Read Chapter 8: The Castle at Licques

Greybourne's offer paid badly and promised danger.

Martin accepted at once.

Not because of revenge, he told himself.

Because Licques controlled roads leading to three grain depots.

Ysabeau did not believe him.

“You have the face you make when pretending not to be angry.”

“What face is that?”

“That one.”

They met Greybourne in a ruined mill outside English territory. The knight looked thinner than before.

“I hear you are rebels now.”

“I hear you are still English,” Martin said.

“Neither of us can help our misfortunes.”

Greybourne spread a map on a millstone. Licques was held by sixty men under a castellan loyal to Marconne. The English wanted it because it threatened supply traffic from Calais. Martin wanted the records stored there.

“What records?” Greybourne asked.

“The kind men kill to protect.”

“Excellent. Those are usually useful.”

They planned a night assault through an old drainage culvert shown by a local miller. Twelve men would enter, open the postern, and let Greybourne's force in.

The culvert was narrower than promised, half-filled with mud, and occupied by rats of astonishing confidence.

Martin crawled first.

At the inner grate, he found fresh iron bars.

Behind him, Alain whispered a curse.

Martin examined the mortar. New bars, old stone. He took a chisel from his pouch. For nearly an hour, they worked in silence, loosening two stones beside the frame.

A guard coughed above them.

Nobody moved.

The cough receded.

They squeezed through one by one.

The postern fell quickly. The courtyard did not.

The defenders rallied around the hall. Crossbow bolts snapped from windows. Greybourne's men pushed through the gate while Martin's Free Hounds cleared the wall walk.

At dawn, the castle surrendered.

Martin went directly to the clerk's room.

He found ledgers, contracts, letters, and sealed accounts packed in chests. Greybourne assigned two scribes to help examine them.

By evening, the pattern was undeniable.

Marconne was not acting alone.

Twelve noble houses appeared repeatedly. So did merchants in Bruges, Saint-Omer, Arras, and Calais. They bought harvest contracts through intermediaries, financed armed escorts, and arranged controlled shortages. Some depots sold to the French crown. Others supplied English garrisons. Several deliberately delayed deliveries after battles, when demand was highest.

There were also payments to captains on both sides.

Greybourne read one page twice.

“This officer is English.”

“Yes.”

“He serves in Calais.”

“Yes.”

“I dined with him at Christmas.”

“I am sorry.”

Greybourne threw the ledger onto the table.

“If I take this to my commander, half of it disappears.”

“If I take it to the French, all of it disappears and I am hanged.”

“So what do we do?”

Martin had been asking himself the same question.

Burning the records would achieve nothing. Publishing them required authorities willing to act. Killing Marconne would leave the network intact.

Then Ysabeau entered carrying a smaller book.

“This was hidden beneath the floor.”

It was not a ledger of sales.

It was a schedule.

Over the next two months, grain from multiple depots was to be moved to three fortified locations. Prices were expected to rise sharply because both armies were preparing summer campaigns.

One location was Saint-Venant.

Another was Doullens.

The third was a monastery storehouse near Abbeville.

Martin looked at the quantities.

Enough grain to feed thousands.

“Why move it?” Greybourne asked.

“To create scarcity where armies are buying,” Martin said.

“And civilians?”

“Will pay whatever remains.”

Greybourne went silent.

Martin closed the book.

For the first time, the enemy in front of him had a shape larger than a man.

It was not French.

It was not English.

It was a market protected by swords.

Licques also gave Martin his first experience of winning a castle and immediately wanting nothing to do with owning it. Greybourne suggested leaving a Free Hound detachment as garrison.

“With what food?” Martin asked.

“There are stores.”

“For how long?”

“Three months.”

“And afterward?”

Greybourne smiled. “You are learning why castles need peasants.”

Martin walked the walls at dusk. From the battlements, fields looked orderly: strips of brown and green, villages clustered around church towers, roads threading between them. From above, war almost seemed manageable.

Then a woman appeared at the gate asking for a cow taken by the former garrison. Another man claimed the castle owed him for firewood. Two brothers demanded payment for repairing a roof. Victory produced creditors faster than glory.

Martin ordered the cow returned and promised to review the debts. Greybourne watched, amused.

“You truly do not want to be a lord.”

“I have met lords.”

“Some are charming.”

“So are some dogs.”

That night, while scribes copied the ledgers, Martin found a list of grain destroyed deliberately rather than sold below the Concord's minimum price. The quantities were not enormous, but the principle chilled him. He had seen soldiers burn food to deny it to enemies. Here men burned food to deny it to customers until those customers paid more.

War's logic had been imported into trade.

Martin understood then that the Concord did not merely exploit conflict. It had learned from conflict.