Jeri Westerson - The Demon’s Parchment

More garden walls, more climbing. The repetition served to warm his stiffening limbs, but not the fear of capture. He counted the gardens. He knew where each chamber lay, knew which window he needed. Of course, if it was barred, he’d have to break in. The thought made him chuckle. Breaking into the king’s palace? Richard’s expression would be priceless. . before the guards bore down on him, of course.

There ahead. The Jews’ apartment. He reached up to the window and wedged his booted foot on a stone plinth, pushing upward. He grabbed hold of the decorative stone and peered within. The heavy drapes had not been entirely closed and so a slim strip of the room was visible. All dark. A red glow from the hearth changed the shadows in the room and he saw the outline of a four-poster bed. The bed curtains remained open. The Jews were not yet abed. Good.

Crispin inched his hand up the casement window, and found the seam. It was latched, but there was enough room to slip his blade through the thin opening. Hoisting his dagger out with a grunt, he gripped tighter to the decorative stone surrounding the window. The blade skittered off the glass. He paused, listening.

No footsteps.

Holding his breath, he wriggled the steel through, found the latch, and lifted.

The metal latch flipped with a whisper and the casement creaked open. Crispin grabbed it, pulling it wider.

Just then, a window several rooms down opened, spilling candlelight onto the snow-whitened courtyard. A man leaned out and turned.

Crispin froze, hoping against hope that the darkness and fog hid his burglary. But eyes met eyes and Crispin was shocked to see Lancaster staring back at him. And here was Crispin, with one leg already hoisted onto a window ledge that was not his own.

Lancaster’s eyes widened for a moment. When his lips parted it was not to shout, but to swear an oath that Crispin could not hear. The man shook his head slowly, his expression stunned. Finally, he looked pointedly in another direction-perhaps thinking it was better to feign he had seen nothing-and slowly withdrew back inside.

Crispin waited, eyes darting, ears pricked. No sound. No alarm. Just the soft spitting of the fire in the grate and a distant splash of the Thames kissing the shore.

“God’s blood,” he whispered, blinking hard. He gathered himself and slipped inside, lighting on the floor in a crouch. Swiftly, he turned and closed the window again, sheathing his knife. The shock of warmth unsteadied him for a moment, but he quickly recovered and stepped nimbly to the wall nearest the door. At last, he was in the inner chamber! He leaned over and pressed his ear to the door, listening for movement without. Nothing. The physician and his son must be attending the queen, even at this late hour.

Crispin felt safe enough to take a straw from the small canister near the hearth, enflame the tip, and light a nearby candle. Taking up the candle he raised it and looked about the Spartan room. It was not merely a bedchamber, but an extension of the physician’s workroom. A trestle table was set up in a niche on the other side of the bed. Glass jars with lids and parchments covered it. His eye immediately fell on the closest jar. Floating in some clear liquid was a grayish mass reminiscent of the offal sold by the butcher. Leaning close, he peered at it, a grimace growing. What was that? Its vague familiarity raised his gorge. Could it possibly be human?

His anger rising, Crispin longed to sweep it from the table and send it crashing to the floor. What was that physician doing with such a dreadful thing? He looked at the notes in a leather-bound journal lying open on the table beside it and paled. In French, Crispin read the details of experiments with entrails and offal. These were from young creatures but the nature of the creatures was not mentioned.

He lifted the journal and tilted it toward the candlelight, squinting at the tight, careful script. After a bit of reading, he realized that the journal did not belong to the physician, but to the boy Julian, and his anger threw his pulse into a vigorous thrumming.

Flipping pages back, he read the earlier entries, trying to discern what the youth had been up to and liking it not at all. Experiments involving poking the internal organs while they were exposed to the air, the abdomen being sliced open, the poor creature bound and helpless to resist. It explained how long it took the creature to expire and all the abominable note-taking in a dispassionate tone.

He slammed the book closed and panted. Murderers he had known, but this !

He searched the rest of the room, looking for other evidence, other horrific things he did not wish to find. More books and scrolls, some in the physician’s hand and some in the youth’s. There was a wooden pail by the bed and when Crispin inspected it, he saw a twisted mass of discarded rags smeared with dried blood. They could have been used for the physician’s art, but when he looked back at the table and its gruesome contents, he could imagine only the one thing.

A door fell shut and he swiftly pinched out the candle flame. His dagger was in his hand, ready.

A key turned in the bedchamber lock. Its pins fell and the latch lifted. With a hushed whine, the door swung open. A figure, haloed by the firelight from the outer chamber, passed the threshold and reached for a candle.

Crispin’s knife met the small of his back. Julian stiffened with a gasp.

“Master Julian,” growled Crispin close to the young man’s ear. “I would not move if I were you.”

“Y-you!” he whispered. He began to tremble. His voice was choked with anger. He tried to turn around but Crispin could see him struggle not to. “You. . you vile, hideous man! What do you think you are doing here? This is our private chamber!”

“Light the candle.”

“What? I-”

“Light the damned candle!”

The lad swore an oath in French and reached for a straw. He echoed Crispin’s movements of only moments ago and lit the same candle that Crispin had moved to the trestle table. Slowly, Crispin stepped back, his knife still visible. He motioned toward the journal with it. “What is this abomination?”

Eyes darted, narrowed, then looked up at him with hatred. “You could not possibly understand.”

“Try me,” he said.

“How can I explain to a man unfamiliar with the medicinal arts? It would be like explaining the nature of the Almighty to a simpleton.”

Crispin reached back without looking and tapped the glass jar with his knife blade. “What is that ?” he demanded.

“That?” Julian frowned at him, his brows contracting to an unpleasant “v.” “It is a spleen. It is one of the organs-”

“Who is it from, whelp?”

“ Who? You must be jesting. It is from a goat.”

“Prove it.”

Julian tore away from the nimbus of candlelight. His face fell into darkness. “I can’t. I won’t. These are important experiments. They might save lives someday. But what would you care with your brutish ways and clumsy oafishness? You break in here without a by your leave and expect answers from me at knifepoint. I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid of anyone!”

Crispin’s anger bubbled. He had met murderers aplenty. It seemed in London they came a penny a dozen. But the young corpse that he had seen with his own eyes was beyond murder. He dismissed the idea of a Golem. That was a distraction, a cheap conjurer’s trick to fool the eye. Whatever that thing was, if it existed at all, did not perpetrate these atrocities. The body was handled in too calculated a way, too clinical, too careful. The crime was committed by a man, to be sure. And he was beginning to be certain that the culprit stood before him.

“You should be afraid of me. And afraid of the hangman’s noose. You are a murderer of a most foul nature. To do the things you have done-it disgusts me to even think of it.”