Free The Tavern in the Morning by Alys Clare

let that happen,’ she said. ‘Won’t let your horse trip, I mean. I know the way, and he’ll probably follow on quite happily behind me. If he gets uneasy, I’ll dismount and lead him. All right?’
    ‘All right.’
    They travelled for some time. Josse, in the blackness of his blindfold, disorientated and dizzy, concentrated on clinging on to the saddle, and on coping with the sickness that kept coming in vertiginous waves.
    After a while, he sensed they were no longer beneath the trees. The ground seemed a little firmer and once or twice one of the horses struck a shoe against a stone. The air felt colder and colder. Josse was shivering almost constantly now.
    They climbed a slight rise – instinctively, feeling Horace’s effort, he put his weight forward slightly – and then they were there. He sensed walls around them, a building of some sort, and then the woman was beside him, untying his hands, removing the blindfold.
    ‘Thank you.’
    She stared up at him. ‘No. It is I who must thank you. Not a journey for a sick man, I’m afraid, especially when he has been deprived of his sight.’
    ‘Only temporarily,’ he murmured.
    She helped him down, and, as she led Horace and the pony on into the building – it appeared to be a barn, which had been fitted with internal partitions to make two or three rough stalls – he leaned against the door frame, trying to stop the spinning in his head. He noticed absently that one of the stalls was already occupied, but the light inside the barn was too dim for him to make out details of the horse. Perhaps – probably – it was the woman’s mount.
    Soon she came back. ‘ They’re all right,’ she said. ‘Noses in the manger, happy as jesters. Now, let’s see about you.’
    Now he needed her support. She shoved her left shoulder under his right arm, bracing his back with her left hand, and, slowly and steadily, got him out of the barn – pausing to secure the doors – and across what seemed to be a paved courtyard. In front of them loomed the bulk of a house. Quite small, square in shape, enclosed at the back by tall trees.
    She helped him up a flight of steps to the entrance to the main room, situated over an undercroft. She opened the heavy wooden door and warmth and candlelight flooded out to embrace them. She ushered him quickly inside and Ninian, who had sprung up from where he had been sprawling beside the fire, rushed to close and bar the door behind them.
    ‘Hello.’ Josse gave the boy a grin, which the boy returned.
    ‘Hello, Sir Josse d’Acquin.’ The boy glanced at the woman. ‘You can tell her you know what my name is,’ he added, ‘it’s the others that—’
    ‘Ninian!’ the woman said warningly.
    The boy gave a strangely adult shrug.
    The woman was putting cushions on to a thin palliasse placed in front of the wide hearth. ‘Come, lie down,’ she ordered Josse, ‘it’s not much, but it’s better than my son’s camp. Oh!’ She straightened up, looking aghast at Josse.
    ‘I already knew,’ he said gently, ‘despite your protestations to the contrary. Or, rather, I guessed.’ He longed to ask why it was so important to pretend Ninian wasn’t her son, but everything about her spoke of someone who was fiercely resisting others’ curiosity. Others’ attentions.
    She would have much preferred to leave me out in the woods, he thought as he lay down. Only her good Christian heart made her bring me here, out of the cold.
    As if she knew what he was thinking, she said, ‘I think you would have suffered sorely out there tonight. I did not want Ninian to be out at his camp, where he might have tended you and kept the fire in. He cannot play there anymore, not now that I know—’
    That you know someone is looking for you? he wondered. No – more than that. You’d have been aware of that all along. But now you have to accept that he’s closing in.
    He. Who is he?
    Is it – can it be – who I think it is?
    The woman brought him food