Chapter 22: The Fever Woman’s Truth

The morning came grey as ash, and Tom found himself standing at the door of the woman’s hut before the cock had finished his second crow. Joan was already there, kneeling beside the pallet, pressing a damp cloth to the woman’s brow. The fever had broken three days past, but she was still thin as a winter hare, her eyes too large in a face that seemed all bone.

“She asked for you,” Joan said, not looking up. “I thought it best you come before Catesby’s spies notice a pattern.”

Tom ducked under the low lintel. The hut smelled of woodsmoke and yarrow, and the woman—her name was Alice, he had learned, though she had given no surname—watched him with the wary stillness of a creature that had learned to expect blows.

“You saved me,” she said. It was not a question.

“Fulke brought you. I did what any man would.”

“Any man would have let me die.” She pushed herself up on one elbow, and Joan moved to support her back with a folded sack. “I was bleeding from the mouth when he found me on the road. The priest had already said the rites. He wanted my purse and my mule, and he got both, but he also got a conscience he didn’t know how to feed.”

Tom knelt, bringing his eyes level with hers. “You said you have something to tell me about Sir Hugh.”

Alice laughed, a dry, rattling sound. “The lord of this manor. Yes. I was in the kitchens at Kirkton Abbey when he came through at midsummer, on his way from the coast. He didn’t know I was listening—servants are furniture to men like him.” She paused, and her thin fingers plucked at the blanket. “He’s not just in debt. He’s in treason.”

The word hung in the air like a bell struck once. Joan’s hands stilled on the cloth.

“Say it plainly,” Tom said.

“He’s been selling grain to the French. Through a merchant in Southampton, a man named Gascelyn. The abbey’s cellarer was part of it—he took a cut for the Church’s blessing, though he called it a tithe.” Alice’s lip curled. “The King’s wars need wheat for his armies, and Sir Hugh sells his harvest to the enemy. He was coming back from Southampton when he stopped at the abbey. He argued with the cellarer over the price. Said the French were offering more than the King’s purveyors, and that Edward could starve for all he cared.”

Tom felt the ground shift beneath him. The man who owned his life, who held the threat of the pyre over his head, was not merely a greedy lord. He was a traitor to the crown.

“Do you have proof?” Joan’s voice was sharp. “Letters? Names?”

“The cellarer keeps a ledger,” Alice said. “I saw it. Red leather, with the abbey’s seal on the cover. He writes everything down—ships, weights, payments. If you can get that book, you have Sir Hugh by the throat.”

Tom sat back on his heels. The lime kiln. The dying battery. The bishop’s steward circling like a hawk. And now this—a thread that led to the heart of the realm, to Edward himself, if he could only pull it hard enough.

“Kirkton Abbey,” he said. “How far?”

“Three days’ walk, south and east. But you won’t get in through the gate. The cellarer is cautious, and the abbot has his own spies.” Alice studied him with those hollow eyes. “You’d need a reason to be there. A pilgrimage, a tithe dispute, a sick horse. And you’d need to find the book without being seen.”

Tom thought of the warehouse, of the books on veterinary science, of the steel knives and the tinctures. He thought of Wat, who had learned to keep secrets, and of Baldric, who had killed men at Crécy and knew how to move unseen.

“I have a reason,” he said slowly. “Fulke told me the bishop’s steward has been asking questions. I can go to the abbey seeking counsel, to answer those questions before they become accusations. It will put me in the cellarer’s path without raising suspicion.”

Joan shook her head. “You’ll be walking into the lion’s den. The Church is already suspicious of you. If you’re caught searching for that ledger, you’ll hang as a thief and burn as a heretic in the same week.”

“And if I don’t go?” Tom met her gaze. “Hugh will bleed this manor dry to pay his French friends. He’ll take every bushel, every ox, every man who can hold a spear, and when the winter comes and the village starves, he’ll blame me for the shortages. The ledger is my only way to turn his own treason against him.”

Alice sank back onto the pallet, exhausted by her words. “There’s one more thing,” she whispered. “The cellarer is not the only one with a book. Sir Hugh keeps his own accounts, locked in a chest in his solar. I saw it when I was at the manor, before the fever took me. If you want to destroy him, you need both.”

Tom stood, feeling the weight of the day settle on his shoulders. Outside, the first flakes of snow began to fall, drifting past the door like the ghosts of all the winters to come.

“I’ll leave at dawn,” he said. “Baldric will come with me. Joan, you’ll stay and keep watch over the village, over the warehouse. If I don’t come back by Candlemas, take Wat and the seed and go north. Find Margery. She’ll know what to do.”

Joan rose, her face pale in the grey light. “You’re asking me to bury you before you’re dead.”

“I’m asking you to survive me if I am.” He took her hand, the same fierce gesture she had given him in the frost, and held it. “That’s what love is, Joan. It’s the plan for after.”

She pulled away, but her eyes were bright. “Then come back. I refuse to be a widow twice.”

Tom stepped out into the snow, and the flakes melted on his face like the first touch of a truth he had not yet fully accepted. Somewhere to the south, a red leather ledger waited in a candlelit scriptorium, and behind it, a locked chest in a traitor’s solar. He had come to this world to save lives with turnip seed and steel. Now he would have to save them with theft, lies, and a reckoning that could bring a lord to his knees.

The snow fell faster, and the wood where the lime kiln waited grew white and silent.

And out of the white, a rider came—a man in Church livery, mud-spattered and grim, reining his horse before the manor gate. Tom recognized the coat. It was the bishop’s steward, come early, with questions that would not wait for spring.