Alys Clare: The Tavern in the Morning

Nothing.

He waited. Tilly’s watching eyes seemed to burn into him.

Nothing.

He put the piece of onion carefully back in the pie dish, and then replaced the dish on the floor of the lean-to.

Still nothing.

I was wrong, he thought. Wrong about that dish, anyway, which means I’ll now have to go through the remaining three stacks to see if I can discover another pie-dish.

Which was not a pleasant prospect.

‘Tilly, I’m going to continue the search,’ he said. ‘Can you remember how many pies you got through on market day? Because-’

A tiny tingle in his lower lip.

He stopped what he was doing, straightened up. Waited.

No.

Ah well, it was-

Yes! From an all-but-undetectable tingle, now the spot inside his lip, where he had touched the onion to the gum, was burning as if he’d put a live coal on to it. Elbowing Tilly out of the way, he ran for the pump in the corner of the yard, working the handle feverishly, holding his open mouth beneath the stream of icy-cold water. It was only self-preservation, not deliberate action, that made him hold his head so that the water ran into his mouth and then straight out again, rather than going down his throat.

The burning sensation soon began to diminish. He went on rinsing out his mouth for some time after it had ceased altogether. By then, not only his lower lip but his whole face was so cold that a burning coal might actually have been quite welcome.

He rinsed his hands as well, rubbing the finger and thumb of his right hand over and over again.

Then, when at last he was satisfied, he asked Tilly for an old sack, and, careful not to touch the pie dish again, enveloped it in the sack and went in search of Goody Anne.

She was sitting in the tap room with her feet up, drinking a mug of her own ale. She looked up apprehensively as Josse entered.

He held up the sack. ‘I’ve found the culprit,’ he said quietly. ‘Not your pie, Goody Anne, or, at least, not your pie as it left your capable hands.’

She looked doubtfully at him, obviously not prepared to be relieved until he’d told her everything.

‘And?’ she asked.

‘I suggest we destroy this,’ he said, swinging the sack. ‘Smash the platter, bury it somewhere no creature will dig it up.’

She whispered, ‘Why?’

‘Someone put poison in it,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, which I don’t believe I am, someone put a large dose of wolfs bane in a portion of the chicken pie. Then they fed it to Peter Ely.’

* * *

Now that he knew about the poison, the chief reason for visiting Peter Ely’s home — to see if anyone else in his family had fallen sick — seemed to have been removed. But Josse decided to go, anyway: it didn’t seem right that nobody went, and, with the forces of law and order stirred up like a henhouse circled by a fox over the discovery of the wolfs bane, it seemed that, if Josse didn’t make the effort, nobody else would.

Sheriff Pelham and Josse had met before. Josse wasn’t keen to renew the acquaintance, and nor, it seemed, was the sheriff.

‘You again!’ he greeted Josse when, preparing to set out for the Ely acreage, Josse approached him to ask to be given Peter Ely’s meagre personal effects.

‘Me again,’ Josse agreed. He explained his mission, and the sheriff, having scratched his head to see if he could come up with some objection, discovered he couldn’t and grudgingly handed over a small bag made of coarse linen.

‘I’ll have that back when you’re done,’ he said, pointing a dirty-nailed forefinger at the bag. ‘That’s official property, that is.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of it,’ Josse said. He didn’t wait to hear Sheriff Pelham’s reply.

* * *

The Ely home was a small and ramshackled cottage, a lean-to, in fact, tacked on to the end of a row of three other cottages which, on first sight, seemed better maintained. Peter Ely, Josse observed, hadn’t been a man to turn his hand to a repair; the roof was holed, the door was off one of its hinges and the whole place had an air of squalor and neglect.

He dismounted and, tethering Horace, walked up to the door and put his head inside the cottage’s single room.

‘Hello?’

Two figures materialised from the gloom, followed by another, smaller one; as his eyes adjusted, Josse thought they might be Peter Ely’s father, wife and adolescent child. Whether the latter was male or female was not immediately apparent.

‘Eh?’ said the old man.

‘I have ridden out from town,’ Josse began, not really sure where to start — did these wretched people even know Peter was dead? — ‘to seek out the kin of Peter Ely.’

The woman, gazing at Josse dully, said, ‘’E be dead.’

‘I know,’ Josse said. ‘I’m very sorry.’

There was a silence. The three Elys went on staring. Finally, Josse remembered the bag. ‘These belongings were his,’ he said, holding out the bag. The woman shot out a hand and grasped it, swiftly tucking it away inside some fold of whatever garment she was wearing in what looked like an automatic gesture. ‘They are Peter’s effects,’ he added. ‘Found on his — found on him.’

‘Aah,’ said the old man.

‘I’m ’aving ’em!’ the woman hissed, giving the old man a vicious dig in the ribs as if fending off an attempt to wrest her late husband’s possessions from her. ‘Anything ’e ’ad, it’s mine!’

Nobody seemed to wish to dispute that.

The four of them went on standing there for some time. Eventually Josse said, ‘Er — it appears Peter was poisoned. More than that I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’

‘Poisoned,’ echoed the old man.

It was the only response any of the three made. And even then, it seemed more an observation than a grief-stricken moan.

Despairing of them, Josse said curtly, ‘I’ll wish you farewell.’ mounted Horace, spurred him and hastened away.

* * *

It was clear he would have to put up at the inn overnight. For one thing, it was getting dark and, for another, he still had so much to find out.

He hoped Goody Anne could offer an alternative guest chamber. Fortunately, after making a few hasty rearrangements, she could.

After supper (mutton stew washed down with ale, and quite delicious), he was lingering by the fire in the tap room, reluctant to go up to a cold bed, when Goody Anne came hurrying in.

He could tell from her face that she had something to tell him; giving her a quick grin, he said, ‘Well? What have you found out?’

She smiled back. ‘T’isn’t me, it’s that wretch of a girl.’

‘Tilly?’

‘That’s the one. She’s — oh, you’d better come and see for yourself, no doubt it’ll be quicker in the long run.’ She took his mug from his hand, thumped it down and, grabbing his sleeve, hurried him out of the tap room, down the passage and into the kitchen. Tilly, face in her hands, seemed to be sobbing.

‘Come on, then, my girl!’ Anne said angrily. ‘You can tell the gentleman here what you just told me!’

‘Oh, no! ’ Tilly wailed.

Anne folded her stout arms across her deep bosom. ‘Either you do or I shall,’ she said relentlessly.

‘Come, Tilly,’ Josse said, moving forward and crouching down beside the girl. ‘What can be so terrible?’ He tried a small laugh. ‘After all, you didn’t poison the old man, did you?’ He chuckled again. Very soon, he realised he was laughing alone; Anne was staring at him with a face like thunder and Tilly had broken into renewed wails.

‘Dear merciful God,’ Anne muttered. Then: ‘Tilly, you didn’t poison him, not really, and no one’s going to say you did, not while I’ve got life in my body. You mayn’t be much,’ she added, half under her breath, ‘but you’re better than nothing, and I won’t see you dragged off and accused of sommat you didn’t do.’