Chapter 97: The Lion at the Door

The rain had not stopped by dawn, but it had thinned to a grey drizzle that clung to everything and made the world look half-drowned. Tom stood in the barn doorway with his satchel over one shoulder and the King’s commission rolled in an oiled cloth inside his tunic. The warehouse lights behind him had dimmed to a faint amber pulse, like a heart slowing toward its final beat. He did not look back at them. There was no time.

Wat appeared at his elbow, mud to the knees, a billhook in his belt. “They’re at the ford,” he said. “Six riders. Two banners. Black and gold.”

“And Hugh?”

“I didn’t see him. But the man in front rides like he owns the road.”

Tom nodded. “Keep the women and children inside the barn. Bolt it from within. If I raise my hand, you come with every man who can hold a staff. If I don’t, you stay.”

Wat’s jaw tightened. “And if he kills you?”

“Then you’ll know what to do. The seed is in the ground. That’s what matters.”

He walked out into the mist before Wat could answer. The road to the ford was a ribbon of brown water and churned clay, and the riders emerged from it slowly, shapes resolving out of the grey. Six men on heavy horses, their cloaks sodden and their faces grim. At their head rode a knight in black harness, his shield bearing the two lions of de Lacy, black and gold, quartered with a bar sinister that Tom had not seen before.

But it was the rider behind him that made Tom’s breath catch.

Sir Hugh de Lacy sat his horse like a man who had spent the winter in a dungeon and intended to take it out on the world. His face was thinner than Tom remembered from the King’s descriptions, his beard streaked with grey, but his eyes were the same—flat, pale, and utterly without mercy. He wore no chains. He wore no shame. He wore a sword.

The King’s promise had been a lie, or worse, a delay.

“Master Ashwick,” Hugh said, reining in a few paces away. His voice was soft, almost pleasant. “I am told you have been busy.”

Tom did not bow. “I have been farming, my lord. As the King commanded.”

“The King commands many things.” Hugh dismounted, his boots sinking into the mud. He was shorter than Tom had expected, but broader, and he moved with the coiled confidence of a man who had never lost a fight he intended to win. “I have been in London. I have spoken with the King’s clerks. Do you know what they told me?”

“That you owe twelve thousand pounds.”

Hugh smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “They told me that a man claiming to be a royal commissioner had presented a seal that no one could verify. That the King himself was in Calais. That the commission was likely a forgery.” He stepped closer. “They told me you are a warlock who has bewitched a village and stolen my lands.”

Tom’s hand tightened on the satchel strap. “I have stolen nothing. I have planted turnips and paid your reeve’s wages with grain I grew myself.”

“You have no right to grow anything on my land.”

“The King’s commission gave me the right.”

“The King’s commission is a scrap of parchment.” Hugh’s hand rested on his sword hilt. “I have a better claim. I have fifty men at my manor, two hundred more I can raise by nightfall, and the Bishop of Winchester’s ear. You have a barn and a woman who spreads heresy like a pox.”

The mention of Joan sent a cold spike through Tom’s chest. He kept his face still. “Mistress Joan is a healer. Nothing more.”

“She is a witch who hanged a tithe-collector’s soul with her lies. I know what she did at Michaelmas. I know what she told the King’s men.” Hugh’s eyes narrowed. “I know she was in London with you.”

Tom said nothing. The rain dripped from the hem of his hood.

Hugh laughed softly. “You think I came here to arrest you. I did not. I came here to offer you a choice.” He gestured, and one of his men rode forward, leading a spare horse. “You will come with me to my manor. You will bring your books. You will show me how you made the turnips grow in winter, how you healed the sick, how you turned a village of starving peasants into a garrison. And in return, I will let the woman live. I will let the village live. I will even forget the King’s commission.”

Tom’s mouth was dry. “And if I refuse?”

“Then I will burn the barn with everyone inside it. I will hang the reeve from his own oak. And I will take the woman to my manor anyway, and she will wish she had died with you.” Hugh’s voice did not rise. It did not need to. “I am not a patient man, Master Ashwick. The war in France has cost me everything. I will not lose my own lands to a charlatan in a wet cloak.”

The spare horse stamped and blew. The rain fell. Tom could feel the weight of the King’s commission against his chest, useless as a broken key. He could feel the warehouse lights flickering behind him, dying by inches. He could feel Joan’s hand in his, the memory of her warmth, her warning.

Be better than good. Be alive.

He looked at Hugh de Lacy, and he understood something he had not understood before. The King had not betrayed him. The King had simply done what kings do: he had used Tom as bait. The trial at the Tower, the summons, the promise of arrest—all of it had been designed to draw Hugh out of France, to bring him back to England where he could be taken quietly. But Hugh had moved faster. He had come to Wykeham first.

And now Tom stood between a lion and a lamb, and the lamb was everyone he had come to love.

“I’ll come with you,” Tom said.

Hugh’s smile widened. “A wise choice.”

“But the books stay here. They’re too valuable to risk on the road.”

Hugh considered this. “You will bring them when I send for them.”

“When you send for them,” Tom agreed.

He walked toward the spare horse, his heart hammering against his ribs. He did not look back at the barn. He did not look back at the warehouse. He kept his eyes on Hugh de Lacy’s face, and he counted the seconds.

Because Wat was in the barn, and Wat had heard every word. Because Baldric was in the village, and Baldric had fought at Crécy. Because Joan was somewhere in the dark with her herbs and her secrets and her sharp, unyielding will.

And because the King’s men were not in London. They were in the trees beyond the ford, hidden by the mist, waiting for a signal Tom had not yet given.

He mounted the horse. Hugh mounted his own. The riders closed around them like a fist.

“Ride,” Hugh said.

Tom rode. And as the barn fell away behind him, he raised one hand, slowly, as if adjusting his hood against the rain.

In the mist behind them, a horn sounded.