Blood Lance (25 page)

“Well, a woman might be good at getting information from a man when he is in such a state.”

Crispin gave a crooked smile. “We did very little talking.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Aye. Well then. What else? Did you say anything to her?”

“I told her I was detained by the same men who accosted her. But that only served as a warning that we need to conclude this investigation quickly.”

The boy nodded. “But you also told her you did not know where the relic is.”

“This she already knows.”

“But did she? She was ever anxious to help you find it. Maybe she knows something we don’t.”

“She was unaware of it previously.”

Jack smacked his own head, no doubt wishing he could do the same to Crispin. “And a woman has never lied to you before?”

His fourteen-year-old apprentice was making him look like a complete fool. Crispin sat back. “By my Lady, Tucker. I am not being myself. I have been caught up in my … my solitude, I suppose. Thinking of … another.”

Jack’s eyes flicked to the mattress, and by that simple gesture, Crispin knew that Jack was aware of the portrait of Philippa Walcote.

Crispin stared at the table. “She wanted me to forget the robbery. The whole thing.”

“Forget the murder, too?”

“It wasn’t … put in those terms. Not exactly.”

“If you were any other man, might you have put it all aside … for her?”

He frowned. “I have a need to stroll the bridge, Jack. Care to accompany me?”

*   *   *

THE CARPENTERS HAD WORKED
fast, for the viewing stands were already finished by the time Crispin and Jack reached the bridge. Shopkeepers seemed energized by the business they were sure to acquire when the jousts began, which put Crispin in mind of Thomas Saunfayl. He hoped he had turned himself in by now. It was still difficult to believe that a man like him could be a coward, but he had admitted it to Crispin’s face. The whole world had truly gone mad.

He reached the armorer’s and there was no longer a sheriff’s man guarding the shop. He checked the nailed boards. The window remained unbarred and he pushed the shutter open.

“Here now!”

Crispin’s foot was on the sill when he stopped and turned. A woman with a basket of turnips tucked under her arm was wagging a finger at him. “Get away from there. That’s been barred by the sheriff.”

He stepped out of the window and faced her. “I do know that. I am here investigating—”

“There’s been too many men going in and out of there. I’ve a mind to call the king’s guards again. That poor Master Grey being murdered and his apprentices, too! It’s foul, it is. What’s this town coming to?”

“How many men have been coming and going through here?”

“Half a dozen or so. First those three knights and then those other men. It’s not right. Looting a poor dead man.”

“Were they taking things?”

“Well.” She hitched the basket higher on her hip. “I live in yon lodgings.” She pointed across the way to a second-story window. “I can see the street well enough during the day and at night. And I could see these men coming and going without so much as a by your leave.”

“Did they take anything?”

“And who are you for asking?”

With a hand on his breast he bowed. “I am Crispin Guest. I’m called the Tracker. Perhaps you’ve heard—”

“By the saints! The Tracker? Wait. Aren’t you the one who pulled Master Grey from the Thames?”

“Yes. You were telling me about—”

“Well then.” She sidled closer and spoke confidentially, all the while eyeing Jack suspiciously. “People coming and going. But nothing taken. Naught that I could see. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Why have you not reported this to the sheriff?”

“Stranger, that. I saw
her
leading one man in there.”

“Her?”

“Her. You know. The tailor’s daughter.”

“You mean Master Grey’s betrothed?”

“Betrothed? Absurd. She was never betrothed to him. What honorable man would want such tainted goods?”

An angry flush warmed Crispin’s cheeks and he found he had to clench his fists to keep them from grabbing and shaking the old woman. “I beg your pardon.”

“She was his lover, not his betrothed. Everyone on the bridge knows that. And I dare say, he wasn’t the only one.”

19

“MASTER?”

“Be still, Tucker.”

“Master. We best go inside.”

He tugged on Crispin’s sleeve. Exasperated, Crispin turned his head and Jack gave him a meaningful look.

“Do you mean to say that it is
rumored
that Mistress Coterel was not betrothed?” he said to the woman.

“It is no rumor, sir.”

“Forgive me. But there was also a rumor that Roger Grey killed himself. That was found to be false.”

“I did hear that rumor but I never believed it. But you can ask any man on the bridge about Anabel Coterel. Even at a young age, barely out of swaddling it seemed, she was sniffing after men. Gets her way, too. Knows how to twist them round her finger. If anything, Grey was jealous of her meandering. She’d deny it, as any woman would. And just as soon as he was twisted good and tight around her wrist again, off she’d go to the next man. A vixen, is Mistress Coterel. She’ll never lack, that is a certainty. Never go hungry and never be out in the cold. But mark me, someday she’ll coil around the wrong man. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to hear that she is found with a knife in her throat. Lord bless her.”

Try as he might, Crispin could not utter a sound. He was ready to burst with rage but he swallowed it down.

Stiffly, Crispin bowed. “If you will excuse us, madam.” He could do this. He could walk away. Except he still needed to know. Not for himself, but for the investigation, or so he told himself, over and over. “Madam, may I ask? What man did Mistress Coterel lead inside?”

“The knight. The one with the silver and green surcote.” Saunfayl. No doubt to retrieve his armor. He felt better about that until she added, “And that other.”

“What other?”

“Don’t know.”

“Can you describe him? Was he a knight?”

“No, not a knight. Just a merchant or some such. Did it after nightfall.”

“Was he a stranger, then? No one you have seen before on the bridge?”

“Oh no,” she said, with a self-satisfied smile. “I’ve seen him before right enough.”

“Does he dwell here?”

“I don’t know. But I have seen him in her company. Many a time. Young, auburn hair. Has a confident way about him.”

The first person to come to mind was Lancaster’s son Henry, but Crispin dismissed it just as quickly. It was only because the man was in his thoughts of late. What would Henry have to do with this?

“I trust you will allow us to proceed inside?” asked Crispin.

She curtseyed and gave a nervous smile. “Of course, sir.”

He slapped his boot on the sill and pulled himself in. Tucker soon followed and closed the shutter behind him.

“I know what you’re going to say,” said Jack.

“Do you?” he snapped. “Perhaps you don’t need me at all in this investigation. Perhaps you should do it all yourself.”

“Now Master Crispin, don’t be like that. I just saved you from throttling her, is all.”

“I would have been very pleased to do it. Except that she gave us some very valuable information.”

“Aye. Mistress Coterel
was
lying.”

“Indeed,” he said tightly. “She could hardly have told the coroner that she was the man’s lover. She received little enough respect when she declared she was his betrothed.”

“Verily, I can see the reason for the lie in this instance.”

But it didn’t sit well with Crispin. If she were Grey’s lover, then her strange distant attitude to his death seemed even worse. And then last night …

“A lover who was not very devoted to her lover. One does not take a lover except for an emotional bond. What could that mean, Jack?”

He shrugged.

“Perhaps not an emotional bond. And if not that, then…” That didn’t sit well either. He turned toward Jack. “As that woman said … for gain?”

“He paid her?”

“Not so much that. But she seemed to think he would lend her money for rent. Perhaps he was more devoted than she.”

Jack looked around the dusty room. The shutters were all closed but light did filter in through the seams. “What are we looking for, Master?”

“Something, anything to give us a clue as to where the Spear might be.”

“But we already looked.”

“Without the knowledge of what we were looking for.”

“So it’s the point of a spear?”

“No. Remember what the abbot said?” Mention of the abbot caused a spike of discomfort for the fate of the man he cherished. “He said that the tip is in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. It’s the rest of it that seems to be the missing piece.”

They both looked at the decorative spear shaft leaning against the wall. Crispin reached it first and hefted it in his hands. “I suppose if the spearhead were attached to this, one might construct a point for it, but I am no swordsmith.”

Jack took it in his hands and turned the shaft, examining the bas relief designs. “This is fine work, Master. Then he must truly have had the Spear, otherwise he would not have gone to the trouble and expense. Why did he wait to affix it to this shaft then?”

“It could be he had to construct a way to give it a point without harming it and was interrupted in his task.”

“Blind me. We’ve already got Suffolk who wanted it and Master Chaucer and Sir Thomas. Who else wanted it? And how many people knew about it?”

“It’s becoming quite a list, isn’t it? I wonder from whom it actually came. Was it gotten illegally as Anabel—that is, Mistress Coterel—implied? And perhaps the seller wanted it back.”

“And got it, without these others knowing?”

“Yes. And if that is the case, we will never find it now.”

They stood silently, staring at the dim interior. Jack gently laid the spear shaft aside.

“Jack,” he said quietly. “If you were still a thief, where might you hide your letters?”

“Letters, sir?”

“Master Grey had a correspondence with Sir Thomas, but he might also have had one with whomever he obtained the Spear from. He had a hidden place in the wall, behind that buckler.” Crispin pointed to the round shield on the wall. “But there was nothing there. Either someone had gotten to it beforehand or he had some other secret place.”

“It would be in his bedchamber,” offered Jack.

Crispin nodded and headed for the stair. Jack followed. When they reached the top the shadowed room seemed to be asleep in its gloom and stillness. There was a bed, a coffer, a sideboard, and two chairs positioned before the cold, dark fireplace. Crispin watched from the doorway as Jack made his way stealthily about the room. He went first to the fireplace and ran his hands over the opening, even to reaching up into the firebox. He dusted his hands together to rid them of soot when he stood again, and made his way around the walls, knocking occasionally at a timbered beam running up to the rafters. With an ear cocked, he listened, paused, then moved on. When he reached the sideboard, he stopped again and opened the doors. Peering inside, he leaned in, trailing his finger along each seam and pressing firmly on the boards, both of the interior walls and the doors themselves.

The boy is thorough,
he mused, and then began to wonder at the former career of his apprentice. He knew the boy was an accomplished cutpurse, but by the looks of it, he had learned his trade of thievery a little too well.

After examining the turned legs, Jack continued on until he came to the bed. It had a sturdy frame of dark wood and an overhanging canopy of heavy drapery. Crispin thought the lad would turn over the mattress or perhaps the bedhead, but instead, he ran his careful hands over the frame, his eyes glittering in concentration, until Crispin heard a soft click.

Jack made a sound of pleasure and opened a door on the heavy frame, which swung away from the mattress.

He reached in and pulled out a stack of folded parchment, wrapped with a leather strap. Holding it up, the boy beamed.

Crispin took the bundle and Jack scrambled to find the tinderbox and light a candle. Crispin untied the strap and laid the first document on the table under the candle. The first was a receipt, as was the second. But the third was a letter from a Moor in a place near the Spanish border. The writing was small and tight and the English was poor. Much of the seal was torn away, but when Crispin held the parchment in the light, he could make out some of it.

“Jack,” Crispin breathed. “Listen.
The object you seek is rare. Rarer still is the man who can obtain it. He will be of high price but worth it. What shall I tell my brokers? The gold you have sent is insufficient. Twenty marks more is his price
.” His gaze met Jack’s over the candle flame. “It is dated earlier in the year.” He scanned the next letter, discarded it, scanned the next. He angled it toward the light. “Aha. See here.
Master Grey, your price changes with each missive. My lord is becoming anxious. He will deliver unto you the amount on our last agreement and I beg you not to change your mind again. I will send it to you anon.
”

“There’s no signature, nor seal, sir.”

“Yes. But I know this writing. It is Geoffrey Chaucer’s.”

“Blind me. Is the lord he is speaking of the duke, sir?”

“I do not know.” Crispin gazed at the tawny parchment a moment longer before setting it aside. He took up the next one and read.
“The plans have changed. And with those changes, more gold I send to you. I shall reach you by the middle of October. I shall take possession as my lord has instructed. The object shall now be in my keeping. See to it that all is made ready for my arrival…”

“That does not look like the same hand, sir.”

“That’s because it isn’t. It is signed Sir Thomas Saunfayl.”

“Wait.” Jack grabbed Chaucer’s letter and read it over, then read in his slow, careful perusal Sir Thomas’s letter. “Sir, it looks to me as if … as if…”

“As if Sir Thomas bypassed Chaucer to make his own move on the relic? It certainly looks that way to me.” Crispin scowled at the parchment. That would mean that not only was the man a coward but a cheat as well. For if Chaucer were negotiating the Spear for Lancaster, Sir Thomas was maneuvering to slip it out from under him.