Chapter 51: The Candle’s Vigil

The inn fell silent around them, the way a held breath falls silent before a storm breaks. Tom could feel the weight of the two guards’ gaze upon his back, could hear the creak of the settle as one of them shifted his weight. The fire popped, sending a spark skittering across the hearthstones, and Joan’s hand tightened around his.

“They will not wait forever,” she murmured, low enough that only he could hear.

“They will wait until dawn,” Tom replied. “Brother Ambrose said as much. The Church is patient, but it is also precise. It will not move before its appointed hour.”

Joan’s lips pressed into a thin line. “And what happens at that hour? Do we surrender ourselves to a bishop who hanged a woman for speaking truth?”

Tom did not answer. He could not. The bishop’s steward had hanged Margery’s companion—the fevered woman whose confession had been wrung from her like water from a rag—and the memory of that death sat in his chest like a stone. He had come to London to trade Sir Hugh de Lacy’s treason for his own safety, to place the king’s justice between himself and the Church’s fire. But the Church had found him first, and the Church was patient.

He looked at the candle in its black cloak holder, still burning on the table where Brother Ambrose had set it. The flame was steady, unwavering, as if it too had all the time in the world.

“We need to move,” Tom said.

Joan’s eyes flicked to the guards by the door. “They will follow.”

“Then we let them follow—but not where we are going.”

He stood, and Joan rose with him. The guards stirred, hands moving to the knives at their belts, but Tom made no move toward the door. Instead, he walked to the innkeeper, a stout man with a face like worn leather, and leaned close.

“Is there a way out besides the front door?” Tom asked.

The innkeeper’s gaze slid to the guards, then back to Tom. “There is a cellar. It opens onto the alley behind the stable.”

“And the stable?”

“Opens onto the lane that runs to the river gate.”

Tom pressed a coin into the innkeeper’s palm—one of the silver pennies he had brought from the manor, minted before the plague had hollowed out the countryside. “Then we are leaving through the cellar. You will tell the guards we have gone to our room to pray.”

The innkeeper pocketed the coin without a word. He had seen enough desperate men in his time to know when not to ask questions.

Tom returned to Joan, took her hand, and led her toward the back of the common room. The guards watched them pass, but made no move. They had been told to wait until dawn, and wait they would.

The cellar stairs were narrow and dark, the smell of damp earth and stale ale rising to meet them. Tom went first, one hand on the rough stone wall, the other gripping Joan’s fingers. At the bottom, a sliver of moonlight showed beneath a warped wooden door. He pushed it open, and cold air rushed in, sharp with the scent of snow and river.

The alley was empty. The stable loomed to their left, its roof sagging under the weight of the night’s snowfall. Tom led Joan inside, past the horses that stamped and blew in their stalls, to the rear door that opened onto the lane. Beyond it, the river gleamed like black glass under the moon.

“Where do we go?” Joan asked, her breath clouding in the cold.

“To the king.” Tom pulled the bishop’s seal from beneath his tunic, the iron-bound chest that held it pressed against his ribs. “Robert said Margery has already told Edward of Hugh’s treason. If the king knows, then he is waiting for proof. And proof is what we carry.”

“The king is not waiting at a river gate,” Joan said.

“No. But the king’s palace is on the river. And the river has many gates.” Tom gestured toward the water. “We find a boat. We find a boatman who will take us to Westminster.”

Joan looked at him, her face half in shadow, half in moonlight. “And if the boatman is one of the bishop’s men?”

“Then we will not be the first travelers to slip from a trap by moving faster than their pursuers expect.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded, once, and followed him down the lane toward the water.

The riverfront was almost empty at this hour, the wharves silent beneath their burden of snow. A few boats bobbed at their moorings, their hulls creaking against the ice that formed along the banks. Tom scanned the shadows, looking for a boatman, for a watchman, for anyone who might carry them upstream to Westminster.

And then he saw it.

A small wherry, tethered to a post, its oars resting in the bottom. Beside it stood a man in a heavy cloak, his face hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat. He did not move as Tom and Joan approached, did not speak until they were close enough to touch.

“Master Ashwick,” the man said. His voice was low, familiar. “I was told you would come this way.”

Tom’s hand went to the knife at his belt. “Who told you?”

The man lifted his head, and the moonlight caught his face. It was the man from the road—Robert, who had warned them of the bishop’s men, who had spoken of Margery and the king.

“The king,” Robert said. “He has been waiting for you since the first snow. And he is not a patient man.”