Chapter 61: The River’s Turning

The barge moved with the current, but the current moved with a patience Tom did not share. He stood at the prow, watching the brown water slide past, the banks still flecked with the last pale rags of frost. Behind him, Joan sat wrapped in her cloak, her eyes on the oarsmen’s backs. They were good men, silent men, hired by a king’s clerk who asked no questions. But the silence was not empty. It was full of what they had left behind.

“You have not slept,” Joan said.

“Neither have you.”

“I slept in the king’s shadow. It is not restful.”

Tom turned. The morning light caught her face, and he saw the lines that had not been there when they first met—or perhaps he had not looked closely enough. She was younger than him by a decade, but the pestilence and the roads and the bishop’s men had aged her in ways that had nothing to do with years.

“The king’s commission,” she said. “You carry it like a weight, not a gift.”

“It’s both.” He reached into his tunic and touched the rolled parchment, sealed with the great seal of Edward III. The wax was still fresh, still red, still dangerous. “A royal commission to improve the husbandry of the realm. It names me as the King’s Steward of New Husbandry. It gives me authority over manorial practice in the royal demesne and any manor that seeks the king’s favor.”

“And Wykeham?”

“Wykeham is the first.”

She was quiet for a moment. The barge passed a cluster of willows, their branches bare and black against the grey sky. A heron rose from the reeds, slow and deliberate, and flew south.

“The village does not know,” she said. “They know you are gone. They know the lord is absent. They do not know what is coming.”

“They will know soon enough.”

“Will they welcome you? Or will they see the king’s seal and think you have become what the bishop accused you of—a creature of power, reaching down from above?”

Tom had no answer. He had asked himself the same question since the king’s clerk had rolled the parchment and handed it to him with a smile that promised nothing.

“I was their steward,” he said finally. “I fed them. I healed them. I did not ask for their faith, only their labor. That has not changed.”

“But you have changed,” Joan said. “You have been to court. You have stood before the king. You have bargained with a traitor’s life. The village will see that. They will see a man who has learned the language of power, and they will wonder if he still remembers the language of the common field.”

Tom looked at her. Her hands were folded in her lap, but he saw the tension in her knuckles, the way she held herself like a bowstring drawn.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked.

“I want you to tell me that you remember why we went to London. Not for the commission. Not for the king. For the seed. For the ploughshares. For the willow bark that saved the children. For the books that taught us how to keep the cattle alive through the murrain.”

“I remember.”

“And for me?”

The question hung in the air between them, as tangible as the river mist. Tom stepped closer, and she did not move away.

“I went to London because you were the only one who believed me,” he said. “You did not ask if I was a warlock. You did not ask if I was mad. You asked if I could help. That is why I went. That is why I am coming back.”

Joan’s breath caught, but she said nothing. The barge rounded a bend, and the river widened. Ahead, Tom could see the smoke of a village rising against the pale sky—not Wykeham, still too far, but a place where men lived and worked and did not know that a stranger with a king’s seal was passing by.

“The battery,” she said, changing the subject with the skill of a woman who had learned to steer conversations away from dangerous waters. “How long does it have?”

Tom closed his eyes and tried to remember the last time he had checked the warehouse’s power. Days ago. Weeks. He had been so consumed with the journey, with the bishop, with the king, that he had pushed the thought aside.

“When I left, it was at half strength. The books said that with the cold and the damp, the rate of decay would accelerate. I do not know how long. Perhaps a week. Perhaps less.”

“Then we must not delay.”

“We are on a barge. We cannot go faster than the river.”

Joan looked at the oarsmen. They were strong men, but the river was wide and the current slow. Wykeham was still two days away.

“There is a road,” she said. “It leaves the river at the next landing and cuts across the downs. It is a harder path, and the horses are not with us, but there is a horse fair at the village ahead. We could buy mounts and go overland.”

Tom considered. The barge was safe, but it was slow. The road was dangerous—the bishop’s men were still abroad, and Hugh de Lacy was riding south with armed men. But every hour counted. The battery was dying, and with it, the last hope of the seed.

“The king’s commission protects us,” he said, but the words felt hollow.

“The king’s commission protects you,” Joan corrected. “A dead steward is no use to anyone. A dead commission is just parchment.”

She was right. She was always right.

“At the next landing,” Tom said. “We buy horses. We ride for Wykeham.”

Joan nodded, and for the first time since they had left London, she smiled—not the sharp, defensive smile she wore against the world, but something softer, something that reminded him of the woman who had first shown him the herb garden at Wykeham, before the pestilence, before the bishop, before the king.

“You are going home, Tom Ashwick,” she said. “And I am going with you.”

The barge slid past the village, and Tom watched the smoke rise, thin and grey against the white sky. Somewhere behind them, the bishop’s men were searching. Somewhere ahead, Hugh de Lacy was riding to his doom. And somewhere in a hidden barn, the warehouse sat in darkness, its lights flickering, its battery fading, waiting for a man who had bargained with a king to return.

The river turned, and the current quickened. Tom felt it in the shift of the deck beneath his feet. He did not know if it was a sign or simply the nature of the water. But he took it as one, and he held it close, like a seed waiting for the thaw.