Chapter 24: The Weight of Treason

The fire was a living thing between them, and for a long moment Tom could not find his voice. The woman—she had given her name as Alice, a laundress from the Calais camp—watched him with the flat weariness of someone who had already said too much and expected nothing good to follow.

“You are certain,” Tom said. It was not a question.

“I carried the linens,” Alice said. “I saw the ledgers when the steward was drunk. Sir Hugh’s own seal on every page. Grain, salted pork, even good steel arrowheads—all bound for the coast at night, loaded onto Flemish cogs that flew no flag.” She coughed, a wet sound that rattled in her chest. “The gold came back in small chests. He buried them in the cellars under the great hall. I know because I was made to scrub the blood off the stairs after a servant stumbled upon one.”

Joan, who had been standing in the shadows near the door, stepped closer. Her face was pale in the firelight. “If this is true, Tom, you hold a noose for Sir Hugh. And he will know it the moment he suspects you know.”

“He already suspects everything,” Tom said. He rubbed his face with both hands, feeling the stubble rough against his palms. The warehouse hummed behind him—the last of its lights flickering faintly as the battery continued its slow death. “But this changes things. He is not just a greedy lord squeezing his tenants. He is a traitor to the Crown.”

Alice nodded slowly. “The King’s war in France bleeds the realm dry. Every sack of grain Sir Hugh sends across the water feeds the very army Edward III fights. If the King knew, Hugh would be hanged, drawn, and quartered before the month was out.”

“And so would I,” Tom said quietly, “if Hugh learns that I know.”

The room fell silent. Snow hissed against the shutters like a thousand tiny accusations.

Joan broke the quiet. “Then we do not let him learn. We use this, Tom. Carefully.”

“Use it how?” Tom turned to her. “I could go to London, petition the King directly. I had planned to trade my knowledge for protection. But now I have something better—proof of treason. The King will listen to that.”

“If you reach him,” Joan said. “The roads are death in winter. And Hugh’s men watch every path out of the manor. Catesby has already doubled the guards on the granary.”

“Then I go without the road,” Tom said. He stood, pacing the length of the warehouse aisle. Crates of turnip seed, steel ploughshares, and the leather-bound books of veterinary science lined the shelves like silent witnesses. “I have the lime kiln hidden in the wood. I have Wat. I have you.” He looked at Joan. “And I have Alice’s testimony.”

Alice shook her head weakly. “I am a laundress. My word against a lord’s is nothing. The King’s justices will not hang a noble on the say-so of a sick woman from the camp kitchens.”

“Then we need proof,” Tom said. “The ledgers. The gold in the cellars. Something Hugh cannot explain away.”

Joan’s eyes narrowed. “You are thinking of stealing from him again.”

“I am thinking of surviving,” Tom said. “The audit was delayed with Peverel’s stolen satchel. But Catesby’s patience will run out before the snow does. If I do not act, I will be dead by Christmas, and the warehouse will be Hugh’s, and all of this—” he gestured at the shelves, at the dying lights, at everything he had brought across time—“will be nothing but kindling for a pyre.”

Joan crossed her arms. “And if you are caught? The satchel was one thing. Breaking into the lord’s cellars is another.”

“I will not be caught,” Tom said. But even as he said it, he felt the lie settle in his stomach like a stone.

Alice stirred on her pallet. “There is another way,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper. “The camp at Calais had a clerk. A man named Geoffrey of York. He wrote the ledgers for Sir Hugh’s shipments. He kept copies—secret ones—in case Hugh ever tried to silence him. Geoffrey was taken prisoner by the French two months before I fell ill. If he still lives, he is in a French gaol.”

“And how would I reach him?” Tom asked. “I cannot cross the Channel in winter.”

“You do not need to,” Alice said. “The French have their own war with the King. They would welcome proof that an English lord deals with them. A letter to the French commander at Calais, with Hugh’s seal and the dates of his shipments, would be enough to condemn him in any court—English or French.”

Tom stared at her. The fire crackled. The snow continued its patient assault on the world outside.

“You have been thinking about this for a long time,” he said.

Alice met his eyes. “I served that household for six years. I watched them beat a girl to death for spilling wine on Hugh’s boots. I have been thinking about this since the day I was old enough to hate him properly.”

Joan moved to stand beside Tom. Her shoulder brushed his. “A letter to the French,” she said slowly. “It is a gamble. If it falls into the wrong hands, you are not just a heretic—you are a traitor yourself.”

“Everything is a gamble now,” Tom said. He looked at the dying lights of the warehouse, the fading glow of his last connection to the world he had lost. “But I did not come here to hoard my gifts and save my skin. I came here to change something. And if the only way to do that is to trade one treason for another, then so be it.”

Joan was silent for a long moment. Then she reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was fierce.

“Then we do it together,” she said. “But we need the seal. Hugh’s personal seal. Without it, the letter is worthless.”

Tom nodded. He knew where the seal was kept—in the great hall, in the iron-bound chest beside Hugh’s bed. He had seen it during the audit, glinting in the candlelight.

He had one winter to steal it.

And the snow was already falling.