Serpent in the Thorns

8

“CHRIST’S SOUL! MASTER CRISPIN!” Jack jerked forward, but there was little he could do.

Crispin reached up, curled his fingers around the arrow’s shaft, and yanked it from the wood. It tore a further hole through his coat and he swore at the ragged cloth. He pressed his hand to his left shoulder, felt a little wetness from blood, and didn’t worry further over it. “It is only a graze,” he said to Jack and examined the arrow. “More importantly—” He looked up and scanned the rooftops. Nothing but smoke and ravens. “Where did it come from?”

Of course, every man on the street was carrying a bow.

“It couldn’t have been no accident,” said Jack.

“No, not likely.” Crispin pointed to a rooftop across the lane. “He’d have to have been there. Possibly behind that gable.” Crispin trotted over the rutted street and looked for handholds on the building. The timbering bowed outward from the daubed wall at differing levels, offering places to put his foot. He did so, grabbing the exposed wood, and hoisted himself up the jettied wall. A windowsill offered more purchase for his foot until his fingers reached the eave and he hung on a corbel for a moment. He tried not to think of loose tiles before he swung his leg up and onto the roof. He pulled himself farther until his entire arm rested on the roof and he managed to roll himself onto the tiles. He stood at the edge and looked down at Jack on the street. “I could use that relic now, eh?”

“Don’t jest about it!” cried Jack.

Crispin picked gingerly across the slick tiles until he reached the gable. He grabbed it and looked over every inch of the roof surrounding it. He did not expect to find footprints on the slate, but he hoped for other clues that might lead to finding the culprit. He almost gave up when he spotted a half moon of mud. A heel? No, too small. The ball of a shoe, perhaps? He looked along the edge of the gable and glimpsed something more along the rough edge of its daubed wall. The archer must have leaned there to take his shot. Crispin peered closely and grasped with two fingers. A few hairs—gold-colored—and a few threads. White. Possibly a shirt.

“Find anything?” asked Jack from below. Crispin could not see him from the pitch of the roof.

“Yes, but not much. I’m coming down.”

Crispin took one more look over the spine of the roof in the opposite direction, saw nothing, edged down to the eave, lowered himself to the jutting beam, sat on it, and leaped the rest of the way. He showed Jack his spoils.

“That ain’t nought but a hair and a thread. What can you make of that?”

Crispin shook his head. He let the items fall to the ground. “I don’t know. There was a partial footprint up there, too. It only proves he was where I thought he was.” He stood a moment thinking, glancing at Martin Kemp’s tinker shop just two doors down.

A queasy feeling rumbled in his gut. “Jack.” He slapped Jack in the chest and leaped forward into a run. “The Crown!”

Crispin reached the foot of the stairs first. He took the steps two at a time and fumbled for his key, finally sliding it into the lock. He turned it, left it in the lock, and pulled the door open.

Everything was as he left it. The box lay buried under the straw. He fell to his knees and dug it out and lifted the golden casket out of the wooden box. He lifted the lid.

Still there.

He sat back on his feet just as Jack slammed into the doorjamb, panting. “Well? Is it gone?”

“No.” Crispin slowly closed the lid and replaced the gold casket in the box. He carefully assembled the straw about it again and stood, brushing bits of straw from his knees. “It’s untouched. The room is untouched. Surely he knew where I lived. Why didn’t he take the Crown?”

“Maybe he wanted to kill you first.”

Crispin looked at Jack and noticed the boy clutching the arrow in his fist. Jack raised it. “I thought you’d want it. Evidence.”

Crispin smiled. “Very good, Jack. You’re learning. You’ll be an accomplished Tracker on your own someday.”

Jack’s brow grew a crop of wrinkles running up into his loose fringe. He handed over the arrow for Crispin’s inspection. “What, me? A Tracker? I ain’t as smart as you, Master. I could never—”

“You’re young. Keep your eyes and ears open and you can be more than a servant.”

“God blind me.” Jack shook his head and caught sight of Crispin’s torn coat. “Oh Master! Let me see to your wound.”

He shook off Jack. “It’s nothing, I tell you.” Crispin was more entranced by the arrow. He knew it was the brother of the one that killed the courier. Hawk fletching, barbed tip. Expensive. Not the kind a man would use for target practice. A hunter’s arrow. A nobleman’s arrow. The same sort of arrows sitting in the quiver of the Captain of the Archers.

AFTER SHEDDING HIS COAT for Jack to repair and shrugging on his cloak to cover his shirt, Crispin went back outside to look up at the gable across the way. Despite the odd looks from passersby, he climbed the wall again and slid up onto the roof. A light drizzle washed away all sign of the muddy footprint. Not that it could have helped him. Only a shoe left behind would have done that, but Miles would not have been so careless.

Crispin looked up. Was his mind playing tricks, or did he hear Miles’s voice?

He stepped to the edge of the roof and looked down. There was Miles, astride his horse and talking to a page. Miles patted the boy on the shoulder and sent him off. He chuckled and fisted the reins.

Crispin noticed the quiver of arrows hanging from the saddle—hawk fletching all.

Miles would be gone in another moment. The horse shook his large head, awaiting his master’s instructions.

Crispin scanned the street. The page disappeared around the corner. The street emptied. The drizzle kept them away from the pungent butcher’s street. Crispin stared at the top of Miles’s head . . . and leaped.

He landed heavily on Miles’s back, knocking him off his horse to the mud. Winded, Miles tried to right himself, but Crispin pushed him down. Miles grabbed his ankle and Crispin fell with him. They rolled, each trying to get the upper hand as the horse grunted and stepped out of the way, its trapper swishing.

Crispin shoved Miles down, grinding his face in the sludge. Then he scrambled on top of Miles’s shoulder blades, forcing him deeper into the mushy ground. He yanked out his knife and held it to the man’s neck.

Miles glared over his shoulder and when he finally got his breath back hissed, “Get the hell off me!”

“I think not. I’d like to have a parley, if you will.”

Miles tried to rise but Crispin used his knees to dig into Miles’s spine.

Miles twisted to look back. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“You know,” said Crispin calmly, more calmly than he felt, “it’s bad enough you manipulated me into committing treason all those years ago, but trying to kill me is quite another matter. I don’t like it.”

“I never tried to kill you.”

Crispin grit his teeth and pressed the blade’s tip into Miles’s jaw just at the juncture of his ear. Miles grunted when Crispin pressed harder. A pearl of blood oozed up, bulged, and then ran down his neck. “I don’t tolerate liars. Let’s try this again. Why did you try to kill me?”

“Dammit, let me up! I never tried to kill you, you bastard, but I will now!”

“I am in possession of one of your arrows that just grazed my shoulder not more than a few moments ago. There is another stuck in the flesh of a dead French courier. Care to tell me about these unrelated events?”

Miles stopped struggling. A line of red ran down his neck like a necklace. He blew two bursts from his nostrils and then a third before he turned his head as much as Crispin’s blade allowed him. “Let me up and we will talk.”

“Why should I do that?”

“I have much to say.”

“I rather enjoy my knee in your back.” Miles said nothing. Crispin stared at the back of the archer’s head, watched his shoulders fall and rise with each labored breath. At last, Crispin leaned back, grabbed Miles’s sword from its sheath, and rose. “Get up. No tricks.”

Miles pushed up from the mud on his hands and knees and carefully rose. He turned to face Crispin before raising a gloved hand to his bleeding neck. He looked at the blood and mud on his glove and scowled. “Always one for the dramatic, aren’t you? Tell me what all this is about.”

“I told you. You killed that French courier and you tried to kill me.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What French courier?”

“Must we play this?” Crispin raised the sword. It felt good in his hand. “The French courier that may bring the war with France to our doorstep. The one carrying a particular object from the French court to this one.”

Miles’s brows rose. “You think I killed him?”

“And tried the same on me. But Miles. With an arrow?” He shook his head. “Of course, that is the cowardly way. I’d expect that from you.”

The corner of Miles’s muddy lip raised in a sneer. “I can assure you, when I choose to kill you, it will be face to face so that you may see it coming.”

Crispin tapped the sword point into Miles’s chest with each word. “Tell me about the French courier.”

“You’re repeating yourself. I don’t know anything about that or the—” Miles bit down on his cheek. He glared at Crispin and the sword blade at his chest.

“Or the what?” smiled Crispin.

Miles made an unconvincing grin. “The object from the French court. As you said.”

“On top of everything else, you’re a bad liar.”

“Oi!”

Crispin turned. Several guards came running up the street, weapons raised. Crispin turned back to Miles and smiled. “Time to go. We’ll meet again.” He jammed the sword into the mud and leapt for the roof, leaving Miles to react a hairsbreadth too late. Crispin hung on a corbel and swung his legs up to the slate, grabbing hold of the roof’s edge. With the strength of his legs, he pulled himself up over the eave the rest of the way and rolled onto the slick tiles, gripping with his fingers so he didn’t slip off. Miles stood below him, a shocked look on his face. Crispin saluted him with a grim smile and ran up to the roof’s peak and down the other side, leaving the guards and a sputtering Miles behind.

He didn’t need Miles or his false testimony. All he needed was the arrow. One he already possessed, but the one that killed the courier would be best. That would convict Miles right well.

He slid on his backside down the roof to the edge and leapt off into a haycart. He rolled out of the hay and righted himself on the ground, brushing the mud and hay off his shirt before he straightened his cloak.

He listened but could not hear anyone following him, neither over the roof nor around the corner. So much for the king’s guards and the Captain of the Archers.

He took a deep breath and looked up the lane one side and down the other. Now where would Wynchecombe have put the body?

“IT’S A SIMPLE QUESTION, Lord Sheriff.” At least Crispin thought it was.

“I’ll make you a bargain, Guest.”

Ah. Here it comes.

“I’ll tell you where the body is if you tell me where those women are.”

“Now my Lord Sheriff, I told you I was protecting them—”

“Do you truly want to be thrown into gaol again?”

Crispin sighed. He stood before the sheriff in his Newgate chamber. Wynchecombe had not offered him a seat, so he stood. “I prefer to remain a free man if given the choice.”

“That choice is slipping away.”

“I told you I’m protecting them.”

“From whom?”

“From you, my lord.”

Wynchecombe sat back. His eyes whitened at the edges but the incredulity was not there. “Why should they need protecting from me?”

Should he say? Always difficult to decide how helpful the sheriff would be. Crispin stared at his boots. “The one who found him is dull-witted, my lord, and she, well, she seems to think she killed him.”

“What!” The sheriff shot to his feet and slammed his hand on the table. His candle wobbled and the flame flickered. “God’s teeth, Guest!”

“My Lord Sheriff, with a bow and arrow? A kitchen wench?”

Wynchecombe glared. His bushy brows lowered over his eyes until they cast a shadow. “Hmph” was all he said and sat heavily. His sword clanked against the chair.

“I need that arrow from the dead man. I think I know who killed him.”

The sheriff recovered and leaned forward. “Who, then?”

Crispin smiled grimly. “I cannot say just yet.”

Wynchecombe sat back slowly. “Were you always this annoying, Guest, or did you come by it only after the king dealt with you?”

“ ‘Annoying,’ Lord Sheriff?”

“Never mind. Very well. Come with me.”

The sheriff rose. He led Crispin down the wooden staircase outside his tower chamber and through several passages, then down another staircase to a dark undercroft lit with a few pitch torches. Ahead, Crispin saw a bier set up with a sheet-covered body. The cloth glowed like pale moonlight in the torches’ illumination.

“The French ambassador wanted the body returned to France,” said the sheriff gravely, “but the king refuses to release it.”

Crispin snorted. Politics.

Once he neared, he noticed the arrow still protruding from the corpse. “No one removed the arrow?”

“Why should we do that?”

Crispin shook his head. “Why indeed.” He cast back the sheet. The dead man’s dry eyes stared upward. Did he see angels or demons?

Crispin grabbed the arrow’s shaft but it stuck solid in the dead flesh. He yanked out his dagger and ripped the dead man’s blood-soaked surcote from the neck down to the arrow.

Wynchecombe grabbed Crispin’s dagger hand. “Holy Mary! What are you doing? Why do you not simply break it off.”

“I want the entire arrow. Do you mind?”

Wynchecombe released him with a rumbled sound in his throat. “Desecrating a corpse? I mind not at all. You’re certainly bound for Hell at any rate. Why should I try to stop your progress?”

Crispin continued pulling the blade through the layers of bloody fabric, now stiff and brown. There had been a lot of blood considering the arrow pierced the man’s heart. Crispin sawed the blade into the fabric all the way down past his chemise to the man’s skin. He used his hands to tear the material away from the arrow wound. The man had not been cleaned and the dried blood rusted his chest and the punctured flesh. The rest of his skin shone white and ashen in the pale light. Crispin tugged on the arrow again but still it would not yield. He glanced once at Wynchecombe. The sheriff shook his head slightly at what he surely knew Crispin was about to do, but Crispin turned back to his task and thrust the tip of his dagger into the wound next to the shaft and worked the blade around, ripping open the flesh. He supposed it was like any other bit of dead meat on his supper table, meat that would not bleed. But knowing it was human flesh made his belly a little uneasy.

He grabbed the arrow again and wiggled it, rocked it, until the arrowhead tore upward. The body rose slightly as Crispin pulled the shaft. The flesh made a distasteful sucking sound until he yanked the arrow free.

He examined the metal broadhead and its glistening blood. He wiped his blade for an extra few seconds on the dead man’s surcote and sheathed it.

“What do you plan to do with that?” asked the sheriff. He didn’t mask his grimace.

“I know the maker. I wish to have it identified for assurance.”

“Isn’t that the province of the Lord Sheriff’s office?”

Crispin wiped the arrow on the sheet and shoved it through his belt. “Only should you insist.”

Wynchecombe looked at the arrow now secured on Crispin’s person. He leaned closer and his face dropped into shadow. “What of the Crown of Thorns? Have you found it yet?”

“Not yet. You can be sure that once I have, everyone will know.”

“What does that mean? What are you plotting, Guest?”

“Nothing, Lord Sheriff. Do I have your leave to go?”

Wynchecombe glared and inhaled deeply. The exhale through his nostrils ruffled his mustache. “I know you look for trouble, and I’d see you hang yourself. As long as it doesn’t drag me in with you.”

“No, my lord. If I hang, I will most assuredly hang alone.”

“Happy to hear it. Off with you, then.”

Crispin knew that wasn’t quite the truth. If hang he must, he wanted Miles struggling right beside him.