THE TAVERN IN THE MORNING
by Alys Clare
In his third adventure (Ashes of the Elements, 2001, etc.), Josse D’Aquin, king’s man and knight, returns home from a cold, hard trip to find that a man has died at the local tavern. The wolf’s bane Josse discovers in the leftovers is not one of Goody Anne’s usual seasonings. But why would someone deliberately poison a poor and harmless farmer like Peter Ely? The only clue is that a handsome nobleman ate a bit of the same dish at the same time as poor Peter. After consulting with his usual partner in these investigations, Abbess Helewise, who’s laid low by a fever, Josse sets off on the nobleman’s trail. His rewards for this sleuthing are a concussion and a mysterious encounter with a smart little boy and a beautiful young woman, apparently hiding from the same mysterious nobleman. Then the nobleman appears at Hawkenlye Abbey and introduces himself to Helewise as Denys de Courtenay, searching for his recently widowed and distraught cousin Joanna and her son. The Abbess instinctively distrusts the oily Denys, and Josse, chivalrous and smitten, rushes back to her hideout to protect her. At length, he manages to do considerably more than that, and the determined Joanna uses him to create a new life for herself and her son.
La belle dame sans merci meets 1990s New Age feminism: an awkwardly uncertain romance.