The Tavern in the Morning (10 page)

He edged the stool even closer. ‘I believe it may be a possibility, yes. I – she—’ For the first time he hesitated. Then, as if he realised he had no option but to respond to what was, after all, a perfectly reasonable question, he confided, ‘She has a friend hereabouts. A woman. I’m not sure where she lives, but I do recall hearing Joanna speak of her.’

‘And you think this woman may be caring for your niece?’

‘It’s the only thing I can think of!’ Denys de Courtenay flung his hands up in an expansive gesture. ‘No family of her own, as I said, save myself! And, for reasons which I cannot even begin to guess, she wished to distance herself from her late husband’s kin.’

She also wished to distance herself from you, Helewise thought. Or so it appears. ‘She did not try to contact you?’ she asked.

‘She –’ The smile spread out across the handsome face, white teeth gleaming in the smooth, olive skin. ‘Abbess, she had no way of knowing I was at present in England.’ Leaning confidingly towards her again, he whispered, ‘She knows me to be a King’s man.’ He nodded as if in confirmation of his words. ‘Joanna, I am certain, would have believed me to be in Outremer. With the King.’

He obviously expected her to be impressed, so she said, ‘Indeed! With King Richard!’

He looked smug. ‘I have enjoyed the great privilege of being permitted to be of use to His Majesty in the past, I have to own. He knows he can depend on me, when he needs a good man in a fight.’ He examined the long fingernails of one hand.

‘But not this particular fight,’ Helewise said softly. ‘This supreme fight in which King Richard is now engaged, to regain the Holy Places.’

Denys de Courtenay raised his head and glared at her. The unctuous charm had quite vanished, and, for a split second, she saw something feral, something infinitely sinister and cunning, in his dark eyes.

He recovered as swiftly. So swiftly that she could almost have thought she had been mistaken.

Almost.

‘Abbess, Abbess,’ he smiled, ‘what can you know of the world of fighting men?’ Quite a lot, she could have answered. ‘I see I must enlighten you!’

‘Please, don’t trouble yourself,’ she said quickly. ‘My ignorance must remain, for there are weightier matters for our attention. You were speaking of your niece’s friend, the woman with whom she may be lodging.’

‘Yes, yes, so I was.’

‘What is the woman’s name?’

Again, there was that strange reluctance to divulge details. Instead of answering Helewise’s question, Denys said, ‘I suppose it is too vain a hope to ask if she has been here? Joanna, that is?’

‘Here?’ After her initial surprise, suddenly Helewise was quite sure this was what de Courtenay had been leading up to. The simple question: have you seen her? Then why all the rigmarole? Why all the acting? ‘Has she been to the Abbey, do you mean? Or to the Holy Shrine down in the Vale?’

She thought it was the first he had heard of any Holy Shrine. ‘Oh – here, I meant. Seeking food or shelter, perhaps…?’

‘I recall nobody named Joanna among our recent visitors,’ Helewise said. ‘More importantly, for she could easily have used a different name, I recall no young noblewoman. Our visitors, sir, tend more usually to be the poor and the sick.’

‘Of course, of course,’ he said smoothly.

‘What name does she go by?’ Helewise asked. ‘I ask in order that I may enquire of my nuns, monks and lay brothers, those, that is, who have dealings with the outside worlds.’

He had got to his feet, and she thought for a moment he wasn’t going to answer. His expression was stern, distracted, almost …

Then, replacing the seriousness with another smile, he said, ‘Her name? Did I not tell you?’

‘No,’ Helewise said. ‘You only said she was called Joanna.’

‘She was born Joanna de Courtenay,’ he said, ‘the daughter of one Robert de Courtenay.’

‘Your brother.’ So must the woman’s father have been, for Denys de Courtenay to be her uncle.

‘No, Robert de Courtenay’s father and my father were brothers.’ Denys laughed lightly, as if indulging a perfectly natural mistake.

‘Then,’ Helewise persevered pedantically ‘I believe that makes you and Joanna second cousins, or in fact first cousins with one degree of removal. But not uncle and niece.’

‘Does it indeed?’ He laughed again. ‘I never was very good at the complicated network of kin relationships. Not that it matters the smallest bit!’

‘Only if you wished to marry her,’ Helewise observed. ‘Second cousins have been known to be wed, given the proper dispensation, whereas uncle and niece cannot, such unions being commonly regarded as incestuous.’

There was an instant’s icy silence in the room. Then Denys de Courtenay swept his cloak across his shoulder, bowed to Helewise and said, ‘Ah, well. There it is. Now, I fear, Abbess Helewise, that I have wasted your time.’

‘But what of your niece’s friend?’ Helewise said. ‘Her woman friend? Surely—’

But he acted as if he hadn’t heard. Bowing low, he said, ‘I would ask, Abbess, that you and your nuns keep Joanna in your prayers. If it please God, I pray that she and I may soon be reunited.’ His eyes on Helewise’s, he went on, ‘You
will
tell me if you hear word of her, won’t you? Or if, by God’s grace, she comes here?’

Helewise didn’t want to undertake that she would. Adopting her guest’s evasive tactics, she said instead, ‘And how will we find you to tell you, if we do have news?’

He said, ‘No need for that.
I
will find
you.
’

And just why, Helewise wondered, does that sound so ominously like a threat?

‘Now,’ de Courtenay was saying, ‘I have, as I said, taken up far too much of your precious time, so I will take my leave.’

Bowing again, he had let himself out and closed the door behind him before Helewise could say another word.

It did not occur to her for some time that, if Joanna de Courtenay had been married, then her name must now be something other than de Courtenay.

Something else which her uncle – in fact, her cousin – had chosen not to divulge.

*   *   *

She went straight over to tell Josse.

He was awake, in the middle of eating what appeared to be quite a substantial meal. He was, as she had hoped, riveted by what she had to say.

‘He
has
to be Tilly’s handsome stranger!’ he said, his mouth full of boiled hare. ‘Your description and hers tally far too closely for him not to be.’

‘It does seem likely,’ she agreed. ‘Denys de Courtenay. A King’s man. Have you ever heard of him, Sir Josse?’

Josse shook his head. ‘No, but that alone doesn’t mean he’s lying. About his royal connections, anyway. And, if he was the man I saw at Tonbridge Castle, that implies a link with the Clares and
they
certainly have court connections.’

‘If, if, if,’ Helewise said dismally.

‘One less
if
now!’Josse reminded her.

‘Probably,’ she said.

‘Oh, Abbess, let’s be rash! It
is
the same man!’

‘Very well. Which leads to the next question: is your mysterious woman in the woods the missing Joanna de Courtenay?’

‘She could well be,’ Josse said. ‘Although her name is not de Courtenay, or, at least, her son’s name isn’t. It’s de Lehon, and it’s a French name.’ He fixed Helewise with an intent look. ‘Did this Denys say she’d lived in France?’

Helewise thought back. ‘No. But, there again, he didn’t say she
hadn’t.
He was, as I said, very reluctant to tell me anything definite.’

‘Strange,’ Josse mused. ‘And, Abbess, I’ll tell you what else is strange. Your friend Denys didn’t seem to know that Joanna had a son. Did he?’

‘He didn’t mention any child,’ Helewise agreed.

There was a reflective silence. Josse finished his meal, wiped his hands, and, taking a long drink, lay back on his pillows. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ he offered. ‘Well, I’ll tell you two.’

‘Yes?’

‘First, if he’s the man responsible for my sore head, then it’s just as well we didn’t come face to face just now. I should not want blood spilled in the sacred confines of Hawkenlye Abbey.’ He smiled at her, but she wasn’t at all sure that he wasn’t deadly serious.

‘And the second thing?’

‘If we’re right in our guessing and it
is
Joanna whom de Courtenay is searching for, then, believe me, she doesn’t want him to find her.’

Helewise saw the man again in her mind’s eye. Tall, strong, oozing a charm that was far too obviously false. And, worst of all, that frightening moment when he had lowered his guard and allowed her to see him for what he really was.

She shivered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I believe you readily enough.’ She raised her eyes to meet Josse’s. ‘And, having met him, truly, I can’t say that I blame her.’

Death by Drowning

Chapter Seven

Josse discharged himself from Sister Euphemia’s care the next morning.

‘
I
don’t know!’ she complained, giving the wounds on the back of his head a final inspection. ‘You and the Abbess Helewise, you’re a right pair! You both believe the world’ll come to an end if you’re not around to make sure it doesn’t.’

‘How true,’ Josse agreed. ‘Of myself, in any case. I always was an arrogant fellow, Sister Euphemia.’ He gave her a wink, and she blushed faintly.

‘Go on with you!’

‘I’m going.’

‘You hurry
straight
back, now,’ she said, trotting along the long, open space between the infirmary’s many beds to keep up with his strides, ‘the moment you start to get head pains, or dizziness, or—’

But, with an acknowledging wave of his hand, he had gone.

*   *   *

In the crisp morning air, the heavy frost sparkled pure, dazzling white. Horace’s breath hung in clouds, like the smoke of some idling dragon.

Josse met nobody on the road down into Tonbridge. Which was no surprise: it was too cold a day to venture out of doors and go off journeying unless you really had to.

He rode straight for the castle.

He hadn’t really hoped he would find his stranger there, which was just as well since he didn’t. The drawbridge was now fully up and the castle looked, if it were possible, even more abandoned than it had on Josse’s last visit.

A woman passed by, a bundle of kindling under one arm.

‘You’ll get no welcome from
them,
’ she remarked, nodding in the direction of the castle. ‘They’re away. Gone, they have, and gone they’ll stay, s’long as there’s sickness in the valley.’ She sniffed. ‘Don’t have no truck with the idea of
helping
the sick and needy, they don’t.’

‘Ah.’ Trying to sound casual – a passer-by venturing a conversational remark – he said, ‘I’m surprised they don’t leave at least a small staff, though. After all, there must be caretaking duties and there’s security to think of…’ He trailed off, hoping she would take up the opportunity of a bit of a gossip.

She did. Putting down her kindling and folding her arms, she said, ‘Security? I don’t imagine
that
bothers them, not with that ruddy great drawbridge pulled up. I mean, who’s going to try to climb up
there
?’ She jerked her head towards the castle’s formidable walls. ‘And why bother, that’s what I say! If them grand folks don’t want to associate with the likes of us, then there’s no call for us to go bothering
them.
’

An independently-minded woman, Josse reflected. ‘Is there truly nobody within?’

‘Oh, there’s your caretakers, all right.’ She sniffed again, then suddenly her face lightened into a smile of genuine humour. ‘You’re not thinking, mate,’ she said. ‘Course there’s got to be
someone
inside, else how’d they raise the drawbridge?’

He grinned in response. ‘Aye. You’re right there.’

‘There’s any number of them,’ she continued. ‘Caretakers, like. But they ain’t going to come out all the while there’s food and water within. They’ll see the advantages of keeping themselves apart from the sickness, same as their precious lords and masters. You mark my word, there’ll be no comings and goings over that drawbridge till spring.’

‘I did have a faint hope of finding an acquaintance of mine here. I heard tell he lodged with the family…?’

The woman shook her head. ‘Unlikely. As I’ve already told you –’ she was eyeing Josse suspiciously now, as if trying to decide if he had evil intentions or was just plain stupid – ‘the family’s away. If your
acquaintance
is in there, he must be a guest of the caretakers, not the Clares.’ Another assessing look. ‘And you’ll be a better judge than me, sir, as to the likelihood of that.’

‘No, no, as you say, he can’t be. I must have been mistaken.’ Keen to allay her curiosity – he didn’t like the idea of her passing on details of her meeting with a man nosing around outside the castle and asking daft questions – he said, ‘I’m for the tavern. A mug of ale and a spell of warming my toes by Goody Anne’s fire sounds just the thing for me. I wish you good day.’ He bowed, swung up on to Horace, and set off down the track towards the river.

When he risked a glance behind him, the woman had picked up her bundle and was striding away.

*   *   *

The inn was bustling. There seemed to be as many people milling around in the yard as within, Josse thought as he pushed his way inside. And there was a deal of animated chattering going on, too.

Goody Anne was in the tap room, sleeves rolled up to display her well-muscled forearms, handing out jugs of ale to a band of men.

‘How goes it, Mistress Anne?’ Josse asked when, catching sight of him, she nodded a greeting.

‘Rushed off my feet, as ever.’ She gave him a friendly grin. ‘Thanks to you, sir, people haven’t been scared off.’ She winked. ‘If you get my meaning.’

He did. Standing beside her now, he said softly, ‘Glad to have been of service.’

‘Any news as to who did for poor old Peter Ely?’

‘No.’

‘And now there’s this new business. I really don’t—’ A voice demanded service, followed by a chorus of others, and, interrupting herself, Anne said, ‘You’ll have to excuse me, sir, I’m that busy.’