Read Chapter 6: The Cook's Tale

The cook’s fire was dying, and so was the cook’s patience.

Thomas found him hunched over a cauldron of thin stew, stirring with the mechanical weariness of a man who had been feeding an army for three months and had long since stopped caring what went into the pot. His name was Ned, a broad-shouldered Yorkshireman like Thomas, and he had served the Earl of Suffolk’s household for twenty years. He looked up at Thomas’s approach, grunted, and went back to stirring.

“If you’re wanting breakfast, it’s not ready,” Ned said. “And if you’re wanting something besides breakfast, I’m not the man to ask.”

Thomas sat on an upturned barrel, close enough that the heat from the fire touched his face. “I’m wanting information.”

“Then you’ve come to the wrong man,” Ned said. “I know what goes into their bellies, not what goes into their heads.”

“I’m not asking about their heads.” Thomas pulled the torn ledger page from his tunic, unfolded it, and held it toward the firelight. Ned glanced at it, then away. “I’m asking about who’s been sneaking around the baggage train at night when the camp’s asleep.”

Ned’s stirring slowed. “That’s a dangerous question, Thomas Barrow. A man could get himself killed asking questions like that.”

“A man could get himself killed if his bowstring snaps when the French come charging,” Thomas said. “I’d rather die with an arrow loose than with my hands empty.”

For a long moment, Ned said nothing. The stew bubbled. Somewhere beyond the firelight, a horse stamped and blew. Ned sighed and set down his ladle.

“There’s been someone sneaking to the baggage train,” he said quietly. “Three nights running. I only know because I sleep near the stores to keep the rats off the flour. I heard footsteps, soft ones, not soldier’s boots. More like a gentleman’s shoes.”

Thomas leaned forward. “Who?”

“Lord Greyhill’s squire,” Ned said. “The young one. Roger, they call him.”

Thomas felt a cold knot tighten in his chest. “You’re certain?”

“I saw his face the second night,” Ned said. “He came walking past my fire, bold as you please, like he had every right to be there. But there was something off about him. He walked too quiet. Soldiers learn to walk quiet, but squires don’t. Squires grow up in manor houses, tripping over their own feet.”

“What was he carrying?”

“A sack. Small one, but heavy by the way he held it.” Ned shook his head. “I figured he was running an errand for his lord. Squires do that. I didn’t think nothing of it.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

Ned hesitated. His eyes flicked toward the prisoner pens, a dark cluster of stakes and rope at the edge of the camp. “There’s a French prisoner been asking for extra bread. Jean, they call him. Captured at Harfleur. He’s been watching the baggage train too. I caught him staring at the arrow carts more than once, but he’s a prisoner—what harm can he do?”

Thomas stood. “That’s what I mean to find out.”

---

The prisoner pens stank of mud and fear. Thomas had seen enough captured men in his years to know the look of them: hollow-eyed, slumped, waiting for ransom or death, whichever came first. The French knight Jean sat apart from the common soldiers, his fine clothes torn and stained but still marking him as a man of rank. He was young, perhaps twenty-five, with a thin face and dark hair that fell across his brow.

Thomas stopped at the rope barrier. “Jean of Harfleur.”

The Frenchman looked up. His English was halting, heavily accented, but understandable. “You are the archer. The one who fights with the longbow.”

“I’m the one asking questions,” Thomas said. “I’m told you’ve been watching the baggage train.”

Jean’s eyes narrowed. “A prisoner watches everything. It is what we do. We watch for escape. We watch for food. We watch for the moment when the guards forget us.”

“I’m told you watched the arrow carts.”

Jean said nothing for a long moment. Then he moved closer to the rope, his voice dropping to barely more than a whisper. “I saw something. Three nights ago. A man in English livery, with the badge of a lion on his chest, standing near the carts. He was tampering with the barrels. Opening them, touching the arrows inside.”

Thomas’s pulse quickened. “What did he look like?”

“Tall. Broad shoulders. He walked with a limp.” Jean touched his right leg. “He favored this side. And he wore a hood, even in the dark. A man does not wear a hood at night unless he does not wish to be recognized.”

The limping stranger. The same man Thomas had seen slipping away from the quartermaster’s tent. The same man Watkins had described. Thomas filed it away and asked, “Why are you telling me this? You’re French. This plot, if it exists, helps your cause.”

Jean smiled thinly. “I am a knight. I swore an oath to fight honorable men in honorable battle. This is not honorable. This is murder by another name.” He paused. “Also, I would like to go home.”

“I can’t arrange that.”

“No, but you can carry a letter.” Jean reached into his tunic and produced a folded square of parchment, sealed with a blob of wax. “For my wife. I promised her I would write if I was captured. The guards will not send it. They say I could use it to signal my countrymen.”

Thomas took the letter. It was light, almost weightless. “How do I know this isn’t a code?”

“You can read it,” Jean said. “I wrote it in English, so your officers could inspect it. It is simple. I miss her. I hope she is well. I will see her again when the war is done.”

Thomas pocketed the letter. “I’ll see it gets to someone who can carry it to France.”

“You are kind,” Jean said. “More kind than most of your countrymen.”

Thomas turned to leave, then paused. “The man in the livery. The one with the lion badge. Was it the Duke of York’s household?”

Jean’s eyes flickered with something—surprise, or recognition. “I do not know English lords by their badges. But the lion was white, and it stood on its hind legs, and it had a chain around its neck.” He shrugged. “That is all I saw.”

Thomas nodded and walked away. Behind him, the prisoner pens fell silent again.

He found a patch of ground near a dying campfire, sat down, and unfolded Jean’s letter in the flickering light. It was written in a neat hand, exactly as Jean had described—words of longing, of hope, of patience. Nothing more.

Unless.

Thomas turned the paper over. The back was blank. He held it up to the flames, tilting it this way and that, searching for hidden markings. Nothing. He brought it close to his face, sniffing it. The faint scent of oil, but that could be from anything.

And then he saw it.

In the corner, almost invisible against the parchment’s cream color, was a single thin line of wax. Not spilled. Deliberate. A faint, almost imperceptible ridge, as if someone had drawn a thread of wax across the page and then scraped it smooth. Thomas ran his thumb over it. It caught his skin.

He pulled out his belt knife and held the blade flat against the paper, pressing down. Slowly, carefully, he scraped away the wax coating. Beneath it, the paper was slightly darker, the fibers disturbed. Words, pressed into the pulp with a dry stylus, none of the ink left—but the impression remained.

Thomas held the paper up to the firelight again, tilting it at an angle. Letters emerged, faint as ghosts.

*The arrows come from Calais. The gold comes from Faulquemont.*

Faulquemont. The name meant nothing to him. But Calais—that matched the ledger page from the quartermaster’s tent. The sabotaged arrows had shipped from Calais. And now the French prisoner’s letter carried the same thread, folded into a message that would look blank to any careless eye.

Thomas folded the letter carefully and tucked it inside his tunic, next to the torn ledger page. Jean wasn’t just some homesick knight. He was a messenger, and he had found a way to send his message through the one thing no one would suspect: the pity of an archer.

But the message had been meant for someone else. Someone who would know what Faulquemont meant. Someone who was waiting to receive it.

Thomas looked back toward the prisoner pens. Jean was watching him. Their eyes met across the darkness, and the Frenchman offered a small, knowing smile.

Thomas walked back toward Greyhill’s tent, the blank letter burning against his chest. He had found his next thread to pull. And he had the uneasy feeling that when it came loose, it would unravel far more than a saboteur’s plot.