Veil of Lies cg-1

by Jeri Westerson

  “But there may be much you know. Why is it you disliked your master?”

  “I didn’t hold nought against him, Master Crispin. It’s just—” Adam wrung his hands and moved haltingly into the shadows of the vestibule. He glared once at Jack. “He shouldn’t have married her, that’s all,” he whispered.

  “I thought you had nothing but admiration for your mistress.”

  “I do! I mean, I—”

  The man’s in love with her. Crispin frowned. “It’s no good, Becton. She is your better. You must not gaze so high.”

  Adam broke into an unpleasant laugh. “‘Gaze so high’? A jest! I need not gaze high at all.”

  Crispin took a step closer, hand poised near his dagger. “You’d best watch your tongue, Becton.”

  “I need watch nought,” he said, teeth bared. “Philippa Walcote was the chambermaid for my master before he married her three years ago. She’s no better than you or me.”

  4

  All the questions on Crispin’s tongue slipped away.

  Adam laughed. “Don’t have a snappy reply for that, eh?”

  Before he could stop himself, Crispin swung. His knuckles met the flesh of Adam’s cheek and the man buckled against the wall. He slid down halfway, but shook his head and unsteadily righted himself.

  Adam rubbed his face and grumbled. Crispin couldn’t think of anything more to ask. His mind felt numb and he didn’t know why; didn’t want to know.

  He said nothing more and quickly left, massaging his sore knuckles.

  Jack chased after, his shorter legs moving twice as fast to keep pace. “That was a right good clout, Master! Set him in his place, I’ll warrant.” He did his best imitation of Crispin’s swing several times. “Master? Master? Did you find out what you needed to?”

  Crispin scowled and said nothing. His memory echoed Adam’s words: Philippa Walcote was a chambermaid.

  He wandered down the gray streets toward the Fleet to Gutter Lane without noticing his surroundings or that Jack walked beside him. Even when he pushed through the doors of the Boar’s Tusk and sat heavily in his customary corner, he never fully roused himself. He simply sat on the bench and stared at the knife-scarred wood and flinched when Eleanor slapped a bowl of wine in front of him.

  “Crispin.” She glanced at Jack who smiled in hopeful anticipation of a bowl of wine, and ignored him as usual.

  Eleanor set down the leather jug and sat across the table. A white kerchief, neatly draped on her head and expertly tucked about her face, revealed nothing but her hazel eyes, light brows, and stern nose and cheeks, both slightly red from the cold. “What vexes you? You were miles away.”

  “Was I?” He drew up the bowl in his hands and drank nearly the whole thing.

  Eleanor and her husband, Gilbert, were always ready to lend a kind ear. Yet what to say? Why did Adam’s news affect him? How could this Walcote woman, this woman he barely knew, mean anything at all to him? He knew little of her, which forfeited any serious consideration.

  And yet.

  Crispin ran his hand over his forehead and up his scalp, raking his thick hair between his fingers. He glanced once at Jack. “There is nothing to speak of,” said Crispin.

  “Oh! I’ll wager it’s a woman!” cried Eleanor.

  “Why do you always think it involves a woman?”

  “Because nothing can bring out that melancholy look about you but a woman.”

  Crispin slouched and cradled the bowl in the curve of his arm. “Think what you like.”

  “Crispin,” she said in her best conciliatory tone. “When have I ever left you alone to brood? Come now, out with it. You know it will make you feel better.”

  “It never makes me feel better. It only makes you feel better.”

  She leaned forward and rested her arms on the table, buttressing her ample bosom. “We worry so over you, Crispin. Thank God for Jack Tucker here,” and she patted Jack’s hand. He smiled grimly and pulled it out from under her attention. “At least someone is looking after you, but I’d rather it were a wife.”

  “Not this again. I tell you, woman, if you don’t let me alone on this matter I will find another tavern to patronize.”

  “There’s none on Gutter Lane that would let you maintain an account month after month like we do, and you know it. Besides, Gilbert and I are your family now. That’s the only reason I bring up the subject of a wife time after time.”

  “…after time,” he muttered into his bowl. He wiped his mouth with the side of his hand and poured more wine. The ruby liquid drizzled into his cup. It swirled around the bowl and settled in diminutive waves. “The thing of it is…” He shook his head, amazed that she managed to drag the words out of him. Again. “I don’t even know her. Not truly.” He let the thought of Philippa ripple in his mind. The thought stayed longer than anticipated. “She’s completely unsuitable. But she is intriguing.”

  “Is she a client?”

  “Of a sort…no…maybe.” He chuckled halfheartedly. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m pleased that’s settled.”

  “Truly, Nell, it does not bear discussing.”

  “Then why do you look so sad?”

  “I’m not sad!”

  Jack pressed forward. “You would not wonder if you saw the lady,” he said, wincing under Crispin’s sharp glance. He opened his hands in apology. “It is true. She is something to behold.”

  “When did you ever see her?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen Madam Philippa Walcote before at market.” He whistled and winked at Eleanor. “Rich and beautiful.”

  Crispin measured Jack before he sighed and slowly withdrew the portrait from his scrip and handed it to Eleanor.

  “Oh, Crispin, she is fair. Is this a good likeness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “From her husband.”

  Aghast, Eleanor slowly lowered the picture to the table. “Crispin Guest!”

  “It’s not what you think—God’s teeth! I don’t know what you think! The husband is dead. He was murdered last night.”

  She crossed herself and handed back the miniature as if it were the dead man himself. “Bless me! Crispin! Not you?”

  His look of disdain mollified her, but only briefly.

  “Well you cannot expect a woman who has recently lost a husband to look your way,” she said.

  “That’s not—” He exhaled a long, bitter sigh. “What does it matter?” He clutched the portrait for a moment before he tossed it across the table. It clattered faceup. Philippa’s painted face gazed serenely toward the ceiling. “She is, after all, only a servant.”

  “Only a servant? They do not paint portraits of servants.”

  Jack made a grab for the jug, but Eleanor easily moved it from his reach. “She was a chambermaid in her master’s household,” Jack said in a loud whisper, looking back at Crispin. “And he married her! Now that’s a right smart lass.”

  Eleanor nodded knowingly. “There’s many a lass who betters herself by marrying the master. It happens more often than you think.”

  “Perhaps in the merchant class,” Crispin mumbled. “But knights do not marry their servants.”

  Eleanor’s kind demeanor darkened. “Oh, it’s that again, is it?” She rose, her voice shrill. “It’s not that she won’t look twice at you; it’s that you scorn her class!”

  Gilbert arrived at that moment, a barrel-shaped man with dark eyes and brown hair. Crispin glanced at him hopefully while Eleanor postured over him like a Fury, her mouth flapping and her finger wagging.

  Flustered, Gilbert frowned at his wife. “What’s this? Wife, you’re too loud.”

  “I am not loud enough!” she exclaimed, raising her voice. Some of the patrons turned, but those more used to this exchange slumped back over their cups and edged away.

  Gilbert clutched her arm. “You will be still!” He looked at Crispin apologetically.

  She shook him off. “I will not be still. This
intolerable man, who has lived these eight years in this parish under our care and guidance, still cannot suffer the lower classes, even though he is now one of them.”

  “Now Eleanor,” said Gilbert, lowering her to the bench beside him.

  “He’ll drink our wine and beg our advice,” said Eleanor, “but when it comes to it, he’s a lord and we are peasants, and he will not demean himself with our lowly selves.”

  Crispin set the cup aside. “Perhaps I should go.”

  “Now Crispin,” said Gilbert, eyeing his wife. “There’s no need for that. It takes getting used to,” he said to her. “His state, I mean. Even after eight years. He’s been a nobleman for far longer than that. It’s in the blood.”

  They talked about Crispin as if he weren’t sitting there. It didn’t matter. Crispin could not tell whether he flushed more from embarrassment or anger. “It is in the blood,” he said soberly.

  Eleanor picked up the portrait and wagged it at Crispin. “If you have any love for this woman at all, nought should stand in your way. You’re not a grand knight any longer. Who could speak ill of you if you sought some happiness? Even amongst the lower classes.”

  “I never said I loved her!” He stood, weaving slightly from the wine. He opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind and swatted the air in a futile gesture. Gilbert took the little portrait from his wife and eyed it with raised brows, but Jack snatched it from his hands when Crispin made no move toward it, stuffed it in his tunic, and scurried ahead to open the tavern door for him.

  Crispin called himself a fool ten times over. He never thought of himself as a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. It’s the drinking, that’s what it was. It loosened his tongue, unmanned him. And in front of Eleanor! His face warmed with a blush. Never again! Philippa Walcote was only a client. A client! Nothing more. He didn’t need these unnecessary complications in his life. Women. A dog was more satisfying companionship. At least they didn’t talk.

  He lumbered into the street and soon heard Jack’s nimble steps behind. Crispin inhaled the sour odors of London’s poorer streets, silently lamenting the lost days where he rode aloft a fine horse, far from the muddy gutters and ingrained poverty of the city’s lower class. He used to throw them a few disks of silver in charity, but he never walked among them. And now walk he did.

  He scowled the more he thought about his state but owed his temper to the wine and Eleanor’s harangue more than a querulous disposition.

  They walked silently for a time before Jack nudged him.

  Crispin slowed and stopped. The boy held out the little portrait to him. Dammit! He thought he was rid of that.

  Jack raised it higher, urging it on him.

  Sullenly, Crispin snatched it. He slipped it between the buttons of his coat and felt it slip down his shirt and settle near his midsection where the belt stopped it.

  “Where are we going, Master?”

  Crispin didn’t know. Distracted, that’s what he was. And by a silly portrait? His neck flushed. “Tell me, Jack. Is it so wrong?”

  “Marrying better, you mean?” he said, not understanding Crispin’s question. “A servant marries a master. Their children marry better than they, and onward. Haven’t you heard them minstrel songs?”

  “But that obscures everything. The race is mongrelized. What point is there at all in being born noble?”

  Jack scowled and rolled his shoulders uneasily. “‘Mongrelized’? I ain’t certain of your meaning.” But by the scowl on his face Crispin guessed he was more certain than he let on. “But I see it all around us,” Jack went on. “Look at the Lord Mayor. He is a grocer, after all. The one before him was a draper. Nobility don’t sprout out of the ground like cabbages, do it? Where’d your family come from, eh?”

  Crispin arched a brow. “My family was noble as far back as Adam and Eve.”

  “’Slud!” Jack lifted his nose mockingly and straightened his shoulders as if they wore ermine. “Course, that ain’t the situation no more.” He seemed to relish saying it, and Crispin resisted the urge to strike him. “But if you should marry well, say Walcote’s widow, then you’d move up again.”

  Crispin’s black mood deepened. “Marry in a class beneath me,” he said, voice deadly, “in order to advance? You must be mad.” He twisted. His cloak spun out around him like a raven’s wing.

  “The trouble with you—begging your pardon, Master—is that you can’t forget yourself; your old self. You can’t let yourself be who you are now.”

  “The only thing different about me is my status,” he growled. “I am myself.”

  “That’s your true image, right enough,” Jack grumbled.

  Crispin halted and Jack ran into him. Swiveling his head, he eyed Jack. “What did you say?”

  Jack swallowed and raised his hands to ward off a blow. “Now Master, I don’t mean nought. I was raised on these streets and I say what comes into me head. You live here now, and so I think of you as one of us, see. Course your manner and your skills say otherwise, don’t they?”

  “No. I mean, what did you say? Just now.”

  “Er…y-you said ‘I am myself’ and I said ‘that’s your true image, right enough.’ But I didn’t mean nought by it.”

  “What made you say ‘true image’?”

  Jack scratched his flat chin. “Dunno. It just popped out of me mouth.”

  Crispin’s wine-dampened mind rolled the thoughts one over the other. True image. So many “true images” from so many false ones. “I’ve been distracted.” He chuckled, though it came from no place near good humor. “A pretty face will do that. I’ve been acting like a child.” He looked at Jack’s eager expression, sometimes as wily as Robin Goodfellow, sometimes as frightened as an infant. “There is a cloth I am supposed to find and it very well may have to do with murder. Let this ‘true self’ concentrate on that.”

  Instead of entering through the Walcote front door, Crispin and Jack walked around to the servant’s entrance situated in a dingy alley smelling of moldy vegetables and rotting bones from past feasts. An old woman with matted hair under a stained kerchief was just opening the door and looked up at Crispin. Her etched features were accentuated by grime and bore a strong resemblance to a castle’s stony exterior.

  “And who might you be?” She glared at Crispin but aimed an eye at Jack, hiding behind Crispin’s left flank. “This is the Walcote kitchens. It ain’t Westminster Palace where all come and go as they like.” Several of her front teeth were missing and those that remained were black or gray. She brandished a long cooking fork that Crispin didn’t like the look of.

  “I am Crispin Guest, woman. I am here investigating the heinous crime of your master’s murder.”

  She gave his clothes a quick scrutiny. “You?”

  “Bless my soul! Friend Crispin!” John Hoode rushed forward. Surprised to see the man he met at the brazier, Crispin was nevertheless relieved. “Stupid woman! This is Crispin Guest. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “I am glad to be so acquainted,” said Crispin. “Master Hoode, I see your fortunes have turned.”

  “Aye. I’m in the kitchen now. Going to try to give the mistress a chance at hiring you, eh?”

  “Well, in point of fact, I am working for her. I am trying to discover the culprit who killed Master Walcote.”

  “No! Then I was right about you. You are an educated man.”

  “Of a sort.”

  “Oh!” said the woman. “You’re that man I seen in the hall with the mistress.”

  Crispin flicked a nod at her. “Yes. I only wish to ask a few questions concerning your master.”

  “Oh it’s a sad, sad thing, it is. Who would do a thing like that?”

  “Indeed. That is what I wish to know.”

  “He was a good and fair master, m’lord. Always a kind word to all.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Since five years now.”

  “Has anyone worked here longer than five years?”

&nbs
p; “Well now.” She put a dirt-blackened finger to her temple and scratched. “Only Master Becton would have been here longer. He’s the one what hired me and the others.”

  Crispin offered a smile bereft of mirth. “I see. May I look in the hall? Is the way locked?”

  “The mistress no longer locks all the inner doors. Just go through that passage. Mind your head. It’s a low ceiling.”

  “I will see you again, Crispin,” said Hoode, and he glanced at Jack a little suspiciously. Jack glared back.

  Crispin entered the kitchens. There were two hearths flickering with light, each tended by a young boy. Other kitchen servants stopped their chopping or dough kneading to watch Crispin and Jack as they passed through, but no one spoke to them. Jack strained his neck looking back curiously when they arrived at a low passageway that led across a courtyard to the rear of the great hall.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Jack, once the kitchens were far behind.

  “I’m not certain.”

  “Why did you ask that old woman how long she worked here?”

  “Because apparently there is no one in this household who has been here longer than five years.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “In most houses, Jack, generations serve their masters.”

  “Aye, but maybe Walcote has not been rich for generations.”

  “True. I shall have to make inquiries.”

  They reached the far edge of the hall and passed under its arch only to encounter Philippa Walcote. She and Crispin stood apart in mutual assessment before her face passed from surprise to anger. “Why are you here?” she said.

  Crispin smiled a lopsided grin. “Why does everyone ask me that in that same uncivil tone?”

  “Maybe it’s because you don’t know when you ain’t welcome.”

  “Seldom am I welcome.” He raised his arm and leaned on the archway. His eyes roved insolently over her. “And so, Mistress Walcote.” He relaxed against the carved stone. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About that cloth. You never finished telling me.”

  She eyed his casual posture with a frown. “I recall you did not want to have anything to do with it. You refused my coins.”