Queen Without a Crown by Fiona Buckley Read Free Book Online Page B

there, in that room where the meat is now. While Master Hoxton was ill, his food was put on the table, ready for his man to take. There’d be a tray with dishes on it, covered, and a jug of something with a glass or a tankard alongside. I saw his tray put here on that day – just on noon, it was.’
    ‘How did you come to be here, if you were working in the Spicery?’ I asked.
    ‘Well, at that time, the Spicery was through there, to the left.’ Madge pointed on ahead to where the passage met a broader one, which crossed it at a right angle. ‘I was bringing a tray-load of bowls with spices in, from there to the big kitchen we’ve just come through. The kitchen wasn’t different, just the Spicery. I nearly bumped into a fellow coming from the kitchen with another tray, and he said to be careful, to look where I was going, this was Master Hoxton’s dinner.’
    ‘What was he going to eat?’ I asked.
    Madge shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It was all under covers.’
    ‘I can remember,’ said Sterry. ‘I ought to, with all the questions that were asked. Some sort of coney stew, and an egg custard. The man was sick, but mending by then. Getting his appetite back. Then, later, Madge was sent to fetch the used dishes—’
    ‘But I never did. I just forgot all about them when . . . when . . .’ Her eyes grew round, thinking about it.
    ‘Quite,’ Sterry said. ‘And there in the room was a bit of pie that he’d left, a pie that was never made in these kitchens. Paulet fetched help to Hoxton’s room – that included me – and we were trying to quieten him when his manservant came back. We sent him off again to find a doctor, and while he was gone, someone found a physician in the castle, tending someone else, so in the end we had the two of them.
    ‘The first one smelt the pie and said the berries weren’t bilberries, whatever else they were, and the second one, when he arrived, knew it for deadly nightshade straight away. Children eat the berries sometimes, not realizing they’re dangerous. They can make people mad, and make them see things. Poor Hoxton went mad, right enough, and thought he saw the ceiling coming down on him, too.’
    ‘That’s horrible,’ I said.
    ‘There was nothing that anyone could do,’ Sterry said. ‘The doctors got people to hold him down, and they tried salt water to make him empty his stomach out completely. Then they tried plain water, to wash out the stomach the other way, so to speak, and then charcoal in water. That’s supposed to help with poison cases. But it was no use. He fell into a lethargy, and within two days he was gone. Well, Madge, tell Mistress Stannard the rest.’
    ‘There ain’t much more,’ Madge said. ‘Only, on my way back from the kitchen to the Spicery, I saw the tray still on the table and I saw a man put something extra on it. I didn’t know who he was. I couldn’t even see him that well. There was sunlight coming through the window, and there was a shaft of light, like, between me and his face. I mean—’
    ‘It wasn’t Hoxton’s manservant?’ I asked.
    ‘No, no, it wasn’t Master Edwards, that I am sure of. This fellow was a different shape, like. He had a little satchel on his belt, like Master Sterry now . . .’
    ‘I carry a purse and a slate with notes of work to be done in it,’ Sterry said.
    I nodded. Like many busy men who needed to keep the tools of their trade handy, Sterry had a square leather bag strapped to his belt.
    ‘He was standing looking at Master Hoxton’s tray,’ Madge said, ‘and as I went past, I saw him put his hand into the satchel and take out a little bundle. He pulled off the cloth it was wrapped in. Inside was a small pie, in a dish. He put it on the tray, and then he went away.’
    ‘What did you think he was doing?’ asked Sterry.
    ‘It weren’t aught to do with me. I was only sixteen and just a skivvy,’ said Madge. ‘If I thought at all, I’d reckon a dish had been forgotten and he was