Death at St. Vedast

by Mary Lawrence

  The two remained stonily silent.

  Bianca took a sip. “This ale is quite fine.” She meant it.

  The more hospitable of the two perked up. “Aye. It is a goodly batch. I am pleased.”

  “I don’t believe the Stuffed Goose has as fine a brew.”

  “Oh, they do,” he said, frowning at a spot on the trestle table. “They don’t serve it properly.” He rubbed the spot vigorously with his towel. “They pour it in tankards with the dried remains of soup. Ye get bits of onions floating about. The taste is not a concern for them.”

  “Does their disregard trouble you?”

  “It is our brew that they sell. I’m the brewer. Call me Felton.” He gave up rubbing the spot and folded the towel. He draped it over his shoulder. “Of late, I am also the cook.”

  “I should like to see how you make your brew. I have a curiosity for ale well done.”

  The brewer glanced at the old monk, then nodded. “I haven’t any patrons to tend to. I need to see after it anyway. You can pour a tap, Brother March?”

  Bianca followed Felton through a kitchen that was sparsely stocked with food in the way to cook. A lone baker kneaded dough on a dusted board and watched the brewer lead Bianca out the back door. Holding his cap to his head, the brewer suddenly dashed through the rain to a building behind the alehouse and held the door for her. Bianca followed.

  The brewery was smaller than the alehouse, with a fusty smell permeating the air. She noted that the brewhouse had not lost its windows like the other monastery buildings. The brewery had avoided the widespread ransacking Grayson had told her and John about. Gray light lent the interior a melancholy feel. A large vat, taller than either of them, sat in the middle of the room, its oak staves bound by iron hoops and rivets. Felton took an empty jar from a shelf and lifted a paddle off a hook on the wall.

  He climbed a ladder propped against the side and skimmed the surface. After a moment, he handed Bianca the jar of foamy liquid. “For Brother Fromme, the baker,” he said. He then lowered the paddle into the vat and, with concentrated effort, swept the wood oar around the perimeter.

  Bianca could see that the brewer prided himself in his work. He took great pleasure explaining the process, adding colorful asides and even laughing once. “Would you like to see how we malt grain?” He led Bianca up a set of stairs to a room and explained that in the warming days of spring, they raked the grain over the floor, then added water to encourage it to sprout. When all of Bianca’s questions had been answered, she followed him back down the stairs and crossed the room to the door. The man’s good cheer fell away as he looked at the alehouse before running back through the rain.

  “I’m sorry the people of Dinmow don’t appreciate the care you put into your brewing,” said Bianca when they entered the kitchen.

  “Perhaps we are being righteously punished,” he said. He brushed the rain from his sleeves.

  “Sir, you deserve to do a fair business like anyone else.”

  He handed the baker the jar. “The truth be, we are blamed for several deaths of late.”

  Brother Fromme, who had remained quiet, spoke. “Felton, we are unjustly accused. Why must you tell of our woe?”

  “The priest hides in his room. He does not defend us.”

  The baker went back to his table and began scraping off the flour into a bowl. “Paston is a gutless caitiff. He can’t even perform his godly duty. He should leave and let the town find another who cares for their needs.”

  “Perhaps he will leave on his own accord.”

  “He cannot leave soon enough! He will see us ruined or run out of town.”

  “We haven’t been run out of town yet,” Felton reminded Brother Fromme. “I hope, in time, we are forgiven.”

  “I am beginning to think this town has a long memory. And if another incident happens like before, who do you believe will be blamed?”

  Bianca understood their burden, having had to prove her innocence in a friend’s death. She could not remain quiet. “I know, personally, the frustration of being falsely accused. It is easier for people to cast blame than prove a man innocent. Guilty men would have run by now.”

  Brother Felton glanced at the baker, then lowered his voice. “About a month ago, several people took ill after eating at our alehouse. They all died.”

  “And was the cause for their deaths determined?”

  The brewer shook his head. “It was peculiar. They all acted strangely. They had all eaten here the night before they took ill.”

  “So you are accused of poisoning them?”

  “We have been accused, aye.”

  “Our food is the same as the Stuffed Goose,” said the baker.

  “It comes from the same farmers?” asked Bianca.

  They both nodded.

  “But perhaps the food is not prepared the same?”

  Felton straightened and lifted his chin. “I do nothing different. Why would I taint the food? What reason would I have to do that?”

  The baker spoke. “The townspeople blame the priest.”

  “What issue have they with him?”

  “Father Paston is not respected. The townspeople think him weak. They say the deaths are proof of his inability to protect the monastery, the church, and Dinmow from evil.” The baker stopped his furious scraping. “He is not our choice. When the monastery was dissolved, he was assigned to the parish church.”

  “Could the Stuffed Goose have wished ill for you? Would they benefit making their own ale rather than buying it from you?” Bianca wanted to hear their response.

  Brother Felton spoke. “They looked into brewing their own. They haven’t the means to accomplish it. We convinced them that the expense would not be worth it. Under our agreement, we make ale for the owner of the monastery property for the right to stay here.” Felton tugged on his jerkin. “As you can see, our habits have been turned into ordinary garments, and we may not pursue our previous calling. Eventually we hope to buy the alehouse and brewery outright.”

  “If your reputation is called into question, would it not present someone with an opportunity to buy?” suggested Bianca.

  Felton doubted the possibility. “I would not imagine Elgin at the Stuffed Goose to be so devious.”

  “You are naïve, my brother.” The baker placed his bowls on a shelf. “I do not wish to think ill of him, but it is possible.”

  “Nay, it is not me who is naïve. You make these loaves and no one buys them. We will soon run out of money for flour.”

  “I will continue to bake my loaves until no one wants them.”

  “Our customers have abandoned us. No one wants them anymore.”

  “I stand by my bread over Duffy’s any day. Soon people will tire of his soured dough. Besides, I plan to offer the villagers free loaves. We must show the people what they are missing.”

  Bianca regretted inciting the two men to argue. She wished to depart leaving them with something on which they could both agree. “Brother March still wears his habit.”

  The baker sighed. “He shall not abandon it.” He scraped the flour off the board into his palm. “If it costs him his life, he has resigned himself.”

  “How will it not? I should think he must avoid notice.” Bianca looked toward the open room.

  “He never leaves the grounds,” said Brother Felton, “and so far has avoided notice by the commissioners.”

  * * *

  Bianca returned to an empty bedchamber at the Stuffed Goose. She stamped down the stairs and entered the back of the tavern, scanning the tables for John.

  “Ye lookin’ for yer old man?” asked the serving wench, sidling past with five tankards hooked through her fingers.

  “Have you seen him?”

  “He took off in the rain, foolish man. Said to tell you he was gone to the gristmill.”

  Bianca looked out the window at the rain still pouring with no sign of slowing. She was already as soaked as if she had taken a swim. What did it matter if she went out again
?

  This time she glupped through town in the direction from which they’d first come. Instead of taking the stone bridge across the river, she kept on and arrived at the gristmill. She found John enjoying a thorough instruction in grinding flour. Between the two of them, they would walk away with enough knowledge to start their own village.

  “Bianca,” said John. “Meet Daniel Littleton, the town miller.”

  Bianca did a double take at the man’s last name, then curtsied.

  “I have learned how they operate the sluice gate for the water, how the paddle wheel works. Look at this.” John extended his hand beneath a chute and showed her a fistful of fine flour. “Before now I’ve never given any thought to how flour was ground.” John smiled, then gazed in admiration at the contrivance turning the millstones.

  “What grain do you mill?” asked Bianca.

  “Barley mostly. Although I mill wheat and rye.”

  “And the flour is for Dinmow?”

  “And London.”

  “I wonder if we eat bread baked with your flour.”

  “I’ve a merchant who distributes my goods, so I need not bother with individual bakeries anymore.”

  “Show her how you hoist the grain,” said John. “You will enjoy this,” he said to Bianca. “Mayhap I will convince Boisvert of a pulley system.”

  Miller Littleton went to the sacks of grain piled against a wall. He lifted a bag onto his shoulder as easily as if it were a toddler. John watched with admiration as Littleton carried it over and dropped it on the floor next to the millstones. He secured the sack with rope, then swung the wallow wheel aside and pulled on a chain that hoisted the bag through a flap door in the floor above them.

  “Come see this,” said John, tugging Bianca’s sleeve. Though she lacked John’s passion for cogs and mechanicals, his enthusiasm was contagious. She followed him up the stairs to the second floor. Realizing a young woman had arrived, the assistant shook off his boredom and cheerily untied the rope, then slit the cloth with a knife. He tipped the grain into a wood hopper, the hard kernels clattering down the shaft and spilling onto the turning millstones below.

  Bianca peered into the hopper. “Is this from neighboring fields?”

  “From the farmers who grow it.”

  Bianca wandered to the row of sacks leaning against the wall. She reached into one and withdrew a fist of grain, running her thumb over the dried husks. The golden brown kernels left a powdery residue on her fingers. “Do the kernels get burned from too much sun? They are of differing shades.”

  “The darker kernels are probably from the bottom of a bin. Sometimes they get wet.”

  After watching the grain disappear through the hopper, Bianca and John descended the stairs to the bottom floor, where the miller was bagging the ground flour.

  “And who shall get these sacks?” asked Bianca. “London?”

  “Nay, these will go to the bakers in town. To the Stuffed Goose and church alehouse.”

  They watched Littleton bag the remaining flour, then thanked him for his kindness in showing them the mill. Just as John’s hand went to the door, a man with the bearing of an ox threw it open and entered. A young boy accompanied him, diminutive by comparison.

  “I’ve come for me flour,” he said. “I’ve completely run out. I wouldn’t bother coming, but Elgin sent me to settle our account.” He eyed Bianca and John, and the miller introduced them.

  “They hail from London,” said Littleton.

  “That is a journey,” said the cook, who went by the name of Duffy. “Being in London, I doubt you give much thought to farmers and millers.”

  “Nay,” said John. “I’ve learned a great deal in Dinmow.”

  “I wonder, sir,” said Bianca, “if I might help in the kitchen tonight?”

  The man was neither surprised by her request nor particularly keen for her help. “Have you skills?”

  “I learn quickly. I would like to see how an inn cooks for so many people. I might even learn something on how to make a proper mutton stew.”

  “There is no pay and the owner looks unkindly on barter.”

  “My compensation is to learn.”

  John blinked at Bianca’s sudden interest in cooking. He was always hopeful that she might improve in the kitchen. He turned eagerly to the cook. He had to stop himself from begging the man.

  “All right,” said Duffy, noting a look of desperation on John’s face. “Come when you are ready. But don’t expect to stand about. I’ll put you to work.” He stepped back, shirking John’s attempt to embrace him. “Don’t think either of you will get a free meal out of this.”

  * * *

  “What was that for?” asked Bianca when they got back to their chamber at the inn.

  “Can’t I kiss my wife on occasion?”

  “You never kiss me when we’ve come in from getting soaked to the bone. I suppose I should stomp about in the rain more often.”

  John unbuttoned his jerkin and hung it from a rafter to dry. He couldn’t contain his cheerful mood. “It gratifies me that you wish to improve your cooking.”

  Bianca set her boots upside down in the warmest spot of the room and peeled off her stockings. She hung them near John’s coat.

  John’s smile collapsed. “You aren’t spending time in the kitchen to learn how to be a better cook.”

  “Nay. It is not my first order of interest.”

  John took off his shirt and wrung it out. “Perhaps you might surprise yourself and find cooking food to your liking,” he said.

  He didn’t need to add, “instead of medicinals,” because Bianca sensed it was what he was thinking.

  “I want to learn more about Elgin, the owner of the Stuffed Goose. I want to see what he is like.”

  “Bianca, we needn’t try to solve another set of deaths. Boisvert is sitting in Newgate Prison awaiting his fate.”

  “But the peculiar manner in which these people died is similar not only to Odile’s demise, but also to that of the woman who fell from St. Vedast. Even the young boy who was taken with demons might have something in common with all of this unusual behavior.”

  “I’m not seeing a connection to any of it,” said John, crawling under a blanket to get warm.

  “I don’t know what all of these people had in common,” Bianca admitted, peeling off her wet kirtle and standing on the bed to drape it over a beam. “Perhaps we will never understand.”

  “In which case this trip to Dinmow has been a waste of time.”

  “Well,” said Bianca, cheering, “all is not lost. I’ll go down to the kitchen and maybe I’ll learn something about cooking food—after my clothes dry.”

  “It’ll be a while before that happens,” said John, smiling archly, and Bianca dropped onto the bed beside him and kissed the impish grin off his face.

  CHAPTER 23

  The difference between Bianca’s brand of cooking and Duffy’s was that his smelled undeniably better. John believed Bianca’s sense of smell had been ruined by years of assisting her father in his alchemy room. In fact, Bianca had an acute olfactory sense—it was just that it was more finely attuned to cooking chemistries, not comestibles.

  She could discern the difference between terebinth and hemlock, but put a rotten egg or a bowl of sour milk in front of her and she might not reject either. Instead she would snatch them up and stash them away for use in her experiments later.

  That night, Duffy found he could not trust the girl to know when to pull carrots off the fire or onions off a grill. She seemed content to watch them caramelize and then blacken before she made a move to save them. He decided she was a lost cause and was about to send her away when she showed an interest in learning how to make bread. He was busy trying to remedy the ambiguous stew caused by her negligence and figured she could not possibly find a way to ruin bread, unless she burned it, but he would watch to be sure that she didn’t.

  He instructed her to measure the needed flour using a scale in the corner and handed her a cup
of gloppy dough. “Add this to the mix,” he told her. “It will make the dough light. We can’t get barm from the alehouse, and we haven’t time to sit and wait for God’s goodness.”

  “Why can’t you get barm from the alehouse?”

  “They won’t sell it to us.”

  She looked at him expectantly, but he declined an explanation.

  Bianca took a whiff of the jar. “It is sour,” she said.

  Duffy shrugged. “That is how it should be.” He instructed her on what to do and watched her take care adding the ingredients one by one, like she was expecting an explosion if she added them too fast. He had never seen a girl so enthralled with mixing ingredients.

  With Bianca occupied, Duffy now took care of the orders the serving wench kept screeching through the open door. The woman’s voice sounded like a crow cawing in his ear. Duffy wished the nag would work somewhere else, but since he had little control over the owner’s hiring, he amused himself with devising ways to be rid of her. She had an ill effect on the kitchen staff, and the sniping usually built to manic proportions before it was quashed by the appearance of Elgin.

  Such was the case tonight. The Stuffed was doing an unprecedented business, the rain being such that no one wanted to sit home and stare at their spouse when they could be drinking ale and staring at their neighbor’s spouse instead. So the Stuffed earned its nickname and Duffy the cook grew more prickly by the minute.

  He served up bowls of stew and saw that more would soon be needed. He directed more carrots to be chopped, more onions to be diced, and more mutton to be thrown in the pot. The loaves of bread disappeared off the shelves, and Duffy eyed Bianca happily kneading dough that should be set to lighten. She must have seen enough people work dough, for the girl took to it without being told how.

  “Let it rest,” he yelled, and tossed a wad of damp cloths at her to cover the dough.

  The kitchen struggled to keep up with the requests, and tempers flared. With the prospect of a long night ahead, Duffy paced himself and tried to ignore the serving wench, who was grating on his nerves. He might have made it through the night without serious mishap if she hadn’t announced that the ale had run out.