Despite everything, Amelia looked down at him. “Bite him?”
“Or kick. You’ve little legs, but they’ve spirit.”
She made a sound that might have become laughter in a kinder world.
Belmaine mounted. Crale climbed onto his own horse with less grace, keeping well clear of Thomas’s blade. Wise again.
Thomas stood in the yard and watched as they turned toward the gate.
The household stood as one around him. Not speaking. Not moving. Walter with his roll crushed in one hand. Edith with both hands fisted in her apron. Huck murmuring something that didn’t sound like prayer. Wat held Alyson against his side, the little girl’s face buried in his tunic as she sobbed. Hob stood near Thomas with one hand on his axe and murder in every line of him.
At the gate, Amelia looked back. Only once.
Thomas felt that look strike and lodge.
Then Belmaine’s men closed around her, murrey and gold swallowing brown wool and red hair and every foolish, bright thing Ashcombe had dared to love.
The gatehouse shadow took her. Hooves struck the road beyond and Amelia was gone.
Thomas stared at the empty gate. The law had taken her because Belmaine had made a stage of it, and Thomas, God rot him, had stood upon that stage and played the only part that wouldn’t doom Ashcombe with her. His sword had been in his hand.
That was the worst of it. He had always believed, in the secret brutal chamber of himself, that if all else failed he could become what he’d been made to be. A blade. A shield. A man standing between harm and those under his protection.
But Belmaine hadn’t attacked with steel, he’d attacked with parchment.
Thomas slid his sword back into the scabbard.
Walter came forward. “My lord, we must act with care.”
Thomas turned as the old steward stopped. Whatever he saw in Thomas’s face made the man’s mouth close with a click.
“Care,” Thomas said, and the word tasted of ash. “Aye. We’ve been careful.”
Hob’s jaw worked. “Say the word.”
“No.”
“My lord.”
“No,” Thomas said again, louder. “We don’t ride after them like brigands. We don’t give Belmaine what he wants.”
“What he wants,” Hob said, “is her.”
Thomas looked toward the gate. “No. He wants me to break the law in front of a royal clerk and prove Ashcombe should be taken apart stone by stone.”
Hob spat into the mud. “Then we use the law to break him.”
Friar Huck’s round face lifted. For the first time since Belmaine had arrived, something like grim approval lit his eyes.
Walter drew himself straighter, the roll still crushed in his fist.
“The attestation must be tested. Seals can be forged. Priests can lie. Witnesses can be bought. And Saint Alphege’s near Alcester…” He frowned. “I know the name, but not the priest.”
“You’ll know him by dusk,” Thomas said.
Walter nodded once. “Aye.”
Huck tucked the honey pot beneath one arm as if it were a weapon. “Churchmen talk to churchmen. Especially when honey is involved.”