Read Chapter 7: A Debt of Wine

The night office had barely ended when Thomas heard it—not a voice raised in prayer, but one raised in anger, echoing up from the cloister walk below the dortoir. He paused on the stair, habit bunched in one hand, and listened.

“I told you, the harvest was poor. The rents from the mill were late. You cannot expect—” That was Brother John, the cellarer. His voice had the reedy quality of a man who spent his days counting peas and his nights worrying over them.

“I expect what is owed.” The other voice was harder, smoother, like a stone worn by a river until its edges cut. “The agreement was struck before your abbot took his vows. The wine was delivered. The payment was not.”

Thomas crept down three more steps until he could see the pair silhouetted against the guttering torch in the cloister. Brother John stood with his hands folded inside his sleeves, a posture of humility that looked forced. The man before him was not a monk. He wore a riding cloak of dark wool, mud-splashed to the knee, and a short sword at his belt. His face was barely visible beneath the hood, but Thomas could see the set of his jaw, the way it ground side to side as he spoke.

“The abbot will not—” John began.

“The abbot will do what the abbot must do,” the stranger cut in. “Or I will take the matter to my uncle. You know how he feels about the Church’s claims on Ashwick land. One word from him, and this abbey’s rights to the river meadow will be in question before the king’s court by Michaelmas.”

John’s shoulders sagged. “The prior has been meaning to speak with you.”

“The prior is dead. Your two scribes are dead. Your abbot is hiding in his chapel like a frightened hen. Forgive me, Brother, if I do not find your reassurances comforting.”

The stranger turned on his heel and strode toward the gate, boots ringing on the flagstones. Brother John stood a long moment, then raised a hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm. When he lowered it, his expression was hollow, and Thomas felt a pang of something close to pity.

Thomas stepped down into the cloister. “Brother John.”

The cellarer flinched as if struck. “Thomas. You should be abed.”

“So should you.” Thomas moved closer, keeping his voice low. “Who was that?”

John glanced toward the gate, then back at Thomas, as if weighing how much to say. “Sir Godfrey of Ashwick. Nephew to the baron.”

Thomas felt a cold thread pull taut in his chest. Ashwick. The name was already carved into his memory from the land charter hidden beneath his mattress—parchment that tied this abbey’s holdings to that very house, a seal torn away, a claim written in careful legal script that he could not yet fully parse.

“What does he want?” Thomas asked.

John laughed, a short, bitter sound. “What every noble wants. Wine, land, and his name above the door. We owe his family a debt for a vintage purchased three years ago—before Abbot Laurence took office. The prior had promised payment from the autumn rents. But the rents were short, and the wine merchant refused to extend further credit, and so we paid him in parchment instead, and the parchment was late, and—” He stopped, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “It is a tangle. You would not understand the accounts.”

“Try me,” Thomas said.

John looked at him, and something in his expression shifted—a flicker of suspicion, or perhaps calculation. “Why do you care?”

Thomas chose his words carefully. “Two brothers died this week. I would not see a third buried before the year is out.”

John’s face went pale. “You think Godfrey had something to do with James? With William?”

“I think nothing yet,” Thomas said. “But I would know more of Ashwick.”

John was quiet. The torch spat and hissed between them. Then he said, low and fast, “Godfrey has been pressing the abbot for years to release the river meadow—the one that borders his family’s land. He claims the abbey stole it from his grandfather under false pretenses. The charter is contested. If he can prove the abbey defaulted on its debts, he may press a claim before the king.”

Thomas felt the pieces begin to turn, slow and heavy as a millstone. “And the parchment store. Who supplies it?”

John blinked. “What?”

“The parchment. Who brings it in? Who pays for it?”

“Brother Mark has managed the stores since—” John stopped, his mouth snapping shut.

“Since Anselm disappeared,” Thomas finished.

John’s eyes darted toward the chapel. “I should not speak of this.”

“You should speak of it to me,” Thomas said. “Or I will speak to the abbot about the debt you have hidden from him—the debt that led you to pay the wine merchant in parchment, and that parchment went to the scriptorium, and now I have buried two brothers who touched it.”

John’s face drained of what little color it had. “You would not.”

“I would,” Thomas said. And he meant it.

John swallowed. “The parchment was Anselm’s doing. He had a contact—a merchant in the village who dealt in prepared sheets. Anselm vouched for the quality, and I paid the merchant from the wine fund. The first batch was fine. The second—” He shook his head. “The second was cheap. Anselm argued with Mark about it. Said the sheets were flawed, that they smelled wrong, that he would not have them in the scriptorium. Mark said the abbey could not afford better. They fought. The next day Anselm was gone, and Mark took over the stores, and I was left holding a debt to a nobleman who wants my hide for a wall hanging.”

“What happened to the second batch?” Thomas asked.

“I burned it.” John’s voice cracked. “Or I thought I did. Mark said he would see to it. He swore it would never reach the desks.”

Thomas closed his eyes. He had a sheet of that parchment in his cell right now, wrapped in cloth, tucked beside a charter that would make a baron’s nephew very rich if he could claim the land it described.

“Where did the merchant go?” Thomas asked.

“Gone,” John said. “Fled the village two weeks past. Anselm went to find him, I think. He said he would make things right. He never came back.”

Thomas stood in the flickering torchlight, the cold seeping through the soles of his sandals, and understood that the questions were no longer about who had died. They were about who had been bought.

He turned to go, then stopped. “Brother John. The lord—Godfrey. You said he threatened to take the matter to the baron. What is the baron to Ashwick?”

John’s laugh was hollow. “His uncle. The baron would see this abbey dissolved and the land divided among his kin before the year was out. He has made no secret of it.”

Thomas nodded, tucking the fact away like a stolen coin. “Keep your silence about our talk,” he said. “And keep your accounts close. If Mark asks why you sought parchment from Anselm's merchant, you know nothing of the quality.”

John stared at him. “And what will you do?”

Thomas thought of the infirmarian, waiting in his herb-scented cell with his vials and his quiet nerves. He thought of Brother Cuthbert, who had seen James die and who knew the shape of a cross cut into flesh. He thought of the charter, the copper-stained sheets, and a nobleman who had come to collect a debt the abbey could not pay.

“I will find out who profits,” Thomas said. “And I will make certain they do not live to enjoy it.”

He left Brother John standing in the torchlight, mouth half-open, and climbed the stairs to the infirmary, where the first light of dawn was just beginning to bleed through the eastern windows. The infirmarian was already awake, grinding something in a mortar, and he looked up when Thomas entered.

“You look like a man who has not slept,” Brother Aidan said.

“I have not,” Thomas said. “And I will not, until I understand why a baron’s nephew would threaten a monk who copies texts.”

Aidan’s grinding slowed. “Godfrey was here?”

“He was arguing with the cellarer about a wine debt, paid in parchment, delivered in secret, poisoned in the making.” Thomas sat down on the stool by the fire. “And I think the same man who prepared that parchment prepared a deed that would give Ashwick the river meadow. I think whoever killed William and James was not punishing sinners. They were clearing the way for a claim.”

Aidan set down the mortar. “What will you do?”

Thomas looked into the fire. “I will go to Mark. And I will not leave until he tells me where Anselm’s merchant went.”