The Demon’s Parchment cg-3

by Jeri Westerson

  Crispin nodded and drank down the rest. Gilbert quickly refilled it from a round jug. He licked his wine-slickened lips. “God be praised. I know that since you are on it, you will not give up. That child shall find justice.”

  Crispin slurped another gulp of wine. He wiped the rest with his hand and took up a fish. It was cold but it didn’t matter. He pulled the meat from the bones and chewed. “Four children,” he said quietly.

  “Four?” Gilbert muttered a prayer and crossed himself. He did not move or speak for some time. Crispin finished two fish and two more bowls of wine. He was feeling warm and soft.

  Gilbert finally looked up at him. His brown eyes flickered to gold in the hearthglow. “And today. What happened today?”

  Crispin sighed around the bread in his mouth. He tore off another hunk, dipped it in his wine, and sucked up the soggy dough. “A man who might have told me the culprit was himself murdered.”

  “Oh!” Gilbert jerked in his chair. He shook his head in disbelief. “Crispin, this is unbelievable. Unheard of in all of London’s history! How can such a thing be?”

  “You do not know the half of it, Gilbert. But I am too much of a friend to fully share the horrors with you.”

  Gilbert shuddered. The Langtons had no children. Perhaps this was why they so took to Crispin, forlorn and very like a child in his naïveté when he had first lost everything. Though Gilbert and Eleanor were a scant few years older than he, they still often treated him like their own. For the most part, he ignored it. But today, for the first time, he felt like the parent, protecting his charge from the evils of the world. No, he would not tell Gilbert the gruesome details.

  “I do not know what London is coming to,” said Gilbert, his voice slurring. The both of them finished the jug in no time. Fortunately, Ned had poked his head out earlier, and now approached with what looked like another full jug.

  “Ned, my boy,” said Gilbert. “Bless you. You know us too well.”

  “As does Mistress Eleanor,” said Ned. He wore a patched cap and a stained apron. “She warned me she’d box me ears if I didn’t send Master Crispin home soon.”

  Crispin eyed the jug critically. “I think much can be accomplished in that time, Ned.”

  It was Gilbert who took up the jug, saluted to the retreating Ned, and poured more into each of their bowls.

  “Now, I’ve always said. . . .” said Gilbert, leaning precariously toward Crispin as he poured. The jug’s spout barely teetered over the bowl. Crispin pulled his leg out of the way to avoid a drenching. Gilbert laughed. “Whoops. Perhaps this shall be my last bowl.”

  “Perhaps it should be,” said Crispin, though his own words weren’t as crisp as when they’d started.

  Gilbert thumbed the rim of his bowl. “What was I saying?” He stared at Crispin with a lopsided expression. “Oh yes!” His eyes suddenly brightened and he sloshed his wine when he sat up. “I’ve always said what a clever man you are. You will not let this murderer go free.”

  “I thought I had found him tonight. But it might be that I . . . I was wrong.” Even the drink did not take the sting out of it. He drank but it did not numb the irritation he felt for Julian. But it was more than irritation. His emotions seemed all over the map. He could not reconcile his feelings in this instance. He wanted to throttle the young man, to be sure, but there was something else about him.

  He laughed at himself and drank. Too much of this had softened his well-earned frustration with the youth. He had not wanted relief from that but from the other strange tidings today: of the secret Jews and the murdered servant, plainly killed by the same monster that slew those boys.

  Monster. Was there not a monster on the loose? That strange being that was more demon than man? Had he not seen him with his own eyes? And Jack. He had seen it, too. Dare he call it a Golem?

  He raised his head. It felt muzzier than it had before. With a serious tone that came out a bit more slurred than he would have liked, Crispin said, “Gilbert, be warned. Do not let your own out after dark.”

  Gilbert blinked at him. “After dark? As a matter of course, we have no cause. Except to the kitchens.”

  “Even to go outside to the privy. Stay within.”

  “What? But why?”

  “Demons are afoot, Gilbert. And I do not say this lightly. I do not know what prowls London’s streets these nights, but I fear for its citizens. Do not go out after dark.”

  Gilbert stared at him, his jaw hanging. It took a moment, but he slowly closed it and nodded, fear shining though the wine glaze in his eyes.

  Crispin leaned in. “There is no reason to tell Eleanor. I would not cause her undue anxiety.”

  “Anxiety about what?” asked Eleanor.

  Crispin jumped three feet at least. He pressed a hand to his racing heart. “God’s blood, woman! Must you creep up on a man?”

  She smiled and folded her arms over her generous bosom. “Sometimes it is the best way.” She eyed the wine jugs sitting before them. “The hour is late, Gilbert. I think the two of you had best bid your farewells.”

  “Can’t a man gossip with his friend, Eleanor?” He swung his arm over Crispin’s shoulder, an overfriendly gesture he would never have attempted when sober.

  “Now I am certain you are in your cups. Come now. Up, husband. Let Master Crispin to his bed.”

  “I’m not sleepy, Nell,” said Crispin and then stifled a yawn.

  “Indeed not.” She pulled the large tavern keeper to his feet. “And neither is this fellow. Which is why his lids droop and his step slackens. The two of you! Adolescents. Go home, Crispin.”

  “Home,” he muttered and stood. As soon as he did his vision slanted. Ah. Just right.

  Ned arrived and Eleanor surrendered Gilbert to him. She took Crispin’s arm and escorted him to the door. “Mayhap you will come to Christmas dinner this year. Do we have to serve it in such an ungodly hour for you to accept our invitation?”

  “Christmas.” Crispin was not so drunk that he would capitulate so easily. “I will think on it,” he said with no intention of doing so.

  “Aye. I’ll wager you will.” Eleanor was not fooled. Damnable woman.

  She propped him against the wall as she lifted the beam that barred the door. She made to open it but the door slipped out of her hands. She gave a little shriek just as Jack Tucker poked his head in. He stuck dirty fingertips into his ears. “Hold, woman! You’ll make me deaf!”

  “Jack,” said Crispin, relieved. He needed someone to lean on for the journey home.

  Jack looked Crispin over and smirked at Eleanor. “Right drunk, ain’t he?”

  She nodded. “As a pickled crabapple.”

  Crispin’s foggy brain tried to feel affronted. All he could summon was, “What are you doing here, Jack?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “I would have come home anon.”

  “I ain’t been home.”

  Crispin struggled out of the boy’s grasp. Eleanor placed a hand on her hip. She seemed to be wrestling with the notion of pushing them out or hustling them back in.

  “Jack! I sent you home hours ago!”

  Jack smiled. It was the most insincere thing about him. “I didn’t go. I got a notion. About that Golem, sir.”

  Eleanor frowned at them but Jack’s words seemed to decide it. She closed the door and replaced the beam, then shooed them toward the fire. “Well, you might as well sit down if you are to have a discussion. And what, pray, is a ‘Golem’?”

  Jack sat but then shifted forward on his seat. “Oh Mistress! It is a foul monster!”

  “Jack,” warned Crispin.

  “A fiend who stalks the night. We seen him. Master Crispin and me.”

  “Jack. . . .”

  “He was huge and awful. Murdering boys and such with his bare hands—”

  “JACK!”

  Jack turned mildly toward Crispin. “Aye? What is it?”

  The worst had been done. It couldn’t now be unsaid. Crispin sat back. “Never
mind.”

  “Well then.” Jack licked his lips, staring anxiously at the discarded wine bowls. Eleanor pushed the jug decidedly away toward the other end of the table. With a sigh, Jack gripped the table’s edge. “There is this Jew physician at the palace—oh!” He turned a sheepish expression toward Crispin. “Was I supposed to keep that part a secret?”

  Crispin waved his hand and settled back, resting his chin on his chest. “I have no secrets, apparently.”

  Jack blinked. “Well.” He looked at Eleanor who urged him on with a gesture. “And so, there is this Jew and he lost some parchments. But they were magical parchments because some whoreson—beggin’ your pardon, Mistress—used them to summon this demon.”

  She gasped. “Oh Crispin! Is this true?”

  With eyes closed, he waved his head as vaguely as he could. Eleanor took this as an affirmative and Jack as a cue to continue. “They’re made out of clay, these Golems, and the demon somehow goes into the clay body, see. And then it tromps all over London at night, killing what he wills.”

  Crispin snorted, barely awake at this point. “Jack, you’re getting it quite wrong.”

  “No, I ain’t. It’s killing boys is what it is. And worse!”

  Eleanor planted her chin on her hand. “What do you mean by ‘worse’?”

  “Eleanor!” said Crispin. “For Christ sake.”

  “Very well,” she said, waving him off. “Did you encounter it? How did you get away?”

  “It was a fair pace from us. We tried to follow the beast but it was a slick piece of work. Got clean away every time Master Crispin chased it.”

  Her eyes flicked to Crispin. “You gave chase?”

  “He did,” answered Jack proudly. “He don’t fear nought, does Master Crispin.”

  “Only your loose tongue,” he grumbled.

  “And so, this night, when Master Crispin sent me home—”

  “Where you should have gone!”

  “I got m’self an idea. This Golem is made of clay, ain’t it? And me and Master Crispin saw the bits of clay for ourselves, didn’t we? So I thought to m’self, ‘Where can a body get that much clay?’ ”

  Crispin suddenly sat up. Not quite sober but not quite as drowsy as before, Crispin stared dumbfounded at his charge. “Jack! You are a genius!”

  Jack sat back with a wide grin and laced his fingers behind his head. “I know.”

  13

  It took some time for Jack to convince Crispin to come home to sleep and see about the clay on the morrow. Climbing the narrow stairway to their lodgings, Crispin had almost tumbled down the stairs, but Jack’s steady arm prevented his breaking his neck. He was grateful in the long run to settle into his bed, the scratchy blanket tucked under his chin, while Jack covered the embers with ashes. Crispin imagined himself to be warm, but he knew it was only due to his inebriated state.

  But now that the morning had come, and with it the sharp lance of light piercing the shutters and the raucous clang of iron kettle against clay cauldron, he could no longer appreciate his perceived comfort. Not when his head felt leaden, swollen, and like a pot on an anvil, being beaten upon by an unsteady tinker.

  “Jack,” he moaned. “Can’t you be quiet?”

  “Sorry, Master,” said Jack heartily. “But it is morn and you said last night that we must get an early start. The water is almost hot for your shave and the peas porridge is ready when you want it.”

  He offered Crispin a wooden bowl of ale. Crispin sat up and glared at it. “Where did you get this?”

  “Master Kemp brought it up this morning. He heard how you were feeling poorly and said this was a good remedy.”

  “I have only just awakened. How did he know I would be feeling poorly?”

  “Well, when I came across him this morning I might have mentioned about how you were . . . last night.”

  Crispin did not question it further. He downed the ale and smacked his lips. It wasn’t enough to take off the edge but it was better than nothing.

  Jack took Crispin’s cloak and draped it over his master’s shoulders as he hunched in the bed, trying to keep warm. The boy next pressed the bowl of porridge into his hand and Crispin drank the warm liquid. He wiped his mouth and handed the bowl back to the boy, who scooped up a helping for himself and sipped at it. “Your water, sir.”

  Crispin muttered to himself as he slid out of the bed, the straw in the mattress crunching under him. He wrapped the end of his cloak over the kettle’s handle and poured some of the steamy water into a basin and took that to the shelf under a bit of shiny brass nailed to a post. He lathered his chin with a soap cake and hoped the razor was sharp enough. He ignored his shaky hand and did the best he could. He scrubbed his teeth with a finger and the leftover water, and spit it back into the basin.

  Jack took the basin from his hand, swished open the back garden shutters, and tossed the water out.

  “How do I look?” asked Crispin blearily.

  Jack studied him and cocked his head. “As well as can be expected.”

  “High praise,” he muttered and pulled the edges of his chaperon hood down over his cloak.

  Jack fingered the book that lay on the table. “What is this, sir?”

  He had quite forgotten about the book. Did he have time to look it over now? His hand inched over the leather cover and he found himself sitting before it with both hands at the leather ties.

  He opened the cover, tsking at the water damage done when Giles’s cousin tossed it into the mud, and settled down to read.

  Jack tinkered with the fire and rambled about, finally settling down in his corner to brush the mud vigorously from Crispin’s cloak hem.

  Crispin read, and it wasn’t long before his ire pricked the back of his neck. The more he read, the angrier he got. He had thought little about Jews before, but that they would scheme to kill an innocent boy for their strange rituals was unthinkable. Yet it was all there, inked on this parchment. Yes, well. He’d have a thing or two to say to Julian about this!

  Crispin got unsteadily to his feet. He wasn’t certain if it was still the effects of drinking or of his anger. “Jack, if we go we had best go now. While I am still upright.”

  Jack mumbled something that Crispin did not care to hear and waited for the boy to don his own cloak and hood. There was much he needed to relate to Jack about the happenings of yesterday.

  As they made their way down the icy steps, Crispin began his tale, and Jack listened wide-eyed to all its ups and downs, particularly when he came to the part about the dead servant. Several “God blind me” exclamations later, Jack drew silent.

  There was slush upon the ground but the sky held no snow. It was washed in a mottled gray like the ocean after a storm. They moved south toward the Thames, making their way to Salt Wharf in Queenhithe. When they arrived, they hired a ferryman to take them across, and Jack stood at the bow like any other child excited to be making the trip. Crispin leaned on the side, looking out across the choppy, gray water. Skiffs speared the water beside them, their pilots glaring as if Crispin were invading their territory. Possibly, he was. He paid them no heed and pulled his hood down as far over his head as he could, trying to shield his face from the icy wind and spray. His mind was on death and blood and the treachery of Jews.

  The Bankside suddenly loomed out of the mist. As they drew closer to the dock, fishermen mending their nets took shape out of the gloom.

  He thought he could make out the smoke from the kilns though it might just be suspended fog. But perhaps it was only cooking fires from the row on row of houses and shops lining the riverfront. Crispin seldom traveled to Southwark. Not if he could help it. The stews did not interest him. At least that’s what he told himself. The truth lay more in practicalities. A tumble with a Bankside whore seemed less critical when one’s purse was empty.

  As he stepped out onto the wharf and handed the ferryman a halpen, he could not help but feel surrounded by the low speech of Southwark such as came from Jack’s mouth. In h
is exile, Crispin had decided early on that he would not live in Southwark, no matter what it took. It was bad enough living on the Shambles, but to live on the Bankside with whores and thieves . . .

  His eye fell upon Jack springing forth from the ferry’s unsteady rolling bow and landing squarely on the wharf. The boy smiled up at him; a grin that was as wide as the Thames. So much for not living with thieves.

  He raised his chin and took in the busy wharves and street above. The potters were not far, for indeed that had been smoke coming from the hardworking kilns of London. He could smell it now.

  He followed his nose while Jack ran back and forth at his heels like a pup. He was quite proud of Jack for coming up with the notion. The boy was sharp, no question about it. It surprised him that a creature of such low beginnings could be so clever, but with a bit of gloating, he owed much of Jack’s shrewdness to himself and his careful tutoring.

  Jack raised his arm and pointed. “That’s the potters,” he said. “They’re the ones I seen yesterday. I watched them for a good long time, Master. I talked a fair bit to one of them apprentices, a boy named Wat. He told me about their trade. They make jugs and cooking pots and such. But business is getting poorly, so he says. His master is worried that they might have to find another vocation.”

  “Business is that bad?”

  “Oh aye. So he said. But he is just an apprentice.”

  “I find the word of apprentices more and more valuable these days.”

  Jack missed the compliment. His attention was taken by the many ovens as they cleared the corner, of the young men carrying buckets of clay hanging from yokes over their bent shoulders, of young boys balancing vast bundles of sticks on their heads.

  It was hard to believe that this industriousness might all be for nought. Crispin watched silently from across the lane, staying in the shadows. Jack fairly vibrated beside him, no doubt impatient for Crispin to do something. But Crispin had no need to do anything as of yet. He, too, wanted to watch the work, especially the men and even women he could see through doorways, their feet pushing at a wheel while they worked their alchemy on a shapeless slab of clay. With hands drenched in murky water, they brought forth tall hourglass-shaped jugs and squat, round-bellied pots. Decorations were daubed onto the sides in diamond patterns and basket weaves, or merely rolled on with small wheeled instruments.