Read Chapter 28: The Road to London

The road east was little more than a cart track, choked with last autumn’s leaves and the mud of early winter. Thomas walked ahead, the ledger wrapped in oilcloth and bound to his chest beneath his cloak. Every step put distance between him and the smoldering ruin of the manor, yet the heat of that fire seemed to follow him, a warmth that had nothing to do with the pale January sun.

Emmeline kept pace at his side, her stride short but unflagging. She had bound her hair beneath a woolen cap and wore men’s breeches borrowed from the stables, a practical disguise that did little to hide the sharp intelligence in her eyes. Agnes brought up the rear, her gravedigger’s shoulders broad beneath a patched cloak, a mattock slung across her back like a soldier’s pike.

The village of Poxed Lamb had grown small behind them, then vanished entirely behind a fold of hills. Thomas had not looked back. He could not afford to.

“You walk like a man running from a ghost,” Emmeline said.

Thomas kept his eyes on the track ahead. “I am running from a great many ghosts.”

“Then you will need to run faster.” Agnes’s voice was low and rough, the voice of a woman who had spent years speaking to the dead. “The lord who paid Sir Richard will not let his ledger reach London.”

Thomas touched the oilcloth at his chest. “Which is why we do not stop until we reach the city gates.”

They made good time through the morning. The land here was sparsely farmed, the villages few and far between, and those they passed were quiet in that particular way that spoke of plague and fear. Doors barred. Windows shuttered. A dog chained to a post barked until they were out of sight.

At midday they stopped at a crossroads marked by a stone pillar worn smooth by centuries of weather. Thomas passed around hard bread and a wedge of cheese purchased with the last of his coin. Emmeline ate with the mechanical efficiency of one who had known hunger, while Agnes knelt by the pillar, studying the ground.

“Riders,” she said. “Four, perhaps five. Recent.”

Thomas followed her gaze. The mud was churned, hoofprints fresh enough that water still pooled in the deeper impressions. “How recent?”

“Last night, maybe dawn.” Agnes straightened, her face unreadable. “They came from the west and turned south.”

“The direction we came from,” Emmeline said quietly.

Thomas felt the cold settle in his gut. The men Sir Richard had hired—the ones the widow had warned about—would have been summoned the moment the manor fell. Whoever funded the trade had agents nearby, waiting for word. The fire at the manor would have been visible for miles.

“We leave the road,” he said.

They cut across open country, keeping to the treelines and hedgerows, moving in the direction of the next village where they might find shelter and a change of horses. The sun was low by the time they reached a wooded hollow, and Thomas called a halt. They were all tired, but more than that, they were exposed. On open ground, against armed riders, they would not stand a chance.

“We make camp here,” he said. “We move again before dawn.”

Agnes set about gathering dry wood while Emmeline tended to their scant provisions. Thomas climbed a low rise, scanning the landscape. The road they had left was visible in the distance, a pale ribbon winding through dark fields. He watched it for a long moment before his attention snagged on a flicker of movement.

Riders. Five of them, moving fast along the road, heading east.

He slid back down the rise, his heart hammering. “They are ahead of us. They must have ridden past while we were cutting through the fields.”

Agnes swore, a sound surprisingly delicate from such a woman. “Then they will lay a trap at the next village.”

“Or they will double back,” Emmeline said. She looked at Thomas, her face pale in the gathering dusk. “We cannot stay here. We cannot go forward. Where does that leave us?”

Thomas thought of the map in his head, the roads he had traveled in his years as a wandering physician. There was another way east, a track used by shepherds and charcoal burners that ran along the ridge of the hills. It would add three days to their journey, but it would keep them off the roads the riders would watch.

He opened his mouth to say as much when a sound cut through the evening air. The snap of a twig, close by. Then another.

Agnes reached for her mattock. Emmeline drew a knife from her belt that Thomas had not known she carried.

A figure emerged from the trees. A man, hunched and weary, his robes dark with travel. Father Aldous.

“Thomas,” the priest said, his voice cracked and dry. “Thank God I found you.”

Thomas did not lower his guard. The priest had vanished during the rebellion, had not been seen during the fire or the fighting. Now he appeared on the road like a specter, and Thomas could not shake the memory of the sexton, poisoned for knowing too much.

“Father Aldous,” he said carefully. “We thought you dead.”

“Not dead. Hiding.” The priest took a step closer, his hands raised in a gesture of peace. “When the fighting began, I slipped away. I feared what Sir Richard’s men would do to me if they found me. I have been following you since morning.”

“Why?” Emmeline’s voice was cold. “Why follow us and not make yourself known?”

Aldous hesitated. “Because I am not the only one following you.”

The priest turned and gestured toward the trees. A moment later, three figures emerged from the shadows. Thomas recognized them as prisoners from the manor, men and women he had freed from the dungeons. One of them, a young man with a broken nose, stepped forward.

“We will not be sent back to that place,” he said. “Whatever you are running from, we are running from worse.”

Thomas looked at Emmeline. She met his eyes, and he saw the calculation in them. More people meant more mouths to feed, more tracks to leave. But it also meant more eyes, more hands if they were cornered.

“You know what we carry?” he asked the priest.

Aldous nodded. “I know of the ledger. I know what Sir Richard was doing. And I know that the man who paid for it all is not a man you will find in the village.” He paused. “I served him once, many years ago. Before I took my vows. His name is Sir Robert of Ashford, and he sits on the King’s council in London.”

The name struck Thomas like a blow. Sir Robert of Ashford. He had heard that name before, in letters and dispatches, in the whispered conversations of the powerful. The man who had funded the trade was not some rural lordling but one of the most powerful men in the realm.

“Then the evidence goes to the King himself,” Thomas said.

Aldous shook his head. “The King is in Bordeaux. He has been since summer. In his absence, Sir Robert sits at the head of the council. He controls what reaches the King’s ears.”

Thomas felt the ground shift beneath him. The ledger was useless if the man it condemned was the man who would receive it. He looked at Emmeline, and for the first time, he saw fear in her eyes.

“Then where do we go?” she asked. “Who do we trust?”

A sound rang out in the dark. The unmistakable jingle of harness, followed by a shout. The riders had doubled back. They had found the trees.

Thomas drew the iron key from his pocket—the key he had taken from the sexton’s corpse—and felt its weight in his palm. He did not know what it opened. But he knew that he had to survive the night to find out.

“Follow me,” he said. “Into the dark.”

He turned and plunged into the trees, with the others close behind, and the sound of pursuit grew louder with every step.