Four riders waited in the yard, their cloaks spattered with mud, their horses blowing steam into the autumn air. Riders from the queen’s household.
Walter made a sound like a quill snapping in half.
“Saints,” he whispered. “Not again.”
The rider dismounted. Not the same man who had brought the sword, but kin to him in bearing, sober, efficient, and possessed of the face of someone who had carried both good news and death warrants and preferred neither to be mishandled.
“Lord Ashcombe?”
Thomas stepped forward. “Aye.”
The man bowed. Deeper than the last messenger had.
That alone changed the air in the yard.
“I come from Lady Eleanor’s household by command of Her Grace the Queen, and with seal from those empowered to speak upon the matter of Ashcombe.”
Walter looked ready to faint, fight, or ask for the parchment.
Possibly all three.
The messenger withdrew a packet from within his cloak, the wax seal wrapped in a fold of oiled cloth to keep the rain from it. He held it out with both hands.
Thomas accepted it.
“Read it,” Thomas said, passing the packet to Walter.
Walter’s hands trembled as he received it. The old steward broke the seal with a reverence so profound Amelia half expected him to genuflect. His eyes moved over the first lines.
Then stopped. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Amelia leaned closer. “Walter?”
He swallowed. Once. Twice.
Thomas’s voice dropped. “Walter.”
Walter lifted his head.
“My lord,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Ashcombe is pardoned.”
For one breath, no one moved. The words seemed too large to fit inside the yard. Then sound broke.
Not cheering, not yet. Something rougher. A gasp through dozens of throats. A sob from somewhere near the kitchen doorway. Hob’s muttered oath. Huck’s whispered prayer. Edith saying, “Thank God,” with all the force of a woman who had been arguing with Him for weeks and could finally approve His answer.
Walter kept reading, louder now, his voice strengthening as joy took hold of him in the only form he trusted. That of official wording.
“In recognition of faithful service rendered upon the old north road, and in gratitude for the rescue and protection of Sir Aymon de Sauveterre, kinsman and servant to Her Grace, and for the recovery of letters whose loss might have injured crown and realm, Thomas Ashcombe is received into the king’s peace. His lands, rents, rights, and liberties are confirmed to him and to his lawful heirs, free of forfeiture upon the former suspicion attached to the late rebellion, so long as he holds faith with crown and realm.”
Thomas stood as if the words had struck him harder than a blade.
Ashcombe pardoned. Lands confirmed. Rights and liberties. Lawful heirs.
Amelia felt the world tilt, not with magic this time, but with relief.
Ashcombe was saved and Thomas was saved. Not merely reprieved. Saved in ink, wax, and royal authority. The noose that had hung over this place since Evesham had been cut.
A laugh escaped her, wild and breathless.
