The Tainted Coin by Mel Starr Page A

dug up the soil beneath it. Arthur and I stood silently and gazed at the mess. After a moment I walked to the front door and tested it. It opened readily. It was not locked. Either Amice had failed to lock it when she and her children were taken off, or men had come in the night with a key. I chided myself that I had not tried the door the day before.
    Little sunlight penetrated the single window of oiled skin, for the day was cloudy and a light drizzle had begun to fall. But there was enough light that the shambles which was Amice Thatcher’s home was plain.
    “Didn’t tell ’em where the chapman found ’is coins,” Arthur said.
    “Aye. Doesn’t know, or wouldn’t tell, else they would not have overturned this place seeking loot.”

    “Did they come in the night, I wonder, or did this happen yesterday?” Arthur swept his hand and his gaze about the ruin.
    “We might learn from the old woman who lives across the way. She strikes me as the sort who allows little to escape her notice.”
    Arthur grinned agreement, and followed as I pushed through the front door and crossed the narrow lane to the crone’s hut. Vigorous thumping upon the woman’s door brought no response.
    In the silence after my pounding Arthur heard something which had escaped me. The gentle mist softened other sounds, so when the old woman groaned a response to my knocking Arthur barely heard her and I heard nothing at all. And at the moment he was unsure of what he had heard.
    I saw Arthur raise a finger and frown, then cock his head attentively toward the door.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “Dunno… someone in there’s in trouble, I think. Heard a moan, like, just now.”
    I tried the latch and the door swung open. If someone was within they had not troubled themselves to bar the door. They had not done so, I soon discovered, because they could not.
    Rusty hinges squealed when I pushed the door open. When they quieted I heard from within the house a groan, frantic in nature, as if the soul who voiced it feared she would not be heard or discovered.
    The interior of the house was dark, my vision obscured, but when I sought the source of the moaning I saw, propped against a wall, the shape of the old woman who had told me of Amice Thatcher’s departure the day before.
    Rushes were thin upon the floor, and had not, I think, been changed for many months. So when I knelt beside the woman my knees rested upon dirt. She looked up to me and seized my arm with bony fingers when I bent close. Her bed lay nearby, and I wondered why, if she was ill, she had not sought it rather than the uncomfortable place where she lay, her head pillowed by the wall of her house. I soon discovered the reason.
    “Kicked me, the knave,” she whispered.
    “Who?”
    “Them as was pryin’ about Amice’s house last night.”
    The effort to report this to me sapped the woman’s strength. She had raised herself upon an elbow when she spoke, but fell back against the wall, exhausted, when she finished.
    Arthur peered over my shoulder. I told him to take the old woman’s shoulders, and I would lift her feet. Together we would lay her upon the bed. Then, when she was more comfortable, perhaps I might learn more of who had kicked her and why they had been prowling about Amice Thatcher’s house. I thought I knew the answer to both questions.
    The crone gasped when Arthur and I lifted her from the floor, but sighed gratefully when we set her gently upon her bed. I placed her pillow beneath her head, and when I did, she spoke again. “Ale,” she whispered.
    Arthur heard, and crossed the small house to a crude table where rested an equally crude ewer. I watched as he lifted it, then turned it upside down.
    “Empty,” he said. “Seen another ale house down toward the marketplace. Be back shortly.”
    “Who was it did you this injury?” I asked when Arthur disappeared through the door.
    “Dunno,” she mumbled. “Heard voices. Opened the door to see who was about so