Jeri Westerson - Troubled Bones

Jack’s head came to Crispin’s shoulder. The boy was gaining height and a broadening of his chest. He hadn’t noticed before how big Jack was getting. He seemed to have shot up like a bean sprout. His body didn’t swim in his tunic any longer and his arms were overreaching their sleeves. He still thought of the lad as a child. Though Jack’s voice had begun to change, he still sported the soft, rounded cheeks of childhood. At nearly thirteen, Jack walked the fine line between his formative years and adolescence.

Crispin turned his attention from Jack to the tower floor, looking for anything that might yield something useful to his investigation.

“Master Crispin.” Jack stood at the tower’s edge, the sword he grasped in his hand now hanging by his thigh. His gaze was fixed somewhere in the distance but his voice was strong against the wind. “I heard what Master Chaucer said … said about me. You ain’t- aren’t -ashamed to have me as your protégé, are you? If you were, I’d understand if you weren’t to call me that no more- any more.”

Crispin rose and clapped the dust from his knees and hands. “Who said I was ashamed of you?”

“It ain’t- isn’t what was said. It was the way he said it. He’s an important man, isn’t he? You meet other important men all the time for your work, sir. It’s hard to impress them. There is only your reputation as the Tracker. We both ain’t got fine clothes, like you was used to.” He clenched his eyes in frustration. “ Were used to. And here I am. A beggar. I told him so m’self, didn’t I? And that’s what I am. And that’s what I look like. Maybe you’d be better off without me in the way. I’d still want to be your servant, mind. But … I’d stay out of the way. So’s they wouldn’t know.”

Crispin sighed and measured the broad horizon that disappeared in a misty gray fringe of trees. “That was a fine speech. Worthy … But I think you’re a fool.”

Jack whipped his head toward Crispin. His hood flung back and his red hair flared in the wind like flames. “A fool?”

“You must not allow men like Geoffrey to intimidate you. It is their chief weapon. For the last time, I am not ashamed of you. You are my protégé. I am proud to call you so and I don’t want to hear anything more about it again, either to gain sympathy or a raise in your wages.”

Jack raised his hood against the wind. His face broke into an uncertain smile before he grinned wide, freckles and all.

Crispin wrapped his cloak about him. “I’m cold and there is nothing here. Let’s go back down.”

He trotted down the steps with Jack at his heels. They reached the bottom, stepped through the door, and Crispin locked it again. “I believe he hid there waiting for the appropriate time to strike. And the cloth must be from that night. Someone would have noticed it before then. Some monk scrubbing the floors. See how clean they keep the stairs? Let me see that sword again.” Jack handed it to him and he unwrapped the pommel. A muzzled bear’s head on a red field. Crispin ran memories of his jousting days through his head but he could not recall ever seeing this blazon before. “ Fortis et Patientia ,” he muttered.

“Latin, right, Master? Fortis . Strong. Patientia . Patience?”

“Enduring. Do you suppose it is the motto to this blazon?”

Jack snapped his fingers. “Course it is. Isn’t that something like your motto, sir?”

Crispin eyed Jack. “And how would you know what my family motto is?”

Jack’s face slackened. Caught. “Well … I came across them rings you got hidden, sir. Came across them last year.”

“Indeed.” A blend of emotions crossed his heart. Was he angry? Jack was prone to find secret places in their lodgings. He had his own cache of hidden goods, so he supposed it was not unlikely Jack could find Crispin’s meager treasure. Two family rings with the Guest blazon on them. His father’s ring and his own. It was all that was left of the Guests. All the memory allowed him. Their family banners had been struck from the Great Hall in Westminster Palace. His surcote of colors long gone.

Crispin lowered his brows. “Are those rings still there?” Even as he asked it he knew the answer.

Jack looked aggrieved. “Master Crispin! What do you take me for? I would never touch your family rings, sir. I know what they are.”

A corner of Crispin’s mouth drew up. “Anyway, my motto is Suus Pessimus Hostilis .”

“‘His Own Worst Enemy,’” Jack recited. “What does that mean, sir?”

“As I understand it, the arms were first granted to my ancestor by King Henry Fitzempress.”

“Saint Thomas Becket’s King Henry?”

“The very same. My ancestor was Welsh but fought for England, thus becoming his own enemy. Or so the story goes.”

“How come you don’t wear your ring no more- any more, sir?”

“You know why, Jack.”

“But I don’t, sir. You’ve still a right to it. No one else’s name is Guest. It’s yours and will always be so. It’s your family, sir. And you weren’t no bastard. The king can’t do that to you, now can he?”

Crispin sighed. “‘Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.’” He stared at his feet. “My name is my name, true, and he cannot take that away. But what good is a blazon without a proper dynasty? No, they are better kept safe in their not-so-secret hiding place.”

He handed Jack the sword and straightened his coat. He raised his head to take in the chapel and the nave beyond it. “I wonder what business Geoffrey had in the cathedral.” He did not see the poet and when he moved past the pilgrims poised in rapt attention around the shrine, he did not see him in the south aisle either. But something in the aisle did catch his attention. His careful steps toward it soon became a trotting run.

He heard Jack’s footfalls behind him and then the muffled clang of the sword dropping on the tiled floor. Crispin bent over the dark lump of clothes that wasn’t a lump of clothes at all. A monk lay on the floor and an all-too-familiar dark pool grew around him. He turned the body and saw the young white face of Brother Wilfrid, quite dead.

“It’s Brother Wilfrid!” whispered Jack. His fingers dug into Crispin’s shoulder as he leaned over to stare at the dead monk. “God help us.” He crossed himself.

Crispin pulled the dagger free and a small amount of blood oozed from the wound in the monk’s throat. He stared at the knife and its bejeweled pommel, unwilling to believe what he was seeing. It was a very familiar dagger. A dagger he’d given as a gift to one of his very dear friends some fifteen years ago. He raised his face and was suddenly aware of people running and then a woman screamed.

He drew back, barely aware that he was pushed aside by many hands, all reaching for the monk. Soon a crowd clustered around the becassocked form and Crispin was vaguely aware of Jack pulling him completely out of the way and under the shelter of a shadowing alcove. “Master Crispin,” he whispered. “Come, sir. Snap out of it.” The sword’s pommel smacked Crispin on the side of the head and he glared at Jack. Tucker retracted the sword and nodded. “Thought that would bring you round.”

“It’s impossible.”

Jack raised the sword again and Crispin blocked it with his hand. “There’s no need for that. It’s just … I know this knife.”

“It’s Chaucer’s, ain’t it?” Jack’s rasping voice dropped to a deadly tenor. All of Crispin’s muddled emotions were mirrored on Jack’s face: betrayal, rage, vengeance. Jack whirled toward the pilgrims, his bottled energy thrown outward. He waved the sword at them, moving them back. He ordered a monk to get the archbishop, and he patrolled the body like a Centurion, letting no one near it.