Chapter 75: The Gallows at the Crossroads

The royal justices did not dismount. They sat their horses in a crescent before Sir Hugh’s hall, their breath steaming in the cold morning, their eyes moving over the gathered villagers with the flat, patient assessment of men who had seen every kind of desperation. The man in the blue surcoat—the one who carried the banner of the leopards—urged his horse forward a single pace.

“Sir Hugh de Lacy,” he called, his voice carrying without effort. “In the name of Edward, King of England, I place you under arrest for the crime of high treason. You will surrender your sword and your person to the King’s justice.”

Hugh stood at the head of his own men, a dozen armed riders arrayed behind him. For a long moment, Tom thought the knight might fight. He saw the calculation in Hugh’s face—the weighing of odds, the counting of lances, the desperate arithmetic of a man who had sold grain to the enemy and now found the bill presented.

But Hugh had been at Crécy. He knew what royal justice looked like when it arrived with trumpets.

He unbuckled his sword and let it fall into the mud.

“I demand trial by my peers,” he said, his voice thin.

“You will have the trial the King grants you,” the justice replied. He gestured, and two sergeants slid from their horses and took Hugh by the arms. The knight did not resist as they bound his wrists. His men sat motionless, watching their lord led away like a cow to the knacker’s yard.

Tom let out a breath he had not known he was holding. Beside him, Joan’s hand found his, and he gripped it hard.

The justice’s eyes found him. “Master Ashwick,” he said. “The King instructed me to inform you that your service is noted. He expects to see you at Westminster by the Feast of Saint Michael, to discuss the matter of your commission.”

Tom nodded, his mouth dry. “And the men of this village? They acted on my authority. Will they be held accountable?”

The justice’s expression did not change. “The King has heard a full account of the disturbances at Wykeham. He has chosen to regard them as the lawful resistance of loyal subjects against a traitor’s machinations. No further inquiries will be made.” He paused. “Provided no further inquiries are required.”

It was a warning, and Tom understood it.

The justices rode north before noon, taking Hugh with them in chains. The villagers watched them go in silence, and then, one by one, they turned to Tom.

Wat was the first to speak. “Well, Master Ashwick. What now?”

Tom looked at the hall, at the fields beyond, at the pale sky where the frost was finally breaking. He thought of the warehouse, waiting in its hidden barn, its battery dying cell by cell. He thought of the King’s commission, and what it would mean: a lifetime of travel, of explaining, of watching every word he spoke for fear of the pyre.

But he also thought of the turnip seed in its crates, and the ploughshares of steel, and the books that could teach a generation to keep their cattle alive through the winter.

“Now,” he said, “we begin.”

He walked toward the barn, and Joan fell into step beside him. The village followed, a ragged procession of the curious and the hopeful and the merely exhausted. When Tom reached the false wall, he paused with his hand on the timber.

“Whatever you see in here,” he said, turning to face them, “you must understand that it is not magic. It is not sorcery. It is knowledge—knowledge from far away, but knowledge nonetheless. And I will share it with you freely, on one condition.”

“What condition?” asked a woman from the back of the crowd.

“That you use it. Not to hoard, not to sell to the highest bidder, not to enrich yourselves at your neighbors’ expense. But to feed your families, and your village, and your kingdom. The King has given me a commission to spread this knowledge across England. I cannot do it alone. I will need help—men and women willing to learn, and to teach others in turn.”

Wat stepped forward. “I’ll learn.”

“So will I,” said another voice, and then another, until the murmur of assent became a chorus.

Tom pulled the wall aside.

The warehouse stood in the gloom, its metal shelves gleaming dully, its crates stacked in orderly rows. The lights flickered weakly—one, then two, then three—before settling into a dim, steady glow. The battery was failing, but it had not failed yet.

Joan stepped past him and ran her hand along a crate of turnip seed. “How long?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Tom admitted. “Weeks, perhaps. Perhaps less. But we have enough here to plant a hundred fields before the battery dies. And once the seed is in the ground, the knowledge is in the books. They don’t need power to be read.”

“And the ploughshares? The tools?”

“They’ll outlast us all.”

Joan turned to face him, and in the dim light of the dying warehouse, her eyes were bright. “Then we have a chance.”

“We have more than a chance,” Tom said. “We have time. And time is the one thing this kingdom has never been able to buy.”

He did not know, then, that even as he spoke, a rider was approaching Wykeham from the south—a rider in the livery of the Bishop of Winchester, carrying a sealed letter that would challenge the King’s authority over the heretic in their midst. He did not know that the bishop had already appealed to the Pope, and that the Pope had already responded, and that the response was now crossing the Channel in the satchel of a papal nuncio.

He did not know that the war with France was about to flare again, and that the King’s need for grain would soon become a need for gold, and that the commission Tom had accepted would make him the most hunted man in England—not by the Church alone, but by every lord who saw his methods as a threat to their power.

But he would learn.

For now, he stood in the warehouse with Joan at his side, and the seed was in the crates, and the thaw was coming.

The spring would be a test. And Tom Ashwick, warehouse manager and royal commissioner, was finally ready to face it.