Chapter 27: The Iron Door

The lantern cast a wavering halo as Tom and Wat crossed the yard, keeping to the shadows where the moon could not find them. The manor house loomed above, its timber frame creaking in the wind like old bones. Somewhere inside, Sir Hugh de Lacy was drinking his weight in wine, and Catesby was no doubt tallying the cost of every candle burned in his lord’s name. Tom did not care. Tonight, he needed the cellar.

“The door’s locked,” Wat whispered, his voice barely a breath. “Iron banded. Lord Hugh keeps the key on his belt.”

Tom pulled a length of wire from his sleeve—a trick he’d learned in a warehouse full of seized goods, where locks were sometimes the only thing between a man and a hanging. “Then we don’t need the key.”

The cellar entrance was a low arch behind the kitchens, half-hidden by a stack of empty barrels. The door was exactly as Wat had described: iron-strapped, studded with nails the size of a thumb. Tom knelt, pressed his ear to the wood, and listened. Nothing but the drip of water somewhere below.

He worked the wire into the lock, feeling the tumblers with his fingertips. It was an old mechanism, simple by his standards, but his hands were cold and the wire kept slipping. Wat held the lantern close, his breath fogging in the chill.

“You’ve done this before,” the boy said. It was not a question.

“I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of,” Tom muttered. “This is one of them.”

The lock gave with a soft click. Tom pushed the door open, and the smell of damp earth and old wine rolled out to meet them. He took the lantern from Wat and started down the stairs, the stone steps slick with moisture.

The cellar was larger than he had expected—a vaulted chamber with racks of wine casks along one wall and crates of salted meat stacked against another. But Tom’s eyes went straight to the far corner, where a writing desk sat beneath a single guttering candle. The French clerk was there, his quill scratching across a sheet of parchment.

He looked up as Tom approached, and his face went pale. “You should not be here.”

“And you should not be writing about me,” Tom said. He set the lantern down on the desk, casting the clerk’s face in harsh shadow. “What do you know?”

The clerk’s hand trembled, but he did not reach for the knife at his belt. He was a small man, thin as a reed, with ink-stained fingers and the hollow look of someone who had seen too much and said too little. “I know what Lord Hugh tells me. No more.”

“Then let me ask him myself.” Tom reached across the desk and grabbed the parchment. The clerk made a grab for it, but Tom was faster. He held it to the lantern light.

The writing was in Latin, but Tom had read enough legal documents in his own time to recognize the shape of a report. Names, dates, quantities. And then his own name, scrawled in the margin: *Thomas Ashwick, custos horrei*—keeper of the warehouse.

“This is an inventory,” Tom said. “Of what I’ve given the manor. Seed, steel, medicine.”

The clerk nodded, his eyes darting toward the stairs. “Lord Hugh wants to know what you have left. He wants to know how much more you can give.”

“And if I have nothing left?”

The clerk’s silence was answer enough.

Tom folded the parchment and tucked it into his tunic. “You’re going to tell me what else you’ve written. Every letter, every word. Or I’ll take you to the reeve and tell him you’ve been stealing from the manor’s stores.”

“I have stolen nothing!”

“You’ve stolen my life,” Tom said. “That’s worse.”

The clerk’s shoulders sagged. He reached into a leather satchel at his feet and pulled out a stack of letters, bound with twine. “These are copies of the correspondence between Lord Hugh and the bishop’s steward. The steward has been asking questions about you for weeks. Lord Hugh has been… deflecting.”

“Deflecting?” Tom’s heart hammered. “Or bargaining?”

“Both.” The clerk’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The steward suspects you are a witch. Lord Hugh has told him you are merely a clever farmer. But the steward is not convinced. He has sent for a relic from Canterbury—a piece of the True Cross. He means to test you with it.”

Tom stared at him. “Test me how?”

“If you are a servant of the Devil, the relic will burn you. That is what they say.” The clerk swallowed hard. “Lord Hugh has bought you time, but not much. The relic arrives before Christmas.”

Wat’s face was white in the lantern light. “Tom… they’ll kill you.”

“They’ll try.” Tom turned back to the clerk. “What else? What about the woman I saved—the one who asked to see me? What does she know about Hugh?”

The clerk’s eyes flickered with something like fear. “She was one of his… companions. Before the plague took his first wife. She knows where he keeps his private accounts—the ones that do not appear in the manor ledger. He owes money to the Lombards in London, and he has been selling grain that should have gone to the King’s army.”

Tom felt the pieces click into place. Hugh was not just hungry; he was desperate. And desperate men were dangerous.

“Thank you,” Tom said. He turned to go, then paused. “You should leave this manor. Before the snow traps you here.”

The clerk shook his head. “I have nowhere else to go. The plague took my family. The war took my home. This is all I have left.”

Tom looked at him for a long moment. “Then keep your head down and your mouth shut. And if anyone asks, you never saw me tonight.”

He climbed the stairs with Wat at his heels, the lantern swinging wildly. The night air hit him like a fist, cold and sharp. He stood in the yard, staring up at the manor house, where Hugh’s window glowed with candlelight.

“Tom?” Wat’s voice was small. “What do we do now?”

Tom’s hand closed around the parchment in his tunic. The inventory. The letters. The woman’s testimony. He had pieces of a weapon, but he did not yet know how to wield them.

“We find the woman,” he said. “And we find out exactly what Hugh is hiding. Because if the bishop’s relic is coming, we need something stronger than steel to save us.”

He turned toward the cottages, where the woman lay recovering, unaware that she held the key to his survival—or his doom. The wind howled across the fields, carrying the first sting of snow. Winter was here. And with it, the truth.