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

by Jeri Westerson

  He slammed his free hand on the table. “Do not play games with me.” He eased back and chuckled unpleasantly. “I happen to know that saintly Rosamunde spent her free time swyving Gaston D’Arcy.”

  This time she slapped his face. He expected it, relished its sharp thwack and the sting. He smiled broader and slurped the wine. “Such coy games you used to play with me. Only letting honorable Crispin go so far, touch only so much. What was the matter? Was I not comely enough for you?” He slid closer and looked her over like a man scrutinizing a tavern wench. His hand snaked forward to capture her waist and he pulled her snuggly against him. “How about now?” He tightened his grip and kissed her noisily and sloppily, prizing open her cold mouth and stabbing in with his tongue. When she would not react, he let her go and sagged back. He smiled again. “No. I didn’t think so.”

  He drank his wine and poured more into the bowl. “Will you drink with me, Rosamunde? Like old times?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Maybe. Maybe. But not quite as drunk as I intend to be. Not yet.”

  “And this,” she gestured distastefully to him, “is what stands in the way of freeing my brother and my servant? You. Look at you. Bruised and beaten from some tavern brawl, no doubt. You, of all people, are a witness to their character and their actions.”

  He nodded and chuckled. “Yes. Amusing, is it not? I am the witness, who has witnessed so much in this life already.” He raised his head unsteadily to look at her. Her eyes were dark like coal smudges on her pale face, and even the candlelight could not warm it with its generous yellow tones. “You have a look on your face, my dear. Do I disgust you?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He laughed. “Then why did you not wipe my kiss from your mouth?”

  Her expression hardened but her pouting lips remained moist. “Crispin, I came to reason with you.”

  “I am beyond reason, my lady. Well beyond. And if you will excuse me, I must go to the latrine and piss away the rest of my reason.” He rose but grabbed his wine bowl and drank it down. Setting it back on the table he kissed her cheek wetly. “I shall be back. Don’t go away.”

  He staggered to the door and found a privy in the rear courtyard. He hummed to himself and made water down the privy’s pit, thinking about his early days of disgrace when he spaded out such muck and dumped it into his wheelbarrow. In the earliest hours of the morning, he would roll that wheelbarrow throughout London, his frown deep behind his scarf. “How the mighty have fallen,” he had muttered to himself, never thinking he deserved any of it. He’d go back to the hovel he lived in, reeking from the morning’s activity.

  He brushed the memories aside. Tying his braies and adjusting his coat, he smiled to himself. At least those days were behind him. He found respect amongst his fellows at the Tusk and even begrudgingly with the sheriff. Perhaps time could erase the past and make a new life, remake him anew. If not with Rosamunde then some other willing woman.

  He sauntered back inside, not shoving his way this time, but patting the men on the shoulders whom he moved past, smiling in wine-soaked congeniality at grins and hoisted cups.

  He returned to his table in the dark shadows of the back of the room and was surprised to find Rosamunde still there. She refilled his wine bowl and set it before him with a grim expression.

  He took it up and drank. “Much thanks, Rosamunde,” he said and took another swallow, downing almost all of the bowl’s contents.

  Steadily she watched him drink, every motion he made—tilting back the cup, drinking deeply, licking his lips—until he put the cup down and smiled at her. “Perhaps you are having second thoughts about me,” he said, leaning on an elbow. “It’s not too late, you know. You don’t have to marry that Frenchman.”

  She was surprised but it quickly faded. “You know about that too.”

  He patted her hand. It was cold. “Dearling, I know much about you.”

  “Yes. I was afraid you did.”

  Her hand clenched something which he tried to decipher in the dim light. “What’s that?”

  “This?” She raised it so he could see the small ceramic vial with a cork stopper. “It is an empty vial.”

  He chuckled, his sodden mind believing the most mundane things to be funny. “Why do you carry an empty vial, my dear?”

  “It was not empty a moment ago.”

  “Oh? Where did it go?” Yet even as he asked, he felt an unnatural sensation creep through his limbs. Not ordinary drunkenness. That was familiar. This was different. It dragged his extremities into thick heaviness like weights were attached to points of his body and he was falling down an abyss. And then his vision blurred and his heart quickened. His throat unaccountably tightened, like fingers pressing harder and harder.

  He glared at Rosamunde, but her bland expression revealed nothing.

  “Rosamunde,” he rasped. “What have you done?”

  “I have killed you,” she said calmly.

  She spoke so plainly as if to a servant asking for something as simple as a bowl of wine. Her deed meant no more to her than that. “Rosamunde…” He couldn’t say more. His lungs screamed. He clutched the table in order to breathe. His heart hammered so hard he thought it would burst.

  “You were getting much too close,” she said in the same becalmed manner. She looked at the vial in her hand and turned it in the dim light. “But without you, there will be no reason to condemn Stephen or Jenkyn. Stephen knew nothing of this. I told you that. Jenkyn wanted to help but he was too afraid. In the end, I was the one to buy the poison, and I was only too happy to administer it. You were right about Gaston and me. I do not know how you discovered it, but you are a clever man.” She sighed deeply and stared at the table. “It was lovely at first. Such a change from the dried lips and cankerous hands of my husband.” She smiled, the dimpled corners of her mouth rising. “Oh, you needn’t worry over him. He died a natural death. Though had I known how easy it was, I should have killed him years ago.”

  Crispin’s chest ached and burned, partly from the poison’s effects, but mostly because he could not believe her words. He did not want to listen, but he couldn’t move.

  “But Gaston…such a passionate man. I imagined you might have been the same. For many years, you see, when lying in my husband’s bed, I did think of you, Crispin. When he touched me, I closed my eyes and told myself it was you. And when he put his foul-breathed mouth on me, my thoughts were only of you and your sweet lips. But as the years past, I could no longer conjure your face. You abandoned me, abandoned us. When Gaston came along, it was as if new life was breathed into me. I had been a corpse for seven years and suddenly for seven weeks I was reborn. But he became demanding, coarse. When Stephen secured my betrothal I told Gaston it was over, but he would have none of it. Gaston threatened to tell my betrothed, to extort me for his silence. That was when Jenkyn suggested I kill him. But he was too weak to do it himself. So I did it.” She glanced over Crispin in his effort to breathe. “I know what you are thinking. Why did I not go to Stephen? But how could I confess my disgrace? It was not possible to ask him to do it. So I came here to Gaston one last time, not too far from where we are now sitting, and I poured him a bowl of wine—just as I did for you—and I added the poison. It did not take him long to die, but I did not wait to see his final breaths. Later, Jenkyn told me he came here to do the deed himself, but again, his courage failed him. Of course Gaston was already dead, but poor Jenkyn did not know that.”

  Crispin sank toward the table. Only the weakening strength of his forearms upheld him. Every muscle in his body cramped and his heart hammered relentlessly. He gasped, casting blindly about the room for someone to notice, someone to come to his aid. He saw neither Gilbert nor Eleanor.

  “The apothecary was more difficult,” she went on. “When I discovered you were investigating the murder and that you were seeking the man who sold the poison, I could not risk his discovery. By chance, I was there the same moment you arrived. I was in the back ro
om listening, and when I saw my opportunity I stabbed him with his own dagger.” She looked at her hand, flexed the fingers. “Such a strange sensation, stabbing someone. I had no idea how hard the body is. Of course, with a sharp knife, it is easier.” She raised her chin. Her small nostrils flared with the scents of smoke, sweat, and spoiled ale. “I have no regrets for killing him. He was a vile man. I have no regrets about killing Gaston, for he, too, was a cruel and vile man.” Her gaze returned from far away and rested on Crispin. She cocked her head. Her moist lips pressed together, pouting. “But I do have regrets over killing you, Crispin, for you were dear to me once. You do not know how many times in my marriage bed you saved my sanity.” She rose and looked at him curiously.

  Crispin struggled for consciousness. She wavered in his blurry vision. A tear left his eye to run down his sallow cheek.

  She leaned forward and touched her lips to his gasping mouth, ignoring his struggle to breathe. “Farewell, my love. I do you a favor. It hurt me deeply to see you so degraded, living this horrid life in that decrepit little hovel.” She leaned forward, and with her lips brushing his, she whispered, “Surely your reward will be greater in Heaven.”

  She closed her fingers over the vial and stepped back. She looked at him once more with a pitying expression, and walked from the Boar’s Tusk.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Crispin’s eyes followed her until she disappeared out the door into the gray sunshine.

  Rosamunde! He longed to scream it aloud, but no breath came; only a rushing sound in his ears and the approach of blessed death. Slowly—it seemed so slowly—he laid his face on the table. He made no more choking noises. He simply felt his cheek hit the surface and closed his eyes.

  Oh God! Oh blessed Jesu! How could she? How could she kill me after all we were to one another?

  There seemed little left to think about but this last betrayal. He wondered why it hurt so much. Why was it taking so long to die?

  Through his closed eyelids, a bright light pierced the darkness, and he stared through the vibrant red. A moment passed before he realized the color was his own blood through his lids, but he wondered at the light, and with difficulty, pried open his eyes. The light shone starkly white and filled his view. Strangely, though he expected it to, the light did not hurt or make him squint. He simply looked into it and it seemed to go on a long way, a tunnel of pure light. He speculated about this strange apparition for some time. Shadowy figures moved past him but he did not fear them. He knew, without knowing why he knew, that they were friendly, even loving. He felt it a comforting place and he longed to move forward and join the figures that came into sharper focus. He felt glad to be away from whatever disturbed him, and he vaguely wondered why his memory of those events seemed so foggy.

  A figure approached out of the bright light, coming closer. Crispin spoke to him, though he was slightly surprised that he did not need to open his mouth.

  What is this place?

  The figure looked at him. Crispin could not see his face clearly, but he felt the expression was one of paternal amusement. Don’t you know?

  Crispin didn’t answer. The situation had all the earmarks of a dream. Yet it also felt distinctly unlike any dream he had ever had. No. Where am I?

  Not yet, Crispin Guest. Not yet. There is more for you to do. Much more.

  Before he could question the figure again, before he had time to contemplate the sensations rippling about him, the vision receded. Something wrenched him away from the light and the warm sensation of love.

  He awoke and snapped upright with a long gasp. His body spasmed and ached, but even that subsided and he slowly warmed from the nearby hearth. He put his hand to his throat. The passageway opened and he felt only a vague sense of grogginess.

  He froze with an awful realization. Was he a ghost? Doomed to haunt this place?

  He turned to the man behind him and poked him in the shoulder. His finger did not pass through and the man turned to him with a stern but quizzical look. “What the hell do you want?” he growled at Crispin. But upon receiving no reply, he cursed, and turned back to his ale.

  I am not a ghost. He ran his hand over his corporeal chest, trying to believe it. She poisoned him, didn’t she? Where was the death he expected?

  He lifted his head and darted his glance about the room. No one seemed to take notice of him. He was just another patron in the Boar’s Tusk, one of many men who spent their evenings forgetting their troubles in the bottom of a wine bowl.

  Wine bowl.

  Crispin looked down. It sat where he left it, almost directly before him. Only dregs remained of the red wine now, and, he assumed, the deadly poison. A simple wooden bowl, much like the two he owned at home. But as he looked around the room, he saw only clay bowls and horn cups. None but this one was made of wood.

  He gingerly grasped its edges with his fingertips and turned it. It was worn, with the faintest of etched designs running along its outer rim, a simple design of static waves, lines zigzagging around the circumference creating a border one inch wide. The bowl seemed more worn than the others. Quite old. Wood, smooth to the touch and well-crafted, made by a very skilled carpenter.

  Hands now trembling, Crispin lifted it up and looked closely at it, turning it tenderly in the dim light. Such a simple thing. No one would take note of it. And no one had. Countless men drank from it, this humble cup, this wooden bowl.

  “The Holy Grail,” he whispered, unable to fathom the immensity. “It’s impossible.” He dumped the last of the poisoned wine on the table and ran his hand reverently over its outer surface.

  Still, his analytical mind reasoned. How did it get here?

  He recreated the incident in his mind. He saw Gaston D’Arcy sitting here in the tavern hatching his plots, and with a pang of an unnamed emotion, he saw Rosamunde enter and argue with D’Arcy. Somehow, without his seeing, she administered the deadly potion. He drank it, and she left him to choke to death just like she did to Crispin.

  Crispin wiped the sweat from his brow. Unimaginable that she murdered two men and tried to add him to her list. Him!

  His knuckle removed the last tear he would shed for Rosamunde, and he resettled his mind again to the puzzle. D’Arcy struggled to breathe just as Crispin had, and no doubt D’Arcy suspected poison. What then did he do?

  He had the grail. The scrip. It held the grail. After all, he was the ‘Cup Bearer’. He did the only thing he could do to try to save his life; he tried to get the cup. And he succeeded. He brought it forth, but he was perhaps too ill to pour the wine into it and drink. He believed that it would heal him, but he could not manage to do it. It was on the table. There were several cups there, but it was the only one of wood and it was the only one empty. My God. It’s been here all along and no one knew it.

  He stared at the cup and felt its solidity.

  But what of me? Did the grail heal me?

  He glanced toward an open shutter and noticed the darkness. He had lain unconscious a long time, for hours, allowing the poison to work itself out of his system. Isn’t that what the apothecary said? If he had only consumed a small portion of it, a grain or two, it would have caused a great deal of unpleasantness but he would survive. How much did Rosamunde have left in the vial? Not enough to kill, that much was certain. He couldn’t quite make himself believe that this cup healed him. But others believed it and believed in the other powers they said it possessed. So many men wanted it so badly.

  Even if it were just the true cup of Christ, wouldn’t it be worth fighting for?

  He examined the cup one last time before he slipped it under his cloak. Rising from the bench, he glanced anxiously about the room, fearing someone saw him and knew what he had. Hastily he left the Boar’s Tusk and hurried down the lane. He made it several yards before he slowed and suddenly stopped. Where should he go? To the sheriff? To his lodgings? He wiped his face with a clammy hand.

  A horseman galloped down the lane and forced Crispin against a wall, spattering
him with clods of mud. Crispin took no notice and simply leaned there, thinking, his hand pressed to the object beneath his cloak.

  “I need guidance,” he whispered. And before he truly knew the direction he traveled, he made for the little chapel of Father Timothy.

  The chapel lay in darkness but the altar glowed in a wash of candlelight. The cross’s gold beckoned, and Crispin threw himself forward, clutching the cup at his side. When he knelt, he felt a sense of gratitude and relief. Even if the grail had not healed him, Divine intervention had still saved his life. He had not forgotten the strange vision of the figure.

  Behind him he heard steps approach, and he jumped to his feet. Father Timothy strode down the short nave and smiled upon recognizing Crispin. “Welcome again, my friend. It is good to see you.”

  “Oh, Father, you do not know how good it is to see you. Can we talk in your rectory?”

  “Of course.” The young priest led the way and soon Crispin sat on a stool by the humble hearth. He forced himself to drop his hand away from his cloak, but he satisfied himself with the feel of the cup against his thigh. Silently he gazed into the fire.

  “There must be something I can do for you, friend,” urged Timothy, sitting on a stool across from him. “Else why would you be here? Has it to do with what we discussed before?”

  “Father.” Crispin leaned forward, closed fists resting on his thighs. “When we die, what exactly happens to us? What do we see?”

  “Our hope is to see the face of God.”

  “Yes. But before that, what else?”

  “I know not. When a man dies, he cannot return to tell the tale.”

  Crispin shook his head and sat back. “I am not so certain. At least…” He managed a chuckle. “Perhaps a man can rise from the dead.”

  Timothy’s gaze was steady.

  Crispin scowled. “I was vilely betrayed by a woman I once loved. She poisoned me and I…I nearly died.”

  “By the blood of Christ, tell me! What happened?”

  Crispin lifted his hand and touched the rounded belly of the cup under the cloak, testing its substantiality with his fingertips. “There was not enough poison to kill me. But in so doing I might have discovered the whereabouts of the Holy Grail.”