Chapter 66: The Hoofbeats on the Muddy Bank

The sound came again, not the distant thunder of a galloping column, but the deliberate, closing rhythm of a small party riding hard. Tom’s hand went to Joan’s arm, pulling her back from the barge’s low rail. The boatman, a grizzled man with a face like a crumpled sail, looked over his shoulder and spat into the river.

“They’ll not catch us on the water,” he said, though his hands tightened on the pole.

“They don’t need to catch us,” Joan said, her voice low. “They only need to know which bank we land on.”

The fishing village loomed ahead—a scatter of wattle huts, a sagging wharf, and a single fire burning on the foreshore, its smoke flattening against the grey sky. The barge’s master steered for the far side of the wharf, where a cluster of empty boats bumped against the pilings. Tom counted the villagers: an old man mending a net, two women gutting herring, a boy throwing stones at a stray dog. No horsemen. Not yet.

“We get off here,” Tom said. “We walk the rest of the way.”

Joan gave him a sharp look. “The warehouse is three miles from here, across open fields.”

“Then we cross them before dark.” He climbed onto the wharf, his boots slipping on the wet planks, and turned to help her ashore. The boatman had already begun unloading their packs—a canvas sack of dried fish, a roll of blankets, and the small iron box that Tom had refused to let out of his sight since leaving London. Inside it lay the King’s commission, sealed with the great seal of Edward III, and a letter granting Tom Ashwick the authority of a royal steward over the manors of Wykeham and its neighbours.

Joan took the box from him and tucked it into her cloak. “You carry it like it’s made of glass.”

“It’s made of better than that,” Tom said. “It’s made of paper and wax, and it’s worth more than this whole village.”

They set off along the bank, keeping to the narrow path that wound between the reeds and the ploughed fields. The ground was soft, still wet from the thaw, and their boots sank with every step. Tom’s breath clouded in the cold air. The winter had been long, but the frost was breaking, and the earth smelled of rot and renewal—the same smell he remembered from the first morning he had woken in this century, when he had stood in the mud of Wykeham Road and wondered if he had died and gone to a place that God had forgotten.

“Tom,” Joan said, “the horsemen are not following us.”

He glanced back. She was right. The sound had faded, swallowed by the wind off the river. But he did not feel relief.

“They don’t need to follow us,” he said. “They know where we’re going.”

Joan’s jaw tightened. “Then we’re walking into a trap.”

“We’re walking into the warehouse,” Tom said. “And whatever’s waiting there, we’ll face it with the seed and the steel and the books. That’s all we’ve ever had.”

They walked in silence for a mile, past a coppice of hazel and a stream that had burst its banks, flooding the low meadow. The fields here were poor—thin soil, stones poking through like the bones of a starving man. This was the edge of Sir Hugh’s demesne, land he had squeezed dry with his taxes and his tithes, land that had been left fallow because there was no one left to work it. The plague had been here too. Tom could see it in the abandoned cottages, their roofs collapsed, their doors hanging open to the weather.

“Margery said the King would protect us,” Joan said, breaking the silence.

“Margery said the King had been waiting for proof,” Tom replied. “There’s a difference.”

“And now we have his commission. His seal.”

“His seal and his eyes,” Tom said. “He’ll watch us, Joan. Every bushel we grow, every acre we plough—he’ll count it, and he’ll take his share. And if we fail, he’ll hang us for wasting his time.”

Joan stopped walking. She turned to face him, her cheeks flushed with cold and anger. “Then why did we come back? Why didn’t we keep riding north, to Scotland, to the edge of the world where no one has ever heard of Wykeham or Hugh de Lacy or the King’s commission?”

“Because the warehouse is here,” Tom said. “Because the seed is here. And because—” He stopped, the words catching in his throat.

“Because what?”

“Because Wat is here. And the reeve. And the women who buried their children in the plague pit. And the man whose wife died because we didn’t have the medicine in time.” Tom’s voice was raw. “I can’t run from that, Joan. I’ve run from enough in my life. I ran from my marriage. I ran from my father’s death. I ran from every difficult thing that ever required me to stay and fight. But I can’t run from this.”

Joan’s expression softened. She stepped closer and took his hand. “You’re not the same man who came through that door in the rain.”

“I hope not,” Tom said. “That man would have burned the books by now, just to be safe.”

They walked on. The sun was low in the west, casting long shadows across the fields, when they crested the rise and saw Wykeham below them—the manor house, the church tower, the cluster of cottages, and the barn. Tom’s breath caught. The barn was still standing, its roof intact, the false wall at the back still hidden behind a stack of mouldering hay. But there was smoke rising from the chimney of the manor house, and lanterns burning in the windows.

“He’s back,” Joan whispered. “Hugh is back.”

Tom looked at the smoke, at the lights, and then at the barn where his warehouse waited in the dark. “Then we have a problem,” he said. “Because the King promised to hang him, and Hugh clearly hasn’t heard the news.”

From behind them, faint and far off, came the sound of hooves again—closer now, and growing closer still.