The split-eared man narrowed his eyes. “Ashcombe.”
There it was. Recognition. Not surprise. They had known whose road this was, whose ruin might be blamed, whose neck might fit the noose if a queen’s man died in a ditch near land held by a former Montfort lord.
Thomas’s rage turned cold. Hot anger was noisy. Cold anger had better aim.
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you,” Thomas said.
The man with the sword glanced at the packet. Fool.
Split-ear spat in the mud. “Road’s closed, my lord.”
Hob stepped out from the hedge behind Thomas, axe in hand, mud to his knees and joyless amusement on his face. “That’s a shame. We were enjoying the mud.”
The swordman shifted. “There’s two of them.”
Hob looked around with exaggerated concern. “Saints, he can count. We’re undone.”
Thomas went for the packet first, because Amelia had taught him, curse her bright clever eyes, that paper could be sharper than steel. He closed the distance before the swordman finished lifting his blade. The man’s swing came wide and careless. Thomas turned it aside, stepped inside his reach, and slammed the guard of his sword into the man’s mouth.
Teeth broke. The man dropped with a wet cry.
The packet-man bolted toward the chapel.
Thomas went after him. Mud sucked at his boots. Rain slicked the stones. The man stumbled over a root, caught himself, and twisted with a knife in hand. Thomas caught his wrist, turned it hard, and drove him back against the chapel wall. Old stone bit beneath Thomas’s shoulder. The man’s breath left him in a grunt.
“Where is the rest?” Thomas asked.
The man snarled.
Thomas struck him once in the belly.
The snarl became a wheeze.
Behind them, Hob’s axe rang against steel. Once. Twice. Then came the dull thud of wood against bone, followed by Hob saying, “Lie down, you great turnip,” in the tone of a man correcting a child with jam on his face.
Thomas did not look away from the man pinned beneath his forearm.
“The letters,” he said.
The man’s eyes flicked toward the chapel altar.
“Oh, you daft bastard,” Hob called from the road. “You looked.”
Thomas dragged the man away from the wall, shoved him face-first into the mud, and put a knee in his back. The man cursed, thrashing.
“Bind him,” Thomas said.
Hob lumbered over, breathing hard but looking pleased in the grim way Hob looked pleased when violence had been tidy. “With what? My good humor?”
“The cord from his cloak.”
“Seems a waste of fine cord.”
“It has already tied itself to poor company.”
Hob snorted and bent to the work.
Thomas went into the chapel. The place smelled of wet stone, nettles, old sheep, and the faint, sour ghost of extinguished candles. Rain fell through the empty roof and pattered against broken flagstones, gathering in shallow pools where leaves had blown in and stuck. The altar was cracked down the middle, one half tilted lower than the other as if the whole chapel had grown weary and leaned toward the earth.