Jeri Westerson - The Demon’s Parchment

He was nudged awake by the proprietress, Eleanor, some hours later. The jug lay empty on its side mere inches from his lax fingers. Still feeling the indentations of the wooden table impressed into his cheek, he wiped a bit of spittle from the side of his mouth. She looked a little blurry to his wine-soaked eyes but he could tell her displeasure right enough.

“Go home, Crispin. This is no inn.”

He didn’t argue. He drew himself up-feeling as if he were a sack of rocks-and staggered toward the door. Drunk he was, but not as numb as he would have liked to be.

The cold slapped his cheeks hard. He shook out his shaggy head, trying to stay awake. Clumped flakes of snow fell about him, wet blossoms landing and sticking to his dark cloak. He let them. Above him, a cluster of dark clouds and a washed-out sky added to his sense of despair. There was little relief in the landscape of London. White smoke curled from every chimney, and shutters were tightly closed, allowing only splinters of light to streak across the opaque streets. What did it matter? Go home, Eleanor had told him. To the Shambles? That wasn’t his home . It was just the place he lived. Giles de Risley lived in his home . His home , goddammit! He was raised there. His sister and brothers were born there. Born and died in that same manor house. As a young man, Crispin had kept safe the Guest household with the help of his mentor, John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster. But kept safe to what end?

Did Lancaster know? What did it matter if he did? He could no more save Crispin’s home than he had saved his miserable life. Oh, yes. He had been saved from the gibbet, right enough, but was this life ?

Crispin leaned heavily against a wall, the roughened daub, pilling the threads of his cloak. His lover gone to Giles, his home. It seemed like too much. True, it hadn’t belonged to him in some seven years, but still the thought of it, lying fallow all this time. The friendly halls of his youth, the warm solar, his rooms with the embroidered bed curtains. How many nights had he spent staring at those horsemen galloping across those curtains and dreaming that this would be him someday, on a steel-gray charger, sword drawn, hacking the heads from infidels? And it had been. He had been a noble and valorous knight. He had proven himself time and again in battle and on the lists. Crispin had been a force to be reckoned with. He had become everything he had wanted to be. Lancaster had been proud. Crispin was pleased to make him so.

And then it all fell apart.

Pushing himself away from the wall, he trudged on. Shops were closing early from the fading light and the heavier snowfall. The aroma of stews competed with the sharp stench of the Shambles as he turned the corner. A fishmonger was sliding the slippery remainder of his basket of eels back into an urn filled with water. His apprentice mopped fish scales from the doorstep into the frozen gutter.

Crispin reached the dark, narrow stairwell squeezed between his landlord’s tinker shop and a butcher’s house. He stepped onto the creaky bottom step and dropped his key into the slush twice before Martin Kemp opened the door of his shop to see what the noise was. He looked Crispin over with a shake of his head. Crispin ignored him and staggered up the stairs. He never got a chance to fit the key in the lock. Jack yanked the door open, his face awash with worry. “At last!”

He shoved Jack aside and stumbled into his chair, which Jack had positioned in front of the fire. A peat fire. Not the large logs of oak that Crispin had enjoyed at the manor in Sheen. He barely noticed Jack kneeling at his feet to pull off his sodden boots, or pull his cloak free of his shoulders. He did raise a brow when Jack stood uncertainly next to his chair with the jug and bowl in his hands.

“Think I’ve had enough?” growled Crispin.

“Truth be told, sir. . yes.”

“Bring it here.”

“Master. You’ve been in the Boar’s Tusk all afternoon-”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Mistress Langton sent a message.”

“Eleanor should mind her own business. As should you. I said bring it here.”

Jack hesitated. His fingers curled tighter around the jug’s handle.

“God’s blood! Can I not expect to be obeyed in my own house!” But then the words sunk in. It was as far from his “own” house as could be imagined.

He lumbered up from his seat, lunged at Jack, and grabbed the jug. He sloshed most of its contents when he pulled it free from the boy’s grip. He didn’t bother with the cup. He planted his lips on the jug’s rim and knocked it back, spilling more down his neck, shuddering at the cold of it. But only when he had drained it did he set it aside.

“I’m hungry,” he growled.

“W-we have pottage, sir.”

“Well then?”

Jack timidly pulled the iron arm from the fire from which a small kettle hung. He picked up the bowl from the floor where Crispin had tossed it, and carefully ladled the thick soup into it. He handed the bowl to Crispin with a quivering hand. Crispin took it without thanks and drank the liquid without tasting. Pottage again and again. Peasant food. Where was the meat he deserved? Where the sweetmeats and honeyed fruit?

When he finished he made noises about having more. Jack shuffled forward. Crispin had not noticed whether Jack had partaken or not. “If you have more now, sir, there will be nothing for breakfast.” Jack’s eyes glanced toward the pantry shelf. Crispin did not need to look. He knew how empty it was.

He hunkered down in his chair and pulled the blanket from the bed over his legs.

The room was dark except for the fire. Jack said nothing, merely added more peat and small sticks now and again to urge the timid flames to life. He coughed a few times at the smoke and darted a wary glance at Crispin occasionally, but the creaking rafters and the flicker of fire were all the sounds in the room for a while.

Until Jack finally spoke.

“Master Crispin,” he said quietly. “Forgive me. I don’t always understand courtly ways. But. . did you not lose your family estate some years ago when you was. . was banished from court?”

Crispin’s curt “Yes!” cut knife-sharp into the room’s stillness.

“So why does it fret you so now?”

The wine was heavy in his belly but it did not muddle his mind as much as he had hoped. “Of course it was the king’s to dispose of as he would. But. . my home, Jack!”

“I know, Master. It is a sour thing. But. . so long ago.”

“For generations, the Guests have lived there. The barony, too, was granted to my ancestor by King Henry II and each generation has been knighted in turn-” His broken voiced unmanned him and he shot from the chair. But the wine had addled him more than he realized and he stumbled. Jack caught him with a surprisingly strong hand.

“Go to bed, Master Crispin. It will be better in the morning.” He pulled Crispin toward his small bed and pushed him down. “Shall I help you with your clothes?”

He waved him off. He fell back against the straw-stuffed pillow and closed his eyes. Yes, perhaps sleep was what he needed. God grant him a dreamless sleep. For once.

He woke badly. His head was pounding and his tongue felt thick and dry, his belly queasy. A pot rattled against another, sounding like the gong of a bell. “Stop that godforsaken noise!” he bellowed.

The pot crashed hard into the hearth. Crispin cringed and squinted at it. Jack stood with fists dug deep into his boney hips. He was scowling.

“I must care for you, drunk or no, or whether you suffer from its ill effects, because you are my master. But you must stop growling at me! I’m doing me best. If you didn’t drink so much. .” He let the sentence linger, never finishing it. He grabbed the pot again and hoisted it with a grunt onto its hook over the flames, nudging another smaller clay cauldron sitting on a grate, the flames licking its bowed sides. Crispin watched the steaming water slosh into the pitiful fire, hissing as it met orange coals.