Chapter 44: The Road Beneath the Frozen Stars

They moved before dawn, the cart’s wheels creaking over ruts hidden beneath the fresh snow. Tom’s hands were raw inside his gloves, the reins stiff as iron. Joan sat beside him, a woolen blanket pulled up to her chin, her breath clouding in the grey light. Neither had spoken since they had left the haystack, and the silence had grown thick as frost on a windowpane.

“The river’s ahead,” Tom said finally, nodding toward a dark line of alders that marked the frozen watercourse. “We cross there, then the road bends east through the beech wood.”

Joan studied the treeline. “You know this country.”

“I know maps. I’ve studied them for weeks, in the warehouse, in the dark.” He hesitated. “I know where the bridges are, and where the fords are shallow. But I’ve never walked this road before.”

“Then we walk it together,” she said, and something in her voice made the cold seem less absolute.

They crossed the river at a narrow ford where the ice had not yet thickened enough to bear a cart. The water came up to the horse’s chest, black and viciously cold, and Tom felt the shock of it climb his legs as he waded alongside, steadying the wheel. Joan held the reins, her jaw set, her eyes fixed on the far bank. When they reached the other side, dripping and shivering, she laughed—a short, surprised sound.

“I have not been so wet since the spring floods of ’46,” she said. “I thought I would never be warm again.”

“You’ll be warm soon enough,” Tom said, but he did not believe it. The wind was rising, and the snow had begun again, fine and bitter.

They pressed on through the beech wood, the cart lurching over roots and stones. The trees were bare, their branches like black veins against the grey sky. Tom’s mind drifted to the warehouse, to the battery that was dying, to the steel ploughshares that would rust if they were never used. He had left it all behind—the lime kiln, the books, the boy Wat who had sworn his vow. He had left them to face the bishop’s steward alone.

“Do you think they will burn the barn?” Joan asked, as if reading his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Baldric will hide what he can. Wat knows how to move the seed.”

“And the woman? The one who told you about Hugh?”

Tom did not answer for a long moment. The image of the hanged woman, swaying in the grey light of the bishop’s yard, was burned into his memory. He had seen death before—had counted bodies in plague pits, had watched men die of fever in the warehouse’s makeshift infirmary—but this was different. This was a murder meant to be seen, a message written in rope and bone.

“She knew the risk,” he said finally. “She told me anyway.”

Joan was quiet. Then she said, “She was braver than most men I have known.”

They emerged from the wood as the light began to fail. The road widened, and in the distance Tom could see the smoke of a village rising against the white sky. He pulled the cart to a halt at the edge of a low stone wall, half-buried in snow.

“We need shelter,” he said. “The horse won’t last another night in this.”

Joan nodded, but her eyes were wary. “We don’t know whose village that is. We don’t know if the bishop’s men have ridden ahead of us.”

“We don’t know anything,” Tom said. “That’s the truth of it. We’re moving blind, with a dead woman’s warning in our ears and a traitor’s secret in our saddlebags.”

Joan turned to face him. In the fading light, her face was sharp and beautiful, the lines of hardship and humor etched deep. “Then we choose to trust each other,” she said. “That is the only thing we have left.”

Tom looked at her for a long moment. The snow had settled on her shoulders, on the dark wool of her cloak, and she looked like something out of a story—a woman who had walked through fire and come out with her eyes still clear.

“I trust you,” he said, and he meant it.

They drove into the village as the last light died. It was a small place, a dozen cottages clustered around a church with a crooked tower. The smell of woodsmoke hung thick in the air, and here and there a candle glowed behind a shutter. Tom reined in before the church, where a priest stood on the steps, a lantern in his hand.

“Strangers,” the priest said. His voice was flat, neither welcoming nor hostile. “You come late, and the road is hard.”

“We come from Wykeham,” Tom said. “We seek shelter for the night, and food for our horse.”

The priest’s eyes moved over the cart, over the sacking that covered the steel, over Joan’s face. “Wykeham,” he repeated. “There is plague in Wykeham.”

“There is plague everywhere,” Joan said. “We are not sick. We are cold.”

The priest considered them for a long moment. Then he stepped aside. “The stable is behind the church. You will find hay, and a pump that still works. In the morning, you will move on.”

“Thank you,” Tom said.

The priest did not answer. He turned and walked back into the church, and the heavy door closed behind him with a sound like a coffin lid.

They tended to the horse in the stable, rubbing her down with straw and feeding her the last of the oats. The wind howled outside, and the snow piled against the door. Tom and Joan sat together in the hay, sharing a loaf of hard bread and a piece of cheese that had frozen solid.

“We’re four days from London,” Tom said. “If the weather holds.”

Joan looked at him. “And if it doesn’t?”

Tom did not answer. He stared at the dying lantern, at the shadows that danced on the stable walls. Behind him, in the cart, the bishop’s seal lay hidden in a leather pouch—a key to a door that might already be locked.

“We’ll make it,” he said, but even as he spoke the words, he heard the sound of hoofbeats on the road, growing louder, growing closer, and he knew that the night was not yet over.