“And if I say no?”
Edith’s gaze lifted.
Thomas went to stand somewhere else.
By dusk, Ashcombe had surrendered.
The hall had been overrun by a small army of conscripts. The trestle tables had been scrubbed, the worst of the rushes replaced, and fresh herbs scattered near the hearth so the room smelled less of smoke and damp, and more of rosemary, thyme, apple peelings, and roasting goose. Rushlights burned in iron brackets along the walls. The fire had been built high, golden and loud, throwing heat across the stone and coaxing a shine from every wooden cup, every pewter spoon, every eager face.
Someone had hung the last garlands of dried yarrow and oat straw over the door. Someone else, likely Alyson, had addedthree lopsided bunches of late lavender and a string of rowan berries that drooped in the middle.
At the high table, he sat where he belonged and felt, as he often did, that belonging was another word for being watched.
He wore his good tunic, dark blue wool patched so carefully at the elbow that only a blind man would call it fine. His belt had been oiled. His boots had been cleaned until Hob declared them “less tragic.” Edith had sent Wat up twice to make certain Thomas had combed his hair, as if he were eight years old and likely to attend harvest-home looking like a hedgerow.
Amelia sat halfway down the hall between Edith and Widow Maud, exactly far enough from him to be proper and exactly near enough to undo the peace he had spent the afternoon pretending to have.
She had washed the bit of ink from her chin. Her veil had been pinned more firmly, though one curl had escaped, because Amelia’s hair had apparently declared rebellion against both the Church and household order. Firelight found it and turned it copper and gold. The brown gown suited her more than the grey had. It warmed her skin, brought out the freckles across her nose, and made her eyes look like the green grass in summer.
She had an untouched cup of mead in front of her.
Thomas noticed this, because apparently he had become a man who noticed how much mead a woman drank, whether she had eaten enough goose, and whether her sleeve had slipped down over one hand when she was nervous.
He had become a witless dolt when near her.
The first course was pottage, thick with barley and leeks, served in wooden bowls. Bread came beside it, warm and coarse, with soft cheese where it could be spared. Then came goose, crisp-skinned and shining, cut into small portions so everyone received a bite or two. The hens followed, then peas with onions, roasted turnips, apples stewed with honey and a little ale, andfinally broken pieces of honeycomb passed on wooden trenchers while Friar Huck instructed every child in the hall not to chew the wax though few listened.
Alyson made a face so dramatic three men at the lower table nearly choked laughing.
“You said not to chew it after I chewed it,” she told the friar accusingly.
“I said it before.”
“I was listening to the honey.”
“A common spiritual danger,” Huck said solemnly.
Wat swallowed his wax, then looked both pious and ill.
Amelia leaned toward the boy. “You’re turning green.”
“I’m always this color.”
“You absolutely are not.”
Thomas looked down quickly before she caught him smiling.
Huck’s bees fed on heather along the ridge, clover in the lower meadows, and whatever wild blossom had survived the season’s weather. The mead came pale gold and fragrant, sweet first, then sharp, and far stronger than it seemed to men who trusted their tongues over their knees. Cups lifted. Shoulders lowered. Voices warmed. The hard lines around mouths softened by degrees.
Hob, who claimed that no mead brewed by a friar could trouble a man of his constitution, had entered the third stage of his usual harvest-home argument with the drink. The first was confidence. The second was philosophy. The third was singing.
He had not yet begun to sing though Thomas watched him warily.
The old songs began when the second keg was tapped.
Not the courtly ones sung by minstrels in great houses. These were rougher, older, born of fields and kitchens and men who had spent too long behind plows or with blades in their hands. Songs for cutting barley, songs for apple harvest, songs for saintswho had probably not approved the verses sung in their honor. The women knew the true words. The men knew louder ones.
Huck joined with an alarming cheerfulness and a voice that would have frightened birds from a hedge.
