“Before eating,” Amelia repeated, because apparently this was the hill she had chosen to die on, and honestly, given the other available hills in medieval England, it wasn’t the worst.
“Hands get dirty and can make people sick. So you wash before you touch food.”
Edith’s brows rose. “Dirt makes people sick?”
“Yes.”
“Not rain, bad air, or God’s temper?”
“Those too, probably,” Amelia said, because she knew when not to pick a theological fight before breakfast. “But also dirt.”
Walter, seated near the high table with a roll of parchment he had brought to breakfast like a man determined to make meals depressing, made a reproachful little sound. “Mistress Quinn, folk have eaten with the same hands God gave them since Adam.”
“And Adam didn’t have access to soap either, which may explain a lot.”
Wat leaned closer to Alyson and whispered, loudly enough for half the hall to hear, “Is this another faery rule?”
Amelia pointed at him. “It’s a very ordinary rule.”
Hob’s beard twitched. “How many ordinary rules have you, mistress?”
“More than you want to hear before breakfast.”
“I doubt that.”
“You should not say that to a woman with a list.”
Thomas, who had entered the hall silently enough that Amelia only noticed him when the air at the far end seemed to alter around his scowl, stopped beside the high table. He wore a dark tunic belted at the waist, boots still muddy from the yard, and a leather bracer on one forearm. His hair was damp at the ends, as though he had already been outside long enough to make morning feel lazy, and he was freshly shaved.
His gaze moved from Amelia to Wat’s suspended hands to the untouched bowl of porridge.
“What has happened?”
“Mistress Amelia says Wat’s hands will kill him,” Alyson reported.
“I did not say that.”
Thomas looked at Amelia, one perfect brow arched.
She lifted her chin. “I said he should wash before he eats.”
His expression didn’t change, which meant, she was learning, that he was either amused, irritated, thinking, or all three at once. With Thomas, the human face was apparently a fortress with one tiny window, and she had not yet been given the key.
At last he looked at Wat. “Wash.”
Wat’s mouth dropped open. “My lord?”
“You heard me.”
“But I washed yestereve.”
“Then you have practice.”
A muffled laugh moved through the hall like wind through wheat. Wat flushed, slid off the bench, and marched toward the water bucket near the door with the wounded dignity of a boy being sent to his execution. Alyson followed, not because she had been told to but because she found Wat’s suffering fascinating.
Amelia tried very hard not to look triumphant, and failed.
Thomas noticed. His eyes narrowed slightly, and one corner of his mouth almost moved.
