Serpent in the Thorns Page 9

  He landed heavily on Miles’s back, knocking him off his horse to the mud. Winded, Miles tried to right himself, but Crispin pushed him down. Miles grabbed his ankle and Crispin fell with him. They rolled, each trying to get the upper hand as the horse grunted and stepped out of the way, its trapper swishing.

  Crispin shoved Miles down, grinding his face in the sludge. Then he scrambled on top of Miles’s shoulder blades, forcing him deeper into the mushy ground. He yanked out his knife and held it to the man’s neck.

  Miles glared over his shoulder and when he finally got his breath back hissed, “Get the hell off me!”

  “I think not. I’d like to have a parley, if you will.”

  Miles tried to rise but Crispin used his knees to dig into Miles’s spine.

  Miles twisted to look back. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “You know,” said Crispin calmly, more calmly than he felt, “it’s bad enough you manipulated me into committing treason all those years ago, but trying to kill me is quite another matter. I don’t like it.”

  “I never tried to kill you.”

  Crispin grit his teeth and pressed the blade’s tip into Miles’s jaw just at the juncture of his ear. Miles grunted when Crispin pressed harder. A pearl of blood oozed up, bulged, and then ran down his neck. “I don’t tolerate liars. Let’s try this again. Why did you try to kill me?”

  “Dammit, let me up! I never tried to kill you, you bastard, but I will now!”

  “I am in possession of one of your arrows that just grazed my shoulder not more than a few moments ago. There is another stuck in the flesh of a dead French courier. Care to tell me about these unrelated events?”

  Miles stopped struggling. A line of red ran down his neck like a necklace. He blew two bursts from his nostrils and then a third before he turned his head as much as Crispin’s blade allowed him. “Let me up and we will talk.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “I have much to say.”

  “I rather enjoy my knee in your back.” Miles said nothing. Crispin stared at the back of the archer’s head, watched his shoulders fall and rise with each labored breath. At last, Crispin leaned back, grabbed Miles’s sword from its sheath, and rose. “Get up. No tricks.”

  Miles pushed up from the mud on his hands and knees and carefully rose. He turned to face Crispin before raising a gloved hand to his bleeding neck. He looked at the blood and mud on his glove and scowled. “Always one for the dramatic, aren’t you? Tell me what all this is about.”

  “I told you. You killed that French courier and you tried to kill me.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What French courier?”

  “Must we play this?” Crispin raised the sword. It felt good in his hand. “The French courier that may bring the war with France to our doorstep. The one carrying a particular object from the French court to this one.”

  Miles’s brows rose. “You think I killed him?”

  “And tried the same on me. But Miles. With an arrow?” He shook his head. “Of course, that is the cowardly way. I’d expect that from you.”

  The corner of Miles’s muddy lip raised in a sneer. “I can assure you, when I choose to kill you, it will be face to face so that you may see it coming.”

  Crispin tapped the sword point into Miles’s chest with each word. “Tell me about the French courier.”

  “You’re repeating yourself. I don’t know anything about that or the—” Miles bit down on his cheek. He glared at Crispin and the sword blade at his chest.

  “Or the what?” smiled Crispin.

  Miles made an unconvincing grin. “The object from the French court. As you said.”

  “On top of everything else, you’re a bad liar.”

  “Oi!”

  Crispin turned. Several guards came running up the street, weapons raised. Crispin turned back to Miles and smiled. “Time to go. We’ll meet again.” He jammed the sword into the mud and leapt for the roof, leaving Miles to react a hairsbreadth too late. Crispin hung on a corbel and swung his legs up to the slate, grabbing hold of the roof’s edge. With the strength of his legs, he pulled himself up over the eave the rest of the way and rolled onto the slick tiles, gripping with his fingers so he didn’t slip off. Miles stood below him, a shocked look on his face. Crispin saluted him with a grim smile and ran up to the roof’s peak and down the other side, leaving the guards and a sputtering Miles behind.

  He didn’t need Miles or his false testimony. All he needed was the arrow. One he already possessed, but the one that killed the courier would be best. That would convict Miles right well.

  He slid on his backside down the roof to the edge and leapt off into a haycart. He rolled out of the hay and righted himself on the ground, brushing the mud and hay off his shirt before he straightened his cloak.

  He listened but could not hear anyone following him, neither over the roof nor around the corner. So much for the king’s guards and the Captain of the Archers.

  He took a deep breath and looked up the lane one side and down the other. Now where would Wynchecombe have put the body?

  “IT’S A SIMPLE QUESTION, Lord Sheriff.” At least Crispin thought it was.

  “I’ll make you a bargain, Guest.”

  Ah. Here it comes.

  “I’ll tell you where the body is if you tell me where those women are.”

  “Now my Lord Sheriff, I told you I was protecting them—”

  “Do you truly want to be thrown into gaol again?”

  Crispin sighed. He stood before the sheriff in his Newgate chamber. Wynchecombe had not offered him a seat, so he stood. “I prefer to remain a free man if given the choice.”

  “That choice is slipping away.”

  “I told you I’m protecting them.”

  “From whom?”

  “From you, my lord.”

  Wynchecombe sat back. His eyes whitened at the edges but the incredulity was not there. “Why should they need protecting from me?”

  Should he say? Always difficult to decide how helpful the sheriff would be. Crispin stared at his boots. “The one who found him is dull-witted, my lord, and she, well, she seems to think she killed him.”

  “What!” The sheriff shot to his feet and slammed his hand on the table. His candle wobbled and the flame flickered. “God’s teeth, Guest!”

  “My Lord Sheriff, with a bow and arrow? A kitchen wench?”

  Wynchecombe glared. His bushy brows lowered over his eyes until they cast a shadow. “Hmph” was all he said and sat heavily. His sword clanked against the chair.

  “I need that arrow from the dead man. I think I know who killed him.”

  The sheriff recovered and leaned forward. “Who, then?”

  Crispin smiled grimly. “I cannot say just yet.”

  Wynchecombe sat back slowly. “Were you always this annoying, Guest, or did you come by it only after the king dealt with you?”

  “ ‘Annoying,’ Lord Sheriff?”

  “Never mind. Very well. Come with me.”

  The sheriff rose. He led Crispin down the wooden staircase outside his tower chamber and through several passages, then down another staircase to a dark undercroft lit with a few pitch torches. Ahead, Crispin saw a bier set up with a sheet-covered body. The cloth glowed like pale moonlight in the torches’ illumination.

  “The French ambassador wanted the body returned to France,” said the sheriff gravely, “but the king refuses to release it.”

  Crispin snorted. Politics.

  Once he neared, he noticed the arrow still protruding from the corpse. “No one removed the arrow?”

  “Why should we do that?”

  Crispin shook his head. “Why indeed.” He cast back the sheet. The dead man’s dry eyes stared upward. Did he see angels or demons?

  Crispin grabbed the arrow’s shaft but it stuck solid in the dead flesh. He yanked out his dagger and ripped the dead man’s blood-soaked surcote from the neck down to the arrow.


  Wynchecombe grabbed Crispin’s dagger hand. “Holy Mary! What are you doing? Why do you not simply break it off.”

  “I want the entire arrow. Do you mind?”

  Wynchecombe released him with a rumbled sound in his throat. “Desecrating a corpse? I mind not at all. You’re certainly bound for Hell at any rate. Why should I try to stop your progress?”

  Crispin continued pulling the blade through the layers of bloody fabric, now stiff and brown. There had been a lot of blood considering the arrow pierced the man’s heart. Crispin sawed the blade into the fabric all the way down past his chemise to the man’s skin. He used his hands to tear the material away from the arrow wound. The man had not been cleaned and the dried blood rusted his chest and the punctured flesh. The rest of his skin shone white and ashen in the pale light. Crispin tugged on the arrow again but still it would not yield. He glanced once at Wynchecombe. The sheriff shook his head slightly at what he surely knew Crispin was about to do, but Crispin turned back to his task and thrust the tip of his dagger into the wound next to the shaft and worked the blade around, ripping open the flesh. He supposed it was like any other bit of dead meat on his supper table, meat that would not bleed. But knowing it was human flesh made his belly a little uneasy.

  He grabbed the arrow again and wiggled it, rocked it, until the arrowhead tore upward. The body rose slightly as Crispin pulled the shaft. The flesh made a distasteful sucking sound until he yanked the arrow free.

  He examined the metal broadhead and its glistening blood. He wiped his blade for an extra few seconds on the dead man’s surcote and sheathed it.

  “What do you plan to do with that?” asked the sheriff. He didn’t mask his grimace.

  “I know the maker. I wish to have it identified for assurance.”

  “Isn’t that the province of the Lord Sheriff’s office?”

  Crispin wiped the arrow on the sheet and shoved it through his belt. “Only should you insist.”

  Wynchecombe looked at the arrow now secured on Crispin’s person. He leaned closer and his face dropped into shadow. “What of the Crown of Thorns? Have you found it yet?”

  “Not yet. You can be sure that once I have, everyone will know.”

  “What does that mean? What are you plotting, Guest?”

  “Nothing, Lord Sheriff. Do I have your leave to go?”

  Wynchecombe glared and inhaled deeply. The exhale through his nostrils ruffled his mustache. “I know you look for trouble, and I’d see you hang yourself. As long as it doesn’t drag me in with you.”

  “No, my lord. If I hang, I will most assuredly hang alone.”

  “Happy to hear it. Off with you, then.”

  Crispin knew that wasn’t quite the truth. If hang he must, he wanted Miles struggling right beside him.

  9

  THE DAY HAD CRAWLED on uneventfully. No guards came to his door to haul him away. No sign of that cur Miles. And so the night took hold with a cold dampness that seemed to mourn the day, and Crispin and Jack, resigned to the silence that had enveloped the Shambles, had a meager dinner by a brittle fire, and then settled in for the night.

  The following morning was still raw when Crispin awoke with a start. Cold sweat covered his face and body, and he cast off the blanket and threw his naked legs over the side of the bed. He stared at the floor, dark in the absence of moonlight and a dying hearth.

  Jack snored nearly beneath Crispin’s bed. His body was curled in a tight knot as far away from the Crown’s reliquary as he could get.

  Crispin ran his hand through his damp hair. He hadn’t had that dream in a long time, though it truly wasn’t a dream. A memory, then, slipping into the landscape of his dreams.

  He sat up and glanced across his dim room, but the half-dream, half-memory lingered. He still felt the rough ropes bite into his wrists, felt the raw wheals from the pressure, from pulling on the bindings so hard. Then the hot pincers, glowing red from the coals. They came closer, so close he could smell the damp, fetid air sizzle on them. “Tell us,” they said, over and over. “We won’t have these ‘meetings’ anymore if you just tell us the other names.” But he didn’t, wouldn’t. And so they’d touched the pincers to his flesh. And then it was the sound of skin blistering and steam rising, his own flesh cooking with an acrid odor, smoke wisping skyward.

  He rose and staggered to the window. He opened the shutter, stuck his head out, and inhaled the cold, foggy air. Even now he could not fight the nausea, and he spit the sour taste out the window.

  He knew why he dreamed it. Miles. Miles brought all those memories back into stinging clarity. Especially that last day. The day they took him from the cell. Crispin thought he was to be executed and even thanked God for it, that it would finally be over. But instead of marching him to the courtyard and the gibbet, he was led instead to Westminster’s great hall.

  King Richard, ten years old and newly minted as king, sat his gangly frame on his marble throne. His feet did not yet touch the ground and so a cushioned stool rested beneath his long-toed slippers. His smooth face saw neither beard nor scar. Small mouth, small chin, languid lids. But no mere pup. Fire burned in those eyes. Anger. The king knew that the Plot meant his death. The others were gone, every one of them executed in all manner of foul ways. There remained only Crispin on whom to pass judgment.

  Crispin staggered toward the king’s dais, barely recovered from the torture that had gone on for weeks. The iron shackles pulled his wrists down. Their chains dragged along the floor. His surcote hung torn and bloody on his weakened body.

  Stiffly, like a wooden puppet, he lowered to his knees, his last obeisance to the crown at least, if not the one wearing it.

  A knight with a conical helm and camail down his chin and chest stood before Crispin. He lifted something. After taking some time to focus his eyes, Crispin recognized it. His sword. The knight pulled it from its sheath and raised it.

  What was happening? Was he to be executed with his own sword?

  The knight whirled and the sound of steel whistled in the air. But instead of feeling the blade slice through his neck, which Crispin fully expected, he felt the rush of wind as the knight slammed the sword against the stone floor. The shock reverberated throughout the hall. He flinched along with the many lords and ladies from the inharmonious noise and its echo. But the sword remained undamaged. The knight swung it again and even a third time before the tip finally broke off and spun across the floor.

  Crispin turned and watched the tip slide until it stopped several paces away. He raised his head and looked with glazed eyes about the crowded hall. Courtiers and ladies, in finery all, men he knew, women he knew better. Even his betrothed—former betrothed. The betrothal had been severed as soon as he was arrested.

  All present, all staring at him, mouths agape, hands over faces.

  What was this if not an execution?

  The knight drew forth Crispin’s spurs, taken from his boots long before he entered the darkness of Newgate. The knight dropped them to the floor, took a mace, and smashed them to pieces.

  Then Crispin understood. They were taking away his knighthood. The accoutrements of his status—his sword and spurs—were removed and destroyed before his eyes, before the eyes of the court.

  He expected it then, when the knight took a dagger and stripped his surcote, bright with Crispin’s blazon and colors, from his body and tossed the rags to the floor.

  So he was a knight no more. And what did it matter if he were to die? His head would join the others on its pike on London Bridge. His body parts would be scattered to the four corners of the realm. In a few years, no one would remember him. No one would speak his name except in the hushed tones of a story told to warn. He would be smashed to pieces like his hapless spurs.

  And what was worse, he knew he deserved it. Treason. He hadn’t taken it up lightly. He agonized over it for weeks. But he had been loyal to Lancaster, loyal unto death. And now death was knocking.

  The king rose, stepped awkwardly over his
cushioned stool, and approached only as far as the edge of the dais. His clear young voice rang out. He spoke through a sneer that was all Richard’s, not his father, the famed warrior Edward of Woodstock, or his grandfather, the great King Edward of Windsor. “It is not at our pleasure that you stand before this court, Crispin Guest.”

  Crispin squinted and blinked. Candles, rushlights, it was more light than he had seen for five months. Sweat dripped from his grizzled beard. The hall was warm. His cell had been cold. The stink in his nose was his own.

  “It was, in fact, our pleasure to see you executed along with the other traitors to the realm. But”—Richard adjusted his belt, hooking his thumbs—“my uncle, my lord of Gaunt, begged for your life.”

  Crispin’s jaw slackened at that, and he turned his eyes toward Richard’s right. Standing behind the king and almost in the shadows—John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. At first glance he appeared to be staring at Crispin, but Crispin soon discovered that Lancaster stared past him, just over his shoulder. He refused to even look Crispin in the eye! That was far worse than this child, this seedling taking from him his sword. Lancaster! He longed to rush to him, to throw himself on the ground before Gaunt. The man’s disappointment was palpable. It struck Crispin to the quick.

  Of course, the Plot involved Lancaster, or at least Crispin thought it had. The plotters said Gaunt, the fourth son of the old king, was behind a scheme to depose the then Prince Richard and put himself on the throne. Gaunt’s brother Edward of Woodstock had been the heir but he had taken sick and died. That put his son Richard in the direct line. But Richard was young. Too young. Lancaster was the better statesmen, more experienced, more power, more wit.

  And Crispin, raised in Lancaster’s household since he was eight years old, loved the man like a father.

  Crispin followed the conspirators, never knowing Lancaster knew nothing of the Plot—until it was far too late.

  He came back to himself when they removed the shackles from his wrists and ankles. Then the knight dropped Crispin’s belt with his dagger at his feet. Crispin looked down at them without comprehension.