by Alys Clare
Just inside the main door to the stables was a tinker’s handcart, covered with heavy sacking. That, Josse thought, explained why Will hadn’t come rushing out: no doubt he and Ella were in the kitchen, lapping up all the latest gossip. He unsaddled Horace, took off the bridle and, giving the horse a friendly slap on his broad rump, put him into a stall strewn with fresh, sweet-smelling straw, a filled water-trough on one wall.
‘Wait there, old friend,’ Josse said, ‘and I’ll send Will out to you.’
Entering the kitchen, he heard an unfamiliar voice.
‘… sick everywhere, up the walls, all over the floor, and they do say there’s a fresh mark by the window, a scorch mark, like, as if the Devil himself flew off and left a sign of his passing!’
‘Ooooh!’ breathed Ella, eyes wide, clutching her apron tightly.
‘I don’t know about devils,’ Will began, ‘but—’
In the doorway, Josse cleared his throat. Will and Ella spun round, and the stranger looked up and gave him a friendly grin.
‘It’s the master!’ Will cried, leaping up and looking as guilty as if he’d been caught rifling through Josse’s personal belongings. ‘I’m right sorry, sir, but I didn’t hear you call out.’ He reached down for his sacking hood, drying beside the fire. ‘I’ll go and see to your horse, sir, he’ll be in sore need of it on a foul day like today.’
‘It’s all right, Will, I—’ Josse said. But Will, giving him a sheepish look, had gone.
‘Sir Josse d’Acquin?’ the stranger asked, getting up and making a brief bow.
‘Aye.’
‘I am Thomas, Sir Josse. Tinker of these parts, mender of household items, supplier of fancy goods, acquirer of rare luxuries, and bringer of tidings both good and bad.’ He bowed again, more deeply; had he been wearing a hat, Josse reflected, he’d have swept it off.
‘Welcome to my house, Thomas the Tinker,’ Josse said. ‘You have, I trust, been offered comforts?’
‘That I have.’ Thomas glanced at Ella, who, eyes cast down, seemed to be pretending she wasn’t there; eighteen months in Josse’s easy-going household had wrought little change in the diffident, nervous woman she had been when Will first brought her there to live with him. She never looked you in the face, Josse had noticed; was it natural shyness, or was she too conscious of the slight cast in her left eye? ‘She’s a fine cook, your serving woman.’
‘As I well know,’ Josse agreed. ‘Ella? May I have some of that?’ He indicated the jug of mulled wine beside the fire. With a brief exclamation, she rushed to serve him, and, on Josse’s nod, filled up the tinker’s mug.
‘You were saying something about a visitation from the devil?’ Josse said, as the warm, sweet wine began to thaw him out. ‘Will you repeat your tale for a fresh audience?’
‘Gladly!’ Thomas pulled his little stool closer to Josse, ‘I was in Tonbridge day before yesterday, see, it being market day, but trade were bad. Too cold to get folks interested – it were out of the door, buy your chicken, your bunch of herbs or your tub of goose-fat, then straight home again. Nobody wanted to linger, not with that there wind howling like a hundred dead souls. Oh, no!’
‘And?’ Josse prompted.
‘Well, like many another fellow, I made my way to the inn. A taste of Goody Anne’s ale, that’s what you need, Thomas my lad, I told myself. So off I went, and, to cut a long story short, sir, that’s where I stayed. Afternoon turned to evening, evening to night, and there I sat in my corner, talking the hours away in good company, my mug ever-full, my platter cleared of every last crumb and every last drop.’
The disadvantage of having a professional storyteller pass on the news, Josse thought resignedly, was that they never used one word where ten would do.
‘In due course we all went our several ways to bed, sir,’ the tinker went on, ‘and Mistress Anne were good enough to let me sleep under my barrow, in one of her outhouses, so I were cozy enough. All were quiet till morning, sir, when one of the serving folk went up to see to the guest chamber.’ He paused dramatically, eyes fixed on Josse’s. ‘And you’ll never imagine what she found, sir, not if you guessed from now till next Christmas!’
‘Sick all over the floor and up the walls and a scorch mark by the window?’ Josse suggested.
The tinker looked fleetingly put out, then, recovering, grinned. ‘Ah, but sir, you have the advantage of having heard the end of the tale before the beginning, so as to speak,’ he said. ‘But, aye! That’s exactly what the poor little lassie did find! Scream? I never heard the like! Woke me up, she did, and I’m no light sleeper, let me tell you, sir. I goes rushing inside, along of everyone else who heard her cry, and we all goes stumbling and tumbling along that passage.’ Another pause. ‘And there he is, lying there! In a pool of his own vomit, expression on his face like he’d been terrified half out of his wits, and dead as a doornail!’
‘Poor man,’ Josse said inadequately.
‘Poor man?’ Clearly Thomas had expected more of a reaction. ‘I’m telling you, sir, that man died in agony! Just imagine, you’re all alone, you’re ill, sicker than you’ve ever been in your life, and you feel the despair of approaching death. Hear the steps of the grim reaper come plod-plodding up the passage, see his claw-hand open the door, watch in horror as that tall, thin, black-hooded figure creeps stealthily towards you, knowing all the while that—’
Ella gave a little scream, quickly muffling it with her apron. Josse, glancing at her white face, said, ‘Quite. We see the picture. What happened next?’
‘What happened next,’ Thomas said, peeved at being interrupted in the middle of the good bit, ‘was that Goody Anne came muscling into the chamber, sees all that sick all over the floor and orders everyone out. Then someone – don’t ask me who, sir, as I don’t know – must have gone for the Law.’
You could hear the capital letter of ‘Law’, Josse thought. Here, obviously, was a man who preferred to keep his distance, from both the institution and its officers. ‘And so you made yourself scarce?’ he suggested, grinning.
Thomas looked affronted. ‘Sir! The very idea! I – well, that’s to say, I didn’t put myself forward, like, there being no point since I had nothing to offer that could possibly help.’
‘Of course not,’ Josse murmured.
The tinker shot him a very sharp look, then said, ‘Course, I couldn’t help picking up the odd titbit of information, here and there, and what I gather is that they’re saying the dead man got fed a bad bit of supper. Slice of pie, portion of stew, whatever. And that whatever had got into it did for him.’
‘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 re
mark 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.’
Chapter Two
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.
‘We’ll start with the guest chamber,’ Goody Anne announced. And led the way along the passage.
* * *
The guest chamber had, Josse was relieved to find, been cleaned. The thin rugs on the floor still showed patches of damp from their recent washing, and the cot, stripped of bedding, was covered in a haze of condensation. The leather flap over the window had been fastened back, and the cold, fresh air circulating in the room was fighting gamely with the pervasive stench of vomit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t yet winning.
‘We found him half on and half off the bed,’ Goody Anne said, holding her nose. ‘As if he’d lain down, then, feeling the sick rise up, leaned out over the floor to puke up.’ She muttered something else, something about folks that hadn’t the decency to find a bowl to be sick in and save other folk from the mopping up.
‘Had he been drinking hard?’ Josse asked.
Anne gave him a look. ‘They’d all been drinking hard. Always do, market day. It’s my best day.’
‘Do you think a surfeit of alcohol killed him?’
She considered. ‘I’ve heard tell of such things,’ she admitted. ‘Young feller I knew when I was – er, when I was younger, it happened to him. He got drunk, then fell heavily asleep on his back, and choked on his own vomit.’ She shook her head. ‘But that can’t be what happened to this poor soul.’
‘It can’t?’
She sighed. ‘No. Like I said, he was leaning out over the edge of the bed. The vomit ran out of his mouth, not back down his windpipe.’
The talk was becoming rather too graphic, for Josse. Especially standing in a room that reeked all too strongly of its last occupant’s demise.
‘I’ll talk to the girl who found him,’ he announced, striding for the door. ‘Come on, Mistress Anne.’
* * *
The ser
ving maid who had discovered the corpse was a small, thin, pale-faced girl of about fourteen or fifteen. She had light brown hair tied in a knot on the nape of her neck, pale bulging eyes with light-coloured lashes, spots on her chin and lumpy hands reddened from constant contact with cold water. She had a permanent sniff, a habit of wiping the dewdrop off the end of her nose with the back of her hand, and she answered to the name of Tilly.
For some reason, Josse detected instantly, she was very disturbed by his gentle questions.
‘I can’t tell you nothing!’ she kept crying. ‘I went in and there he was, and that’s all there is to it!’
‘You knew who he was?’ Josse asked.
‘Eh? How d’you mean?’ She looked cagey.
Josse tried another tack. ‘Were you serving in the tap room the previous evening?’
Tilly hesitated. ‘Might have been.’ Josse waited. Eventually, as if even Tilly’s limited intelligence realised there wasn’t much future in evading the truth on a point that could instantly be decided by others’ testimony, she said, ‘Yes.’
‘And you served the dead man?’
‘No,’ she said instantly. Then: ‘Yes, maybe. It’s hard to tell, when we were so busy.’
‘I’m sure,’ Josse said soothingly. ‘What I’m asking is, when you saw the dead man in the morning, did you recognise him as one of the previous evening’s customers?’
She looked at him as if he were daft. ‘Course I did! He’d stopped the night, hadn’t he?’
This was getting nowhere. Realising that he still didn’t know the dead man’s identity, Josse thanked Tilly for her help – she wouldn’t have noticed the mild irony – and sent her back to the kitchen.
He spoke to half a dozen men who had been in the tavern the night the man died before anyone could tell him the dead man’s name.
It was Peter Ely. He had been in his mid-thirties, it was guessed, and he farmed a few meagre acres in the Vale of Tonbridge, some five or six miles out of town. He was in the habit of coming to the market, where he would sell whatever produce he’d brought with him before repairing to the tavern for a drink and a bite before setting off for home.