Read Chapter 16: Twenty Days of Bread

On the third day, Martin reduced rations.

On the fifth, he slaughtered two injured horses.

On the seventh, French and English patrols began fighting each other over nearby villages, making the encirclement less effective and the countryside more miserable.

Chainbreak's defenders numbered one hundred and seventy-one combatants. Civilians inside the walls brought the total population to nearly six hundred.

Ysabeau calculated flour every morning.

“Fourteen days,” she said.

“You said fifteen yesterday.”

“Yesterday people had not discovered how much they enjoy siege.”

Marconne was kept in the old chapel under guard. He asked for wine. Martin sent water.

The nobleman accepted it without complaint.

“You will release me,” he said when Martin visited.

“Why?”

“Because the people outside can wait longer than yours.”

Martin sat on an overturned chest.

“Who has grain closest to us?”

Marconne laughed.

“You are asking me to help rob myself.”

“I am asking whether you prefer being hungry with us.”

Marconne's humour faded.

He named a depot twelve miles east, hidden inside a walled manor. It held rye intended for an English purchase scheduled in two weeks.

“How many guards?”

“Thirty in winter. Perhaps fifty now.”

Martin left.

That night, eighty Free Hounds slipped through a drainage ditch south of Chainbreak while Will Hobb staged noise at the north wall. They moved without torches, guided by villagers through orchard paths.

The raid succeeded because no one expected a besieged force to leave its walls.

Martin's men scaled the depot wall before dawn. The guards surrendered after a brief fight. Inside were over four hundred sacks.

Enough to feed Chainbreak for months.

Martin took one hundred and fifty.

Ysabeau stared when he ordered the rest left untouched.

“Why?”

“Because if we take everything, villages east of here starve when the armies seize the roads.”

“This is Concord grain.”

“It is grain.”

They loaded carts and sent smaller wagons toward villages under Free Hound escort. By sunrise, people across the countryside knew where the depot was.

Farmers arrived with carts of their own.

When Concord agents demanded they leave, hundreds refused.

The depot became a public market before noon.

By evening, the English force outside Chainbreak had pulled east to investigate. The French followed, fearing the English would seize the grain.

The encirclement broke.

Chainbreak's gates opened.

Marconne heard the cheering from his chapel.

Martin went to him.

“You used my own stock to break a siege.”

“Your stock?”

Marconne gave him a long look.

“Careful, Vautrin. Today peasants cheer because you opened another man's store. Tomorrow they may decide your store is another man's too.”

Martin did not dismiss the warning.

That was what made it useful.

The hearing resumed three days later.

This time, no authority tried to interrupt.

Not because they had accepted Martin's right to hold it.

Because too many people were watching.

At the end, Martin did not pronounce sentence.

He asked the assembled villages and merchants what should be done.

Some demanded hanging.

Others wanted ransom.

One widow said, “Make him feed us.”

The answer took hold.

Marconne's estates within reach were assessed for grain and livestock. Stores tied to the Concord would be opened at controlled prices. A portion of his liquid wealth would compensate burned villages.

Marconne himself would be released only after these terms were met.

“You have invented taxation,” he told Martin.

“No,” Martin said. “Repayment.”

“Every tax collector says that.”

Martin almost smiled.

For the first time, he understood why Hugues had distrusted heroes.

Power had a way of making every theft sound necessary.

During the twenty-day siege, Martin discovered that hunger had a sound. It was quieter than battle. Conversations shortened. Children stopped running. Men stared when bread was cut. Every smell from the cookhouse travelled through the entire yard.

Ysabeau weighed flour publicly each morning.

At first Martin thought it theatrical.

“It is,” she said. “People need to see the measure.”

“Why?”

“Because if they do not, they invent another measure in their heads, and it is always larger.”

Marconne watched the ritual from a chapel window.

“You are training them to demand accounts,” he told Martin.

“Yes.”

“You may regret that when they demand yours.”

“Then I should keep better accounts.”

Marconne shook his head as if Martin were naïve.

Yet when the raid brought grain back, Martin ordered the first sacks opened before everyone and the new ration calculation read aloud. The cheering was less for the food than for the certainty that it existed.

That moment clarified the difference between stock and trust. The Concord possessed immense stock but needed secrecy. Chainbreak possessed little stock but survived because people believed the count.

Martin began to understand why Rochefort would later fear public inventories more than stolen wagons.