There wasn’t one machine-made edge anywhere. No cell phones, sneakers, zippers, or glasses.
“Push,” Thomas said.
The men heaved. Amelia pushed where he told her to push. The cart lurched, the wheel settled with a heavy thunk, and Thomas slid the pin into place with a quick, competent motion that made all three men fall silent in relief.
He straightened and wiped his hand on a rag. “There.”
“You…know how to do everything?” Amelia said, because her nerves had apparently chosen that moment to speak without permission.
His brow lifted. “It’s a wheel.”
“Right. Of course. Everyone knows wheels. Basic wheel knowledge.”
The man with three teeth stared at her.
Thomas looked at the man. “Go see if Walter needs the second cart.”
The man went at once, and the others followed with the eagerness of people released from a strange conversation. Thomas waited until they were several steps away before turning back to her.
“You are staring again.”
“Am I?”
“Aye. It unsettles the men.”
“Sorry. I’m trying to decide whether I’m unsettled enough for all of us, or if I should let them have some too.”
He studied her face, and whatever he saw there made him give a brief nod. Thomas didn’t seem like a man given to large public demonstrations. But the scowl gentled at the edges, and his voice lowered.
“What did you see that troubles you?”
Amelia looked past him at the tower, whole and not in ruins, then at the muddy yard, the thatched roofs beyond the wall, the men leading horses, the smoke, the river, and the endless fields pressing in on all sides.
She could ask him. She could ask and have the answer. Once she did, the thin paper wall she had built between suspicion and fact would tear clean down the middle.
“Lord Ashcombe,” she said, and was proud of how steady her voice sounded. It belonged to someone very capable, someonewho didn’t have mud on her knee and terror clawing against her ribs. “Can I ask you something, and you’ll just answer?”
“Aye, and Thomas is fine. No need to call me Lord Ashcombe, not in this ruin.” He ran a hand through his hair.
Now or never.She took a breath. “What’s the date?”
He frowned, as if this was not the question he had expected. “The feast of Saint Bartholomew is in a fortnight, I think. Ask Edith if you want the saints kept properly. She knows such things better than I.”
“No, I mean…” Amelia swallowed. Her throat felt lined with ash. “The year. What year is it?”
For a long moment, he simply looked at her.
She watched him decide again what everyone here seemed to be deciding about her.Madwoman. Liar. Faery. Runaway wife. Some poor creature who had hit her head and lost her wits.
The choices moved behind his eyes, and then he did what he’d done since he found her in the hay. He answered her as if she were a person deserving of the truth.
“The Year of Our Lord twelve hundred and sixty-five,” he said carefully.
Twelve hundred and sixty-five.
The words didn’t strike her all at once. They traveled through her slowly, from ear to mind to blood, shutting doors as they went.
Seven hundred years and change between her and Bree’s ridiculous wedding. Between Amelia and her apartment with its labeled bins and good sheets bought on sale after Christmas, her calendar app, inbox, dry cleaner, her standing coffee order, her favorite black flats, the emergency sewing kit, her passport, driver’s license, and her return flight. Seat fourteen-C. Aisle. Chosen deliberately because she liked to get up without climbing over strangers.