Serpent in the Thorns

19

“JACK!” CRISPIN THREW OPEN the door. The room was dark except for the faint glow of the peat embers in the hearth. “Jack.” He heard a yawn and fell on the sleepy boy in the hay. “Jack. You’re still here.”

“Aye, Master. ’Course I am. What’s amiss?”

“You’ve got to get up now. We’re going to the Boar’s Tusk.”

“I ain’t thirsty, Master. I’m just weary.” He tried to lay back down but Crispin yanked him to his feet.

“I said get up! There’s no time to waste. It’s not safe here.”

“Not safe? ’Slud. What you got yourself into, Master?”

Crispin started to light a candle but then thought better of it. “I went to Westminster Palace to try to stop an attempt on the king’s life.”

“And did you?” Jack was fully awake now and pulled on his cloak.

“Well . . . in a manner of speaking. I mean, I did stop it, but—”

Jack grabbed the sore arm and Crispin winced. “You’re hurt. What’s happened?”

“I got myself accused of the assassination attempt. And now I’m on the run. So if you don’t mind, make haste!”

Jack threw his arm across the doorway to block Crispin. “Wait. You mean to tell me you got yourself blamed for trying to kill the king? Did anyone see you?”

Crispin tried not to look at Jack. “Did anyone see me? Only all of court.” Crispin made a halfhearted attempt at a laugh. “It doesn’t look good, Jack. We must leave.”

Jack raised his hands and made a plaintive plea to the heavens. “I leave you alone for a few hours—”

“We must go!”

“Wait! What about the Crown o’ Thorns?”

Crispin’s glance darted toward the corner. “God’s blood!” He stomped to the hay pile and freed the wooden box. He cast open the lid, pulled out the gold box and opened it. His fingers touched the Crown and he yanked it out and looked at it. “Where was your invincibility tonight?” he accused. He stood with it a moment, clutching it in his hands. What was the purpose of holding on to this any longer? Well, it would certainly do Crispin no good anymore, but there was always Jack. If Jack took this to court, perhaps he would get a reward. No, no. Better he take it to the sheriff when he could. The sheriff would surely realize that Jack was no marksman with a bow. Wynchecombe might have the bollocks to defend the boy, but then again . . . Crispin ran a hand up his face. He couldn’t think. His shoulder still pained him, still muddled his mind. Only one thing was clear. He had to keep the Crown safe until he could let someone know where it was.

He glanced at the hearth and strode to it. He leaned down and, braced against the heat, he reached up inside the chimney as high as he could and tucked it on the smoke shelf.

Done, he made for the door.

“What of the boxes?” Jack pointed to the courier boxes in the hay.

“Cover them up again and hope for the best. Then come on.”

He didn’t wait for Jack. He knew the boy would catch up. Crispin rambled down the steps and onto the street. It was past curfew but it didn’t matter. His long strides took him quickly to Gutter Lane and even as he turned the corner Jack drew up beside him. He expected a smile on the boy’s normally cheerful face, but those ginger brows were instead wrinkled over worried eyes.

Crispin knocked on the tavern’s door and a sleepy Ned answered. “Master Crispin, it’s far past curfew.”

“I know it, Ned, but we need to come in. I must talk with Gilbert.”

Ned had already shuffled out of the way, his hair more disarrayed than usual. Crispin didn’t know if the boy was heading for Gilbert’s room or not, so he pushed him out of the way and began shouting. “Gilbert Langton! Awake!”

Crispin turned at a sound and saw Gilbert, wearing only his knee-length chemise, leaning in a doorway. Gilbert was rubbing his tosseled head. “What’s the matter? Crispin? For the love of the Virgin, what are you doing here at this hour?”

Now that sanctuary seemed close at hand Crispin was ready to crumble. He needed rest. Food could wait. “Gilbert.” It felt good to drape his hand on his friend’s shoulder. He really wanted to drop into his arms. “There’s a lot to explain, but simply put, the king’s men are after me. I need a place to hide out for a few days until I can get out of London.”

“Out of London?” Gilbert was now fully awake. He dragged Crispin by the arm and hurried him down the stairs into the wine mews. Ned followed with a candle. It barely lit the big bellies of sweating casks, a stone floor, a table, two chairs, and a cot the scullion sisters recently shared. “Crispin! What have you done?”

“I’ve done nothing but try to save the king, and it’s got me only trials and evils!” He slammed his fist to the wall. “I saved him! And now I am blamed for trying to kill him myself!”

Gilbert looked at Jack, whose pale face had nothing to offer. “We need wine.” Gilbert found a jug and put it under a spigot. “No need for straws, lads. Jack, fetch the bowls. One for each of us.”

Crispin sank to the chair and put his head in his hands. Ned stood warily next to the other chair as Gilbert sat. Jack offered the bowls and Gilbert filled them, Crispin’s first. They all drank silently until Crispin shook his head and grasped the bowl with both hands. “I’ve gotten myself into a right fix this time. I truly do not know how I am to come out of it alive.”

“The trick is,” said Gilbert, “to find the real assassin.”

“I can’t do that if I’m not at court.” Crispin gulped the wine and set the bowl down again. Gilbert refilled it and he watched the alluring flicker of ruby red and yellow candlelight play against the sides of the clay bowl.

Gilbert drank his wine. “The king has it in for you. Always has. Probably jealous of you and Lancaster. After all, a man can tell the difference between fawning and true affection.”

Crispin rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble. He looked up into the shadowy faces of Jack, Ned, and Gilbert. “I can’t think anymore tonight. Let me rest. But Gilbert, you must keep watch. The sheriff may come here looking for me.”

ONCE NED AND GILBERT left them alone, Jack settled Crispin on the cot, and as soon as he hit the straw he lost track of Jack and everything else.

Until the sound of men shouting awoke him.

He scrambled out of bed. His knife was in his hand and he looked up the stairs where Jack pressed his ear to the door. He motioned down to Crispin to be quiet and hide.

Crispin cast about for a reasonable hiding place. Behind the large tun cask. A tight fit with his nose pressed against the damp wood. His nostrils filled with the smell of must and old wine.

Wynchecombe’s voice trembled the rafters. “I know he’s here!” He crashed through the door sending Jack tumbling down several steps. Crispin squeezed his dagger hilt. If anything happened to the boy because of him . . .

“Bring a candle,” bellowed the sheriff.

One of the sheriff’s men thrust a candle at him. He took it and held it aloft. “Ah, Jack Tucker. Where the lapdog is, the master is close at hand.”

“No, my good lord. I don’t know where Master Crispin is. What is all this about?”

“Get out of my way.”

Crispin heard a slap. He held his breath, ready to pounce.

The sheriff’s heavy footfalls thundered down the steps. He paused at the bottom and then silence.

It had been folly coming to the Boar’s Tusk. Now Crispin endangered all those he loved. He should have taken his chances on the Shambles or simply gotten out of London completely. Of course it was all too late. What was the use in hiding? There was no way out of the cellar and Wynchecombe was going to catch him. It was over.

The sheriff blew a long breath through his nose. “Go out to the tavern and wait for me.” He called this up the stairs, Crispin assumed to his men.

“My Lord Sheriff? And leave you alone with a desperate criminal?”

“He can’t get out except up the stairs. Leave me, I say.”

Crispin listened to the sound of the men’s retreating footsteps until they finally disappeared.

“Jack,” said the sheriff, his voice low and slick. “Close the door.”

“My Lord Sheriff, I’m telling you—”

“Close the damn door!”

Jack’s miserable steps trudged slowly upward and then the door clicked closed. “He’s not here, my lord,” repeated Jack in a desperate voice.

Wynchecombe didn’t reply. His echoing steps made a slow meander. The flat of his boots crunched damply on the stone floor. “Crispin.” His voice echoed hollowly. Each cask tossed the sound back to Crispin. “Oh Crispin. I know you’re here. Best come out and talk to me. It’s your only and last chance.”

Crispin didn’t think he could stomach being thrown into prison again. And he did not relish the idea of more torture. This time, they would devise something better, something more lingering. And then his execution was bound to be long and agonizing. Perhaps he could use the sheriff as a hostage. It was worth a try.

Crispin squeezed out of his hiding place and stepped before the sheriff. The candle in Wynchecombe’s hand lit his face with enough malevolent light to sharpen his features to demonic proportions.

“Well, well. Here he stands.” The sheriff laid his hand on his sword pommel, seemed to consider, and let his hand fall back. “A merry chase, but now it is done.”

“You have something to say to me, Wynchecombe?”

He shook his head and chuckled. “Must I constantly remind you, Crispin, that you must address me as ‘my Lord Sheriff’? Why is that so difficult to remember?”

“I have no time for games. If you’ve come to arrest me I warn you. I won’t go quietly.”

“I didn’t expect that you would. I will be happy to see you in gaol again where you belong and to collect the reward for your capture.” He smiled. The candlelight caught it. His teeth glowed like bones. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”

Crispin glanced down at his hand, and turned the dagger in the candlelight.

Wynchecombe looked at it, too. “Are you going to use that?”

Crispin tightened his hold. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Wynchecombe’s smile flattened. “I’m still waiting for a reason.”

Crispin tried, as he had tried many times before, to discern the man behind those dark eyes. Wynchecombe was greedy, self-important, vicious, cruel, and ambitious. But his dealings with Crispin had been fair, tempered, of course, by Wynchecombe’s threats and imperious style.

The sheriff seemed to be offering him a chance—whatever that chance was. His other options didn’t look so good.

Crispin took a breath. “I can’t bribe you. You know that.”

“Intimately.”

“All I have is our history. We’ve known each other for a full year. I’ve helped you more often than not, surely you recall that. Little compensation have I had for it. You usually garnered the credit for work I did—”

Wynchecombe canted forward. “There’s no need to go into that, is there?”

“You know I didn’t do this, Lord Sheriff.”

“I know no such thing. I was there, after all. The bow was in your hand. So many witnesses.”

“And none of them saw what truly happened.”

“Now you weave tales. How can you possibly dispute the testimony of so many eyes? Even if you do not, I see the writing on the walls.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“So says the condemned man. I’ve heard it so many times before.”

Crispin shook his head. “After all this time, you haven’t a sense of me?”

Wynchecombe opened his mouth to speak but held it in check. He looked around the dark room as if for the first time.

Crispin moved his fingers over the knife’s handle. “Simon . . . you can’t be that much of a bastard.”

“What kind of bastard I am depends on you. No, you’re as enigmatic as they come, Guest. You wallow in it. Maybe you tried to kill the king and maybe you didn’t. It would still be a prize for me to bring you in, guilty or not.”

Crispin glanced at Jack. His face was pasted with an expression of terror, marking it white and longer than usual.

“You know I would never have a chance to prove my innocence. I’m a dead man the moment I walk back into court.”

“You didn’t let me finish.” Wynchecombe sauntered toward the tun and kept a careful eye on Crispin’s movements. Crispin followed the sheriff’s progress and kept his knife drawn but lowered.

The sheriff sneered and sniffed the spilled wine dripping from the spigot.

“I was going to say,” said Wynchecombe, turning toward Crispin, “that though you are a great prize, so is the Crown of Thorns. I think I am in a good bargaining position now. I do not think it will cost me the usual to get it from you. Will it?”

“Are you that certain I have it?”

Wynchecombe laughed. “Now I am certain. Come, Crispin. Is this relic worth your life?”

“Will you help me bring the true culprit to justice?”

“Bring me the Crown and I’ll consider it.”

“I don’t have time for you to consider it. Yes or no?”

Wynchecombe chuckled and nodded. “Very well. Have it your way. Get me the Crown and I will forget I saw you. And look for the culprit.”

“I know the criminal. It is Miles Aleyn, the king’s Captain of the Archers.”

Wynchecombe raised a brow. “Indeed. Can you prove it?”

Crispin made a sound very like a growl. “No.”

The sheriff looked up the stairs. Jack had pulled his knife and was breathing hard. He glared at the sheriff murderously. “Then it won’t be easy. How about that Crown, then. Get it.”

“You’ll let me go?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I? Take your mastiff with you before he hurts himself.”

“What about your own dogs? I don’t want to be let free only to be cornered by one of those heroes up there.”

Wynchecombe was still smiling. “You there. Tucker. Tell my man I want to see him.”

Jack hesitated and looked to Crispin. Crispin nodded for him to obey and Jack opened the door and went through it.

“You’d better hide again, Master Guest,” said the sheriff.

Crispin saw the sparse light from the open door illuminate the first bit of stairs. Wynchecombe’s smile galled but he had little choice. Reluctantly, he slid in behind the tun cask again—hiding like a rat, he thought—just as the sheriff’s man appeared at the top of the stairs.

“My lord?” he said.

“There’s nothing here. You men go along back to Newgate. I want to talk to the innkeeper a bit longer.”

“He’ll await you here, my lord.”

The man left and Crispin peered out of his hole. Jack stood in the doorway, one half of him lit by the firelight in the tavern, and half in the darkness of the cellar. He watched until every man left before he nodded to Crispin that it had been done.

Crispin crept back out from the shadows, stared at Wynchecombe, and reluctantly sheathed his knife. “I thank you, Lord Sheriff. Trust can be an uneasy thing.”

“I never said I trusted you. I still have the upper hand. If you don’t return with that Crown, your precious innkeeper and his wife will be hauled to prison on the charge of treason.” Wynchecombe opened his full-toothed smile again. “No risk. You see, I do have a sense of you.” His smiled fell away. “Make haste. I weary of this.”

Loathsome bastard. Crispin edged past the sheriff, expecting like some unruly schoolboy to receive a blow, and climbed the stairs. “Come along, Jack.”

Crispin stared at the silent Gilbert and Eleanor sitting in the near darkness of the tavern hall, at Ned who sat on a stool by the door and looked back at Crispin as if he were the Savior himself. Nothing like it. If anything, he was the portent of doom to them all.

He cast his feelings of dread aside, concentrating instead on his mission. Crispin stood beside the tavern door and nodded for Jack to open it. He saw Jack step into the moonlit street and look carefully down one way and then the other. When his pale face turned back to Crispin, he gave a solemn nod.

Crispin slid carefully out the door and shivered in the cold. He regretted for the thousandth time his lost cloak, but there was nothing to be done about it. He was grateful, however, for the dark, for there would be fewer prying eyes when shutters were closed and shadows hid him.

He took the lead of Jack and trotted ahead, with Jack trying to keep up beside him. Neither said a word. Nothing needed to be said. They both knew the situation well. Handing over the Crown now was a small price to pay for the lives of his friends. He hoped it might spare his as well.

The moonlight lit the way, shining the muddy street like a ribboning beacon. They turned at Cheapside and followed it to where it became the Shambles. Passing the quiet shops on the dark street, Crispin suddenly felt more alone than he had for a long time. The poulterer who shouldered Martin’s tinker shop was shut up and silent. Not even the soft sound of clucking could be heard from its depths as they passed. Martin’s window, too, was shuttered and barred, though a splinter of light lined the sill where a candle no doubt rested.

Crispin nabbed the key from his pouch. He crept as silently up the stairs as he could, cautious about the creaking step. Jack was silent behind him. If there was anything the boy excelled at, it was stealth.

He brought the key forward, but it slipped from his fingers and fell with a tinkling clunk. He turned to Jack with a wince and they both froze, waiting for the shadows to pounce upon them. When nothing happened, he dropped to the floor with a whispered oath, and felt with his hands along the darkened wooden landing until he touched metal. Rising and rubbing his aching shoulder, he thrust the key in the lock at last and pulled open his door.

One glance at the corner and the pile of straw told him the reliquary lay undisturbed. He went directly to the hearth. The fire had burned down to ash but was still warm. He dropped to one knee and reached up into the fire box. His fingers ran along the shelf, and then he leaned into the hearth, twisting, reaching, the peat embers cooking his back and choking him with a puff of smoke and a swirl of ash. His fingers scrabbled as the panic slowly rose in his gut.

No use. The Crown was gone.