after a moment. “Look there. Tommy’s about to burn the castle down.”
“She’s what?” Claire said, too tired to be fully alarmed. “Why?”
“Because it’s temporary,” he said with a chuckle, squeezing her, “and she’s the queen here. My mother always used to say thatone day Tommy wouldn’t be here to do it anymore and it would have to be me. I’m not convinced that will ever happen.”
“She will outlive us all,” Claire agreed, and then, after a moment, she added, “if you ever make me a dowager, Freddy, I will never forgive you. If you do that, it will be the final straw.”
“All right,” he said, and she could feel the curve of his smile against her temple. “I will never die.”
They watched together as the tiny flame of Tommy’s torch drew closer to the center of the field, surrounded by a half-circle of fellow torches carried by the remaining revelers, come to bear witness. They watched the leading flame as it lowered and caught on the thin wood of the little painted castle in the center of things. They watched as the fire grew, large enough that they could hear it on the hill, large enough that they could smell the change of the smoke, now tinged with sweet cedar and hints of the paint.
“That is a little sad,” Claire said. “Don’t you think?”
He shook his head. “I think it’s a promise to come back next year. It might be sadder in a place where everything else wasn’t so enduring.”
She frowned, tilting her head up so that he would pull slightly back and look at her. “What do you mean? The only things around here are the sheep, and they certainly aren’t eternal.”
“Maybe you’re meeting the wrong sheep,” he said, because he could never help himself. “No, that’s not what I mean. Look, I will show you.”
He stood then, suddenly enough to make her squeak, and offered her his hand to assist her to her feet. When she accepted,he hoisted her up and grinned at her, not releasing her hand. “We’re walking this way anyhow,” he said, and gestured with a nod of his head toward the cottages.
“I suppose we are,” she answered, too intrigued to bother with confusion. She glanced over her shoulder one more time at the flaming castle in the valley, flickering and sparking and tossing little baby flames into the air above it, and then left it behind her to follow Freddy.
“Here,” he said after they’d crested the wold and come back down on the other side. He stopped, their feet on a series of bricks deep in the earth, surrounded by sprigs of grass and clover, and pointed down at them. “There, do you see that?”
“The ground?” she asked. “Yes?”
“The bricks,” he clarified, more excited than this topic ought to have made him, “the road. Well, this isn’t the main road, it’s just a little path, but it leads to the big one. You can see the trail.” He pointed to the sequence of the old, dirt-deep bricks winding their way up near the cottages and out toward the central road. “Do you see it?”
“I do,” she confirmed.
“It’s Roman,” he said, his voice falling a level, like he was telling her a very delicate secret. “The hands that put these bricks in this ground did so almost two thousand years ago, Claire. Two thousand years! Longer than we can even comprehend, really. Exponentially longer, and look, here they still are, tonight. With us.”
“Roman,” she repeated, a little skeptically.
It made him laugh, a delighted little laugh like he couldn’t believe his luck in being the first to tell her. “Sometimes I forget you lived all your life in London,” he said fondly.
“There are plenty of ancient things in London,” she countered, raising her brows.
“Yes, exactly,” he replied, admiring the dirt on his boots and the stones that sat under them. “Living in the center of things tends to make you forget all the other bits in orbit. But London was never the only place with people in it.”
“Ah,” she said, giving her own feet a second look, testing the brick under them with the edge of her shoe. “You might be right.”
“When Fosse Way, this road, was built,” he said, taking her other hand and stepping around to look down into her face, “there was no England. There was no Alfred the Great, no William the Conqueror, no Cotswolds or Chipping Camden. Just Hwicce and Rome. Tribes and empires. And the sheep.”
“Oh, the sheep,” she said with a little smile. “Of course.”
“Cotswolds,” he added. “Do you know what that means?”
“I know wolds are hills.”
He nodded, his eyes managing to sparkle even in the dark. “And cots are sheep.”
“They are not!” she protested, a laugh bubbling in her throat. “You are teasing me.”
