Cup of Blood: A Medieval Noir: A Crispin Guest Medieval Noir Prequel Read online

  “For these, perhaps.”

  Christ! The man had known all along. Jack knew he had awakened! “Them’s just purses I come by,” he said quietly.

  “Came by them, did you? Well one of them came by way of my belt.”

  “O-o-o-h! So you’re the lord what lost it.”

  With knees pinning Jack’s shoulders, the man picked out his pouch from the two. Since the straps were cut, he maneuvered the flap over his belt and managed to secure it there one-handed. “As for you, what’s to be done? Turn you over to the law?”

  “For what, m’lord? I done naught. I told you. I come by them purses.”

  “Not afraid of the law, eh? Do you know what they do to thieves in London?”

  “I’m not afraid of gaol,” he said, though his voice quivered.

  “Gaol? You’d be lucky to be thrown in gaol. No, for your type of thief, the sheriff prefers to cut off that sinful hand of yours.”

  Jack gasped. Hadn’t meant to. Fear closed his throat. If the man turned him in he’d be hanged for sure!

  With a flourish, the man suddenly brandished his knife. “Perhaps I should do it myself.”

  The brave façade fell. Terror welled up in him and he squirmed, eyes pouring forth tears. “M’lord! Have mercy. I’m just a poor lad all alone in the world! I got naught. Please, m’lord, have mercy!”

  The man considered. He looked once at his blade before he shrugged and replaced it. “Then what shall we do? Go to the sheriff?”

  “There’s no need to trouble him, is there, m’lord?” He sniffed and longed to wipe his dripping nose on his sleeve, but his arm was still trapped at his side by the man’s knee. “You have your property back. I would say that is all fair and done with. Wouldn’t you, m’lord?”

  “Not all. There is this other pouch. And I have a mind that you should be the one to personally restore it to its owner.”

  Jack grimaced. “Aw now, m’lord. He might not be as fair-minded as you are. Can’t you take it to him and be done with it?”

  “Not possible. ‘First be reconciled with thy brother.’ You have sinned against your fellow man. You will take it to him yourself, or we will go to the sheriff now.” The man released him and rose.

  Slowly, Jack got to his feet and shook the cold mud from his cloak. He frowned up at the man. “If it’s to be done, let’s do it quickly.”

  Any thoughts of escape quickly faded as the man grabbed Jack by his cloak in a tight grip. He smiled. “Perhaps he will be merciful. A genuine show of repentance will do much for a man’s disposition. I suggest you add remorse to your apology.”

  “Aye, m’lord,” he grumbled. Jack fell silent and did not struggle even when the man hoisted him up and his toes barely danced along the ground. It could have gone worse, he decided. The man could have been cruel, could have beaten or cut him. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  They made the long walk back to the tavern in silence. Yellow light pierced the broken shutters, though many of the candles had burned low. The place was quiet when they opened the door. The tavern keeper no longer dozed at his place by the kitchens, but was instead picking up the mess Jack had left when he ran.

  The piper had left his pipe aside and quaffed his cup of ale from a clay cup. A male servant lay asleep and snoring near the door, his feet hanging off the end of a cot. Most of the patrons had gone, but Jack’s latest victim never moved, sleeping where he had left him.

  When the man shut the door, the tavern keeper looked up. “Oi? Is that you Crispin?”

  “Yes, Gilbert.”

  “Come, man. I thought you left for the night. In truth, it is time I send these last two away so that I can go to my own bed.”

  The musician looked up from over the rim of his cup and pointed to it.

  Gilbert waved him off with a huff. “He’d nurse that ‘til dawn if I let him. But what is this?” He gestured toward Jack, who shrank away from the brawny man as much as he could while still in the clutches of the man called Crispin. “What have you brought me?”

  “I return him to the place of his crime for the betterment of his soul.”

  Gilbert rubbed his face with a fat hand, wiping away the sweat from his bearded chin. A big-boned man, he stood nearly as tall as Crispin. “Crime? What mean you by that?”

  “I mean that this knave is a cutpurse…”

  “Oh! It’s that way, is it?” Gilbert lunged for the knife at his belt and pulled it free, advancing on Jack. “I’ll have none of that in my house!”

  Jack recoiled and tried to wriggle free.

  “Peace, Gilbert. I have already pardoned the knave on condition that he returns his spoils to the rightful owner.”

  Gilbert glared and pointed with his knife. “You do not know how fortunate you are, young lad. Crispin Guest is a right honorable gentleman. That’s the Tracker you’re fooling with. I’ll wager you’ve heard of him. Any other man would have first sliced you open for your thievery—” and he made cutting motions— “and only then asked questions. He’s coddling you, and in all probability you don’t deserve it.”

  Jack glanced once at Crispin before licking his dry lips. Tracker? He had heard of the man, though he thought it was more of a legend than a real person. He slipped further into the neck of his tunic held firm in the Tracker’s fist. Were he thinner, he might have slipped entirely free of the tattered garment.

  “I think first you owe Master Langton an apology for using such tricks in his establishment.” Crispin shook him. “Well?”

  Hanging from his own hood, Jack smiled weakly up at Gilbert’s taut face. “I…I am heartily sorry for plying me trade in your ale house, good Master.”

  “Hmpf,” snorted Gilbert. “The words are spoken but the sincerity is lacking. Let me never see your face in here again, lad.”

  “Aye, Master.” He glanced up at Crispin’s stern expression. “I doubt I’ll be back.”

  “Well then,” said Crispin, casting his glance toward the sleeping man. “Let us awaken your victim.” Crispin maneuvered the boy forward and kicked the table. “Awake, Master. Come, now.”

  The man remained stubbornly motionless.

  Crispin chuckled and looked up at Gilbert. “The character of your wine must be particularly potent today.” With Jack’s hood still firm in his grip, he reached down with his other hand and shook the man’s shoulder before frowning.

  “He sleeps like the dead, this one,” said Gilbert.

  “You are partly correct,” said Crispin. His fist slackened on Jack’s hood, and Jack took advantage by stepping back and adjusting his loosened collar. Crispin’s fingers touched the sleeping man’s neck and turned his face, revealing wide bulging eyes.

  Jack gasped.

  “This man isn’t asleep at all,” said Crispin. “He is dead.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Crispin examined the dead man’s face and grimaced, not at the pale and waxy skin, for he was used to corpses both on the battlefield and off, but at the manner and incongruity of such a body in such a place. The man looked as if he had suffered. His eyes bulged and spittle whitened his lips. Crispin cautiously bent to sniff the corpse’s opened mouth but didn’t detect any unusual odors or obvious poisons. One arm extended across the table ending in curled fingers as if he were reaching for something. Crispin tested the arm by raising it. Stiff.

  He shook his head. “It’s a wretched thing, Gilbert. Poor man. Dying and not a soul aware of it.”

  Gilbert stood behind Crispin’s shoulder and nodded. “You don’t think it was the food? Or the wine?”

  “Not the food, though you would think so.”

  “Crispin! This is no time for jesting.”

  “Who’s jesting?” He saw the look on Gilbert’s face and laid his hand on his shoulder with a hasty smile. “Rest assured it was nothing in your food or drink. However, it was most certainly something he consumed, though I fear not by choice.”

  “Poison?” Gilbert whispered.

  “I don’t see any other w
ay about it.” His temples throbbed again and he groaned. He was too tired to entertain this now. Let others content themselves with it. He hated to leave Gilbert with such a thing, but he had spent too much time today at the Boar’s Tusk already. He glanced at the boy, still cringing in the corner. “Gilbert, I would be off to my own bed. There’s little I can do here, at any rate. You’d best wait for Ned to get back with the sheriff and the coroner.”

  “Oh, Crispin, don’t go! You know how the sheriff is.”

  All too well. Crispin rubbed his face. It felt like damp leather. “Gilbert. For God’s sake.”

  “Please, Crispin.”

  He sighed and opened his eyes to glare at his friend. “Very well. But you owe me for this.”

  “I’ll take it from your overdue bill,” Gilbert muttered and stared at the dead man. He wrung his hands on his apron, shuffled backward to a table opposite, and sunk to the bench.

  The ginger-haired boy stealthily made for the door but Crispin leaned over and grabbed his hood again. “I am afraid you cannot leave either, little thief. For the sheriff may wish to question you as well.”

  “But I don’t know naught!”

  “That remains to be seen.” He shoved him down onto a stool while he sat on a chair, rocking it back, and plopped his feet on the table. He stared over his muddy boot tips at the dead man and waited.

  The nearby monastery bells rang for Lauds by the time Sheriff Simon Wynchecombe entered and looked across the smoky room, legs wide with gloved fists dug into his hips. There was nothing particularly ostentatious about his dress, for another man might have made more use of bright colors in more combination. The sheriff’s pretension sprang from his person, some of it by choice and some of it by nature. A tall, ruddy man with dark bushy brows and an equally dark mustache and beard, he seemed to relish this darkness and clothed himself equally so.

  Two of his men entered after him and stood at the ready in his shadow.

  The sheriff clucked his tongue, but when he spied Crispin his expectant expression melted into a scowl. “I should have known you were somehow involved.”

  “Me? I have no involvement. I am merely a bystander.”

  Wynchecombe grunted. “Why do I find that so difficult to believe?” He cast about again and bellowed, “Who is master here?”

  “I-I am, Lord Sheriff,” said Gilbert. He sprang from his bench and shuffled forward.

  “Then what mischief is here?”

  “We only found him an hour ago,” said Gilbert. “Such a terrible thing.” He glanced at Crispin. “To have him dead like that and no one the wiser.”

  “So he’s been dead an hour.”

  “Longer,” said Crispin.

  Wynchecombe leveled a glare at him. “I did not ask you, Master Guest.”

  “Nevertheless.” Crispin didn’t look at the sheriff. “He has been dead longer. Possibly all evening.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Try to move his arms. They are stiffening with rigor.”

  Wynchecombe snorted. He eyed the stark faces looking expectantly back at him. “Well. Does anyone know who the man is?”

  “I know not,” said Gilbert. “I do not remember his coming in, and I have never seen him before. Perhaps he’s a merchant. His cloak is plain enough, but his boots are well made.”

  “He’s a knight,” said Crispin.

  Wynchecombe strode toward Crispin and measured him with a pinched expression. His mustache twitched. “And how the hell do you know that?”

  “He’s wearing a hauberk under his gown. I felt it when I touched his arm. Further, those clothes are not of local origin. That gown is a Damascus weave. I remember it well…from a long time ago.”

  Wynchecombe glared a long moment before he slapped Crispin’s feet from the table. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

  Crispin clenched his fist at his side but turned an indifferent expression to the sheriff. “I have very little respect for anything. Isn’t that what you’ve heard?”

  “Yes.” Wynchecombe chuckled and nodded. “That is exactly what I’ve heard.”

  The sheriff studied the dead man, peering at him at close range. “I don’t suppose,” he said over his shoulder, “you know who he is?”

  Crispin shrugged. His lids hung heavily. “I do not. He wears no signet. But he did wear a necklace. A thin chain. His neck.”

  “What?” The sheriff bent to look closely at the man’s neck.

  Crispin yawned and waved in the dead man’s general direction. “See the red stripe? As if it were pulled off. I wonder by whom?”

  He did not need to turn his head to know that the cutpurse cringed. The sheriff caught the movement and swiveled, directing his attention to the boy on a stool.

  “Well? And who are you?”

  “N-no one, m’lord. Jack Tucker. Just an innocent witness.”

  “Innocent?” The sheriff swept the anxious faces of Gilbert and Jack with a scowl. “No one here looks innocent to me.” He crossed the room with heavy steps and leaned on the table. The wood creaked under his weight. “What time did you get here, my Lord Guest?”

  Crispin slowly withdrew his knife and began cleaning under his fingernails with the tip. “I am no one’s lord,” he reminded tolerantly. “Are you suggesting I killed the man?”

  “It was not established he was killed. There is no blood, after all.”

  “Natural causes? In one so young? Surely even you are not that dim, Wynchecombe.”

  Wynchecombe grabbed Crispin’s hood. He leaned in so close that Crispin could smell the stale wine on his breath. “I am ‘my Lord Wynchecombe’ to you, Guest.” Wynchecombe’s eyes flicked to the dagger in Crispin’s fist, but Crispin never flinched nor took his gaze from the sheriff. “Give me an excuse,” the sheriff whispered, twisting Crispin’s hood tighter. “Any excuse.”

  The sheriff’s two men at the door took several steps closer. Their hands clutched their sword pommels.

  Crispin blinked. He took his time curling his lips into a slow smile. It made the sheriff’s scowl deepen. “I am your servant as always… Lord Sheriff.”

  Wynchecombe released him and straightened. “Then I repeat. What time did you get here?”

  Crispin smoothed out his coat and shoulder cape and resumed cleaning his nails. “Sometime after sundown. I am not certain of the hour.”

  “How many were here?”

  “The usual number. It was nearly a full house, wouldn’t you say Gilbert?”

  “Aye, Crispin. A goodly number.”

  The sheriff smiled an unpleasant grin. “Been drinking here all evening, eh, Crispin?”

  Crispin snapped his blade back in its scabbard without looking up. “I am no longer concerned with the running of estates, Lord Sheriff. What I do with my time is surely my own business.”

  “Yet death seems to stalk you.”

  “Death stalks us all. And in this case, I believe the man was poisoned. I’d stake my—” He paused, wondering what exactly was left to stake. Certainly he possessed no reputation to wager, no property, and no money. And his life? Likewise discounted. He smiled grimly and looked the sheriff in the eye. “I am certain,” he continued. “See how he struggled? And the foam at his mouth? Yet no one noticed his dying.”

  “Poison, is it?” Wynchecombe glanced at the bowls scattered on the table. Wine still glistened in the bottom of both clay cups. The one of wood stood empty. He pushed one bowl with his fingers. It wobbled and sloshed red wine onto the table. “Poison is the choice of cowards and conspirators,” he snorted. “Which bowl was his?”

  Crispin grinned crookedly. “I do not recall. Why don’t you try them and find out?”

  The sheriff gritted his teeth in a steely smile. “Not today, Guest.” With his gloved hand he tipped over both bowls. The wine ran red like blood. “Tavern keeper!” he said, stepping away from the dribbles spattering the floor. “Clean this mess.”

  Gilbert moved quickly and plucked up the bowls with apron-covered fin
gers.

  The sheriff edged toward Crispin. “What sort of poison?”

  “The sort that kills quickly. There are a few that would do the trick.”

  “You know a bit too much about this.”

  “I have a habit of knowing a bit too much about everything. Jack of all trades—”

  “Master of none,” the sheriff chuckled. “Then of course you—a man who knows everything—would know where to obtain such poisons.”

  “Any apothecary knows of them, but only the more unsavory would sell them. Do not waste your time. It will be difficult finding the purveyor.”

  “The king has appointed me to waste my time, as you say.”

  Crispin shrugged. “Then be my guest.”

  “And what about this fellow, Jack Tucker. Tucker?” Wynchecombe turned, but Jack had vanished. The sheriff glanced a warning at his men. Their faces flattened with guilty apology.

  Crispin chuckled. “Your fish slipped the hook.”

  “Damn the boy! You two! Go get him!”

  “Surely you do not suspect Tucker?” said Crispin over the noise of the sheriff’s men clamoring out. “What cutpurse would waste money on poison? That boy’s a thief not a murderer.”

  “I care nothing for what you think you know of it.”

  Crispin glanced at the window and groaned at the sight of gray light tinting the open shutters. “As you will,” he sighed. “It is nearly dawn. Are you done with me?”

  Wynchecombe’s bushy brows lowered. Crispin well knew that if the sheriff wished, if taunted enough, he could arrest Crispin and put him on trial for the crime. Evidence could be easily cobbled to make him look guilty enough. Especially since the dead man’s money pouch still lay tucked in its hiding place inside Crispin’s coat.

  Wynchecombe snorted and turned his back. “Go home. If I need you further, I know where to find you.”

  Crispin gathered his sluggish body and rose, made a cursory bow that Wynchecombe did not notice, and dragged himself from the tavern.

  He groaned again, squinting at the eastern sky visible now as a bluish-gray wash behind the dark silhouette of rooftops and spires. The morning hung in the air as cold and as damp as last night’s laundry. He put up his hood and wrapped his worn cloak over his chest to protect his chapped fingers. His empty belly complained, but he did not feel well enough to eat, even if there was bread or cheese in his larder. There might be the dregs of wine still left in his jug at home, and that thought sustained him while he leapt the puddles and trudged down gray-edged alleys.