Blood Lance: A Medieval Noir

by Jeri Westerson

  “Truth is truth, no matter the messenger.” He bowed.

  More took the hint at last. He narrowed his eyes at Crispin before escaping out the door. Crispin listened to their footfalls gratefully before he rested against the closed door. “I grow weary of those two.”

  “And not one word of paying your fee, Master. They’ve got their nerve.”

  Jack suddenly clamped his lips shut. Someone was returning up the steps. Crispin didn’t hesitate to open the door, expecting one of the sheriffs.

  Instead, Sir Thomas pushed his way through and all but pounced on him. “Crispin! Where, by the saints, have you been? I waited an eternity for those sheriffs to depart.”

  “I’ve been out.” He bolted the door after him.

  Jack removed his wet cloak, hung it by the door, and then went immediately to the fire to stoke it.

  Thomas tore his gaze away from Crispin as he, too, removed his sodden cloak and draped it over the chair by the fire. Steam rose from the dank wool. The knight paced, wringing his hands. “I am being followed,” he said, striding back and forth across the tiny room.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes … NO! I … do not know.” He stopped before Crispin’s chair and clutched the back of it. “I think there were those following me.”

  “More than one man, you mean?”

  “Yes. But sometimes … sometimes my mind conjures these injuries where there is none. Now it is worse than ever.”

  “And so … no one may be following you?”

  “I tell you I don’t know!”

  Crispin breathed a long breath. “Sit down, Sir Thomas.” Jack was already beside him with a bowl of ale. “Drink, Thomas. And tell me what you would have me know.” He handed the man the bowl and he took it, slowly sinking to the chair.

  “My mind is besieged. I fear every shadow, every creak of wood. There were men following me. I know it.” The hand not holding the bowl clenched to a tight fist. “What am I to do?”

  “Have … have you surrendered yourself to the judges yet?”

  He shook his head, scrubbed his face, and shakily drank from the bowl.

  “You know you must. These shades that haunt you may very well be your conscience.”

  “I know, I know.” Shoulders slumping, his breath was harsh and irregular in the quiet room.

  “At least I found the armor that Master Grey made for you.”

  “Eh?” Thomas’s eyes were dulled and stared into a dim corner when he lifted his face.

  “Master Grey made you a fine new breastplate with your arms scrolled upon it. It will surely help with your trials to come.”

  “Yes. My trials. He is—was—a fine craftsman. Where is it?”

  “Back at his shop. I will go with you to fetch it, if you like.”

  “That is good of you, Crispin. You have been kind and patient with me. More than I deserve.”

  Crispin sat on the stool and scooted it closer to the man. “What has happened to you, Thomas?”

  He shook his head. Stubble peppered his chin. He had not combed his hair nor shaved. His whole appearance was that of a disheveled beggar. “I do not know. Would that I did. But I must face my judges and win my trials. Did you know the joust is to be on the bridge?”

  “I had heard that. I did not know it was to be for your trials.”

  “Why not? Sport and humiliation go hand in hand.”

  “You will be triumphant.”

  “You are so certain. I am not.”

  “Thomas—”

  “I am under no delusion, Crispin. I am as good as a dead man.”

  “No. NO! I refuse to believe it. And you must not. The battle is won in the mind first, you know this as well as I.”

  Thomas shot to his feet. “That is why I need that relic! Crispin, are you any nearer to finding it?”

  Guiltily, Crispin rose, too. “No, Sir Thomas, I am not. But—”

  “There shall be no more secrets between us, Crispin. I feared that you would somehow let it slip, that others would know and then they would seek it out and grasp it for themselves. And I could not allow that. But now I see the folly in this. I must tell you what it is. Then, sweet Jesu, you may find it for me and save my life.”

  Crispin waited, unwittingly grasping his dagger hilt with tightening fingers.

  “This armorer, this Master Grey,” said Thomas slowly. “He was a most ingenious fellow. He obtained this precious relic through means I know not of. Legal? I didn’t care. He had it and I wanted it. He wrote me letters, keeping me apprised of his dealings, and when he had it in his possession, he begged me to return to London to receive it along with my new armor.”

  “God’s death, Thomas. Tell me! What is it?”

  Softly, he said, “It is the Spear of Longinus, the Holy Lance; the spear that pierced the side of our Lord while he hung dying on the cross.” His red-rimmed eyes stared distantly with a glassy haze. “That very relic was to be in my hands, on the end of my lance. I would be victorious every time. He wrote me of its provenance. It was the true relic, Crispin, and it was to be mine. And now it is gone.”

  Crispin hadn’t realized that his mouth was hanging open until he shut it. He spared a glance at Jack, who was pressed against the wall beside the fireplace. He wore that same fishlike expression.

  “The … Holy Lance? Good Christ. What … where…” Crispin sat. “God’s blood, I never expected that.”

  “But you will search for it, will you not, Crispin? You made an oath to me.”

  “Yes, I know, but…” The man wasn’t even looking at him anymore. His thoughts were far away, and so were Crispin’s. On impossible tasks. But he had made an oath …

  Crispin gazed up into his rafters; dark, smoky, cobwebbed. “Thomas, at least go retrieve your armor. Talk to Master Coterel, the tailor next door. His daughter will get you inside.”

  Thomas said nothing more, didn’t even ask what Crispin meant. He simply rose and dragged his feet to the door.

  “One thing more,” said Crispin, stopping the knight. “The letters from Master Grey. Where are they? May I see them?”

  “I burnt them. I did not want anyone to know.”

  Crispin closed his eyes briefly, mourning the loss of a valuable clue. “Of course not. Regrettable.”

  Sir Thomas glanced at Jack, then Crispin, and nodded solemnly, before unbolting the door.

  When they could hear the tread of his feet on the steps no more, Crispin sat and stared into the fire. Jack came up beside him. “You don’t think that Master Grey really got the Spear, do you, Master?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  “What do you know of this relic, sir?”

  “Nothing. Only as much as anyone might.”

  “Then we’d best go to the Abbot of Westminster, eh? He knows all about relics and such. How else are we to find it?”

  “That is a very good suggestion, Jack. Let us go now.”

  * * *

  WESTMINSTER WAS BUSTLING AT midday, even through the rain. Though shopkeepers seemed to have empty shops, people were on the streets, moving from place to place or talking furtively in front of braziers.

  Crispin stopped a meat pie seller pushing his cart through the mud and bought a small hand-size pie each for Jack and himself. Remarkably, his was still warm when he bit into it, the flavors of clove and cinnamon awakening his tongue. The exertion of earlier seemed to have burned the illness out of him and he inhaled appreciatively, simply because he could. He could taste the pie, too, and he chewed enthusiastically, even though there was more gristle in it than meat.

  When he finished, he rubbed his hands together, divesting them of crumbs and grease. By then the abbey stood before them and Crispin led Jack through the ancient church to the south transept and asked a monk to allow him in to see the abbot.

  But instead of the young cleric hurrying him through as Crispin was used to, the monk apologized with a sorrowful expression. “Forgive me, Master Crispin. But the abbot is not here.” />
  “Not here? Where is he, then?”

  He becrossed himself and with a hitch in his voice declared, “He has taken ill, sir. Very ill. His chaplain, Brother John, has taken him to the abbot estates at La Neyte.”

  “His estates? But I saw him here only yesterday.” Crispin’s mind had suddenly stopped working. The abbot had always been at Westminster, seldom at his estates. He had known Nicholas a long time. He was Westminster Abbey. He was the architect of all the renewal and renovation the abbey had undergone, commissioning the Purbeck marble for the pillars, enlarging the abbey cloisters, and so many other innovations that Crispin had lost count. He did not want to contemplate the abbey without him, and, selfishly, he did not want to lose a friend and ally.

  “May I go to see him there?”

  “He is at his ease for the moment,” said the monk, sniffing and rubbing his nose. His eyes were red and ready to tear. “I think he would be pleased to see a friend.”

  “Then I will go. Thank you, Brother.” He bowed and Jack did likewise before following Crispin out.

  He walked dazedly away from Westminster, north toward Tothill Fields. Houses were few as they left the city behind.

  Jack had been quiet but he wiped the rain from his face, looked up at the darkly mottled sky, and sighed. “You’ve known the Lord Abbot a long time, sir?”

  Crispin’s thoughts had been on that. “Yes. All my life, in truth. But I did not know him well until I became a young man. At eighteen or so.”

  Jack said nothing more and followed Crispin down the muddy lane into the meadow and past small clusters of woodland at the slow rise of the land.

  They entered a wood—little more than a stand of sweet-scented laurels—and when they emerged again they came to the lane of a manor house surrounded by a low stone wall. There was no one at the gatehouse, and so they proceeded up the pathway to the front entrance. Crispin pulled the bell chain and waited. Presently, Brother John came to the door and bowed to him. “Master Guest,” he said. “Please come in. He will be cheered to see you.”

  They entered into a great hall and stood on straw, their cloaks dripping. Crispin discreetly shook out his heavy mantle and peeled back his hood. He moved forward at the urging of Brother John and entered into a room under an arched doorway just off the hall.

  A canopy hung over a bed, where the pale abbot lay propped up against a bedhead. He was not in his cassock as Crispin was used to seeing him, but instead in a chemise and a fur-trimmed bed gown. Crispin approached. The abbot appeared asleep, but when a floorboard creaked under Crispin’s boot, his eyes snapped open, focusing on him.

  “Crispin. So soon I see you again.”

  Crispin knelt by the bed. “My Lord Abbot. I heard that you had taken ill. It is not usual for you to retreat to La Neyte to take your ease.”

  “Ah, Crispin. Does not a dog at the end of his day return to the hearth? And so, too, do I. For I know I am at the end of my day.”

  “No, Nicholas. You are robust yet. It was only yesterday that Brother John was laying out your armor.”

  “No more battles for me. Please get up, Crispin. Here. Young Jack? Fetch a chair for your master and bring it here beside my bed.”

  Jack scrambled and found a folding chair in a corner by a window, grasped it by its arms, and hustled it back to the side of the abbot’s bed. Crispin swept his cloak aside and sat.

  “Though I am not a wagering man,” said the abbot, “I am willing to venture that you did not come to wish me well.” He held up his hand to Crispin’s protests. “I merely mean, Master Tracker, that you most likely went to the abbey to query me on some matter and discovered I was here.”

  Caught. Crispin shook his head. “It does not matter now, Nicholas.”

  “Oh come. My eyes are too weary to read and my ears too taxed to listen to Brother John.” He smiled, his wrinkled mouth furrowing. “So tell me, Master Guest. Use me, while there is light left in this soul.”

  Crispin glanced at Jack, and the boy, as usual, was standing behind his chair. “You know me too well, Father Abbot. Very well. This will pique your interest. I came to learn of the Holy Lance.”

  Nicholas’s eyes widened. “The Spear of Longinus? Crispin, I … it frightens me when you ask these questions.”

  “Frightens, my lord? I merely ask out of curiosity—”

  “It is not appropriate that you should lie to me, Crispin. We have known each other far too long. You have come to me for years asking about this relic and that. Haven’t you ever wondered? Haven’t you ever pondered why the Almighty has graced you with their care?”

  Crispin shifted on his seat. “I try not to think of that, Nicholas.”

  “But why? Crispin, I have contemplated God’s wishes for the many decades that I have been a brother in the Church, trying as best as a man can do to fulfill my vocation. I have prayed, I have built up His mighty church, an edifice of faith at Westminster. I have followed the dictates of my king, the anointed of God. Without the sin of pride, I can heartily say that I have done more than is required in sacrifice and suffering.” He touched his heart and bowed his head, his ermine hair swaying with the movement. “I have made a great study of the relics of his Holy Ones throughout Christendom. But Crispin, I have never experienced what you have undergone when guarding or returning His most holy relics back to their proper places. And yet you tell me you do not believe in their power.”

  Crispin drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair and stopped when he realized what he was doing. “My lord, I haven’t your strength of faith. I see them as objects of greed and envy, something to be bartered in the marketplaces. Something to be stolen. To kill for. I cannot see that they are a benefit to man when such ill-doings are associated with them. I’d rather they never existed.”

  Nicholas gasped and Crispin cursed himself for his wayward tongue. He was used to being honest with the monk, used to arguing with him. It did not occur to him that this was not the appropriate moment for such stark candor.

  “Forgive me, Nicholas. You know me. I give no quarter when my opinion is asked.”

  “Indeed not, Master Guest. Your frankness has always been valuable to me. But I see that you wear a blindfold when it comes to God’s relics.”

  “We mustn’t continue to have this argument,” he said kindly.

  Nicholas chuckled. “You are a most stubborn pupil.” He raised his eyes to Jack, still standing stoically behind Crispin’s chair. “Is it so, young man? Do you find your master to be a stubborn man?”

  Jack, startled to be addressed, paused. Finally, when Crispin twisted around to look at him, he lowered his eyes. “I must not say so, my lord.”

  Both Nicholas and Crispin laughed. “And perhaps a stubborn apprentice, as well,” said the old monk.

  “It’s what I deserve,” admitted Crispin.

  The abbot’s chuckle became a hum and he smoothed the crisp sheets with a quivering hand. “But we distract ourselves. We were speaking of a most holy relic, no? I take it you know what it is.”

  Crispin nodded. “It is the spear that a centurion used to pierce the side of Christ on the cross.”

  This time it was Jack’s turn to gasp. Over his shoulder, he heard his apprentice mutter a prayer.

  “When it pierced the side of our Lord, blood and water poured forth, the blood of our sins and the waters of baptism. Lancea Longini,” said Nicholas. “From the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus. The spear head, at least, was said to be passed from the family of this centurion, Longinus, to other holy men, who kept it in safekeeping for many years.” He licked his lips and coughed. “Please. A little wine.”

  Crispin rose but Jack was faster. He poured wine from a silver flagon into two silver-rimmed horn cups sitting on a sideboard. With a bow, he gave the first to the abbot and the second to Crispin.

  Nicholas smiled at Jack. “A fine apprentice,” he muttered before taking a sip, clearing his throat, and then sipping again. “As I was saying, the spear made many journeys to many place
s. Eventually, the spear tip was broken off and sent to France where, as you know, it is housed in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.”

  “Along with the Crown of Thorns,” said Crispin, drinking the pale Spanish wine.

  Jack leaned forward. “But Master! The Crown—”

  “Is back in Paris, Jack, where it belongs.” Minus a thorn or two, he mused to himself.

  The monk raised his hand. “However, the other piece of the spearhead disappeared. At one time, pilgrims have said to have seen it at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, but when Jerusalem was sacked by the Persian infidels, it made its way to Constantinople.”

  “Jack,” said Crispin out of the side of his mouth. “You’re breathing down my neck!”

  “Oh! Sorry, sir.”

  “And from thence,” the abbot went on, “it made its way to various churches, after which it seems to have disappeared. Though I greatly fear that you, Master Guest, are about to tell me where it is now and in what peril.”

  Crispin choked on his wine and Jack thumped his back until he turned to give the boy an evil eye.

  Setting his wine aside, Crispin straightened his coat. “I merely wished to discover its provenance, good abbot. It has not yet crossed my path, though … as you have guessed, I am charged with finding it.”

  “Bless me!” Agitated, the abbot jerked his hand and the cup spilled a patch of wine onto the sheets. “Oh! Look what I have done!”

  Jack pressed forward but it was Brother John who swooped in like a sparrow and with a cloth, blotted the golden wine until the abbot waved him off with an impatient mutter. “Don’t fuss, Brother John. You know I cannot abide it.”

  “My lord,” he said with a bow and stepped deftly away from the bed, glancing at Crispin as he passed.

  Nicholas wagged a finger at Crispin. “Master Guest, take care. This is a dangerous object. The owner of the Spear is utterly invincible.”

  “The thorns from the Crown were supposed to have the same influence.”

  “No. It is much more than the thorns from the Crown of Thorns. The thorns protected the man who was pure of heart. They made him invulnerable to harm. But the Spear is different. It imbues the owner with an invincibility unmatched. Why, he could conquer his enemies, wage war and be the victor, he could—”