Chapter 93: The Lions at the Gate (II)

The rider came out of the west with the last of the daylight behind him, a black shape against a sky the color of cooling iron. Wat saw him first from the ridge above the turnip field, and by the time the hoofbeats carried down the muddy road to the manor yard, Tom was already at the gate with Baldric at his shoulder and Joan a step behind, her hand resting on the satchel at her hip where the willow-bark tinctures lay.

Two lions, black and gold, on a field of crimson. The banner snapped in the wind off the river, and the man who carried it sat his horse like a man who had ridden hard and meant to ride harder. He drew rein twenty paces out and did not dismount.

“Thomas Ashwick,” he called. “By the seal of Sir Hugh de Lacy, lord of this manor, I bid you open your gates and present yourself.”

Baldric spat into the mud. “He’s got a fine voice for a man whose lord owes the Crown twelve thousand pounds.”

Tom walked forward, boots sinking in the thawed earth, and stopped where the rider’s horse could see him plain. The beast rolled its eyes and sidestepped. “I’m Ashwick. You’ve my name. Now give me yours.”

“I am called Reynald. I serve Sir Hugh as herald.” The man’s face was narrow and windburned, his cloak good wool but patched at the elbow. A servant’s cloak, Tom thought. Not a knight’s. “My lord will arrive by nightfall. He bids you prepare lodging for himself and twelve men, and fodder for their horses. He bids you present your books and your stores for his inspection.”

“He bids,” Joan said softly from behind Tom, loud enough for the rider to hear. “A lord who fled his own manor rather than face the King’s justice now bids us open our gates to him.”

Reynald’s jaw tightened. “The King’s justice is for the King’s court. My lord has friends at Westminster who will speak for him.”

“Then he should have gone to Westminster,” Tom said, “instead of riding here. Tell me, Reynald. Did Sir Hugh send you ahead to see what we’ve made of his land? Or to see whether the warlock of Wykeham keeps a gallows in his barn?”

The herald’s horse stamped. Reynald looked past Tom at the village — at the new-sown furrows stretching in long, straight lines toward the river, at the limed rows white as bone in the failing light, at the barn where the dead warehouse slept behind its doors. Something moved in his face. Not fear, exactly. Calculation.

“My lord has heard rumors,” Reynald said. “He has heard that a man came from nowhere with carts of strange goods and a king’s seal, and that the people of Wykeham no longer pay their tithes to the Church nor their rents to their lord. He has heard that the reeve has turned traitor and the widow of Wykeham has taken a warlock to her bed.”

Baldric’s hand went to his sword. Tom caught his wrist without turning.

“The widow of Wykeham,” Joan said, stepping out from behind Tom so the herald could see her plain, “buried her husband three winters past and has paid her rents in full every quarter since. She has taken no man to her bed. But if she had, it would be no business of a lord who sold grain to the French while his own people starved.”

Reynald’s horse shied at the steel in her voice. The herald gathered the reins and for the first time looked uncertain.

“You speak boldly for a woman.”

“I speak truthfully for a subject of the King,” Joan said. “Which is more than your master can claim.”

A murmur ran through the villagers gathered at the gate. Wat stood with his billhook loose in his hand, and behind him the men of Wykeham — not many, not well-armed, but standing. Tom saw their faces in the twilight: the reeve’s scarred cheek, the smith’s soot-stained hands, the old woman who had lost her daughter to the pestilence and had nothing left to lose. They had planted turnips in the lord’s own furrows. They had eaten bread from the warehouse’s seed corn. They had watched Tom pull a child back from the fever with willow bark and cold water, and they had decided, somewhere in the long winter, that they would rather hang with him than kneel to Hugh de Lacy.

“Reynald,” Tom said. “You’ve ridden a long way. I’ll give you bread and ale, and a place by the fire, and in the morning you can ride back to your lord and tell him this: the King’s commission names me steward of these lands until such time as Sir Hugh’s case is heard at the Tower. If Sir Hugh comes here by nightfall, he comes as a man accused of treason, not as a lord. If he comes with twelve armed men, he comes as a threat to the King’s peace. And if he raises his hand against this village, he raises it against the Crown.”

The herald’s face worked. “You have no authority to—”

“I have the King’s seal.” Tom drew the commission from inside his tunic, the parchment crackling in the cold, and held it up so the last light caught the wax. “You know what that is. You’ve seen its like before. Go back and tell your master.”

For a long moment Reynald did not move. The wind pulled at the banner, and the two lions rippled, black and gold, as if they were alive. Then the herald gathered his reins and turned his horse.

“He will come,” Reynald said over his shoulder. “He will come by nightfall, and he will not come alone. You would do well to open your gates before he arrives.”

He put spurs to his horse and rode west into the gathering dark. The sound of hoofbeats faded, and the village let out a breath.

Baldric turned to Tom. “That was well done. But he spoke true. Hugh will come, and he’ll not come to talk.”

“I know,” Tom said.

Joan touched his arm. “The King promised to arrest him. If Hugh arrives before the royal men do—”

“Then we hold him ourselves.” Tom looked at the barn, dark against the first stars, where the warehouse’s dying battery flickered like a candle behind a curtain. He thought of the books beneath the floorboards. He thought of the ledger with Hugh’s name in it, the two years of grain sold to France, the twelve thousand pounds owed to a king who never forgot a debt. He thought of the lime kiln hidden in the wood, and the steel ploughshares stacked in the loft, and the seed corn that had fed a village through the worst winter any of them had known.

“Baldric,” he said. “Call in every man who can hold a billhook. Wat, take the boys and drive the cattle into the far pasture, out of sight. Joan—” He paused. “Joan, I need you to take the books and the ledger to the chapel at the edge of the wood. Father Anselm will hide them in the crypt. If Hugh searches the manor, he finds nothing but a dead warehouse and a field of turnips.”

“And if he finds the books anyway?”

“Then we’ll have a different conversation.” Tom looked at the western road, where the last of the light was bleeding away. “But I don’t intend to have it in a burning barn.”

Joan studied him for a moment, her face half in shadow. Then she nodded and turned toward the manor, the satchel of tinctures bouncing against her hip, and Tom watched her go with a weight in his chest he could not name.

The villagers moved quickly, quietly, the way people move when they have been afraid for so long that fear has become a kind of skill. Wat drove the cattle toward the far pasture with a switch and a low whistle. Baldric went from door to door, and men came out with billhooks and scythes and one old spear that had seen Crécy. The women banked the fires and put out the candles. The village went dark.

Tom stood alone at the gate as the night came down, and far to the west, across the ford and the frozen marsh and the long muddy road, he saw a flicker of torchlight.

One torch. Then two. Then a dozen, moving toward Wykeham like a string of fallen stars.

He heard Joan’s footsteps behind him before he saw her. She had come back, the satchel still at her side, and she stood close enough that he could feel the warmth of her through the cold.

“You didn’t go to the chapel,” he said.

“I sent Wat’s sister. She’s quicker than I am, and she knows the crypt.” Joan’s hand found his in the dark. “You’ll need someone at your side who knows which of these men will stand and which will run.”

“And which will you do?”

She laughed, low and without much humor. “I’ve buried one husband and outlived a plague. I’ll stand.”

The torches came closer, and now Tom could hear the horses, the creak of harness, the jingle of mail. A voice carried across the dark fields, thin and sharp and accustomed to being obeyed.

“Ashwick! Open in the name of Sir Hugh de Lacy!”

Tom squeezed Joan’s hand once, then let go. He walked to the gate and put his palm flat against the cold wood.

“The gate stays barred,” he called into the dark, “until the King’s men arrive. You’re welcome to wait, Sir Hugh. You’ve waited two years for the King’s accounting. One more night won’t kill you.”

A pause. Then a sound that might have been laughter, or might have been the rasp of a sword leaving its scabbard.

“We’ll see,” Sir Hugh de Lacy said. “We’ll see what the night brings.”

Behind Tom, the village waited in silence. Above him, the stars burned cold. And in the barn, the warehouse’s last light guttered, flickered, and went out.