Read Chapter 19: The Carpenter's Truth

The rain had stopped, leaving the mill air thick and stale. Margery stood at the window, peering through a crack in the boards, her breath fogging the splintered wood. Thomas crouched beside her, the silver scalpel cold in his palm, listening to the dripping silence outside.

“They’ll come,” she whispered. “Micah will break. Losing his ear won’t make a coward brave.”

Thomas said nothing. He had seen men break under less. A man with a hammer and a question could turn a saint into a traitor inside an hour. Micah was no saint.

He moved to the corner of the room, where the miller’s daughter had once kept her bed. The frame was still there, rotted and stripped of its mattress. The floorboards beneath it were dark with age, warped from years of damp. Thomas knelt and ran his fingers along the seams, testing for give.

“What are you doing?” Margery asked.

“Looking for a way out that isn’t a door.”

He found it beneath a loose plank near the wall—a trapdoor, crude but functional, cut into the floor of the raised mill. It would lead down to the grinding floor, and from there, perhaps to the sluice gate. A way to the river, if the sluice was open.

He straightened and crossed back to the window. “We can’t stay long. Micah will talk within the hour, maybe sooner.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know cowards.” Thomas met her eyes. “And I know what Sir Richard does to them.”

——

At the manor, the air was warm with firelight and smelled of wine and woodsmoke. Sir Richard sat in a high-backed chair, a goblet in his hand, watching as two guards dragged Micah into the hall. The carpenter’s face was pale, his left ear a raw, bloody mess where they had already begun their work. His hands were bound behind him, his knuckles split.

Sir Richard took a slow sip. “Old Micah. You’ve served this village for forty years. Built half its roofs, mended its carts, made coffins for its dead.” He set the goblet down. “And now you’ve chosen to dig graves for the living.”

Micah shook his head, a wet sound in his throat. “I didn’t know—I swear, I didn’t know what he was doing.”

“The physician.” Sir Richard leaned forward. “Thomas Blackwood. Where is he hiding?”

“I don’t know. He came to me, threatened me, but he never told me where he slept.”

Sir Richard gestured. One of the guards stepped forward and pressed a heated iron rod against Micah’s ribs. The carpenter screamed, his body arching, breath hissing through clenched teeth.

“I’ll ask again,” Sir Richard said calmly. “Where is Blackwood?”

Micah sobbed, gasping, knees buckling. “The mill—the old mill. The one by the river. He was going there with the widow. Please—that’s all I know.”

Sir Richard studied him, then nodded slowly. “The mill. You’re certain?”

“Yes. Yes, I swear it. He said the miller’s daughter’s room. He can’t be far.”

Sir Richard turned to his guards. “Take ten men. Burn the mill if you have to, but bring me his head and the widow’s tongue.” He paused, glancing back at Micah. “And keep him alive. I may need him to verify the bodies.”

The guards hauled Micah away, and Sir Richard lifted his goblet again, watching the flames dance in the hearth.

——

Thomas felt it before he heard it—the subtle vibration through the floorboards, the tremor of hooves moving fast along the cart track. He pressed his ear to the wall and caught it: the muffled rhythm of riders, the jangle of harness.

“They’re coming,” he said.

Margery’s face went tight. “We’ll never reach the treeline.”

Thomas was already at the trapdoor, forcing the blade into the seam and prying. The wood groaned, then gave, revealing a dark shaft leading down into the belly of the mill. He dropped through, landing hard on packed earth, and reached up for Margery.

She hesitated.

“I’d rather face the river than them,” Thomas said.

She took his hand and dropped. They stood in a narrow crawlspace beneath the mill, the timbers groaning above them. Thomas found the sluice gate—a wooden panel, water weeping around its edges. He pushed, but it barely moved.

“Help me,” he said.

Together they threw their weight against it. The panel shifted, groaning, and a rush of cold water spilled into the crawlspace, soaking them to the knees. The gap was just wide enough to squeeze through.

Above them, boots pounded the floor. A voice shouted. A torch’s orange glow bled through the cracks.

Thomas shoved Margery through the opening, then twisted himself through, the water tearing at his legs as it poured into the channel beyond. He pulled the gate shut behind him, sealing them in darkness, the roar of the river filling his ears.

They crawled along the channel, water up to their chests, until the current grew too strong. Thomas braced against the stone walls and found the maintenance ladder—rusted, slick, but still firm. He climbed, pushing open a hatch at the top, and hauled himself out onto the muddy riverbank.

Behind them, the mill erupted in flame. A single torch had been enough. The guards stood silhouetted against the blaze, their shouts lost in the crackling of burning wood.

Margery grabbed Thomas’s arm. “The church. It’s on raised ground—we can cross the fields.”

They ran, bent low, through the tall grass at the river’s edge, following the line of willows until the church tower rose ahead of them—black against a sky still heavy with storm clouds. The village lay quiet, the fires of the mill painting the far rooftops in flickering orange.

They reached the churchyard wall and scrambled over it, dropping into the cold shadow of the leaning headstones. Thomas pulled Margery behind the bulk of a stone angel and waited.

No pursuit. Not yet.

He scanned the churchyard, his breath slowing. The graves. The crypt. The old stone steps leading down beneath the chancel. He remembered the ledger—the markings for the dead, the discrepancies, the names that did not match. The village had buried more than bodies in this ground.

He moved to the crypt entrance, a low arch half-hidden by a fallen yew branch. The iron gate was rusted but unlatched. He pushed it inward, and the smell of old earth and turned stone rose up to meet him.

“We’re going down there?” Margery asked, her voice hollow.

“They’ll search every house in the village before they think to search the dead,” Thomas said. He stepped into the dark, the silver scalpel cold in his hand, the stones closing around them like a tomb.

Behind him, the gate swung shut with a groan. Somewhere in the dark below, something moved.