Chapter 18: The Reckoning of Michaelmas

The frost had come early that year, hardening the ruts in the manor road until they rang like iron under the cart wheels. Tom stood at the edge of the home fields, watching Wat drive the new plough through a strip of fallow ground. The boy had taken to the steel blade with a reverence Tom had seen only in church, and the soil turned in long, dark ribbons that gleamed with moisture.

“He is good with it,” Joan said, coming up beside him. She carried a basket of late herbs—mugwort and yarrow, their leaves edged with brown. “The boy has a gift for anything that grows.”

“He has a gift for keeping his mouth shut,” Tom said. “That is worth more than any crop.”

Joan did not answer. She had been quiet since the woman’s recovery, since Fulke’s veiled threats had become open ones. Tom knew she was weighing him in some balance of her own making, trying to decide whether his usefulness outweighed his danger.

“Sir Hugh’s steward comes tomorrow,” she said. “With the reckoning.”

“I know.”

“Baldric says the lord wants a full accounting. Every bushel, every hide, every soul who can bear a bow. He means to squeeze us like a grape.”

Tom watched Wat reach the end of the furrow and turn the plough with a practiced hand. The boy had grown three inches since summer, or so it seemed. The food was working, the new crops were working. But none of it would matter if Hugh de Lacy decided that Tom Ashwick was more useful dead than alive.

“I will give him an accounting,” Tom said. “I will give him numbers so large he will have to sit down to read them. And then I will give him a promise.”

“What promise?”

“That there is more where that came from. That the warehouse holds secrets he cannot imagine.” He turned to face her, and saw the fear in her eyes—not of him, but for him. “I know the risk, Joan. But the alternative is worse. If I hide everything, if I hoard it all, then what was the point of any of this? The plague will come, and the winter will come, and we will all be dead anyway. At least this way, some of it might live on.”

Joan was silent for a long moment. Then she reached into her basket and pulled out a small leather pouch, tied with a red cord. “Here. For the fever, if it returns. And for the wounds that will come when Sir Hugh’s men begin fighting in France again.”

Tom took it. The pouch was warm from her body, and he could smell the crushed roots inside—feverfew, poppy, something bitter he could not name. “Thank you.”

“Do not thank me,” she said. “Just be careful. The bishop’s steward is not a fool like Fulke. He will not be bought with a story about Saint Cuthbert’s grace. He will want to see the miracle for himself.”

“Then I will show him one.”

“Tom.”

He paused. She was looking at him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable—not the sharp, critical gaze she usually wore, but something softer, more fragile.

“When the reckoning comes,” she said, “do not try to save everyone. You cannot. You will only burn with them.”

He did not know what to say to that. So he said nothing, and she turned and walked back toward the village, her basket swinging at her side.

---

The steward arrived at noon, as the church bells were ringing for the Office of Sext. He was a thin, precise man named Ralph of Alton, with a clerk’s ink-stained fingers and a face like a closed book. He rode a mule that looked better fed than half the villagers, and he was accompanied by two men-at-arms in Sir Hugh’s livery—wolf grey and black, the colours of de Lacy.

Baldric met them in the manor yard, his scarred face unreadable. Tom stood behind him, trying to look like nothing more than a reeve’s assistant, a man of modest importance and no particular interest.

“The lord’s steward,” Ralph said, dismounting with a fastidious care. “I am here for the accounting. Grain, livestock, labour services, and the muster roll. The King’s commissioners will be here by Christmas, and Sir Hugh will not be found wanting.”

“The accounts are ready,” Baldric said. “You will find them in the hall.”

Ralph nodded, then his eyes swept over the yard, over the new plough resting against the barn wall, over the neat rows of turnips in the near field. “I see the manor has been busy. My lord will be pleased.”

“We have worked hard,” Baldric said.

“So I see.” Ralph’s gaze settled on Tom. “You are the new steward’s man? The one who came from nowhere?”

Tom felt his throat tighten. “I am Tom Ashwick. I serve the reeve.”

“The reeve,” Ralph repeated, as if tasting the word. “And yet I am told you know more about crops and cures than any man in the shire. That you saved a woman from the sweating fever when the priest had already given her the last rites.”

“I used the knowledge God gave me,” Tom said carefully. “Nothing more.”

Ralph smiled, and the smile was worse than any threat. “Of course. God’s knowledge. The bishop’s steward will be eager to hear how God chose to share such wisdom with a man of your… station.”

The words hung in the cold air. Tom could feel Baldric tense beside him, could feel the weight of the two men-at-arms and the closed faces of the villagers who had gathered to watch.

“If the bishop’s steward wishes to speak with me,” Tom said, “I will be happy to explain myself.”

“Oh, he wishes it.” Ralph gestured toward the hall. “He wishes it very much. But first, the accounting. My lord’s debts do not wait for God.”

He walked toward the hall, and Tom followed, his heart pounding against his ribs. Behind him, he heard Joan’s voice, low and urgent, speaking to one of the village women. He did not catch the words. But he knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than any frost, that the questions were no longer coming.

They were already here.