Chapter 68: The Torches at the Barn Door

The frost had begun to soften under the weight of their boots as Tom and Joan crossed the yard. The barn loomed before them, its timbered flanks dark against the bruised sky, and behind it the huddled shapes of the village—cottages with smoke curling thin from their chimneys, the church tower a black finger pointing at nothing.

Tom’s heart hammered against his ribs. The battery, Wat had said, had hours left. Maybe less. He had spent days on the river, days in the King’s hall, days in the saddle—and every hour that passed had drained the warehouse’s failing heart. He had no way to measure what remained. No gauge, no dial, no light on a console. Only the hum he had grown to feel in his bones, fainter now than when he had first arrived.

“Mistress Joan,” he said, stopping at the barn’s threshold, “if the light fails when we open the wall, if the seed is still there but the tools are dark, if the books are pages we cannot read—what then?”

She turned to face him, her face half-lit by the lantern swinging from her hand. “Then we have what we have,” she said. “And we use it. You taught me that.”

He wanted to argue, but Wat appeared at the edge of the yard, a gaggle of villagers behind him. They carried torches—pitch-soaked rags wrapped around ash shafts, their flames sputtering in the damp air. Tom saw faces he knew: old Margery the beekeeper, her eyes sharp with suspicion; the smith, his arms thick as hawsers; the miller’s wife, clutching a child to her skirts. They had come because Wat had asked them, because Joan had asked them, because Tom had promised them a miracle once before.

“You said one night,” the smith called, his voice rough. “You said the storehouse would give us what we need to plant. The lord is coming. The bishop’s men are coming. What do we have, Master Ashwick?”

Tom stepped forward, his boots squelching in the mud. “We have what we have always had,” he said. “Seed. Steel. Knowledge. And now we have the King’s word that the lord’s treason will be answered.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Treason. The word was a stone dropped into still water.

“The King knows?” Margery asked, her voice thin.

“The King knows,” Tom said. “And he has given me a commission to bring new ways to every manor in England. But it begins here. At Wykeham. With you.”

He turned and pulled open the barn door. The hinges groaned. Inside, the dark was absolute, and the smell of hay and old timber washed over them. Tom raised his lantern, and the light fell on the false wall—the planks he had nailed himself in the first desperate hours after his arrival, hiding the impossible behind the ordinary.

“Wat,” he said. “Bring your torch.”

The boy stepped forward, his face pale in the flame’s light. Tom took the torch from him and held it to the lantern’s flame. The pitch caught, hissing, and Tom thrust it toward the false wall.

The wood was warped from months of damp. He had to set the torch down and use his shoulder, bracing against the planks, feeling them give with a groan of protest. Joan moved beside him, her hands finding the edges, pulling with him. The nails screamed as they came free, and then the wall swung open, and the light spilled into the space beyond.

The warehouse stood as he had left it—racks upon racks of steel ploughshares, their edges gleaming dully in the torchlight. Sacks of turnip seed, stacked in neat rows. The leather-bound books, their spines cracked with age, their pages still crisp. The crates of willow-bark tinctures, the rolls of canvas, the coils of rope.

But the hum was fainter. Tom felt it, like a heartbeat slowing. He walked to the console at the far end of the warehouse, where the battery had once glowed with a soft green light. Now the screen was dark, the dials unmoving. He pressed his palm to the metal casing. It was cold.

“How long?” Joan asked, her voice quiet.

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Hours. Maybe less.”

He turned back to the villagers, who stood at the barn’s threshold, their faces a mixture of awe and fear. The smith had stepped forward, his hand reaching toward a ploughshare as if it were a relic.

“This is what you brought us,” he said, not a question.

“This is what I brought you,” Tom said. “And this is what I will leave you. Not just these tools—the knowledge of how to use them. How to plant the turnips in rotation so the soil does not die. How to bleed a horse without killing it. How to set a broken bone with willow bark and clean linen. I will teach you, and you will teach your children, and your children’s children will inherit a land that does not starve.”

He paused, looking at the faces before him. “But I will not lie to you. The Church calls me a heretic. The lord calls me a thief. The bishop’s men are hunting me even now. If you stand with me, you stand against them. If you turn away, I will not blame you.”

The silence stretched. Tom could hear the wind in the rafters, the crackle of torches, the distant bark of a dog.

Then the smith stepped forward and took a ploughshare from the rack. He hefted it in his hands, testing its weight, its balance.

“My grandfather ploughed with a stick,” he said. “My father with an iron-tipped stick. I have broken two ploughshares in the last year, and the lord’s bailiff took a third of my harvest for the privilege of using his oxen.” He looked up at Tom, his eyes hard. “If you can give me a share that does not break, I will stand with you against the devil himself.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd. Margery stepped forward, her beekeeper’s veil tucked into her belt. “I will stand,” she said. “My hives have been dying for three years, and you showed me how to save them. I will stand.”

One by one, the others stepped forward. The miller’s wife. The carpenter. The cowherd. Wat, his face bright with pride. Joan stood at Tom’s side, her hand finding his in the firelight.

“Then we have work to do,” Tom said. “Before dawn, we dig. We plant. We teach. And when the lord arrives, we will be ready.”

He turned back to the warehouse, to the dying battery, to the racks of steel and seed and knowledge that would outlast him, outlast the Church, outlast the lord’s greed.

And then, from beyond the barn, came the sound of hoofbeats on the muddy track—a single horse, riding hard. The villagers turned, their torches raised, as a rider burst into the yard, his mount lathered with sweat.

It was Robert, the King’s messenger. His face was pale, his cloak spattered with mud.

“Master Ashwick,” he gasped, reining in. “The lord. He is not coming south. He has turned east. He is coming here—with two hundred men. He means to burn the barn and everything in it before the King’s men can reach him.”

Tom felt the cold settle in his chest. He looked at the warehouse, at the seed and steel and books that held a hundred years of hope.

“How long?” he asked.

“He will be here by noon,” Robert said. “And he has brought a fire-thrower from the siege at Calais.”