Read Chapter 14: A Witness in the Village

The morning light was thin and gray when Thomas slipped through the wicket gate behind the infirmary, a rough woolen cloak pulled over his shoulders and a peasant’s cap pulled low over his tonsure. He had shaved his crown clean the night before, but the faint red ring where the razor had scraped still stung against the cold air. He would pass for a laborer if no one looked twice, and he prayed no one would look twice.

The path to the village wound through the abbey’s western meadow, then dipped into a copse of alders where the mud was still soft from the previous night’s rain. Thomas kept his head down and his pace brisk. His heart hammered with every step, but no voice called out from behind him, no bell sounded to mark his escape.

He had left his cell before matins, using the hidden passage he had discovered behind the loose stone near his pallet. The passage had been dry and narrow, and it had spat him out behind the chapel’s sacristy, where the old brothers said a prior had once hidden his wine. Thomas had not lingered. The abbot would not send men to search until lauds, and by then he would need to be far from the abbey walls.

The village of Saint Vitus sat at the foot of the hill, a scatter of daub-and-wattle houses around a crooked church tower. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys, thin and white against the pale winter sky. Thomas passed the smithy first, where a man with a leather apron was hammering a plowshare, the ringing of his blows echoing off the muddy street. He did not look up.

The merchant he sought was said to keep a stall near the churchyard, where the road widened into a small square. Thomas remembered the name from Anselm’s half-written letter—a whisper of a reference, a merchant who traded in rare herbs and roots, who came to the village only twice a year from the coast. What had Anselm written? *The man knows the properties of the root as I do, and he will not sell to the abbey again, for the baron has bought his silence.*

Thomas stopped at the edge of the square. The stall was there, a low wooden table covered in a canvas awning that sagged under the weight of last night’s rain. But the merchant was not alone. A man in a dark traveling cloak stood at the table, his back to Thomas, speaking in low tones to the merchant, who shook his head and spread his hands in a gesture of refusal.

Thomas slipped into the shadow of the church porch and watched.

The dark-cloaked man spoke again, his voice too low to carry, but the merchant’s reply was loud enough. “I have told you, I have nothing left,” the merchant said, and there was a note of fear in his voice. “It was one parcel, and it is gone. I do not know where it went. I told you all I know.”

The dark-cloaked man said nothing. He reached into his belt and placed a coin on the table. The merchant looked at it, then at the man, and slowly shook his head again. The man took the coin back, then turned and walked away, crossing the square with a purposeful stride.

Thomas waited until the dark figure was out of sight before he approached the stall. The merchant was a thin man with a face like dried leather and eyes that flicked nervously from side to side. Behind him, sacks of dried roots and bundles of herbs hung from the stall’s frame, filling the air with a bitter, earthy smell.

“You are the trader,” Thomas said, keeping his voice low and coarser than his own. “The one who sells medicinal roots.”

The merchant looked him up and down. “I sell many things. What do you need?”

“A root that dulls the senses,” Thomas said. “That can make a man seem dead when he is not.”

The merchant’s face went pale. He took a step back, his hand moving to the counter. “I do not sell such things. You have been misinformed.”

Thomas leaned closer. “A monk bought such a root from you. A tall monk, with a scar over his left eyebrow. He came to you before the snows. He told you what he intended to use it for. And you sold it to him.”

The merchant’s eyes darted to the left, then the right. “I do not know who you are,” he said, “but you are speaking of trouble I do not want. The monk—yes, he came. A tall one, with the scar. He asked for the *mandragora* root, the kind that grows only on the coast. He said he needed it for a sleeping draught for the infirmary. He paid well.”

“And what else did he say?”

The merchant swallowed hard. “He asked about the abbey’s land. The meadow east of the village, the one the abbey claims as its own. He wanted to know who held the deed, whether it was the abbot or the baron. I told him I did not know such things—I am a trader, not a lawyer. But he persisted. He asked if the baron had been to the village recently. And I told him no, but that men had come asking about the land. The baron’s men. They had been asking questions about the abbey for weeks.”

Thomas felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. “What kind of questions?”

“Whether the abbey had any claim to the meadow that would hold in a court. Whether the abbot had papers, or whether it was all by word of mouth. They spoke to the reeve, I heard. And to the old woman who lives by the mill, who remembers when the land was granted to the abbey. She told them it was a gift from her grandfather, and that the papers were signed in the abbey’s own archive.” The merchant leaned forward, lowering his voice. “They did not like that answer. The baron’s men, I mean. The woman says they threatened her, told her if she spoke of it again, she would be named a liar in the baron’s court.”

Thomas’s mind raced. The deed he had hidden in his cell—the one that had been altered, the annotation added in copper-infused ink to nullify the abbey’s claim—was more important than he had imagined. But if the baron already knew the deed was contested, then the annotation was not the first move. It was the last, a final stroke to make the abbey’s claim look fraudulent.

“The monk,” Thomas said. “Did he say where he was going after he bought the root?”

The merchant shook his head. “He said he would return to the abbey. That he had work to do there. He looked troubled, that one. As if he carried a weight he could not set down.” The merchant paused, then added, almost reluctantly, “But I saw him again, three days later. On the road to the north, walking with the baron’s steward. They were deep in conversation, and the monk did not look happy.”

Thomas’s blood ran cold. Anselm, walking with the baron’s steward. Anselm, who had quarreled with William over a manuscript, who had been expert in rare plants, who had written of a poison that mimics death. Anselm had not been planning to expose the killer. He had been planning to negotiate.

“The baron,” Thomas said. “What does he want with the abbey’s land?”

The merchant laughed, a brittle sound. “You ask what every man in the village asks. They say his nephew needs the land to secure his inheritance—the law requires he hold a certain acreage or his claim to his uncle’s title falls to a cousin in the south. The baron would do anything to see his nephew keep the estate. Anything.”

Thomas remembered the abbot’s announcement of the new bell. He remembered the fear in his abbot’s eyes, and the way Brother Mark had smiled when he spoke of the “news.” He remembered the copper residue in the inkpot, and the deed annotated after the fact to nullify the abbey’s claim.

“Where is the baron’s steward now?” Thomas asked.

The merchant shook his head. “He rode south yesterday. He said he would return before the feast of Saint Agnes, with papers. But the monk—the tall one—he did not return. The road north is dangerous in winter. Wolves. Thieves. And men who do not want others to speak.”

Thomas stepped back from the stall. His head was pounding. Anselm had disappeared after walking with the baron’s steward. William and James were dead, killed by poisoned ink. The abbot was frightened. And Brother Mark knew more than he was telling.

He needed to get back to the abbey. He needed to confront Mark. And he needed to find Anselm before the baron’s steward returned with papers that would seal the abbey’s fate.

But as he turned to leave, the merchant called out to him. “You, with the cap,” he said. “The monk who asked about the land—he left something with me. A packet of seeds, wrapped in cloth. He said if anyone came asking about him, I was to give it to them, if they could tell me what the seeds were for.”

Thomas stopped. He turned back. “What are they for?”

The merchant smiled, a thin, knowing smile. “That is what I asked him. He said whoever could name the seed would be the one who deserved to know the truth.”

Thomas looked at the merchant’s table, where a small cloth-wrapped bundle sat among the sacks of roots. He did not need to unwrap it to know what it contained. He had seen such seeds in Anselm’s cell, hidden behind the loose stone with the strange roots.

“Belladonna,” Thomas said. “The deadly nightshade.”

The merchant’s smile vanished. He pushed the bundle across the table. “Then it is yours,” he said. “And may God have mercy on you for it.”

Thomas took the bundle and tucked it inside his cloak. He did not look back as he crossed the square, the merchant’s words echoing in his mind: *May God have mercy on you for it.* He hoped the merchant was wrong. But he had seen the bodies of William and James, their faces frozen in agony, and he knew that mercy was in short supply in this matter.

He had a name for the poison. He had a motive for the baron. And he had a seed packet that might just be the key to finding Anselm—or to proving that the murderer was closer to home than he had ever imagined.