Alys Clare: The Tavern in the Morning

‘What?’ Josse was amazed. ‘They’re saying something served in Goody Anne’s inn poisoned him?’

‘Aye,’ Thomas said, obviously pleased to have provoked a reaction at last. ‘Threatening her with the full force of the law, they are, for feeding a man vittles that killed him.’

There were at least two things wrong with that, Josse thought. For one, his experience of Goody Anne’s fare was that it was good, honest nourishment, cooked fresh each day, and that she richly deserved her reputation as a generous and skilled innkeeper. The second objection — and this was the clincher — was that, if a bad dish had indeed been served, then it was most unlikely that there would be only the one casualty.

‘Poor Anne,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What a misfortune! The worst thing to happen to a woman in her profession.’

From her corner, and to Josse’s total surprise, Ella suddenly spoke. ‘Can’t you do nothing for her, sir?’ she asked, face flushing at her own temerity, hands clasping at each other in anxiety. ‘I’m a cook, too, sir, though I wouldn’t dare to compare myself with this Goody Anne. But, sir, if someone said that food I had prepared had done for some poor soul, then I don’t know what I’d do.’ Her eyebrows descended over the mismatched eyes in a ferocious frown as she tried to imagine the unimaginable. ‘Reckon I’d want to be dead, an’ all.’

It was the first time Josse could recall Ella ever having ventured a remark of her own accord. Certainly, it was the first time he’d heard her say more than a few words: ‘Mornin’, sir’ and ‘Aye, a cold day it is’ were normally her limit. ‘Ella?’ he said gently. ‘You feel strongly for poor Anne?’

But her courage had run out. She had returned to her hunched position in her corner, and would not meet his eye. She grunted and managed, ‘Aye.’

The tinker was standing up, draining the last of his wine with a slurp. ‘I’ll be on my way,’ he said. ‘There’s an hour or two of daylight left, I’ll make my next stop afore dark if I leave now.’ He nodded to Ella, bowed to Josse, and headed out through the kitchen door.

Josse followed him out to the stables. Will could be heard, whistling between his teeth to Horace as, with steady, soothing strokes, he rubbed the horse down.

‘Cheerio, Will,’ Thomas called, bending to pick up the handles of his cart. ‘Be seeing you.’

Will’s head appeared over the half door of the stall. ‘Cheerio, then, Thomas.’ He caught sight of Josse. ‘Oh! Nearly done here, sir, then I’ll see about helping you with your kit.’

Josse watched the tinker set off across the yard, one wheel of the handcart accompanying the regular beat of his steps with a small squeak. ‘I didn’t come to hurry you along, Will,’ he said, turning back to the manservant.

‘No, sir?’ Will looked at him expectantly.

‘No.’ Josse sighed. It wasn’t a very happy prospect, especially when he’d been so looking forward to a few days’ peace and quiet in the warmth and comfort of home. But, there you were, a friend was a friend, and one in need couldn’t be ignored. Especially when, as seemed to be happening, they were being punished for something they hadn’t done.

‘I came to say, Will,’ Josse went on, ‘that I’d be grateful if you’d feed old Horace up a bit tonight.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’ll be needing him again tomorrow, I’m afraid. It looks like I’ll be going to Tonbridge.’

Next day the weather had changed. Improved, almost, for, although it was actually colder, the rain had stopped and the wind had lessened. Josse set out around mid-morning under a clear blue sky, and, wrapped up in a cloak which Ella had renovated for him by lining the hood with a precious piece of fur, he felt quite cheerful.

As he and Horace trotted along, he looked round him at the winter-dead landscape. You would think, he thought, that everyone had gone, deserted their hovels and hamlets, been driven away by some dread calamity. There’s nobody about, no sign of any life, human or animal.

It made him feel quite lonely. To reassure himself, he imagined the inside of a cottage such as Will and Ella lived in. Small and dark, yes, but dry, if the inhabitants took the trouble to attend regularly to their roof. Warm — the one thing everyone made sure of was to keep the fire alive, no matter how small the room, how tiny the hearth. Reasonably clean, too, provided a woman was a good manager. Sharing your home with your animals tended admittedly to make cleanliness a problem, but there were ways. Apparently.

It was, Josse realised, something about which he really hadn’t a clue.

The water in the streams and ponds was frozen hard now, and, on the banks, remnants of dry grass and bracken were coated in glistening white frost. Pretty — Josse noticed a skein of geese flying in formation up ahead, alive and active in contrast to the dead hare he’d just seen beside the track, already half-eaten by anonymous predators — but such severe weather sorted the survivors from the weak, no doubt about it.

Hunching deeper into his cloak, he kicked Horace into a canter and turned his head down the long sloping road that led off the flank of the higher ground and into the valley where Tonbridge lay.

* * *

Goody Anne was in tears.

‘Oh, sir, I’m that glad to see you, I can’t put it into words!’ she sobbed, clutching Josse’s hand and wringing it between her own. She was a strong woman, and quite soon he had to disentangle himself.

‘What a business, Mistress Anne,’ he said, patting her plump shoulder.

‘They’re saying I gave him a bad plate of supper!’ she said, the indignation clearly still fresh. ‘Me that’s been feeding folks all my life! It’s an insult,’ she went on, with quiet dignity.

‘I agree,’ Josse said. ‘If it’s any comfort, dear Anne, I don’t believe for one moment that you are to blame.’

She gazed at him, eyes filled with sudden hope. ‘Don’t you?’

‘No. If by some terrible mischance there had been a dish that had gone bad, where are all the other victims?’

Her lips moved in silence as she worked it out; it must be the shock, he thought charitably, she was normally a quick-witted woman. ‘You mean, lots of people would have eaten the same meal, and they’d all have fallen ill?’

‘Aye.’

‘And they haven’t.’ She gave a visible shudder. ‘Thank the good Lord, they haven’t!’

‘Amen,’ Josse said. ‘So, Mistress Anne, we have to look at other possibilities.’

She was looking at him keenly. ‘Such as?’

‘Well, perhaps the man was sick when he arrived here, and merely died in your guest chamber of something that had already written his death warrant. Perhaps he was very, very drunk. Perhaps…’ He paused. Unable to think of anything else, he finished lamely, ‘Something like that.’

Anne gave him a grateful smile. ‘You’ve a good heart, sir knight, that you have.’ Drying her eyes, she said, ‘You’ll be wanting to talk to a few folks, ask a few questions, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Will I? Josse thought. He couldn’t for the moment think what he might ask. Then, recovering, he said, ‘I’d like to see the room where he died. And talk to the maid who found him.’ His mind seemed to have recovered. ‘And I’d better know who he was and where he came from, so that I can pay a visit to his family, whoever they are.’

‘If they’re sick too, it’ll put me in the clear,’ Anne said, accurately but with little regard, Josse thought, for the dead man’s kin. Shock again, he decided. In her right mind, Goody Anne wouldn’t wish a ghastly death on somebody purely to prove that her food wasn’t poisonous.