Cup of Blood

CHAPTER SEVEN

Crispin retraced his steps of that morning and stole back to the alley where they had abducted him. Like a hunting dog, he followed the trail along the edges of the buildings, searching for anything that might yield him clues. But there was nothing.

He stood at the mouth of the dank alley and listened to dripping water and creaking eaves. His gaze glided over the dew-slick rooftops, and he pulled his cloak over his sore chest before striding toward the storeroom where he was imprisoned. Its mews emptied onto a dark and colorless alley. The shutters that first blocked the daylight from the windows now hung wide from the efforts of his rescuers.

When he crossed the threshold and stood in the center of the room, coldness numbed the pit of his belly. With a scowl he surveyed the broken chair, discarded ropes, and spattered droplets of blood. His blood. A candle stub sat on an upright firkin, but there was nothing else.

Crispin looked at the remains of the ropes and shivered. Though the room was empty, he could not help but feel the evil that once inhabited it, charring its plaster and stone walls with unseen malevolence.

He left the room with relief and sought out the owner of the building, a man who owned a number of similar mews along the same lane. He told Crispin that these particular stores were unoccupied for the last six months and that he was unaware of anyone using them. He promised with all solemnity to board them up.

Crispin made his way to the Boar’s Tusk and sat in his usual place close to the fire with his back to the wall, the best place to observe anyone entering or leaving.

At that early hour few patrons occupied the benches and stools under a familiar haze of candle and hearth smoke. He glanced at the table where he had found the dead man. The place was conspicuously unoccupied. Word traveled fast on Gutter Lane.

Crispin settled on the bench and drank. His elbow sat in something wet but he didn’t care to move it. A shadow paused over the table and when he looked up he saw Gilbert’s wife, Eleanor, above him. She brushed off the table with a rag before glancing at the jug of wine. “Crispin,” she said softly. Her friendly but careworn face, lined at her brown eyes, seldom wore a sour expression, though her clientele often gave her cause. Her hair was a dull blonde or possibly gray, but Crispin rarely saw it, for she kept it tucked under a white linen headdress.

“What is it, Nell?” He waited for her usual rebuke; ordering the more expensive wine instead of ale. Wine reminded him of better days and he felt it was the one luxury he could not afford to do without.

“There’s a sadness about you today, Crispin,” she said instead. She sat opposite him and slid the wine jug aside. “Usually you’re just cross. But today, it’s sadness.”

Sadness? Nothing particularly saddened him today. There was the usual poverty, but that made him more angry than sad. So, too, his treatment at the hands of those mysterious men. He rubbed his chest, thinking of it. Yet, in a small way, Jack Tucker made him sad, he supposed. Here was a boy who had nothing. Far less than Crispin, no prospects, no shelter, no hope. Yet he was as cheerful a soul as he had ever met. What made him so damned happy?

Crispin shrugged. “Maybe so.”

“Care to say?”

“No.”

“Sometimes,” she said, pouring more wine into his clay bowl, “when a body feels sad and he tells his troubles, he feels better. It’s like confession. It’s cleansing.”

“And sometimes a body likes to be left alone.”

She smiled, wrinkling the bridge of her nose. “Well now. If I thought that for a moment, I’d leave you be.” She set aside the wine jug and laid both arms on the table, leaning toward him. “Have some wine. It seems to be from a better cask today. Those who drink it are in a merry mood.”

After a moment he sighed and reached for the bowl.

“It must be a woman,” she said, ticking her head.

Crispin swallowed the harsh wine and grimaced. If this was the good wine he didn’t want to sample the bad. “How do you reason that?”

“Well! Just look at you.”

He studied her face and took another swallow. “It’s not always about a woman, you know.”

“Well now!” She settled her rump and leaned closer. “Tell me about it. It’ll help.”

“No. It won’t.”

“Crispin.” Her hand covered his. “A woman is sometimes fickle. She does it to inspire her man to artful courting.”

“It’s not a woman! It’s…” He searched for the words. “What purpose do I serve, Eleanor?” The words came out of his mouth, but they weren’t quite what he had wanted to say. But Jack Tucker’s insistence on serving him had crept into his mind and opened his thoughts from a place that should have been long buried. “I do not serve a lord. I do not serve the Church. I am…nothing.”

She sighed and wrapped her fingers around her rag, winding the material into a twisted rope. “I’ve known you a long time, Crispin. Even before I knew your name or you knew mine, you and your friends would come here. And I remember thinking what a jolly lot they were. But looking at you now, you’re not the same man.”

He scowled. “I’m not the same man.”

“It’s despair you’re feeling. I tell you, Crispin. It’s as if you stopped living from that day. It seems to me that you cannot live on disappointments and hopes of revenge all your life.”

He gulped his wine and stared at the table. “No? I seem to get on well enough.”

“No,” she said in a firm voice and reached for him again. Her hand closed on his wrist. The fingers felt warm on his cool skin. “You don’t get on. And the more you dwell on it the more it shall devour you from the inside out.”

He shook his head. “Nell-”

“Tell me. How many friends have you, eh? True friends. Friends to tell your troubles to.”

“There is you and Gilbert.”

“Aye. And who else?”

Crispin paused to think. His questing brow soon lowered into a scowl. Slowly he extricated his hand from hers.

Eleanor sat back and folded her arms over her ample chest. “That’s what I thought. You make no friends, you meet no women-”

Crispin hunched forward and surrounded his cup with both hands. “I am a solitary man.”

“That is not how I remember it when you were a knight. You had many associates then. And many women before your betrothal. Now you live like a monk.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled as he offered a slight smile. “Not quite as a monk.”

“But even so. You have no cause to be so glum. It’s been seven years. You’re one of us now.”

Crispin stiffened his shoulders and dug a fist into his temple, leaning into it.

Eleanor scowled, no doubt reading his gesture for what it was. “I’m no fool, Crispin. I know you would rather hang than consider yourself one of us, poor lowly class that we are. The class that welcomes you, by the way. The class that hasn’t rejected you. The class that won’t. Maybe someday you’ll lose that stubborn pride of yours and realize that. What’s it gotten you anyway? Heartsore and humiliated, that’s what.”

“I’m glad we had this talk, Eleanor” he sneered, raising the wine to his lips.

“All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t hurt you to be merry; to find some friends. And for heaven’s sake to find a lovely girl. She’ll take that frown from your face.”

“I can think of no woman save Rosamunde.” He stopped. He hadn’t spoken her name in years. Was it years? The sound of it jabbed his heart, brought back all the memories.

“Rosamunde? Your betrothed?” He nodded. “Crispin Guest! That was seven years ago! She is wed. You told me so.”

“Yes. Her dog of a brother betrayed his honor and broke his oath to me.” He lifted his bowl. “Here’s to Sir Stephen St Albans. I hope to God he is dead.”

“Sir Stephen? Oh, he’s not dead. At least he wasn’t yesterday.”

“Indeed. Too bad.”

“Aye. He was arguing with that dead man…before he was dead, of course.”

Crispin’s eyes snapped up. “What?”

“He was here. And I haven’t seen him in years. Not since…well.” She took up her rag again and twisted it into a lumpy rope. “Oh, such a sad thing. Who would go and poison such a fine man as that?” She shook her head and pressed the rag to the corner of a glossy eye. “I tell you, Crispin. I do not know what this town is coming to.”

Crispin edged forward and sat up. “Stephen was here, you say? What did they argue about?”

She sniffed and drew the rag into her lap, pulling on its errant strings. “I know not. They did it in whispers, if you know my meaning. But the other, the dead one, he would have none of it.”

“And when was all this?”

“Right before you came in. Sir Stephen saw you, put up his hood, and left.”

“Did he?”

“Sir Stephen tried to get something from the man. I did not see what it was. I thought it best to stay out of sight.”

“I wish you had not done so.”

“Aye. I see that now. I told as much to the Lord Sheriff.”

Damn. “You spoke to the sheriff?”

“He came back this morning and demanded I tell him what I knew.”

“But Gilbert never said-”

“He was not here at the time. He was below in the mews. I was here alone.”

“Then what more did you say?”

“Only that John the piper was here. A few other men who looked to be servants. And the monks.”

“Monks?”

“Aye. Two friars.”

“What did they look like?”

“I could not say. They wore their cowls the whole time. They each called for a cup of ale but never drank any of it.”

“Were they here before or after Stephen?”

“Before, I think. But I cannot be certain.”

“Anyone else?”

“Only the woman.”

Crispin squinted hard at her. “By all that is holy, Eleanor. Why did I not hear this before?”

She straightened and lifted her chin. “No one asked me before.”

With a puff of air he leaned in. “Yes. Well, then. What woman?”

“I could not see her face.”

“Naturally.”

“She spoke to that dead man, too, for a brief time after Stephen left.”

A busy fellow, this dead Templar. “How long did she stay?”

“Not long at all. She was gone after I turned round again. She could not have exchanged more than a few words with him.”

“A servant woman or higher?”

“Oh, much higher. Fur-trimmed cloak and all.”

He nodded. “You were correct on one account, Eleanor. It was good to talk.” He climbed from the bench and before Eleanor could speak again, he slipped out the door.

A soft rain gentled the street, hazing its somber features. He pulled the leather hood over his head and clenched it over his chin. The chill still permeated the scuffed leather, and it suddenly reminded him of warmer capes and cloaks he once owned, fur-lined with fox or miniver. Some were sturdy weaves of wool while others were of velvet and brushed serge. His boots, too, had been sturdier and also lined with fur, except for the courtly slippers with their impossibly long, pointed toes.

His fist tightened on the hood and he felt the raw skin stretch. He used to have gloves, too. Masculine things for the hunt or on the lists. He remembered the feel of his gloved hands curled around a sword hilt, or pulling back the strings of a hunting bow with the gloved fingers veed around a nocked arrow.

One man took all these things away. Stephen.

Crispin felt giddy. If Rosamunde’s brother was the last man to see the Templar alive-a man he had argued with-then there was a good possibility he could be the murderer. It was almost too good to be true.

Crispin exhaled a laugh more like a bark. “Then you’ll hang,” he whispered into the hood. “I will make certain that you’ll stand in disgrace on the scaffold and hang for your crime. And I will be the one to bring you to justice. Thank you Jesu for this mercy!”

It fit nicely into his plots of revenge. Stephen guilty of murder. Stephen hanging.

Until his thoughts suddenly drew up short. What about the woman?

He rubbed his face. Who was she and what did she discuss with the dead Templar? Did she have anything to do with the murder?

“Perhaps not,” he reasoned. “Perhaps it is mere coincidence.”

A crowd blocked the avenue and stopped his momentum and his musings. People seldom gathered in the rain. Most Londoners did their best to escape the muddy streets and raw wind. Why then should this mob gather here?

Crispin peered through the throng and saw an ordinary man who smiled and waggled his arm. The crowd seemed to be excited by this.

“What the devil is going on?” Crispin demanded to no one in particular.

One of the men standing beside him pointed at the man in the center of all the attention. “Said his arm’s been healed.”

“Healed? How?”

“Miracle, I suppose. I don’t know the man. Don’t know what all this foolery is.”

Crispin watched the man in the center of the crowd. The people guffawed or congratulated him on his good luck, but did not seem interested in dispersing. Crispin observed them for a moment more before he gave up with a shrug and pushed his way through.

The lowly were always making more of such events than were called for, he decided. A physician’s remedy somehow becomes a miracle. The simple truth of it, Crispin knew, was that the body healed on its own. He himself sustained many a battle wound, some horrendous. Nasty gashes from swords; blows from maces that dented his helm. But he recovered each time, some under a physician’s art and some simply because of his own obstinacy.

He walked on, thinking of Man’s folly, of his own, and even of revenge. “Living on revenge,” he muttered, considering Eleanor’s words. He had not liked those words when she spoke them, but now he could not erase them from his mind. They rang in his ear, punctuated by each of his plodding steps. They prevented him from immediately noticing Jack Tucker standing in his path until he nearly ran him down.

Crispin stopped and looked up. “My shadow,” he said with a frown.

“Aye, sir. A good servant knows what his master is about.”

Crispin felt in no mood for the “not my servant” roundelay, so he said nothing and side-stepped him.

“The sheriffs are awaiting you at your lodgings, Master,” Jack said to Crispin’s retreating back.

Crispin took one more step then stopped. He raised his head and stared up into the raining sky. It misted his cold cheeks with the patter of drops. “Of course they are,” he muttered defeated. “Then I must see them at once, no?”

“They are not patient men.”

Crispin yanked his cloak across his chest and cursed under his breath. “Neither am I.”

Crispin found Sheriff Wynchecombe and Sheriff John More staring at his meager hearth flames when he entered. Jack took up a post in a corner of the small room. Crispin nearly told him to be off but at the last moment decided against it. He turned to Wynchecombe and More and bowed. “Welcome, my lords,” he said without a shred of welcome in his voice. He strode past the sheriffs to stoke the fire.

“So these are your lodgings.” Wynchecombe looked about with distaste. His gaze swept over Jack but there did not appear to be any recognition in his eyes.

“What would you expect?” said More. He was a shorter, rounder man than Wynchecombe, appearing his opposite in every way. Where Wynchecombe was dark, More was light with sandy blond hair. And where Wynchecombe sported beard and mustache, More was clean-shaven like Crispin. His houppelande was scarlet with small pearls sewn onto the chest. He chuckled and placed his thumbs in his wide belt. “For my part,” he went on, “it appears better than I anticipated.”

Wynchecombe scowled. London well knew that he did not approve of his partner being elected to the post of sheriff and in fact, More was more absent in most proceedings than not. He sniffed, ignoring More. “Why London, Crispin? One would think you would hide yourself far from here.”

“A man can lose himself in London. Or at least…” He set the poker aside and faced them both. “He can try.” He felt a wave of uneasiness with the sheriffs standing in his place of safe and private surroundings. “My lords, to what do I owe-?”

Wynchecombe looked at More before answering. “The body is gone.”

Crispin raised a brow. “Indeed.”

More shook himself. “Is that all you can say?”

“What would you have me say, Lord Sheriff?”

“Damn you, Guest,” said Wynchecombe. “You couldn’t let it go, could you? Couldn’t let me hang that useless cutpurse who now seems to be your lap dog. Now it’s missing Templars and dark mysteries. I want none of it, I tell you.”

“You have a sworn duty-”

Without warning, Wynchecombe slammed his forearm into Crispin’s chest and pinned him against the wall. Jack made a half-hearted lurch forward, but truly, what could he do?

More stood beside the fire uncomfortably, shuffling from foot to foot.

Inhaling a sharp breath through his teeth, Crispin swore softly. The freshening pain of his wounds smarted. “Don’t tell me my duty,” Wynchecombe spat at Crispin’s cheek. “I know it right well.” The sheriff waited, but Crispin said nothing. Wynchecombe snorted. He held Crispin one moment more before releasing him. He paced, as if nothing had happened between them. “But this,” he said. “This is beyond me. Templars. Bah! I tell you I know not what to do.” He snarled in Jack’s direction and the boy cringed. There was a pause and Crispin waited for whatever pronouncement Wynchecombe would surely hurl at him. Instead, he was surprised by Jack scurrying around them offering bowls of wine. Wynchecombe took one, looked into his bowl, but did not drink. More refused the offer, lifting his face in disdain.

“Perhaps…we might work together on this,” offered More.

The wine proved interesting again to Wynchecombe, but only to look at. “Eh? What is it, John?”

“Well, might I suggest, just this once, mind you, that Master Guest…I mean him with his history as a knight and us with… with…”

“With the might of the king’s majesty?” said Crispin.

Wynchecombe nodded abruptly. “Yes. Yes, to be sure. Am I right in assuming you mean to hire this churl, John?”

“It is just that he has inconvenienced us, has he not? With his distractions of cutpurses and Templars. We must be about the king’s business, not this nonsense.”

Wynchecombe smiled, though not a pleasant one. “So? What say you, Guest?”

Their mummery was good, he mused. Not as practiced as it could have been, but good enough. “‘Evil draws men together’,” he muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Pardon my asking, but what do I gain from this extraordinary partnership?”

More stuttered.

“What?” cried Wynchecombe. “You mean pay you? Ha!” He finally drank and then grimaced, looking quizzically into the bowl. He handed it off to Jack who took it and sniffed its contents, shaking his head.

“My wages are sixpence a day,” said Crispin.

Wynchecombe laughed. “Sixpence? I pay my archers as much and they work harder.”

“Sixpence is my fee, archer or no. And more often than not, I hit the mark.”

Jack snorted a laugh but quickly suppressed it when both sheriffs eyed him with twin scowls.

“Yes,” said Wynchecombe. “I do recall something a year ago about your finding Westminster Abbey’s missing altar goods. They were returned forthwith.”

“Not so forthwith,” said Crispin, shying from the warmth of flattery. “A fortnight, perhaps.”

Wynchecombe pushed More aside to glare hard at Crispin. “You think yourself very clever.”

“As long as I am clever, my lord, I eat.”

Wynchecombe smirked. His dark mustache framed his white teeth. “You were fortunate they did not execute you for treason.” The low growl of his words reassured them both of their status with one another.

Jack froze while setting the empty bowl back on the shelf.

“Was I?”

“Come, Crispin,” Wynchecombe said, magnanimous again. “You live.” He glanced about the dingy room. “Such as it is.”

“My title, my lands all taken with my knighthood,” he managed to say without gritting his teeth. “Yes. I live. Such as it is.”

More snorted and clutched his gloved hand on his sword hilt. “By God! The gall. You were a traitor, sir! Conspiring with other traitors to put Lancaster on the throne over King Richard, the rightful heir.”

Wynchecombe leaned against the wall, his arms folded in front of him. “You do not think you deserved to lose your knighthood over that? Better your knighthood than your head, eh?”

Crispin eyed their swords still in their sheaths before flicking his gaze away. “I know not. In similar circumstances, I, too, might have cast my vote to degrade such a knight. But when it is oneself, the circumstances seem…unjustified.” The flames caught his attention and he shook his head. “Richard is king now. There is nothing to be done. But ‘they should rule who are able to rule best’. I stand by that now as then.”

Wynchecombe laughed. “Still quoting that pagan Aristotle? No wonder you are without your sword.”

“And without food. Do you pay my wage or not?”

Wynchecombe frowned. “Yes. I agree to your fee.”

“Now wait a moment…” said More.

“Be still, John,” Wynchecombe said wearily. “These matters are best left to me, are they not?” More scowled deeply. It was true that Crispin rarely saw More in these duties except to take his place of pride in processions and other high profile events. Still, for Wynchecombe to rub his face in it…

“Though I may not need to pay it,” the sheriff went on. “I know now who killed our missing knight, and it may cheer your heart to hear it.”

Crispin nodded. “Stephen St Albans.”

“How the hell-? Oh! That wench at the Boar’s Tusk.”

“You forget. She is my friend.” Crispin took two steps to the fire and warmed his knuckles near the blaze. Behind him, rain drizzled against the half-closed shutters and misted the floorboards. “Will you arrest him?” The idea tingled Crispin’s neck, coursing an energized sensation throughout his gut.

He did not even look at More. “Yes. Unless you have a better idea.”

“My better idea isn’t exactly legal.” He twisted back to look at both sheriffs. “You do not seem as concerned as one would expect that your corpse has vanished.”

More waved his hand in dismissal. “We no longer need the corpse to know he is dead. It is the same as if he were buried.”

Crispin turned. “But he is not buried! He is stolen. Do you make nothing of that?”

More moved as if to speak but Wynchecombe cut him off. “I do not care.”

“We do not need the body,” assured More, face glowering comically.

Crispin chuckled. “The Templars are now out of your hair, eh? One problem solved.”

“That is not your concern. Your concern is only to help me find Stephen St Albans.”

“You forget, Wynchecombe. The body must be produced for a trial.”

“I can get round that, never you fear.” He huffed at More and turned back to the fire to warm his hands. “What troubles you? I would have thought nothing would please you more than to put that particular man on the gallows.”

Wynchecombe was right. Nothing could possibly please Crispin more except to drop the rope over Stephen’s neck himself. But something about Stephen’s guilt gnawed at him. He worried at it, like a widow at her rosary.

“Yes,” was all he said. Stephen a poisoner. Crispin hated him with all his being, but was Stephen dishonorable enough to use poison? It was mostly that thought that kept him silent when he and Jack followed the sheriffs out to the street and watched them and their entourage of horses and men finally depart up the avenue back toward Newgate.