Chapter 55: The Price of Home

The words hung in the air like smoke from a damp fire, refusing to disperse. Tom stood in the presence of the King of England, and Edward III had just offered him the one thing he had never dared to name aloud.

Home.

Not the manor with its mud and its dying battery. Not the warehouse that had become both his salvation and his cage. Home. The world he had left behind—the fluorescent lights, the clipboard inventories, the endless hum of forklifts. The wife who had stopped loving him. The daughter whose birthday he had missed three years running.

Joan’s hand tightened on his arm. He felt the warmth of her fingers through the wool of his sleeve, and for a moment, the two worlds pulled at him like opposing tides.

“Your Grace,” Tom said, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You speak of sending me home. But I do not know the way.”

The King smiled, and it was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a man who held all the cards and enjoyed watching his opponent realize it.

“The way is not a road, Master Ashwick. It is a bargain. You will give me proof of de Lacy’s treason. You will testify before my council. And then—when the scaffold has claimed its due—I will have my scholars examine this… warehouse of yours. The writings. The tools. The strange metal that does not rust.” He leaned forward. “I have men who study the heavens and the humours. If there is a door back to wherever you came from, they will find it.”

Tom felt the floor shift beneath him. The King did not believe in magic. He believed in mechanisms. In systems. In the slow, grinding machinery of statecraft applied to any problem, including the impossible.

“And if they cannot find it?” Tom asked.

“Then you will have a lordship instead,” the King said simply. “Land. A title. A place in my England. I am not ungenerous to those who serve me well.”

Joan stepped forward, and Tom saw the guards tense. But she did not kneel. She did not bow. She stood before the King of England with her chin raised, and her voice was iron.

“And what of the village?” she asked. “What of Wykeham? What of the people who trusted him—who trusted me—when the pestilence took their sons and their harvests? Sir Hugh returns from France with his debts and his hunger. What becomes of them?”

Edward’s gaze shifted to her, and Tom saw something flicker behind the royal mask. Not anger. Interest.

“You are the widow,” he said. “Joan of Wykeham. The herb-woman.”

“I am.”

“The bishop’s men speak of you,” the King said. “They say you are a witch. That you brew potions with the stranger and speak to plants in a tongue no Christian can understand.”

Joan did not flinch. “The bishop’s men speak of many things. They spoke of Margery too—the woman they hanged for telling the truth.”

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut. Tom watched the King’s face, looking for the crack, the tell. But Edward III had survived twenty years of war, plague, and political betrayal. His face was a fortress.

“Margery was a fool,” the King said finally. “She came to me with accusations and no proof. I could not act on the word of a peasant woman against a baron of the realm. But you, Master Ashwick—you have proof. You have the ledgers. You have the names of the French merchants. You have the route of the grain ships.”

Tom reached into his tunic and withdrew the leather satchel. It was worn now, stained with river water and road dust. He had carried it across frozen rivers and through tollgates. He had slept with it beneath his head in the snow. He had killed for it—or close enough that the distinction felt like a lie.

He placed it on the table between them.

The King did not reach for it immediately. Instead, he studied Tom with those pale, calculating eyes.

“You hesitated,” Edward said. “Before you gave it to me. Why?”

Tom thought of the warehouse. The dying battery. The steel ploughshares that would rust in a century. The veterinary books whose knowledge would be lost when the pages crumbled. He thought of Wat, the ploughman who had learned to read from those books, who had called him “sir” with something like reverence.

He thought of Hugh de Lacy, who had sold grain to the enemy while his own people starved.

“Because I do not know what kind of man I am anymore,” Tom said honestly. “I came here as a steward. A keeper of things. I did not ask to be a rebel. I did not ask to be a savior. I did not ask to hold a man’s life in my hands.”

Edward nodded slowly. “And now?”

Tom looked at Joan. She met his gaze, and he saw the question in her eyes—the same question that had been there since the night they fled the manor.

*What do you want?*

“Now,” Tom said, “I want to go home. But I am beginning to understand that home is not a place. It is the people who would mourn you if you left.”

The King’s smile softened, just slightly. It was the closest thing to warmth Tom had seen from him.

“Then we have an understanding,” Edward said. He reached for the satchel. “You will testify before my council at dawn. I will have my scholars examine your warehouse within the week. And you will have your answer—whether it is a door home, or a lordship here.”

He paused, his hand on the satchel.

“But know this, Master Ashwick. Once you give me this proof, there is no taking it back. De Lacy will hang. His lands will be forfeit. The bishop will lose a powerful ally—and he will not forgive you for it. You will be a marked man for the rest of your life, wherever that life is spent.”

Tom felt the weight of the words settle on him like a stone.

“I understand,” he said.

“Good,” the King said. “Then kneel.”

Tom knelt. Joan knelt beside him. The stone floor was cold beneath his knees, and he could smell the rushes and the candle smoke and the faint, copper tang of blood that lingered in the hall from some earlier justice.

Edward III placed his hand on Tom’s head, and the gesture was surprisingly gentle.

“Rise, Thomas Ashwick,” he said. “Rise as a free man of England. And at dawn, you will help me bring down a traitor.”

Tom rose. Joan rose beside him. And as the guards led them from the hall, Tom felt the satchel’s absence like a missing limb.

The proof was gone. The bargain was struck. And somewhere in the darkness of London, the bishop’s men were still waiting.

The King’s final words followed them down the corridor.

“Do not think this makes you safe, Master Ashwick. It only makes you useful.”

The door closed behind them, and the candle in the black cloak was waiting in the shadows.