Jeri Westerson - Cup of Blood

“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.”