Jeri Westerson - Cup of Blood

Slowly, Jack got to his feet and shook the cold mud from his cloak. He frowned up at the man. “If it’s to be done, let’s do it quickly.”

Any thoughts of escape quickly faded as the man grabbed Jack by his cloak in a tight grip. He smiled. “Perhaps he will be merciful. A genuine show of repentance will do much for a man’s disposition. I suggest you add remorse to your apology.”

“Aye, m’lord,” he grumbled. Jack fell silent and did not struggle even when the man hoisted him up and his toes barely danced along the ground. It could have gone worse, he decided. The man could have been cruel, could have beaten or cut him. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

They made the long walk back to the tavern in silence. Yellow light pierced the broken shutters, though many of the candles had burned low. The place was quiet when they opened the door. The tavern keeper no longer dozed at his place by the kitchens, but was instead picking up the mess Jack had left when he ran.

The piper had left his pipe aside and quaffed his cup of ale from a clay cup. A male servant lay asleep and snoring near the door, his feet hanging off the end of a cot. Most of the patrons had gone, but Jack’s latest victim never moved, sleeping where he had left him.

When the man shut the door, the tavern keeper looked up. “Oi? Is that you Crispin?”

“Yes, Gilbert.”

“Come, man. I thought you left for the night. In truth, it is time I send these last two away so that I can go to my own bed.”

The musician looked up from over the rim of his cup and pointed to it.

Gilbert waved him off with a huff. “He’d nurse that ‘til dawn if I let him. But what is this?” He gestured toward Jack, who shrank away from the brawny man as much as he could while still in the clutches of the man called Crispin. “What have you brought me?”

“I return him to the place of his crime for the betterment of his soul.”

Gilbert rubbed his face with a fat hand, wiping away the sweat from his bearded chin. A big-boned man, he stood nearly as tall as Crispin. “Crime? What mean you by that?”

“I mean that this knave is a cutpurse…”

“Oh! It’s that way, is it?” Gilbert lunged for the knife at his belt and pulled it free, advancing on Jack. “I’ll have none of that in my house!”

Jack recoiled and tried to wriggle free.

“Peace, Gilbert. I have already pardoned the knave on condition that he returns his spoils to the rightful owner.”

Gilbert glared and pointed with his knife. “You do not know how fortunate you are, young lad. Crispin Guest is a right honorable gentleman. That’s the Tracker you’re fooling with. I’ll wager you’ve heard of him. Any other man would have first sliced you open for your thievery-” and he made cutting motions- “and only then asked questions. He’s coddling you, and in all probability you don’t deserve it.”

Jack glanced once at Crispin before licking his dry lips. Tracker? He had heard of the man, though he thought it was more of a legend than a real person. He slipped further into the neck of his tunic held firm in the Tracker’s fist. Were he thinner, he might have slipped entirely free of the tattered garment.

“I think first you owe Master Langton an apology for using such tricks in his establishment.” Crispin shook him. “Well?”

Hanging from his own hood, Jack smiled weakly up at Gilbert’s taut face. “I…I am heartily sorry for plying me trade in your ale house, good Master.”

“Hmpf,” snorted Gilbert. “The words are spoken but the sincerity is lacking. Let me never see your face in here again, lad.”

“Aye, Master.” He glanced up at Crispin’s stern expression. “I doubt I’ll be back.”

“Well then,” said Crispin, casting his glance toward the sleeping man. “Let us awaken your victim.” Crispin maneuvered the boy forward and kicked the table. “Awake, Master. Come, now.”

The man remained stubbornly motionless.

Crispin chuckled and looked up at Gilbert. “The character of your wine must be particularly potent today.” With Jack’s hood still firm in his grip, he reached down with his other hand and shook the man’s shoulder before frowning.

“He sleeps like the dead, this one,” said Gilbert.

“You are partly correct,” said Crispin. His fist slackened on Jack’s hood, and Jack took advantage by stepping back and adjusting his loosened collar. Crispin’s fingers touched the sleeping man’s neck and turned his face, revealing wide bulging eyes.

Jack gasped.

“This man isn’t asleep at all,” said Crispin. “He is dead.”

Crispin examined the dead man’s face and grimaced, not at the pale and waxy skin, for he was used to corpses both on the battlefield and off, but at the manner and incongruity of such a body in such a place. The man looked as if he had suffered. His eyes bulged and spittle whitened his lips. Crispin cautiously bent to sniff the corpse’s opened mouth but didn’t detect any unusual odors or obvious poisons. One arm extended across the table ending in curled fingers as if he were reaching for something. Crispin tested the arm by raising it. Stiff.

He shook his head. “It’s a wretched thing, Gilbert. Poor man. Dying and not a soul aware of it.”

Gilbert stood behind Crispin’s shoulder and nodded. “You don’t think it was the food? Or the wine?”

“Not the food, though you would think so.”

“Crispin! This is no time for jesting.”

“Who’s jesting?” He saw the look on Gilbert’s face and laid his hand on his shoulder with a hasty smile. “Rest assured it was nothing in your food or drink. However, it was most certainly something he consumed, though I fear not by choice.”

“Poison?” Gilbert whispered.

“I don’t see any other way about it.” His temples throbbed again and he groaned. He was too tired to entertain this now. Let others content themselves with it. He hated to leave Gilbert with such a thing, but he had spent too much time today at the Boar’s Tusk already. He glanced at the boy, still cringing in the corner. “Gilbert, I would be off to my own bed. There’s little I can do here, at any rate. You’d best wait for Ned to get back with the sheriff and the coroner.”

“Oh, Crispin, don’t go! You know how the sheriff is.”

All too well. Crispin rubbed his face. It felt like damp leather. “Gilbert. For God’s sake.”

“Please, Crispin.”

He sighed and opened his eyes to glare at his friend. “Very well. But you owe me for this.”

“I’ll take it from your overdue bill,” Gilbert muttered and stared at the dead man. He wrung his hands on his apron, shuffled backward to a table opposite, and sunk to the bench.

The ginger-haired boy stealthily made for the door but Crispin leaned over and grabbed his hood again. “I am afraid you cannot leave either, little thief. For the sheriff may wish to question you as well.”

“But I don’t know naught!”

“That remains to be seen.” He shoved him down onto a stool while he sat on a chair, rocking it back, and plopped his feet on the table. He stared over his muddy boot tips at the dead man and waited.

The nearby monastery bells rang for Lauds by the time Sheriff Simon Wynchecombe entered and looked across the smoky room, legs wide with gloved fists dug into his hips. There was nothing particularly ostentatious about his dress, for another man might have made more use of bright colors in more combination. The sheriff’s pretension sprang from his person, some of it by choice and some of it by nature. A tall, ruddy man with dark bushy brows and an equally dark mustache and beard, he seemed to relish this darkness and clothed himself equally so.