Alys Clare - The Tavern in the Morning

‘Not necessarily!’ Helewise protested.

‘Well, at least would you agree that it suggests Joanna had very good reason to dislike her uncle?’

‘He’s not her uncle, he’s her second cousin. Well, actually, she is his cousin’s child.’

‘He’s what ?’

‘Her second cousin. De Courtenay explained that he and her father were cousins, so she and Denys are cousins distanced by a degree.’

‘Don’t you see the relevance of that?’ Josse demanded. ‘Abbess, I do wish you’d told me this before!’

‘I thought I had,’ she said feebly. ‘And, yes, of course I see the relevance. It means-’

‘It surely means that, having acquired his dispensation, he can marry her!’ Josse exploded. ‘Great God above, Abbess, isn’t that motive enough for a man to torture an old woman for information, and kill her when she won’t oblige?’

‘You mean, if Joanna were an heiress, or something?’

Josse muttered something under his breath; he seemed to be appealing for divine patience. ‘ Yes, Abbess dear, I do mean if she were an heiress or something.’ He shook his head, grinning at her. ‘I suppose I must make allowances,’ he said kindly, ‘you have, after all, recently been sick.’

‘I am perfectly well now, thank you very much!’ she said, stung. ‘And there is nothing whatsoever wrong with my reasoning powers. It is only your own imagination that makes Joanna a rich heiress. There is nothing to prove it!’

Josse looked downcast. ‘Aye, I hate to admit it but you’re right.’ He sighed. ‘The woman I met certainly shows no evidence of wealth. The house was pretty comfortless and Joanna herself was dressed more like a peasant than a noblewoman. But that could be to disguise herself!’

Helewise laughed. ‘You never give up, do you?’

‘No,’ he said, getting to his feet.

‘Where are you going?’

He stared down at her. ‘Abbess, we’re forgetting about the first murder. Somebody put poison in the pie meant for Denys de Courtenay and that somebody must have been inconspicuous enough to slip into Goody Anne’s tap room, hear de Courtenay give his order, then somehow get to the pie before the serving girl did and lace it with poison.’

‘Inconspicuous,’ Helewise repeated. ‘Which appears to rule out Joanna, since, even disguised as a peasant, her cousin would recognise her. Yes?’

‘Aye,’ Josse confirmed. Helewise noticed a slight softening of his expression as he added, ‘She’s a striking woman.’

‘Ah.’ Putting that aside to consider later, Helewise said, ‘So you’re thinking it must have been Mag Hobson who was the poisoner?’

‘She was a wise woman,’ Josse said, making for the door. ‘We know that she was skilled, that people spoke highly of her.’ He gave Helewise a courteous bow. ‘There’s an hour or two of daylight left — I’m going back to have a look in her herb garden. I know it’s February and nothing much is growing above ground, and I’ll probably fail miserably, but I’m going to see if I can find any sign of wolf’s bane.’

Instinctively she called out, ‘Be careful!’

But he had already gone.

* * *

He found the way back to the pond and Mag Hobson’s little hut quite easily; the track had been well marked by the boots of the Sheriff’s men, and here and there he saw snapped-off twigs and leafless branches where the hurdle-bearers had caught their burden against the trees.

The clearing was deserted now. Tying Horace’s rein to a tree trunk, Josse looked around him. The hole in the ice which he had made to extract the corpse had already frozen over again, but now the ice stood up in sharp little peaks, like a miniature mountain range. The many muddy footprints at the pond’s edge had also frozen hard.

With the body gone, the clearing felt different. Josse stood still, letting his senses absorb information. After a while, he thought: yes. That’s it. It feels — good now. Earlier, the horror of that brutal death had overlaid the normal atmosphere of this place, but now she’s been taken away, the positive mood is returning.

It felt, he thought, a nice place. The very air seemed to have a quality that promised to make a man feel well …

But he was not, he reminded himself firmly, there to take the air.

He strode over to the shack. The door was neatly tied shut by means of a length of twine passed through two iron eyes, one on the door, one on the door post. The Sheriff, Josse concluded, couldn’t have bothered to look inside Mag’s home; Sheriff Pelham wouldn’t have wasted his time tying the twine into that intricate and attractive knot.

Untying it, saying a silent apology to the dead woman for his violation of her handiwork, Josse unthreaded the twine and opened the door.

The interior was as neat, tidy and clean as he had expected. There was a small hearth in the centre of the beaten earth floor, stones laid in a circle, with kindling and small logs laid ready. Over the hearth, hanging from a simple tripod, was an ancient blackened pot. Empty.

On the far wall were several wooden planks serving as shelves, each bearing a load of containers of various sizes. There were also some implements: a knife, a mortar and pestle, some small pottery bowls, a row of flasks. All appeared scrupulously clean.

There was a three-legged stool beside the hearth, and, hanging on the wall behind it, a heavy cloak.

A short ladder led to an upper platform; standing on the second rung, Josse found his eyes came level with the platform. On it were a straw-stuffed palliasse and some covers.

Making a mental note to come back and inspect the shelves if he had no luck in the herb garden, Josse went outside again, looping the twine back through its eyes and re-tying it to secure the door. His knot, he noticed, was nowhere near as elegant as Mag’s.

He ignored the vegetable patch, on the grounds that even the most junior wise woman would know better than to grow her wolfs bane in with her cabbages. Squaring his shoulders — he was feeling distinctly uneasy about his quest — he walked over to the carefully-tended rectangle where Mag Hobson had cultivated her herbs.

Some plants he recognised straight away. Evergreen ivy, juniper and the tough, spineless stems of broom. Others he was less sure about: some tiny green shoots poking out from the ground could be saffron and these woody stems, sharp-edged where the dead growth of last year’s flowering had been cut back, might they be dill? He grinned to himself. They might. But, given the paucity of his herbal knowledge, they might be virtually anything.

Divisions had been made in the garden by means of low hedges of box. There was a small bed, roughly square, which was entirely hedged in; wondering if this were a method which Meg had employed to keep the most deadly plants separate, Josse went to have a closer look.

Hunching into his cloak, putting up the hood — he was rapidly becoming colder and colder — he crouched down over the sleeping ground.

The earth had recently been disturbed, that he could see. But it looked more as if someone had been planting things than digging them up. Would that be right? Would a herbalist be planting, in the middle of an icy February? He had no idea. This, he realised, was hopeless; unless he dug over the entire bed and just happened to find the radish-shaped tubers of wolf’s bane — and was he going to be able to distinguish them from similar tubers, without the grave risk to himself of putting them to the tasting test? — then he might as well give up.

Wearily, he rubbed his hands over his face. It had seemed such a good idea, but-

‘Don’t move,’ a voice said softly right in his ear. He gave a great instinctive start — he had heard nothing! no footfall, no sinuous approach — which wasn’t very sensible since someone was holding a blade to his throat.