Alyson’s lower lip pushed out. “It is a very little one.”
“That is how they start,” Hob said gravely. “Then one day you wake and call the reeve a pox-rotted sack of eel guts before Prime.”
Amelia stared at him.
Hob looked back, innocent as a saint in a stained-glass window.
“Is that one?” she asked.
“A good one,” Osbern said. “Not my finest.”
“Your finest made Father Aldred drop his cup,” Martin said.
“He was not meant to be behind me.”
“He was in the chapel.”
“Then he had God to comfort him.”
Amelia should have left. Should have taken her wax tablet and gone to Edith, who would be horrified or secretly amused, likely both.
Instead she stayed at the rail with the children pressed close, the warm sun on her veil, dust settling on the hem of her green gown, and half a dozen battle-hardened men gleefully debating which words were too crude for a woman who had already survived small beer, Thomas’s scowls, and Walter’s account rolls.
It was ridiculous.
It was wonderful.
“All right,” she said, because she had never been a coward about continuing education.
“Teach me one that won’t get me thrown out of the hall.”
Hob thought. The effort appeared painful. At last he said, “Clotpole.”
Amelia blinked. “Clotpole?”
“A fool,” Martin said.
“A thick-headed fool,” Osbern corrected.
“A man whose wits have gone wandering and not come home,” Hob said.
“That’s useful,” Amelia admitted.
“Goat-brained lout,” Martin offered.
She smiled. “Also useful.”
“Dung-souled hedgepig,” Osbern said, with the solemnity of a priest offering communion.
Amelia blinked. “I’m sorry. Dung-souled what?”
“Hedgepig.”
“That feels very specific.”
“It is for a man who has earned specificity,” Hob said.
Wat’s face lit with wicked joy. “Dung-souled?—”
