“I did not ask if a priest had fed you sweets. Eat.”
Amelia obeyed. Mostly because Dame Margaret looked like Edith’s wealthier, colder cousin, and Amelia had developed a healthy respect for women with keys.
The bread tasted of old grain. It stuck in her throat, but she swallowed it anyway.
“You will walk with your head down,” Dame Margaret said. “Not because you are meek. Because I don’t want Osric seeing your face before we reach the passage.”
“Osric?”
“My nephew.”
“Of course there’s a nephew.”
“He serves Sir Roger.”
“And you?”
Dame Margaret’s face did not change. “I serve this house.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
Joan slipped to the door, listened, then nodded once. Dame Margaret knocked, it was unlocked, and the three of them stepped into the corridor as the guard retreated after a stern look from Dame Margaret.
Amelia kept her head bowed as Dame Margaret led her down the stair with Joan at her heels. The broken cup shard pressed against her wrist inside her sleeve.
At the bottom, they crossed the screens passage rather than the hall. Through the open arch, Amelia saw men gathered near the hearth. Belmaine stood among them, one hand on the mantel, speaking low. Crale was there too, hunched over a cup, his bruised face turned toward the fire. He did not look like a husband wronged. He looked like a man wishing he had chosen another line of work.
Then he looked up as his eyes met hers. Amelia looked away quickly, but not before his expression changed.
Recognition. Possession. And anger over the ale still drying in his beard.
Lovely.
Dame Margaret’s hand tightened on Amelia’s arm. “Walk.”
They went through a narrow door into a covered passage leading toward the chapel. The air changed, carrying the smell of limewash, beeswax, old incense, and wet stone. Rain had begun to tap on the roof tiles in a soft, uneven patter. Outside, the last of the light had drained from the yard, leaving the world bluish and thin.
The chapel was small, prettier than Amelia expected, and colder. Whitewashed walls. A narrow altar dressed with linen. A plain wooden cross. Three candles burning in iron prickets. A woven mat near the step. Nothing grand. Nothing gilded. Just a little room where human fear had probably knelt for generations and asked heaven to explain itself.
Father Martin stood near the altar.
He was younger than she expected, perhaps not yet forty, with a narrow face, tired eyes, and ink stains on two fingers. His brown robe had been patched at the hem. A wool cloak hung from his shoulders, and he held a small leather pouch in one hand.
His gaze went to Amelia first, then to Dame Margaret, and then to Joan, who hovered at the chapel door like a girl trying to look invisible and failing beautifully.
“Sir Roger said I was to counsel a disobedient wife,” Father Martin said.
Dame Margaret spoke first. “Counsel quickly.”
The priest’s mouth twitched. He reached into the leather pouch and withdrew a lump of sealing wax, hardened and dark red, wrapped in cloth.
“The attestation shown at Ashcombe carries the mark of Saint Alphege’s,” he said quietly. “Or what is meant to pass for it.”
Amelia’s breath caught. “You know it?”
“I served there as a clerk when I was young. Father Odo died three years past this Martinmas. His hand was fine, but not the hand on that paper. The seal itself is not from Saint Alphege’s.”
