Sweet Death: A Matthew Cordwainer Medieval Mystery by Joyce Lionarons

Author:Joyce Lionarons [Lionarons, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

Margrete shuffled to her front window, hunched over the two short sticks she used when she walked, her knees aching in the wet weather. The rain had ended once again, and she had sliced two early apples and drizzled them with honey, placing them carefully, each slice overlapping the next, on a pewter plate. Where were Mistress Isobel and her two little girls? Every day save Thursday Market day Isobel walked them up the street and back before returning to her work, both for the fresh air and the exercise. And every day Margrete prepared a treat for the girls, something sweet whenever she might spare the honey. Yet today neither Isobel nor her daughters had come.

Poking her head out the window, Margrete craned her head around to the right, the bones in her neck popping and creaking. She could just glimpse Isobel’s door before she felt her neck would crack and she needs must pull her head in again. Aye, the door was closed. Yet no rain had fallen on her head covering, and if she walked carefully in the mud she might knock on Isobel’s door. What if Isobel or one of the girls were ill?

She shuffled away from the window to find her cloak and stick. The young, she told herself, ought to see to the old, not the old to the young. Yet Isobel had no one else to see to her if she were ill.

Perhaps she ought to bring the apple slices, she told herself, looking at the pewter plate. She could walk a short distance with one stick when necessary. Nay, twould be too difficult in the mud, with her stick likely sinking inches deep. “Cease your wittering!” she said aloud. Grasping both sticks in her gnarled hands, she made her slow way to her door, then fumbled with the latch.

“Grandmama, what do you think you are doing?”

“Visiting Mistress Isobel,” Margrete replied without turning. She did not want to see the amused, condescending expression that she could hear in her grandson Thom’s voice. She might be old, but she was not witless. “Summat be wrong.”

“Nowt be wrong,” Thom replied. “Isobel has but kept her children home because of the rain.”

“Tis not raining now. Summat be wrong,” Margrete insisted, turning slowly to face Thom, her sticks scraping in the dirt below the floor rushes. He looked just like his father, she thought, with his sandy hair sticking out in all directions, the bristly beard, the wide, upturned nose. And as she had expected, his face bore a half-smile under pitying eyes, as if twere only his pity that kept him from laughing at her.

“Summat be wrong,” she repeated. “The rain has stopped, yet her door be closed and all within.” She began her slow turn back to the door. “I must see what it is and help if I can.”

“Nay, you will not,” said Thom, rising from the worktable and letting the leather pouch he had been working on fall to the tabletop. He circled the table and was at the door in two long strides.

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