Chapter 80: The King’s Measure at the Ford

The water ran high and brown, swollen with the melted snows of the northern hills, and it spoke with a voice that Tom had come to know too well. It was the voice of the river that had carried him south to the King and north again to this moment, and it said nothing of mercy.

He stood at the ford with Joan at his right hand and Wat at his left, the village men fanning out behind them in a ragged line. The morning light was thin and pale, the sky the colour of old bone, and the smell of rain hung in the air like a promise that had not yet decided whether to keep itself.

“They will come fast,” Wat said. He had his hammer over his shoulder, the great iron head worn smooth from a lifetime of work. “Hugh will not want to give us time to think.”

“He has had time enough to think,” Joan said. “He has had the whole ride from London to think of what he will do when he finds us.”

Tom did not answer. He was watching the road where it curved through the willows, the same road he had first walked on that rain-slicked night when the warehouse had brought him here. So much had changed since then. The village had lost a third of its people to the pestilence. The lord who had ruled them had sold his soul to the French. And the man who had come with strange gifts and stranger knowledge had learned that survival was not a matter of what you knew, but of what you were willing to spend.

“The King’s men will not be here before noon,” Tom said. “We have perhaps two hours.”

“Then we spend them well,” Joan said.

She moved among the men, checking the placements they had made in the night. The carts had been drawn across the ford in a rough barricade, their wheels chained together with links of iron that Wat had forged in the village smithy. Behind the carts, the men had dug a shallow trench, just deep enough to break a horse’s stride, and lined it with stakes cut from the hedgerows.

It was not a fortification that would hold against a trained company of men-at-arms. Tom knew that. But it was not meant to hold them. It was meant to slow them, to confuse them, to give the King’s men time to arrive and find Hugh de Lacy exactly where they wanted him.

“You are thinking of the warehouse,” Joan said, coming back to stand beside him.

Tom nodded. “If Hugh burns it, we lose everything. The seed, the tools, the books. Everything we have built.”

“He will not burn it,” Joan said. “He wants it for himself.”

“That is what I am afraid of.”

The sound came to them before they saw anything—the thunder of hooves on the muddy track, the jingle of harness, the low murmur of men riding hard. Tom felt the vibration through the soles of his boots, a drumbeat that seemed to match the pounding of his heart.

“They are coming,” Wat said.

The column appeared around the bend in the road, and Tom saw that Hugh de Lacy had not come alone. There were at least two dozen men behind him, some in the livery of his house, others in the rough leather and steel of hired swords. At their head rode Hugh himself, his cloak mud-spattered, his face set in a mask of cold fury.

He reined in at the edge of the ford, his horse dancing nervously at the sight of the barricade. For a long moment, he simply stared at the carts and the stakes and the line of villagers behind them, his eyes moving from face to face until they found Tom.

“Ashwick,” he said. The name came out like a curse.

“Hugh de Lacy,” Tom replied. “You have ridden far.”

“Not far enough.” Hugh’s hand rested on the pommel of his sword. “I have come for what is mine. The manor. The village. The grain in your hidden storehouse. And your head, if you do not step aside.”

“The manor is no longer yours,” Tom said. “The King has taken it into his hands. You are attainted, Hugh. You are a traitor to the Crown.”

Hugh laughed, a harsh, brittle sound. “The King is in London. I am here. And I have thirty swords behind me. Where are your King’s men, Ashwick? I do not see them.”

“They are coming,” Tom said.

“They are always coming,” Hugh said. “They will arrive after I have taken what I need and burned what I cannot carry. You have been a thorn in my side since the day you appeared on my road, and I mean to pull you out.”

He drew his sword, and behind him, the men-at-arms did the same. The sound of steel leaving scabbards was a cold, sharp music that Tom had heard only once before, in the chaos of the warehouse on the night he had been pulled from his own world.

“Joan,” Tom said quietly. “Now.”

She raised her hand, and from the trees on either side of the ford, the village women stepped out. They carried no weapons, but they carried something else—bundles of dried herbs, tied with twine, and in their other hands, the smouldering ends of torches.

Hugh’s horse shied as the first bundle arced through the air and landed at the edge of the ford. The herbs caught, sending up a thick column of smoke that drifted across the water, stinging the eyes of men and horses alike. More bundles followed, and soon the ford was obscured by a screen of grey, choking smoke that made the men-at-arms cough and curse and rein their horses back.

“What sorcery is this?” Hugh shouted.

“No sorcery,” Joan called out. “Just rosemary and rue and a little sulphur. The same trick the bee-keepers use to calm their hives. It will not harm your men, my lord. But it will slow them.”

Tom stepped forward through the smoke, the leather tube in his hand. “Hugh de Lacy, in the name of Edward, King of England, I command you to lay down your arms. You are charged with treason, with selling grain to the enemies of the realm, and with the murder of a woman whose only crime was to speak the truth.”

“I have killed no one,” Hugh snarled.

“Margery died in the bishop’s custody,” Tom said. “She died because she knew what you had done. And I will see that her death is accounted for.”

Hugh’s face twisted with rage, and he spurred his horse forward, charging through the smoke toward the barricade. The horse balked at the trench, stumbling, and Hugh was thrown from the saddle, landing hard in the mud. Before he could rise, Wat was there, his hammer raised.

“Do it,” Tom said.

Wat brought the hammer down, not on Hugh’s head, but on the sword that lay beside him in the mud. The blade shattered with a sound like a bell, and Hugh de Lacy lay there, weaponless and stunned, as the smoke cleared to reveal the King’s standard rising over the far ridge.

The King’s men had arrived.

Tom looked down at the man who had tried to destroy everything he had built, and he felt no triumph, only the cold weight of justice. “You should have stayed in France,” he said.

Hugh’s eyes were wild, but there was something else in them now—fear. “You do not understand,” he said. “The bishop will not let this stand. He will come for you.”

“Let him,” Tom said. “I have the King’s commission. And I have something he does not.”

He looked past Hugh, toward the smoke that still drifted over the ford, toward the hidden barn where the warehouse waited in the darkness.

“I have the future.”