“No, I mean it’s a disaster, but with a pattern.”
“That does not comfort me.”
“It should.” She reached for a tally stick, then paused and glanced at him. “May I?”
“It is a stick.”
“It’s clearly not just a stick or you wouldn’t look like you want to stab it.”
He considered denying that and decided he had not the strength.
“Take it.”
She picked it up and turned it in her hand, thumb passing over the notches. Her brows drew together. Then she pulled another stick toward her, laid both beside one of the rolls, and bent low enough that one of the curls slipped free and brushed the parchment.
Thomas opened his mouth to tell her not to touch the rolls, but she was already reading.
She read swiftly, not sounding out words as many did, not dragging a finger slowly from line to line. Her gaze moved quickly, taking in the cramped hand, the marks, the figures, the notes in the margin. She glanced from parchment to tally and back again, then reached for a second roll as if she had every right in the world to rummage through the bones of his house.
“Who did this?” she asked.
“My bailiff. Wexford.” The name still sat ill in his mouth. “Dead at Evesham.”
Her expression softened at once. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
And he was. Wexford had served Ashcombe for years, though Thomas had never liked him. The man had been too smooth, too pleased with the sound of his own quill, but dislike did not make death easier to swallow. Too many men had gone down in that bloody field beneath a hot August sun, some guilty of nothing worse than following the lord who had called them.
Amelia was quiet for a moment. Then the sharpness returned.
“I’m sorry he died,” she said. “But I don’t think he was honest.”
Thomas stopped tapping his fingers against the dagger at his side.
Outside the narrow window, somewhere in the bailey, a man called for a cart to be brought round. A dog barked, children shrieked and men practiced in the lists. The ordinary sounds of Ashcombe went on as if she had not just accused a dead man of theft.
“Take care, mistress.”
“I am.”
“Nay. You are accusing a dead man of stealing from my coffers.”
“No,” Amelia said, looking down at the tally again. “I’m saying he was clever about it.”
Thomas stared at her.
She pushed one tally stick toward him. “This says the reeve delivered twelve sacks from the south field.”
“Aye.”
“This roll says eight were put into the barn.”
“Aye.”
“And this note here says four sacks went to repair old debt owed to the miller.”
He leaned closer. “That is what the hand says.”
