Veil of Lies

by Jeri Westerson

Crispin hid his smile by turning away. A day’s wage. How hard it was to earn one honestly. He could almost sympathize with Jack. He stared at the boy in all his bland simplicity; a boy who wanted to become what Crispin once was to his former lord John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Crispin, too, had followed his lord about, seeking encouragement and flattering words. He had worked hard in Lancaster’s service, though not for a wage, for Crispin had been wealthy enough on his own, being Baron of Sheen. But after Crispin’s disgrace eight years ago, Lancaster did not welcome Crispin’s company. Yet there was a time when they had been so close. Like father and son. Yet even father and son can have a falling out. Crispin only wished it hadn’t involved treason.

  Treason. He was the only man he knew who had been found guilty of it and yet lived. By all rights, his body should have been strung up at Smithfield, his entrails dangling from a battered corpse, dead eyes plucked out by ravens. But it was Lancaster who had begged the king. Though he could not save Crispin’s knighthood or his title, he had at least saved his life.

  He sighed. Ancient history. Best forgotten.

  Jack was no page to Crispin’s lord. There would be no lands to inherit for him, no battalions to lead in war. Crispin did not even pay the lad, but instead compensated him for his time and his company in food and lodgings, and those were poor wages indeed. In many ways, he envied Jack Tucker his blissful ignorance.

  Crispin well remembered the day he had caught Jack stealing Crispin’s meager purse. On that day several months ago now, the boy had been more animal than man. Eleven years old, possibly twelve, Jack was dirty with mud and lice. An orphan, a street beggar, and thief. Bound for the gallows, Crispin had rescued him from Sheriff Wynchecombe’s clutches only to be rewarded by the boy’s unexpected and unflagging devotion. One day he found the boy in his lodgings cleaning the place and the next thing he knew the knave had moved in. An opportunist, was young Jack.

  Crispin turned from the boy’s concentrated gaze and looked back at the inn’s hall with its revelers and quiet sorts drinking at their places, stuffing their mouths with food.

  Philippa’s lover was lodged here. The more he thought about him the tighter the knot in his neck became. Who was he? Did she harbor a murderer? He could call in the sheriff, but the thought left a sour taste in his mouth. He couldn’t merely forget it or leave it to the sheriff, especially when his client was killed right under his nose.

  That was bad for business.

  He pushed his way deeper into the room, searching for the innkeeper. Jack scrambled to keep up with him. “What are we doing, Master?”

  Crispin jabbed his finger at Jack’s nose in warning. “You are being quiet.” He hailed the innkeeper.

  The innkeeper’s plain face resembled a hound’s with its long features and jowls. His oversized hands hung from hairy forearms. “Aye, good Master. What can I do for you?”

  “I would know who is staying in the room at the top of the stairs,” said Crispin. “I think it is an old friend of mine. Dark hair, ruddy complexion…”

  The innkeeper glanced up the stairs and turned a perplexed expression back on Crispin. “But Master, there is no one staying in that room.”

  “Nonsense, man. I just saw him there not too long ago.”

  “Good Master,” he said with a chuckle. “Someone plays a jest on you. There is no one in that room, today or yesterday.”

  “Well now,” said Crispin good-naturedly. “A jest. That must be it. What a fool I’ve been, eh?”

  “Not at all, not at all. And you are a good fellow to take it so well. Is there anything else?”

  “No, thank you. I’ve had my wine.”

  The innkeeper left and Crispin’s smile quickly fell away.

  “What’s that all about?” Jack whispered.

  “Jack, I have a task for you. Go up the stairs to that room and go inside.”

  Jack blanched. “What? Me?”

  Crispin sat at a vacant table and toyed with an empty wine bowl. “Yes. You. You’re so anxious to commit larceny, I thought you would jump at the chance.”

  Jack looked up the stairs and then back at Crispin. He sat beside him on the bench. “What am I supposed to do once I’m in there?”

  Crispin smiled a lopsided grin. “The innkeeper is lying. He’s let the room to a lodger. I want you to steal his scrip.”

  “Master! After what you just gone and told me! For shame on you. That’s not an honest living, now is it?”

  Crispin curled his arm around Jack’s shoulders and leaned in. “We’re not stealing it for the money, Jack,” he said in conspiratorial tones, “but for any information it may contain on the man. Got it?”

  Jack sighed and rubbed his nose. “What if it ain’t there? What if he’s got it with him?”

  “Then we’ll wait till he returns.”

  “What if he’s there now?”

  “You’re the thief. Reason it out.”

  Jack thought a moment, then nodded decidedly. “Right, then!” He leaped to his feet and stomped up the stairs. At the top of the shadowed stairway, he looked both ways down the dim gallery and gently tugged the door ring. When it did not budge, he looked again down the gallery of closed doors, knelt, and worked at the lock until he sprang it.

  Crispin glanced to either side of him. No one seemed to notice the boy’s covert activity hidden by the gloom and smoke of the gallery above.

  Jack winked down at Crispin, gently pulled the door, and looked inside. He raised his thumb to Crispin and, like a shadow, slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Crispin settled himself and spun the empty bowl to pass the time. He glanced up the stairs now and again. Time dragged. A man with a bagpipe struck up a lively tune. A few men drummed their hands on the table to follow the rhythm. When the piper finished, they tossed him some coins.

  Crispin lifted the bowl, forgetting it was empty. With a snort he put it down again and looked up the stairs. At last the door opened and Jack’s head appeared. He shut the door softly behind him and took the stairs two at a time and flopped down on the bench beside Crispin.

  “Well?”

  “Got it!” Jack reached under his shirt and pulled out the scrip.

  Crispin snatched it and opened the flap. He pulled out several papers and smoothed them out on the table and stared at the writing.

  “What does it say?” Jack whispered, peering over Crispin’s arm.

  Crispin shook his head. “I don’t know. It is close to Latin, but it is not Latin.” He ran his finger along the scrawl. “I suspect this is Italian. But I cannot read much of it.” The man did not look Italian to him. He looked like a Saracen from the desert countries. It’s possible he was a merchant who traveled through the Mediterranean. That would account for the Italian papers. But why would Philippa Walcote take up with a Saracen? Such activities were more than immoral; they were against Church law.

  He sat in thought for a moment before he folded the papers again and stuffed them into the scrip. “You’d better take this back now.”

  “Take it back? But Master—”

  “And Jack, put back the coins you took from it.”

  Jack heaved a bitter sigh and with deadly slow fingers, pulled the coins from the folds of his shoulder cape and slammed them back in the scrip.

  “Hurry, now,” said Crispin, resting his elbows on the table.

  With heavy steps, Jack returned up the stairs and disappeared inside the room. No sooner had the door closed than the inn’s door opened with a whoosh of autumn air and crackling leaves swirling in small eddies and collecting in the corners. Ordinarily, such an event would not cause Crispin to take much note of it. But in this instance, he turned and squinted at the man who entered. The man wore a long, dark cloak with a pointed hood. The door shut behind him, blowing the hood low over the man’s face. The capering light from the hearth painted the edges of the cloak in a fiery outline and dropped any clue to his features in impenetrable shadows.

  Crispin had only snatched a
glimpse of the man’s face before it disappeared again, but he thought he recognized the man as Philippa’s paramour.

  Crispin darted a glance up the stairs to the room in which Jack was now trapped.

  The man made a cursory sweep of the room—only revealing a shadowy vision of his features—and stomped purposefully toward the stairs, cloak rippling.

  Crispin stood. “Jack,” he mouthed. What could he do for a distraction? Call to the man? But what? Who was he?

  No time to think. The man reached the bottom step and rose up the first tread.

  Crispin moved quickly around the table, jabbing his thigh on the corner of the wood. He strode quickly toward the man, but the cloaked figure was at the top of the stairs in a heartbeat. Jack would come out of that door at any moment and be caught. Crispin grabbed for the sword that no longer hung at his side. “God’s blood!” His hand went for his dagger instead and he rushed up the first three steps.

  “Oi, Master!” said Jack behind him.

  Crispin spun, nearly toppling down the stairs. “What the devil are you doing there?” Heart racing, blood rushing through his ears, he stared at the smiling boy.

  Jack shrugged, still smiling. “I heard someone on the stairs and thought it was our man. So I hightailed it out the window.”

  Crispin breathed again and grinned. He mussed the boy’s already disarrayed curls. Jack ducked away from his touch. “You did well, Jack.” Crispin glanced up the stairs. The man had disappeared into his room. The door was shut again. Crispin didn’t feel like confronting the man this instant. There was time. Crispin gave the tavern room a final perusal and signaled to Jack.

  “What’s the task?” The boy asked, walking beside Crispin into the street, arms swinging.

  Crispin sniffed the cold, damp air. It smelled like the mold at the back of a privy. “Adultery. But I suppose it is now murder.”

  “Christ Jesus.”

  “A man hired me to discover if his wife was unfaithful. She was. The next day he’s found murdered.”

  “’Slud! She did it, then!”

  “Possibly. But not without help. This morning I saw her in the same gown as the night before. She would have had to divest herself of her gown, killed him, and changed back into it.”

  “Why, Master?”

  “Because I saw a bloody knee print on the floor. It should have been evidenced on her gown.”

  “Her lover, then?” He thumbed back over his shoulder toward the Thistle, now out of sight around a bend. “He did it.”

  “Perhaps. The trouble is, her husband was murdered in a room where the door locked from the inside with no other way in or out.”

  “Blind me! That’s a puzzle.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Who’s the dead man?”

  “Nicholas Walcote.”

  “Not the merchant? ’Slud!” Jack shook his head. His face slowly changed from shock to an expression of pride. “Are you going to find his murderer?”

  “I do not like being cheated out of a client. Especially a wealthy one.”

  After a quarter of an hour they reached the Walcote gatehouse and Jack whistled at the size of the walls and the number of chimney stacks. Upon recognizing him, the porter let Crispin pass through the gatehouse, though he gave Jack a sour eye.

  Instead of going directly to the front door, Crispin made a circlet of the outside of the manor, gazing up its encircling garden walls until he spotted the upper-floor window of the solar. Even after walking the length of the enclosure he still found no entrance. He inspected the vines that clung to the wall and experimentally pulled on them, hanging with his full weight.

  “Master,” said Jack in a nervous whisper. “They’ve let you in the gate. Why are you trying to break in?”

  “I wish to inspect that window,” he said, jerking his head upward. He grasped the vines, pushed himself off from the mud, and climbed. Some of the vines were stronger than others. The lesser stems broke off in his hand or snapped under foot, pelting Jack who was climbing directly behind him. With a grunt Crispin reached the top of the wall with his fingers and touched wet granite. He peered over the edge, slid his body out along the top, and jumped heavily to the other side.

  Jack fell with a thud beside him, looking unhappy and a little in pain.

  “Are you well?” Crispin asked.

  Jack got to his feet and rubbed his backside. “Aye. A little worse for wear is all. Garden walls ain’t my specialty.”

  “If I find a purse to cut I’ll let you know.”

  Crispin glanced about the little garden with its short hedges trimmed down to perfect box shapes and other shrubs cut into ornate cones and spirals. The rest lay dead under an early autumn frost. A few fruit trees divested of leaves lined a far wall. A willow stood near the house, draping its long branches like a maiden’s hair toward a gravel path.

  The earlier mist turned to icy drizzle but Crispin did not put up his hood. Instead, he craned his neck to peer at the window, one of three along the face of the damp stone. Tall, arched, the windows’ carved stone sills were dented with ridges and floral carvings.

  “Give us a boost, Jack.”

  Jack looked at him sideways. He was shorter than Crispin by almost two feet and slight of build. Crispin shrugged and climbed as far as he could up the jutting plinth foundation on his own. He examined the stone sill and the wall below the window, running his fingertips along the stone. He could not reach above the arched window, but he looked along the upper perimeter. He could see no telltale scratches, no ropes, no ladders, and no broken tiles from the roof.

  Jumping back down to the gravel path, he stared at the window and the one beside it some four feet away. A third window stood only three feet from the solar window. He looked from one to the other and back again.

  Jack patted his arms and stamped the ground to keep warm. He blinked away the raindrops though one dangled from the tip of his blunt, reddened nose and seemed to freeze there. “Master, are we done here?”

  Crispin studied first the wall and then the windows again without moving.

  “Master, we’re getting wet. And it’s cold.”

  When he turned at last to Jack, the boy’s pleas finally registered. “Of course. Let us go to the house.”

  Crispin climbed up the wall again. Straddling it, he leaned down, grabbed Jack’s arm, and hoisted him over. Together they walked in the drizzle to the front entrance.

  Jack’s earlier revelry fell subdued under the specter of the enormous entry. “Shouldn’t we be going round to the kitchen door?” He peered anxiously at the dark windows.

  “No, Jack. We are front-door guests today.” Though when he heard the bolt thrown back, Crispin belatedly realized how muddy his foray into the garden made him. He brushed off as much as he could before Adam opened the door.

  “I would talk to you, Adam,” said Crispin, pushing forward.

  Adam tried to close the door on him, but Crispin used his weight to wedge himself forward. He slammed Adam against the wall. “We could do this the easy way or the hard way. Which is it?”

  Adam’s jaw tightened. “What do you want?” he said between clenched teeth.

  Crispin released him and brushed off the man’s coat. “Now that’s not a very civil attitude. I merely come to seek answers to why your master was killed. Don’t you wish to help in this matter?”

  Adam pushed Crispin’s hands aside. “Aye. I would see justice served.”

  Crispin measured his brooding countenance. “You told me you served in this household five years. What happened to the previous steward?”

  Adam looked once at Jack and then dismissed him. “I don’t know. I think he was transferred to my master’s estates in the north.”

  “Is that where you are from?”

  “Aye. Though not from his household. I received a missive that I was to be his new steward in London, so I journeyed here and presented the steward with documents from my master stating that I should replace him. And shortly thereafter, I r
eplaced all the servants.”

  “Replaced all the servants? Why?”

  “Because my master wished it. Who knows why the rich do what they do.”

  “You appear rather insubordinate to me, Becton. You speak of your betters this way?”

  “It is no secret about the wealthy. They are all of the same ilk. Doesn’t matter where they come from. They all end up the same.”

  “You did not love your master?”

  Adam looked down. “It isn’t proper to speak ill of the dead.”

  “But confidentially, you could do so to me.”

  Adam snapped up his chin. “And why should I care to do that? You aren’t the sheriff.”

  “Sheriff Wynchecombe and I often work in concert. You would do well to speak to me. His interrogations usually involve white hot irons.”

  Adam’s eyes rounded and his jaw slackened. “I do not need to be questioned by the sheriff,” he said in a rush. “I’ve done nought.”

  “But there may be much you know. Why is it you disliked your master?”

  “I didn’t hold nought against him, Master Crispin. It’s just—” Adam wrung his hands and moved haltingly into the shadows of the vestibule. He glared once at Jack. “He shouldn’t have married her, that’s all,” he whispered.

  “I thought you had nothing but admiration for your mistress.”

  “I do! I mean, I—”

  The man’s in love with her. Crispin frowned. “It’s no good, Becton. She is your better. You must not gaze so high.”

  Adam broke into an unpleasant laugh. “‘Gaze so high’? A jest! I need not gaze high at all.”

  Crispin took a step closer, hand poised near his dagger. “You’d best watch your tongue, Becton.”

  “I need watch nought,” he said, teeth bared. “Philippa Walcote was the chambermaid for my master before he married her three years ago. She’s no better than you or me.”

  4

  All the questions on Crispin’s tongue slipped away.

  Adam laughed. “Don’t have a snappy reply for that, eh?”

  Before he could stop himself, Crispin swung. His knuckles met the flesh of Adam’s cheek and the man buckled against the wall. He slid down halfway, but shook his head and unsteadily righted himself.