“She fed a frightened child honey,” Huck said. “She corrected Walter without shaming him, which I had thought impossible. She laughed at Hob’s French, as God intended. And she looks at you as if she has seen the worst of you and still wishes to remain.”
Friar Huck drained the last of his mead and stood with a small grunt, knees cracking.
“Tell Edith the goose was excellent, the bread better, and the honey was used with appropriate reverence. I’ll return before winter closes the roads.”
Thomas rose with him and walked him out. The night had sharpened while they sat inside. Frost covered the yard, catching along the trough and the edges of wagon ruts. The stars were bright above the black line of the walls. Huck’s mule, patient as a saint and twice as long-suffering, waited near the stable with the empty kegs tied in the small cart.
Huck clasped Thomas’s shoulder, firm and brief.
“Watch your gates,” he said.
Thomas’s attention sharpened. “Why?”
Huck’s round face had lost its feast softness. In the starlight, he looked older, more priest than beekeeper, more man who hadheard confessions than man who had spent the evening arguing over honeycomb.
“Men have been asking questions.”
“Belmaine’s men?”
“Mayhap. Men in murrey and gold riding farther than they need to ride, and servants who pay too readily for ale they do not drink.”
Huck glanced toward the gate. “Questions about your red-haired lady. About who came through Ashcombe’s gate after Evesham. About whether you have sent letters. About whether you ride to Worcester.”
Thomas looked toward the dark road. The good warmth of the feast thinned inside him.
“How do you know?”
Huck’s mouth quirked. “I am a friar with mead. People confess even when they do not intend to.”
“What did they ask exactly?”
“Nothing clean enough to hold. Enough to watch.”
“Aye,” Thomas said. “I’ll watch.”
“I know.” Huck clambered up on the cart with surprising ease for a man of his size. “That is not what worries me.”
“What does?”
“That you may watch the road so hard you miss the heart beside your own fire.”
Thomas had no answer for that.
The gate creaked shut behind the friar and his mule, and Ashcombe settled once more into darkness.
Thomas went back inside. The hall was nearly dead quiet now, the feast reduced to embers, crumbs, honey-sticky boards, and the faint sour-sweet smell of spilled mead. He stood by the hearth and listened to the house.
A log shifted in the hearth as a dog sighed.
Somewhere above, in the loft, Amelia hummed. Very softly. Half a song, not one he knew. The tune wandered, rose, caught itself, and fell again.
Thomas stayed where he was until the humming stopped, then he went to his chamber, but as usual, sleep avoided him.
He lay on his back beneath the rough wool blanket and stared at the dark beams overhead, tasting honey and mead at the back of his throat. The feast should have comforted him. The barn was full enough, people had laughed and made merry. For one evening Ashcombe had been more than hunger, repairs, and winter’s slow approach.
At some hour when the night had deepened and the last voices had long since gone quiet, Thomas rose.
He didn’t know what woke him. Not a sound, not precisely. A change, a feeling in the dark, like a soldier’s knowledge that the world had shifted by a hair. He crossed to the narrow window and looked out.
