Serpent in the Thorns (8 page)

Gilbert hunched forward, cupping their dialogue within his bowed shoulders. There was no need to distinguish which “Plot.” “No!”

It was the first time Crispin spoke about Miles to another human being. What did it matter? Miles was right. Who would believe Crispin now after so many years?

Crispin searched over Gilbert’s shoulder. Where was Ned with the wine? Such a distasteful subject needed the satisfaction of spirits. “Paid by someone to start the deceit,” Crispin went on, “he was the unknown conspirator whom none of us divulged even under torture.”

Gilbert’s face, so round, so naturally jolly, elongated with horror. “Torture?” he murmured. “I did not know they tortured you, Crispin. You never said. You never spoke much about it at all.”

Crispin’s belly rumbled uneasily, remembering. The smell of fear made of sweat and piss; the odor of burning flesh. He shut it away again and bolted the memory behind his hate. “It is of no consequence. It turned out to be the least of my worries.”

“But Crispin, why wouldn’t you say? Why not reveal the scoundrel at the time?”

“I hadn’t realized his full guilt then. It was only sometime after it was all over that I knew. Perhaps, even if I had known, I wouldn’t have revealed his name.”

“For God’s sake, why not?”

Crispin looked up, taken aback. “It would not be the honorable thing to do.”

Gilbert snorted. “Your honor. It hasn’t gotten you very far.”

“If I have not that, then what is left to me?”

The wine arrived but not by Ned. Livith faced Crispin and leaned far closer to him than necessary to put the drinking jug on the table. He inhaled the scent of hearth smoke on her clothes and sweat on her skin. When she bent over, he noticed perspiration dotting the tender flesh between her breasts. She put two bowls down, taking longer with Crispin’s. “Would you have me pour?” she asked.

Thoughts of torture and Miles Aleyn suddenly receded to a far place in Crispin’s mind. A tentative smile wiped away some of the day’s rancor. “Yes,” he said. She slid the bowl to her, scooped it up to her breast, and poured the wine.

Gilbert squinted at her. “None of your tricks now.”

She cast a wearying glance at Gilbert and lowered the cup to the table. She had to push the arrows and bow aside and glanced at it before raising her eyes to Crispin. “Ah now. This brings back memories,” she said, sliding her finger suggestively up the curved weapon. “Me dad was an archer in the king’s army. Always fiddling with a bow and arrows. Talked of nought but.”

Crispin eyed her fingers lightly sliding up the bow. “What happened to him?”

“Died of sickness in his bed. Not the way he would have wanted to go.” She sighed and shook out her apron. “And now all this trouble with archery practice. It’s a shame, it is.” She gave Crispin a smile and sauntered away, looking back over her shoulder in a casual manner, not exactly looking all the way nor catching Crispin’s eye, but Crispin knew well what she was about.

“She’s trouble.” Gilbert shook his head.

“Yes,” said Crispin into his bowl. “Maybe the kind I’m looking for.”

“Don’t get mixed up with her, Crispin. She’s got a sly way about her that doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Never fear, Gilbert. She’s not the sort I usually favor.” But he watched her disappear behind a curtained alcove and thought long about her slick lips and sweat-misted flesh. Gilbert was talking to him, yet he did not hear his words. He rose with his bowl and walked toward the kitchens when Gilbert grabbed his arm.

“Crispin,” he warned.

Crispin merely smiled and when he moved again Gilbert’s hand fell away.

He reached the doorway and cast aside the curtain. The alcove led to another door and to the kitchens in a small outbuilding situated too close to the tavern to do much good if it caught fire. He leaned in the open doorway and scanned the tiny space, smaller than his own lodgings. Ned and a female servant were busy roasting and basting meats over a fire burning within the high-arched hearth. Black iron pots, pans, and cooking tools hung on hooks beside the arch, swaying with the smoke rising from the turning meat. A large kettle hung from a rod, its lid rattling from steam.

Grayce sat on a stool by the hearth, peeling turnips. The peels piled in her apron-covered lap like autumn leaves. She did not seem to be looking at her work, but distantly; looking farther than any sane person could, Crispin reckoned. Ned almost tripped over her as he worked, giving her the evil eye.

Livith stood at the worktable that took up the bulk of the floor. She bent over it, kneading a large wad of dough, her sleeves rolled up past her elbows. Flour dusted her breasts. He thought about brushing them off for her, but instead he stood quietly watching, sipping wine from his bowl.

At last she looked up and smiled, a little triumphantly, he thought. “Now what would you be wanting, Master Crispin, that you have to come all this way to the kitchens to get it?”

He sauntered forward two steps, reaching the other end of the table. The woman servant elbowed Ned in the ribs.

“Something I can’t get out there in the tavern’s hall.”

She slapped the dough one last time and planted flour-covered knuckles at her hip. Flour smudged her nose. A wisp of hair dangled from her kerchief and swung before her eyes but it didn’t make her blink. Crispin suspected that not much made her blink. “And what would that be?”

He smiled at her audacity. Her angular face was more appealing than on first glance.

“I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Questions?” She leaned over and rested her hands on the table, giving Crispin a clear view. “I’d ’a thought you already knew all you needed to know.”

He made a point to examine her obvious features before raising his gaze to her’s. “You can put those away. I’m not interested.”

She straightened abruptly and looked as if she would spit.

Crispin smiled. “I’d like to know where you were during the shooting.”

“I was in me place at the inn,” she said stiffly.

“On your back?”

She picked up a knife lying on the table. Crispin leaned back to dodge it as it hurled past him out the door.

Grayce popped up, knocking over her stool. “It’s the Tracker, Livith. Look, it’s him.”

“Aye, Grayce. I see him.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’m talking to him, ain’t I? You go back to your work.”

“I’m done with the turnips.”

“Then go stir the pot.”

A wide smile broke out on Grayce’s face. “As you will, Livith. ’Day to you, Tracker.”

Crispin gave her a nod and watched her set the stool back on its feet and lean over to stir the pot under Ned’s supervision. He wondered how good an idea it was letting her get close to so big a fire, but he supposed Livith knew her business better than he.

Livith wiped her hands on her apron. “You’ve got a mouth on you, too,
Tracker
.” She said the last with oozing sarcasm.

He watched her wipe her apron over her hands. “Why did Grayce admit to killing that man?”

Ned looked up, his face an open question.

Livith shrugged. “She’s a simpleton is why. Who knows why she says what she does?”

“Has she always been . . . slow?”

“Aye.” Livith glanced at her sister, dreamily stirring the big cauldron. Livith pulled at her apron one more time and let it drop. “She’s always been that way. Can teach her a few things and she remembers them, but other things she forgets the moment she’s done with it. It’s a curse, that.”

“Your duties at the King’s Head—”

“Don’t concern working on me back!”

Crispin raised an unconvinced brow. “Of course. You’ve been working at the King’s Head—how long did you say?”

“I didn’t.” Her hand at her hip formed the last word on it. Crispin didn’t press the matter. Livith seemed to soften. Her weight shifted over one hip. “Any news on that man and who killed him? Can we go back to the King’s Head yet?” she added sweetly.

“No, to both. The sheriff is looking for you two.”

Her calm manner fled. She crouched forward as if to leap like a spider. “You saw him? You didn’t tell him what Grayce said, did you?”

“Of course not. But he knows I am the one who hid you two away.”

“Then what are you doing here? Off with you!” She scrambled around the table and shoved him hard in the chest. It barely tilted him.

Crispin chuckled. “The sheriff isn’t standing behind me, is he?”

“Get out before he is!”

Crispin smirked and allowed her to turn him and push him toward the open doorway. “Out!” she cried and shoved.

He found himself in the courtyard and chuckled again. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he suspected Livith kept the greater part of the truth from him. Whether it had to do with the murder or something else he was uncertain.
Perhaps she is a thief and lured our courier to his doom—but no. If that were the case, who had the bow? And besides, Livith did not appear to be in the room at the time of the murder and nothing was stolen. And Grayce was not capable of such deception . . .
He had nothing. But murder was murder and someone had to hang for it.

His mind lit on the object that waited for him at his lodgings. “The Crown,” he muttered. They didn’t get the Crown, if that’s what they were after. The courier was murdered and Grayce came to get Crispin. That took half an hour at the most. Another delay while Crispin tried to wrestle the information from Grayce and to return to the King’s Head—another half hour and more. That allowed at least an hour for the killer to take what he wished, yet when Crispin examined the dead man, he still possessed his purse, his scrip, and the Crown.

The Crown. He tapped his finger on his lips. He’d better hide it before Wynchecombe decided to pay him a visit.

He entered the Boar’s Tusk once more, waved to a frowning Gilbert, and left by the front door. Gutter Lane teemed with people. Not only were men still returning from the butts, but the corn had been newly threshed in the outlying fields and men with scythes or bundles of straw were lumbering down the narrow corridor, laughing and jesting with one another in easy camaraderie. The harvest was nearly done. Crispin had seen its plenty in the stalls of fruit sellers and those merchants selling herbs and vegetables. Soon the plenty would give way to the sparseness of winter and there would be less on his table than there was now.

His lodgings on the Shambles was only a short walk from the Boar’s Tusk. He side stepped a man dragging his goat down the lane, avoiding the beast as the goat whipped its head, pulling on the lead wrapped tight around its horns. But he slowed when he noticed Martin Kemp nervously pacing outside the shop—with Alice beside him.

“God’s blood.” Crispin moved forward slowly, fingering Martin Kemp’s bow and arrows. His apology to Alice Kemp had to be done and in quick order. It wouldn’t do to have a raging Alice hovering near his door every moment. He tugged at his wrinkled coat and stiffly approached them. But before he could open his mouth, Alice swooped upon him like a hawk.

“How
dare
you speak to Matilda in that manner! And you
threatened
her! You should be locked up, Crispin Guest! You are not safe to be hard by.”

“Mistress Kemp, I offer my sincerest apologies for my lapse in behavior. I was out of sorts and did not know my right mind.”

“Out of sorts! So much transpires in that room. I tell you, husband, it is not safe.”

“Now dear. He is apologizing.”

“Never pays the rent on time—and too little of it there is, I dare say. Strange people coming and going at all hours. And then he threatens the very fruit of your loins.”

“He apologized to me, dear. Quite humbly.”

“Humble? Him? He hasn’t a humble bone in his body.”

Crispin rocked on his heels. Impatient to get away, he knew he could not leave until Alice was mollified.

“Ma-til-
da
!” she screeched.

Crispin held his breath. Out of the shadows, the wide specter of Matilda Kemp blocked the light. She posed shyly behind her mother, peered around her, and glared venomously at Crispin.

“You will apologize to my daughter. And further, we will require a service of you to make up for your threats to her.”

“A service?” He kept his voice steady, though the effort was supreme.

“Yes. I will decide at a later date what that shall be.”

Crispin’s glance darted from one woman to the other. Martin Kemp looked worried, but the two women were nothing if not triumphant.

Crispin wished he could use the bow. He swallowed the sour taste in his mouth and inclined his head to Matilda. “Damosel, forgive me for yesterday’s outburst. I do apologize for my rudeness and for any distress I might have caused you.”

Matilda glanced sideways at her mother and finally curtseyed in return. “I do accept your apology, Master Crispin.”

Crispin frowned.
I hope they don’t expect me to kiss her hand. I’ve already kissed her arse.

The Kemps seemed satisfied. Martin took the weapon and arrows from Crispin and ushered his wife and daughter away. He looked back at Crispin apologetically.