The cellar was a hive of frantic, ink-stained activity. By the light of flickering tallow candles, Diccon and two other village boys who had shown a knack for the alphabet worked the lever of the press in a rhythmic thud-and-creak. They were no longer printing medical advice. They were printing a legend.
Thomas sat at a small desk, his phone propped against a stack of unprinted paper. He was cross-referencing the vernacular of 12th-century hagiographies with his own fabricated accounts. He needed the language to be perfect—steeped in the breathless, reverent prose of a miracle-witness.
"And behold, the Man of God, Hamo, didst stand upon the hill of the Hart, and the mists didst part at his word..."
"This is a wicked thing we do," Victoria murmured, standing behind him. She was holding one of the fresh broadsides, the ink still wet enough to mirror the candle flame. "To clothe a man in a holiness he hates, simply to bind his hands."
"It is the only prison he cannot escape," Thomas said, his eyes never leaving the screen. "If I call him a liar, I am a heretic. If I call him a saint, and the people believe it, then any word he says against us is merely 'holy madness' or 'the humility of the righteous.' The more he screams that there are no miracles, the more the people will weep at his devotion."
"And the Bishop?"
"The Bishop cannot punish a man the people are already worshipping. It would start a riot. He will be forced to embrace the 'miracle' to keep his own power. He'll have to canonize the very lies Hamo is trying to expose."
The plan was a double-edged sword. By elevating Hamo, Thomas was ceding the spiritual narrative of the hill to the Church, but he was buying the secular freedom to keep his school, his forge, and his mine. It was a tax on progress paid in the currency of superstition.
By dawn, three hundred copies had been printed. Thomas sent the charcoal burners and the village weavers—those who moved unnoticed through the woods and the markets—to distribute them. They didn't sell them; they "lost" them in taverns, left them on church altars, and read them aloud to the illiterate crowds at the well.
The effect was instantaneous. By midday, a crowd of pilgrims had already gathered at the manor gates. They weren't calling for the Lord Thomas; they were calling for "The Holy Brother."
Thomas watched from the solar window as Hamo emerged into the courtyard, intending to head for the forge. The monk was stopped in his tracks by a dozen peasants who threw themselves at his feet, clutching the printed broadsides as if they were holy relics.
"Bless us, Father!" a woman wailed, holding up a sick child. "The paper says you spoke to the Hart! The paper says you brought the light to the hill!"
Hamo stood frozen, his face a mask of pale fury. He looked at the paper in the woman's hand, his eyes scanning the bold, printed type. He looked up at the solar window, his gaze finding Thomas's. There was no confusion in his eyes, only a cold, crystalline recognition of the trap.
He reached down and grabbed the paper from the woman, shredding it in his hands. "This is a lie!" he roared, his voice cracking with desperation. "There is no miracle! These are the words of a deceiver! I am no saint!"
The crowd recoiled, but they didn't leave. They whispered among themselves, nodding knowingly. "See how he denies his own glory? Just like the stories of old. Such humility! Such holy grace!"
Hamo turned and fled back into the keep, the laughter and prayers of the crowd following him like a curse.
Victoria stepped up beside Thomas. "He is broken," she said softly.
"No," Thomas replied, his hand tightening on his phone. "He's just realized the rules of the game have changed. He can no longer fight me with the truth because I've made the truth irrelevant."
He pulled his phone from his pocket. The signal bar flickered—five bars, then four, then five again. It was stable, but the battery had dipped to ninety-five percent, the first time it hadn't snapped back to a hundred immediately upon his return to the manor. The strain of the last few days, the constant data processing, and the distance of his ride to the boundary were starting to take a toll on the tether.
A new message blinked on the screen.
Sarah: Hey Tom! Just checking in. I'm picking out flower arrangements today. I was thinking of white lilies—remember how you used to say they looked like stars? Miss you!
Thomas stared at the message. White lilies. The "white hart." The stars. Everything was bleeding together. He felt the weight of the centuries pressing in on him. He was manipulating the faith of an entire valley, playing god with a piece of glass, while a girl in another life was picking out flowers for a wedding he would never attend.
"Thomas?" Victoria asked, sensing the shift in his energy.
"I'm fine," he said, though his voice sounded hollow. "We need to prepare for the Bishop. He'll be here by sunset. Make sure the 'icons' are prominently displayed. And tell Wat to hide the press. We're done printing for today."
The Bishop arrived with the count in a flurry of purple silk and polished armor. The mood was not the inquisitorial gloom Thomas had feared, but a festive, opportunistic air. The count was beaming, convinced that his "holy hill" was now the center of the Christian world.
The Bishop, a man named Odo with a belly that suggested a deep appreciation for the finer things of the earth, accepted a goblet of wine and looked at Thomas with a shrewd, calculating smile.
"A remarkable business, Lord Thomas," Odo said, gesturing toward the crowd of pilgrims still gathered at the gate. "I came expecting a dispute over land and taxes, and I find a living saint in your guest room. Brother Hamo is... vocal in his denials, of course. But that only adds to the luster of the tale."
"He is a very humble man, Excellency," Thomas said, bowing.
"Indeed. So humble that he insists these papers—these marvelous, uniform papers—are the work of the devil." Odo pulled a crumpled broadside from his belt. "I have never seen such script. It is as if a hundred scribes all possessed the same hand and the same heart. Tell me, Thomas, where did you find such artists?"
Thomas felt Victoria stiffen beside him. This was the moment.
"They are not artists, Excellency," Thomas said, his voice steady. "They are students. I have found a way to use the very earth of this valley—the lead and the oil—to give voice to the Word. I call it the 'Giver of Tongues.' It is my gift to the Church, to ensure that the stories of your saints and the glory of your hill can be known by every man, woman, and child."
The Bishop's eyes lit up. He wasn't thinking of heresy. He was thinking of the power of a Church that could speak to every soul at once. He was thinking of the tithes, the influence, and the sheer, overwhelming speed of it.
"A Giver of Tongues," Odo whispered, his fingers tracing the printed ink. "And you say this... device... can produce hundreds of these?"
"Thousands, Excellency. Under your guidance, of course."
The Bishop looked toward the keep, where Hamo was likely still pacing his cell. He looked at the count, who was already bragging about the "holy press" to his knights. Then he looked back at Thomas.
"It seems, Lord Thomas, that God has indeed blessed this valley with more than just a Hart. We shall have a grand dedication tomorrow. And Brother Hamo... well, we shall find a very quiet, very holy monastery for him. A man of his 'sanctity' deserves a life of uninterrupted prayer."
Thomas bowed low, hiding the grim satisfaction on his face. He had won. He had traded a piece of his soul for the survival of his world.
But as he walked away, he looked at his phone. The battery was at ninety-four percent. The tether was fraying. He was the architect of a new age, but he was building it on a foundation of shifting sand, and the light from the future was beginning to dim.