Chapter 39: The Tollgate at the River’s Bend

The horses’ hooves rang hollow on the frost-hardened planks of the bridge, and the water beneath them ran black and fast, swollen by the autumn rains. Tom did not look down. He had crossed enough rivers in his life to know that a man who stared too long at moving water began to feel it pulling him, and he had no intention of being pulled anywhere but forward.

Joan rode ahead, her hood pulled low against the wind that came off the water. She had not spoken since they passed the gibbet with its warning of thorns and rope, and Tom had learned to read her silences the way a sailor reads clouds. This one was heavy, threatening, the kind that broke into storm or cleared into bitter calm. He did not know which, and he did not ask.

They reached the far bank and found the road climbing through a thin stand of alders, their leaves gone yellow and rattling in the wind. Beyond the alders, the land opened into flat, water-meadow country, cut by ditches and low stone walls, and there, where the road bent toward a cluster of thatched roofs, stood a gate.

Not a castle gate, not a town gate. A tollgate, made of stout oak and iron, with a small stone guardhouse beside it and a pole across the road. A man in a worn leather jerkin leaned against the pole, a long staff in his hand, and beside him a boy held the reins of a shaggy pony.

Tom reined in. Joan did the same, her mare dancing sideways as she turned.

“Toll,” the man said. He did not move from his post. His eyes were pale and quick, and they went from Tom’s face to his cloak to the pack on his saddle, taking in everything and giving nothing back.

“We have no coin,” Tom said. It was not entirely true. He had a few silver pennies sewn into the lining of his belt, but he had learned that a man who admitted to coin on the king’s highway was a man who invited a knife in the dark.

The tollkeeper spat into the mud. “No coin, no passage. The lord of this manor keeps the bridge and the road, and he takes his due.”

“The lord of this manor,” Joan said, her voice flat, “is Sir Hugh de Lacy, and I doubt he has ever seen this gate or this road. The toll is his by custom, and the custom is that a widow and her servant pass free.”

The tollkeeper’s eyes narrowed. “You know the lord?”

“I know the custom,” Joan said. “And I know that the steward Catesby collects the tolls. Catesby takes his tenth, and the lord takes what remains. I have seen the accounts.”

That was a lie. Tom knew it was a lie. But the tollkeeper did not know that, and the name of Catesby hung in the air like a steel blade.

The tollkeeper studied her for a long moment. Then he shrugged and lifted the pole.

“Pass,” he said. “But tell Catesby I let you through, and that I want my cut.”

Joan nodded and urged her mare forward. Tom followed, and as he passed the tollkeeper, the man’s eyes met his, quick and sharp.

“You’re the stranger,” the tollkeeper said. “The one from the barn. The one they say has iron that cuts like a priest’s tongue.”

Tom’s hand tightened on the reins. “I do not know what they say.”

“They say you saved a woman from the fever. They say you have seed that grows in frost. They say the bishop’s steward came to ask questions and left with none.”

“They say many things,” Tom said.

The tollkeeper smiled, and it was not a kind smile. “They do. And they will say more before the snow comes. The road is long, stranger, and it has ears.”

He let the pole drop behind them, and the sound of it was like a door closing.

They rode in silence for another mile, the road running straight through the water-meadows, and then Joan pulled her mare up beside Tom’s horse.

“He will send word,” she said. “The tollkeeper. He will send word to Catesby that we have passed, and Catesby will send word to Hugh.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you let us stop? Why did we not ride through him?”

“Because he was not alone,” Tom said. “He had a boy with him, and the boy had a horn. If we had tried to force the gate, the horn would have blown, and we would have had riders on us before we reached the next bend.”

Joan was silent, and Tom saw her hand relax on the reins.

“You think like a soldier,” she said.

“I think like a man who has been hunted,” Tom said. “It is the same thing.”

They rode on, and the land began to rise, the water-meadows giving way to low hills and then to woods, the trees bare and black against the grey sky. The road narrowed, and the mud deepened, and the horses began to labor.

Tom felt the seal in his cloak, the bishop’s seal, cold against his chest. He had told himself that the seal was the key to London, the proof that would open doors and silence questions. But the tollkeeper’s words had unsettled him. The road was long, and it had ears. And every ear on the road belonged to someone who wanted something.

They came to the crest of a hill, and below them the land fell away into a wide valley, and in the valley, beside a river that caught the last grey light of the dying day, stood a town. Smoke rose from its chimneys, and the spire of a church pierced the sky, and the walls around it were old and patched, but they were walls, and they meant shelter.

“What town is that?” Tom asked.

“Basingstoke,” Joan said. “It is a market town. There will be an inn, and the inn will have a stable, and the stable will have straw, and the straw will be warm.”

“And the innkeeper will ask questions.”

“They always do,” Joan said. “But they ask questions of everyone, and they do not remember the answers. That is the beauty of an inn on the road to London. Every stranger is a wonder, and every wonder is forgotten by morning.”

Tom looked at the town, and at the road that ran through it and out the other side, and at the darkness that was beginning to gather beyond.

“We will stay the night,” he said. “And we will leave before dawn.”

Joan nodded, and they urged the horses down the hill, toward the smoke and the walls and the questions that waited there. And as they rode, Tom felt the seal warming against his chest, and he wondered what it would cost him to use it, and whether the price would be worth the freedom it promised.