Tomas nodded. “Name your past loyalties and deeds relevant to this house’s safety.”
Too much detail might draw a thread toward England, toward Canterbury. Too little would look evasive. Reginald choseground that might bear weight. “I have held garrison for lords in the marches. I have ridden in actions meant to secure roads against raiders. I have served under men of rank in the south. I will ride with this house as duty requires.”
A murmur passed through the people gathered behind him in the chamber.
Then Brennach leaned forward. “Have you ever borne arms against men of the Church?”
Reginald felt his pulse in his mouth. For one instant the room fell away. Old wax became incense. Pale walls became Canterbury stone. A priest cried out. Steel struck flesh.
Had he borne arms against the Church?
Not in campaign, he told himself. Not by the measure he had built to survive. He had acted under order. Under necessity. Under the law of his king. “No,” he answered.
A silence followed.
Seamus’s hand settled on the pommel of his sword, not threatening, not protective. Simply there. Suspicion had not vanished. It had only moved, searching for a better place to lodge.
Tomas continued. Lands. Prior oaths. Roads. Boundaries. Scraps of campaigns.
Reginald answered each as a man crossing marsh ground, one careful step after another. Every lie tightened the weave. Every answer depended on the last.
Then Brennach asked, “You said you held garrison in the marches. Under whom? Names matter.”
Reginald’s jaw tightened. He could offer a captain’s name from some winter muster, the sort of man no one here would bother confirming. He could invent one. He could say too much and draw a road straight back to the place he could never allow them to reach. “I served under Captain O’Malley in a wintermuster,” he said. Common enough to be believed. Vague enough to survive.
Brennach was not satisfied, but he let it pass.
Tomas came to the final question. “Do you stand ready to swear before God, in this house, that the words you have spoken are true, and that you will hold honor and defense for this land as if it were your own?”
Such a simple question.
He thought of the grave beneath the leaning ash. Of sliding a dead man’s ring onto his finger because the dead no longer needed names. He thought of Aingeal in the chapel demanding light as if light alone could make a thing honorable. He thought of the oath he had once made to a king whose anger had become blood before anyone dared name it madness.
He could still leave. He could be gone by dawn.
He looked at Aingeal. Her face gave him nothing. Only the line at the corner of her mouth, tense enough to betray something beneath composure.
Perhaps she wanted him to fail so she would be spared a marriage built on rot. The thought stung.
He had meant to leave. But something had shifted in him since he rode through the gate. Curiosity, perhaps. Or the dangerous beginning of belonging.
He wanted to belong.
He met Tomas’s gaze. “I do.”
Father Cillian lifted one hand as if to bless, then let it hover. “I will witness no falsehood in God’s name,” he said quietly. “If a man speaks truth with clarity, I will lay blessing upon him. But this church will not become a shroud for deceit.”
The warning hung between them. Not condemnation. Not blessing. A blade too fine to see until it cut.
The steward made his mark. The clerk scratched the record. The council, satisfied enough for business, moved on to dowrycalculations, border watches, and the dry necessities that mattered most to men who meant to survive winter.
Behind him, the crowd began to disperse.
Reginald stood through it all and felt the lie settle deeper.
When the assembly broke, men came with easy questions. Where had he ridden? What roads did he know? Could he train green men into steadier soldiers?
He answered as best he could. Each answer tightened the lie another turn.
