Spiteful Bones Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Also by Jeri Westerson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Notes About Characters

  Glossary

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Afterword

  Also by Jeri Westerson

  The Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series

  VEIL OF LIES

  SERPENT IN THE THORNS

  THE DEMON’S PARCHMENT

  TROUBLED BONES

  BLOOD LANCE

  SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST

  CUP OF BLOOD

  THE SILENCE OF STONES *

  A MAIDEN WEEPING *

  SEASON OF BLOOD *

  THE DEEPEST GRAVE *

  TRAITOR’S CODEX *

  SWORD OF SHADOWS *

  Other titles

  THOUGH HEAVEN FALL

  ROSES IN THE TEMPEST

  * available from Severn House

  SPITEFUL BONES

  Jeri Westerson

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2020

  in Great Britain and 2021 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2021 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2020 by Jeri Westerson.

  The right of Jeri Westerson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8999-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-737-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0459-2 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book contains many spoilers for Veil of Lies, so if you haven’t read it, you might wish to return to that first book in the series for a refresher before continuing with this one.

  Also, it must be noted that John Rykener was a real person from Crispin’s London. We first met him in The Demon’s Parchment. We only have one document from the law rolls about him from 1395. He had been arrested, not necessarily for prostitution, but for dressing as a woman. In the document, he was also accused of theft and: [He] further said that certain Phillip, rector of Theydon Garnon, had sex with him as with a woman in Elizabeth Bronderer’s house outside Bishopsgate, at which time Rykener took away two gowns of Phillip, and when Phillip requested them from Rykener he said that [he] was the wife of a certain man and that if Phillip wished to ask for them back [he] would make [his] husband bring suit against him.

  We never knew the name of the husband. I have supplied it here.

  NOTES ABOUT CHARACTERS

  Several lords in Crispin’s time will be mentioned, and sometimes they were known by several different titles. For clarification, I thought it best to define them here.

  Hereford – Henry Bolingbroke. Henry was the eldest son and heir to John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. He is called ‘Bolingbroke’ for where he was born, but he was called by several titles during his young life. In 1377 to 1397 he was styled the Earl of Derby or just ‘Derby’ as in earlier Crispin books. He was also the Earl of Northampton and at the same time was made Earl and Duke of Hereford, and also, briefly, the Duke of Lancaster upon his father’s death. And then finally Henry IV, King of England.

  Norfolk – refers to Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk, who was earlier styled ‘Nottingham’.

  Gloucester – Thomas of Woodstock, brother to John of Gaunt and uncle to King Richard, was the Duke of Gloucester.

  Lords Appellant – These lords (who were not called the ‘Lords Appellant’ in that time period) were some of Richard’s great lords of England, and one was even his uncle and one his first cousin. Beginning in 1387, these lords banded together to arrest Richard’s favorites who had too much sway over him and his decisions, and to control Richard’s spending policies and what they saw as tyrannical tendencies. They were: Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, brother of John of Gaunt (who were both sons of King Edward III), and thus Richard’s uncle; Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundle and of Surrey; Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby (at the time), and future king of England; and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham (at the time). After battles with these lords and after Richard was cornered in the Tower (see the Crispin books Shadow of the Alchemist and The Silence of Stones), he acquiesced to their wishes. But he never forgave their execution of his favorites, nor the injury to his ego for ordering around an anointed king.

  Robert de Vere and the Battle of Radcot Bridge – Richard saw the writing on the wall in 1387 and he sent for one of his favorites, Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, to come to his aide when Henry and his Lords Appellant were pressing their advantage. But Henry headed him off and fought de Vere’s troops at Radcot Bridge, where de Vere’s army was routed and de Vere escaped into exile. Richard was furious with this outcome, because it meant that there was no stopping the Lords Appellant from forcing him to do their will.

  Glossary

  Cooking Powders – These are ground spices that every wealthier kitchen would have had on hand. ‘White Powder’ is ginger or mace blended with confectioner’s sugar. ‘Powder Fort’ is ginger or a blend of cinnamon and mace. ‘Powder Douce’ is one or more of the ‘sweet’ spices; anise, fennel, and nutmeg. Any of these spices would often be used with meat dishes and sauces.

  Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours – In the Middle Ages, the hours were set by certain prayers offered at certain times of the day. The lay-people outside of monasteries and churches could tell what time it was by the bells calling the religious to prayer. They are (with approximate times):

  Matins – Midnight to dawn

  Lauds – 3 a.m.

  Prime – 6 a.m.

  Terce – 9 a.m.

  Sext – 11 a.m./noon

  None – 3 p.m.

  Vespers – twilight/sundown

  Compline – night/9 p.m.

  Lychgate – A covered gate leading to a churchyard. Lych from an Old English word meaning corpse; a place a corpse would be left – sometimes for days – to await burial.

  Varlet – older term for personal valet

  Wattle – twigs and young branches woven together with stakes to create fences and walls that might be plastered to make smooth, solid structures.

  ONE

  London, 1398

  Nigellus Cobmartin stood in the courtyard of his family home – its garden walls crumbling, its arched windows overlooking the tired and weedy garden with its dead flowers and gnarled trees – and sighed. His brother had done poorly in business and had not kept up repairs, and when he died only a fortnight ago, it had finally come to Nigellus. Now he wondered if it was worth salvaging.

  He counted in his head the funds needed to bring the manor into a livable condition, and despaired that his law practice was still in its infancy, even though his student days were some seven years behind him.

  The shadow of a woman approached and slipped her hand in his. The perfumed scent reached his nose and filled his mind and heart with pleasant thoughts and sent his worries away. She was a slender figure in a gown of simple woolens that rustled and swayed with each step of slippered feet, but a gown embroidered so elaborately that it could have easily been mistaken for a lady of highborn stature.

  Except that it wasn’t a woman at all, but Nigellus’s lover, John Rykener. John was lean in his woman’s gowns, and his skin
was smooth and pale like any well-bred maiden’s. Even the fullness of his lips and the arch of his brow gave him a softer appearance that fooled most men.

  It had not fooled Nigellus.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ John whispered in his ear. ‘It will be made whole again, as it should have been all these years.’

  ‘How lucky I am to have you by my side … sweet Eleanor.’ ‘Eleanor’ was the name John insisted on using when in public. And because workmen fairly swarmed over the place, it was as public as it got.

  ‘How your brother let it go to shit as he had …’

  ‘Now, now.’ He patted John’s hand and glanced up at him. ‘Augustus hadn’t a head for money. I daresay, none of us had. Only father. And only at times. But with Augustus now gone …’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you sadness. You never spoke much of your brother.’

  ‘Never had much to say. He thought my becoming a lawyer was foolish. As foolish as if I’d joined a monastery, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m grateful you didn’t do the latter,’ said John, nudging him with his elbow. His woman’s gown of blues was a cote-hardie with dainty cloth buttons John had embroidered himself. ‘Though I might have met you there nonetheless. My clientele practically bulged with clergy.’

  ‘John!’ he hissed. Shaking his head, he knew he seemed to admonish the daring Rykener more often than not, but he caught the edge of John’s smile and knew he hadn’t offended.

  ‘Madam Cobmartin?’

  John turned as a workman doffed his hat to him. It still made Nigellus uneasy to style themselves as husband and wife, but John delighted in it. ‘Yes?’ he said sweetly.

  ‘We have found the plumbing and we’ve got men assessing the situation.’

  ‘Oh, Nigellus! Do you hear that? Plumbing! Water running through pipes into the house!’

  ‘Yes, we always had running water in the house when we were children. Be sure your men check the cistern on the roof,’ he said to the workman. ‘I don’t have a hope that it hasn’t rotted out.’

  ‘Aye, sir. It’s going to take work to get to all them lead pipes. But I say, sir, what’s good enough for them Romans is good enough for Londoners.’

  ‘Well said,’ gushed Rykener.

  The workman bowed, replaced his hat, and trudged back out through the courtyard arch.

  John grabbed his arm and jumped up and down. ‘Our very own home. With plumbing!’

  ‘Anything for you, my love.’

  ‘Oh, you are a sweet man, aren’t you? How I love you.’ He leaned over and gave Nigellus a loud, smacking kiss. Nigellus felt his cheeks redden. Not that he was embarrassed to be kissed where others could see. But he was so flushed with happiness. And to think, only a brief few years before, he never imagined himself settled as they were beginning to be. He had Crispin Guest to thank for that. He never would have met the effusive Rykener if it hadn’t been for London’s Tracker.

  They walked together arm in arm, looking over the foundations and peering up to the towers. ‘What a shame that Augustus never married,’ said Rykener. ‘Such a big house with only him. And it truly is a fine house.’

  ‘It was,’ Nigellus agreed. ‘I fear I shall never be able to afford to repair all of it.’

  ‘Well, at the very least, we can make certain it’s livable again.’

  ‘That is my goal. The master carpenter said we can likely move in by as little as a fortnight.’

  ‘I’ve never lived in so grand a house. Do you think it will be all right?’

  Glancing at the man, Nigellus could see, despite all his spirited effusiveness, that he was nervous. He had come from a different life. A life of brothels and seamy streets, pandering to the most outrageous of clientele. John still kept the company of the infamous Elizabeth Bronderer. He had said he owed her much, teaching him the craft of embroidering … as well as pandering. She’d taught him to cater to women as well as men. Nigellus sometimes dreamed of bringing charges against her and putting her out of business, for he could see no good coming from it, and the priests of London would have been pleased to put down her business as well as the other stews in Southwark … but there were just as many other bishops and priests that were her patrons – and the Bishop of London himself owned stews – that in the end it was hardly worth the trouble.

  He patted John’s hand at the crook of his elbow. John may not have been raised in a household with servants attending him, but if Nigellus had anything to say about it, he’d make certain he would now. ‘Of course. We already have servants,’ said Nigellus, ‘but, er … I wondered what to do about ladies’ maids …’

  ‘I’ve got it all sorted. I’ve already hired a woman from Madam Bronderer’s house. She’s around here somewhere.’

  That woman again! But he smoothed his expression. ‘That is good news.’ And then he considered. ‘She won’t be … er, plying her trade here, will she?’

  John stopped and gave him the look he had become familiar with. ‘Under our roof? I wouldn’t hear of it. She’ll be making more coin as a lady’s maid than as a whore at any rate, so I shouldn’t think so.’

  Nigellus blinked, took a deep breath, and released it. Yes, things were different with Rykener in his life. But with a shake of his head and a small smile, he decided he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  ‘Oh, there she is!’ John waved at a stout, young woman with dark hair and pink cheeks. She waved back. ‘Come, Susannah. Meet the master of the house.’

  Susannah moved forward sluggishly and offered up a complacent smile. ‘Master Nigellus,’ she said.

  ‘You must call him “Master Cobmartin”, Susannah. I’ve told you that.’

  ‘Aye, I forgot. What do you need, madam?’

  ‘Nothing. I hope you’re settling in.’

  ‘I don’t much like the other maid. She talks too much.’

  ‘Well, we can’t help that. But is that what you plan to wear? You mustn’t look slovenly. This is a great house.’

  ‘It’s what I got, John.’

  ‘And don’t call me “John”.’ He looked around but there were no workmen within earshot. ‘It’s Madam Cobmartin.’

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Well, stop forgetting or I’ll find someone else. Here.’ John handed her a few coins from his own money pouch. ‘Get yourself some better clothes. By the saints, I know Madam Bronderer has enough money to clothe you properly. Why hasn’t she?’

  Susannah shrugged. ‘I’ll just nip out and be back.’

  ‘See that you do! Nigellus is terrible at helping me dress.’

  She looked over Nigellus insolently, and rumbled away.

  ‘I don’t like her manner,’ he whispered harshly to John.

  ‘She’s all right. She’s just a bit of a grumbler.’

  John took his arm again in appeasement – and it did appease – as they passed under an arch that took them into the side door, where they ended up in the foyer. Nigellus raised his eyes to the tall, vaulted ceiling and the grand staircase. His father had been wealthy as a mercer, but lost nearly all his fortune later in life on dubious purchases and, of course, gambling.

  ‘Didn’t you tell me that there was supposed to be a family relic? You’d make our friend Crispin proud.’

  Nigellus chuckled. ‘I daresay. But it was lost some twenty years ago. Everyone believed one of our servants made off with it.’

  ‘The churl! Whatever happened to him?’

  ‘No idea. He ran off. I was but a lad of fifteen at the time. Oh, it was the scandal. How father raved. I was set to learn my father’s trade, but I had begged instead to learn the law. Father didn’t see the sense in it, but he handed over the coin anyway. I’ll always be grateful for that. He wanted me to be happy, bless him. And in any case, Augustus was the older son. He was set to inherit the mercer business. So it little mattered what I got up to.’

  ‘I’m glad you became a lawyer … and a fine one you are! I can’t see you as a merchant. Though you are getting a bit round in the middle.’ He poked Nigellus in the gut. He sputtered.