Alyson shouted, “Liar!”
Wat shouted something worse.
Edith said, “Wat.”
“He is!”
“I meant mind the cursing in front of the friar.”
Huck waved one hand. “I’ve heard worse.”
“Hush,” Pickering said, and remarkably, everyone did.
Crale’s face had gone shiny with sweat.
“I owed money. To men in Worcester. Bad men. Sir Roger’s man paid the debt. Said I need only claim a woman who had no kin. Said it would never come before a proper court.”
Belmaine’s voice cracked like ice. “You miserable cur.”
Crale lurched to his feet. Hob put one hand on his shoulder and returned him to the stool with gentle violence.
Crale’s words began tumbling now, each one clawing over the next to escape.
“He gave me her name, the color of her hair, the tale of a runaway wife. Said Ashcombe kept her unlawfully. I didn’t write the paper, I can’t read nor write. I didn’t know the priest was dead. I never touched her save when told to take her from the yard.”
“You entered her chamber,” Dame Margaret said coldly.
Crale’s mouth opened.
Amelia held up one finger. “Careful. The ale remembers too.”
That broke something. Hob laughed once. Huck snorted into his cup. One of Pickering’s clerks made a sound and buried his face in the parchment. Even Sir Aymon smiled.
Crale slumped. “Aye. I entered. I meant to frighten her, but that’s all.”
Thomas pushed away from the bench. Amelia’s hand caught his sleeve without looking back.
Thomas stopped, not because the rage had lessened, but because she wished him to.
Pickering looked from Thomas to Amelia’s hand and back again.
“Crale, you will give names. The man who paid you. The inn where you met. The witnesses who never witnessed. Every coin.”
Crale nodded quickly. “Aye. Aye, I will.”
Belmaine laughed then.
“You think this over? A debtor’s confession? A steward’s quibbles? Women chattering about corridors?”
Sir Aymon set down his cup.
Until that moment, his part in the proceedings had been mostly silence. He had sat pale and composed, one hand over his bandaged side, watching with the court-trained patience of a man who had learned that power often preferred to arrive after lesser men had exhausted themselves. Now he stood.
Thomas moved at once. “You should sit.”
“And miss the pleasure? Never.”
Huck sighed. “Nobles are impossible patients.”