Cup of Blood

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Crispin waited in the dark passageway to be announced to the sheriff. He rocked on his heels. Newgate’s darkness seemed blacker than ordinary night, more oppressive than cellars and storerooms. Perhaps the density of its gloom was fed by the many souls who had passed through its portals. Even an oil lamp could not seem to pierce the murkiness that hovered in each corner, keeping its mysteries tightly concealed.

The bailiff startled him from his musings and motioned for him to go into the sheriffs’ hall.

Crispin yanked at his coat and tried to smooth out its permanent wrinkles. He took a deep breath and walked in with head held high.

“Well?” bellowed Sheriff Wynchecombe before Crispin took two steps. “Where is this prisoner you were so keen to bring in?”

John More hovered beside Wynchecombe, silent and studied. As always, he seemed pleased enough just to let Wynchecombe take charge.

“My lords,” said Crispin with a deep bow.

Wynchecombe sneered. “None of that. That only means you are about to lie to me. But I warn you,” he said, pointing a bejeweled finger at him, “if you perjure yourself, I will not keep that spare cell idle.”

More huffed and turned away, looking out the window toward the rising mist.

Crispin sighed. “I fully intended to return with a prisoner. But after my interview, I did not believe she had much to do with this crime.”

“You don’t believe? Since when have you designated yourself my keeper of the peace? You have no authority to decide such things. I should send you out again on a donkey to retrieve her.”

“Why must we content ourselves with Master Guest?” sighed More. “Send him away, Simon.”

Crispin persisted. “You must trust my judgment in this, my lord.”

Wynchecombe ignored More’s bored sighing. “Why? Give me one good reason to do so. Why is your judgment better than my own? It does not seem to be touched with gold. Nothing about you, in fact, is touched with gold.”

With tensed hands pressed behind his back, Crispin cleared his throat. “I have no better explanation than my instincts, my lord. Such instincts have kept me alive.”

Wynchecombe laughed, sharing it with More’s back. “Bollocks to your instincts.”

“If my instincts prove wrong, I still know where to find her. She is going nowhere.”

Wynchecombe cracked a smile. “A contingency strategy? Well, you are no fool, at least. A stubborn whoreson, but not a fool.” Wynchecombe rose and picked up the silver flagon. “Wine?” he asked, gesturing with the ornate jug.

Crispin’s mouth felt dry but he forced himself to shake his head. “I did not come simply to present myself to you, Lord Sheriff.”

Wynchecombe poured his wine and made as if to offer some to More, but with the man’s back still to him he huffed his displeasure and held his full cup. “Oh? Why, then?”

“I wish to speak with Sir Stephen again.”

The sheriff frowned and shook his head. “No. Enough. He is not your personal whipping boy. He is a knight of the court, even if he is guilty of murder. You have no further jurisdiction in this.”

“My lord-”

“I told you,” said More. “Send the whoreson away. By my lady, Master Guest, you are a vexation.”

“I said enough!” cried Wynchecombe. Crispin wasn’t certain if he was talking to him or to John More, until Wynchecombe swiveled toward him. “You think because I allow you certain liberties that we are equals in this. You are not my equal.”

Crispin knew he should drop his gaze and appease the sheriff’s temper, but he could not quite make himself do it. Instead, he looked straight at him and nodded. “Yes, my lord. It is only that I am a man of justice. And I would see it served to its fullest.”

In the same quietly malevolent tone, Wynchecombe asked, “And do you think that justice is not being served?”

“Not yet to its fullest, my lord. And it is my fault.”

“Ha!” Wynchecombe’s guffaw broke the tension. He jabbed the air with his finger and swept up the goblet with the other hand. “That is the first sensible thing you have said.”

“Then will you allow me to further question Sir Stephen?”

“Oh, for the love of Christ, Simon, let him do it.” More turned, disgust twisting his face. “Then we’ll be rid of him. Rid of them both.”

Wynchecombe threw More a glare. “Guest,” he growled, still pinning his gaze to More, who had already turned his back again. “Perhaps. First, you must prove yourself to me.”

Everything is a test. He sighed. “In what way?”

“I have a visitor arriving. Some foreign dignitary. I have no patience for such like. He wishes to speak to Sir Stephen as well.”

“My lord?”

“That’s simple enough, isn’t it?” Wynchecombe sat again and leaned back in the chair. “You take care of it. And I will see my way to being generous to you.”

“Would not the gaoler be better suited-”

“No. I want you to do it.” He glanced at More. “Does that suit you as well, my lord?”

More shrugged, still gazing out the window.

Wynchecombe scowled and fixed his gaze on Crispin.

Crispin raised his chin. “What is it I am to do, Lord Sheriff?”

“Just show him through. That’s all. When the page comes, meet him at the gate.” He smiled. “When you meet him, give him my apologies. Tell him that I am too concerned with the king’s business to welcome him personally, but convey my sincerest greetings. Tell him you are my lackey and that you will serve him as well as if you were the ‘sheriff himself’. Did you get all that?”

For a moment, the most fleeting of intervals, Crispin thought of overturning Wynchecombe’s table and spilling the wine and his papers across his floor. He thought of his hand already clenched in a tight fist, and of his knuckles meeting Wynchecombe’s white teeth, causing some of them to loosen with a rush of bright red blood.

He thought of it, and then let it go. He must talk to Stephen, and if it meant gulping more than his fair share of pride, then so be it.

Crispin bowed to both sheriffs and straightened his spine. Almost at the same time, a breathless page entered and said that the foreign dignitary waited at the gate.

He followed the page down the dim stairs to the gatehouse. Newgate’s guards were there hovering near a fire in an iron cage. They glanced with disinterest toward Crispin, but nudged each other to attention when other men approached from the courtyard.

Crispin went out to meet them. The tall dignitary wore his hood over his head. Five men accompanied him. When he threw back his hood, his familiar face smiled wide. A scar pulled up his lip.

Crispin narrowed his eyes.

“My good friend Crispin!” said the man, his accent purring off his tongue. “You come in the sheriff’s place? How fitting.”

“My Lord de Marcherne,” said Crispin with a curt bow.

“Though,” said de Marcherne feigning concern and speaking in a stage whisper, “we are not supposed to know each other.” He tossed his cloak over his shoulders and opened his arms, encompassing the presence of his companions who walked at a considerable distance behind him. “I am a dignitary from the French court and I humbly asked permission from King Richard to interview one of his prisoners.” De Marcherne chuckled and walked with Crispin across the courtyard back toward the gatehouse. “I did not expect to find you here, however.”

They passed under the arch into the building, but de Marcherne stopped and motioned for his men to return to the outer courtyard leaving Crispin and himself alone. Once the men left, he turned to Crispin. “Lead me.”

“Where? Which prisoner?”

De Marcherne smiled with an airless chuckle. “You know which one.”

It was Crispin’s turn to smile. His lips drew up crookedly. “I do not think he is accessible.”

“I was given to understand I was to be denied nothing.”

“What a shame you were misled.”

De Marcherne stepped away from Crispin to glance across the gatehouse. The stone ceiling arched over them. A long wooden staircase clambered up the walls in a meandering pattern. One way led to the sheriff’s chamber. The other way to the prisoners in the tower. “I could go to the sheriffs myself and tell them how you were dismissive of me and insulted the French court.”

“Should I go against custom?”

“Insults to the face of a dignitary, and from a lackey? What would your master say to that?”

Crispin did not need to consider. He tried not to frown but was unsuccessful. “I will only allow it if I am present.”

De Marcherne was about to protest but at the last moment seemed to think better of it. “Very well,” he said, and gestured Crispin forward.

Crispin took his time and toured de Marcherne throughout the narrow passages and distasteful corners of the prison, hoping to try his patience.

De Marcherne did not indicate by look or gesture that his patience had reached its limit, except that his face looked stiff and drawn. He made almost no comment the entire length of the wearying tour. On the rooftop, Crispin gazed down through the embrasure at London on one side, and its fields and marshes on the other.

“This looks nothing like a cell,” said de Marcherne.

Crispin breathed the air and after standing in the wind for a time, he gestured for de Marcherne to precede him down the stairs again through another dark passageway.

“I understand,” said de Marcherne suddenly, “that you were visited again by your Templar friends.”

Crispin said nothing.

“Did you ask about me?”

“Yes. I believe they called you the ‘Devil incarnate’.”

When they approached Stephen’s cell at last Crispin slowed.

“The Devil incarnate. How refreshing. Did they say nothing else?”

Crispin turned to him quizzically. “What else needed to be said?”

They stopped before the cell door and de Marcherne stared steadily at Crispin. “They did not say, for instance, that I used to be a Templar? The Grand Master, in fact?”

Crispin’s lips parted while de Marcherne smiled and looked at the door. “Is this the place?”