Chapter 21: The Fevered Woman’s Tale

The woman’s name was Alice, and she had been a dairymaid at Sir Hugh’s manor house until the fever took her. Tom found her propped against a pile of straw in the corner of the tithe barn, her face still pale but her eyes clear and watchful. Joan stood by the door, arms crossed, a silent sentinel.

“You asked to see me,” Tom said, lowering himself onto a stool. He kept his voice calm, the way he had learned to speak to frightened workers in his old life. “Joan says you have something to tell me about Sir Hugh.”

Alice’s fingers plucked at the blanket drawn to her chin. “You saved my life. The priest said it was God’s will I lived, but I know it was your hands and your strange medicines. I owe you a truth.”

“Truths are dangerous things,” Tom said, hearing Margery’s voice echo in his memory.

“This one is already dangerous,” Alice said. “I heard it with my own ears, the night before the fever took me. Sir Hugh came back from France with more than debts. He brought a prisoner—a French knight, a man of some rank. He keeps him chained in the old cellar beneath the manor’s north tower. No one is supposed to know.”

Tom felt the cold seep through his tunic. “Why would he keep a prisoner secret?”

“For ransom,” Alice said. “But the knight has been there since summer, and no herald has been sent to France. Sir Hugh does not want gold. He wants something else.” She paused, her eyes darting to Joan, then back to Tom. “I heard him arguing with the knight through the grate. Sir Hugh said, ‘Tell me where the money is hidden, and I will let you die clean.’ The knight laughed. He said, ‘You will be dead before I am, English dog. Your king will bleed you dry for his wars, and your own people will tear you apart for the leavings.’ Sir Hugh struck him. I heard the blow. Then he said, ‘The Church will not save you. The King will not save you. Only I decide what happens in my manor.’”

Joan stepped forward, her voice tight. “This knight—did you hear his name?”

Alice shook her head. “Only that he is called the Falcon. Sir Hugh said it with hate, as if the name itself was a wound.”

Tom’s mind raced. A hidden prisoner, a ransom unpaid, a lord holding secrets from both Church and Crown. It was leverage, if he could use it. But it was also a noose. Hugh would kill anyone who discovered the knight.

“Why tell me?” Tom asked.

“Because you are the only one who might survive him,” Alice said. “And because I heard Sir Hugh tell Catesby that after Michaelmas, he would have the harvest accounted, the muster complete, and you—‘the warehouse man’—bound to his service by oath or by iron. He means to own you, master. He means to own everything you have.”

The words hung in the air like smoke. Tom thought of the steel ploughshares, the turnip seed, the veterinary books—all of it about to become property of a man who would bleed the land dry to pay his debts.

“Where is this cellar?” he asked.

Alice’s eyes widened. “You cannot go there. The door is barred, and Catesby keeps the key.”

“I did not ask if I could,” Tom said. “I asked where.”

She told him. A low door behind the wine racks, hidden by a tapestry of Saint George slaying the dragon. The dragon’s eye was a loose stone; behind it, a key. She had seen Catesby use it once, when he thought he was alone.

Tom stood. “Thank you, Alice. Rest. You will be strong again soon.”

She caught his sleeve. “Master Tom—if Sir Hugh finds out I told you, he will hang me from the orchard tree.”

“He will not find out,” Tom said. “I will make sure of that.”

Outside, the frost had turned the mud to iron. Joan walked beside him, her breath clouding in the cold air. “You are thinking of going to that cellar.”

“I am thinking of the French knight,” Tom said. “If I can free him, or use him as a bargaining piece, I might have a way out of Hugh’s grip.”

“Or a way into the fire,” Joan said. “Hugh will not negotiate. He will kill you and the knight both, and blame the French for the murder.”

“Then I do not tell Hugh,” Tom said. “I tell the King.”

Joan stopped. “You cannot reach the King. London is weeks away, and winter is coming.”

“Then I find another way,” Tom said. “Margery said the bishop’s steward is sending traps. Hugh wants to own me. The Church wants to burn me. But there is one man who might see my worth as a weapon, not a heresy.”

Joan’s face was unreadable. “The King.”

“Edward has spent his life chasing glory in France,” Tom said. “He needs money, he needs soldiers, he needs grain. I can give him all three—if I can get to him before Hugh or the Church takes me.”

“And if you cannot?”

Tom looked toward the wood, where the hidden lime kiln waited, and beyond it, the dark shape of the manor house where a French knight rotted in chains.

“Then I will make sure Hugh’s secrets destroy him first,” he said. “And I will be gone before the ashes cool.”

Joan said nothing, but her hand found his and squeezed, quick and fierce, before she turned and walked back toward the village. Tom stood alone in the frost, feeling the shape of a story he had not yet decided how to tell, but which was now pulling him forward whether he willed it or not.