Season of Blood

by Jeri Westerson

  ‘Strange company you keep.’ Simon rocked on his heels before he moved toward the fire. ‘I just wanted to … well, to thank you, is all. We have not had the best history together.’

  ‘You were a right bastard to me.’

  Simon laughed until it filtered to something uncomfortable. ‘Yes, I suppose I was. It wasn’t easy dealing with you. You had been so much higher in rank before. You had fallen so much lower and yet the citizens didn’t spit on you. They respected you. I resented it.’

  ‘Why is it I suddenly feel like apologizing to you?’

  ‘Because it’s your breeding, Crispin. Nobility will out.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I hear you got your killers.’

  ‘Yes. All of them.’

  ‘I’m curious. Was the woman one of them?’

  Crispin rubbed the knot between his brows. ‘No.’

  ‘Hmm. I would have wagered good coin on it. And what of the relic? Recovered?’

  ‘It’s here, as a matter of fact. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘Please.’

  Crispin went to the peg where Jack had left his scrip and took it down. Bringing it to the table, he opened the flap and took out the beryl crystal. The familiar tingle shot up his hand as he set it down on the scrip.

  ‘Strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘What is, Simon?’

  ‘That such a thing should be so venerated … and be responsible for such mischief. It’s only a stain, after all.’

  Crispin glanced at the sheriff and burst out laughing.

  ‘What the devil are you laughing at?’

  He wiped at his eyes and stuffed the relic back into the scrip. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  ‘You’ll return it, of course.’

  ‘Of course. What would I want with it?’

  ‘These objects do plague you, don’t they? Do you ever wonder?’

  He rubbed his scruffy chin and thought of his delayed shave. ‘Wonder what?’

  ‘Why they come into your hands? It’s … odd.’

  ‘Yes. But I suppose one must not wonder too much at what the Almighty chooses to do.’

  ‘That is wisest. Well!’ He strode back toward the door. ‘I’ve said my piece. I bid you farewell.’

  ‘Offer my salutations to your wife.’

  Simon stopped. ‘Oh … I have set her aright as concerns you. Should you need to come to my shop again, you will be greeted civilly.’

  ‘Should I have the need. I thank you.’

  ‘God and all his saints keep you, Crispin. It already seems that they do.’

  ‘Farewell, Simon.’

  He shut the door, wondering just what he had done to gain God’s scrutiny as he had.

  Crispin had finally gotten his shave – though his water had gone cold rather quickly – and was just setting about to leave for St Mary Graces when a knock sounded on his door a second time.

  He was surprised to see Nigellus Cobmartin and John Rykener when he opened it. They rushed in before he could say anything.

  ‘Crispin,’ said John, now dressed properly as a man. ‘Is everything all right? I haven’t gotten a wink of sleep worrying over you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nigellus. ‘It’s been so distressful.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re both here. I wanted to thank you for your generosity toward Jack and Simon Wynchecombe, though the latter scarce deserves it.’

  John frowned. ‘He’s a sour fellow, isn’t he?’

  He felt the weight of the new coins in his money pouch at his side. ‘He’s mellowing.’

  ‘So all is well?’ asked the lawyer.

  ‘Yes. I suppose it could be characterized that way.’

  ‘Oh, dear. All is not well?’

  ‘The murderers were found. The relic is recovered. I have money in my pouch. That’s as well as can be expected.’

  ‘Oh, Crispin,’ said John with an irritated sigh. ‘You’ve no right to be so melancholy.’

  A surge of anger rumbled up, coiled amid all the other frustrated emotions. ‘I have every right to be as angry as I please. Was there anything else?’

  Nigellus touched John’s arm. ‘Perhaps Master Guest would like to be alone for now.’

  John sneered. ‘Perhaps Master Guest would like to pitch a fit all by himself.’

  That stabbed at his heart, opening a hole in his shame. ‘I’m sorry,’ he grumbled. ‘And Nigellus, Master Wynchecombe offered me some compensation to you, to replace some of the parchments he might have damaged.’

  ‘That’s very kind indeed.’

  Crispin handed over the coins.

  ‘That will do very well. I’m looking for new lodgings at any rate. It was fine for a student but I need bigger lodgings these days. After all, I need enough for two.’ He smiled shyly at John.

  ‘Let us know when you’re in a better mood,’ said John, pulling on the lawyer’s arm. ‘And let yourself celebrate a bit. Even if the woman has left you, for I know why you are being so sour. I’m not an idiot, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry, John.’

  He paused at the door and cocked his head. ‘And so am I. You liked her, didn’t you?’

  He shrugged, looking down at the scrip on the table. He didn’t want to speak about Brother Eric. The wound was still fresh, the hurt of it still throbbing.

  ‘Come along, Nigellus. We have new accommodations to search for.’

  He watched them leave with some small amount of discomfiture. He had been in a sour mood and it hadn’t been their fault. It seemed he was always apologizing these days for his ill-temper. Well, there had been a day when he had had no one to apologize to. ‘Here’s to better days,’ he muttered, shouldering the scrip with the relic within.

  He stepped outside his lodgings and locked the door. He didn’t suppose St Mary Graces would be pleased to receive the relic and have to transport it to Hailes themselves but he didn’t want to go back there himself. Not so close to Winchcombe.

  He took a step onto the muddy Shambles when he noticed a figure in the shadows. ‘God’s blood!’ he chafed.

  Lenny shuffled forward. ‘There have been some comings and goings from here, haven’t there?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s none of your business. What do you want?’

  ‘Well, I like that! Here old Lenny has done you a service for the last sennight and more and what does he get? No thanks at all. And where’s them coins he was promised, I wonder? It isn’t like you, Master Crispin, to go back on a promise. At least tell me I can stop following her now.’

  ‘Blessed saints, I forgot about that. Yes, you can stop. Here’s what I owe you.’ He dropped some coins into the old thief’s grimy hand.

  ‘Aw, now. That’s better. I thank you kindly, Master Crispin. Any time you need old Lenny, he’ll be nigh. You just call out to him and he’ll come running.’

  ‘Good. Now you can go.’

  ‘Well I would, Master Crispin, except for one thing.’

  ‘Good God, man. What?’

  He pointed upward. ‘It’s just that she’s right there.’

  Crispin turned. The woman sat on the top of his roof in broad daylight, her skirts hitched up almost to her knees.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘What in Heaven’s name are you doing up there?’ Crispin cast about, not wishing to call attention to her, though the people on the street weren’t blind. They had already noticed her and were talking among themselves about it.

  ‘Enjoying the view,’ she said. ‘Will you join me?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. Come down!’

  ‘No. You come up.’

  Lenny chuckled and saluted. ‘Good luck with the lady, Master Crispin.’

  Crispin ignored him as the man limped away. Hitching the scrip over his shoulder, he scrutinized the wall. Lots of handholds but he hated to make a spectacle of himself. There were lots of passers-by on the street, after all. Still, what was the use in denying what he wanted to do?

  He placed his foot on his sill and climbed. He tried
not to think about the gossips on the lane observing him as he reached for each handhold. Once he’d pulled himself fully up to the roof and sat, straddling the spine as she was doing, he looked down. He saw the butcher, Roger Lymon, standing in front of his stall, staring at Crispin and scratching his head.

  ‘Care to go further … where we may not be observed?’ he asked. More on the street and in their stalls were looking up toward him with quizzical expressions.

  She smiled and turned. He noticed that the back of her skirts were brought up between her legs and tucked into her belt. ‘It’s disgraceful what you’re wearing,’ he muttered.

  ‘Better this than to trip over one’s skirts, slip down the roof, and die. You have no idea how inconvenient a woman’s skirts are.’

  He followed her further until they were out of view of the street below. But they could see the goings-on in high windows.

  ‘I thought we’d already said our farewells,’ he said.

  ‘We did. But … I couldn’t leave it at that.’

  ‘And why not?’

  She reached over and took his face in her hands. Before he could stop her, she came closer and kissed him. It wasn’t a long kiss but it was a tender one. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from capturing her waist, clutching her against him and kissing her back.

  That kiss took more time. She added to it with the tilt of her head, the savoring of his mouth, the flick of a tongue. When she drew back, her breath coming quickly, she traced her hand down the side of his face, touching his bottom lip with her thumb. Her smile softened her features. ‘You should have a woman. That woman should be me.’

  ‘But you’re leaving London.’

  ‘Perhaps not. There are ways to hide myself. A change of hair color, a hardening of an accent.’ The last had her sounding like Jack. He wondered if that was how she truly talked.

  ‘It is dangerous for you.’

  ‘Only from you. And Simon Wynchecombe. And I somehow think that you both travel in different circles.’ She leaned in and took another quick kiss.

  ‘Kat …’

  ‘Oh, I love my name on your tongue.’

  When she spoke of tongues … ‘Kat, it might be unwise to stay.’

  ‘No one knows me. Only your friend John, and I daresay he won’t speak ill of me. Well, not too much anyway. I hope he’s not upset for my deception. He was an amusing companion.’

  ‘He was upset, running all over London looking for you.’

  ‘Wasn’t that sweet of him. But that’s your fault. You’re the one who sent a man to do a woman’s task.’

  ‘Yes. I apologize.’

  ‘That’s not necessary. As I said, he was most amusing. And useful. He taught me how to embroider.’

  Crispin gusted a sigh. And still he couldn’t resist touching her hair, tucking a stray strand of it behind her ear. He liked the color of it and hoped she wouldn’t change it. ‘What will you do? Where will you go?’

  ‘I told you. I might stay in London … or somewhere close to it. I should like to see you again.’

  ‘What would be the point?’

  ‘The point, my dear Crispin, is that you need a woman to tend to you. In all the ways a woman can.’

  He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’ She slid into his arms again. ‘You are in great need of … attention.’

  ‘Am I?’ He had to admit, it was exciting, her lithe body against him on their precarious perch where at any moment a flurry of wind could send them to their doom. ‘What if I prefer my solitude?’

  ‘Nonsense. You are a lusty man. A man like yourself – a man who climbs up onto a roof just to talk to a girl – needs my kind of attention.’

  ‘I don’t think you are the kind of girl who likes being tied down to one man.’

  ‘What a dreadful thing to say.’

  ‘But it is the truth. You must admit it.’

  ‘But I’ve never met a man like you. Perhaps you’re just what I need to tame me.’

  ‘Tame you? Even I don’t have bollocks that big.’

  She threw back her head and laughed. It rolled up and down the rooftops and echoed back to him. He feared that her posture would undo her and he clasped her tighter.

  She looked up at him through her lashes. Softly, she said, ‘You see. You don’t want to let me go.’

  ‘I don’t want you to fall to your death.’

  She seemed to be studying his face, perhaps trying to memorize it. She stepped back incrementally, enough so she was out of his arms. ‘You are sending me away.’

  ‘Not … too far, I hope.’

  ‘Ah! So you do want me.’

  ‘I don’t not want you.’

  ‘You are a puzzle. And a joy. I would like to try to figure you out.’

  ‘That may take some time.’

  She smiled and stepped up to the slant of the roof, dislodging some shingles without even a twitch. She glanced back at him over his shoulder. ‘I’m counting on it.’

  Before he could say anything more, she scampered away, sliding, trotting and finally leaping to the next roof across a narrow lane until she disappeared.

  He stood looking after her a long time before he suddenly felt foolish and got himself to the edge, then carefully climbed down.

  When he leaped to the ground, he turned and encountered Jack Tucker, staring at him skeptically. ‘Something up there worth looking at?’ he asked.

  ‘There was,’ he said, trying to hide his smile. ‘But it’s gone now. Shall we go to St Mary Graces and get rid of this relic once and for all?’

  ‘A pleasure, master.’

  They walked up the lane together as the working day began.

  AFTERWORD

  The Holy Blood of Christ. In the medieval mind, this was the relic of relics. After all, in the daily mass, the mystic transubstantiation of the Body and Blood of the Savior into bread and wine to be consumed was the central character of religious life. To possess the actual blood of the Son of God was not only a relic to be cherished and venerated but, let’s face it, the monastery that had it stood to make a lot of pilgrimage money, and that was nothing to sneeze at. To be fair, having pilgrims traipse in and out of your church, day in and day out, takes a toll on the premises. Naturally upkeep must be maintained. It doesn’t mean that a little extra profit isn’t skimmed off the top, though.

  And so this book concerns itself with two blood relics. One in Hailes and one in Westminster. Let’s take Hailes first.

  As with any relic, it has a history as convoluted as any mystery plot. It is only a little over a hundred years before Crispin’s day, in 1267, that the Blood Relic of Hailes begins. Richard, first Earl of Cornwall, became King of the Romans, which meant he was elected by various princes to be in line for the Holy Roman Empire. His son Edmund went with him to Germany to accept this honor and young Edmund struck up a friendship with Roger, the son of the steward of Castle Trevelyan where they were staying.

  Intrigued by the stores of riches there, Edmund was supposedly particularly taken by a relic of the Blood of Christ. Edmund pleaded with Roger to be given a small portion of this blood – cheeky, wasn’t he? – and it was so given. Edmund took it back to England and decided to give a portion of it to Hailes monastery where his mother was buried, and which his father founded only twenty-two years earlier.

  But how did this blood relic make its way in the first place from Jerusalem to Germany?

  As the story goes, a Jew, a Christian convert, snuck over to watch the crucifixion and managed to get himself a bit of blood from Jesus on the cross. Imagine the crowd looking for the same exact thing! Joseph of Arimathea grabbing his bit in what was to become the Holy Grail, this unnamed Jew with his little bottle, countless others waiting in line for a chance at their blood relics – a real zoo. In any case, the Jews of Jerusalem, discovering what this fellow had done and well aware of the prohibition of Jews touching human blood, imprisoned him in a little stone house outside the walls with his relic and left him the
re to rot. Seems like a lot of trouble. But miraculously, he survived on nothing but the presence of the blood. He was there for forty-two years, in fact, until the emperors Titus and Vespasian besieged Jerusalem, reducing it to rubble. But they noticed the little stone house outside the city that had been spared, asked what it was, and went to explore it for themselves. The Jew was still there and they demanded the relic. He refused, and then they just grabbed it out of his hand. Immediately, the Jew ‘lost both syght and speech and fell in powder as dead as stone,’ according to A Little Treatise of Divers Miracles Shewed for the Portion of Christ’s Blood in Hayles from Richard Pynson in the fifteenth century.

  Returning to Rome, the leaders placed the blood relic and the foreskin of the circumcision they just happened to pick up along the way into the Temple of Peace where the relics remained until Charlemagne entered the city and took them back to Germany. And that is how it supposedly got to Castle Trevelyan and Edmund took a fancy to it.

  However, there is another version – as there always is – that seems more logical. Edmund bought the relic from Count Florenz V of Holland after it had been brought to Europe by his predecessor, Count William II, along with that all-important seal of authenticity from Pope Urban IV, who was also a Cistercian monk, no doubt enough of a seal of approval for the Cistercian monks of Hailes.

  That’s not the only blood relic. The other less famous one resided in Westminster Abbey. The Holy Blood of Westminster was originally given to Henry III by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1247. Originally it was stored in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in London before being translated, with much pomp and ceremony, to Westminster Abbey. Strangely, no one knows quite where it was kept in the church. It did not seem to have its own bejeweled shrine as the Holy Blood did at Hailes, but was possibly kept by/in the high altar or near the tomb of Henry III. And, because it is no longer with us and there was a deplorable dearth of photography back then during Henry VIII’s reign, we don’t know what the reliquary looked like. At some point, it was described as a cuppe of gold with stonys with ye blode of oure lord, but later descriptions by Matthew Paris, no less, didn’t call it a cup, but a pyx of crystal (pixis cristallina) or a ‘most handsome crystal vase’ (vasum cristallinum venustissimum). One illustration by Matthew Paris makes it look like a salt cellar.