“It is grey,” Amelia murmured.
Thomas kept his gaze on the merchant. “It is grey.”
“Only in this light.”
The bargaining went on long enough for Amelia to shift from one foot to the other and begin, Thomas suspected, doing sums in her head. When the merchant made his final offer, she leaned close, her voice barely audible as she pretended to brush dust from his cloak.
“If we take two sacks now and one after Martinmas, assuming he’ll hold the price, we can stretch what’s left from the coffer without Walter developing a facial twitch.”
Thomas did not look at her. “You think Walter has only one?”
“He has several. I’ve named them.”
He nearly smiled and hated himself for it.
They left with two sacks of salt, a promise for the third, and the merchant looking as if he had been politely robbed.
They bought lamp oil from a woman with sharp eyes and no patience for foolish men. Amelia liked her at once. They bought iron nails from a smith whose hands were black to the wrist and whose apprentice stared at Amelia’s loose curl until Thomas turned his head and the boy discovered sudden interest in a horseshoe.
They bought coarse winter cloth, undyed, rough, and sturdy. Amelia rubbed it between her fingers and made a face.
“This is not soft.”
“It is warm.”
“So is a badger, presumably, but I don’t want to wear one.”
The cloth merchant blinked.
Thomas cleared his throat. “She means the weave is sound.”
“I mean I’m going to itch until spring.”
“You may complain warmly.”
She gave him a look that would have felled a weaker man.
At a stall selling herbs, dried fruit, and little charms tied in colored thread, Amelia nearly ruined them.
In fairness, Thomas should have anticipated it. She was full of curiosity, and the old woman at the stall had an eye for customers who looked curious. Before Thomas could steer Amelia toward the next stall, the woman had thrust a small twist of blue thread and dried rue toward her.
“For the evil eye, mistress. A fine charm. Wear it near the heart.”
Amelia looked delighted and skeptical in equal measure. “Oh. That’s very pretty.”
“Against ill wishers, envious women, jealous men, and those who would call a curse on your womb.”
Thomas stiffened.
Amelia opened her mouth.
He saw the sentence forming. He did not know precisely what it was, but he knew the coming of disaster when it gathered breath.
“Actually, the science of?—”
Thomas closed his hand over hers and pulled her away.
She stumbled after him. “Hey, I was only going to say?—”