Cup of Blood

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After leaving Vivienne, he decided to accept the convent’s humble hospitality. Once the morning light brightened his small room, he donned his own garments and stuffed those donated by Martin Kemp into the saddle bag. He could now happily return the clothes to his landlord and owe nothing.

But as he stretched into the damp morning and pulled himself into the saddle again, he could think of nothing better than Gilbert’s wine and the comfort of the Boar’s Tusk. Of course he would have to first return the horse to the sheriff and explain why he did not have a prisoner.

His hips rolled along with the mare’s gait. “I do not have to tell him the whole truth,” he muttered, and put up his hood.

He rode silently, reviewing his diagram in his head and rearranging the names to piece together the new information. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold. How many lies were there now? How many more were there to find?

He arrived in London after sext and slowed his mount to a dull plod before dipping down toward Newgate.

He left the horse in the stable courtyard with a groom, and took his time reaching Wynchecombe’s hall, but when he neared it, he heard him arguing with someone.

Rosamunde.

Flattening against the wall, Crispin considered. He certainly did not wish to challenge Rosamunde again, and the sheriff would not be pleased that he returned empty-handed. The Boar’s Tusk was looking better and better. He felt a bit of a coward when he turned on his heel, but he consoled himself that another confrontation with Rosamunde was bad for his disposition and a bowl of wine was the only cure.

Crispin pushed his way through the throng blocking the entrance to the Boar’s Tusk. After finally freeing himself, he staggered into the room and scowled at the crowd still pushing their way in.

All he wanted was some peace and quiet. What the hell was all this?

He spotted Gilbert near the back doorway and tried to make his way toward him, but the crush of people overwhelmed. No way through. He jumped up onto a long table instead and walked across the planks to the next table until he reached him.

Gilbert looked up just as Crispin leapt to the ground.

“Sweet Jesu, Gilbert. What goes on here?”

“I do not know,” he shouted back over the noise. “There is a rumor about the wine. Now everyone wants it, but I am nearly out. I fear a riot.”

“The wine? Surely not yours.”

He shook his head. “I know not. People have come saying they were healed of infirmities, and they think it is my wine.”

Crispin scoffed. “All because of rumor?”

“Aye. But the casks are nearly empty. What can I do?”

“You may have to call in the sheriffs.”

Gilbert cast his gaze across the heads and faces angrily shouting for drink. “What will they do to my place?”

“I don’t know. I only came for the peace and quiet. And of course your excellent wine.”

Gilbert looked at him and suddenly laughed. “Come with me,” he gestured, and Crispin followed him through the back courtyard and down a staircase to the lower mews.

“At least it is quieter here,” he said, leading Crispin to a table and stools. Oil lamps lit the store room and shadowed the large casks that lined the walls. “If it is wine you want, wine you shall have.” He took a jug from a shelf and filled it from a spigot. He raised the jug triumphantly and brought it and two clay cups to the table.

“So now your wine has miracle properties, eh? I always thought it was the water.”

“There now! You know I do not water my wine.”

They both drank. Gilbert’s face concentrated on the flavors. Crispin found himself doing the same and trying to discern anything new.

“This is madness,” Crispin said at last, putting the cup down. “There is nothing to this wine. It is a miracle if it tastes good.”

Gilbert feigned shock. “Indeed! And yet you return day after day.”

With a nod Crispin drank again. “Hope over experience.”

“Well, if no miracle, then perhaps a special cask, but I cannot seem to taste a difference from one to the other.”

Footsteps rushed down the stairs and they both turned to spy Gilbert’s servant clinging to the stair rail.

“What it is, boy?”

“Master, forgive me, but I’ve taken the liberty of telling them people that we sent all our wine to the Monk Tavern, and they’ve begun to clear out.”

“Ned, my boy!” Gilbert rushed up, grabbed Ned by his ears, and turned his head downward to kiss his crown. “That’s good thinking. Now it’s the Monk’s problem.” Ned shook his head and rushed back up the stairs.

Gilbert returned to the table and sat with a sigh of relief. “I tell you, Crispin, strange things seem to be happening of late. I owe it to that murder. You don’t suppose that dead knight haunts us, do you?”

“I do not believe in ghosts, Gilbert. But this murder definitely haunts.”

Gilbert licked the wine from his lips and leaned forward. “How goes your investigation?”

Crispin settled his elbows on the table and curled his fingers around the cup. “That is madness, too, Gilbert.”

“Rumor has it you have your man. Stephen St Albans. And may the Devil take him, if he will have him.” He raised the bowl and drank to it.

“Yes, I apprehended Stephen.”

Gilbert settled his cup on his thigh and studied Crispin’s expression. “For God’s sake, Crispin! Does nothing make you merry? Why so glum? This must be good news.”

Crispin sat silently, looking into his cup.

Gilbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “Oi, Crispin? What ails you? You are miles away.”

Lifting the cup Crispin slurped its contents. The wine burned its way down his throat. No, this was certainly no miracle wine, but Gilbert’s open expression did much to ease his troubled soul, and he leaned forward, the cup imprisoned within his fingers.

“It seems to be a hollow victory, Gilbert. Rosamunde has changed. She does not love me and I fear she never will again. Certainly hanging her brother will not endear me.” He sat back still clutching the cup, his nails tapping against the chipped ceramic. “I fear I might have let an accomplice go because of sentiment. Do I grow soft, Gilbert? Have I lost all sense of perspective?” He dropped his face into his wide palm and left it there, breathing through his open fingers. “I could be completely wrong about all of it. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I have never been so personally involved in these matters. Always, I solved whatever puzzle and walked away. But this time…”

“Well, it seems to me you have put your finger on it,” said Gilbert, wiping his lips and brown beard with his hand. “Everywhere you turn you are personally involved, whether by these Templar fellows or those dangerous men who abducted you, or by ghosts from your past.” He drank another dose and set the cup down. “This accomplice you have let go. It isn’t a woman by any chance?”

Crispin nodded.

“I see. Crispin, this convinces me of something I have considered for a long time: you need a woman.”

“God’s blood.” Crispin sank his head to the table and wrapped his arms around his head, hoping to muffle Gilbert’s words. He heard them anyway.

“Not the sort you crave for a time and cast away, mind you. But a woman to straighten you out. A woman to marry.”

Crispin rolled his head within his arms. All the protestations in the world would not make Gilbert stop, and where he left off Eleanor was certain to take it up again. “Gilbert, for the love of Christ, please!”

“I’m only saying…”

“My life is complicated enough without a woman mixed in it.”

“And yet you do entangle yourself.”

Crispin stopped moaning and cracked a weak smile. He raised his head. “I do indeed. Would you deprive me of that?”

Gilbert shot a quick glance up the stairs. “Well now. I am not a man to stifle a man’s appetites. What sort of tavern keeper would I be then, eh?”

Crispin’s smile grew broader and he took up his wine again. “In truth, Gilbert, this is a vexing case.”

“With the murderer caught and imprisoned, you should be in better stead with the sheriffs. That is a good thing, at least.”

“Yes. It is.”

“But?”

“But I can’t help but feel that the wrong man awaits the gallows.”

Gilbert smacked the table with his hand, sloshing Crispin’s wine onto the stained wood. “For God’s sake! It is the man who ruined you. What better scoundrel could there be?”

“And I truly wish I could see it that way. Indeed, I did at first. But now…there is no sense to it. Stephen is an intensely honorable man. Both of them were knights. If he wanted him dead or needed to avenge himself, he would have challenged him on the field. They would have fought it out like true knights, not in deception with poison. I tell you truly, I cannot picture Stephen doing such a thing.”

Gilbert set down his bowl and nudged his stool closer to the table. The oil light behind him glowed the stray strands of his brown hair with a golden edge. “Then you have a problem. You need to discover his motive in killing him in this secret fashion, or…”

“Or, I need to find who did do it.”

“What about this woman you let slip through your fingers?”

“I believe she is capable, but…”

“Did you swyve her?”

Crispin drew up sharply and peered down his nose at Gilbert. “That is hardly your business.”

“No. It isn’t my business. It’s the king’s. If you let yourself be influenced by every quim that comes your way, then justice cannot be served.”

Crispin launched to his feet and paced across the dusty floor. “I made a decision and I stand by it.”

“Well then. It looks like you made up your own mind at last. Perhaps you best question Sir Stephen and find a motive you can live with.”

Crispin stopped pacing and swiveled his head in Gilbert’s direction. “Yes. There is a lot of sense to what you say.”

Gilbert laid his hand on his heart. “I am a man of many gifts.”

Crispin set down the cup and headed for the steps. “God keep you, Gilbert. And your good wife,” he said over his shoulder and raced up the stairs.

He turned up Gutter Lane, heading toward the Shambles, concentrating on what he would say to Stephen as well as what he would be forced to admit to the sheriff. He hoped that Rosamunde had left Newgate by now so he could be alone with the sheriff and the prisoner.

The Shambles was crowded with a man moving pigs down the avenue and Crispin slipped up an alley to skirt around them. Until three figures blocked his way.

It didn’t matter, he decided. His spirits were high and a fight would do him good.