Serpent in the Thorns

15

CRISPIN SET HIS WINE down. Peale dead and his secrets with him. “By an arrow?”

“No,” whispered Onslow. “Throat was cut. But not much is spoken of it. Most of the palace do not know, and the king wants it to stay that way.”

His throat cut? “That’s my fault,” Crispin muttered. “I should have taken better care. I should have thought of this.”

“How can it be your fault? No man can possibly blame you.”

“I made too well known the point that I was identifying some arrows.” And now there was no chance to prove identification. None at all. “My staying now is all the more imperative.”

“Do you think the assassin will strike tonight?”

“I think it a ripe possibility. It is best I serve in the great hall.”

“But Sir Crispin! They’ll recognize you.”

“Not if I keep my hood up and my head down.”

“You’re taking an awful risk.”

“What would you have me do? I owe Peale that much.”

Onslow ticked his head. “You serve the king, and he doesn’t even know it.”

Crispin said nothing, picked up the jug and knocked it back. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “And the scullions. No trouble? No threats?”

Onslow shrugged. “Nought that I could see. They work hard. No complaints. Would you speak with them?”

“No. I would not vex them. I brought them here to be safe. I would have them believe that this is so. I will wander about, if you will allow it.”

“Of course. My kitchen is your kitchen, Sir Crispin.”

Crispin did his best to stay out of the way. He did not make himself known to Livith or Grayce. He reckoned they would be less likely to call attention to themselves if they didn’t know he was watching them. Instead, he kept his hood up, and he walked along the perimeter of the kitchen, striding slowly, and nudging into the shadows when he could.

As the dinner hour approached, Crispin could feel the tension in the kitchens as the last-minute preparations were made. In the hall, the long trestle tables were probably already laid with their white linens, spoons, salt cellars, pipkins, and goblets. He detected music through the walls. That meant the diners had entered the hall and were assembling. Soon hands would be washed, a benediction prayed.

The king and his closest consorts would sit at the high table, but below that were tables for the noblemen of court. These were laid with tablecloths and less fine tableware than on the high table. They would be set with pewter chargers for the bread at each place, but the jugs for wine were of ceramic, not silver. Still, they sat closer to the king, and therefore it was a place of honor.

The low tables, farthest from the high table, would not sport the fine linen tablecloths, nor did they have their own salt cellars or even a bowl of their own. These men and women—lowest on the ladder of court hierarchy—shared their fare from the same trencher and their wine from the same cup. They might be pages. They might be minor nobles and rich merchants invited to eat with the king. They might be hangers on, ambitious men who sought the counsel and favors of some of the court’s nobles.

In days past, Crispin’s seat was at the middle tables, and sometimes at the high table itself, but only because Crispin was in the company of John of Gaunt. When Crispin was younger than Jack Tucker, he remembered serving the high table as a page. It was a privilege, after all, cutting the duke’s meat for him and serving as ewerer.

He gave a thought to Peale, for he would not be part of this earthly feast tonight. Why had Miles killed him? To prevent Crispin from discovering the identity of the arrows’ owner? But if they belonged to Lancaster, how did that incriminate Miles?

With a head beginning to ache with circular thoughts, Crispin found his way to the great hall’s archway. Pottage was already being wheeled forward to the hall in big cast-iron pots. Platters of oysters were next, with servings of roasted eels.

Onslow looked like a marshal on the field of battle, directing his troops to form their lines. The roasters readied their meats and laid the entire animal on beds of greens. Some of the birds were dressed again in their feathers. All were laid on biers to be hoist by two servants.

Crispin decided to be a wine server. He could get close enough to conversations but not tarry too long for anyone to look directly at him.

He caught Onslow’s eye amid the cook’s wild gesticulations and nodded to him, but the look on Onslow’s face seemed to say “be careful.”

Crispin agreed wholeheartedly.

He drew the edge of his hood down low to his brows and grabbed a jug of wine. He followed a line of boys carrying long skewers of fist-sized quails all bunched together. He kept his head down and emerged into a hall already bursting with activity.

Crispin slowed and paused in the doorway. A wave of nostalgia rumbled in his chest. It had been a long time since he’d seen the hall in its full bloom. The coronas blazed with candles. Cressets burned. Golden light showered the hall’s expanse. There were so many lights that the diners barely noticed that the sun had moved behind the clouds, making its long path toward the horizon.

But the noise. He’d forgotten the noise of diners talking and laughing. Musicians plucked and hammered and whistled merrily away, their notes dancing above the cacophony reverberating off the banner-draped walls. Jugglers and acrobats talked a patter as they tossed wooden balls and moved leisurely between the many tables.

Then there were the smells of smoke and roasted meats and sizzling butter and spices and fresh-baked manchets and sugar and honey and people and herbs.

It was almost more than he could bear.

“Oi! You. Move there.”

Crispin scuttled out of the doorway so more servants could enter with their fare. He strode into the hall, keeping his head down but his eyes raised into the sheltering shadow of his hood.

He scanned the room. Where was Miles?

There. He sat on a bench at one of the low tables in the company of several men Crispin didn’t recognize. The men were eating the food on their shared trencher with relish, reaching in with their fingers or jabbing a quail with the tip of their knives. In fact, all the men around Miles laughed, chatted, and ate—all except Miles. He leaned on his elbow and steadily drank from his clay goblet. And not once did he take his eyes off the king’s dais.

Crispin turned toward the far end of the hall. At the middle of the high table on a fine wooden seat sat Richard himself.

Crispin drew closer even though his good judgment told him not to.

Absently, he poured wine for those who motioned him over, careful to keep his head down and say nothing. He moved between the benches and edged nearer to the high table.

Richard, now seventeen, was pale and round-faced, with those same heavily lidded eyes Crispin remembered. His fair hair fell in curls about his face, not quite long enough to reach his gold-embroidered collar, or his shoulders in their red velvet coat patterned in foliated circles. He wore a crown, a simple gold circlet with trefoiled points. He sported the beginnings of a goatee and faint mustache. He listened to the other diners as they talked, but his attention seemed to be diverted by his diminutive bride of over a year, Anne of Bohemia.

Sixteen years old and possessed of a simple face, Anne could have been the daughter of a merchant. There was nothing particularly regal about her. Perhaps that was what Richard found so appealing. Surrounded by the likes of his very regal mother Joan of Kent, his uncle John of Gaunt, his Chancellor Michael de la Pole, his chamberlain Robert de Vere, and his tutor Simon Burley, it was as imposing an entourage as one could endure.

Crispin tried not to stare at Gaunt. The duke’s face was flush in a healthy if not slightly inebriated glow. His wife, Constance, sat several chairs away and kept a solicitous eye on him. Crispin couldn’t help but suffer a strange feeling in his gut about Lancaster.

This was foolish. To be so close to the head table. Crispin knew he was asking for trouble. He should keep close to Miles and he turned to do just that when Joan, the queen mother, called out to him.

“Bring the wine, man.”

Crispin would have clouted himself if he’d a free hand. He couldn’t just run, could he?

He pivoted slowly. His heart hammered and he steadily approached the dais. He kept his head down and moved up the steps as if they were a gibbet.

Joan had kept her pert beauty, though now her face was etched with grooves, particularly at the eyes and mouth. She did not look at Crispin as she raised her goblet. Several of the others also indicated they needed wine and Crispin bowed his head so low he feared he might stumble.

He filled Queen Joan’s goblet and then Richard raised his.

Crispin hesitated for a moment. Of all the places he could have been, of all the things he could be doing, he didn’t imagine he’d be serving the king wine. Mildly he thought of poisons as the red liquor drawled into his Majesty’s cup.

He breathed again when it appeared safe enough to leave. Wiping the jug’s lip with his fingers, he turned on his heel when he noticed that his mentor the duke had raised his cup. Crispin paused. No. Don’t stay! Crispin pretended he had not seen the duke’s gesture and made to leave, but a page stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Knave,” the boy hissed at him. “The duke of Lancaster needs wine.”

Crispin stared wide-eyed at the boy, that whelp in his way, hindering his escape. The boy’s audacious grip tightened on Crispin’s arm. “Are you deaf?” Without warning, he spun Crispin around and pushed him toward Lancaster.

Crispin swayed for a moment. It wasn’t fear exactly that froze him to the spot but an overwhelming sense of stupidity, that he could have avoided this. With a fatalistic sigh, he edged behind the throne and reached toward the duke as far as he could without getting closer. He tilted the jug and clapped its spout to Lancaster’s raised cup. The pouring of it seemed to take the length of a small eternity. But once the cup was finally filled, he lifted the jug away and let out a long breath and even a chuckle. That wasn’t so hard. At last. He was free to depart and no one had been the wiser. God be praised.

But then the duke looked up.