Veil of Lies

by Jeri Westerson

  She rolled onto her belly. Propped up on her elbows, she gazed down at him. Her locks fell softly over one eye. “Because it makes you so secretive and mistrusting. And I would know and share your pain as you shared mine.”

  “No one can share this.”

  “Yet I would still know.”

  He looked at her. “Stubborn.”

  She frowned playfully. “Determined.”

  Her face was, in fact, determined, and he shook his head at it. “‘I was shipwrecked before I got aboard,’” he sighed.

  “What?”

  “It’s a quotation. From a philosopher I favor.” He hoped it would distract her, but he saw from the corner of his eye that she was not deterred.

  “Very well.” He settled his interlaced hands on his bare chest and stared upward. “Eight years ago, I was a knight.”

  “A knight! You?”

  He nodded, his head sliding on the rough cloth of the pillow. “I fought great battles, I warred in France, in Germany, fought the Turk, and went on a crusading pilgrimage in the Holy Land. I owned fields, flocks, woodlands, villeins. I dressed in the finest clothes, drank the finest wines, ate course after course in my great hall at my barony in Sheen not far from the king’s own residence. I served and was served in the great hall in Westminster Palace—when Edward of Windsor was king.”

  “What happened?”

  “I did a stupid, foolish thing. I wagered on the wrong horse.”

  She cocked her head charmingly. He took her hand and stroked it. “You see, I was the duke of Lancaster’s man. He fostered me in his household. Made me a knight. But that gratitude blinded me to my duty. I felt that he should have been heir when his brother Edward of Woodstock died. I could not imagine this great realm ruled by Edward’s son Richard when the duke lived and breathed.”

  “Hush, Crispin.” She looked to the shuttered window in fear, but he had long since stopped worrying over speaking treason.

  “There were others who did not share my view of Lancaster,” he went on. “They wanted to bring him and his men down. They hatched a plot, intimating that Lancaster was ready to move against Richard and take the throne for himself.” He shook his head, still amazed he believed it. “It was not true, of course, but I—brash, young fool that I was—thought it was so, and I joined my name to the conspirators.”

  She said nothing. Her hand went to her lips.

  “The treasonous plot was soon unmasked and many were executed. I should have been among them, but my liege lord Lancaster pleaded for my life. By then, Richard was crowned and he only ten years old. Though he did not yet have the rule of the country, he had a say in my fate.” He nodded ruefully. “I remember the day well. Richard called his court and I stood before them all. He announced in his clear, young voice that I was a knight no more. And further, that all my lands and my wealth were forfeit to the crown, and that my title was abolished. I was stripped of my armor, my shield, and my sword, and left with nothing but the clothes on my back.” He smiled at her sadly. “Sound familiar?”

  “Oh, Crispin.”

  “He told the court that any lord who succored me would see the same fate or worse, and I was set loose on the road as I was.”

  “But what of your kinsmen?”

  “The male line had died out. I have some female cousins in the Marches, but after I was degraded, well. I’m certain they prayed I would disown them. I was utterly alone. But I managed to survive as you see me now.”

  She glanced about the small room she once called a stable. “It’s very cozy here.”

  He kissed her hand before releasing it. “It’s dismal, but it’s all I can afford.”

  Philippa glanced away before rolling on her back to join Crispin in contemplating the ceiling. She pulled the covers lightly over her and turned to smile at him. “Poor dear. Me? Well, I can be a chambermaid again, maybe even a chatelaine. But you—”

  He frowned, realizing how much he had revealed. “Don’t worry over me,” he said brusquely.

  “Doesn’t anyone worry over you?”

  “Jack does.”

  He felt her stare at him before she said, “Is there no woman to care about you?”

  He closed his eyes. “Once or twice. Briefly.”

  She turned over onto her belly again, rolling herself in the sheet. She ran her fingers lightly over his sable chest hair. “If I had been a chambermaid in your manor in Sheen and I had caught your eye, would you have married me?”

  Crispin opened one eye to look at her and just as quickly shut it.

  Only a few short moments ago he felt drowsy with languor, but now he was wide awake. He knew he should answer her, but the time stretched so long that she squirmed beside him.

  “It’s a simple question,” she said. “Or is it?”

  He snapped open his eyes. He shuffled himself up to a sitting position and lay his hands on his thighs over the covers. His head rested against the plaster wall. The wall felt cold. “You want the truth?” Her only acknowledgment was her intensely concentrated stare down her nose. He suspected that the truth she said she wanted wasn’t the one he was about to give her. “The answer is ‘no.’ Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. I was a lord of the court. A knight. I would never have married my chambermaid. No such man would have done.”

  She folded her arms over her ample chest and pouted. “I see. Well then, you answered that right well.”

  Women! Their pouts were such sharp weapons. And they wielded them well. Her hurt look was almost as good as its equally quick change to a pixie smile. He couldn’t trust that kind of smile. Especially when it hid behind that sleepy way of hers, drooped lids that so easily enticed him to her will. “You aren’t a lord now,” she purred.

  He studied her, somehow able to resist her allure. “It’s in the blood.” He chuckled at the memory of his conversation with Eleanor. “This is my ‘true image’ you see before you. But I was betrothed once.”

  “What happened?”

  He rolled his eyes and closed them again. “You can guess.”

  “She broke the betrothal because you were no longer a knight? And yet, if it is ‘in the blood’ as you say, what should it matter?”

  He opened his eyes and fixed them on her. It wasn’t hard to do. The sheet wound tightly about her chest and hid her charms, but only tantalized by creating depth and darkness between her breasts. Her hair teased her white shoulders and caressed her face in soft curls and shadow. He was surprised by the regret tingeing his words. “This is no fit place to bring a wife.”

  She looked at him a long time. A sigh eased over her pert lips before she snuggled against him and cast her arm across his chest. In spite of himself, he liked the feel of it.

  “It’s no good, you know,” she said softly. He felt her breath tickle the hair on his chest. “I’m falling in love with you.”

  Crispin felt a stab in his heart. A not entirely unfamiliar feeling, but not a welcomed one. He thought to keep silent and drift off to sleep again, but instead his lips unaccountably parted. “I think I love you, too.”

  He searched the rafters. Maybe something heavy would fall on him. “Funny,” he said. “I never intended to say that aloud.”

  Philippa’s warm body rested against his for another pleasant moment. But suddenly, as if the house were afire, she scrambled out of bed.

  “It’s here, ain’t it!”

  Her naked body gleamed in the waning firelight but she clutched her breast as if enduring chest pains. His heartbeat thrummed before he understood what she was talking about.

  “The Mandyllon? Don’t be a fool. Of course it is, but—”

  She rummaged for her clothes and drew on her shift. “You must get it out of here! I won’t spend one more moment in its presence. It made you say all those things. Don’t you remember? It made me tell the truth to the sheriff!”

  Crispin dismissed it. Hysteria. And confession was good for the soul. Although he, too, had acknowledged love for her he had no intention of voicing.
But he owed that to his sleepiness and a certain amount of shared vulnerability. All easily explained.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Philippa, it is the middle of the”—he glanced toward the shuttered window and noted light creeping through—“morning,” he finished lamely. “Come back to bed.”

  She cowered near the opposite wall looking down at her feet. Nothing could convince her, so he dragged himself from the tangle of bedsheets and stood naked on the cold floor. His stockings, lying across the floorboards like a skinned snake, were still tied to his under braies, so he pulled on each one and slipped the braies up. He shrugged into his shirt and when he grabbed his cotehardie, the Mandyllon fell out of it onto the floor. She gave a little screech and he quickly tucked it beneath his cote as he pulled it on, snorting at himself at the freshly torn-off buttons.

  “Put yourself at ease,” he said, buckling his belt. He patted the lump the Mandyllon made inside his coat. “I will find a suitable hiding place until I can decide what’s to be done with it.” He leaned toward her to kiss, but she backed away, pointing to his chest. He scowled instead and pulled open the door.

  Jack stood on the landing wearing an expectant smile.

  Crispin closed Philippa in the room behind him and rubbed his unshaven jaw. He didn’t know why he felt embarrassed. “Look Jack, this was all unexpected.”

  “Course.”

  “Stop looking at me like that. Do you need to be cuffed to remind you who is master here?”

  “Oh, I know right well who the master is here. She is.”

  Crispin’s anger drained away and he leaned limply against the closed door. “I fear you are right. I suppose I must tell you what transpired.”

  The boy tucked his hands behind his back and shuffled his feet. Under his breath he said, “I know what transpired—”

  Crispin cuffed him lightly. “Not that! I mean yesterday. Walcote’s brothers came calling, and they declared that the dead man is not Nicholas Walcote.”

  “’Slud! Who is he, then?”

  “No one seems to know. But Philippa knew he was an imposter. She tried to suppress it. Then the sheriff interceded and, well, it was determined that she should be cast out. It wasn’t even a lawful marriage, and so she is left with nothing.”

  “Oh, Master! It’s just like what happened to you!”

  “Yes, and perhaps that is why I’m sympathetic. Or—” He turned toward the door as if he could spy her through the wood. “I, uh…” Taking in Jack’s expression, he decided he didn’t have to share all his thoughts and suspicions with the boy. “I have an errand to run. Watch over her while I am out.”

  “Aye, Master. With pleasure, sir.”

  Crispin rambled down the stairs and swore into the wind. He glanced up the Shambles one way and down the other. Animal carcasses hung from great metal hooks near the shop fronts, hallowed, skinned, and bereft of head and forelimbs. He felt a little like that himself.

  What was he going to do about these foreign villains; what about the cloth? And what, by all the saints, was he to do about Philippa? The sheriff still thought her guilty of murder but Crispin believed otherwise. Or was it merely his feelings getting in the way?

  A pleasant ache suffused his chest when he thought about her desirable softness, her eager compliance. He looked up to the window. A cold sweat dampened his chemise when he also thought about his admission to her.

  He lightly touched the Mandyllon under his coat. He didn’t believe in the power of such things. He knew about profitable traffic in relics, and how easily faked they were. Wasn’t this just one more of those? Still, it was provable. All he had to do was deliberately lie in its presence.

  A lie was easy to conjure. He’d made many as a means to his ends. A lie was only another tool, like a dagger or a sword.

  He strolled down the lane, trying to think of a lie. A butcher called out to him. “Come sir! This is the finest flesh in all of London, except of course for the stews in Southwark.” He laughed at his own bawdy jest and Crispin turned to him. “Oh! Master Crispin. I did not see it was you.”

  “Master Dickon,” Crispin responded. “I know how it is in Southwark,” he said with a crooked smile. “How is the meat in your own establishment today?”

  Dickon lay his hand on a haunch swinging from an overhead hook. “Truth to tell, it ain’t as fine as it could be. Lots of gristle in this one. Better for stewing than roasting, but I will still try to get the best price. And a good price I will offer to you, of course.”

  Crispin eyed him. “Did you truly mean to tell me that?” he asked in a hushed tone. “About the gristle.”

  The butcher thought a moment. “Well now, I doubt I would tell another man such, but I have always tried to be honest with you, sir.”

  “Are you certain? Did you not just get a sudden urge to tell me the truth?”

  Dickon smiled awkwardly. “I don’t rightly know, sir. I don’t know until the moment strikes me, do I?”

  Crispin nodded, dissatisfied. He thanked the butcher and proceeded on his way, heading up the small incline of the Shambles, which inevitably led him to Newgate and its prison.

  He hadn’t meant to arrive there, but as he looked up its fortress walls and thought of its guards and many cells, an idea occurred to him.

  19

  Crispin sauntered down the dim corridors, the guards nodding to him in recognition of his uneasy relationship with Simon Wynchecombe. That alone allowed him free rein in Newgate, though it wasn’t his favorite haunt. Usually he headed directly for Wynchecombe’s hall in the corner tower, but today he swallowed his own revulsion of the place and strolled among the few cells, each arched portal closed up tight. Black iron hinges, double, triple strength, bolted tightly to the heavy oaken doors. Some doors had smaller, barred spy-holes, yet still others had none, making them dark and lonely places of despair.

  He traveled down the passage lit only by an occasional pitch torch or cresset. All the doors seemed to be closed until he reached the end of the passage. One cell stood open. The straw that served as bedding and toilet sat in an unattended dung cart. Crispin darted a glance down both sides of the empty passage before slipping into the cell, cold with its open arrow-slit window. Embedded grillwork in the stone sill made certain the prisoner could not escape even if it were possible to squeeze through the tight window. If he managed even this feat, he would plunge four stories down, though a death in freedom was often preferable to the uncertain future of prison walls.

  Crispin knew the feeling.

  He ran his hands along the stone walls, looking for crumbling mortar. Reaching above his head, his fingers caught on a loose stone and he used his nails to pry it free. A hole barely big enough for his purposes, he nevertheless took out the folded cloth and did his best to stuff it in the hole. “If this is your face on this cloth, Lord, then I beg your mercy,” he grunted, pushing the stone block back into place. It teetered, trying to fit. Crispin withdrew his dagger and used the pommel to pound it in the rest of the way. He craned his neck to look at it and decided it needed mortar.

  Under the window, a permanent mud hole collected from streaks of dribbling rain running down the discolored wall. He used his dagger again to scrape some with his blade and pasted it between the joints. He worked at it for a few minutes and then stood back to admire his effort. I’m no mason, but if no one is looking for it, then I have nothing to fear.

  He wiped his blade on his coat, sheathed it, and clapped the mud from his hands.

  “Miss the place?”

  Crispin stepped back, his hand on his dagger. He looked up at a squint-faced guard with a three-day beard and a leather cap slightly askew on his head. Ginger hair peeked from a tear in the cap, sticking out straight from his head like a sentinel.

  “I am only looking around, Malvyn.”

  Malvyn tapped his knife on the side of his face, scratching his unshaven chin. The blade was nicked and stained. Crispin wondered if he ever cleaned it.

  “And here is his
lord, standing in a cell again. What do we make of that? Shouldn’t you be in the sheriff’s hall?”

  “I am not seeking out the sheriff today.” Crispin crossed the threshold and stood upwind of the gaoler before he turned his back on him.

  “Now, Crispin. I thought we had become friends while you was here.”

  Crispin chuckled with bared teeth. “We were never friends. I loathed the air you breathed.” He waved his hand before his own sharp nose. “I still do.”

  “Now, now. Rudeness? That was never tolerated when you was a prisoner here.” He grabbed Crispin’s arm.

  The cold feel of the man’s fingers closing over his skin flooded Crispin’s mind with memories he had no desire to revisit. He stiffened and spun. With a much stronger grip than Malvyn’s, he captured the man’s wrist and twisted until he sank down on one knee with a yowl.

  “I am no longer a prisoner here!” Crispin growled. “And I will thank you not to touch me.” Crispin twisted the arm once more simply because he enjoyed it. With a feral grunt he released him, tossing the captured hand aside.

  Clumsily, the man rose and found his footing. He scowled, face reddening as he wobbled toward Crispin to spear him with his finger. “You’ll come to regret this,” he snarled.

  Crispin straightened his coat and turned on his heel. He didn’t look back as he strode down the passage. “That I doubt.”

  Crispin took the stairs to his lodgings two at a time. He was anxious to see Philippa and tell her…tell her what? That he loved her? He’d said it once and didn’t know how it could be true. But didn’t he feel his heart leap when he looked at her? Didn’t he admire how she had lifted herself from her hardships? He wouldn’t speak of it again. Maybe she wouldn’t either. He chuckled at that. Wishful thinking. At least she would be relieved the Mandyllon was gone.

  He opened his door carelessly, expecting to find both Philippa and Jack.

  He did not expect the man across the room or the one behind the door.