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Tiphaine began gathering the ingredients together, pushing them carefully back into the bag. ‘Not from some village wise woman, that’s for sure,’ she said, ‘for there are things here that even Hawkenlye Abbey doesn’t keep.’
         ‘But we have to be careful to—’ the Abbess began, apparently sensing a criticism. Then she stopped. ‘Please, Sister,’ she said majestically, ‘go on.’
         ‘My lady, the things I refer to are not necessarily the costly items,’ the infirmarer said gently, ‘although for sure I would hesitate to use as much myrrh as this in any remedy unless I could be sure of getting my hands on some more. Wasteful, I call it,’ she added in a mutter. ‘I was thinking of the vervain.’ With a swift look at Josse – which he failed to understand just as thoroughly as he had done the Sister’s remark about eating bodies – she said, ‘I could understand the vervain if this were a potion produced by the Forest Folk, but it isn’t. I can be quite certain of that because they don’t use mandrake.’
         ‘Ah, I see,’ the Abbess said. ‘You mean that vervain is not used at Hawkenlye because of its magical associations?’
         ‘Aye. Which I reckon suggests our dead man wasn’t given his remedy in any convent or monastery.’
         ‘Where, then?’ asked Josse.
         ‘I would say that this’ – Sister Tiphaine held up the little bag, whose neck she had tied up with a length of string – ‘was purchased from an apothecary. A good one, I’d say, and probably an expensive one. No man would put so much mandrake and myrrh in a potion and then give it away.’
         Asking the question more in hope than expectation, Josse said, ‘Do you know of such an apothecary hereabouts, Sister?’ The infirmarer shook her head. ‘And what of you, my lady?’
         ‘No,’ the Abbess said reluctantly. ‘I have never consulted an apothecary and I would not even know how to go about finding one. What shall we do, Sir Josse?’
         Feeling at that moment quite bereft of any sensible suggestions, Josse held his peace. Then gradually an image began to form itself in his mind: a dead body on a narrow cot, a vicious, crushing blow in its skull.
         The man carried nothing with which we might identify him, Josse thought, except for this little remedy in its cloth bag. Sister Tiphaine, bless her for her skill, has told us far more about it that I for one could have hoped for, including the very useful fact that it was put together by a master in the apothecary’s art. None out of the three of us knows of such a man, but this man, whoever he is, must be located because, once shown the remedy, he will be able to tell us for whom it was prescribed.
         Or at least let us hope that he will  . . .
         ‘My lady,’ Josse said, with more confidence that he felt, ‘we must, I believe, await the arrival of Gervase de Gifford. We shall ask him whether there is a skilled apothecary in Tonbridge or anywhere else in the vicinity, and if such a man exists and cannot help us, then we must broaden our search until the right man is found. Then we will  . . .’
         ‘. . . ask the identity of the man for whom he prescribed this potion so that, provided the purchaser did not give the potion to someone else, we shall then be able to put a name to our dead man,’ the Abbess finished for him. ‘Yes, Sir Josse, I fully understand your reasoning.’
         Of course she did. ‘Aye, my lady.’
         But, as they thanked Sister Tiphaine and left her to her bunches of rosemary, Josse wondered if the Abbess had extended that reasoning as far as he had. What he was thinking was that being given the dead man’s name and circumstances was a very good start in discovering who had killed him.
         And why.
     
    Gervase de Gifford arrived shortly after Josse and Helewise had returned to her room. Helewise experienced a moment’s regret; she had hoped