“But the miller’s mark is wrong.”
Thomas blinked. “The mark?”
“This one.” She tapped the parchment. “He makes it like this on the other notes.” She drew a shape in the air with the tip of her finger. “A sort of crooked hook, yes? But this one turns the other way. And the pressure is different. See how the ink pools? It was done slowly, by someone copying it.”
He took the roll, because surely she could not be right.
She was right.
Damnation.
She reached for another note. “And here. Same thing. Three hens owed by Widow Maud, marked paid, but then marked owed again on this second list. Also, and I’m sorry, but whyare all the sums arranged as if the person writing them hated everyone who might ever need to read them?”
“Wexford said it discouraged idle hands from meddling where they ought not.”
“Convenient.”
Thomas looked at the piles again. They had been irritating a moment ago. Now they looked like a nest of vipers.
“You have been in my solar less time than it takes Hob to find his boots.”
“Hob loses his boots?”
“Often.”
“I like Hob.”
“You would.”
She gave him a look, then bent over the rolls again as he adjusted his tunic.
The door opened before Thomas could decide whether to be impressed, annoyed, or deeply suspicious.
Walter stepped in, all bones and disapproval beneath a dark wool tunic that had seen better years. His white hair stood in wisps around his head, his narrow face pinched by years of service and the conviction that the world had gone poorly since everyone stopped listening to him first. He held another roll beneath one arm and a wax tablet in his hand.
He stopped when he saw Amelia leaning over the table, his mouth tightening.
“My lord,” he said.
There were sermons less reproachful.
“Walter.”
“I did not know Mistress Quinn had been summoned to the accounts.”
“She was not summoned.”
Amelia straightened, a pleasant smile on her face. “I wandered in.”
Walter’s gaze moved from her face to the tally stick in her hand and back again. “So I see.”
The air in the chamber cooled.
Thomas had known Walter since he was a boy. The man had served his father, and before that his grandfather. He knew every field boundary, every family grievance, every spring that dried too soon and every tenant who paid late but always paid in the end. He could reckon seed and rents and days owed in labor without blinking. He had kept Ashcombe breathing after Evesham with nothing but stubbornness, a sour temper, and a spine that refused to bend.
He was also a man who believed order was the only thin wall between survival and ruin, and Amelia was disorder and a woman to boot.
“Mistress Quinn believes Wexford was dishonest,” Thomas said.
