There was iron under the words. The kind that had been heated, hammered, cooled, and sharpened over years.
I went to the chapel after supper. Candles flickered low beside the altar. Father William was standing near the communion table holding the wine cup in a manner that made me smile.
He straightened too quickly when he saw me. “I was polishing it.”
“With wine?”
“I was checking for damage.”
“With your mouth?”
“That is one accepted method.”
“In medieval England, perhaps.”
He gestured vaguely at the surrounding architecture. “Where exactly do you believe you currently are?”
I laughed before I could help it.
He looked unbearably pleased with himself. Father William was wearing a dark wool cassock belted at the waist with a plain cord, the hem damp where he had walked through the wet courtyard. His sleeves were too long for practical work, which had not stopped him from doing any of it. A small ink stain marked one finger, and his hair had escaped its tonsure in several directions, giving him the air of a holy man recently attacked by a manuscript.
I moved to the front pew and sat down. The heavier sleeves of my gown pooled around my hands as I folded them together.
The chapel smelled of beeswax and old stone. The psalter rested on its lectern. Outside, somewhere beyond Thames, the war kept moving.
Aldwin was north with a ruined leg, a dead horse, and a talent for surviving things he should not survive. Geoffrey was somewhere near the King’s court inventing a plausible reason to flee armed politics before said politics decided to imprison him.
And I?—
I had started waiting for people. That was the thing I couldn’t quite explain to myself. Boston had been my life. My apartment, my great job. Delicious coffee.
But Thames had become the place where the day felt unfinished until everyone came home.
Months ago I would have sat in this chapel wondering whether the psalter might send me back.
Now I found myself wondering what would happen to this household if Geoffrey never returned.
Whether the Baron would simply go silent one morning and never entirely recover from it. Whether Aldwin would laughagain if the war finally managed to take something from him he could not survive losing. I couldn’t bear to think what I would do.
Father William lowered himself onto the altar step beside the wine cup with a sigh.
“You are thinking loudly again,” he observed.
I looked toward the dark manuscript.
“I want them to come home,” I said quietly.
The chapel fell quiet again.
I closed my eyes and simply sat there in the candlelight with Father William, the manuscript, the smell of old stone and wine and beeswax, and let myself want openly for everyone I cared about to survive the year.
Fourteen
HARPER
Geoffrey’snext letter came eleven days after the Baron started moving men.
The courier was new. The seal was a different wax, pale grey instead of the dark blue Geoffrey had been using at court. Maud brought it up to me as soon as it arrived.
