Serpent in the Thorns Read online

  SERPENT

  in the

  THORNS

  The Crispin Guest Novels by Jeri Westerson

  Veil of Lies

  Serpent in the Thorns

  SERPENT

  in the

  THORNS

  A Crispin Guest Medieval Noir

  Jeri Westerson

  MINOTAUR BOOKS NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,

  and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the

  author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  SERPENT IN THE THORNS. Copyright © 2009 by Jeri Westerson.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  For information, address St. Martin’s Press,

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Westerson, Jeri.

  Serpent in the thorns / Jeri Westerson. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-53498-1

  1. Great Britain—History—14th century—Fiction. 2. London (England)—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.E8478S47 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2009012739

  First Edition: October 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Craig and Graham

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Author’s Afterword

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Again, my first thanks go to my ever-patient husband, Craig, my wonderful son, Graham, and my Vicious Circle of Ana Brazil, Bobbie Gosnell, and Laura James. Thanks also to my agent, Joshua Bilmes, for continuing to hold my hand, and a very special thanks goes out to Julia Spencer-Fleming and her husband, Ross, for their kind words and their wonderful help! Another very special thanks also goes to Kevin Cooper and Carl Vitolo of Inland Color Graphics. They have continued to help me with their support and their valuable printing for all my wonderful promotional materials. And thanks also to DiAnne Cooper, my idea person at ICG. (Thanks, guys! I owe you more tequila.) Paige Vignola offered help in the Latin, and there were scores of others who helped with aspects of history and answered many other questions I posed on mediev-l. I’ve met librarians and booksellers who have been nothing but supportive and kind and I thank you all, wherever you are. Last but not least, I thank Keith Kahla at St. Martin’s Press for his excellent editing and advice. Long may you wave!

  SERPENT

  in the

  THORNS

  1

  London, 1384

  PRETTY, LIKE A WINDBLOWN shepherdess. Sweet, but a bit dim. Crispin sensed it from the way she ran her chapped fingers over her right hand and by the care she took pronouncing each word. She lifted her chin and parted her lips even when she wasn’t speaking. He leaned forward and focused his blurry eyes on her. “Tell me again about the dead man,” he said. “Slowly.”

  She rubbed her hands, meekly, hurriedly, as if she knew she would be chastised for it.

  Crispin watched her busy hands and closed his eyes. His head felt like an eggshell liable to crack, and the merest sound seemed to rake the back of his eyeballs with sharp needles. He glanced at the wine jug on its shelf. Hair of the dog?

  She sat on a stool in his lodgings, a small room above a tinker shop on the pungent streets of the Shambles with its meat markets and butchering stalls. One of his broken shutters rattled with an acrid wind that did nothing to sooth the belch of the room’s smoky hearth. A table, a chair, another stool, a narrow bed, and a chest. All rented. He owned little more than the clothes on his back, and they made a poor showing.

  “There’s a dead man in me room,” she said, thick with a Southwark accent. She overpronounced her words, letting her lips slip back over her teeth, revealing them often. One bottom tooth was chipped and gray. “Livith wasn’t there. I couldn’t ask her. She’s always there to explain, but she wasn’t there.”

  He passed a hand over his face but his head hurt too much. He slowly sank to the stool. “Who is Livith?”

  “She’s me sister. She looks after me. I get confused. She always explains.”

  “I see,” he said, barely understanding. Wine might not be a bad idea at that, and he moved to the larder. He poured a bowl, but not for himself, and handed it to her. She stared into the wine and then looked up at him. “Go on,” he said. “You look as if you need it.”

  She tipped the bowl with trembling fingers, sloshing some of the wine onto her faded blue gown and apron-covered lap. She tried to smile. A wine mustache made it pathetic.

  Crispin sat on the chest this time and rested his hands on his thighs. He hoped it would keep the room from tilting. “Why did you come to me?”

  Her lips twisted. “You’re the Tracker, ain’t you? I heard of you from the others. You find out things. They say you was once a knight and know all sorts of matters.”

  He waved his hand and scowled, but that, too, hurt his head. “Never mind that. Past history. It is your difficulty that intrigues me now. You have a problem and I am happy to solve it for you. But . . . I am paid for such a service.”

  “I couldn’t find Livith, so I came to you. Not the sheriffs. They scare me. I heard you was smart like her. Like Livith. You could reckon things out.”

  “Yes, that is true. But I do so for a fee. Do you understand?”

  “Livith won’t let me have money.”

  No surprise there. “Where is the dead man now?”

  “In our room. At the King’s Head Inn. We’re scullions there. He’s got an arrow in him, doesn’t he?”

  An arrow? Crispin sat up straighter. “I haven’t yet seen him. Do you know who he is?”

  “No. Never saw him before. But he’s dead now.”

  “Never fear. I will do my best to find the man who killed him.”

  She cocked her head and blinked. “But I already know who killed him.”

  Crispin made a surprised sound, but before he could respond with a question, the door flung wide. Crispin shot to his feet and blocked the woman from the unknown intruder.

  A ginger-haired boy dashed into the room, slammed and bolted the door, and rested against it, panting. He looked up at Crispin through a mane of curled locks. Riotous freckles showed darker against his bone pale skin.

  “Jack!” Crispin put a hand to his throbbing head. “What by God’s toes are you doing?”

  “Master,” said the boy. His gaze darted between the girl peering around Crispin’s back and then up to Crispin again. “Nought. Nought much.”

  Crispin glared at his charge. Jack Tucker was more trouble than any servant had a right to be. Certainly more so than had served him in the past. A pitiful servant, was Tucker. Seldom present when needed, almost always an annoyance, and just
another mouth to feed. He had not wanted a servant! Not anymore. Not when he didn’t deserve one.

  Ah, if only seven years ago Crispin had not plotted treason. If only he had not been caught by the king’s guards. If only they hadn’t stripped him of his knighthood and his lands. If only . . . if only. Then he wouldn’t be living on the stinking streets of the Shambles above a tinker’s shop with a thief as a servant and a simpleton girl as a client.

  “The gods, too, are fond of a joke,” he lamented.

  Jack was eyeing the wine jug and Crispin was about to berate him for interrupting when the tinker’s door below shook with muffled pounding. Crispin crossed to the opposing wall and threw open the shutters to the small window overlooking the street. The stench of butchering and offal rose to his second-story room. A boy lugging chickens in a stick cage hurried next door to the poulterer followed by a man carrying several dead coneys by their feet. He tramped through the mud, the rabbits’ long ears dragging with each stride.

  Crispin leaned out over the sill. Two men stood at the tinker shop door right below him and beat on it with their fists.

  He turned back to the room. “For God’s sake, Jack. What have you done?”

  Jack shrugged, still looking at the girl. “Begging your pardon, sir, for interrupting.”

  “Why are those men after you?”

  “It’s a little disagreement over property, you might say.”

  “You stole from them.”

  Jack opened his mouth. His brows widened. “Now why is that the first thing you think about me?” He thrust his fist into his hip. “I get into a little bit of trouble and you think I’ve gone and cut a purse.”

  “Well? Did you?”

  “Ain’t that beside the point?”

  Beneath Crispin’s window, the men grumbled as they waited, and Crispin peered out again, observing them. Martin Kemp, Crispin’s landlord, opened his shop door a crack. The meek tinker made his polite inquiries. And then the men answered. Crispin couldn’t hear the words exactly, but their voices rose in volume as each side argued their case. The shrill voice that joined the others could only be Martin’s wife, Alice. Crispin winced at the sound filtering up through the timbers. Her appearance only made things worse and, against Martin’s protest, the men finally pushed past him. All of them rumbled up Crispin’s stairs, still arguing.

  Jack sprinted toward the other window facing the back courtyard. “Sorry, Master. Must go. We’ll talk later.” He quickly pushed opened the shutter and looked back apologetically toward Crispin. Scrambling out the window, Jack leaped down to the next building and minced across the rooftops.

  Crispin closed both windows and made a contrite smile to the girl who didn’t seem to understand or care what was happening.

  His door suddenly shuddered under pounding fists. Steeling himself, he unbolted and yanked open the door, filling the threshold with indignation. “What is the meaning of this?”

  The gathering pulled up short. Clearly they did not expect Crispin or his refined accent. Two strangers—one thin and golden-haired and the other short and robust with dark, bushy brows—stood on the landing beside the tinker Martin Kemp and his wife. “We beg your pardon, good sir,” said the blond-haired man, making a curt bow, “but we were chasing a thief and have good reason to believe he came this way.”

  Crispin kicked the door wider so they could see into the sparse room. “Does it look like he’s here?”

  They stared at the girl—eyes wide, mouth gaping—and then at Crispin. “No sir,” said the man with the bushy brows. He scanned the room again, and gave a resigned nod.

  The tinker’s wife, Alice, pushed forward. “He’s here. Mark me.”

  The bushy-browed man frowned at Alice and then at Crispin. “Sir,” he said, “if that boy is here we demand you surrender him to us. He’s a thief and we’re here to see he gets his just punishment.”

  “Nonsense. This is my entire lodgings. Do you suggest he is hiding in the walls?”

  As one, they all leaned down to look under the pallet bed—the only likely place left.

  A solitary chamber pot sat in the shadows.

  The bushy-browed man huffed with disappointment and they all straightened again.

  Alice postured. “He’ll hang from the highest gibbet, if I have my way.”

  “Hush, dear,” said the tinker out of the side of his mouth. His leather cap, snug against his head, trembled with agitation.

  The men muttered together until the bushy-browed man finally said, “We’ll trouble you no more, sir. Our apologies. God keep you.” They bowed to him and the girl, gave Alice a scathing look, and slowly retreated down the stairs.

  Martin and Alice remained on the landing.

  Crispin glanced back at the girl. Clients were few and far between and the rent—as always—was late. If this girl could name the killer like she said, it could mean a reward from the sheriff. He studied her simpleton’s face and clenched his teeth.

  If there was a body.

  He tried to close the door, but Alice Kemp put out a large hand and stopped it. “That is the third time this week that boy has been in trouble,” she said, voice rising like a banshee. “I should call the sheriff on him.”

  “Now my dear,” said Martin. His slim frame did not seem a match for Alice’s plumpness. Crispin knew the tinker could swing a hammer with all grace and skill, but could not seem to manage his wife. “There’s no need for that. Crispin can take care of any difficulty, can’t you, Crispin?”

  The last was a plea and Crispin nodded. “Yes, Mistress Kemp. I will do my best.”

  “Your best! Ha! Your best is piss poor.” She eyed the girl. “And this had better be a client, Crispin Guest, for I’ll have none of your whoring under my roof.”

  “Madam!” He sputtered and drew up, glaring down his sharp nose at her. “This young woman is a client,” he said, teeth clenched, “but not for long if you persist. If you want your rent on time—” He jabbed his open hand toward the door, urging her out.

  Martin paled and yanked his wife back out of the threshold. Crispin slammed the door and threw the bolt. He breathed through his nostrils at the wood, and listened as their steps disappeared downward. He counted to ten, turned back to the room, and tried to grin, but the throbbing in his head would not allow it. “I apologize,” he said tightly. “That was my landlord . . . and his wife.” He said the last with bared teeth. He gestured uselessly toward the closed window. “And the boy was Jack Tucker. He insists on calling himself my servant but I’m afraid he is more suited to the vocation of a cutpurse.”

  The girl did not change expression. She merely lifted her upswept nose. Her eyes were gray like Crispin’s but more watery than his slate, and for all her steady gaze, there seemed little sense behind those eyes.

  He gave up.

  “We were speaking of a dead man,” he said quietly. “And his killer. You say you know who it is.”

  “Livith wasn’t there,” she repeated.

  “No, she wasn’t there. You said that.” He groaned and slowly blinked. This was going to take all day. “Does anyone else know this man is in your room?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted your help.”

  “You have it. Who killed him?”

  “I shouldn’t say—”

  “Are you protecting someone?”

  “It ain’t like that.” She sucked on her dirty index finger.

  “If you know who did it then you must tell me.”

  Her face crumpled and tears spilled down her apple cheeks. She pulled her finger from her mouth and dropped her hand to her lap. In a small voice she said, “I did.”

  2

  CRISPIN DID HIS BEST to settle his expression into something bland and unthreatening. He looked her slight frame up and down. She was a hand span shorter than Jack Tucker, who was another hand span shorter than Crispin. “You killed him?”

  “Aye. I must have, mustn’t I? I was the only one there.” She wiped her moist nose with her finger
s.

  He sat on the chair and pulled it up to her, looking her in the eye. “It doesn’t necessarily follow that you killed him.”

  “But I did!” Her wide eyes darted, lighting here and there in the room, never finding a resting place. “I must have.”

  “Did he attack you?”

  “No.”

  He watched her lip tremble, and a tear rolled with ferocity down her cheek, dragging a dirty trail with it. “I think it best we go to your lodgings and discover what we can. Maybe your sister has returned.”

  “Aye!” She jumped to her feet and pushed him out of the way to get to the door. “Maybe she’s back.”

  She unbolted the door and scurried over the threshold. Crispin watched her descend the stairs. He settled his cloak over his shoulders, locked the door, and tromped down the steps after her.

  The midmorning shadows hatched the lane, leaving some puddles to catch the blue-tinted sky while others reflected a dull gray. A man with a pushcart of bundled sticks heaved his charge over the muddy ruts, swearing colorfully to the saints as he did so. A dog sniffed at his heel at first and then trotted onward to lift his leg at the first rung of Crispin’s stair.

  “Make haste!” The girl danced near a frost-edged puddle outside the tinker shop. “Livith might be back and she’ll be awful cross with me.”

  “Leaving a dead man in her room,” Crispin muttered. “I should think so.”

  He followed her along the Shambles over muddy lanes and dark alleys stinking of mold. The clouds, so recently parted above, closed in again and made the way dark and threatening with rain. Crispin knew the King’s Head, an inn little better than his favorite haunt, the Boar’s Tusk on Gutter Lane. Though he considered the latter no fine tavern, his friends Gilbert and Eleanor Langton owned it and made it homey. The King’s Head was a rougher place, an inn near the wharves, less inviting except to drown a man’s sorrows in watered wine and even smaller beer.