The Queen stopped him. ‘Sir Josse!’
‘My Lady?’
‘My compliments to the Abbess Helewise, when you see her.
She seemed, Josse thought later, in no doubt that it was when, not if.
* * *
Riding into his own courtyard, his many bodily discomforts were all but obliterated by the pleasure of being home again. And, moreover, with his mission accomplished. He patted the parchment, carefully stowed inside his tunic. Now let them come demanding rent! he thought cheerfully. I’ll show them!
On reflection, it was rather a pleasant prospect. He actually hoped some agent of John would turn up. It would be worth the furore to see the man’s face when Queen Eleanor’s personal seal was waved under his nose.
Horace, who had broken into an almost eager trot over the last half mile, was urging on across the courtyard in the direction of the stables. Yelling out for Will, Josse slid off the horse’s back, stumbling slightly on stiff, numb legs, and led Horace under cover.
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.