“No. Some are useless.”
Sir Aymon took the cup.
Thomas stood behind Amelia’s bench because sitting seemed impossible. Amelia sat with Alyson pressed tight to one side and Wat hovering at the other, pretending not to hover. Edith had wrapped a dry shawl around her shoulders. Her wet hair had been loosely braided, but loose curls had already begun escaping around her temples, bright against the bruise on her cheek. She looked exhausted, pale, and more furious than fragile.
Saints preserve him, he had never loved anything the way he loved the sight of her alive and angry.
Pickering began with the false attestation.
Father Martin spoke first. He told them of Father Odo, dead three years past Martinmas. He described the true parish seal of Saint Alphege’s, the church and fish, and set the oldwax fragment beside Belmaine’s paper. Even by torchlight, the difference was plain.
“Wax remembers,” Amelia murmured.
Father Martin’s eyes flicked to her with the faintest smile. “Aye, mistress.”
Walter leaned over the table as if the wax had personally offended him. “The hand is different as well. See the slope? A hurried forgery. The letters swell where a confident clerk would thin them.”
One of Pickering’s clerks looked up, intrigued despite himself.
Walter brightened like a hound catching scent. “And the witness names. Nonsense. One is from a lease twenty years old, copied from the wrong roll. The other is no man at all, but a field boundary.”
“A field boundary?” Amelia said.
Walter sniffed. “A poor one.”
Belmaine stood near the hearth between two guards, wrists bound, shoulders squared. He had regained some color and with it, his arrogance.
“You expect royal officers to accept a steward’s vanity over a sealed attestation?”
Walter turned his head.
Amelia leaned toward Wat. “This is where he starts using words as knives.”
Wat whispered, “Who?”
“Walter.”
“Oh.” Wat relaxed. “Good.”
Walter picked up the false document between two fingers as if it smelled.
“I expect royal officers to see that a man who cannot tell a witness from a ditch has committed fraud poorly.”
Hob made a choking sound.
Pickering’s mouth twitched once, then vanished back into severity.
“Enough. The document is suspect. Continue.”
Next came Dame Margaret.
She stood straight, chin lifted, keys at her belt glinting in the firelight. She gave no drama. That made her worse for Belmaine. She told the room that Crale had been brought to Belmaine’s house two days prior, that Sir Roger had instructed servants to call him Master Crale and no other name, that a horse had been prepared for Amelia before Belmaine rode to Ashcombe, and that no man in the house had spoken of a grieving husband until Belmaine taught them the story.
Belmaine’s face tightened.
“Margaret,” he said softly, the way a man might call a dog back before it reached the road.
She did not look at him.