Read Chapter 15: The Heir's Motive

The merchant’s hut smelled of dried herbs and tallow, but Thomas barely noticed. His fingers closed around the packet of belladonna seeds, rough cloth against his palm, while the old man’s words hung in the smoky air like a half-spoken confession.

“The steward,” Thomas said. “You said Anselm walked with him. Where did they go?”

The merchant—a wiry man named Étienne with a face like cracked leather—shifted on his stool. “To the mill, I think. Or the meadow. Always the meadow.” He spat into the hearth. “That land. It poisons everything it touches.”

Thomas tucked the seeds into his scapular. “The meadow belongs to the abbey.”

“Was,” Étienne said. He leaned forward, voice dropping. “Will it still, come spring? The baron’s nephew, young Godfrey—he’s been sniffing around these parts like a dog after a bone. Word is he needs that stretch of ground more than he needs his own soul.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the autumn air crept up Thomas’s spine. “Why? It’s good pasture, but there are others.”

“Not like this one.” Étienne counted on his fingers. “It borders the baron’s own fields, so it rounds out his holding neat as a stitch. But more than that…” He paused, and Thomas saw the calculation in his eyes—the weighing of how much to give, how much to hold back.

“The law,” Thomas pressed. “A man can’t just take what belongs to the Church.”

Étienne let out a bitter laugh. “You think they care for law, Brother? They care for inheritance. Godfrey’s claim to his uncle’s title is fragile as spun glass. The old baron’s will says the estate passes only if Godfrey can prove he can support it—a certain size of holding, a certain income. Without your meadow, his land falls short by half a league.” He leaned in. “And a short land means a short inheritance. The baron’s second cousin waits in the wings like a hawk.”

The pieces clicked into place with a sound Thomas felt more than heard. He remembered Brother James’s pale face at the last chapter meeting, the tremor in his voice when he’d read the abbot’s announcement about Sir Godfrey’s “donation.” A donation. Not a purchase. A gift to the abbey that would, in the same breath, somehow bind the land more tightly to the baron’s family.

“There’s more,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Étienne hesitated, then reached under his counter and produced a folded parchment, creased and stained. “Brother Anselm left this with me. Said to hold it safe, for if anything happened to him.”

Thomas took it with trembling hands. The seal was broken—Anselm’s own seal, a sprig of yarrow pressed into red wax. He unfolded it carefully. The writing was cramped, hurried, the letters of a man who feared being interrupted.

*To whoever finds this: I have learned that Brother William and Brother James have met with the steward privately, three times this harvest month. They speak of selling the meadow rights before Saint Agnes. William says the abbey owes a debt to the baron from the old war. James says nothing, but his silence has a price. I have tried to reason with them. I have failed. If I am prevented from completing my task, know that the poison is not in the cup—it is in the ink. Let no one write what cannot be unsaid.*

Thomas read it twice, then a third time, the words burning into his memory like a brand. *The poison is in the ink.* Anselm had known. He’d known about the murder, about the poison, and he’d tried to stop it—not with confrontation, but with negotiation. With the baron. With the steward.

And someone had stopped him first.

“He came to me the night before he left,” Étienne said quietly. “Said he had one more conversation to have. Told me if he didn’t return by morning, I should give this to the next brother who came asking questions.”

“Which brother did he expect?”

Étienne’s eyes met his. “He said the one who noticed the ink.”

Thomas’s throat tightened. He hadn’t known Anselm well—the old monk kept to his herbs and his silences—but now he felt the weight of that trust settle on his shoulders like a stone. He folded the letter and tucked it beside the belladonna seeds.

“The steward,” he said. “Where would he be now?”

“Gone back to the baron’s hall, I’d guess. He rides hard when the weather turns.” Étienne glanced at the window where rain had begun to streak the glass. “You won’t catch him before dark, and you shouldn’t try. His men have no love for wandering monks.”

Thomas nodded, his mind already turning. He couldn’t go back to the abbey—not yet, not with the abbot’s accusation still ringing in his ears and Brother Mark’s watchful eyes waiting in the cloisters. But the village had other places to hide. Other sources of information.

“The miller,” he said. “You said they met at the mill. Who owns it?”

“Old Jacques. He’s deaf as a post but sharp as a blade. Sees everything, says nothing unless you buy him a drink.” Étienne jerked his chin toward the door. “He’ll be at the tavern by now. Every night, same corner, same cup.”

Thomas stood, pulling his hood lower over his face. “You’ve been more help than you know.”

“I’ve been more complicit than I’d like,” Étienne muttered. “The baron bought my silence about the root sale. Bought the miller’s too, last I heard. But a man can only hold his tongue so long when the weight of it starts to choke him.”

Thomas paused at the door. “Did Anselm tell you what he was going to say to the steward?”

Étienne shook his head. “Didn’t need to. I knew Brother William and James had been meeting with the steward too—on their own, without the abbot’s knowledge. Anselm found out and threatened to expose them. Went to make them see reason, he said. Went to offer them a way out before he had to take another path.”

A way out. Thomas thought of William’s smug face in the refectory, his smooth words about the abbot’s wisdom and the Church’s patience. James, quieter, always glancing at the door. They had been negotiating to sell the ground beneath the abbey’s feet—and Anselm had walked into the middle of it.

He was still out there somewhere. Or he was dead, his body hidden in a ditch or a river, a story told in whispers that no one dared repeat.

Thomas pressed his hand against his scapular, feeling the seeds and the letter—both pieces of a man who had seen too much and trusted the wrong people. The rain hammered the roof now, a drumbeat that matched the pulse in his temples.

He would go to the tavern. He would find the miller. And he would learn what Brother William and Brother James had promised to give away—before they gave away something worse: the truth of what happened to Anselm.

The door closed behind him, and the village street lay empty and dark, rain turning the ruts to mud. Somewhere beyond it, in the abbey he could not return to, the bell for Compline began to toll—a sound that seemed to say, *too late, too late, too late.*

Thomas walked into the rain, and the ink in his blood burned like accusation.