Chapter 89: The Reckoning of the Green Blade

The hoofbeats came out of the mist like a drumbeat from the grave.

Tom Ashwick stood at the edge of the ford where the river shallowed over flat stones, the leather tube with the King's seal heavy in his hand. Behind him, the village of Wykeham lay silent, its cottages shuttered, its people watching from behind doors that had been barred for a week. Before him, the river road curved north toward the manor house, and along that road a column of riders was emerging from the grey morning—a dozen men-at-arms in de Lacy's russet and gold, their horses lathered, their faces grim with the haste of a hard ride.

At their head rode a man Tom had never seen, but whose description he knew from the reeve's careful words. Sir Hugh de Lacy was broad-shouldered and thick-necked, his face weathered by years of French campaigns and the particular cruelty of a man who had spent his youth killing and his middle years stealing. He wore a mail hauberk beneath a surcoat that had once been fine and was now stained with mud and road-dust. His eyes, when they found Tom standing alone at the ford, narrowed with something that might have been contempt or might have been hunger.

"So," Hugh said, reining in his destrier a dozen paces from the water's edge. "The warlock of Wykeham. I had heard you were in London, begging the King for your life."

"I was," Tom said. "And I have his answer."

He held up the leather tube. The seal caught the pale light, red wax glinting like a coal. Hugh's men stirred in their saddles, but Hugh himself did not move. His gaze flicked from the seal to Tom's face and back again, and Tom saw the calculation there—the same calculation he had seen in the eyes of warehouse managers who had discovered a shipment was missing and were deciding whether to blame the carrier or the receiver.

"The King is in London," Hugh said slowly. "He has no business here."

"He has business with you," Tom said. "Twelve thousand pounds in back taxes. Two years of grain sold to the French. A woman hanged at the bishop's command to keep her quiet. The King knows all of it, Sir Hugh. He has the proof in his hand, and he has given me his commission to see it enforced."

For a moment, nothing moved. The river whispered over the stones. A crow called from the oak at the ford's edge, and the sound was harsh and sudden in the stillness. Then Hugh laughed—a short, ugly sound that had no mirth in it.

"You stand there with a scrap of parchment and a wax seal," he said, "and you think that will save you from me? I have twelve men. You have a village of peasants and a woman who spreads herbs. The King is a hundred miles away, and by the time his sheriffs arrive, Wykeham will be ash and you will be meat for the crows."

He raised his hand. Behind him, the men-at-arms drew their swords, the sound of steel scraping leather a long hiss in the cold air.

Tom did not move. He had spent the night before the warehouse, watching the battery light flicker and fail, counting the remaining hours of the thing that had brought him here. He had walked the fields at dawn, touching the green blades of the winter wheat that had come from his seed, the first crop of a new England—his England now, whatever that meant. And he had made a decision that was not a decision but a recognition of what he had already become.

"You are right about one thing," he said. "The King is far away. But the King's men are not."

He turned and gestured toward the manor road behind him. From the mist, a line of men was emerging—not the five-and-twenty villagers Wat had promised, though they were there too, with hammers and bills and the desperate courage of men who had nothing left to lose. No, these were men in royal livery, the three lions of England on their surcoats, and at their head rode a knight Tom had met only once, in the King's antechamber, when Edward had laid out the terms of their bargain.

Sir John Wingfield, steward of the royal household, reined in his horse beside Tom and looked at Hugh de Lacy with the flat, patient gaze of a man who had hanged better men than this.

"Sir Hugh de Lacy," he said, his voice carrying across the water. "In the name of Edward, by the grace of God King of England and France, I arrest you for treason against the Crown, for the sale of grain and materiel to the enemies of the realm, and for the murder of the woman Margery of Ashford, whose testimony you sought to silence."

Hugh's face went white, then red. His hand tightened on his sword, and for a moment Tom thought he would charge—would try to cut his way through and take his chances on the road. But Wingfield's men were already spreading out, flanking the ford, and the villagers were closing in from the fields, and Hugh de Lacy was many things but he was not a fool.

He was, however, a man who had spent his life taking what he wanted, and surrender was not in his nature.

"The King's justice is slow," he said, his voice low and venomous. "And the road to London is long. You may have won this morning, Master Ashwick. But I have friends in high places—friends who owe me debts, friends who will not see a lord of the realm brought low by a peasant with a piece of paper."

He turned his horse and spurred it toward the river, meaning to ford upstream where the banks were shallower and the King's men could not easily follow. But Wat had been busy in the night, and the villagers had been busy for weeks, and the ford upstream was no longer a ford. It was a trench, six feet deep and lined with stakes, covered with reeds and mud and the patient work of men who had learned that the land itself could be a weapon.

Hugh's horse went down with a scream, and Hugh went with it, into the cold water and the stakes, and the men-at-arms who had followed him reined in hard at the bank, staring at their lord thrashing in the shallows.

Wingfield's men moved in. There was a brief, ugly scuffle—steel on steel, a cry, the thud of a body hitting mud—and then it was over. Hugh de Lacy was dragged from the water, bleeding from a gash in his thigh, his sword gone, his hands bound behind him with rope. He did not speak as they hauled him onto the bank. He only looked at Tom, and his eyes held a hatred so pure and so cold that Tom felt it like a physical thing.

"You should have stayed in your own world," Hugh said. "Whatever world that was."

Tom looked at him for a long moment. The warehouse was dying behind him, its secrets fading with its battery. The King's commission was a fragile thing, contingent on usefulness and the whims of a monarch who had already warned him not to feel safe. The bishop's men were still out there, somewhere, waiting for their moment. And the plague was coming—would come, as it had come to every village and every manor and every city in the realm, and no amount of turnip seed or willow-bark tincture would stop it.

But the green blades were growing in the mud behind him. The village was standing. The proof of Hugh's treason was in the King's hands, and Margery's death had not been in vain.

"I am in my own world now," Tom said. "For better or worse."

He turned away from the bound lord and walked back toward the village, where Joan was waiting at the edge of the field, her hands stained with soil from the morning's planting, her eyes bright with something that was not quite hope but was close to it.

Behind him, Sir John Wingfield was already dictating orders to his clerk—provisions for the journey to London, a cart for the prisoner, a guard detail of six men. The King's justice would have its way, slow and certain as the turning of the seasons. But Tom Ashwick was no longer waiting for the King to save him.

He had work to do.

The green blade was in the ground, and the frost was breaking, and the first furrow of a new England was waiting to be turned.

He took Joan's hand, and they walked together toward the barn where the warehouse sat in darkness, its lights flickering one last time before they went out.