Ashcombe lay black beneath the moonless sky. The yard was a darker shape within the walls. Beyond the gate, the road ran pale for a short distance before vanishing between the hedges. Farther still, where the ridge lifted east and the old Worcester road cut along the high ground, a light moved.
Small and distant. A torch, perhaps or a lantern. It appeared between two trees, vanished, then appeared again, bobbing once as if carried by a rider or a man on foot. Too late for honest traffic. Too careful for a drunken traveler. It moved north along the ridge, then disappeared into the dark.
Thomas watched, not wanting to call it an omen, but Huck’s warning sat in his mind.
Men in murrey and gold riding farther than they need to ride. Questions asked. A purse opened.
Thomas watched the place where the light had vanished until his eyes ached. Then he reached for his cloak.
AMELIA
The trouble started, as all trouble did at Ashcombe, with something entirely innocent. A simple jar of honey.
Friar Huck brought it with him shortly after terce, wrapped in clean linen and tucked beneath one arm as if he carried a saint’s finger bone instead of a sweet treat. He came through the gate with mud on the hem of his brown habit, a walking staff in one hand, and the cheerful authority of a man who believed honey could cure anything from a cough to a crisis of faith.
“From Winifred,” he said, setting the jar in her hands.
Amelia looked down at it. The honey glowed deep amber through the thick glass, warm and luminous as if a piece of the afternoon sun had been trapped inside.
“Winifred?”
“My best hive. Third year running. A queen of sound judgment and firm opinions.”
“A true queen.”
“She took to you,” Huck said gravely. “Not everyone earns Winifred’s approval.”
She tried very hard not to be moved by the endorsement of a medieval bee.
“Please tell Winifred I’m honored.”
“I shall. Though she’s not one for flattery.”
“Good. I’d hate to embarrass myself in front of livestock.”
Huck stopped in the middle of the yard, his weathered face going solemn beneath the grey of his beard. “Bees are not livestock.”
“They make food and live in a managed structure.”
“So do monks,” Huck said. “Yet no one calls me livestock.”
“I’m very proud of myself for not responding to that.”
His laugh followed her across the yard, warm as the honey beneath her arm.
By now October had settled over Ashcombe. The fields that had been gold and full of harvest only weeks before now lay shorn and brown beneath a low pewter sky, and every doorway seemed to smell of smoke and the sharp green of herbs hung to dry.
Amelia tucked the jar away in the stillroom between the rosemary tied in bunches from a beam and the crock of rendered fat that Edith guarded as if it were treasure, then went back to sorting linen, because she’d come to realize that linen was the hydra of household tasks.
Later that day, Mistress Bell came calling for salt, though it was never really about the salt. The salt was a social courtesy, a clean little excuse wrapped around whatever gossip she’d brought to season the household. Amelia had learned the ritual quickly. Smile. Fetch the salt. Say nothing of consequence. Let Mistress Bell wander toward the true purpose of the visit while pretending she’d merely been seized by a sudden and desperate culinary need.
Today, unfortunately, the true purpose was about Amelia.
“’Tis only what folk say, mind you,” Mistress Bell said, her voice low, warm, and terrifyingly friendly as Amelia returnedwith the salt wrapped in a twist of cloth. “I take no part in it myself, mistress. I’m not one for idle talk.”
Mistress Bell was very much one for idle talk. She had built an entire vocation around it. If idle talk had guilds, Mistress Bell would have worn a badge, inspected the apprentices, and complained about declining standards.
“Of course not,” Amelia said.
