Read Chapter 17: The King's Council

The tent fell silent the moment Thomas’s voice died against the canvas walls. The Duke of York stood frozen, the French letter trembling in his gauntleted hand, his eyes moving from the parchment to Captain Ashworth’s face and back again. The war council—a dozen knights and men-at-arms in half-armed haste—stared at Thomas as if he’d grown a second head.

“This man is mad,” Ashworth said, stepping forward with a hand on his sword hilt. His voice was calm, practiced, the voice of a man who had talked his way out of a hundred scrapes. “I know him. He’s the deserter from the baggage train. He killed two of my men at the mill last night and fled. Now he’s stolen a letter and forged my name upon it to deflect his own guilt.”

“I didn’t forge anything,” Thomas said, but his words were lost in the murmur of the council. Six knights, all of them armored for war, all of them looking at him like a rat that had crawled into their bread.

York held up a hand. “Quiet. All of you.” He turned the letter over, studying the seal. The wax was French—the fleur-de-lis unmistakable—but the seal had been cracked open and re-pressed. “The seal is broken. Any man could have read this and copied the hand.”

“Your Grace—” Thomas began.

“I did not ask you to speak.” York’s voice was iron. “Captain Ashworth has served this army since Harfleur. He saved the Duke of Gloucester’s life at the breach. You are a common archer who claims to have uncovered a conspiracy in a single night, armed with a stolen letter and no witnesses.”

“I have witnesses.”

“Name them.”

Thomas’s throat tightened. “Sir John Greyhill.”

York’s brow furrowed. He looked past Thomas to the tent flap, where Greyhill stood in the entrance, still wearing the dust of the night’s ride, his face drawn and pale beneath his helm. He stepped forward before York could summon him.

“The archer speaks true, Your Grace,” Greyhill said. His voice was quieter than Thomas had ever heard it, but it carried. “I have seen enough to believe him. The strings of the arrows stacked for the left flank were cut. I examined them myself. And Captain Ashworth—” He hesitated, and Thomas saw the cost of that hesitation in the set of his jaw. “Captain Ashworth was the only man of rank who knew of the supply route the sabotage used.”

Ashworth laughed, a short, ugly sound. “Sir John, I expected better of you. One night with this deserter and you’ve turned traitor yourself?”

“I am no traitor,” Greyhill said, his voice hardening.

“Then you are a fool,” Ashworth said. “He has turned you with his lies. The both of you will hang for this.”

York turned the letter over again, reading the margin where Thomas had pointed. The name *Ashworth* stood there in ink the same shade as the rest. But the captain had a point. Any man could write a name.

Thomas felt the moment slipping away. He could see it in the way the other knights shifted, in the way York’s eyes flicked toward the tent’s door, already considering the muster beyond. The horn had sounded three times. The army was forming. In less than an hour, the first companies would be moving toward the ridge at Agincourt, and every moment spent here was a moment the French could use.

He looked at Ashworth’s hands.

The captain had folded his arms across his chest, his gloves tucked into his belt. The leather was dark, oiled, unremarkable. But Thomas had seen that mark in the firelight at the mill, and he had spent the night staring at broken arrow shafts and triple-thread binding.

“Your Grace,” Thomas said, and his voice was steadier than he felt. “Ask the captain to draw his bow.”

York blinked. “What?”

“His bow. The one he carries. Ask him to string it and draw it to his ear.”

Ashworth’s face flickered—just for an instant, just enough for Thomas to see the crack in the mask. “This is absurd. We are in the middle of a war council, not a tournament field.”

“Humor me,” Thomas said. He turned to York. “Your Grace, the strings of the sabotaged arrows were cut in a specific way. A way that only a man who knew how to cut them would use. I found the same mark on the captain’s glove last night. The mark of the French conspirators. And the string on his bow—” He pointed at the longbow leaning against the tent pole behind Ashworth. “I saw it at the mill. The twist is the same as the broken string I found in the arrow stores. His own string is sabotaged, Your Grace. He meant to blame the archers when it snapped at the next volley.”

A silence fell over the tent. Ashworth’s hand drifted toward his bow—and stopped.

“You think I would sabotage my own bow?” he said. “To what purpose?”

“To prove the conspiracy was real while hiding your own hand in it,” Thomas said. “To give yourself a wound, a story of survival, when the attack came. A captain who almost died at the hands of the saboteur would be above suspicion.”

York looked from Thomas to Ashworth, and something shifted in his face. The doubt was still there, but it was hardening into calculation. He was a man who had won wars by knowing when to trust the unlikely messenger.

“Draw your bow, Captain,” York said.

Ashworth’s jaw tightened. “Your Grace, this is foolishness. I have served you faithfully since Harfleur. I have bled for this army. You would put my honor to the test of a common archer’s fancy?”

“I would put your bow to the test,” York said. He gestured to two of his guard, who stepped forward. “Now.”

Ashworth stood frozen for a long moment. Thomas watched the man’s eyes dart toward the tent flap, toward the guards, toward the assembled nobles who had begun to murmur again. The confidence was draining out of him like water from a cracked cup.

He walked to his bow, slow and deliberate, and lifted it. The longbow was a thing of beauty—yew, waxed, the string pale and tight. Thomas knew that string. He had seen the milky twist of it in the lamplight at the mill, had watched Ashworth’s gloved fingers stroke it like a pet.

“Very well,” the captain said. He lifted the bow, nocked an imaginary arrow, and drew.

The string snapped.

It didn’t break cleanly. It unravelled, the fibers splitting in a spray of pale strands that hung from the bow’s tip like gutted fish. Ashworth stared at it, his face blank, and for a single, awful moment Thomas thought the man would laugh again, would turn it all to another trick.

Then Ashworth threw the bow at Thomas’s head.

Thomas ducked. The bow clattered past him and slapped against the tent canvas. Ashworth was already moving, his sword clearing its scabbard in a single, practiced motion, but he was a captain who had expected to win with words, not steel. The guard behind him caught his sword arm before the blade came up, and the second guard drove a mailed fist into his kidneys.

Ashworth folded with a groan, and the guards pinned him to the ground.

“The mark on his glove,” Thomas said, stepping forward before anyone could move. He crouched beside the captain and grabbed Ashworth’s right wrist, twisting it to show York the three-thread pattern sewn into the leather. “The same mark is on the false arrows, Your Grace. I saw it myself. He is the one. He is the traitor.”

York stared at the mark for a long moment. Then he inclined his head.

“Take him to the stocks,” the Duke said. “Bind him with the chains we use for prisoners of war. He will be tried tomorrow, after the battle, if any of us are left to see it.”

The guards hauled Ashworth upright. The captain’s face was a mask of purple fury, but his eyes had gone strange—calm, almost, in the center of the storm. He looked at Thomas, and Thomas saw something in that look that made his stomach turn.

“The arrow was meant for the archer,” Ashworth said.

The words were quiet, almost gentle, spoken as they dragged him across the tent floor. York’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”

But Ashworth did not answer. The guards pulled him through the flap and into the grey light of dawn, and the tent fell silent again.

Thomas stood in the center of the council, the broken bow at his feet, the smell of wax and stale air thick in his nose. The letter lay open on the table. York was looking at it again, his face unreadable.

“Your Grace,” Thomas said. “The eastern hedge gate. It is unbarred. The French are waiting for a signal.”

York looked up, and his eyes were hard. “Then you will go. Bar it. Find the rest of them.” He paused. “I am giving you until dawn. That is not an hour away. Clear the camp of the remaining agents, archer, and you will have your name cleared. Fail, and I will have you hanged beside your captain.”

Thomas opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. There was no time. The horn sounded again—truly the last call now, the deep bray that meant the vanguard was moving. He could hear the stamp of boots outside, the creak of carts, the distant thunder of many men walking toward their deaths.

He turned to leave, and then stopped.

Will. He had not seen Will since the camp had broken. Not since the second horn. Will was supposed to find him at the pigsty. Will was supposed to be watching the eastern gate.

Thomas looked at York. “One of my comrades is missing. Will Croft. He was to help me bar the gate.”

York’s expression did not change. “Then find him.”

Thomas did not wait for more. He ducked through the tent flap and into the chaos of the camp, the broken string of Ashworth’s bow still clutched in his fist, the strange words of the traitor echoing in his ears.

*The arrow was meant for the archer.*

He did not know what it meant. But he knew, with a certainty that turned his blood cold, that Will’s disappearance was no accident.