Serpent in the Thorns (11 page)

Wynchecombe glared. His bushy brows lowered over his eyes until they cast a shadow. “Hmph” was all he said and sat heavily. His sword clanked against the chair.

“I need that arrow from the dead man. I think I know who killed him.”

The sheriff recovered and leaned forward. “Who, then?”

Crispin smiled grimly. “I cannot say just yet.”

Wynchecombe sat back slowly. “Were you always this annoying, Guest, or did you come by it only after the king dealt with you?”

“ ‘Annoying,’ Lord Sheriff?”

“Never mind. Very well. Come with me.”

The sheriff rose. He led Crispin down the wooden staircase outside his tower chamber and through several passages, then down another staircase to a dark undercroft lit with a few pitch torches. Ahead, Crispin saw a bier set up with a sheet-covered body. The cloth glowed like pale moonlight in the torches’ illumination.

“The French ambassador wanted the body returned to France,” said the sheriff gravely, “but the king refuses to release it.”

Crispin snorted. Politics.

Once he neared, he noticed the arrow still protruding from the corpse. “No one removed the arrow?”

“Why should we do that?”

Crispin shook his head. “Why indeed.” He cast back the sheet. The dead man’s dry eyes stared upward. Did he see angels or demons?

Crispin grabbed the arrow’s shaft but it stuck solid in the dead flesh. He yanked out his dagger and ripped the dead man’s blood-soaked surcote from the neck down to the arrow.

Wynchecombe grabbed Crispin’s dagger hand. “Holy Mary! What are you doing? Why do you not simply break it off.”

“I want the entire arrow. Do you mind?”

Wynchecombe released him with a rumbled sound in his throat. “Desecrating a corpse? I mind not at all. You’re certainly bound for Hell at any rate. Why should I try to stop your progress?”

Crispin continued pulling the blade through the layers of bloody fabric, now stiff and brown. There had been a lot of blood considering the arrow pierced the man’s heart. Crispin sawed the blade into the fabric all the way down past his chemise to the man’s skin. He used his hands to tear the material away from the arrow wound. The man had not been cleaned and the dried blood rusted his chest and the punctured flesh. The rest of his skin shone white and ashen in the pale light. Crispin tugged on the arrow again but still it would not yield. He glanced once at Wynchecombe. The sheriff shook his head slightly at what he surely knew Crispin was about to do, but Crispin turned back to his task and thrust the tip of his dagger into the wound next to the shaft and worked the blade around, ripping open the flesh. He supposed it was like any other bit of dead meat on his supper table, meat that would not bleed. But knowing it was human flesh made his belly a little uneasy.

He grabbed the arrow again and wiggled it, rocked it, until the arrowhead tore upward. The body rose slightly as Crispin pulled the shaft. The flesh made a distasteful sucking sound until he yanked the arrow free.

He examined the metal broadhead and its glistening blood. He wiped his blade for an extra few seconds on the dead man’s surcote and sheathed it.

“What do you plan to do with that?” asked the sheriff. He didn’t mask his grimace.

“I know the maker. I wish to have it identified for assurance.”

“Isn’t that the province of the Lord Sheriff’s office?”

Crispin wiped the arrow on the sheet and shoved it through his belt. “Only should you insist.”

Wynchecombe looked at the arrow now secured on Crispin’s person. He leaned closer and his face dropped into shadow. “What of the Crown of Thorns? Have you found it yet?”

“Not yet. You can be sure that once I have, everyone will know.”

“What does that mean? What are you plotting, Guest?”

“Nothing, Lord Sheriff. Do I have your leave to go?”

Wynchecombe glared and inhaled deeply. The exhale through his nostrils ruffled his mustache. “I know you look for trouble, and I’d see you hang yourself. As long as it doesn’t drag me in with you.”

“No, my lord. If I hang, I will most assuredly hang alone.”

“Happy to hear it. Off with you, then.”

Crispin knew that wasn’t quite the truth. If hang he must, he wanted Miles struggling right beside him.

9

THE DAY HAD CRAWLED on uneventfully. No guards came to his door to haul him away. No sign of that cur Miles. And so the night took hold with a cold dampness that seemed to mourn the day, and Crispin and Jack, resigned to the silence that had enveloped the Shambles, had a meager dinner by a brittle fire, and then settled in for the night.

The following morning was still raw when Crispin awoke with a start. Cold sweat covered his face and body, and he cast off the blanket and threw his naked legs over the side of the bed. He stared at the floor, dark in the absence of moonlight and a dying hearth.

Jack snored nearly beneath Crispin’s bed. His body was curled in a tight knot as far away from the Crown’s reliquary as he could get.

Crispin ran his hand through his damp hair. He hadn’t had that dream in a long time, though it truly wasn’t a dream. A memory, then, slipping into the landscape of his dreams.

He sat up and glanced across his dim room, but the half-dream, half-memory lingered. He still felt the rough ropes bite into his wrists, felt the raw wheals from the pressure, from pulling on the bindings so hard. Then the hot pincers, glowing red from the coals. They came closer, so close he could smell the damp, fetid air sizzle on them. “Tell us,” they said, over and over. “We won’t have these ‘meetings’ anymore if you just tell us the other names.” But he didn’t, wouldn’t. And so they’d touched the pincers to his flesh. And then it was the sound of skin blistering and steam rising, his own flesh cooking with an acrid odor, smoke wisping skyward.

He rose and staggered to the window. He opened the shutter, stuck his head out, and inhaled the cold, foggy air. Even now he could not fight the nausea, and he spit the sour taste out the window.

He knew why he dreamed it. Miles. Miles brought all those memories back into stinging clarity. Especially that last day. The day they took him from the cell. Crispin thought he was to be executed and even thanked God for it, that it would finally be over. But instead of marching him to the courtyard and the gibbet, he was led instead to Westminster’s great hall.

King Richard, ten years old and newly minted as king, sat his gangly frame on his marble throne. His feet did not yet touch the ground and so a cushioned stool rested beneath his long-toed slippers. His smooth face saw neither beard nor scar. Small mouth, small chin, languid lids. But no mere pup. Fire burned in those eyes. Anger. The king knew that the Plot meant his death. The others were gone, every one of them executed in all manner of foul ways. There remained only Crispin on whom to pass judgment.

Crispin staggered toward the king’s dais, barely recovered from the torture that had gone on for weeks. The iron shackles pulled his wrists down. Their chains dragged along the floor. His surcote hung torn and bloody on his weakened body.

Stiffly, like a wooden puppet, he lowered to his knees, his last obeisance to the crown at least, if not the one wearing it.

A knight with a conical helm and camail down his chin and chest stood before Crispin. He lifted something. After taking some time to focus his eyes, Crispin recognized it. His sword. The knight pulled it from its sheath and raised it.

What was happening? Was he to be executed with his own sword?

The knight whirled and the sound of steel whistled in the air. But instead of feeling the blade slice through his neck, which Crispin fully expected, he felt the rush of wind as the knight slammed the sword against the stone floor. The shock reverberated throughout the hall. He flinched along with the many lords and ladies from the inharmonious noise and its echo. But the sword remained undamaged. The knight swung it again and even a third time before the tip finally broke off and spun across the floor.

Crispin turned and watched the tip slide until it stopped several paces away. He raised his head and looked with glazed eyes about the crowded hall. Courtiers and ladies, in finery all, men he knew, women he knew better. Even his betrothed—
former
betrothed. The betrothal had been severed as soon as he was arrested.

All present, all staring at him, mouths agape, hands over faces.

What was this if not an execution?

The knight drew forth Crispin’s spurs, taken from his boots long before he entered the darkness of Newgate. The knight dropped them to the floor, took a mace, and smashed them to pieces.

Then Crispin understood. They were taking away his knighthood. The accoutrements of his status—his sword and spurs—were removed and destroyed before his eyes, before the eyes of the court.

He expected it then, when the knight took a dagger and stripped his surcote, bright with Crispin’s blazon and colors, from his body and tossed the rags to the floor.

So he was a knight no more. And what did it matter if he were to die? His head would join the others on its pike on London Bridge. His body parts would be scattered to the four corners of the realm. In a few years, no one would remember him. No one would speak his name except in the hushed tones of a story told to warn. He would be smashed to pieces like his hapless spurs.

And what was worse, he knew he deserved it. Treason. He hadn’t taken it up lightly. He agonized over it for weeks. But he had been loyal to Lancaster, loyal unto death. And now death was knocking.

The king rose, stepped awkwardly over his cushioned stool, and approached only as far as the edge of the dais. His clear young voice rang out. He spoke through a sneer that was all Richard’s, not his father, the famed warrior Edward of Woodstock, or his grandfather, the great King Edward of Windsor. “It is
not
at our pleasure that you stand before this court, Crispin Guest.”

Crispin squinted and blinked. Candles, rushlights, it was more light than he had seen for five months. Sweat dripped from his grizzled beard. The hall was warm. His cell had been cold. The stink in his nose was his own.

“It was, in fact, our pleasure to see you executed along with the other traitors to the realm. But”—Richard adjusted his belt, hooking his thumbs—“my uncle, my lord of Gaunt,
begged
for your life.”

Crispin’s jaw slackened at that, and he turned his eyes toward Richard’s right. Standing behind the king and almost in the shadows—John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. At first glance he appeared to be staring at Crispin, but Crispin soon discovered that Lancaster stared past him, just over his shoulder. He refused to even look Crispin in the eye! That was far worse than this child, this seedling taking from him his sword. Lancaster! He longed to rush to him, to throw himself on the ground before Gaunt. The man’s disappointment was palpable. It struck Crispin to the quick.

Of course, the Plot involved Lancaster, or at least Crispin thought it had. The plotters said Gaunt, the fourth son of the old king, was behind a scheme to depose the then Prince Richard and put himself on the throne. Gaunt’s brother Edward of Woodstock had been the heir but he had taken sick and died. That put his son Richard in the direct line. But Richard was young. Too young. Lancaster was the better statesmen, more experienced, more power, more wit.

And Crispin, raised in Lancaster’s household since he was eight years old, loved the man like a father.

Crispin followed the conspirators, never knowing Lancaster knew nothing of the Plot—until it was far too late.

He came back to himself when they removed the shackles from his wrists and ankles. Then the knight dropped Crispin’s belt with his dagger at his feet. Crispin looked down at them without comprehension.

Richard spoke again. His youthful voice broke trying to be loud enough for the immensity of the hall. “It is by our infinite mercy that you live, Crispin Guest, and only by that. Our choice was to let you rot in prison. And if not prison, then to banish you from this realm.” He blinked once at his uncle Lancaster. When he turned back to Crispin, his lips curled upward. To call it a smile was to dismiss the grimace of jackals, or the openmouthed anticipation of a buzzard. “But if live you must, then a better punishment is mete. We have decided you shall remain in England. Even London if you like.” He snorted a laugh. He looked to his courtiers to join him in his merriment, but their pale faces did not echo his high spirits. The smile soon turned to a sneer. “But not in prison.” He nodded to the knight to continue, snapped his ermine-trimmed cloak behind him, and returned to his throne. He climbed into it and settled his rump. He grasped the chair arms with bejeweled fingers and drummed. His eyes looked bored.

The knight stood before Crispin again. “Crispin Guest,” he announced. “Stand.”

Crispin concentrated on his muscles and forced them into use. He rose, his shoulders last, and he stood unsteadily, eyes taking in the king, the crowd, and the knight when he spoke again.

“By order of his most gracious Majesty King Richard,” said the knight, “you are a knight no more. Further: you have no title, you have no lands, no wealth. You are nothing.” He stepped forward and pushed Crispin with both hands. Crispin stumbled back. The knight followed him. “Let no man succor you. Let no kinsman support you, or they shall suffer the wrath of the crown.” He pushed Crispin again. “By the king’s mercy,” said the knight, arms dropping to his sides, “you may go in peace.”

Crispin raised his head. One by one, across the circle as if in a wave, the crowd turned their backs. All around him, shoulders stiff and taut. Crispin heard it as the sound of skirts rustling, and shoes scraping the floor. Then nothing.

“What?” he heard himself say.

“You are free to go,” said the knight, fist at his hip. “Begone.”

Then it struck him. The words, all of them, pieced together.
You are a knight no more. No title, no lands. No kinsman may support you.
His heart lurched. He saw the backs of his friends, his companions. He was nothing. His ambitions, his years as Lancaster’s protégé, all crumbled like old bones.

He might as well be dead.

He looked at the belt at his feet, the one that once held his sword’s scabbard and was now naked of it, holding only the meager dagger. He leaned down and grasped the belt, dragging the dagger’s scabbard across the floor. He couldn’t quite muster the strength to lift it higher than his thigh. Dispossessed. From everything and everyone. How was he supposed to live? He reckoned that was the point. “But . . . Sire—?” he whispered.

“You
dare
address me, Guest!” Richard leaned forward so far from his throne he looked likely to fall. His smooth face stretched wide; mouth baring uneven teeth, eyes wild. His words spilled from him, rushing forward like a rain of fiery arrows. “You may stay in London, but you will not come to court. You will not communicate with
anyone
of the court. Is that clear? You are an island, Guest. You will remain alone in the sea of London. And if you survive, you may consider yourself lucky. Thus I give you your life and only as a favor to my uncle. But do not
ever
ask of me anything!”

Richard fell back into his chair and wiped the spittle from his lips.

“Such is the king’s mercy,” said the knight. He drew his sword and raised it. “In the name of the king, begone!”

Miles had been in that crowd. He stared with empty eyes at Crispin and turned his back dutifully with all the others and said not a word.

And even under the torturers’ labors, Crispin, too, had said nothing. Honor bound to hold his tongue, he did. He named no one, knowing nothing of the fate of any of his fellow conspirators. “
Like a lamb led to the slaughter house, he opened not his mouth.
”

Miles stood there and blended into the crowd and never paid for his part in the Plot.

The memories faded, the echoed voices fell to silence. The reality of his one-room lodgings blurred back into view. Returned to the here and now, a voice at his elbow, soft and timid, still startled him. “Master.”

Crispin turned. Jack, his cloak wrapped tight around his shoulders, his hands invisible beneath the ragged material, gazed up at Crispin with wide, moist eyes.

“What troubles you, Master Crispin? Is it your dream again?”

So Jack knew. Little slipped past that boy.

Crispin ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth tasted bitter. “Go back to bed, Jack.”

“I would keep watch, if it’s all the same to you, sir.”