Chapter 43: The Snowbound Vigil’s End

The fire had burned down to embers when Tom woke, his neck stiff from the bench and his mind already churning with the day ahead. Joan stirred beside him, her hand still resting where it had found his in the dark. For a moment, he allowed himself to watch her breathe—the slight furrow between her brows, the way her fingers curled against the wool of her cloak—and then he forced himself to rise.

The innkeeper’s wife was already about, stirring pottage in the hearth and eyeing him with the wary curiosity that had followed him since Salisbury. He paid her in silver that had once belonged to Peverel the tithe-collector, and she took it without comment, though her glance lingered on the steel beneath the sacking by the door.

Joan woke as he was lacing his boots. She said nothing, but her hand found his shoulder, and the weight of it steadied him more than any prayer.

They rode out before the sky had fully greyed, the snow crunching beneath the mare’s hooves and the cart’s wheels groaning under the weight of what Tom carried. The road stretched ahead, a pale ribbon through a world of white, and for the first hour they saw no one. The silence was vast, broken only by the jingle of harness and the steady breath of the horses.

It was Joan who spoke first. “You have not asked me what I think of the bargain.”

Tom kept his eyes on the road. “You told me what you thought when the merchant offered it. You called him a vulture and his seal a corpse’s ring.”

“And yet we ride with it.” She pulled her hood tighter against the wind. “I have watched you trade one danger for another since the night you appeared on Wykeham Road. I wonder when you will see that the King is a different kind of wolf.”

“He is the only wolf who can protect us from Hugh,” Tom said. “And from the bishop.”

“Or he is the wolf who will eat us both and call it justice.” She urged her horse closer to the cart. “But I am still here. Do not mistake that for faith in your plan. It is faith in you.”

Tom felt the words settle in his chest like a stone. He had no answer. The road narrowed as it entered a stand of bare oaks, their branches skeletal against the grey sky, and he found himself scanning the treeline for movement that was not there.

They passed a wayside cross, its stone weathered and cracked, and Tom reined in. The snow had drifted against its base, and something dark was tied to the arms—a scrap of cloth, black and sodden. Joan dismounted and pulled it free, her fingers stiff with cold. She turned it over, and her face went still.

“What is it?” Tom asked.

“A badge.” She held it up. A crude emblem, a wolf’s head rendered in faded thread. “The bishop’s men wear these on their cloaks when they travel on his business.”

Tom’s mouth went dry. “It could have been here for weeks.”

“It could have,” Joan said. “But the cloth is not yet frozen stiff. It was tied here this morning.”

The trees pressed close, and Tom felt the weight of unseen eyes. He scanned the road ahead, the drifts of snow, the silent wood. Nothing moved. But the certainty that had followed him since the inn now pressed harder, colder than the wind.

“We cannot turn back,” he said, more to himself than to her.

“No,” Joan agreed. “But we can be smarter than the road.” She gestured to a narrow track that branched off to the left, barely visible beneath the snow. “That will take us through the brush to the farmlands. It adds half a day, but it will not be watched.”

Tom hesitated. The King’s highway was faster, and time was the one thing they could not spare. But the badge hung in Joan’s hand like a verdict, and he had learned to trust her instincts.

“We take the track,” he said.

They turned off the road, and the wood closed around them. The snow was deeper here, the mare struggling through drifts that reached her hocks, and the cart’s wheels caught on roots hidden beneath the white. Tom climbed down twice to clear the way, his breath pluming in the cold, his hands numb inside his gloves.

By midday, they had made little progress. The track had vanished entirely, swallowed by a frozen stream that wound through the trees. Tom stood at its edge, staring at the ice, and felt the first true sting of despair.

“We are lost,” he said.

Joan dismounted and walked to the bank, crouching to examine the ice. “Not lost. The stream runs south-east. It will meet the river road by nightfall.” She looked up at him, her eyes bright with cold and something like amusement. “You are a man of numbers and ledgers, Tom Ashwick. But I have walked these lands since I was a girl. Trust the land, and it will not betray you.”

He did not argue. He followed, and the stream led them true—by dusk, they had found the river road, wider and better-packed, with the distant glow of a village ahead. Tom’s hands were shaking with cold and relief, and he allowed himself a moment to breathe.

Then he saw the horsemen.

They were three, riding fast from the east, their cloaks dark against the snow. They had not yet seen Tom and Joan, but they would in moments. Tom pulled the cart into the shadow of a stone wall, his heart hammering, and pressed Joan’s horse close beside him.

The horsemen passed within fifty yards, their faces hidden beneath hoods, their mounts steaming in the cold. One of them turned his head, and Tom saw the glint of a badge on his chest—a wolf’s head, black against the grey.

They did not stop. They rode on toward the village, and the snow swallowed them.

Tom let out a breath he had not known he was holding. “They are ahead of us. We cannot go through the village.”

Joan’s hand found his, cold and fierce. “Then we go around. And we do not light a fire tonight.”

They turned off the road again, into the darkness of the fields, and the night closed around them like a fist. Tom drove the cart by the feel of the wheels, blind in the black, and behind him the village lights grew small and distant and then vanished altogether.

By the time they stopped, in the lee of a haystack that smelled of rot and old straw, Tom’s legs would barely hold him. He slumped against the cart, and Joan came to sit beside him, her shoulder pressed to his.

“We are still alive,” she said.

“For how long?” Tom asked.

She did not answer. But her hand found his in the dark, and they sat together as the snow fell, and the road ahead grew colder and longer and more dangerous with every mile.