Later that evening, Mauger gave thought AS to whether or not he should take advantage of the opportunity that had presented itself that afternoon. He recalled the moment that Ivor Severtsson had walked into the hall and how he had been almost blinded with hate for the man. He had listened to the ensuing conversation between Nicolaa de la Haye and Severtsson’s merchant brother with distraction, the intensity of his rage overcoming his ability to focus on anything other than the bailiff.
Only when he realised that the wine Harold Severtsson was requesting the castellan to taste was to be flavoured with honey had his attention at last been diverted to the arrangements that were being made. As a small tun of the merchant’s wine was brought in and placed in the buttery, a capacious room just off the hall that was used for the storage of wine and ale, his speculation about how it could further his aim had begun. When Harald had followed the servant who was carrying the barrel with a jar of honey and a bag of spices in his arms, it had grown even further, especially when the butler had directed the merchant to place the condiments on top of the tun and leave them in the buttery.
The honey pot was of the same shape and design as the ones that were stored in Reinbald’s kitchen, and identical to the pots that Mauger had exchanged for those laden with poison. All were made by Wilkin and bore the Templar mark. Harald Severtsson must have decanted some of the foreign honey into a pot from his aunt’s store; it was a reasonable action, especially if the honey that had accompanied the wine had been in a larger container and he wanted to bring only enough to prepare the wine. Harald had said he was supplying the wine for the sampling free of cost, and a canny merchant did not willingly give away more of his wares than he needed to.
It would not be an easy matter to replace the honey that the merchant had brought for one laced with the poison. The buttery’s close placement to the confines of the hall would make it overlooked all night by the servants and knights that slept on the floor of the large open space, including the butler, who made up his pallet within the buttery itself. But in the early part of the morning, just after the night’s fast had been broken, Mauger might have an opportunity to enter the buttery undetected, at the time when the entire castle household went out into the bail to watch the selection of the queen of May.
For the space of an hour he wondered if it was worth the risk before finally deciding it was. There seemed to be no doubt that everyone considered the potter to be guilty of the crimes that had been committed; there would be no suspicion that the poisoner would strike again, not until after Nicolaa de la Haye and Richard Camville lay writhing on the floor in fatal agony, while the sheriff watched in horror. It was even possible that the merchant would drink some himself, but if he did not, it was most likely that, instead of the potter, the finger of guilt would now be pointed at Harald Severtsson; the brother of the man that Mauger hated most of all. The sheriff would be terrible in his wrath; he might even take his sword to Ivor’s brother without the nicety of a trial. The poisoner suppressed a grim smile. All of those he had sworn would pay for Drue’s and his father’s deaths would, at one stroke, suffer the same agonies of grief they had inflicted on him. Once that happened, he could watch their torment at leisure until he deemed the time had come for them, too, to pay the ultimate penalty for their sins. It would be a fine spectacle to witness.