Read Chapter 14: The Man Called Prior

They captured Eustache de Marconne by accident.

Martin had planned only to seize a grain convoy near Doullens. Snow lay in dirty ridges beside the road, and the Free Hounds waited behind an abandoned chapel.

The convoy arrived with twice the expected guard.

At its centre rode a man in a fur-lined cloak on a black horse.

Ysabeau stared through the bare branches.

“That is him.”

“You are sure?”

“I saw him once in Saint-Omer. He complained that onions smelled poor.”

Lord Eustache de Marconne was in his early fifties, handsome in the careful way of men who had always eaten well. When the ambush began, his guards fought hard. Martin lost six men before the survivors surrendered.

Marconne was dragged into the chapel.

He looked around at the broken saints and smiled.

“So the famous Vautrin is real.”

Martin sat across from him.

“So is the famine.”

“Famines are always real.”

“You created part of this one.”

Marconne shrugged. “I moved grain from unsafe farms into protected stores.”

“You withheld it.”

“I waited for a fair price.”

“Children ate bark.”

“Children always suffer in war.”

The calmness enraged Martin more than denial would have.

He placed copied ledgers on the altar.

“Who is the Prior?”

For the first time, Marconne's expression changed.

Only slightly.

Martin saw it.

“Count Rochefort?”

Marconne laughed. “Rochefort is a vain idiot with useful cousins.”

“Then who?”

“You think this is a conspiracy because conspiracy comforts soldiers. It makes war feel controlled.”

“Is it not?”

“Of course it is controlled. By debt, harvest, weather, fear, and men who understand them. The Concord does not cause the war. We make it possible.”

“By starving people?”

“By feeding armies.”

“At three times the price.”

“Armies that do not eat disband and loot. We provide continuity.”

Martin leaned closer. “Who is the Prior?”

Marconne looked at him with something like pity.

“The Prior is whoever the most powerful member needs him to be.”

It sounded evasive, but Matthieu later understood.

“A rotating office,” the monk said. “Or a mask. No single head to cut off.”

Marconne confirmed it under further questioning. The Concord was governed by a small council. The Prior chaired meetings and held common funds, but the role changed. This year the Prior was Count Amaury de Rochefort.

Next year it might be an English merchant or a Burgundian lord.

“How many members?” Martin asked.

“Enough.”

“How many depots?”

“More than you can raid.”

“How many officials bought?”

Marconne smiled. “More than you can trust.”

Martin could ransom him for a fortune.

He could execute him.

He did neither.

He announced a public hearing at Chainbreak.

Marconne finally lost his composure.

“You cannot try a nobleman.”

“I am not a judge.”

“Then what is this?”

“A market,” Martin said. “People should know what they have been buying.”

News spread across Picardy.

So did armies.

Both French and English authorities demanded Marconne's custody.

For once, they agreed on something.

Martin refused them both.

And Chainbreak prepared for siege.

Marconne's captivity revealed the social distance between noble and mercenary in small, absurd ways. He disliked wooden cups. He asked whether Chainbreak had a falconer. He seemed genuinely surprised that Martin slept in a room without a private garderobe.

Yet he adapted quickly.

Within a week, he had learned guards' names and family origins. Within two, he knew which men gambled and which disliked Martin's rules. Ysabeau warned that he was recruiting without offering employment.

“Conversation is not treason,” Martin said.

“Neither is mould until it ruins the sack.”

Martin rotated the guards.

Marconne noticed and smiled.

“You learn.”

“From bad examples.”

During one long conversation, Martin asked whether Marconne had ever been hungry.

“As a child, once, during a siege.”

“How long?”

“Two days without bread. We had meat.”

Martin laughed despite himself.

Marconne's face remained serious. “Do not mistake privilege for ignorance. I know hunger frightens people. That is precisely why grain has value.”

There, in one sentence, lay the moral distance between them. Martin saw hunger as a condition to end. Marconne saw it as information about price.

Neither man doubted the facts.

They differed over what facts required a person to do.