Cup of Blood

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Let me sum this up,” said Wynchecombe. He left his houppelande unbuttoned down to the waist revealing the white shirt beneath. His wide sleeves were rolled up past a hairy length of wrist. He wore no hat and his black hair lay in mussed waves. “You want me to release our prisoner because you do not believe him guilty. Instead, you wish to implicate a servant who escaped from your easy grasp. Is that the gist of it?”

Crispin gritted his teeth. His hand rested on his dagger hilt. “Close enough.”

“You must be mad!”

“Only slightly.”

“I don’t understand you, Crispin.” Wynchecombe rose to walk around the table. He planted himself firmly beside Crispin and cast a shadow, blocking the oil lamp’s flame. “Your chance at revenge. Fame for such a coup. You would give it up-”

“For the truth, my lord.”

“But as Pilate said, ‘What is truth?’ Anything can be made to be the truth.”

“Not anything. Sir Stephen is not guilty, and though nothing would please me more than to see him die, I would not have it so through a lie. In truth…” He shook his head. “I do not even know if I feel the same about my vengeance any longer.”

“Crispin! God’s teeth! A change of heart? Truly a miracle has come to pass.”

Crispin thought he knew Stephen, thought he understood his own misery, but none of it seemed to matter of late. “I know not. All I know is that I believe him when he protests his innocence. And this servant was there sitting beside Gaston D’Arcy with the means and the motive to kill him.”

“Oh? What motive was that?”

He wondered how much to divulge. Perhaps Wynchecombe could keep his tongue. “He was defending the honor of his mistress.”

“Lady Rothwell? How so?”

“My lord, discretion is tantamount. The lady is betrothed.”

“Indeed? You show an unusual amount of restraint for a man who was once betrothed to her yourself.”

Scowling, Crispin turned away. Not given permission to sit, Crispin stood at the window and gazed into Newgate’s courtyard. The rain began again, and the courtyard was bathed in gray light and misty lines of drizzle. Stagnant puddles came alive with jumping dots of raindrops, and the few wooly horses tethered there stomped impatiently for dryer paddocks. “That was a long time ago, my Lord Sheriff. I have put the matter aside.”

“Then what is this secret that must be so hushed?”

“The lady,” Crispin began in a subdued tone, “was having a love affair with D’Arcy.”

Wynchecombe’s laugh infuriated but Crispin did not turn from the window. He clutched the shutter, grasping so tightly he felt the wood crack.

Wynchecombe composed himself and merrily poured more wine in his silver cup. “Such a motive could be equally applied to Sir Stephen. Or you, for that matter.”

“Not with poison. Stephen would have slit the man’s throat. I know I would have.”

Wynchecombe chuckled and nodded. “And so would I.”

“My witness claims Jenkyn did not drink, and sat beside D’Arcy for at least a quarter of an hour.”

“Your witness? Who?”

“Jack Tucker.”

“Who is Jack Tucker?”

Crispin licked his lips. “The cutpurse.”

The cup flew across the room nearly hitting Crispin in the head. Red wine splattered on Crispin’s coat and face. He wiped his cheek.

“You whoreson! What are you playing at? Do you toy with me?” Wynchecombe pulled his dagger and advanced on Crispin. Not knowing what else to do, Crispin allowed the sheriff to back him against the shutter and hold the blade to his throat.

“How about I slit your throat, eh?” The sheriff’s wine breath puffed on Crispin’s cheek. “Wouldn’t that be the end of all my troubles? Including yours?”

“Don’t you want the truth, my Lord Sheriff? Or are half-lies better than disagreeable facts?”

Crispin felt the cold steel press to the flesh under his jaw. The sharp edge sliced him by his mere breathing. He waited interminably for the sheriff to pull away, and when he did not, Crispin wondered if he ever would.

Then be done with it! Let me leave this world while I have tried to do justice in it. Then maybe God, if not my fellow man, will forgive me.

Wynchecombe breathed raggedly and began to loosen his grip. With reluctance in his eyes, he lowered the dagger.

Crispin reached up to his throat and wiped away the blood.

“You are a damnable man!” the sheriff bellowed. He threw his knife into the table where it stuck. “What am I supposed to do now? I trusted your judgment. I arrested Sir Stephen on your word. I will have the king down on my head because of you.” Wynchecombe faced him. “You’ve betrayed me!”

“Not so, my lord. I have done good work for you in the past. Our history together must surely-”

“History means nothing!”

Crispin surprised himself with the vehemence of his reaction. It bubbled up out of nowhere, yet always it lay just below the crust of emotions. “Nothing?” he cried. “History is everything!”

Wynchecombe drew back, startled, but Crispin didn’t bother with civility any longer.

“How you can stand there and tell me…” Crispin held out his arms showing himself in all the rags and shabby finery of days past. “Look at me, Wynchecombe. I am nothing but history!” He laughed, slightly hysterically, and dropped his arms to his sides. Advancing toward the table he smiled when Wynchecombe subtly retreated. “You are not a brilliant man, Wynchecombe. But surely even you must recognize that history plays the most important part in a man’s life. Mine especially. If it were not so, I should have taken a sword to you years ago.”

Wynchecombe said nothing. He hovered over the table, eyeing his knife. His sword and baldric lay out of reach. “You’d take a sword to me, eh?” asked Wynchecombe warily. “Why? Because I give you the insolence you deserve?”

Crispin nodded. His face felt hot. Anger reddened it and forced his mouth into a grimace. “The insolence I deserve,” he echoed, thinking about the words. “Who knows what I deserve? Perhaps I taunt you so that you will thrust that knife into my gut. You want to, don’t you? Why don’t you take it up? I won’t stop you.”

Wynchecombe grasped the dagger hilt and pulled it free of the wood. He held the blade but not to strike. Crispin could imagine the heft of it. He knew it was well made with soft leather strips carefully wound about the wooden grip. A red gem crowned the pommel.

The dagger hanging from Crispin’s belt was the same he owned for three decades. They did not see fit to take it from him when they stripped him of everything else. It was as fine a thing as Wynchecombe’s blade.

But Crispin made no move to retrieve it. He was as anxious as Wynchecombe to discover what would transpire next.

“Enough of your arrogance,” the sheriff said at last. “Yes, you have a history. You are not a great lord anymore. You are not a knight. You are…what? What are you now, Crispin? A day ago you were my lackey. Is that what you are?”

All the vitality and anger released from him, rushing out with a long, ragged sigh. “Yes,” Crispin said gravely. “That is what I am. That is all I will ever be.”

The sheriff toyed with his knife. He touched the blade’s tip with his finger and turned the hilt, catching the light in flashes on its polished brass. All at once he laughed.

Crispin drew himself up and stared at the sheriff’s ruddy countenance: eyes squinted, teeth bared, mustache lifted up at the corners.

Has he gone mad, too?

“Crispin, you sorrowful bastard!” He slammed the knife into its scabbard and stood back, looking at him.

Crispin knew he had done a terribly stupid thing. Not only had he been uncivil and rude to a better, but he showed his hand, revealed his vulnerability. In a fight, he never would have done so. But in a true fight, he would have been better armed.

The sheriff swung and caught Crispin’s jaw with his fist.

Flashes of light, motes of black. Crispin looked up at the sheriff from the floor.

“That’s for your ill manners,” Wynchecombe said and walked around the table, but not to help Crispin up. Instead, he kicked him hard in the side. Crispin rolled away with a gasp and curled inward to protect the damage.

“And that is for using me.”

He grabbed Crispin by his collar and lifted his shoulders off the floor long enough to snap his fist at Crispin’s face a second time. He let him fall back down. His head hit the wood floor with a bang.

“And that is because I felt like it.”

Crispin lay on his back and groaned. He tasted blood and probed his teeth with his tongue, searching for loose molars. His jaw swelled. The room spun and his bruised side caused nausea to tighten his belly.

“Now,” said the sheriff standing over him. To Crispin’s blurry vision, he looked like a dark, shaggy bear. “Tell me again why I must release Stephen St Albans.”

Slowly, Crispin moved his hand to feel the floor, making certain he knew exactly where it was before trying to push himself into a sitting position. Once he sat up he gave himself a moment to quell his uneasy belly. “My lord,” he began, and gingerly touched his jaw. He glanced admiringly at the sheriff. “Stephen may have had a motive and the means, but he never would have dishonored himself by using poison. He covets his honor almost as much as I do.” He tried to smile but his jaw hurt and he winced instead.

Wynchecombe jerked his head in a satisfied nod and offered his hand to Crispin. When Crispin hesitated the sheriff thrust it forward. “Come now. Take it.”

Crispin slapped his hand into the sheriff’s and allowed Wynchecombe to haul him to his feet. He stood unsteadily, surprised when a wine cup was thrust into his hand.

“You have made a proper mess of this, Crispin.”

Crispin slurped the wine and nodded, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I admit as much. I was fortunate that the servant Jenkyn all but confessed. He knew he was caught.”

“That is all very well for you but what of me? Sir Stephen has no love for me for throwing him in prison. If he goes to the king…”

“I might be persuaded to influence Stephen to press no countercharges.”

Wynchecombe studied Crispin. “I see.” He nodded and released a sound not quite a chuckle. “How much will this cost me?”

Crispin dabbed his sleeve on his bloody lip. “I require no payment.”

“Not in coin, eh?”

Crispin said nothing. He blinked and touched his fingertips gently to his swollen jaw.

Wynchecombe scowled. “What about this Jenkyn, then? Are you certain this time?”

“As certain as I can be. Jenkyn knows too much to be completely innocent. We will have to thoroughly question him.”

“Then I will send my men with a description of him. He will be apprehended anon.” He cleared his throat and postured beside his chair. “I will release the prisoner. But I tell you truly, I shall not arrest him again if you are wrong.”

The Boar’s Tusk was crowded full of men drinking and making merry. Crispin edged his bruised body through the throng and found a quiet place in the back. He eased down onto a bench and cradled his face in his hand, hoping he could dull the throb in his jaw with Gilbert’s wine.

“Crispin, dear.” He looked up at Eleanor through his fingers and he saw her tick her head at him while planting one hand on her ample hip. “Tsk! You look awful. What happened?”

“The sheriff and I have come to a mutual understanding, is all.”

She waited for more explanation, but since Crispin offered none she asked, “Will you have wine?”

“Ah, such sweet words,” he sighed. “I will have wine. And plenty of it.”

She left for only a moment. When she returned she set a wooden bowl before him and poured wine into it. She did not leave the jug as expected. Instead, she cradled it in a ragged cloth and stared at him worriedly until he gestured for her to put the jug down.

“I don’t know, Crispin. Mayhap you should just go home.”

“I am home. And since I am home I am master here. Put down the jug.”

“Now Crispin-”

“Down!” He slapped the table with the flat of his hand.

She hesitated a moment more before slowly setting the jug beside the cup. “I should bring you something to eat. You look like the ragged end of a battle.”

“I don’t want food.”

“But Crispin-”

“Madam, please!”

She swiped once at the table with her apron as if to punctuate her hurt feelings and thumped away with hard steps.

“Bless you,” he said, barely realizing her absence, and then filled the half empty bowl to the rim. He lifted it to his lips and drank gratefully, rolling his upturned throat in long swallows before he set the empty bowl down. He refilled it and settled more comfortably on the bench.

After a few minutes his jaw did not feel so sore and he relaxed and closed his eyes. Alone in his dark corner, he felt the companionable solace from so many men sharing the same experience. The low murmur of their voices and laughter resonated in his chest. A bagpipe merrily played and further eased his mood.

The wine did its work, and the ache of his body and the anxiety of his mind relaxed into the distant haze of alcohol. He sat with eyes closed for some time, simply enjoying the peace of the place he called home until a tingle of discomfort and the sense that someone stood over him ruined that peace.

Rosamunde. A corona of candles flickered behind her, and with her position above him and alcohol warming his senses, it looked like a halo glowing behind her head. He lifted his bowl to her and smiled his crooked grin. “Hail, saintly Rosamunde! How fare you?”

But her saintly demeanor soon changed. Her face grew almost as scarlet as her gown. She sat hastily beside him. Her white fingers clutched the table. “I fare not well at all! How could you? It was not bad enough that you arrested my brother, but you have to abuse my servants and arrest them too?”

“Jenkyn is not arrested. Yet. He escaped, but not for long.” His tongue cleaved to his mouth and did not seem to want to cooperate with his words. They slurred on the pleasant flavors of the dark wine. “And what do you care? He is merely a servant. He is nothing to you. Why should you care that he has done you a service out of loyalty?”

“Done me a service?”

He slammed his free hand on the table. “Do not play games with me.” He eased back and chuckled unpleasantly. “I happen to know that saintly Rosamunde spent her free time swyving Gaston D’Arcy.”

This time she slapped his face. He expected it, relished its sharp thwack and the sting. He smiled broader and slurped the wine. “Such coy games you used to play with me. Only letting honorable Crispin go so far, touch only so much. What was the matter? Was I not comely enough for you?” He slid closer and looked her over like a man scrutinizing a tavern wench. His hand snaked forward to capture her waist and he pulled her snuggly against him. “How about now?” He tightened his grip and kissed her noisily and sloppily, prizing open her cold mouth and stabbing in with his tongue. When she would not react, he let her go and sagged back. He smiled again. “No. I didn’t think so.”

He drank his wine and poured more into the bowl. “Will you drink with me, Rosamunde? Like old times?”

“You’re drunk.”

“Maybe. Maybe. But not quite as drunk as I intend to be. Not yet.”

“And this,” she gestured distastefully to him, “is what stands in the way of freeing my brother and my servant? You. Look at you. Bruised and beaten from some tavern brawl, no doubt. You, of all people, are a witness to their character and their actions.”

He nodded and chuckled. “Yes. Amusing, is it not? I am the witness, who has witnessed so much in this life already.” He raised his head unsteadily to look at her. Her eyes were dark like coal smudges on her pale face, and even the candlelight could not warm it with its generous yellow tones. “You have a look on your face, my dear. Do I disgust you?”

“Yes, you do.”

He laughed. “Then why did you not wipe my kiss from your mouth?”

Her expression hardened but her pouting lips remained moist. “Crispin, I came to reason with you.”

“I am beyond reason, my lady. Well beyond. And if you will excuse me, I must go to the latrine and piss away the rest of my reason.” He rose but grabbed his wine bowl and drank it down. Setting it back on the table he kissed her cheek wetly. “I shall be back. Don’t go away.”

He staggered to the door and found a privy in the rear courtyard. He hummed to himself and made water down the privy’s pit, thinking about his early days of disgrace when he spaded out such muck and dumped it into his wheelbarrow. In the earliest hours of the morning, he would roll that wheelbarrow throughout London, his frown deep behind his scarf. “How the mighty have fallen,” he had muttered to himself, never thinking he deserved any of it. He’d go back to the hovel he lived in, reeking from the morning’s activity.

He brushed the memories aside. Tying his braies and adjusting his coat, he smiled to himself. At least those days were behind him. He found respect amongst his fellows at the Tusk and even begrudgingly with the sheriff. Perhaps time could erase the past and make a new life, remake him anew. If not with Rosamunde then some other willing woman.

He sauntered back inside, not shoving his way this time, but patting the men on the shoulders whom he moved past, smiling in wine-soaked congeniality at grins and hoisted cups.

He returned to his table in the dark shadows of the back of the room and was surprised to find Rosamunde still there. She refilled his wine bowl and set it before him with a grim expression.

He took it up and drank. “Much thanks, Rosamunde,” he said and took another swallow, downing almost all of the bowl’s contents.

Steadily she watched him drink, every motion he made-tilting back the cup, drinking deeply, licking his lips-until he put the cup down and smiled at her. “Perhaps you are having second thoughts about me,” he said, leaning on an elbow. “It’s not too late, you know. You don’t have to marry that Frenchman.”

She was surprised but it quickly faded. “You know about that too.”

He patted her hand. It was cold. “Dearling, I know much about you.”

“Yes. I was afraid you did.”

Her hand clenched something which he tried to decipher in the dim light. “What’s that?”

“This?” She raised it so he could see the small ceramic vial with a cork stopper. “It is an empty vial.”

He chuckled, his sodden mind believing the most mundane things to be funny. “Why do you carry an empty vial, my dear?”

“It was not empty a moment ago.”

“Oh? Where did it go?” Yet even as he asked, he felt an unnatural sensation creep through his limbs. Not ordinary drunkenness. That was familiar. This was different. It dragged his extremities into thick heaviness like weights were attached to points of his body and he was falling down an abyss. And then his vision blurred and his heart quickened. His throat unaccountably tightened, like fingers pressing harder and harder.

He glared at Rosamunde, but her bland expression revealed nothing.

“Rosamunde,” he rasped. “What have you done?”

“I have killed you,” she said calmly.

She spoke so plainly as if to a servant asking for something as simple as a bowl of wine. Her deed meant no more to her than that. “Rosamunde…” He couldn’t say more. His lungs screamed. He clutched the table in order to breathe. His heart hammered so hard he thought it would burst.

“You were getting much too close,” she said in the same becalmed manner. She looked at the vial in her hand and turned it in the dim light. “But without you, there will be no reason to condemn Stephen or Jenkyn. Stephen knew nothing of this. I told you that. Jenkyn wanted to help but he was too afraid. In the end, I was the one to buy the poison, and I was only too happy to administer it. You were right about Gaston and me. I do not know how you discovered it, but you are a clever man.” She sighed deeply and stared at the table. “It was lovely at first. Such a change from the dried lips and cankerous hands of my husband.” She smiled, the dimpled corners of her mouth rising. “Oh, you needn’t worry over him. He died a natural death. Though had I known how easy it was, I should have killed him years ago.”

Crispin’s chest ached and burned, partly from the poison’s effects, but mostly because he could not believe her words. He did not want to listen, but he couldn’t move.

“But Gaston…such a passionate man. I imagined you might have been the same. For many years, you see, when lying in my husband’s bed, I did think of you, Crispin. When he touched me, I closed my eyes and told myself it was you. And when he put his foul-breathed mouth on me, my thoughts were only of you and your sweet lips. But as the years past, I could no longer conjure your face. You abandoned me, abandoned us. When Gaston came along, it was as if new life was breathed into me. I had been a corpse for seven years and suddenly for seven weeks I was reborn. But he became demanding, coarse. When Stephen secured my betrothal I told Gaston it was over, but he would have none of it. Gaston threatened to tell my betrothed, to extort me for his silence. That was when Jenkyn suggested I kill him. But he was too weak to do it himself. So I did it.” She glanced over Crispin in his effort to breathe. “I know what you are thinking. Why did I not go to Stephen? But how could I confess my disgrace? It was not possible to ask him to do it. So I came here to Gaston one last time, not too far from where we are now sitting, and I poured him a bowl of wine-just as I did for you-and I added the poison. It did not take him long to die, but I did not wait to see his final breaths. Later, Jenkyn told me he came here to do the deed himself, but again, his courage failed him. Of course Gaston was already dead, but poor Jenkyn did not know that.”

Crispin sank toward the table. Only the weakening strength of his forearms upheld him. Every muscle in his body cramped and his heart hammered relentlessly. He gasped, casting blindly about the room for someone to notice, someone to come to his aid. He saw neither Gilbert nor Eleanor.

“The apothecary was more difficult,” she went on. “When I discovered you were investigating the murder and that you were seeking the man who sold the poison, I could not risk his discovery. By chance, I was there the same moment you arrived. I was in the back room listening, and when I saw my opportunity I stabbed him with his own dagger.” She looked at her hand, flexed the fingers. “Such a strange sensation, stabbing someone. I had no idea how hard the body is. Of course, with a sharp knife, it is easier.” She raised her chin. Her small nostrils flared with the scents of smoke, sweat, and spoiled ale. “I have no regrets for killing him. He was a vile man. I have no regrets about killing Gaston, for he, too, was a cruel and vile man.” Her gaze returned from far away and rested on Crispin. She cocked her head. Her moist lips pressed together, pouting. “But I do have regrets over killing you, Crispin, for you were dear to me once. You do not know how many times in my marriage bed you saved my sanity.” She rose and looked at him curiously.

Crispin struggled for consciousness. She wavered in his blurry vision. A tear left his eye to run down his sallow cheek.

She leaned forward and touched her lips to his gasping mouth, ignoring his struggle to breathe. “Farewell, my love. I do you a favor. It hurt me deeply to see you so degraded, living this horrid life in that decrepit little hovel.” She leaned forward, and with her lips brushing his, she whispered, “Surely your reward will be greater in Heaven.”

She closed her fingers over the vial and stepped back. She looked at him once more with a pitying expression, and walked from the Boar’s Tusk.