Chapter 48: The River’s Frozen Veil

The snow had stopped by the time they reached the river, but the cold had settled into the bones of the land like a sickness. The Thames lay before them, a broad ribbon of grey-white ice that groaned and shifted under its own weight. Tom reined in the cart horse, a sturdy beast Baldric had bartered for at the tollgate, and studied the crossing.

“It will hold,” Joan said, but her voice carried the uncertainty of a woman who had seen ice lie before.

Tom shook his head. “We’re not crossing here. Too open. The bishop’s men will watch the fords and the bridges. We need a place where the river bends and the banks are steep enough to hide us.”

Joan pulled her hood tighter, frost crusting the wool. “You know this river?”

“I know maps,” he said. “And I know that rivers are predictable. The bends collect silt. The silt makes shallows. The shallows freeze first.”

He clicked his tongue and guided the horse eastward, following a track that wound through bare willows and alders. The cart’s wheels creaked, the steel beneath the sacking clinking softly with every jolt. Behind them, the smoke of the last village had faded into a pale smear on the horizon. Ahead, the river widened, and the ice took on a blueish sheen.

“There,” Tom said, pointing to a place where the bank sloped gently and a stand of reeds jutted through the snow. “We’ll cross there.”

Joan dismounted and walked to the edge, testing the ice with the heel of her boot. It held. She pressed harder, then knelt and laid her ear against the surface. Tom watched her, struck again by the way she moved—practical, unhurried, as if the world’s dangers were merely problems to be solved.

“It’s thick,” she said, rising. “But the horse and cart will be heavy. We go one at a time. You first, with the cart. I’ll follow with the horse.”

“No,” Tom said. “Together, or not at all.”

She gave him a look that was half affection, half exasperation. “You are a fool, Tom Ashwick. A lovable fool, but a fool.”

He almost smiled. “I’ve been called worse.”

They crossed slowly, the ice groaning beneath the cart’s weight, Tom walking beside the horse’s head, Joan behind with a long pole to probe for weak spots. The wind bit through their cloaks, and the silence was so complete that Tom could hear his own heartbeat. Halfway across, the ice cracked—a sharp, gunshot sound that sent a jolt of terror through him. But it was only a surface crack, and the cart lurched forward, wheels finding purchase on the far bank.

They were across.

Tom let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “We’ll follow the river south. There’s a village called Brentford a day’s ride from the city. We can rest the horse there, then approach London from the west.”

Joan nodded, but her eyes were on the distant skyline. “The smoke is thicker now. We’re close.”

They rode in silence for a while, the cart’s wheels crunching over frozen ruts. The landscape had changed—more farms, more fences, more signs of human habitation. But with the signs of life came signs of death. They passed a gibbet by the roadside, its iron cage empty but waiting. They passed a plague pit, freshly dug, the earth mounded and raw. They passed a church whose bell was silent, its door nailed shut with a cross of black wood.

“The pestilence has been here,” Joan said quietly.

“It’s everywhere,” Tom said. “It doesn’t care about kings or bishops or wars. It just eats.”

He thought of the warehouse, of the willow-bark tinctures and the veterinary books, of the lime kiln hidden in the wood. All of it was useless now, a lifetime away. All that mattered was the steel beneath the sacking and the bishop’s seal in his pouch.

“Tom,” Joan said, breaking his reverie. “What will you say to the King?”

He had asked himself the same question a hundred times. “I’ll tell him the truth. That Hugh has been selling grain to the French. That the war is ending, but the treason is not. That I have knowledge that can feed his armies and heal his soldiers.”

“And if he doesn’t believe you?”

“Then I’ll show him the steel.”

Joan was quiet for a long moment. “And if he asks where the steel came from?”

Tom felt the weight of the question. “Then I’ll tell him the same thing I told you. That I’m a steward from a distant land, and I’ve brought gifts that can change the fate of his kingdom.”

“And if he calls you a warlock?”

“Then I’ll hope the steel is more convincing than the words.”

They rounded a bend in the river, and London appeared on the horizon. It was not the London Tom knew—no towers of glass, no bridges of iron, no river of light. But it was still a city, a great sprawling mass of timber and stone, smoke rising from a thousand chimneys, the Tower looming grey and implacable on the eastern bank.

“There it is,” Joan said. “The heart of the kingdom.”

Tom stared at it, feeling the weight of everything he had risked. The woman hanged by the bishop’s men. The village he had left behind. Wat, who had sworn his vow. Baldric, who had doubted but hoped. And Hugh, who was probably already sending riders to intercept them.

“We’ll need to find a way in,” Tom said. “The gates will be watched. The bishop’s men will have descriptions of us.”

Joan reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a length of rough wool, the color of mud. “Then we go in as pilgrims. Penitents seeking the shrine of Saint Thomas at Canterbury. No one questions a man and a woman on their knees.”

Tom took the wool and wrapped it around his shoulders, feeling the coarse fibers scratch against his neck. He looked at Joan, her face flushed with cold, her eyes bright with determination.

“You’re good at this,” he said.

“I’ve survived worse than a bishop’s hunt,” she said. “I survived the plague. I survived my husband’s death. I survived the Church’s suspicion. I’ll survive this.”

They started toward the city, the cart’s wheels creaking, the steel hidden beneath the sacking, the bishop’s seal heavy in Tom’s pouch. The river behind them was already freezing over again, sealing the crossing they had made, erasing their tracks.

But ahead, the gates of London waited, and Tom knew that once they passed through, there would be no turning back.