Chapter 11: The Muster at Michaelmas

The morning of the muster broke grey and bitter, the kind of cold that crept through wool and settled in the bones. Tom stood at the edge of the manor yard with Baldric, watching the villeins shuffle into ragged lines. There were fewer than there should have been. The autumn had taken its toll, and the pestilence had taken the rest.

“Forty-one men,” Baldric said, his scarred face twisted in a grimace. “Sir Hugh asked for sixty. He’ll not be pleased.”

“He’ll be less pleased if we give him men who can’t hold a spear,” Tom replied. He had seen the muster rolls from the warehouse’s library, the neat columns of names and duties, and he knew what a lord’s hunger could do to a village. “How many of these have ever fought?”

Baldric spat into the mud. “A handful. The rest are ploughmen and shepherds. They’ll be meat in France.”

Tom watched a boy—Wat, his young pupil—standing at the edge of the crowd, trying to look older than his years. The boy had sworn his vow, but Tom saw the fear in his eyes. He saw it in all of them.

“Sir Hugh wants a full accounting,” Tom said. “I’ll give him one. But I’ll not give him every able-bodied man in the village. We need hands for the winter.”

Baldric turned to look at him, a flicker of surprise in his weathered face. “You’d defy him? To his face?”

“I’d talk to him,” Tom said. “That’s what stewards do. We talk, and we count, and we make sure the lord understands what it costs to take what he wants.”

The yard fell silent as Sir Hugh de Lacy emerged from the manor house, his cloak lined with fur that had not been paid for. He walked the line of men slowly, inspecting them as a farmer might inspect cattle, and the cold in his hawk’s eyes did not warm as he reached Tom.

“This is what remains of my levy?” Hugh’s voice carried across the yard. “I sent forty men to Crécy and came back with a dozen. You give me ploughmen and boys.”

“You give me a winter with no one to bring in the harvest,” Tom said, keeping his voice level. “These men will fight. But if you take them all, the village starves, and then there’s no grain for your wars either.”

Hugh’s hand moved to his sword hilt, a reflex that Tom had seen before. But the lord did not draw. He looked at Tom, and the hunger in his eyes was not for blood—not yet.

“You speak boldly for a man whose life I hold in my hand,” Hugh said quietly, so only Tom and Baldric could hear.

“I speak as your steward,” Tom replied. “And a steward who tells you only what you want to hear is no steward at all.”

The silence stretched, sharp as the frost. Then Hugh laughed—a short, bitter sound—and clapped Tom on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him.

“You’re a strange one, Ashwick,” he said. “I’ve had stewards who stole from me, and stewards who lied to me, but never one who argued with me in my own yard. Keep your ploughmen. But you’ll give me twenty men, and you’ll find a way to make them soldiers by spring.”

He turned and walked away, barking orders at his retainers. Tom let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.

“You’ve bought us time,” Baldric said quietly. “But Hugh’s patience is a short rope.”

“Then we’ll make the most of it,” Tom said. “I need the lime kiln working. And I need you to find me iron—any iron you can beg, borrow, or steal. The ploughshares in the warehouse won’t last forever, and if we’re to feed these men through the winter, we’ll need to break new ground.”

Baldric nodded, but his eyes were on the horizon. “There’s something else. Fulke the tithe-collector rode through last night. He says the bishop’s steward is asking questions in the next parish. About a stranger who appeared from nowhere, who works miracles and hides his works behind a false wall.”

Tom felt the cold settle deeper into his chest. “How long do we have?”

“A week. Maybe two. The bishop’s steward is a careful man. He’ll want to see for himself before he makes a report.”

Tom looked at the barn where his warehouse lay hidden, its battery dying, its lights growing dimmer with each passing day. He had saved lives. He had taught Wat the secrets of the steel and the seed. But every miracle he offered was a thread in a rope that could hang him.

“Then we light the lime kiln tonight,” Tom said. “And we make sure the village has something to show for it before the bishop’s man arrives. If he sees a thriving manor, he may think twice about asking too many questions.”

Baldric’s scarred face twisted into a grim smile. “You’d hide the truth in plain sight.”

“It’s the best hiding place there is,” Tom said.

That night, Tom walked to the wood alone, carrying a torch. The lime kiln was a crude thing—a pit lined with stone, a mound of limestone waiting to be burned. He had built it with his own hands, using knowledge from books that should not exist in this world. He thought of Joan, who had warned him that the Church’s eyes were everywhere, and of Wat, who had sworn his vow with a boy’s earnest fear. He thought of his own life, the one he had left behind, the wife who had stopped waiting for him long before he vanished.

He lit the kiln. The flames caught quickly, leaping into the cold air, and Tom watched them spread their orange light across the trees. He was still watching when he heard footsteps behind him.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Tom turned. Joan stood at the edge of the clearing, her shawl pulled tight against the cold. In the firelight, her face was sharp and beautiful, and her eyes were full of questions he could not answer.

“The kiln needs watching,” Tom said.

“It needs more than that.” Joan stepped closer. “Fulke came to see me this afternoon. He says the bishop’s steward has a name now. They’re calling you the ‘Miracle Man of Wykeham.’ And miracles, Master Ashwick, have a price.”

Tom looked at the flames, at the lime that would become mortar, at the future he was trying to build from ash and stone.

“Then I’ll make them pay it,” he said. “Every last penny.”

Joan was silent for a long moment. Then she said, quietly, “The woman you saved—the one Fulke brought—she’s awake now. She’s asking to see you. She says she has something to tell you. Something about Sir Hugh.”

Tom felt the cold settle deeper into his chest. He looked at the kiln, at the flames, at the woman who had become his ally and his conscience.

“Then I’ll see her,” he said. “Tonight.”

The fire crackled between them, and somewhere in the dark, a wolf howled—a sound that was not so different from the hunger in Sir Hugh’s eyes.