Jeri Westerson - Cup of Blood

Crispin grimaced. “Spare me.”

“He gave that ring to me ! I thought it was mine. When I discovered it was not I threw it back at him.”

Crispin wiped his face with a clammy hand. “So you are saying Rosamunde… She was his…his…” Crispin could not bring himself to say it. It was worse than D’Arcy and Stephen. Almost.

“Yes,” Stephen finally answered, covering his face with one hand before dropping that hand away. “But she does not know about me.”

Crispin suddenly wished he never came to Newgate, never met Templars and dead men and courtly ladies. He wished to go back to the Boar’s Tusk and drown his senses in bad wine and smoky hearths.

Wearily, he heard himself ask, “What of her betrothed?”

“I know not. The last I heard, he was still in France.”

Crispin froze. “France? Your French business?”

“Yes,” nodded Stephen. “We have been negotiating for months.”

Crispin fell silent. The neat package tied up in a tight string was now unraveling and so much else with it. He pulled distractedly at his coat. Suddenly he felt weary. “For what it is worth,” he said, voice hoarse. “I believe you. And whatever you believe about me, I am a man of honor, however misplaced. I will do my best to see you freed, though the sheriff will not like it.” He strained on the next part, wondering even at the last moment what he was going to say. “I will say nothing to Rosamunde about the…the other matter.”

Stephen lowered his head and heaved a long sigh. “Thank you.”

“You…” He stopped and started again. “It’s…” No use. What could he say? Crispin compressed his lips and shook his head. “I do not understand any of this.”

“I’m…”

“No.” Crispin held up his hand and grimaced. Now more than ever he longed to strike Stephen, but the man was safe, for now, behind a barred door.

Crispin turned, but the ragged thoughts would not leave him. “For God’s sake, Stephen! You frequented a brothel!”

Stephen shrugged. “To keep up appearances.”

“What in hell did you do there?”

He smiled sheepishly. “I played cards.”

Crispin kicked at the straw-littered floor.

Stephen stood at the door, fingers resting on the iron bars. His pensive expression flickered in the torch light. “Will you truly ask the sheriff to release me?”

“Yes. I said I would. I will not be responsible for hanging an innocent man. But he will ask me what I shall ask you now.” He turned to face him. “If you did not kill D’Arcy, who did?”

Stephen shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Wynchecombe will not like that answer and will require convincing.”

“If anyone can do it,” he said, eyes locked on Crispin’s, “it will be you.”

Crispin sat at home and stared into his untouched bowl of wine. After he left Newgate and returned to his lodgings, he realized he was back to the beginning, with no murderer.

De Marcherne and his henchmen. Crispin had all but ignored him in favor of convicting Stephen.

“Stephen,” he muttered. He did not want to envisage it, but now his mind could not erase the image of Stephen St Albans and Gaston D’Arcy. Crispin met Stephen a year before encountering Rosamunde. He fought beside him in battle. He never suspected the man capable of what his mind conjured. It wasn’t as if he had not known sodomites. Some were even his friends, but Stephen…

He shook his head and quaffed the wine. Rubbing his face, he listened to the silence of his room. Below, he could hear Martin Kemp’s wife Alice berating him for some husbandly error among the clatter of pots and pans. Not long after, a door slammed and the quantity of smoke from the outdoor furnace suddenly billowed, cascading across Crispin’s open window and tumbling into his room. Crispin took two strides to close the shutters, but not before watching Martin Kemp jam wood into the inferno, no doubt thinking of something other than wood burning in the fierce blaze and going up in smoke.

Crispin sighed and leaned his hand against the lintel. “I must return to the problem,” he reminded himself. “Who is the murderer?”

He started when Jack Tucker opened the door and walked in as if he’d lived there all his life. He smiled upon seeing Crispin. “Master. What’s the news?”

Crispin stared, unused to the ease with which Tucker had insinuated himself. He still wasn’t quite sure what to make of the lad and his motives, but he shook his head and walked away from the window. Standing in front of the fire, he mechanically raised his fingers to the flames. It did little to warm him.

“The news, Jack, is far from good.”

“Oh?” Jack settled on the floor beside the fire. He took out a wedge of cheese from his pouch and began eating it. With a wad bulging his cheek, he stopped and offered the hunk in his hand to Crispin. Crispin glanced disinterestedly at the food and shook his head.

“Stephen St Albans is not guilty of murder.”

“No! It’s that wretched sheriff to blame.”

“No, no. It is not the sheriff. It’s me. I have talked with Stephen and mulled over the evidence and I do not believe him guilty.”

Jack eyed him and continued chewing. “The woman, then,” he offered slowly. “That Lady Stancliff.”

Crispin shook his head. “Nor her.”

“Blind me, Master. Who’s left?”

“Exactly.” Crispin sat on the hard wood of the chair.

“Maybe it’s them anti-pope men like I said.”

“Yes. I do consider them. But I also consider D’Arcy’s Templar companions.”

“Eh? Why would they murder him? They were his friends, weren’t they?”

Crispin tapped the wooden bowl with his fingers. “Not entirely. I cannot tell you all, Jack, but it might have been simpler for them to merely eliminate him. Remember, they did steal the body.”

“Oh, aye.” He chewed and thought. “It’s complicated, isn’t it?”

“That it is.”

Crispin rose again to retrieve the wine jug and poured more into the bowl. He stood for a moment with the jug still in his hand and stared into nothing.

“Master,” said Jack at his elbow. “Why don’t you ask them Templars. Get it straight from them.”

“Because I cannot find them. They find me.”

“Then what of de Marcherne?”

“At least I do know where he is.” He put the jug down and ran his hand over his day-old beard.

“Where, Master?”

He sighed, but it came from a weariness far beyond the rigors of the day. “Court,” he answered.

Jack whistled. “Have you been lately to court, Master Crispin? Since…well, since…”

“No. I have not. But I have made many a deal with the Devil today. One more won’t hurt.”

Two strides took him to his wash basin, and he proceeded to shave without a word.

Jack insisted upon escorting him to Westminster Palace, and in the back of his mind, Crispin felt glad the boy came. He tried to look his best. Crispin had shaved, clipped his hair, and groomed his poor clothes as best he could, and though Jack’s attire obviously belonged in no court, it was better to have some kind of retainer than none at all.

But the closer Crispin got to the gates, the harder it was to breathe. “I wish to God I had a horse,” he muttered.

Jack nodded. “It would be more seemly, but a man has to make do.” He glanced up at the walls and the finery of the guards ahead and moved closer to Crispin. “How long ago did you say you were last here?”

“Seven years. Yet it seems like only yesterday.”

They reached the gatehouse and the porters looked them over. Each guard wore a mail hood that covered their chins and rested under their lower lip. Their conical helms fit snugly to their heads. One man-at-arms stood back under the shadows while the other approached. “And what would you want?” he asked.