Chapter 100: The Witness in the Rushes

The horn sounded again, closer now, and Tom felt the cold of it in his teeth. He had heard that note before—at Crécy, Baldric had told him, where the French horns had brayed across the field before the arrows fell. But this was no battle call. It was a summons, low and patient, the kind a man blew when he expected to be obeyed.

"Who comes?" Baldric said, his hand already on the haft of his axe. The reeve had aged ten years since the thaw began, his scarred face drawn tight as a drumhead.

The King's messenger—a thin man in royal livery, his boots crusted with road-mud—shrugged. "I know only what I was told. The witness waits at the ford. He would not come to the manor. He said the ground here is cursed."

Joan's fingers tightened on the sword hilt. "And the woman in black?"

"She is no one's servant," the messenger said. "She came to the Tower with the witness. Beyond that, I cannot say."

Tom looked past the furrows, where the green blades of turnip tops showed in the lamplight like a rumor of spring. The mist had thickened, swallowing the willows at the river's bend. Somewhere in that white nothing, a man waited who had known Alys—the woman Hugh's men had hanged for telling the truth about the grain sold to the French.

"Tom," Joan said quietly. "This could be a trap. Hugh is taken, but his men are not. And the bishop's hounds are still loose."

"Then they would have to catch me first." He pulled his cloak tighter. "Baldric, bring two men and a lantern. Joan—"

"I come with you." Her tone allowed no argument. "If this witness is a liar, I will know it. I have buried too many of Hugh's lies to be fooled by another."

They went down the manor road toward the ford, the mud sucking at their boots. The horn had fallen silent, but Tom could feel the waiting in the dark, the way a warehouse felt before the night shift arrived—empty, but not truly empty. Wat walked ahead with the lantern, his young face pale in the swinging light.

At the ford, the river ran black and quick beneath the thaw. A single figure stood on the far bank, hooded and cloaked, a horse cropping the reeds behind him. He did not move as they approached.

"You are the one called Ashwick," the man said. His voice was rough, as if he had swallowed smoke. "The warlock with the king's seal."

"I am Tom Ashwick, a steward. Nothing more."

The man laughed, a dry sound. "A steward who plows with iron and heals with trees. A steward who stood against Hugh de Lacy and lived." He pushed back his hood.

He was old—sixty at least, which in this age was ancient. His face was a map of weather and want, his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. But it was his hands that drew Tom's gaze: broad, calloused, the hands of a man who had worked fields all his life. One finger was missing at the second knuckle.

"My name is Osric," he said. "I was Hugh de Lacy's reeve for nineteen years. Before Baldric. Before the war. Before the girl."

Baldric made a sound low in his throat. "You served him. You collected his tithes. You knew what he did."

"I knew." Osric's voice did not waver. "I knew he sold grain to the French. I knew he starved his own tenants to pay his debts. I knew about the girl Alys—she was my sister's daughter. And when she spoke the truth at the manor court, I said nothing."

The silence stretched. The river whispered. Joan stepped forward, her face hard in the lantern light.

"You let them hang her."

"I did." Osric's jaw worked. "And I have carried that every day since. I come now because the King will try Hugh at the Tower, and I have evidence that will see him hanged. But I will give it only to this man." He looked at Tom. "The one who plowed the fields and fed the village while my lord sold their bread to the enemy."

Tom felt the weight of it—the old man's guilt, the dead woman's shadow, the trial waiting in London. "What evidence?"

Osric reached into his cloak and drew out a leather satchel, cracked and stained. "Letters. Hugh's own hand, sealed with his own seal. Orders to his agents in Calais. Proof of the grain he sent to the French, and the silver he took in return. I stole them from his strongbox the night before he rode to Wykeham." He held the satchel out. "The King's men searched his manor and found nothing. They did not know where to look."

Tom took the satchel. It was heavy—heavier than paper should be. "Why now? Why not years ago?"

Osric's eyes met his. "Because I was a coward. And because I did not know there was another way. You have shown me one." He glanced at the dark fields beyond the ford, where the turnip rows lay under the mist. "They say you grow food from nothing. They say you heal the sick with bark and leaf. They say you are a sign."

"I am a man with a warehouse full of things I did not earn," Tom said. "That is all."

"Then you are the only honest man in England." Osric turned back to his horse. "I will testify at the Tower. But there is more. Hugh has a brother—Sir Robert de Lacy, a knight of the Order of the Garter. He rides from Windsor even now, with fifty men. He means to reach Wykeham before the trial. He means to burn the fields and kill the woman."

Joan's breath caught. "Which woman?"

"Any woman who stands with you." Osric swung into the saddle. "I have ridden hard to warn you. The horn you heard—that was not mine. Robert's outriders are already across the river. They will be at your gates by dawn."

The lantern flickered. Wat cursed under his breath. Baldric was already turning back toward the manor, his hand raised to signal the men.

Tom looked at the satchel, then at the dark road behind Osric, then at the green blades in the furrows—the first crop, the promise of a harvest that might never come.

"Baldric," he said. "Wake every man. Every woman. Every child old enough to carry a pail. We have until dawn."

"And then?" Joan asked.

Tom smiled, and it was not a kind smile. "Then we show Sir Robert de Lacy what a warehouse can do."

The horn sounded again—closer now, and not so mournful. It was a hunting call, sharp and eager, the sound of men who had found their quarry. Somewhere beyond the mist, horses splashed through the ford.

Osric kicked his mount and vanished into the dark. Tom turned and ran for the manor, the satchel clutched to his chest, the green blades trembling in the wind behind him.