Veil of Lies

by Jeri Westerson

  Crispin pulled his knife.

  Lionel shrank back and held up his empty hands. Crispin stopped himself and gritted his teeth. Lionel’s face filled with fear and that alone gave Crispin enough satisfaction, though a blade in the man’s gut would have gone further to cheer his mood. He looked the man up and down and made a disgusted huff before he slammed the knife back in its sheath.

  “Well?” asked Lionel, recovering. He panted. “I asked a question. If that cloth is authentic, you have no choice but to speak the truth. And I can see that you’d rather not.”

  “It—There was—” He pressed his lips tight before saying, “It’s true.”

  “Lord love me!” Lionel wiped off the perspiration above his upper lip.

  “And now I’ve a question.” Crispin raised the cloth, holding it between them. “Did you kill the imposter Nicholas?”

  For a moment, Crispin thought Lionel might run. His hands fisted, and his knees bent in an attitude of flight. Crispin’s body blocked the doorway. He knew he could outrun the corpulent merchant, but it was late, he was tired and wounded, and no one had offered him wine. He almost wanted Lionel to run, wanted to strike him. Looking at Lionel’s sweaty face and piggy eyes, remembering the cold-blooded murder, he decided that a little more violence may not be so bad.

  Lionel unwound his fists and straightened. “Ha!” he said halfheartedly. He seemed to take courage from the sound of his own voice. “What does it matter if I say so to the likes of you? Even if that damned cloth makes me say it, who’d listen to a traitor? Not the sheriff. I saw how he talked to you. Doesn’t trust you either.”

  “Did you?” Crispin asked again.

  Lionel threw out his chest like a cockerel and thrust his hands into his belt. “Yes,” he said at last. “I did.” He gestured toward the cloth clutched in Crispin’s hand. “That cloth, eh? Confession is good for the soul.” He walked slowly toward Crispin. “I thought the man was Nick, of course. Haven’t seen him in a score of years. When I saw it wasn’t, well. I thought his death would complicate things. Until I realized it made it easier.”

  “Did you do it for the money?”

  “Oh, yes. My business is no more. And Nick always had the best of everything. The best house, the best cloth, the best clients. And he was a true bastard about it. Well, no more. I reckoned he was already dead somewhere or this imposter couldn’t have taken his place. So good riddance to him. To the both of them. And I inherit all.”

  “Not quite all. There is Clarence. Or do you plan to kill him, too?” Crispin raised the cloth.

  “To tell the truth,” he said, eyeing the cloth, “I haven’t thought about it. But there is that possibility.”

  “You are a right bastard, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose I am. But I’m a rich one. And now.” He pulled his sword before Crispin could react. “I’ll take your knife and that cloth.”

  Crispin looked at the cloth in his hand, and tossed it to Lionel. He lifted the dagger from its sheath and held it a moment.

  “No tricks,” said Lionel. “Kick the dagger to me.”

  Crispin did as told and the blade rumbled across the plank floor.

  Lionel chuckled and raised the sword blade until it was level with Crispin’s chest and maneuvered Crispin away from the door. Lionel closed and locked it and then backed Crispin toward the window. “Now what’s to be done with you? I don’t suppose a man such as yourself would be missed too much if you vanished. And I know the perfect place to hide you. Just so happens there’s a passage in this room that takes you down to the garden where I can easily bury your remains. No more Nicholas Walcote and no more Crispin Guest.”

  “You have no morals whatsoever, do you?”

  “None at all.”

  “You’ll hang, you know.”

  “Only if I’m caught. Clearly you don’t have enough evidence or you wouldn’t have resorted to this Mandyllon.” Lionel clutched the cloth to his chest and inhaled triumphantly before he stuffed it into his scrip. “This needs safekeeping. I can’t risk your making me confess in front of someone important.”

  The wall creaked and the secret panel whooshed aside. Lionel jumped back. His red face turned a crabapple color and his double chins seemed to double again, quivering.

  The sheriff stepped into the room and placed a fist at his hip. “Am I important enough?”

  Lionel snapped his head toward Crispin and glared. His bushy brows seemed to reach out for him. “You son of whore!” He raised the sword and lunged, but Wynchecombe swung the bejeweled hilt of his sword at the back of Lionel’s head. Lionel’s momentum propelled him forward and he fell facedown on the floor. His sword flung from his hand, skidded across the planks, and slammed with a clang against the wall.

  “Two murders are quite enough,” growled the sheriff.

  29

  When Crispin returned from Newgate, he was grateful to find Jack waiting for him at his lodgings with a decent fire and a bowl of wine.

  Crispin took the bowl and settled in the chair. Jack shrieked and fussed at Crispin’s wound. He peeled the coat off and pulled back the shirt to dress the angry gash as best he could before he knelt at Crispin’s feet and pulled off the muddy boots. Crispin wiggled his toes toward the hearth, luxuriating in the feel of the warmth on his feet and the wine in his belly. He closed his eyes and leaned back. His shoulder throbbed, but the pressure of the dressing minimized the pain.

  “What happened at the bridge? How about that John Hoode being an Italian! Did you get him, Master Crispin?”

  “Yes, Jack. I got him. Whether he is poisoned by Lombardy spies or executed by English justice, his fate is sealed.”

  “What about Master Lionel? Did the sheriff arrest him?”

  “Indeed. All in all, Wynchecombe was pleased by the night’s proceedings. Not only did he foil a foreign conspiracy but he caught the killer of a rich merchant.”

  “Him? He didn’t do nought. It was you!”

  Crispin waved his hand. “I care not. I have my freedom and that is enough.”

  Jack settled on the floor by the fire and rubbed his upraised knees. “Blind me! They’ll hang him, won’t they? That will make Master Clarence the master of Walcote manor, then.”

  They sat for a time listening to the timbers creak and the fire whisper in the hearth.

  “In the morning,” Crispin said softly, “I shall see how Philippa fares. You brought her to Master Clarence safely, I trust.”

  “Oh aye, Master. But it is already morning.” He rose and cracked open a shutter and looked out at a misty dawn. He shivered and closed it again and returned to the fire. “What of that cloth? Who’s got it now?”

  “‘An offering made to the Lord by fire.’” Crispin smiled. “It’s been offered back to God. I burned it.”

  Jack stopped rubbing his hands and stared at Crispin. “’Slud! Master! What made you do such a thing?”

  Crispin stared down into his empty bowl. The wet wood gleamed, seeming to ask for more. “You know I don’t believe in such things, Jack.” Though even as he said it he remembered with a shiver his hours in the cell. He shook it off and stared into the flames. “So many have died trying to possess the Mandyllon. It seemed more hazardous than holy.” He positioned the bowl on his upraised fingers and turned the object, toying with it. “Besides, if there was the least possibility that it did have some power, I couldn’t let it fall to the hands of anyone who coveted it.”

  “Was there no priest, no church you trusted? What of the abbot of Westminster? Or the Archbishop of Canterbury?”

  “Not even them. Power corrupts. ‘We must as second best take the least of the evils.’ So said Aristotle. I made the choice. I stand by it.”

  Jack took the bowl from Crispin’s fingers and refilled it with wine. He shook his head. “I suppose that’s the difference between the likes of you and me, Master. I’d never be able to take such responsibility.”

  Crispin took the bowl and sipped its contents. “You forget. I was tr
ained for many years to be a leader. I led many into battle, after all. And I ran my own estates and oversaw Lancaster’s affairs.”

  “Aye. Far from my like, to be sure. Lords and servants. Miles apart.”

  Crispin frowned at Jack’s words and silently drank, immersing his thoughts and his nose in the wine’s tangy aroma.

  A knock on the door made them both turn. Jack rose, straightened his frayed tunic, and opened the door.

  Philippa stood on the threshold clutching her hood to her face.

  Crispin snapped to his feet and pulled his chemise to cover his bandaged shoulder. He felt a little vulnerable in his stocking feet.

  “May I come in?” she asked, her voice husky.

  Jack looked at Crispin and Crispin nodded. The boy motioned her in and slipped through the door behind her, closing it, but not before Crispin caught sight of his smile in the crack between door and jamb.

  Crispin stared at the back of Philippa’s head when she’d lowered her hood. The golden hair glimmered with rusty streaks. A tantalizing curl sat at the base of her neck where the hair parted. Crispin thought long and hard about pressing his lips there.

  She stared into the fire. Their last awkward meeting when he left her at the Boar’s Tusk rose in his mind, and he tingled with the same discomfort.

  “Philippa, why are you here? Did Master Clarence tell you to leave?”

  “No. He did not. He was most gracious, in fact.”

  He took a step closer. Her nearness felt like heat on his face. “What’s happened?”

  “I had to come as soon as I could. The whole house was in an uproar with Lionel being taken away. Maude is having a fit.” She said it with a certain satisfied slant to her mouth. “Clarence is ready to cast her out.”

  “I see. These are quieter surroundings, then. Peaceful.”

  She turned. The satisfied smile left her and the usual slope of her lids was not there. “There’s nothing peaceful about your lodgings.”

  He moved to stand before the fire but not quite next to her. Smoke rolled over the hearthstone and trembled up his thighs. He smelled the aroma of burnt dreams. “Then why are you here? I intended to come to you this morning.”

  “This can’t wait, I fear.” She raised her chin. “You see, Clarence has asked me to marry him.”

  Something seemed to rush past him. He wasn’t entirely certain what it was. He felt it like a blizzard of ice crystals stinging his face or the slap of a woman’s hand. “These are…sudden tidings.”

  “He’ll inherit all the family wealth, you see. And he—well, he says he trusts me to help him run the house and the business, since I knew it so well. I think also he took a fancy to me.”

  “I see. It makes sense.” His chest was tight. He forgot to breathe. “It’s practical. You will retain your riches and your home. You will not do better than Clarence Walcote.”

  She faced him squarely. “I haven’t had any other offers.”

  He didn’t mean to, but he looked at her. Her face was harder than before. He owed it to all her recent experiences.

  She opened her mouth and her red lips snapped down on the words. “Why don’t you tell me not to marry Clarence?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You could make an offer yourself.”

  He turned his face away.

  “Have you no feelings about me at all?”

  He felt her glare on his cheek. He stiffened. “Is it not enough I confessed that I loved you?”

  She shook her head. “The Mandyllon made you say it. But it can’t make you act on it.”

  “Women,” he grumbled under his breath. “They want it all and only on their terms.”

  “What other terms are there?” She smiled briefly. “Why did you not kiss me when I first came in?” He said nothing. She turned her back on the fire to look at him. She stood that way a long time. “Of course,” she said, sobering, “the true reason you will not make an offer to me is because knights don’t marry chambermaids. Ain’t that it?”

  “I’m not a knight.”

  “Oh aye, you are. In here,” and she tapped her chest. “Always. It is your true self and you can’t shake it. I saw it when you took me to the Boar’s Tusk. You couldn’t stand for people to see you hold me. What would they think, after all?”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You call that man Gilbert Langton your friend, but you can barely stand to be there. Oh, it’s a fine place to drink, because that is the purpose of such a place. But it’s not because of Master Gilbert. It’s because you can hide there.”

  He turned assassin’s eyes on her. “Are you finished?”

  “I thought my life was wretched. But yours is far worse. You’ve chosen a lonely life, Crispin.”

  His frown deepened. “Not chosen.”

  “I’m not so certain.”

  He made a furious sound and walked in a circle, holding out his arms. “Look around you!” he burst out. “This is no great manor, no palace.”

  “I didn’t ask for one.”

  “No? Then why consider Clarence?”

  “Because he asked me.” Her blunt answer stilled his tongue. “If you don’t want me to marry Clarence, then say so now.”

  “Or forever hold my peace? I’ve already told you. This is no fit place to bring a wife.”

  She made a defeated nod. “It’s a shame,” she said. “You might have been happy. But truth to tell, I don’t think you want to be.”

  She turned to go and almost reached the door when she stopped. She pulled a small pouch from her scrip and placed it with care on the table. “It’s your payment. What the sheriff took and what Nicholas owed you. It’s only fair. You did find the Mandyllon and you saved me from Mahmoud. That makes you paid in full now, doesn’t it?” Her fingers lingered on the little pouch and then drew away. Her hand slid across the table till it fell flat against her thigh. “I don’t need palaces,” she whispered, not looking at him. “Neither do you.”

  She hesitated, waiting for him, but his lips pressed grimly together.

  With a sigh, she pulled open the door and walked across the threshold. Crispin lifted his head in time to see the tail end of her train ripple over the floorboards.

  The door hung open and he stared at the empty hole for a long time, not thinking, not feeling, until Jack’s head poked in. “Master, may I come in?”

  Crispin answered by dropping heavily into the chair and laying his arm on the table. He stared past the little pouch.

  Jack slid into the room and closed the door. He stood for a moment at the doorway before he moved toward the fire. Toying with a folded parchment, he looked up at Crispin and handed it to him. “A messenger came and delivered this for you.”

  Crispin turned it over to look at the wax seal, but it bore no arms. He let it rest on his thigh.

  “I couldn’t help but hear through the door—”

  Crispin stared at the pouch on the table with jaw clenched.

  “Master. Why don’t you go after her?”

  Crispin’s jaw relaxed and he sighed, feeling the years on his shoulders. He reached forward and touched the pouch. “Because I can’t dispute anything she said.”

  “You ain’t a mighty lord now. What difference does it make who you marry?”

  “Because it matters, Jack. She was right. It matters to me and it always will. The veil has been drawn aside and I was forced to look into myself. I’m not certain I liked what I saw.”

  “Can’t a body change?”

  “No. At least—it may take a very long time.” They both fell silent. Crispin remembered the parchment in his hand. He rose, strode to the fire, and flicked his thumbnail under the wax seal. He unfolded it and read:

  His Majesty was pleased that his taxes are safe again. Rest assured he knows to whom the credit truly falls. Perhaps the king will not stay angry forever. I counsel patience, Crispin. But in the meantime, I caution you from coming to court again.

  God keep you.

  The
letter was unsigned but Crispin recognized Lancaster’s hand. He read it over once more and lowered the paper.

  With his free hand he drew Philippa’s portrait from his purse. He cradled it in his hand and gazed at it. He looked toward the fire. For a moment he thought about tossing the painting in. Let the flames consume it as they had the Mandyllon. He had thought that burning the cloth would remove the truth. But it was never easy escaping the truth for long.

  He glanced at the letter and then the miniature portrait, ran his finger along its gold-leafed frame, and slowly slipped it back in his purse.

  Afterword

  Why “Medieval Noir”?

  There is something about the dark, the seamier side of things that attracts me. This is realized in the precise prose and staccato dialogue of such specialists as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Dorothy B. Hughes. Their fiction centered on a different slice of reality, one of starkness, harsh lighting, deep shadows, manly men with their own code of honor. And of course the women. Always in danger or always dangerous.

  It seemed to me a perfect fit to drop a hard-boiled detective in the middle ages, even though the notion of a “private detective” was still centuries away. While there seemed to be a plethora of monks and nuns in the field of medieval mystery, my goal was to offer something different. I wanted to bring something darker and edgier to the genre. Here is a period rife with intrigue, codes of honor, mysterious doings, and dim, shadowy light. It screamed for a detective more like Sam Spade than Brother Cadfael.

  A note on some details: Sheriff Simon Wynchecombe was in reality one of two sheriffs of London at that time (who could make up a name like that?). I also embroiled poor Crispin in all the fractured politics of Richard II’s reign. Though there were historical instances—very few—of degraded and disseised (forcibly dispossessed) knights, they were either executed or banished and generally not thrown into the degree of poverty that Crispin was. The fact that he is so depleted from what defined him—his wealth and status—makes for an interesting and sympathetic character: King Richard murders him without actually killing him. The irony—for those students of English history—is that the same fate eventually befalls King Richard himself when, seventeen years later, he is forced to abdicate and is subsequently murdered.