Chapter 32: The Cart’s Last Mile

The frozen road rang like iron under the cart’s wheels, and Tom walked beside it with his hands buried in his cloak, watching the breath of the mule plume into the grey morning. The letter from Willoughby the merchant was a hard square against his chest, wrapped in oiled cloth and sealed with a blob of wax that had cracked in the cold. He had not read it again since the merchant had handed it to him in the yard, but he did not need to. He had written the words himself, in a hand that still felt like a child’s scrawl against the neat secretary script of the age, and he knew every line by heart.

*To the King’s Grace, from the hands of Thomas Ashwick, steward of Wykeham Manor, concerning treasons committed by Sir Hugh de Lacy, knight, against the Crown and realm.*

It was a gamble that could hang him. It was a gamble that could save him. And it was the only gamble left.

Baldric walked ahead of the cart, his scarred face turned into the wind, his hand resting on the axe at his belt. He had argued against the journey for three days. He had argued against the letter for three more. But in the end, when Tom had asked him whether he would rather die of the plague or of the rope, the reeve had only spat into the frost and said, “I’ll die of neither, if I can help it. And neither will you.”

The village of Wykeham had shrunk behind them. Tom did not look back. He had said his goodbyes to Joan in the dark of the warehouse, her hand against his cheek, her voice low and fierce. *“If you do not return, I will burn his manor to the ground myself.”* He had almost smiled at that. She would, too. He had no doubt of it.

The road to London was a ribbon of frozen mud between bare hedgerows, and the world was silent save for the creak of the cart and the distant caw of rooks. They passed a hamlet where the smoke rose thin and grey from a single chimney, and Tom saw a woman at a well, her face hollow, her eyes empty. She did not look at them. The plague had come here, and it had taken everything that mattered.

“How far to the city?” Tom asked, though he knew the answer.

“Four days, if the roads hold,” Baldric said. “Five, if the snow comes again. Six, if we meet the bishop’s men.”

Tom nodded. The bishop’s steward had been asking questions when they left, his horse stamping in the manor yard, his eyes cold and patient. Catesby had greeted him with honeyed words and a flagon of ale, and Tom had slipped away through the back of the barn, leaving the steward to wonder why the strange man from nowhere was suddenly so hard to find. The satchel of records he had stolen from Peverel the tithe-collector was hidden in the lime kiln, wrapped in oiled cloth and buried under a foot of ash. It would keep. It would have to.

The mule stumbled on a stone, and Tom steadied the cart with a hand on the rail. The cargo beneath the sacking was not grain or wool. It was steel—ploughshares and horseshoes and a dozen knife blades, all hidden under a layer of turnip seed and dried herbs, the goods of a warehouse that no longer existed in any world but his own. The battery was nearly dead. The lights were dim. The books in the warehouse were turning to pulp in the damp, and the knowledge they held was fading with them. This journey was not just a gamble. It was the last throw of the dice.

“Willoughby will meet us at the sign of the Green Boar,” Baldric said, breaking the silence. “He knows the city. He knows the King’s court. He knows which palms to grease and which doors to knock on.”

“And he knows how to keep his mouth shut,” Tom said.

“That too.” Baldric glanced at him, his scarred face unreadable. “You trust him.”

“He came to me. He knew the warehouse was not of this world. He could have turned me over to the bishop a dozen times over, and he did not. That is trust enough for me.”

Baldric said nothing to that, and the road stretched on. They passed a gallows standing at a crossroads, a rotting shape swinging in the wind, and Tom looked away. The world he had fallen into was full of such things, and he had learned to look away, to keep his eyes on the road ahead. But the gallows stayed with him all the same, a shadow at the edge of his vision.

They stopped at noon at a wayside inn, a hovel of wattle and daub with a fire that smoked more than it burned. The innkeeper was a thin man with a nervous tic in his eye, and he served them bread and ale without asking questions. That was good. The fewer questions, the better.

Tom sat by the fire, the letter pressed against his chest, and thought of the woman in the fens. He had promised her rescue, and he had not delivered it. He had promised her safety, and he had left her behind. The guilt was a stone in his gut, and he did not know how to dislodge it.

“You will not save her by dying,” Baldric said, as if reading his mind. The reeve was standing by the door, watching the road through a crack in the shutters. “You will not save her by hanging. You will save her by reaching London, and by making the King hear your words.”

“And if the King does not hear?”

“Then you will have tried.” Baldric turned to face him, his eyes hard. “And that is more than most men ever do.”

Tom finished his ale and set the cup down. The fire crackled. The wind moaned in the eaves. And somewhere on the road behind them, he thought he heard the distant thunder of hooves.

He did not look back.

“We move,” he said, and stood.

The cart was loaded, the mule was harnessed, and the road was waiting. Tom climbed onto the cart seat beside Baldric, and they set off into the grey afternoon, the letter burning against his chest, the steel hidden beneath the sacking, and the shadow of the gallows still swinging in the wind behind them.

Four days to London. Five if the snow came again.

And the winter was only just beginning.