Cup of Blood

CHAPTER NINETEEN

With the cell door closed and bolted behind him, Crispin experienced a raw chill of recollection.

Stephen sat on the wooden pallet, knees up and arms wrapped around his legs. He stared blankly into the cold hearth. The chiseled window allowed for a little gray light but made the room cold. “What do you want now?” Stephen snarled. “I thought I was free of you.”

“It is none too comfortable, is it?”

Stephen glared at Crispin but said nothing.

“You will grow accustomed to it. I did. I, too, awaited judgment. You, of course, will die for this murder and justice will be served at last.”

Stephen’s face lay in shadow and his voice arose equally dark. “You will never succeed in this.”

“I already have.”

“You are spineless, Guest. They should have drawn and quartered you. They should have pulled out your worthless guts and set them ablaze before your eyes.”

Crispin’s mouth slanted in a crooked smile. “But they didn’t. Perhaps God spared me for this day.”

“How were you ever made a knight? Whose wife did you lay with to smooth the way of your pardon?”

Crispin grabbed Stephen’s shirt and hauled him up. Nose to nose, he took a ragged breath and then another before he finally released him. Stephen fell back on the pallet and laughed, shaking his head. “You poor bastard. Even in revenge you fail. For if I am convicted, it will be for murder, while you will always be known as a traitor.”

Crispin’s fingers whitened on his dagger. He stepped back and took a cleansing breath. “And yet, your sister will be my wife. And all of your lands will be mine. When you are dead, it will be as if you never were. Consider that.”

Stephen looked up only to sneer at him.

“The sheriff sent me to ask you questions.”

“The both of you can go to Hell.”

“I’ve already been there.” Crispin kept his distance. “If you will not answer my questions, Sir Stephen, how can I help you? The sheriff will then ask, and his methods are far more unrefined.”

“You? Help me? You must think me a fool. Anything I tell you will be twisted and used to destroy me.”

“I see you still have no inkling about my character.”

“I know a traitor when I see one.”

The words stung, but Crispin only smiled in reply, the kind of smile reserved for menials. “Let us not dwell on history. Such is past and done. Today we talk of you. Of murders and of… other adventures. When I discovered you, you were being pursued. Your hands had been bound. Shall we begin there?”

Stephen rubbed his wrists. “Yes, why not?” Crispin watched him carefully. Stephen appeared to be weighing his words. “I was abducted. Held hostage for two days.”

“Indeed. By whom?”

Stephen opened his mouth then closed it. He paused before starting again. “By disreputable men.”

“What did they want?”

The knight laughed, a sound like crumpled parchment. “To torture me.”

“Is that all they wanted?”

“No. They wanted something they thought I possessed. For a while I convinced them I didn’t have it.”

“And how did you accomplish that?”

“By telling them you had it.”

Crispin pushed away from the wall and drew his knife. “You bastard. You set them on me!”

Stephen smiled broadly and leaned back against the wall. “I suppose I did. I take it you were also not in possession of this object. Did they torture you, too? I would have liked to have seen that.”

Crispin felt his hand clench tighter around the dagger hilt. He took a breath. Took another. He tapped the flat of the blade against his other hand and quickly sheathed it. “What did they seek?”

“I am uncertain.”

“No you’re not. They seek the Holy Grail.”

Stephen’s smile dimmed and he scrambled to his feet. Crispin touched his dagger and stepped back, but Stephen did not draw near him. His face changed. The skin paled to a sickly gray. “God’s toes, Crispin!” He trembled. “They hinted at such but I never believed…I couldn’t! Does it…is it real?”

Taken aback, Crispin lowered his hand from his weapon. He angled slightly away from the knight but kept him within his field of vision. “I know not. I have yet to see it.”

“Christ!” Stephen raked his hair with his fingers. His haughty bitterness lay forgotten. “I thought them insane, asking over and over. I could tell them nothing. How could I say? It’s the stuff of legends, is it not?”

“Do you know who they were?”

“No.”

Crispin eyed him, looking for any sign of deception, annoyed he couldn’t find any. “It is rumored they are Clement VII’s men.”

Stephen’s eyes widened.

“The anti-pope. Apparently they want the grail. The knight you killed, Gaston D’Arcy, was the cup bearer, the keeper of the grail. Everyone assumed you took it after you killed him.”

“Cup bearer? What riddle is here? You say Gaston D’Arcy was a Knight Templar?” Crispin nodded. Stephen sat and dropped his head in his hands. He said nothing for a long time. Crispin waited.

“A Templar!” Stephen spat. “A Templar indeed!”

“Tell me what you argued about.”

With his head still resting on his palms, Stephen shook his head. “There is nothing further to say.”

“You are a whoreson, but you are no idiot. Tell me!”

Stephen raised his head. “I repeat: Go to Hell.”

Crispin nodded. “Then you are a fool. And you will hang.”

“Then so be it.”

Crispin turned and knocked on the door. “Gaoler! I am done here.” When the door swung open he glanced once more at Stephen. “And so are you.”

The door slammed on the knight and Crispin smiled with grim satisfaction, but the smile remained only briefly. The sense of triumph he expected fell short.

Crispin returned to the sheriff in his chamber. Wynchecombe did not gloat, or at least his expression did not show it. “Well?”

Crispin sighed. “He told me nothing.”

The sheriff sat back and pressed his fingertips together. “Are you satisfied?”

Crispin shook his head. “My lord, I must leave now.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

Crispin would never understand the sheriff. Here was a puzzle of great import and he had no interest whatsoever in any of its intricacies. Did he not wish to know who captured and detained Stephen, the same who did so to Crispin? Had he no curiosity at all about the grail? Be myth or reality, dangerous men sought it, were willing to kill for it. Wynchecombe didn’t care. If it didn’t fall within his usual sphere of rogue, cutpurse, or murderer, he had no use for it.

Quickly, before he changed his mind, Crispin scraped the coins from the table into his hand. No use letting them go to waste. With a curt bow to hide his embarrassment, Crispin took his leave. He dropped the coins into his money pouch on his way down the stairs, and soon finally stood outside the prison. He looked up, scanned the walls. His eyes lit momentarily on each slotted window in the gate tower. Stephen’s cell would be the one on the far left overlooking Newgate’s sewage run-off that slipped in green tendrils toward the Fleet.

Why was Stephen so stubborn? What did he hide? He had concentrated so tightly on events surrounding Gaston D’Arcy and the grail that he’d quite forgotten to ask about Vivienne. No matter. Stephen was going nowhere and there would be time enough to discover what Lady Stancliff and Stephen had in common, as well as the subject of Stephen’s earnest conversation with Rosamunde.

Rosamunde. He wondered if there would ever come a day when he thought of her name without a pang of longing in his heart.

He tried, with little success, to think of her in the abstract all the way back to his lodgings. When his boot touched the bottom step, he paused. Visions of Rosamunde fled.

A man. He felt more than saw him in the shadows at the top of the landing. It wasn’t Jack, but that was all he knew. The landing above creaked and confirmed what his gut told him.

He braced himself against the railing, held his breath and shot up the stairs like a quarrel from a crossbow. The man had no time to escape-where was he to go? — and Crispin pinned him against the wall so hard the plaster gave way and flecked on the man’s shoulders. The man groaned and hung his head.

“You have to the count of three to tell me who you are,” Crispin rasped, cocking his fist at the man’s eye level. “One…two…thr-”

“Hold! Hold! I am the sheriff’s man!”

Crispin’s gnarled fist remained near the man’s face. “Say again.”

“I am the Lord Sheriff’s man!”

“Why have you been following me?”

“I was under orders.” His gaze darted from Crispin’s fist, to his face, and back again.

“Orders?”

“To follow you. My Lord Sheriff did not trust you to find Sir Stephen and report it immediately.”

Crispin clenched his fist, wanting now more than ever to mash it into the man’s face, but it was really Simon Wynchecombe he wanted before him.

He lowered his hand, released the man’s shirt and stepped back. “Then your charge is done,” he said coldly. “Get back to your master and never let me see you again.”

“Aye,” he grumbled. He straightened his cotehardie and skirted warily past Crispin down the stairs.

Crispin heaved a sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “Damn the man,” he hissed, thinking of Wynchecombe and his suspicions. He took another breath to relax and lifted the key from his pouch. He pushed the door open, but stopped on the threshold, neck tingling.

Too late he sensed the men in the room. They dragged him forward, and slammed the door shut behind him.