Blood Lance: A Medieval Noir Read online

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  ALMOST HALF AN HOUR passed before Crispin reached the steps to his now dark lodgings above a tinker’s shop. He climbed the outer stairs, each step becoming harder than the last. He fumbled for his key, hands frozen into claws, and managed to open his door. It wasn’t much warmer than the street, but the coals were banked nicely under the ashes in the hearth. He took a poker and jammed it in, throwing on another square of peat to urge the fire into meager warmth. He dropped the borrowed blanket to his feet and unbuttoned his icy cotehardie with stiff fingers. Peeling it away from his shoulders he dumped it, too, on the floor with a splat. The shirt was next, then boots, braies, and stockings. Standing naked before the fire, he wrung out his soggy garments into a pail of wash water before arranging them as best he could before the smoky hearth. He scrubbed his skin with the discarded blanket until his pale arms and legs pinked and then he wrapped himself in it again, rubbing his damp hair as well.

  He turned at the sound of the door opening, and Jack entered, shaking out his cloak before he hung it on a peg by the door. “Did you catch him?” the boy asked.

  “No. But I will. He ran, Jack. That can’t mean anything good.”

  The lad stood beside him, stretching his reddened hands toward the weak flames. Crispin turned his head and Jack did, too. Eye to eye they looked at each other, and Crispin had a chance to peruse the boy’s clothing. He was lanky, all elbows and knees like a newborn colt. The young plumpness of boyhood had left his face, replaced with defined cheekbones and a sturdy chin with only a few spots competing with the freckles. “God’s blood, Tucker. You’ve grown out of another coat. Just look at those arms.”

  Jack glanced down to his wrists, jutting a good handspan from the cuffs of his sleeves. “I can’t help it, sir. The good Lord wants me to be tall, I reckon.”

  “And so you are. You will be taller than me in a fortnight, I’ll wager. Fourteen are you now, Jack?”

  “Aye, sir.” He seemed to be wearing Crispin’s crooked smile. “I’m a man, right enough.”

  “Not yet,” said Crispin softly. “Take some coins from my purse—wherever it is you’ve hidden it—and get yourself some new clothes. Not too dear, mind.”

  Jack’s freckled face blushed and his eyes drifted toward the flames. “I can get by with what I have, Master.”

  “Nonsense.” He glanced pointedly at the hem of the boy’s coat creeping up his stocking-clad thighs. “You are about to embarrass yourself.”

  Jack tugged down the hem that barely covered his braies but to no avail. “Well…”

  “Just take the coin, Jack. I owe you back wages as it is. Take that, too.”

  Unbuttoning his coat, Jack pulled the money pouch free and opened it up. He whistled at it. “You did make a goodly sum.”

  “Yes, and we both know it won’t last, so take your share now.”

  Jack hesitated before he upended the pouch into his hand. He squinted at the sums and counted carefully and slowly before returning six coins back into the pouch and handing it to Crispin. Crispin tossed it carelessly on the table and turned around, rubbing his backside before the fire.

  Jack moved away from the hearth to fetch the wine jug from the back windowsill, poured some into a pan, and placed it over the trivet in the fire, crouching beside it. He grinned up at Crispin, chuckling. “You jumped into the Thames.”

  Crispin rolled his eyes. “Yes, if a foolish thing has been done, no doubt it was me doing it.”

  “I knew it was you. I would have laid down coin on it.”

  “Perhaps you should wager next time.”

  “Perhaps I will.” He rolled the wine in the pan, watching the steam feathering upward. Rising, he grabbed two bowls from the pantry shelf and poured the warmed wine into them; the larger steaming bowl he handed to Crispin.

  “To your good health, sir,” said Jack, eyes crinkled in mirth as he raised his bowl.

  “The devil take you,” he murmured good-naturedly before pressing his lips to the bowl’s rim. It warmed all the way down his throat to his belly. He sighed, sniffed, and pulled up a chair, tucking the blanket under him before he sat.

  Jack sat cross-legged at his feet. “Do you truly think that man was murdered?”

  Crispin rested the bowl on his thigh. “True, if a man was determined to kill himself, he might be lackluster in his leap, but he flailed not at all. And he might have struck his head on a pier, but his nose, too? His neck bore bruises. I have a mind the man was in a fight. Jack, I believe he was dead or dying before he ever reached the Thames.”

  “But the Lord Coroner does not mean to investigate. At least unless a jury charges him so. He said as much.”

  Crispin gave his own lopsided grin. “You know what that means.”

  Jack sighed deeply. “But Master Crispin, there’s no money in it. Unless the sheriffs will pay.”

  “I very much doubt that.”

  “Then why, sir? We can’t govern the whole city on our own, for no wages.”

  “Being the Tracker comes with its own weight of responsibility, Jack. As a knight I was raised with a set of rules. I believe in them to the letter. And I will not allow a lack of funds to dissuade me. I thought you knew me better.”

  “Aye, sir, I do. I’m just trying to manage our funds as best I can. I didn’t mean naught by it.”

  He patted Jack’s shoulder. “And I am not chastising you. Merely pointing out that calling oneself a Tracker means more than earning coin. It … it speaks of honor and integrity. I expect when you take the reins someday that it will come to mean the same to you.”

  Jack’s eyes were wide and honest. “It does, sir! I swear by the Holy Virgin it does. I’ll not disappoint you, Master.”

  Crispin smiled. “I know you won’t. And so because we are our brother’s keeper, I cannot let this lie. I saw the man for myself, after all. I’d see it through to the last, till he receives justice under the eyes of God. And besides,” he said, watching Jack sip his wine, “the man’s betrothed might be willing to pay, if she can be convinced.”

  * * *

  A WET COUGH KEPT Crispin awake most of the night. He dragged himself from his bed when the false dawn seeped through the shutters. His nose was still red and stuffed like a winter goose.

  Dressed and dry, he and Jack made their way back toward London Bridge by first light. The bells of the local parish churches were ringing Prime by the time they arrived to the gate. They paid their fee to enter and walked up the avenue. Industrious shopkeepers scrubbed down the plaster walls of their houses while some in upper stories hung garlands of dried flowers and greenery. A festive place, thought Crispin absently. The sounds of hammering, too, plagued the air. Something was always being built or fixed in London. He supposed its bridge was no different, though he was damned if he could envision anything more being constructed on the already overcrowded and overhanging bridge. Would they raise their houses up four stories?

  After inquiring of a shopkeeper just opening his doors which shop it was, they arrived at last to the dead armorer’s. It was wedged between a haberdasher’s shop and a tailor’s and extended up one more story.

  The door lay ajar. Reaching for his dagger and pushing Jack aside out of habit, Crispin cautiously peered in.

  The woman from the night before was there, standing in the middle of what looked like the detritus of a terrible fight.

  Crispin pulled the door open, and the woman looked up. “Master Guest! You returned.”

  “As I said I would, damosel. Er … I apologize, but I was out of sorts and did not get your name last night.”

  “Anabel Coterel.” She curtseyed.

  Jack popped in behind him and swore. “Blind me! What a mess is here.”

  “Yes,” she said warily. “I found it this way this morning.”

  Crispin walked in and glanced around. He cursed himself for not looking last night.

  Tools of the trade hung on pegs above worktables. But the numerous armor pieces—greaves, breastplates, pole
yns, cuisses—were strewn about. Such careful armorer’s art, now dented and scratched. A chunk of unfinished mail hung from a splintered table edge, and even the ashes from the forge were spilled out and made a gray matting over the floor. The window overlooking the Thames still had its shutters wide open and Crispin examined the floor up to it. In the widely scattered ash, two long streaks showed the floor beneath. The streaks climbed the wall toward the window and then widened to an uneven gray swipe across the sill.

  He looked to the side and the ash was a hatching of swirls in all directions, suggesting a struggle. Darker spots mixed with it here and there. More blood. In other spots, gray footprints scattered and dispersed. He crouched and examined and swore that there were two sets of footprints, possibly more. Some were smaller than the others. A woman’s? Rising, Crispin rounded a table and found the ash had collected in neat ninety-degree angles, leaving a clean spot in the midst of it.

  Striding to the window, he looked out. The Thames, just catching the morning sun through the clouds and casting it in shades of gold and green, churned onward below. Jack came up beside him and looked over the sill.

  “That’s a long way down,” he said.

  “Indeed,” said Crispin.

  “Did all this happen this morning?” asked Jack, gesturing all around him. He tilted his head toward the woman.

  She shook her head. “I do not know. My father and I were out most of the evening. We hadn’t yet returned when the night bell was rung. Roger often worked late, and he frequently clattered and made loud noises in his work. But last night I lay next door without a wink of sleep. I would know if there had been a sound this morning.”

  “Are you convinced now, damosel?”

  She looked around. “It proves nothing. He was an untidy man. Only God can know what transpired here.”

  “Master,” said Jack, turning to Crispin. “She’s right. How can we know?”

  Crispin fit his thumbs in his belt. “What do you observe in the room, Jack?”

  His apprentice swiveled his head again and took in the scene. His eyes followed the same view, the same swirl of ash, the two long streaks across the floor and up to the window.

  He pointed to the floor before the forge. “Looks like a fight here.”

  “Yes. And blood.”

  “Oh aye. I see it now, mixed with the ash. It’s darker in color. Not too much, though.”

  “No. Not there, at any rate. Perhaps a bloodied nose. What else?”

  “The struggling stopped, for these are the marks of two feet or heels dragged to the window.” He looked up at Crispin for confirmation.

  “Very good, Jack. And the sill. See how the ash was stirred up enough to leave traces of something large going over.”

  “Aye, I do. That’s horrible, sir.”

  “What does this tell you, then?”

  “It tells me that whatever happened here, a man did not go willingly out that window.”

  4

  ANABEL WINCED. HER FACE, pale and beautiful, betrayed the emotion she seemed so keen to hide. “You have proved nothing to me,” she said stonily.

  Stubborn woman. Why does she insist? “You said you came this morning and found it thus?”

  She nodded.

  “Why did you not venture here last night?”

  “What would be the point? Roger was dead.”

  A thin veneer of fine ash lay on the worktable nearest him and he ran a finger over it. “Was the door locked?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “As I said,” she answered with agitation.

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “No.”

  He stared at her a long time before speaking to Jack, though he did not turn his gaze from hers. “Jack, is anything missing from this room?”

  “Sir, how is a body to know? I knew him not and there’s all this chaos strewn about.”

  “Observe, Jack.”

  Jack screwed up his face and looked around again, stepping cautiously over the gray spots on the floor. When he got to the end of the worktable he made a noise of exclamation. “Master Crispin! Look here.”

  But Crispin didn’t move. He continued to match glares with the woman. “What do you see, Jack? Describe it.”

  “Something’s missing from here, right enough. Something rectangular. Perhaps a box?” He cast about again and saw what Crispin did: There was nothing there resembling anything that could have made that mark. “Whatever it was, it was taken away after the fracas, for the floor is not covered in ash but has left an outline of it.”

  “Very good, Jack. Mistress Coterel, are you certain that you removed nothing from this room?”

  “Of course I am!” Her cheeks reddened prettily.

  “And what of his apprentices? Might they have removed it?”

  “Apprentices?” Her fingers found the edge of her lips and white teeth suddenly bit down on her nails. “Master Crispin, his apprentices! They are not here.”

  It took him a moment to follow her logic. Too long. “Indeed. They would be here, before the cock crowed. And if they found the place thus they would have gone to the law. But they are not here.”

  “Those boys. Surely … surely … no mischief has befallen them—”

  Crispin walked to the window and looked out, wondering. Did more than one murder occur here last night? He glanced at the smaller footprints again.

  What, by God’s blood, did this killer want?

  “That’s a dreadful speculation!” cried Jack, looking desperately at Crispin. “Sir? Are they, too, dead?”

  “Were they young boys, damosel?”

  She joined him at the window. “One was fifteen, the other ten. Brothers.” She gestured to the cots in the corner, both overturned, their bolsters tossed upon the floor.

  “Their parents?”

  “I know them. Only down the way in Southwark. I shall … I shall go there anon.” They all fell silent, Jack with his mouth hanging open.

  Would the sheriffs wish to investigate now, he wondered. Two boys, two apprentices missing, possibly dead? He squeezed the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes.

  “Mistress Coterel, never fear. I will not rest until the killer is put to the king’s justice … or mine.”

  Taking a steadying breath he swept the room again with a probing gaze. “Can you speculate, damosel, as to what that missing object”—and he waved toward the rectangle of clean floor again—“might have been? I must assume you know this place well.”

  Her hair was mostly caged by a linen kerchief but she tossed the long, looped plaits back with a recalcitrant shoulder. “And why do you assume that?”

  “You told me plainly that you were the man’s betrothed.”

  “I had my work and he had his. I did not have the time to dawdle watching him swing a hammer all day.”

  He nodded and scuffed his boot in the ash. “How long have you been betrothed?”

  Her stony veneer cracked slightly and she turned away. She took a step toward the window but stopped suddenly—the ash marks showed so plainly what had happened. She appeared to think better of it and turned toward the worktable instead. A pair of snips had avoided the carnage and her fingers touched the instrument, running down its dark surface. Her jaw clenched. “Not long. But we knew each other a long time.”

  “Damosel, forgive me.” He stood behind her now, trapping her between the table and escape. “I have observed much in this room, but I have also observed that you do not seem as saddened by these events as a woman in your position might be. Care to explain?”

  She made an agitated sound. “He was a singular man, Master Guest. Can you understand that? He did not judge … people … the way other men did. He was going to marry me. He was going to see that I was well cared for.” She turned to him and the loss on her face was no invention. Her large eyes ensnared him with their sincerity. The lips she wetted with a pink tongue distracted. “I am saddened at that loss and worried for his mortal soul. But … I did not
love him, if that is what you are implying … and I know well that it is.” She hugged herself and glanced toward the window. “His time came early. But perhaps not by his own devising as … as I had wrongly supposed.”

  She whirled and faced Crispin so suddenly that he stepped back. “I know now that Roger was murdered even if that lout of a coroner will do nothing about it. If that is the will of the king’s men, then so be it. But I hoped you’d come back for another reason if not for justice for poor Roger. But for me and my father. We need you. We … we need to hire you.”

  “Oh? For what?”

  She sighed. “Someone has stolen money from us. Our rent money. And if we don’t come forth with it soon, our landlord will turn us out. He threatened the law.”

  “And?” He sensed there was more to it and could tell by the frown of her brows he was right.

  “I came this morning to look for the money Roger said he’d lend me. But it’s not here.”

  “That box—”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No. I know nothing of that.”

  Crispin took the damp rag he had stuffed in his belt and wiped his runny nose, coughing down into his chest. He replaced the rag when it had done all it could. “Very well. Your shop? Show me.”

  “Come see.”

  She did not wait for him to follow but darted swiftly out the door. Jack gave Crispin the eye. Crispin nodded at his servant. “What do you think?”

  “I think she’s lying.”

  “So do I. Let us see what is next in her poke of tales.” Crispin passed through the doorway and spotted the impatient woman gesturing to him from the entry to his right. He followed her to the tailor shop he had noted earlier, his eyes scanning quickly over bolts of cloth on neat shelves and several sizes of shears hanging from hooks above a worktable.