Chapter 46: The King's Shadow

The inn at Staines had seen better days, and so had its patrons. Tom sat in a corner of the common room, Joan beside him, their bowls of thin pottage growing cold as the innkeeper’s words settled into the space between them like stones dropped into still water.

“Peace,” the man said again, wiping his hands on a rag that had once been white. “The King’s messengers rode through three days past. There’s to be a truce with the French.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “They say the King himself wept when he heard the terms. Wept for the souls lost, or the coin lost, none can say which.”

Tom stared into his pottage. A truce. After two decades of war, after Crécy and Calais and the endless march of armies across France, Edward III was laying down his sword. And with it, Tom’s leverage.

“Hugh’s grain has been feeding French soldiers for two years,” Joan said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. “If the war is over, what does the King care for that?”

“Treason is treason,” Tom said, but the words felt hollow. He had been a logistics man long enough to know that value was determined by need. A starving man would pay gold for a loaf of bread. A well-fed man would not pay a penny.

The innkeeper returned with a jug of small ale, setting it between them with a practiced ease. “You’re headed to London, then?”

“We are,” Joan said.

“Best be careful. The roads are thick with the King’s men, what with the truce and all. And there’s been talk of”—he paused, glancing around the room as if the walls themselves might betray him—“questions being asked. About strangers. About men who appear from nowhere with strange goods.”

Tom felt the cold settle in his chest. The bishop’s men had been thorough. They had ridden ahead of him, or perhaps they had simply found the fastest horses while he and Joan had struggled through the snow.

“What sort of questions?” Joan asked, her voice even.

The innkeeper shrugged. “The sort that come with chains attached. They’re looking for a man of middling years, dark-haired, with a way of speaking that’s not from any shire. They say he’s a heretic. A warlock.”

Tom kept his face still. He had known this journey was a gamble. He had known that the moment he set out from Wykeham, he was trading one set of dangers for another. But hearing his own description spoken aloud, in a crowded inn on the road to London, made the gallows feel closer than ever.

“We’ve seen no such man,” Joan said. “And we’ve come all the way from the west country.”

The innkeeper nodded, satisfied. “Then you’ll have a safe ride of it. The King’s at Westminster, they say. If you’re looking for work, that’s where you’ll find it.”

He drifted away, and Tom let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“He’s looking for you,” Joan said. “The bishop’s man. He’s already here.”

“Or he will be soon.” Tom reached for the small ale, drinking deeply. The taste was sour, but it grounded him. “We need to move faster.”

“The horses are spent. Another day of hard riding and they’ll founder.”

Tom knew she was right. They had pushed hard through the snow, sleeping in ditches and barns, eating what they could scavenge. The horses had carried them faithfully, but they were near the end of their strength.

“Then we walk,” he said. “We leave the horses at the next stable and walk the rest of the way. It’s only a day’s march from here to the city gates.”

Joan studied him, her eyes sharp in the dim firelight. “And if the bishop’s men catch us on foot?”

“Then we’ll have to hope the King’s justice is faster than theirs.”

It was not a plan. It was barely a prayer. But it was all they had.

They left the inn before dawn, the sky still black and bitter cold. Tom paid the stable boy an extra penny to keep the horses until spring, knowing even as he did so that he might never return for them. Then they set out on foot, their breath pluming in the frozen air, the road to London stretching before them like a grey ribbon through a white world.

The snow had stopped falling, but the ground was hard-packed and treacherous. They walked in silence, saving their strength, their packs growing heavier with every mile. Tom’s legs ached. His boots had worn thin in places, and he could feel the cold seeping through the leather.

By midday they reached a crossroads, marked by a weathered stone cross. A group of travelers huddled there, wrapped in mud-spattered cloaks, their faces grey with exhaustion. One of them, a man with a bandaged hand, called out to them.

“You’ll not make London today, friends. The Thames has flooded the low road. You’ll have to go by the bridge at Kingston.”

Tom’s heart sank. The detour would add hours to their journey. Hours he did not have.

“How do you know?” Joan asked.

“Because we just came from there.” The man laughed bitterly. “We lost a cart and two good mules to the water. If you’ve anything of value, you’ll want to keep it high and dry.”

Tom exchanged a glance with Joan. The steel was hidden beneath the sacking in their packs, heavy and precious. If the river had flooded the road, they would have to find another way.

“Is there a ferry?” Tom asked.

The man shook his head. “Not this time of year. The ice is too thick in places, too thin in others. You’ll have to go by the bridge.”

The bridge at Kingston. It was a full day’s detour. A full day that Tom did not have.

He stood there, in the frozen road, watching the travelers shuffle past. The man with the bandaged hand paused, looking at Tom with something like curiosity.

“You’ve the look of a man running from something,” he said. “Whatever it is, I hope you catch it before it catches you.”

He moved on, and Tom was left standing in the wind, Joan’s hand finding his.

“We’ll find another way,” she said.

“Will we?”

She squeezed his fingers. “We’ve come this far. We’ll come further.”

Tom looked at her, at the fierce determination in her eyes, and for a moment he believed her. Then he looked down the road, toward London, where a king was mourning a war and a bishop’s men were closing in.

“We’ll go by the bridge,” he said. “And we’ll pray we get there before they do.”

They walked on, into the wind, into the cold, into the shadow of the gallows. And behind them, far behind them on the white horizon, Tom saw a thin column of smoke rising from the road they had just traveled.

Riders, with fires of their own.

He did not look back again.