“Only on the inside.”
Walter coughed into his fist. It sounded suspiciously like a man choking on amusement and trying to disguise it as age.
Thomas turned the roll around. “It was handed to me thus.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Amelia said.
Hob, from near the hearth, called, “Was he holding it upside down again?”
“Again?” Thomas demanded.
The hall, treacherous pack of ingrates that it was, began to laugh.
Not loudly. Not disrespectfully. But enough that warmth moved through the room and loosened the last of the morning’s fear. Even Walter looked down with his mouth twitching in defeat. Edith, carrying Maud a bowl of pottage, shook her head as if Thomas had personally disappointed every lord Ashcombe had ever buried.
Amelia leaned closer, all green eyes and trouble. “Your people adore you.”
“They are laughing at me.”
“Both can be true.”
“I preferred them fearful.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He looked at her. The answer that rose was too soft and too true, and so he swallowed it whole. Instead he grunted. Amelia smiled as if she had heard the thing he had not said.
The court resumed after the meal, smaller matters now. A boundary dispute between two men who had apparently hated each other since childhood and intended to continue until one of them died. A complaint about geese in a barley patch. A broken fence. A missing mattock. The question of whether Hugh Miller’s bad back excused him from ditch work, which Hob answered by offering to carry Hugh to the ditch and lay him in it until the matter improved.
“Hob,” Thomas said.
“What? I did not say I would leave him there after dark.”
Amelia covered her mouth with her hand.
Walter whispered, “Saints preserve us.”
By late afternoon, the hall smelled of extinguished rushlights, tired bodies, and the rich pottage Edith had made from barley, onion, herbs, and a scrap of salt pork cut fine enough to convince the pot it held more meat than it did. Folkate before leaving, not a feast, but enough to put warmth in bellies and soften the hard edges of the day. The geese had been carried away. The coin was locked. The rolls were wrapped in cloth and tied.
Thomas stood near the high table while Walter placed the final tally sticks into a small chest.
The steward’s hands lingered on the lid.
“You did well today,” Thomas said.
Walter’s shoulders stiffened. Slowly, the old man nodded. “Mistress Quinn’s columns are sensible.”
Thomas looked at him.
Walter scowled. “Do not make much of it.”
“I would not dare.”
“She asks too many questions.”
“Aye.”
“She writes in a hand too large.”