Serpent in the Thorns

10

OPEN OR NOT, THE Boar’s Tusk was Crispin’s next destination. He knew Gilbert would let him in.

Jack stayed at home, begging off. Crispin knew how he felt. A little frightened, a little at a loss as to what to do. Jack would spend the day cleaning the little room they shared, and that suited Crispin.

The streets were oddly deserted. Merchants stood in their windows staring impotently at the streets. Several philosophers stood over a brazier, shaking their heads, commenting. A short man with a receded hairline hovered just outside their circle. He edged closer as their words became more heated.

“Lenny!” called Crispin to the short man.

Lenny swore an oath with a cloud of breath. The men glanced at him once, but it was enough to break the spell of his anonymity.

He trotted toward Crispin with shaking head. He had the habit of hunching his shoulders and keeping his head below them, much like a buzzard. Crispin supposed he caught the habit from too long a time in low-ceilinged gaol cells.

“What you go and spoil me game for, Master Crispin?”

“You don’t want to end up in gaol again, do you, Lenny? You might lose a hand this time for certain.”

“You wouldn’t put old Lenny back in gaol, would you, good Master? Weren’t it enough you done it three times?”

“Let’s not make it a fourth. The sheriff is not likely to be cozened again out of taking a limb of yours in punishment. Wasn’t the loss of an ear enough?”

Lenny rubbed the scabbed place where his ear had been and where his long, stringy hair covered it. “How’s a man like me to make a living, I ask you? I ain’t fit for much else, and that’s the truth.”

“Let my example be yours. I have a new profession, after all.”

“Well you’re you, ain’t you?” Lenny rubbed his chin bristling with a three-day beard. His eye twinkled. “There wouldn’t be something you want to hire old Lenny for, is there?”

“Not at the moment. You still live near the Thistle Inn?”

“It’s a place I can be found.”

Crispin considered. “I may have something for you. You know my man Jack, don’t you?”

“We met once or twice.”

“He may come round and give you a message from me.”

“And a farthing?”

“And a farthing. You see? It isn’t all that hard to make a decent living.”

Lenny smiled and revealed blackened teeth. He trotted off, running along the edge of the gutter.

Crispin watched him disappear into London’s grayness. He felt the arrows at his side and thought about the fletcher he needed to talk to. Edward Peale was his name. Crispin had known him well from the old days at court, in the days Crispin used to hunt in the king’s deer park with other courtiers. Peale made the finest, straightest arrows. And he made his mark on every one of them, the mark Crispin recognized on both shafts. He also made marks to show the ownership of such arrows. It would be a simple matter, then, for Peale to identify the marks and convict Miles.

But there was the matter of getting into court to talk to Peale. Certainly he was ensconced in the palace grounds as he always had been. Difficult, that. For one, Crispin was forbidden entrance to court. And two, with an attempt on the king’s life, Westminster Palace would be shut up tighter than a barrel of French wine.

Thinking of the king he wondered how severe this attempt was. Abbot Nicholas would surely know.

He glanced toward Gutter Lane just ahead and licked his lips. The Boar’s Tusk was only a short distance around the corner and it was a long, thirsty walk to Westminster.

“Damn.”

Business first. He must find out what happened to the king.

THE STREETS ALONG WESTMINSTER Abbey and Westminster Palace simmered with activity. Soldiers scrambled everywhere like ants, moving just as mindlessly. They stopped Crispin three separate times with a “what’s your business?” before he was able to make his way to the abbey’s doorstep.

When Crispin rang the bell, it took longer than usual for a monk to appear and open the gate. The monk wasn’t a brother Crispin recognized, but he took Crispin to the abbot’s empty chamber. The monk served Crispin wine and hurriedly left, leaving him alone to contemplate the stained-glass window raining colors on the abbot’s desk.

After a brief interval, the door opened and the abbot rushed in.

“Forgive me, Crispin. As you can imagine, this is a busy time.”

“Yes. I came to get information on those very doings.”

“Good. I see you have wine. I will pour my own. Please. Sit.” Abbot Nicholas fussed with the flagon, lifted the goblet, and pressed the goblet’s rim to his dry lips. His throat, peppered with gray stubble from a rushed razor, rolled with a swallow. He moved smoothly to his chair, settled on its cushion, and looked up at Crispin. “A busy morn.”

“No doubt.”

A pause fell over the room until Nicholas broke it by something between a sigh and a snort. “The king is in good health, God be praised. Thank you for asking.” Nicholas’s sardonic expression disappeared behind the goblet.

Crispin quaffed his own cup. No, he didn’t ask, didn’t really care all that much about Richard’s health, but as a citizen he was interested to know. “Didn’t kill him, eh?”

Nicholas raised a hand. A benediction? A call for silence? “You truly should not speak your treason so loudly.”

“Is it treason to wonder if the king is dead?”

His age-yellowed eyes fell kindly on Crispin. “For you, perhaps.”

Crispin toyed with his empty goblet. “What happened?”

“His Majesty was taking an early-morning turn in his garden with his counselors when the attempt was made.”

“Don’t tell me. An arrow?”

The abbot’s eyes enlarged twofold. Wine glistened on his parted lips. “How did you know?” he whispered.

Crispin shrugged. He launched from his chair with the goblet, stood at the sideboard, and touched the flagon, but decided against it and left the goblet there. He turned. The abbot’s tonsure was a mosaic of color from the window’s light. “There is an assassin afoot and he uses a bow. Was anyone hurt?”

“Only a servant. He is well. It hit his arm. It was he who pushed the king aside out of harm’s way. He saw a cloaked figure with a bow ready to fire just over the garden wall.”

Crispin looked at the flagon and nodded. The innocent. They’re always dragged into the king’s business with disastrous results. Maybe more wine wasn’t such a bad idea. He grabbed the flagon and sloshed wine into the goblet, then snatched up the cup and drank. His sleeve took away the excess from the side of his mouth.

“Did the assassin escape?”

“God help us, but yes. The figure slipped back over the wall. No one else saw a thing, neither guards nor page. He seemed to fade into the shadows of court.”

“Hmm. ‘Shadows of court.’ Interesting.”

“Crispin, how do you know of this assassin? Do you know who it is?”

“Yes, I think I do. But there is much I cannot yet reveal.”

Crispin noticed the abbot eyeing the arrows in his belt. “You must! Have you told the sheriff?”

Crispin moved his hand over the arrows before he let his fingers drop away. “No. And I won’t.”

“By God’s wounds! Why not?”

The goblet reached his lips again and the deep peach and citrus flavors of the wine smoothed his tongue. “I have my reasons.”

Nicholas put his goblet aside and stood. “Is it because you would see the king dead?”

Crispin’s eyes narrowed over the rim of his cup and he drank the last of it, licked his lips, and set the goblet down. “Would I see Richard dead at the hands of an assassin? No. He is my king.”

Nicholas shook his head. “You have a strange sense of honor.”

“Is it strange to protect the crown but not its wearer? If that is so, then . . . well. Perhaps I do have a strange sense of honor. ‘It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.’ ”

“As always, Aristotle proves wise. Your heart is in the right place, but your philosophy will invariably cause you trouble.”

“I do not shy from trouble, my Lord Abbot. ‘Trouble’ is my patron name.”

“Indeed. You know too much about this for my liking.”

“Don’t you trust me, my lord?”

“Yes.” Nicholas said it in a drawn-out tenor that made Crispin doubt.

“I see. Even my friends shy when the possibility of treason lies at the heart of it. Well, I have seen the like before.” He strode toward the door in long strides until Nicholas intervened.

“What of your French courier?”

Crispin halted and without turning asked, “What of him?”

“Did you not say he was dispatched by an arrow?”

“Yes. The same sort of arrow, in fact. I do not think it a coincidence.”

Nicholas eyed the arrows in Crispin’s belt again. “My son, is there . . . is there not something you would confess to me? Something . . . you keep deep in your heart?”

Crispin put his hand involuntarily on the arrows, feeling the stiff fletching under his calloused palm. “No, Lord Abbot. I have no need of shriving today.” He turned to go again when the abbot moved forward and laid a strong hand on his arm. Crispin stopped himself from shrugging it off. Nicholas meant well. But then, many had meant well.

Nicholas huffed impatiently. “You would simply leave, Crispin? Surely your path is a dangerous one. Why is it you never ask for a benediction when you depart? Lesser men ask for it. It is so little a gift to give.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Don’t need God’s blessing? Or is it you don’t believe in it?”

“Of course I believe.” He bit down on the rest of his words. What he couldn’t say was that he didn’t believe he deserved it.

Crispin saw the abbot approach and turned his head slightly. The abbot gave his blessing without the asking. The shadow of a cross fell over Crispin, painted in the air by the abbot’s sure hand. Crispin accepted it without comment and passed through the threshold, leaving the abbot’s lodge.

He did not look back as the door closed on the monk’s worried countenance. Instead, he strode purposefully through the familiar colonnade of the cloister, giving the cloister garden a hasty glance, its herbs and greenery slowly browning as summer blooms surrendered to fall. Coming to the end of the colonnade, he met the brother at the gate, thanked him with a bow, and left the abbey’s grounds.

Crispin’s tongue sang with the abbot’s good wine but he still had enough thirst for a bowl of the Boar’s Tusk’s finest.

AFTER A HALF HOUR of walking back to London he turned the corner at Gutter Lane and caught the sweet sight of the tavern, though the incongruity of men being shoved out the door so early in the day gave rise to a snicker in Crispin’s throat.

He watched the spectacle from across the lane. Gilbert himself helped the uncooperative men over the threshold. He clapped his hands together, looked up, and saw Crispin.

“Oi! Crispin!” He waved him over and Crispin trotted across.

“I feared you’d be closing your doors,” said Crispin.

“Not to you. Come in.”

Crispin was used to the tavern sitting empty, but such a sight was usually reserved for the middle of the night, not noontime. Ned stood in the center of the smoky room, surveying the vacant, worn tables with a sorrowful look on his face. He nodded a greeting to Crispin but couldn’t seem to smile it.

Gilbert offered Crispin a seat at his usual spot in the back, farthest from the door, and Crispin took it. “I suppose you know the tidings, then,” he said to Crispin.

He nodded and when Ned brought a full jug and two bowls, Crispin felt that he was home.

Gilbert shook his head and poured the wine, scooting the first bowl toward Crispin. “How is the king?”

“He lives,” said Crispin. He quaffed the wine then lowered the bowl, grabbed the jug, and splashed more wine in the cup. “I’m becoming concerned that I will not be able to bring the culprit the full attention he deserves.”

Gilbert’s red nose hovered over his bowl. “You already know who did it?”

“Yes. I have proof right here.” He patted the arrows snug against his side.

Ned shuffled forward and laid a round loaf on the table. Crispin felt his belly rumble at the sight and realized he hadn’t eaten since Jack’s early-morning repast. He tore a hunk from the loaf, clamped a piece in his teeth, and took the bread into his mouth. He chewed and then dipped the edge of a hunk into his wine and sucked up the dripping crumbs.

“Then why don’t you go straight to the sheriff with it?”

“That’s not the direction I intend to go.”

“I don’t understand you, Crispin. You’ve got proof. Let the sheriff do his duty.”

“This is my kill,” he said quietly. Gilbert stared at him strangely and Crispin realized what he’d said. He tried to smile. “What I mean is, I’d rather do it myself.”

Gilbert shook his head and thumbed the rim of his bowl. His lips were slick with wine. “After all you’ve been through, why do you keep trying?”

Crispin knocked back the bowl. He set it down empty and grabbed the jug. His voice was hard. “I want to win.”

“It’s a stark game you play.”

“It’s a never-ending game.” He drank and caught Gilbert’s sorrowful expression. He patted him on the back until the burly man looked up at him. “Don’t worry over me, Gilbert. I can take care of myself.”

“Aye, you keep saying that, yet Eleanor and I keep putting you back together. I’m afraid there will come a time when the king gets ahold of you again and they’ll be no putting you back together.”

Crispin chuckled without mirth. “The king no longer frightens me.”

Gilbert opened his mouth to speak but the rest of his words never made it across the table. He rose halfway to his feet with a stunned expression on his face. He looked past Crispin’s shoulder.

“Gilbert? What—” Crispin followed Gilbert’s gaze and turned to look. He rose abruptly from the bench. The bread dropped from his hand.

Grayce staggered into the tavern’s hall. Her face had collapsed into a grimace of anguish.

Gilbert was at her side first though Crispin was on his heels. “What’s wrong, girl?”

She looked from Gilbert to Crispin. “Oh help us! Good masters, help. Livith!”

She broke down and dropped her head in her hands. Crispin stood at her other elbow. “What of Livith?”

She lifted her head. Her face was streaked with tears. Her lips parted stickily. “Oh Tracker! You must help her! She’s been shot!”