Mistress Bell knew something. Not everything, perhaps, but enough that fear had given her gossip a brittle little shine.
“What did they look like?” Amelia asked.
Mistress Bell’s eyes darted past her toward the yard. “Riders. Good horses. Livery, mayhap. Murrey and gold, one of the boys said. Though boys see colors in mud if it gives them a tale to tell.”
Murrey and gold. Belmaine’s colors.
Amelia felt her stomach drop, but kept her face neutral with the same grim determination she had once used when a groom’s mother announced, twenty minutes before the ceremony, that the floral arch looked like a funeral wreath.
“What questions?”
“Only whether the lord’s strange woman still remained here. Whether she went to chapel. Whether she ate with Christian folk. Whether she cast shadows.”
Amelia stared. “Whether I cast shadows?”
Mistress Bell had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Some tales grow legs.”
“That one grew antlers.”
“It would be better,” Mistress Bell said, lowering her voice, “if you took care. Folk are kindly when they know what a thing is. They’re not kindly when fear takes over.”
The worst part was that she was right.
Amelia hated that more than she hated the wordfaery. Fear made people stupid. It made them cruel. Fear gave men like Belmaine something to build on.
Before she could answer, Wat came skidding into the hall with a bundle of kindling in both arms and mud on one cheek. Alyson followed at a trot, carrying three sticks and the grave expression of a person contributing essential labor to civilization.
“Mistress Amelia,” Alyson said, then stopped when she saw Mistress Bell. “Are we in trouble?”
“No,” Amelia said.
Wat looked from one woman to the other and narrowed his eyes. He had become alarmingly good at detecting adult lies. “Is someone dead?”
“No.”
He crossed his arms over his chest like Thomas did. “Is Walter angry?”
“Walter is always angry.”
Wat relaxed. “Then it’s normal.”
Mistress Bell’s gaze softened at the sight of the children. “There now. You see? No one says you’ve done harm here. The children follow you like ducklings.”
Alyson brightened. “I’m not a duckling.”
“You do waddle when you carry the water jug,” Wat said.
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“I shall hit you with my stick.”
“No one is hitting anyone with sticks,” Amelia said, because there were days when that seemed to be the entire foundation of childcare in the thirteenth century.
Alyson looked disappointed but obedient. Wat did not look obedient, merely like he was calculating.
Mistress Bell watched them, and something moved through her face. Curiosity, worry, perhaps even kindness, though kindness here was wrapped in so many layers of superstition and survival that Amelia couldn’t be sure.
