The Demon’s Parchment cg-3

by Jeri Westerson

  He was nudged awake by the proprietress, Eleanor, some hours later. The jug lay empty on its side mere inches from his lax fingers. Still feeling the indentations of the wooden table impressed into his cheek, he wiped a bit of spittle from the side of his mouth. She looked a little blurry to his wine-soaked eyes but he could tell her displeasure right enough.

  “Go home, Crispin. This is no inn.”

  He didn’t argue. He drew himself up—feeling as if he were a sack of rocks—and staggered toward the door. Drunk he was, but not as numb as he would have liked to be.

  The cold slapped his cheeks hard. He shook out his shaggy head, trying to stay awake. Clumped flakes of snow fell about him, wet blossoms landing and sticking to his dark cloak. He let them. Above him, a cluster of dark clouds and a washed-out sky added to his sense of despair. There was little relief in the landscape of London. White smoke curled from every chimney, and shutters were tightly closed, allowing only splinters of light to streak across the opaque streets. What did it matter? Go home, Eleanor had told him. To the Shambles? That wasn’t his home. It was just the place he lived. Giles de Risley lived in his home. His home, goddammit! He was raised there. His sister and brothers were born there. Born and died in that same manor house. As a young man, Crispin had kept safe the Guest household with the help of his mentor, John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster. But kept safe to what end?

  Did Lancaster know? What did it matter if he did? He could no more save Crispin’s home than he had saved his miserable life. Oh, yes. He had been saved from the gibbet, right enough, but was this life?

  Crispin leaned heavily against a wall, the roughened daub, pilling the threads of his cloak. His lover gone to Giles, his home. It seemed like too much. True, it hadn’t belonged to him in some seven years, but still the thought of it, lying fallow all this time. The friendly halls of his youth, the warm solar, his rooms with the embroidered bed curtains. How many nights had he spent staring at those horsemen galloping across those curtains and dreaming that this would be him someday, on a steel-gray charger, sword drawn, hacking the heads from infidels? And it had been. He had been a noble and valorous knight. He had proven himself time and again in battle and on the lists. Crispin had been a force to be reckoned with. He had become everything he had wanted to be. Lancaster had been proud. Crispin was pleased to make him so.

  And then it all fell apart.

  Pushing himself away from the wall, he trudged on. Shops were closing early from the fading light and the heavier snowfall. The aroma of stews competed with the sharp stench of the Shambles as he turned the corner. A fishmonger was sliding the slippery remainder of his basket of eels back into an urn filled with water. His apprentice mopped fish scales from the doorstep into the frozen gutter.

  Crispin reached the dark, narrow stairwell squeezed between his landlord’s tinker shop and a butcher’s house. He stepped onto the creaky bottom step and dropped his key into the slush twice before Martin Kemp opened the door of his shop to see what the noise was. He looked Crispin over with a shake of his head. Crispin ignored him and staggered up the stairs. He never got a chance to fit the key in the lock. Jack yanked the door open, his face awash with worry. “At last!”

  He shoved Jack aside and stumbled into his chair, which Jack had positioned in front of the fire. A peat fire. Not the large logs of oak that Crispin had enjoyed at the manor in Sheen. He barely noticed Jack kneeling at his feet to pull off his sodden boots, or pull his cloak free of his shoulders. He did raise a brow when Jack stood uncertainly next to his chair with the jug and bowl in his hands.

  “Think I’ve had enough?” growled Crispin.

  “Truth be told, sir . . . yes.”

  “Bring it here.”

  “Master. You’ve been in the Boar’s Tusk all afternoon—”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Mistress Langton sent a message.”

  “Eleanor should mind her own business. As should you. I said bring it here.”

  Jack hesitated. His fingers curled tighter around the jug’s handle.

  “God’s blood! Can I not expect to be obeyed in my own house!” But then the words sunk in. It was as far from his “own” house as could be imagined.

  He lumbered up from his seat, lunged at Jack, and grabbed the jug. He sloshed most of its contents when he pulled it free from the boy’s grip. He didn’t bother with the cup. He planted his lips on the jug’s rim and knocked it back, spilling more down his neck, shuddering at the cold of it. But only when he had drained it did he set it aside.

  “I’m hungry,” he growled.

  “W-we have pottage, sir.”

  “Well then?”

  Jack timidly pulled the iron arm from the fire from which a small kettle hung. He picked up the bowl from the floor where Crispin had tossed it, and carefully ladled the thick soup into it. He handed the bowl to Crispin with a quivering hand. Crispin took it without thanks and drank the liquid without tasting. Pottage again and again. Peasant food. Where was the meat he deserved? Where the sweetmeats and honeyed fruit?

  When he finished he made noises about having more. Jack shuffled forward. Crispin had not noticed whether Jack had partaken or not. “If you have more now, sir, there will be nothing for breakfast.” Jack’s eyes glanced toward the pantry shelf. Crispin did not need to look. He knew how empty it was.

  He hunkered down in his chair and pulled the blanket from the bed over his legs.

  The room was dark except for the fire. Jack said nothing, merely added more peat and small sticks now and again to urge the timid flames to life. He coughed a few times at the smoke and darted a wary glance at Crispin occasionally, but the creaking rafters and the flicker of fire were all the sounds in the room for a while.

  Until Jack finally spoke.

  “Master Crispin,” he said quietly. “Forgive me. I don’t always understand courtly ways. But . . . did you not lose your family estate some years ago when you was . . . was banished from court?”

  Crispin’s curt “Yes!” cut knife-sharp into the room’s stillness.

  “So why does it fret you so now?”

  The wine was heavy in his belly but it did not muddle his mind as much as he had hoped. “Of course it was the king’s to dispose of as he would. But . . . my home, Jack!”

  “I know, Master. It is a sour thing. But . . . so long ago.”

  “For generations, the Guests have lived there. The barony, too, was granted to my ancestor by King Henry II and each generation has been knighted in turn—” His broken voiced unmanned him and he shot from the chair. But the wine had addled him more than he realized and he stumbled. Jack caught him with a surprisingly strong hand.

  “Go to bed, Master Crispin. It will be better in the morning.” He pulled Crispin toward his small bed and pushed him down. “Shall I help you with your clothes?”

  He waved him off. He fell back against the straw-stuffed pillow and closed his eyes. Yes, perhaps sleep was what he needed. God grant him a dreamless sleep. For once.

  He woke badly. His head was pounding and his tongue felt thick and dry, his belly queasy. A pot rattled against another, sounding like the gong of a bell. “Stop that godforsaken noise!” he bellowed.

  The pot crashed hard into the hearth. Crispin cringed and squinted at it. Jack stood with fists dug deep into his boney hips. He was scowling.

  “I must care for you, drunk or no, or whether you suffer from its ill effects, because you are my master. But you must stop growling at me! I’m doing me best. If you didn’t drink so much . . .” He let the sentence linger, never finishing it. He grabbed the pot again and hoisted it with a grunt onto its hook over the flames, nudging another smaller clay cauldron sitting on a grate, the flames licking its bowed sides. Crispin watched the steaming water slosh into the pitiful fire, hissing as it met orange coals.

  Vaguely, he thought of apologizing, but he was still awash in too much self-pity to utter the words. “Hmpf” was what he managed instead, and threw his legs
over the side of the bed, wrapping the blanket around his shivering shoulders.

  “Now then,” said Jack, standing over him and thrusting a steaming bowl toward his face. “I’ve made peas porridge. It ain’t much and it’s a bit watery, but thank the saints we have something to eat.” He waited as Crispin stared at it. Finally, he lifted a hand and cupped the bowl in his fingers. Porridge again. He brought it to his lips and drank. Jack was right. There was more water than grain and meat, but it warmed and managed to still his belly.

  “Thank you,” he grumbled.

  Jack nodded and poked at the fire. “The water for your shave will be ready anon.”

  Crispin sighed. It was times such as these that he realized how much a luxury it was having Jack at his side. A man in his present position could surely never afford the likes of a servant. Though he had not thought so at the time, saving Jack from the sheriff all those months ago and finding the boy in his service had been fortunate indeed.

  A knock on the door made them both jump. Jack was on his feet, the poker in his hand like a weapon. He looked at Crispin to see whether he should answer it.

  He nodded to him. Dropping the blanket, he stood unsteadily on his stocking-clad feet.

  Jack timidly opened the door, hiding the poker behind it, and then pulled it opened wider.

  A man wearing the livery of the Sheriff of London stepped into the threshold and looked around, a dubious expression on his face. “I seek Crispin Guest.” The tone of his voice seemed to convey that he would not find such a person on these premises.

  Crispin straightened and mustered as much dignity as his mussed hair and slept-in clothes could impart.

  The man frowned. His eyes flicked toward each corner of the modest room; from ramshackle bed, to chest, to table. “Very well,” he muttered. He pulled the pouch slung over his shoulder toward the front and threw open the flap. Reaching inside, he withdrew several scrolls. He looked first at Jack and then at Crispin, not quite knowing to whom he should give them. He settled on placing them on the table. “From the sheriff,” he said unnecessarily.

  Crispin and Jack stared at the man a moment longer before he seemed to decide his presence was no longer needed. He bowed and backed out of the room, rumbling down the rickety stairwell.

  Jack closed the door and Crispin fingered the scrolls. His head was still unsettled but the face of that dead boy in his mind did much to sober him. Sitting, he reached for a scroll and unrolled it. Jack pulled up beside him on his stool and peered over his arm, staring at the tight scrawl. Crispin had begun to teach Jack to read Latin, French, and English, and though the boy was a quick study, he had little patience for his lessons. But Crispin supposed that crime was more intriguing fare, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as Jack’s lips worked over the words.

  Crispin read for himself. These were copies of the Coroner’s rolls: the people he had questioned, the answers they gave, the Coroner’s conclusions based on these questions and answers. It was plain that the Coroner did not know who the dead boy was and was no closer to finding his killer than was Crispin.

  He grabbed another scroll, leaving the last in the hands of Jack, who was still mouthing his way through it, ginger brows furrowed deep into amber eyes.

  Another dead boy. Not the one Crispin had seen. This corpse was found two months prior, though not in London. Again, he had been fished from the Thames but more upstream. Perhaps, then, the murders were not committed in London after all, but further afield.

  But the body Crispin had seen was not waterlogged. It could not have traveled down the Thames too far, not as far as this other one. When he read the accounts of the other dead boys, they were found even further up the Thames. It seemed the killings approached London slowly over the course of a few months. Where had this killer been? And why had he come to London?

  “It’s the Devil,” whispered Jack, his face pale. He was reading over Crispin’s shoulder again. “Unspeakable.”

  “Yes.” These boys were all Jack’s age or younger and none of them seemed to be notable sons of noble families. It was possible they were the sons of merchants, but no one had claimed them. Crispin suspected they were lowlier than that. They were the invisible. Beggar boys, possibly. Wayward apprentices. He felt Jack’s warmth at his side. The thought that a similar fate could have befallen Jack Tucker made his skin crawl.

  He rolled up the parchments and set them aside. Staring into the fire, he tossed the cold facts inked on those parchments back and forth through his brain. “Four boys. Dead. Spaced apart in a matter of months. What links them, Jack? What did they have in common?”

  “It does not say, sir.”

  “Nor would it. But there is something that is common to all of them. And through this knowledge, we shall come close to finding their killer.”

  A knock on the door drew both their heads swiveling sharply. The sheriff’s messenger again? Perhaps a client? He nodded to Jack’s questioning eyes, and the boy hurried to the door, opening it.

  A boy, a page, shifted uncomfortably on the landing. “I . . . I seek Crispin Guest.”

  This is the day for it, thought Crispin. “I am he,” he said, rising and approaching the door.

  The boy looked Crispin over with an air of disappointment. “I bear a message from the physician Jacob of Provençal. He wonders where you were two days ago and entreats you to come to the place he advised previously at the same appointed time.”

  Crispin clenched his jaw. Yes, he must see to this. For the rent and his belly. “Yes, boy. Tell him I will come tonight.”

  He bowed to Crispin, flicked his eye at Jack, and scurried down the steps.

  There was little to do for the rest of the day except to study the Coroner’s rolls. Jack made a trip to the poulterer’s at the other side of the tinker shop and returned with an old, tough pullet that he roasted over the fire, filling the small room with the aroma of sweet, cooked flesh at last. With a stew of turnips and leeks, Jack fed them well. He produced an apple at the end of the meal and Crispin was so glad to see it that he refused to question how Jack acquired such a treat.

  By late afternoon it was time to make the trek back to Westminster. They bundled in their cloaks and headed out along Fleet Street where it became the Strand outside the city walls. It was cold but not snowing. Merchants were still out in full force, calling their wares before the day was spent. Many sat bundled in their stalls, large fires glowing in their shop hearths or in iron braziers outside, while their apprentices labored in colder back rooms.

  Crispin kept half an eye on Jack, who was alert and observing the activity of London with acute ears and wide-open eyes. The boy was no fool. He was clever. But what of these other boys? Were they snatched from the streets without a fight? Had they been in stews, selling themselves to perverted men? Crispin thought of the things he had done to earn a crust of bread once he had been cast from court. Mucking the privies had seemed an insult to his character but he had endured it. He had to. But a boy with few choices had either to beg, steal, or service men for coin. Such was one’s lot. Jack could have no more chosen his way in life than had Crispin.

  They moved without speaking, each deep in their own thoughts. They stopped once at a meat pie seller and shared half a pie as they continued on. The bells tolled for None by the time they reached Charing Cross, though little could be seen of a sun hidden behind a dull expanse of cloud cover.

  Crispin stood again at the place they had found the little corpse. He skidded down the embankment and walked along the muddy shore while the tide was out. Seagulls pecked at rocky crevices and waddled awkwardly over the stones, lumbering to stay a few paces ahead of him. Along the river, skiffs and other small boats carried fishermen or ferried workers and goods to and from each bank. He watched a dirty-faced boy sitting at the stern of such a craft, clutching the boat as an older man beside him forced the tiller into the waves. The sail flapped as it caught the wind, and the boy shivered, watching Crispin. They disappeared around a barge,
heading upriver toward Westminster Palace.

  The wind swept up the Thames and battered his hood, trying to pull it away from his whipping hair. “Somebody must be missing these children,” he murmured.

  “Not if they was like me, sir,” said Jack beside him.

  Crispin started. He had been so engrossed in his thoughts he had forgotten Jack. He looked up at the sky. Still light. Nightfall was still some hours away. He carefully climbed back up the embankment and stood with his hands at his hips, staring down the muddy streets, with their frosty rooftops and slithering smoke. “You take this street, Jack. And I shall take this one.”

  “Er . . . ‘take’ it, sir? For what?”

  “To question the merchants, of course. Ask them if they have heard of any boy who had gone missing. Even if it is a rumor.”

  Jack gnawed on his lip and shuffled his muddy shoes. “Beggin’ your pardon, Master Crispin. But they won’t be answering any fool questions from me.”

  “Hmm?” he asked, distracted. “Why not?”

  “Well, look at me, sir. I ain’t in no fit state. They’d think I was a beggar.”

  Crispin turned and measured young Jack, from his torn stockings to his beleaguered hood that he kept closed by pinching it tight at his chin. “Tell them you are on the Sheriff of London’s business—”

  Jack guffawed, showing a chipped tooth. “Go on!”

  With a sigh of resignation Crispin nodded. “Very well. Tell them you are an emissary of the Tracker. No doubt they have heard of me even on these streets.”

  “Aye. That might do. But if they box me ears for impertinence, it’s on your head.”

  Crispin smiled. “I shall gladly carry the burden.”

  Jack nodded once and was off, looking back warily.

  With a snort at insolent servants, he headed to the first shop on the street he had chosen. These were further in from the Thames; shops and houses that the Coroner had not questioned.

  Crispin repeated the exercise all the way to the end of the street, where Jack met him, rubbing his arms to keep warm. The light was slanting toward the horizon now. The sparse trees in back gardens were becoming dark silhouettes against the sky. Slushy flakes began to fall, speckling the lane. “Have you yielded anything?” he asked the boy.