Cup of Blood: A Medieval Noir: A Crispin Guest Medieval Noir Prequel

by Jeri Westerson

  Crispin checked the other chests and found nothing. He stood looking at them before he knelt to the first chest again. Opening the lid, he examined the inside, running his fingers along its edges. A soft click, and a panel opened. He reached in and removed an empty pouch. Embroidered on it was the Templar’s cross.

  “Jesus mercy,” whispered Jack.

  “Indeed.”

  Crispin rummaged inside the trunk’s secret hiding places but found nothing more. He likewise searched the other chests and found similar hiding places, but those contained only silver and gold coins.

  Crispin returned all to its proper order when they heard footsteps approach from the passageway. “Quick, Jack. Go to the window and hide behind the curtains.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  Jack complied and Crispin moved to a large chair and relaxed into its velvet cushion just as the door opened.

  De Marcherne’s men noticed Crispin first. Both drew their swords and advanced on him. De Marcherne turned and his surprised expression changed to one of admiration.

  “Hold!” he told his men. Crispin did not move and glanced from one sword tip to the other. “Well, Crispin,” said de Marcherne. “What a welcomed surprise.” He assessed the room. Satisfied, he addressed his henchmen. “Put away your weapons. I would speak with this man alone.”

  The henchmen did as told but moved hesitantly toward the door. “Go on,” de Marcherne insisted, encouraging them with a sweep of his hand.

  Once alone he sat in the chair opposite Crispin. “Have you come to accept my offer?”

  “To be a knight in the French court?” Crispin chuckled mirthlessly. “I would not ask a dog to do that.”

  De Marcherne frowned. “Well then. Why are you here?”

  “I have some questions for you. I would rather ask them in the manner you asked me.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Unfortunately, I am in no position to do any such thing.”

  De Marcherne’s face relaxed. “No, of course not. I do wonder at the gall of your being here at all. I will not even ask how you got in here.”

  Crispin shook his head. “I am asking the questions.”

  “I could easily call the palace guards. It would not go well for you.”

  “It hasn’t gone well for me for some years. However. My questions. Tell me about being Grand Master.”

  De Marcherne laughed, a long, rolling laugh, one that included his clapping in amusement. A laugh that only made Crispin’s apprehension tighten and his anger sizzle.

  “I am amused that you are so intrigued by this.” He shook his head. “Yes, I was Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of the Temple. For many years. I knew their secrets, I knew their membership, and where each resided. I knew who was loyal and who was not. I meted out punishment and my word was law. It was a sacred task of unimaginable power. ‘So’, you must be thinking, ‘why did he leave? Was he ousted? Threatened?’ The answer, my dear Crispin, is that I left it all behind.”

  “Forgive me,” he said dispassionately. “But I think you are lying.”

  “Indeed? No. I left it. I foreswore my brothers and I sold their secrets, and I nearly got away with the grail. Why?” His smile widened and his even teeth gleamed in the firelight. He lifted an index finger and ticked it from side to side.

  “You won’t tell me.”

  “Patience, Crispin. I must keep you interested and involved. I do not think of you as my quarry, as I think of so many men. I think of you as an equal.”

  “Merciful God.”

  “Oh, it is a compliment, though you may not recognize it now. You see,” he said leaning forward, “I believe you will convert to my way of thinking once you know all. You will become my ally.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Do not dismiss me so quickly. You have no idea how far this thing extends. Or how far back.”

  Crispin blinked, hiding his bewilderment behind his lids. “This ‘thing’?”

  “This coven of the grail, Crispin. Indeed, the grail goes back nearly fourteen hundred years. And for fourteen hundred years men have sought it. Do you ever ask yourself why?”

  Crispin snorted. “It is the Last Supper cup. It held the Savior’s blood.”

  “So pedestrian.” He sighed. “Of course it did. But do you think most men are sentimental fools? Do you think they want it simply to cherish such a thing?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Crispin, Crispin. I did not take you for a maudlin man. To cherish it! Bah! There are relics aplenty for reverence. No. The reason men want the grail is for power. Unimaginable power.”

  “Power?”

  “Yes. Of course there is the power of healing, but there are more secrets to the grail. Power over others in ways that can never be resisted by trebuchet or arrow.”

  Crispin’s neck hairs stood up and he drew forward. “What are you talking about?”

  “I am talking about the power of God.”

  Crispin shot out of the chair and stood over de Marcherne. “You and these Templars! I am supposed to believe that God’s power is there in the grail for the taking?”

  “Yes. That and more. Do you not listen to your priest’s sermons? Do you not know that God’s ways are not our ways?”

  Crispin stared at de Marcherne’s unruffled demeanor and felt a chill run down his spine. “You do not speak of God at all,” he said in a low voice. “You are the Devil incarnate.”

  “You don’t believe me. I expected as much.”

  “I believe many things about you, to be sure. And I wonder if you killed Gaston D’Arcy to get the grail. You and I both know you will get away with it. I cannot apprehend you. The sheriff cannot touch you. But I have the need to know.”

  “Is that why you came? To investigate an unimportant murder? How commonplace.”

  “Did you?”

  “He was not in the plan for the grail. Ask your Templar friends. They know.”

  “Dammit! Did you?”

  De Marcherne stood and glared nose to nose with Crispin. “Why is this so important? I tell you, there are far greater things at stake than catching a murderer.”

  Crispin grabbed de Marcherne’s coat and fisted the cloth in his hands. He brought his face within inches of de Marcherne’s. “Tell me now, or I swear I will kill you!”

  The curtains rustled. Suddenly they crumpled upon themselves with a great, thunderous crash of rod and plaster that startled Crispin and de Marcherne from their confrontation.

  Jack stood alone in the little alcove, the thick curtains encircling his feet, his face white. “For the love of Christ, Master, let us leave this hellish place!”

  Livid, Crispin released de Marcherne and glared at Jack.

  The Frenchman straightened his houppelande and brushed it off. “Perhaps your little friend is right. Perhaps it is time for you to leave before I call the palace guards. Or mine.”

  Crispin swept the room with a furious glance. He grasped Jack by the collar and hoisted him inches above the floor while dragging him forward, but de Marcherne’s parting words slowed him.

  “And Crispin. Since we no longer have an agreement, I must warn you. If you find the grail first, it will be the last thing you ever do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  They reached the foot of Crispin’s lodgings and he finally spun on Jack. “All I needed was one more moment, one more word from him, you senseless, sorry thief!”

  Jack pouted. “Now, Master. That isn’t no way to speak to me. I’m a good lad, I am. I’m loyal to you. But when that man talked about God! I started gripping the curtains and…well it wasn’t my fault they fell! I got all queer inside. Like he didn’t have the right to speak the name of the Lord with his poisonous breath.”

  Crispin mashed his lips together and stared at Jack a long time. He ran his hand over his face and nodded solemnly. “You may be right.”

  “’Course I am. And you don’t truly believe he done it, do you?”

  “
Why not? He is evil enough.”

  “Aye. That’s my point. If he did it he wouldn’t fear telling you. He’d be proud of it. I think he’s toying with you because he only wished he done it!”

  Crispin said nothing. He climbed the stairs, unlocked the door, and dropped into his chair.

  Jack went to the hearth to coax fire from the ashes.

  Crispin watched the renewing flames. The boy busied himself tidying up the room and swept stray ashes back into the hearth.

  “Very well,” Crispin said, answering Jack’s question at last. “No. I suppose I don’t believe he did it, and for the reason you cite. But God’s blood, I want him to be guilty!”

  He sat with his face in his hands a long while, feeling the room grow warmer from the fire. But he also felt weary and strangely out of place. Returning to court drained his senses. His limbs even felt heavy as if he had been running in full armor.

  “Again, we are placed in the unfortunate circumstance of not knowing who the murderer is.”

  Jack handed Crispin a bowl of wine. “Aye. But you’ve solved difficult puzzles before, have you not?”

  Crispin drank thirstily. His throat felt like parchment. “Yes. But not quite like this.”

  Jack went to the larder and poured himself a bowl of wine and stood over Crispin, contemplating his pinched expression. “I wish I could help you, Master. I truly do. I haven’t a head for puzzles, I’m afraid. That is what you do.”

  “So they tell me,” he said with a sigh. Jack hurried to refill Crispin’s cup.

  “Jack, what am I forgetting? What small clue have I missed?”

  The boy settled on the floor by the fire and hugged his legs, his bowl beside him. “I know not, Master. It seems so long ago now, though it was less than a sennight. I was only at the Boar’s Tusk very briefly.”

  “That’s right. I was asleep and I felt you cut my purse—”

  “Sloppy, that. You never should have felt it,” he said with a brush of hurt in his voice.

  Crispin’s mind summoned the scene from one of many wine-soaked memories. “Let me think. I was asleep and…who else was there?”

  “Master Gilbert, but was asleep, too.”

  “Yes. And then there was you, and John the piper, and the dead man, and some assorted fellows I’ve seen a thousand times before.”

  “And the servant.”

  “And the servant.” Crispin squinted, trying to see the tavern in the dim corners of his memory. “The servant. He was sitting next to D’Arcy.” He thumped his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. “I only saw him…” He tilted his head to the side trying to recollect. “I only saw him through the haze of hearth smoke. And it was shadowy. But I knew he was a servant because he wore livery. Whose? Jack, do you recall his colors?”

  “Ah me no, sir. I know they was dark.”

  “Dark. Green or blue. I can’t remember. But he sat beside Gaston D’Arcy. How long?”

  “He was there when I entered.”

  “And how long were you there before you began to thieve from me?”

  Jack blushed and lowered his face. “I had to get the sense of the room, Master. And though I knew the rest were in their cups—begging your pardon—I had to wait until no one was mindful of me.”

  “And how long was that?”

  “’Bout quarter past the hour. Once no one paid me any heed…well, that’s when I made me move.”

  “So he sat beside D’Arcy all that time? Doing what?”

  “Naught. Not even drinking.”

  Crispin sat up. “But I saw him. He was drunk when he got up. He even fell against you.”

  “Ah no, good Master. That is my way, you see. ’Twas I what stumbled against him.”

  Crispin saw the room in his mind’s eye. The smoky interior flickered in the firelight. The windows were shuttered against the rain and mist. Candles on the tables offered some light but only sparsely. Crispin’s wine bowl sat before him but there were many discarded on the table, just as there had been in front of the dead man. “There were many bowls on that table. Do you tell me the servant drank from none of them?”

  “I only know what I saw, Master, and as you know, I had naught to drink. Until I drank that cursed poison.”

  Crispin looked at his wine but did not drink. “Jack, when you bumped into him, did you take his purse as well?”

  “Ah, no, Master. He moved too swiftly for me.”

  “Damn!”

  “Oh, but I did get his broach.”

  Crispin slowly raised his face. “Tell me, Jack,” he said, trying to calm the excitement in his voice. “You do not, by any chance, still have that broach, do you?”

  “Oh, aye.”

  Crispin shot from his chair and grabbed Jack by the shoulders. Jack squealed in surprise and pushed away from him. “Here now!”

  “That broach, Jack. Get it!”

  “Very well,” he said cautiously once Crispin let him go. He went to the door and grasped the jamb. He guiltily looked back once at Crispin before he pulled and loosened the board and reached with his stick-thin arm into the opening.

  Crispin marveled that such a secret place hid under his very nose, but he admired Jack all the more for his ingenuity.

  At last, Jack pulled out a parcel wrapped in a rag and tied with string. He laid it on the table and ran his hand under his nose. “Now then,” Jack said, the same hand resting on the parcel. “When I open this, you may be surprised by what’s inside. But there’s no sense in your insisting I return these items to their owners for I have long since forgotten who owned them. I am at your mercy, sir.”

  Crispin returned a solemn countenance to Jack’s grave one. “I swear on my honor, Jack, that I will say nothing.”

  “Right then.” Jack took his knife and cut the parcel’s string and opened the rag. Crispin’s eyes widened when he beheld the many folded documents, wax seals and leather ribbons in tact. But there were also rings, brooches, pins, and loose gems.

  “Jack!” he gasped. “God’s blood!”

  “It’s me treasure,” he said sheepishly. “For my retirement. A man can’t be a thief all his life.”

  Crispin laughed and touched the boy good-naturedly on the shoulder. “No indeed. My hope is that no new items of late have been added to this cache.”

  Jack lowered his face and muttered, “‘Of late’? Well, that depends on what you mean by that.”

  “Never mind for now. How is it I missed these things when I caught you that night?”

  Jack smiled. “It’s a clever thief with more than one place to hide his spoils.”

  Crispin eagerly scanned the cache again. “Which one belonged to the servant?”

  “Now let me think.” Jack picked through his bounty and finally weighed something in his hand, nodding. “This one. I think it is this one. With the bird.”

  Crispin took the broach and stared at ivory and silver. A bird, a crane. His mind put it together and he shook his head. “Oh, Jack. What a pity.”

  “Eh? Someone you know, then?”

  “Yes. Someone I know.”

  He took his cloak but left his hood behind and said over his shoulder, “Jack, you’d best come with me.”

  Crispin struggled to remember. He put himself back in the setting of the Boar’s Tusk almost a week ago; watched the servant in dark livery—certain now it was blue. The man would be familiar, but Crispin’s position across the room and his drunken state contributed to his not recognizing him.

  When they reached the White Hart, Crispin told Jack to stand guard at the door until called. Crispin entered and stood in the doorway to get his bearings and to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the dimness. He scanned the room and strode across the tavern until he reached a table near the stairwell. A man sat alone, staring into his bowl of wine. His dark blue coat had a high collar and buttoned up the throat. The skirt, split in the middle, made it easier for him to run and better serve his masters. A black leather belt cinched his waist. A lengthy stra
p of leather, it wrapped around him almost a second time and folded and tucked over the buckle. It sported a scabbard with a dagger and a leather scrip at his hip near his back. An embroidered crane eyed Crispin from the left breast, the signet of Rothwell.

  “Jenkyn,” said Crispin.

  He jerked up his head and stared. Crispin made his way to the table and sat opposite him. “What do you want?”

  “Now, Jenkyn. Is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

  Jenkyn stared up at Crispin with cool gray eyes. Not steel gray like Crispin’s, but light with just the barest blue tint to them. His bushy brows hung over his lids. His nose, straight and aristocratic, belonged more to his betters than his long lineage of servants serving the St Albans household as far back as anyone could remember. His hair, slightly wilder than fashion called for, shined darkly, but gray streaks tangled through it and the hairline shot high up his lengthened forehead. “I was not your friend,” he said. “I was my master’s servant. And now I am the servant of my mistress.”

  “Just so. We were never friends, but I feel I know you.”

  “No, you don’t. You were just another lord like all the rest, and now you’re not even that. Begone. I have no use for you.”

  Crispin curled his fingers into fists. He would have struck the man, but Jenkyn was in the right. Crispin was no longer a lord. He could talk to Crispin any way he liked.

  “So that is how you truly feel? Interesting. If only our masters could hear what is in our heads, eh? We’d all be released from service.”

  “Then it’s a good thing none are mind readers.” He took up the bowl but still did not drink.

  Crispin watched him. “You do not drink.”

  “I am not thirsty.”

  “Yet you ordered wine.”

  Jenkyn looked at the bowl in his hand as if recognizing it for the first time. Hastily he put it down. “Habit.”

  “Perhaps you have no more taste for drinking wine in taverns. To see a man die from such imbibing…”

  Jenkyn rose but Crispin drew his blade and motioned for him to sit again. “I do not believe I am done talking with you,” he said and slowly sat again, echoing Jenkyn’s cautious movements. He kept the knife in plain view. Jenkyn stared at it. His forehead beaded with sweat and his breath became hard and rasping.