Chapter 15: The Tithe of Souls

The morning after the hall’s reckoning, Tom woke to the sound of Wat’s knife scraping frost from the barn door’s hinges. The boy had taken to sleeping in the hayloft, a pallet of sacking and straw hidden behind the false wall, and Tom had not the heart to send him back to his mother’s cot. The boy’s loyalty was a fragile thing, and loyalty, in this age, was currency more precious than silver.

“Mistress Joan came by,” Wat said, not looking up from his work. “Said the fevered woman’s up and walking. Wants to speak with you.”

Tom pulled his woolen cloak tighter. The warehouse’s battery had dimmed to a sullen amber glow the night before, and he had rationed its use to the black hours when the villagers slept. He did not know how many more nights it would hold. He did not want to think about it.

The woman was sitting on a stool outside Joan’s cottage, wrapped in a blanket that had more holes than weave. Her name, Joan had told him, was Annot. She had been brought by Fulke from a village two days west, where the plague had taken her husband and both her children within a single week. She had wandered the roads until the tithe-collector found her collapsed in a ditch, burning with fever.

“You saved me,” Annot said, her voice raw. It was not a question.

“The fever broke on its own,” Tom said. “I only helped your body fight it.”

She looked at him with eyes that had seen too much. “The priest at my village said the pestilence is God’s wrath. He said we were being punished for our sins.” She paused. “Are you an angel, then? Or a devil?”

Tom crouched beside her. “I’m neither. I’m a man who knows a few things about sickness and medicine. That’s all.”

“Fulke said you burn barns and speak to demons.”

“Fulke is a fool who owes me money,” Tom said, and was rewarded with a thin, cracked smile.

Joan came out of the cottage with a clay cup of something steaming. She handed it to Annot, then fixed Tom with a look that was half concern, half accusation. “The bishop’s steward rode through the village at dawn. He was asking about a stranger who ‘works wonders’ and ‘heals with strange arts.’” She said the words with a bitterness that suggested she had heard them before. “He spoke to Catesby first.”

Tom felt the cold settle in his chest, deeper than the frost. “What did Catesby tell him?”

“That Sir Hugh’s reeve had taken on a new steward who was ‘learned in husbandry.’” Joan’s lip curled. “He said you were a gift from God. Catesby has decided to let the bishop’s men dig, and to be seen to help them. It costs him nothing, and it buys him favor.”

“And what does the bishop’s steward want from me?”

“Proof,” Joan said. “He wants to see the ‘miracle seed’ and the ‘iron ploughs’ that have made Wykeham’s fields yield twice what they did last year. He wants to know whether you are a saint or a sorcerer.” She handed him the empty cup. “And he wants to meet you. Tomorrow, at the church.”

Tom walked back to the barn with Wat at his heels. The boy was quiet, which was worse than his usual chatter. Inside, behind the false wall, the warehouse hummed with its dying battery’s breath. The steel ploughshares gleamed in the amber light. The turnip seed sat in its neat wooden crates. The books on veterinary science leaned against the wall, their leather bindings untouched by mold or rot.

“Wat,” Tom said, “if I ask you to do something dangerous, will you do it without question?”

The boy nodded, solemn as an oath.

“Good. I need you to take the lime kiln’s location to Fulke. Tell him I’ll give him a bushel of seed for every load of quicklime he delivers to the wood’s edge before the snow. But tell him to keep his mouth shut, or I’ll tell Sir Hugh where he’s been hiding the tithe grain he skimmed last Michaelmas.”

Wat’s eyes widened. “You know about that?”

“I know everything that moves through this manor, boy. That’s why I’m still alive.” Tom knelt and gripped Wat’s shoulder. “And I need you to find me a man who can read. Not a priest. A man who knows letters but doesn’t love the Church.”

Wat thought for a moment. “Old Martin the shepherd. He was a clerk in London before the plague took his family. He doesn’t go to mass anymore.”

“Bring him to me after dark. And Wat—tell no one. Not your mother, not Joan, not anyone.”

The boy ran off, and Tom stood alone in the warehouse’s dying light. He pulled one of the veterinary books from the shelf and opened it to a page he had marked. It was a treatise on the treatment of cattle murrain, written by a man who had never seen a cow, but whose words had been passed down through generations of scholars who had also never seen a cow. The knowledge was imperfect, but it was knowledge. And in this world, knowledge was the only weapon that did not rust.

He heard footsteps in the barn. He slipped through the false wall and closed it behind him, so that only a crease in the hay remained.

Catesby entered, followed by a man in a plain brown robe. The bishop’s steward. Tom recognized him by the silver cross that hung at his belt—a man who wore his authority like a chain.

“Ashwick,” Catesby said, his voice oily. “The steward of the bishop of Winchester wishes to speak with you.”

The steward stepped forward. He had a face like a ledger: all lines and columns, no room for mercy. “I have heard of your methods,” he said. “I have heard of your seed, and your iron, and your healings. The Church is not blind, nor is it ungrateful. But it is also not foolish.” He paused, letting the silence stretch. “Tell me, Master Ashwick: do you believe in God?”

Tom met his gaze. “I believe in the harvest,” he said. “And I believe that a man who can feed his neighbors in a time of plague is doing God’s work, whether he knows it or not.”

The steward’s mouth curved into something that was not quite a smile. “A convenient answer. But answers, Master Ashwick, are like seeds. They grow into what they are planted to be.” He turned and walked away, Catesby scuttling behind him.

Tom stood in the cold, watching them go. The battery hummed its dying note behind the wall, and somewhere in the village, a woman who had lost everything began to laugh—a sound so raw and unexpected that the birds startled from the eaves.

The harvest was coming. And with it, the reckoning.