Chapter 8: The Price of Pity

The woman’s name was Agnes, and she was the wife of a swineherd. Tom learned this in fragments as Joan worked beside him through the night, her nimble fingers measuring the willow-bark tincture into a clay cup, her eyes never leaving the patient’s face. The fever had broken by dawn, leaving Agnes weak but breathing—a miracle that the village would whisper about for weeks, though Tom knew it was only hydration and the bitter alkaloid of willow.

“You should not have done it,” Joan said, her voice low and sharp as she wrung out a cloth. The first pale light crept through the barn’s cracks, illuminating the dust motes that danced around them like guilty spirits. “The midwife saw. She has a mouth like a millrace.”

Tom pressed his palms against his eyes, feeling the grit of exhaustion. “The alternative was watching her die.”

“She would have died cleanly, with prayers said over her. Now she lives, and you have placed a target on your back.” Joan’s face was unreadable in the half-light, but her hands trembled slightly as she folded the cloth. “Do you understand what they will do to you if they think you are a warlock?”

“I understand that I could not stand there and do nothing.” Tom pushed himself to his feet, his joints protesting. Outside, the village of Wykeham was stirring—the clank of a bucket, the lowing of a cow, the cough of an old man beginning his day. They sounded like any English village, but Tom knew they were all living on a knife’s edge. The plague had not yet reached this corner of Oxfordshire, but every traveler brought rumors. London was dying. Winchester was dying. The whole world, it seemed, was dying.

“We need to be careful,” Joan said, moving to stand beside him. She was shorter than he remembered, her dark hair braided tight against her skull, a streak of grey at her temple that had not been there a month ago. “The reeve trusts you, but trust is a thin rope in these times. And Sir Hugh will return soon.”

Tom thought of the warehouse, still hidden behind its screen of hawthorn and elder. He had been careful—so careful—but careful was not enough. The ploughshares had been distributed under cover of darkness, the turnip seed planted in a field that Baldric had quietly reassigned. The veterinary books sat wrapped in oilcloth beneath a pile of sacking, their knowledge dispensed in small, plausible doses. But Agnes’s survival was not plausible. It was a miracle, and miracles belonged to God alone.

“What do you know of Sir Hugh?” Tom asked.

Joan’s lips pressed into a thin line. “He is his father’s son. Old Sir Geoffrey was a just man, harsh but fair. Hugh is different. He went to France with the king’s army and came back with a taste for gold and a hunger for land. The manor has been squeezed for every penny to pay his ransom after we were taken at Calais. He will want to know why his fields are producing more than they should, and where the extra grain is going.”

“And if I tell him the truth?”

Joan laughed, a bitter sound. “The truth? That you fell from nowhere with seeds that grow three times faster and medicines that cure the plague? He will have you burned before sundown, and me with you for helping.”

Tom turned to look at the woman on the pallet. Agnes’s face was peaceful now, her breathing steady. He had saved one life. But the cost—the cost was compounding like interest on a debt he could never repay.

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Three days later, Baldric summoned Tom to the manor’s great hall. The reeve stood before the empty fireplace, his scarred face grim, a roll of parchment clutched in his fist.

“The steward of Sir Hugh has sent word,” Baldric said, his voice flat. “His lordship will arrive by Michaelmas. He brings with him a retinue of twenty men-at-arms and a writ from the king demanding a levy of grain for the campaign in Gascony.”

Tom felt his stomach drop. “How much grain?”

“Three hundred bushels.” Baldric threw the parchment onto the table. “We have two hundred. The harvest this year will be thin—the rains came late, and the blight has taken a third of the barley. If we strip the stores, the village will starve by Candlemas.”

Tom’s mind raced. The warehouse held seeds—turnips, beans, peas—but they were planted now, their roots reaching into the soil. He had steel ploughshares that could break harder ground, but there was no time to bring new fields into cultivation before the levy. And the grain he had stored—the modern wheat that had come with him through the void—was hidden beneath the floorboards of the warehouse, enough to feed a hundred families for a month.

“Then we give him what he asks,” Tom said slowly, “and we find another way.”

Baldric’s eyes narrowed. “Another way? You speak as if you have a purse of gold hidden in your pockets.”

“I have something better.” Tom stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I have knowledge. The king’s wars are fought with food as much as steel. If we can show Sir Hugh that our fields can produce a surplus—not just this year, but every year—he will have no reason to strip the village bare.”

Baldric studied him for a long moment. “You speak of things that are not natural. The bishop will hear of it eventually.”

“The bishop can burn me if he likes,” Tom said, “but not before I’ve taught your people how to survive. I need you to trust me, Baldric. Just a little longer.”

The reeve’s scarred face softened, just a fraction. “I have seen men die at Crécy, and I have seen them die of plague. I have never seen a man like you. I do not know if you are a saint or a demon—” he paused, “—but I know you saved Agnes, and I know my daughter still lives because of your medicines. That is enough for now.”

He reached out and clasped Tom’s arm, a gesture of old soldiers’ trust. “But hear me, Master Ashwick. If Sir Hugh takes your warehouse, he will not stop at the grain. He will take everything, and he will hang us all for hiding it. We must be ready.”

Tom nodded, but as he left the hall, the weight of the reeve’s words pressed down on him. He had come to this world with a warehouse full of hope. Now he was learning that hope, too, had a price.

That night, as he walked the perimeter of the warehouse, he saw a figure waiting in the shadows—a man in a hooded cloak, holding a lantern that cast a sickly yellow glow. Tom’s hand went to the knife at his belt.

“Steady, master,” the figure said, pushing back his hood. It was Fulke, the midwife’s son, his face pale in the lantern light. “I did not come to cause trouble.”

“Then why are you here?” Tom asked, his voice cold.

Fulke glanced around, as if afraid of being overheard. “Because the midwife told me what you did for Agnes. And I thought—” he swallowed, “—I thought you should know that Sir Hugh’s steward came through the village today. He was asking about you. About the stranger who appeared from nowhere.”

Tom felt his blood turn cold. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing,” Fulke said quickly. “But he will be back. And he will bring questions that do not have easy answers.”

He turned and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Tom alone with the weight of the night pressing down on him. The war for his own survival, and for the soul of this generation, was no longer coming. It was here.