Chapter 78: The Seed in the King’s Name

The frost had not yet left the furrows when Tom knelt in the cold mud of the home field, his fingers parting the dark soil to the depth of a thumb joint. Behind him, a dozen villagers stood in a loose crescent, their breath pluming in the grey dawn, their faces a mixture of suspicion and desperate hope. Wat held the seed sack open, the turnip seed within it small and brown and unremarkable—but to these people, it might as well have been gold dust.

“Here,” Tom said, pressing the seed into the earth with a careful, deliberate motion. “Not too deep. The soil is still cold, but it will warm. This seed will wait. It knows how to wait.”

Old Margery, the thatcher’s wife, crossed herself. “Seeds that wait,” she muttered. “Seeds that know. It is sorcery, plain as the nose on your face.”

“It is husbandry,” Tom said, not looking up. He had learned, in the months since his arrival, that looking a frightened person in the eye while telling them something strange only made them more frightened. He kept his gaze on the soil, on the small brown seed now hidden in its bed. “The same husbandry that planted barley at Michaelmas and harvested it at Lammas. The earth does not care if the hand that guides the seed is English or French or from the moon. It only cares that the seed is good and the planting is true.”

“The moon,” the reeve’s son, a boy of perhaps fourteen, whispered. “He said the moon.”

“I said from the moon,” Tom corrected, standing and brushing the soil from his knees. “I did not say I was from the moon. I am from a place far away, and I am here at the King’s command.” He touched the leather tube at his belt, the one that held the royal commission. “The King has seen what I can do. He has given me leave to do it here, in Wykeham, in this field, with this seed. If you doubt me, doubt the King. But I do not think you will.”

Joan stood at the edge of the crowd, her arms crossed, her sharp eyes moving from face to face. She had been quiet since they had returned, since the barge had brought them to the muddy bank and the villagers had come out to meet them with lanterns and drawn faces and questions they were afraid to ask. She had answered the questions for Tom, had told them of the King’s commission, of the arrest that was coming for Sir Hugh, of the new order that was taking shape. She had been fierce and clear and utterly convincing. But now, in the field, she was watching the seed go into the ground, and her silence was heavier than any words.

Tom moved down the row, planting seed after seed, his motions slow and deliberate. He had done this work a hundred times in his old life, in the warehouse, supervising the loading of seed shipments bound for farms he would never see. He had never once touched the soil himself. He had never once felt the cold weight of the earth on his fingers, the small resistance of the seed as it settled into its bed. He had been a man of inventories and manifests, of invoices and delivery schedules. He had been a man who moved things, not a man who grew them.

But here, in this muddy field, with the frost breaking and the King’s commission heavy at his belt, he was becoming something else. He was becoming a man who planted.

“How long?” Wat asked, his voice low. He had followed Tom down the row, the seed sack still open in his arms. His scarred face was unreadable in the grey light. “How long before we see what this seed will do?”

“Six weeks,” Tom said. “Perhaps eight. The soil is cold. It will be slow at first. But when the warmth comes, it will come fast. The roots will go deep. The leaves will spread. By midsummer, you will have a crop that will feed this village through the winter and leave enough to sell at market.”

“And if it fails?”

Tom stopped. He straightened, his back aching from the bending, and looked at Wat. The reeve’s eyes were hard and unblinking. He had seen crops fail before. He had seen villages starve before. He had seen the world take everything a man had and leave him with nothing but the ground to lie in.

“It will not fail,” Tom said.

“You do not know that.”

“I know the seed,” Tom said. “I know the soil. I know the season. I have done this before, in the place I come from. Not with my own hands, but I have done it. I have been part of it.” He paused, searching for the words that would make Wat understand. “The seed is good. The soil is good. The season will be what it will be. But I have planted enough, in my way, to know that this will grow.”

Wat was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded, a small, tight motion, and handed the seed sack to his son.

“Then we plant,” he said. “All of it. Every field that will take it.”

Tom felt a small easing in his chest, a loosening of the knot that had been there since the bishop’s men had found them on the river. He had won the reeve. The reeve would win the village. The village would win the harvest. And the harvest—

He did not let himself think further than that. There was too much that could still go wrong. The bishop’s men were still hunting him. Hugh de Lacy was still riding south. The warehouse battery was still dying, its lights flickering in the dark, its seed and tools and books waiting for a miracle that might not come in time.

But the seed was going into the ground. That was something. That was a beginning.

Joan came to him as the villagers dispersed, taking up their hoes and their spades, moving to the next field with the seed sack passed from hand to hand. She stood beside him in the cold mud, her shoulder almost touching his, and together they watched the people of Wykeham begin to plant.

“You did well,” she said. “You sounded like a man who believed what he was saying.”

“I did believe it,” Tom said. “Mostly.”

“Mostly is enough.” She paused. “The bishop’s men have not come back. Hugh has not come back. Perhaps they have forgotten us.”

“They have not forgotten us,” Tom said. “They are waiting. Watching. The bishop’s men are patient. They have learned to be patient. They have centuries of practice.”

Joan was quiet for a moment. Then she reached out and took his hand, her fingers cold and strong and sure.

“Then we will be patient too,” she said. “We will plant our seed and tend our fields and wait for the harvest. And when they come, we will be ready.”

Tom looked down at their hands, at the mud on her fingers and the dirt under his nails, and he felt something shift in his chest.

“Ready,” he repeated. “Yes. We will be ready.”

But as he said it, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a rider on the road beyond the field. A rider in a dark cloak, moving fast, heading south. Heading away from Wykeham.

Heading toward the bishop.

Tom did not let go of Joan’s hand. He did not move. He only watched the rider until he disappeared over the rise, and then he turned back to the field, where the villagers were planting, and he let himself believe, for a moment, that the seed would grow.

But the rider stayed in his mind, a dark speck on the horizon, and he knew that the bishop’s patience would not last forever.