Chapter 76: The Oath at the Furrow’s Edge

The dawn came grey and raw, and Tom Ashwick stood at the edge of the south field with a handful of turnip seed in his palm. The soil was cold, still holding the winter’s spite, but the frost had broken three days past, and the earth turned dark and yielding beneath the plough. Behind him, the village of Wykeham had gathered—not all of them, not the fearful ones who still crossed themselves when he passed, but enough. Wat stood at the head of the plough team, his hammer hanging from his belt like a talisman, and the oxen lowed their impatience into the mist.

Joan came up beside him, her breath clouding. She carried a leather satchel of her own, stuffed with dried herbs and the small clay pots she used for salves. She did not speak, but her hand brushed his elbow—a touch that said more than words.

“You are certain of this?” Wat asked, not for the first time. He gestured at the seed in Tom’s palm. “If this fails, we have spent the spring sowing on a stranger’s promise.”

Tom looked at the seed. It was ordinary enough—brown, wrinkled, no larger than a pinhead. But he knew what it carried. A century of selective breeding, of yields that would beggar the thin crops these villagers had scratched from the earth for generations. He had seen the numbers in his old life, in spreadsheets and supply-chain reports. Now he would see them in bread and flesh and survival.

“It will not fail,” he said. “But we must do it right. Deep furrows, not the shallow scratches your ploughs make. The seed goes in at two fingers’ depth, and we space it a hand’s width apart. I will show you.”

Wat grunted, but he did not argue. He had seen too much of Tom’s strangeness prove true.

They worked through the morning, the oxen straining against the new steel ploughshare that Tom had hauled from the warehouse. The village men followed, dropping seed into the furrows with the careful rhythm of men who knew that hunger was the alternative. Tom moved among them, correcting, demonstrating, his voice hoarse with the effort of making himself understood. He spoke of drainage and crop rotation, of nitrogen and fallow, and watched their eyes glaze—until he spoke of bushels per acre, and their hands tightened on their tools.

Joan worked the hedgerows, gathering early nettles and dandelion leaves for the pottage pot, her eyes lifting now and then to scan the horizon. She was watching for riders. They all were.

By midday, the south field was half sown, and Tom called a halt. The men sat in the lee of the hedge, passing a waterskin, their faces streaked with mud and sweat. Tom leaned against the fence, rolling his shoulders, feeling the ache of labour in muscles he had not used in years. The warehouse had given him tools, but it could not give him a farmer’s body.

It was then that the boy came running.

He was one of Wat’s grandsons, barefoot and breathless, his face white with urgency. He skidded to a stop before them, gasping, and pointed back toward the village.

“Riders,” he said. “On the north road. A dozen or more. Banners.”

Tom’s stomach clenched. He looked at Joan, and she was already on her feet, her hand going to the knife at her belt.

“Hugh?” Wat asked.

Tom shook his head. “Too soon. The King’s men were to intercept him at the ford.” But he did not believe it. Hugh de Lacy had slipped the noose before.

They moved quickly, back toward the village, the men gathering their tools and their courage as they walked. Tom’s mind raced. The warehouse was hidden, the false wall intact, but the battery was dying. If Hugh’s men searched the barn, they would find nothing but wood and straw. But if Hugh himself came, with his fury and his claims of treason against Tom—the village could burn before the King’s justice arrived.

They reached the village green just as the riders crested the rise.

Tom’s hand went to his belt, where the leather tube with the King’s seal hung. He had used it once, on the river, to bluff a bishop’s man. He did not know if it would work again.

The riders came on, slowing as they entered the village. Their leader was a tall man in a surcoat of murrey and blue—not Hugh’s colours, not the bishop’s. Tom squinted, trying to read the device. A lion rampant, gold on a field of red.

The man reined in before the green and dismounted. He was older than Tom, with a scar that ran from temple to jaw and the bearing of a soldier who had seen too many winters. He looked at the gathered villagers, at the seed-furrowed fields beyond, and then his gaze settled on Tom.

“Master Ashwick?” he said.

Tom stepped forward. “I am he.”

The man reached into his saddlebag and drew out a rolled parchment, sealed with the royal signet. He held it out.

“From the King,” he said. “Edward of Windsor sends his greetings, and his reminder that the spring sowing waits for no man.”

Tom took the parchment and broke the seal. The letter was short, written in a clerk’s neat hand. It confirmed his commission, granted him authority over the manors of Wykeham and its neighbours, and commanded all sheriffs and bailiffs to render him aid. But the final lines were written in a different hand—hurried, almost angry.

*The traitor de Lacy has slipped my net. He was warned by a friend in the court and fled south before my men reached the ford. I have declared him outlaw, but he will not go quietly. He knows what you carry. Guard it well.*

Tom looked up. The soldier was watching him, his scarred face unreadable.

“The King thought you might need this,” the man said. He reached into his saddlebag again and pulled out a small iron key. “There is a chest in the warehouse. He said you would know what it is for.”

Tom stared at the key. The warehouse. The battery. The chest he had not opened since he arrived, the one marked with the faded label: *EMERGENCY PROTOCOL—DO NOT OPEN UNLESS AUTHORIZED*.

He took the key. It was cold in his palm.

“And the bishop?” Tom asked.

The soldier’s mouth tightened. “The Bishop of Winchester has been summoned to court to answer for his interference in royal matters. He will not trouble you for a time.” He paused. “But there are others. The war in France is not finished. The King needs grain, and he needs it soon. He is gambling on you, Master Ashwick. Do not make him regret it.”

Tom looked down at the key, then out at the fields, where the turnip seed lay buried in the dark earth, waiting for the sun.

“Tell the King,” he said, “that I will not fail him.”

The soldier nodded, remounted, and rode off without another word. The villagers watched him go, then turned to Tom with a new kind of silence—not fear, but expectation.

Joan came to his side. “What does it mean?”

Tom closed his fist around the key. “It means we have a season,” he said. “One season, to prove that this works. Before Hugh comes back, before the Church finds another way, before the King loses patience.”

He looked at the field, at the furrows stretching dark and even toward the hedge.

“And it means we have a chance.”

He did not say what he was thinking—that the battery in the warehouse was dying, that the chest behind the false wall held something he had never dared to open, and that Hugh de Lacy, outlawed and desperate, would come for him before the harvest. He did not say it because the men were watching, and hope was a fragile thing.

But Joan knew. She always knew. Her hand found his, and she squeezed it once, hard, before she let go.

“Then we sow,” she said. “And we pray.”

Tom looked at the key in his palm, and he thought of the chest in the darkness of the warehouse, waiting for a man who had bargained with a king.

He would open it tonight. When no one was watching.