Veil of Lies (24 page)

Crispin’s amusement was overshadowed by the sheriff’s severe expression, and he mounted silently.

It was good to feel a horse under him again. He couldn’t recall the last time he had been in a saddle. The feel of the reins in his hand, the saddle beneath him. Wasn’t this where he belonged? Looking down upon the populace from a high seat?

He barely listened to the sheriff, and pulled himself back from the deep memories. Crispin kept the corner of his eye on Wynchecombe’s stiff form. They rode knee to knee.

Without looking toward him, the sheriff asked, “Discover the murderer yet?”

He adjusted his seat on the saddle. “For Adam Becton? Not yet. As for Nicholas Walcote, yes. I know who it is.”

“Oh? Who?”

“I believe it is Lionel Walcote. He was here in London at the time.”

“What was his reason?”

“His business was failing and he had no love for his brother. He knew about the secret passage—”

“As did you, I see. A fact you did not share with me.”

Crispin shrugged. “I have been busy.”

“So, he knew of the passage.”

“Yes, he waited therein to surprise his victim. After Lionel stabbed him, he saw it was not his brother.”

“Hence the halfhearted stab to his shoulder.”

Crispin nodded.

“So why Becton?”

“He did not kill Becton. A garrote? That is not common fare for a merchant, even a devious one. A garrote shows planning of another sort.”

“I agree.” The sheriff fell silent and hurried the horse. Crispin jabbed his heels into the side of his own mount to keep pace.

“I shan’t arrest him yet.”

Crispin stared at Wynchecombe. “Why not, Lord Sheriff?”

“Not by your word alone. Especially when you are so dewy-eyed for the woman. His guild would have me drawn and quartered.”

Crispin slumped and fisted the reins.
The fool. Can’t he put his faith in me yet?

They rode under Newgate’s gatehouse arch and clattered into the courtyard. Two men rushed forward, each to take a horse as they dismounted. They eyed Crispin but he ignored their stares and followed the sheriff into the building, up the stairs, and into his chamber.

Wynchecombe stripped off his gloves and dropped them on the table. He unfastened his agrafe and tossed the cloak aside. He sat with a dissatisfied huff and glared. “Much thanks for helping with this murder.”

“It is my duty, my lord.”

Wynchecombe sat back and folded his hands on his belly.

Crispin watched him as a cat watches a mouse hole. He hadn’t long to wait for the rodent to emerge.

“Tell me what was in that box.”

Crispin changed his weight from one foot to the other. Wynchecombe hadn’t offered him a chair and it didn’t seem likely he would. “What box?”

“The box on the floor in the solar.”

“I don’t know. What was supposed to be in it?”

“Crispin, Crispin.” Wynchecombe shook his head and rose from his seat. He sauntered around the table and leaned against it. “You are a very poor liar.”

“My lord—”

Wynchecombe backhanded his face. Crispin was unprepared and cocked his own fist in retaliation before he remembered where he was.

Wynchecombe growled a chuckle. “Any intentions you may have had better be put to bed.”

Crispin cleared his face of all expression. His hand shook while he unwound his fingers and lowered his arm.

“I’ll ask you again—and you’d best think carefully about your reply. What was in the box?”

Crispin clenched his teeth. “I don’t know.”

Wynchecombe shook his head and bellowed for his scribe. “Bring in two of my guards.”

Crispin refused to rub his inflamed cheek.

“I think you know there was a cloth in that box,” said the sheriff. “And I think you know where it is now.”

Two men shouldered into the room. Both were tall and burly; each possessed big hands curled into fists, their knuckles crosshatched with scrapes and scabs.

Crispin debated with himself how much to conceal.

“It’s a special cloth,” Wynchecombe continued. “But you know that already, don’t you? You know that a man cannot lie in its presence.”

“I do not know your meaning.”

Wynchecombe moved to his sideboard and poured himself a cup of wine. He drank for a moment, savoring the liquor, before he nodded to the men.

This time Crispin was ready. He may not be able to defend himself against the sheriff, but he was damned if he was going to let the sheriff’s lackeys make sausage of him without resistance.

He blocked the first blow with his forearm and landed his own punch into the man’s gut. The guard tumbled back and slammed against the wall.

The second didn’t waste any time. His fist swung upward and caught Crispin on the side of his head. Crispin’s sight exploded in stars and he lost his balance, but only momentarily.

By then the first man recovered. He nabbed Crispin’s arms and in a struggle that left the man’s shins bruised, managed to pin Crispin’s arms behind his back. The second man snapped his fist at Crispin’s chin and the stars fluttered about him again. Crispin hit the floor like a sack of turnips.

He did not see Wynchecombe signal, but the men eased back. Crispin clutched his head and crawled toward the wall, leaning against it.

“I want it, Crispin. More important, the king wants it.”

Crispin raised his head and squinted. “The king?” he managed to say. “So that is who is behind your summons.”

“Yes, and you will obey or I will be forced to place you under arrest.”

Crispin laughed, though it was a chalky sound of sputters and wheezes. “The king wants it, does he? Well he can go begging for it, can’t he?”

“What does it matter who has it? You told me before you do not believe in the power of such relics. Then what harm would it do to turn it over to his Majesty?”

“I won’t give him the satisfaction.” And if there was the least possibility that the Mandyllon did have the ability to compel the truth from those near it, Crispin didn’t dare take the chance that Richard might possess that much power.

“You were once condemned for lese-majesté,” said Wynchecombe. “Do not force the king to look your way again. For all he knows, you may be dead.”

“He knows I am not dead.”

“Not yet, but soon, maybe.” Wynchecombe smiled without humor. “Crispin, I have done my best to keep this situation from occurring, but you have been stubborn in the extreme and refused to listen to my good counsel.”

“Were you counseling me?” Crispin rubbed his chin. “Just now, for instance?”

“Damn you, Crispin! Are you going to tell me where that cloth is or not?”

Crispin licked his dry lips. “I can’t help you, Wynchecombe.”

The sheriff straightened. His hand fell to his sword hilt and the fingers drummed. “Then you give me no alternative.” He motioned to the guards. “Crispin Guest, I hereby arrest you in the name of the king.”

23

Crispin stumbled after the guards. Each took an arm to drag him down the passageway.
That son of a whore.
The sheriff was the king’s tool, after all. But Crispin assumed he had more character than that. Wynchecombe hadn’t the stomach to stand up to Richard. Few men did and lived, he supposed.

The guards lugged Crispin a long way and tossed him into an empty cell. He rolled once along the straw-cluttered floor before righting himself. They said nothing and closed the door. He heard the key scrape in the lock, then their footsteps receded down the long passageway.

He sat on the floor, which seemed the most convenient, and gingerly palmed his head and then his chin. His head throbbed and ached. Feeling woozy, he stared at the blackened maw of the empty fireplace and willed it to ignite. When that failed, he laid back against the wall, the cold stone chilling his back.

“Why do I seem always to be on the wrong side of the king?”

He closed his eyes. It made the room seem less slanted.

The air thickened with the stench of frightened men. The last occupant of the room left behind his own odor of fear, marking the cell with a distinct haze of despair. Crispin tried to ignore it. No telling how long the sheriff would leave him here. When Crispin had been imprisoned for treason, he had languished in his cell for five months.

He allowed his heart its drumroll for several minutes before taking a deep breath. He was done with fear. Hadn’t he suffered enough humiliation? If they wanted to kill him then it was years overdue.

Bracing his back against the wall, he inched upward. “I’ll stand, thank you,” he said to the shadows. “I will die indeed before I ever give Richard the satisfaction of defeating me.”

“Ah, Lord Crispin,” came the voice from outside the door.

Crispin stiffened. He felt a curse rumble up from his throat.

Keys clattered and dug into the lock, dropping the pins into place. The door creaked and hung ajar, spilling a swath of irregular light across Crispin’s chest. The guard Malvyn stood in the doorway and blocked the rest of the torch’s flame.

“So,” Malvyn said, fat arms crossing over his chest, “you were never going to be a prisoner in here again, were you? You know, you weren’t very polite to me a few hours ago.”

Crispin managed a grin. “You’re not going to hold that against me, are you?”

Malvyn scowled and eyed him up and down. “You’re a high-and-mighty bastard, aren’t you? Born into court society, eh? Title, riches. Where are they now? Who will help you now?” He stepped into the room. His footsteps made a hollow sound. “Do you remember the fun we had eight years ago?” He took a short whip from his belt. “You never once cried out, did you? Let’s see if we can’t change that.”

Malvyn raised the whip but never brought it down. Crispin kicked it out of his hand and it skidded across the room.

Standing half a foot taller than the gaoler, Crispin straightened. “I tolerated a great deal then. I don’t now.” He slammed his boot down on Malvyn’s foot. The gaoler howled in pain and bent toward the floor. He never got there. Crispin’s fist reached his jaw first. The punch met flesh and tooth, tearing the former and cracking the latter.

Malvyn lost his balance. Crispin lunged at him for more—until spear butts jabbed his chest and stopped his progress.

He stumbled back and looked up at two guards. They raised their spears, but he lifted his open hands and backed away from the door. They hauled out the barely conscious Malvyn and ticked their heads. “He’ll make certain you get a beating for that, Master Crispin,” said one of the men.

Crispin rubbed his scraped knuckles and smiled. “Yes, but it was worth it.”

The sound of Malvyn’s heels scraping against the floor and the door closing for the second time filled his ears before all fell silent again. The profound stillness echoed throughout the chamber and rumbled down the passage.

Crispin listened to the silence for a long time. He remembered it well. He used to hum to himself to keep the quiet at bay, all the songs he knew. He tried now to think of a song to hum, but he did not much feel like singing.

As the time crawled by, he felt more and more alone. How much time had passed? He wasn’t certain. Only an arrow slit of a window allowed him to measure the sunlight. But with heavy cloud cover, even that was an uncertain sundial.

In the utter quiet, his thoughts caught up to him. He slid down the wall and sat. He scowled, thinking of the king; scowled further thinking of Wynchecombe; then lost the scowl completely when his mind lighted on Philippa.

Resting his throbbing head against the stone, he closed his eyes. “Philippa,” he whispered, liking the sound of it in the empty chamber. She should be quite safe with Gilbert and Eleanor. It surprised him that he missed her. Women passed through his life like the seasons, and though he knew he was susceptible to a woman in peril, he did not consider himself a fool where they were concerned. “Well,” he admitted with a lonesome chuckle, “not too much a fool.”

He remembered he still had her portrait and jammed his hand into the purse. The light was poor but he cupped the portrait in his hand and gazed at it. Her face peered back at him with a mischievous expression that seemed to say she had a secret.

He frowned and lowered the portrait to his lap. Too many secrets.

The fact that she was a chambermaid—no, worse, a scullion—should have struck down any emotions and concern. What he was, what he was born to, was in the blood. He couldn’t change. He didn’t want to.

“I don’t like to fall in love,” he said. The hollow sound of his lone voice gave poignancy to his assertion. “But I—” He shook his head. “It’s no good. There’s no place for her. Hell, there’s no place for
me
in my useless life!”

His dizzy brain ran through the memories—of jousts and duels, of all-out combat. He had been alive then. Worth something. “What am I now?” he asked the portrait. “The Tracker. What the hell is that?” He’d cobbled the vocation himself from shards of his former knighthood tied with the string of concocted peasant chivalry. Little better than a mummer in a play mouthing verse written by another, a minstrel strumming an instrument. No more real than the tattered honor that he struggled to believe he still possessed.

“My ‘true image’ indeed! If I owned a shred of my true self I should have fallen on my sword years ago. If I
had
a sword. Is it cowardice that keeps me alive?”

He glanced at the portrait before tossing it across the room. “She is truer than I. At least she knows what she is.”

He heard his own voice and touched his tender head. “What’s the matter with me? Must be a fever. Indeed, I do not feel well.”

He rocked his head in his hands for a time before raising his face. A chill breeze breathed over him from the window, feeling surprisingly refreshing to his beaded forehead.

The tiny portrait lay facedown among the straw. A crescent edge of frame gleamed. “I will not entertain the possibility,” he said to it. “I will not!” He glared at it, almost waiting for a response. The silence overwhelmed again, fell away with an echoed cry somewhere down the passageway, and welled again like something solid, encasing him in its shell. He stared again at the little portrait until a crack in the mortar of his defenses crumbled, only a little, and he crawled across the floor to recover the little painting and cradled it again in his palm. She still smiled at him. “You do not care about your past.” He shook his head, partly in wonder, partly in self-loathing. “How is it done?”

He gazed at the portrait for a long moment before embarrassment stiffened his shoulders and he stuffed the miniature back in his purse. He heaved a sigh, stood, and decided to start a fire in the hearth.

One of the better cells designed for nobler occupants, it boasted a fireplace and a bed. The other cells had no such luxuries. Most of London’s thieves and murderers shared a communal dungeon where food was scarce and warmth a mere memory. That Wynchecombe bothered to retain any proprieties and place Crispin in such a cell surprised him, but maybe the sheriff simply did it on instinct. Surely if Wynchecombe remembered, he’d move Crispin to a less hospitable place.

He found in the hearth small squares of peat left behind by the previous occupant, but the tinderbox was damp. He might ask the guards for dry tinder when they revisited, though if it were Malvyn who returned, he knew he could kiss a fire farewell.

“Well,” he said. “If I freeze to death then my worries are over.”

He decided to try to ignite the fire and covered the peat with the driest straw he could find. Spotting Malvyn’s whip, he took particular delight in tossing it on the fuel. Taking the tinderbox, he tried to ignite the straw.

He worked diligently for half an hour before the dry straw smoldered. Bending forward, he puffed a breath across the small flame. The peat began to burn but it was a cool fire. He sat with his back to it and rolled his shoulders into the small portion of warmth and watched the light from the arrow slit turn gray and slip slowly up the damp wall.

He stared at the wall opposite the fire—each carefully laid stone one more piece in the edifice that was Newgate, all flush against one another—and one irregular stone that refused to lay as flat as the wall.

“Christ!”

He rushed to the wall and felt the dried mud with his fingers. “I’m in the same damn cell!”

Behind that crude mortar that he placed himself lay the Mandyllon.

Peering through the spy-hole in the door and seeing no one in the passage, Crispin reached for his knife before remembering the sheriff had taken it. Instead, he used his fingernails to pry the stone loose and dropped it into one hand. He thrust a hand into the hole and touched the cloth with his fingertips. Dragging it out, he stoppered the hole again with the stone.

His thumbs rubbed the smooth cloth and he turned toward the fire and sat before the weak flames. Unfolding the cloth he first laid it on his lap and then raised it. The reflected light caught the image, so faint it was barely recognizable, yet it was recognizable enough to Crispin.

The Mandyllon. “
Vera icona
. True Image,” he snorted. If there was one thing he couldn’t afford to know, it was his true nature. Not now. “What are you?” he asked. His voice echoed softly in the dimming cell. “Is this truly the image of God?”

He ran his rough fingertips over the image, feeling nothing different in its texture. “If this is what everyone thinks it is, then what would you have me do with it?” He raised his face to heaven, but all he saw were dusty, wooden rafters. He looked back at the fire. “I would rather burn this than have it fall into the hands of the king—or any other villain. Tell me now, Lord, what you would have me do. Would this relic not be better out of the greedy hands of man?”

He waited, listening to the silence. He wasn’t certain if he expected a reply, but he caught himself holding his breath and expelled it unevenly. “Does your silence indicate affirmation? After all, I cannot speak an untruth in the Mandyllon’s presence. If this cloth is not of your doing then nothing is lost. If it is, then I say it is better destroyed.” He thrust the cloth toward the meager flames and waited.

He scanned the room. The gloom descended as the sun lowered. “You know how invincible Richard would become, he whose vain favorites rule the court. And these wretched Italians. Would you unleash them on the world?”

His hand clenched the fabric. He felt the smoke curl around his fingers, felt the warmth of the fire grow warmer on his wrist, but still he held the Mandyllon.

“The truth is not a blessing. It is a curse. Speak, Lord! Tell me! There is little time left.”

A clatter. A scrape. The key turned in the lock.

Crispin scrambled to his feet and thrust the cloth behind his back.

The door whined open and a silhouette blocked the door’s light.

“Well, Crispin?”

As close to the voice of doom as he had ever heard.