Alys Clare - The Tavern in the Morning

‘He did.’

‘Which Joanna, obviously, didn’t want.’

‘Why is that obvious?’ Josse demanded. ‘I’d been taking it for granted until just now, riding over here, when it suddenly occurred to me to ask just why she’s so set against the idea.’

‘Oh, Sir Josse, think!’ Helewise was quite surprised he should ask that. ‘What good impressions can Joanna de Courtenay possibly have of Plantagenet court life? Seduced and impregnated by the King of England, then, when she became an inconvenience, married off to some Breton knight to get her out of the way. Would any woman want to introduce her beloved only son into such a world? I know I should not, in her place.’

‘But the power and the riches!’ he protested. ‘The world would lie at the boy’s feet, were he King!’

‘Only part of the world,’ she pointed out. ‘And it would by no means be a foregone conclusion that he would ever be King, since there are several other contenders for the throne, even assuming King Richard no longer sat upon it. And just imagine the danger to Ninian, once his identity had been revealed! Why, every other faction with its eyes on the throne would be after his blood! No, Sir Josse, The reason for Joanna’s reluctance is perfectly obvious to me. ’

‘Hmm.’ He was frowning, his face creased in lines of anxiety. And also, she thought, studying him closely, of sorrow.

‘Sir Josse?’ she asked. ‘What is it?’

He raised his head and turned mournful eyes on her. ‘She didn’t tell me,’ he said quietly.

‘Didn’t tell you what?’

‘Who the lad’s father was. She told me everything else — oh, I had all the sordid details — but not that.’

‘Perhaps she didn’t know?’ It seemed unlikely and Helewise knew she was clutching at straws.

‘She must have done. Anyway, if she didn’t, it makes a nonsense of her elaborate plan to keep Ninian out of de Courtenay’s reach. That was why she agreed to his coming here while I took her off to New Winnowlands — she was leading de Courtenay away from him.’

‘Yes, that makes sense,’ Helewise agreed.

‘So why didn’t she tell me?’ he demanded. ‘She didn’t trust me, did she?’

Helewise’s heart hurt to see the pain in his face. Oh, dear Lord, but she’s got under his skin! she thought. ‘Josse, I’m not sure that it’s possible for anybody but another mother to understand the protective instinct which a woman has for her child,’ she said, her hand once more resting on his shoulder. ‘I know, from my own experience, that, once a baby is born, he becomes, to begin with, the whole world to his mother, and, although that intensity lessens as he grows up and steadily becomes more independent, you never lose it entirely. Indeed, it’s quite common for husbands to resent the children they have fathered, because the act of childbirth changes a wife into a mother, and there is no going back.’ She paused. We speak of Joanna, she reminded herself firmly, not of me.

‘In a loveless marriage, Ninian would have been even more precious to Joanna,’ she went on, ‘and the bonds between them would have strengthened as he grew older. So that, when she sensed the threat from Denys de Courtenay, she would have done anything — whatever it took — to keep her child safe. Josse, my dear, do you not see that, even though she probably longed to reveal the secret of the boy’s parenthood, she just didn’t dare?’

‘She didn’t trust me,’ he repeated stubbornly.

‘She couldn’t trust you,’ Helewise corrected. ‘It wasn’t Joanna who would be in danger if the secret came out, but Ninian.’

He did not reply. Watching him closely, she saw him pass his hand across his face a couple of times. Then he said, ‘Aye. Aye, you’re right. And I’m being foolish. It’s just that we’ve grown so close, Joanna and I, and-’

He stopped.

This time, the silence was rather longer.

Helewise moved away, and stood with her back to him on the other side of her table. After some time, hoping her voice would sound quite normal, she said, ‘Which of them, Joanna or Mag Hobson, do you think put the poison in the pie meant for de Courtenay?’

He began to say something, but his voice broke. Clearing his throat, he started again. ‘I think probably Mag Hobson. She certainly would have prepared the dose — she’s skilled in plant lore and, until her death, had been teaching Joanna. Mag would have been far less conspicuous — there are always a few old men and women hanging around the kitchen courtyard at the inn in Tonbridge, Goody Anne is generous with leftovers. They were busy that day, we know that, and with Goody Anne, Tilly and the serving boy all occupied with tending to people’s needs in the tap room, it can’t have been difficult for Mag to slip into the kitchen when nobody was looking.’

‘How did she know what Denys had ordered?’ Helewise asked.

‘I’ve thought about that. She must have followed him into the tap room — he’d never met her, not then, and so he wouldn’t have known what she looked like — and listened while he told Tilly what he wanted to eat. Then she must have got round to the kitchen before Tilly did and slipped the poison in Denys’s pie.’

‘Would that be possible? For her to reach the kitchen before Tilly?’

‘Aye. If you went out through the main door and slipped along the side passage, you could do it easily.’

‘I see.’

He was shifting in the chair, apparently about to get up. ‘I must go back home,’ he said. ‘I promised Joanna I’d speak to Ninian, see how he is, take any message he may have for her. Can I see him?’

‘Of course. Doesn’t she want to have him back with her?’

‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘Not yet.’

Why? Helewise wondered. Now that the danger was past, why should mother and son not be reunited?

But, sensing Josse didn’t want to talk about it, she merely said, ‘I will take you to him. You can reassure his mother that he’s quite all right. He seems happy, he likes Sister Caliste, and he’s eating like a horse.’

Josse grinned, very briefly. ‘Can’t be too much wrong with him, then.’

They were halfway across to the infirmary when Helewise stopped him. I have to speak, she thought, I can’t let there be an untruth between us.

‘What is it?’ he asked, glancing down at her detaining hand on his sleeve, ‘Why have we stopped?’

She looked round to make sure they were alone. Then, summoning her courage and taking a deep breath, she said, ‘Josse, I know that the story which Brother Saul brought back, the story you have just repeated to me, is not true.’ She noticed he was glaring at her, heavy eyebrows drawn down over his angry brown eyes. Go on! she ordered herself. You must! ‘I cannot believe that a man just happens to fall on a dagger point which pierces him to the heart,’ she hurried on, ‘it’s too convenient. And had you killed him as you fought, it would be self-defence and no crime, either in God’s eyes or under the law of the land. The only other person who could have killed him is Joanna.’

He had hold of her by the shoulders, and he could not have realised, she thought, how hard he was gripping her. She held his eyes steadily, and, after a moment, he loosened his hands.

He said nothing.

She took his silence as an acknowledgement that she was right.

She was tempted to assure him, to swear that the secret was quite safe with her.

But she didn’t really think there was any need.

Josse rode back to New Winnowlands with a heavy heart.

As well as everything else, he now felt he was a failure. The one thing he had wanted to keep from Helewise, and she had guessed it as easily as if he’d painted it across his forehead.