Jeri Westerson - Cup of Blood

After a few minutes his jaw did not feel so sore and he relaxed and closed his eyes. Alone in his dark corner, he felt the companionable solace from so many men sharing the same experience. The low murmur of their voices and laughter resonated in his chest. A bagpipe merrily played and further eased his mood.

The wine did its work, and the ache of his body and the anxiety of his mind relaxed into the distant haze of alcohol. He sat with eyes closed for some time, simply enjoying the peace of the place he called home until a tingle of discomfort and the sense that someone stood over him ruined that peace.

Rosamunde. A corona of candles flickered behind her, and with her position above him and alcohol warming his senses, it looked like a halo glowing behind her head. He lifted his bowl to her and smiled his crooked grin. “Hail, saintly Rosamunde! How fare you?”

But her saintly demeanor soon changed. Her face grew almost as scarlet as her gown. She sat hastily beside him. Her white fingers clutched the table. “I fare not well at all! How could you? It was not bad enough that you arrested my brother, but you have to abuse my servants and arrest them too?”

“Jenkyn is not arrested. Yet. He escaped, but not for long.” His tongue cleaved to his mouth and did not seem to want to cooperate with his words. They slurred on the pleasant flavors of the dark wine. “And what do you care? He is merely a servant. He is nothing to you. Why should you care that he has done you a service out of loyalty?”

“Done me a service?”

He slammed his free hand on the table. “Do not play games with me.” He eased back and chuckled unpleasantly. “I happen to know that saintly Rosamunde spent her free time swyving Gaston D’Arcy.”

This time she slapped his face. He expected it, relished its sharp thwack and the sting. He smiled broader and slurped the wine. “Such coy games you used to play with me. Only letting honorable Crispin go so far, touch only so much. What was the matter? Was I not comely enough for you?” He slid closer and looked her over like a man scrutinizing a tavern wench. His hand snaked forward to capture her waist and he pulled her snuggly against him. “How about now?” He tightened his grip and kissed her noisily and sloppily, prizing open her cold mouth and stabbing in with his tongue. When she would not react, he let her go and sagged back. He smiled again. “No. I didn’t think so.”

He drank his wine and poured more into the bowl. “Will you drink with me, Rosamunde? Like old times?”

“You’re drunk.”

“Maybe. Maybe. But not quite as drunk as I intend to be. Not yet.”

“And this,” she gestured distastefully to him, “is what stands in the way of freeing my brother and my servant? You. Look at you. Bruised and beaten from some tavern brawl, no doubt. You, of all people, are a witness to their character and their actions.”

He nodded and chuckled. “Yes. Amusing, is it not? I am the witness, who has witnessed so much in this life already.” He raised his head unsteadily to look at her. Her eyes were dark like coal smudges on her pale face, and even the candlelight could not warm it with its generous yellow tones. “You have a look on your face, my dear. Do I disgust you?”

“Yes, you do.”

He laughed. “Then why did you not wipe my kiss from your mouth?”

Her expression hardened but her pouting lips remained moist. “Crispin, I came to reason with you.”

“I am beyond reason, my lady. Well beyond. And if you will excuse me, I must go to the latrine and piss away the rest of my reason.” He rose but grabbed his wine bowl and drank it down. Setting it back on the table he kissed her cheek wetly. “I shall be back. Don’t go away.”

He staggered to the door and found a privy in the rear courtyard. He hummed to himself and made water down the privy’s pit, thinking about his early days of disgrace when he spaded out such muck and dumped it into his wheelbarrow. In the earliest hours of the morning, he would roll that wheelbarrow throughout London, his frown deep behind his scarf. “How the mighty have fallen,” he had muttered to himself, never thinking he deserved any of it. He’d go back to the hovel he lived in, reeking from the morning’s activity.

He brushed the memories aside. Tying his braies and adjusting his coat, he smiled to himself. At least those days were behind him. He found respect amongst his fellows at the Tusk and even begrudgingly with the sheriff. Perhaps time could erase the past and make a new life, remake him anew. If not with Rosamunde then some other willing woman.

He sauntered back inside, not shoving his way this time, but patting the men on the shoulders whom he moved past, smiling in wine-soaked congeniality at grins and hoisted cups.

He returned to his table in the dark shadows of the back of the room and was surprised to find Rosamunde still there. She refilled his wine bowl and set it before him with a grim expression.

He took it up and drank. “Much thanks, Rosamunde,” he said and took another swallow, downing almost all of the bowl’s contents.

Steadily she watched him drink, every motion he made-tilting back the cup, drinking deeply, licking his lips-until he put the cup down and smiled at her. “Perhaps you are having second thoughts about me,” he said, leaning on an elbow. “It’s not too late, you know. You don’t have to marry that Frenchman.”

She was surprised but it quickly faded. “You know about that too.”

He patted her hand. It was cold. “Dearling, I know much about you.”

“Yes. I was afraid you did.”

Her hand clenched something which he tried to decipher in the dim light. “What’s that?”

“This?” She raised it so he could see the small ceramic vial with a cork stopper. “It is an empty vial.”

He chuckled, his sodden mind believing the most mundane things to be funny. “Why do you carry an empty vial, my dear?”

“It was not empty a moment ago.”

“Oh? Where did it go?” Yet even as he asked, he felt an unnatural sensation creep through his limbs. Not ordinary drunkenness. That was familiar. This was different. It dragged his extremities into thick heaviness like weights were attached to points of his body and he was falling down an abyss. And then his vision blurred and his heart quickened. His throat unaccountably tightened, like fingers pressing harder and harder.

He glared at Rosamunde, but her bland expression revealed nothing.

“Rosamunde,” he rasped. “What have you done?”

“I have killed you,” she said calmly.

She spoke so plainly as if to a servant asking for something as simple as a bowl of wine. Her deed meant no more to her than that. “Rosamunde…” He couldn’t say more. His lungs screamed. He clutched the table in order to breathe. His heart hammered so hard he thought it would burst.

“You were getting much too close,” she said in the same becalmed manner. She looked at the vial in her hand and turned it in the dim light. “But without you, there will be no reason to condemn Stephen or Jenkyn. Stephen knew nothing of this. I told you that. Jenkyn wanted to help but he was too afraid. In the end, I was the one to buy the poison, and I was only too happy to administer it. You were right about Gaston and me. I do not know how you discovered it, but you are a clever man.” She sighed deeply and stared at the table. “It was lovely at first. Such a change from the dried lips and cankerous hands of my husband.” She smiled, the dimpled corners of her mouth rising. “Oh, you needn’t worry over him. He died a natural death. Though had I known how easy it was, I should have killed him years ago.”

Crispin’s chest ached and burned, partly from the poison’s effects, but mostly because he could not believe her words. He did not want to listen, but he couldn’t move.