Veil of Lies (19 page)

Philippa held her hand to her mouth. Whether or not it was to suppress a scream, Crispin did not know.

All the others were silent for a moment. But then Lionel looked at his wife and then his brother. As one, the three turned accusatory faces toward Philippa.

“This is not Nicholas Walcote!” Lionel declared. “Where is my brother?”

16

Crispin moved forward as if in a dream.
She knew.
A moat of anger welled around that thought.

He raised his voice above the angry chatter of the others. “If this man is not your brother, then who is he?”

“I don’t know. But I do know he is not Nicholas!” Lionel trumpeted.

“It’s been years since you’ve seen him. How can you be sure?”

“We know our own brother!” said Clarence.

Crispin angled toward Philippa. Her face collapsed into horrified fear. Tears ran in double streams down both cheeks and flowed to her jaw where they stayed in paralyzed drips, too afraid to drop away. “Philippa,” he said, perhaps more gently than she deserved. “Tell me.”

Gallows fear. That’s what Crispin called the expression she wore. He saw it on many a prisoner’s face before they were led to the gallows, and then as the rope dropped over their heads; that desperate realization that it wasn’t a nightmare, that it was real and happening now.

“I meant no harm,” she whispered. She twisted her red fingers together, and sucked the spilled tears at the edges of her mouth. “I meant no harm.”

“Well, Sheriff. This is certainly a strange set of circumstances—”

“He isn’t the sarding sheriff, you jackass!” cried Clarence.

Lionel scowled at his brother.

“But maybe he will oblige us by calling the sheriff,” said Maude. “There is a great deal that needs explanation.”

Crispin gritted his teeth. There was nothing he could do. This situation had grown far beyond his ability to influence or control, and he wasn’t about to put his own head in a noose for her. Tautly he moved toward the passageway and spotted the steward. “Adam, you will have to send for the sheriff,” he said.

Simon Wynchecombe met them in the parlor and scanned their faces. He frowned darkest when passing his gaze over Crispin. “Couldn’t do what I told you,” his expression seemed to say. But Crispin lost all patience with him. He desperately wanted to get Philippa alone to ask her what was on her mind, but there was no opportunity.

The others sat in a rough half circle while Philippa stood in the center like a trapped animal. She trembled, and Crispin did not know whether he longed more to comfort her or to throttle her.

“Well, Madam,” said the sheriff, his voice rumbling deep in his throat. “You have been living a lie, calling yourself the wife of Nicholas Walcote when in fact the man in question is
not
Nicholas Walcote. Several questions come to mind: Why did you two perpetrate this deception? Why was he murdered? Where is the real Nicholas Walcote, and is that unfortunate also murdered?”

Philippa stared at the floor.

“Madam? I asked you a question.”

Her voice was unnaturally thin. It seared Crispin’s gut to hear such surrender. “You won’t believe me.”

Wynchecombe smiled. The white teeth under the dark mustache reminded Crispin of the carved gargoyles projecting from the eaves of churches.
He is only fulfilling his obligation.
But Crispin still wanted to lash out at him. A fist to those teeth would do nicely for a start.

“Speak, Madam,” Wynchecombe urged. “It will go better for you.”

She wiped her face sloppily and swallowed. Her chin trembled when she opened her mouth. “When I was hired to this household five years ago, I thought he was Nicholas Walcote. We all did. What reason had we to think otherwise? Everything seemed normal. I served as a chambermaid, and I did my job well. I was a good girl. Honest and hardworking, and not a soul had a complaint against me. Nicholas took a fancy to me. He’d come across me while I was at me work, accidental at first. Then I realized he sought me out. Two years later he married me. We put up the banns and everything. We were married lawfully!”

“That isn’t quite true,” said Wynchecombe with too much enjoyment for Crispin’s ears. “You see, you married a man under an alias. I am no man of law, but that is surely not a valid marriage.”

She looked from one unsympathetic face to another. “But the priest was there! We made our vows—”

“Under a name that was not his to give. But this matter is for an ecclesiastical court. Go on.”

Philippa took a moment to absorb this news. She ran a dry tongue over her pale lips. “A year ago he returned from traveling. On business, I thought. But something frightened him. He put locks on all the inner doors and instructed the steward to keep them locked. That was when he told me he wasn’t Nicholas Walcote.”

Maude made a shrill sound that startled everyone. Wynchecombe stared at her with irritation. “Who did he say he was?”

“He didn’t.”

“Then where is Nicholas Walcote?”

Her tears flowed again and she hugged herself. “He’s dead. Nicholas said he met the real Master Walcote some years ago while traveling. He said they looked alike but that Walcote was killed.”

“Where?”

“In Rome. He got the idea to pretend to be him. It worked so well that he just assumed his life. He only left the house to travel abroad and so no one questioned it.”

“What did you do once you discovered his secret?”

“What could I do? I knew we was in trouble. I couldn’t say nought to nobody!”

“You knew it was unlawful. Why did you not come to me?” asked the sheriff.

“I didn’t want to think of what would happen—”

“You didn’t want to lose your position, you mean.”

“That’s right!” she screamed, throwing back her head and staring at each tight-lipped Walcote in the circle. “Why should I? I’d given up enough, haven’t I? Peace of mind. Me soul. Which of you would go back to being a servant? I’d a done anything to stay where I was!”

Almost too eager, Wynchecombe asked, “Even murder?”

She plunged her knuckle between her lips in a vain attempt to take back her words. “No, I never killed nobody. I don’t know who killed my Nicholas—”

“Make her stop calling him that!” Maude shouted.

Philippa tossed back her head. A braid unwound from its careful coiffure and dangled at her shoulder. “I don’t know what else to call him.”

“He’s a criminal,” said Lionel. “Call him that.”

“He’s dead.” Crispin spoke from behind them. “At least have mercy on that. And he was murdered.”

“Yes, and she did it!” Clarence stood and pointed an accusing finger at Philippa.

“To what gain?” asked Crispin. “This very inquisition?”

“Ah, you think you’re clever,” said Lionel. “But she did not know that Nicholas had brothers and that we could identify him. She thought to be sole heir.”

Crispin’s sneer vanished. The man was right. Was the secret too much for her to bear? That was a better motive for murder than some fabled Italian syndicate.

Then he remembered. Why didn’t she mention the cloth?

“
We
are the heirs,” said Lionel. He threw his shoulders back triumphantly.

“At least you said ‘we,’” grumbled Clarence.

Maude stood to rest her hands on her husband’s shoulders. “That is so. Lionel and Clarence are the heirs. She has no rights at all. And I daresay, she wasn’t even lawfully married to the man she lived with for three years.”

“What’s to be done with her?” Clarence asked.

“Throw her out!” roared Maude. “We certainly don’t need that kind of chambermaid in this household. She’d stir up more trouble, I’ll wager.”

“Well, woman,” said Wynchecombe. “You heard your mistress.”

Lionel lurched toward the sheriff, but Wynchecombe’s glare stymied his progress. “You’re not going to arrest her?” he asked. “She stole Nicholas’s money!”

“And surely she killed that man upstairs,” Maude added.

Wynchecombe’s glance slid toward Crispin. Only the corner of his mouth drew up in a smile. “Shall I arrest her?”

“Possibly, my lord.” Crispin rested his hands behind his back, the only way to keep from wrapping them around Wynchecombe’s throat. “But I would wait. There is more here than meets the eye. I make a solemn promise to you, Lord Sheriff, to keep an eye on her and report to you her whereabouts. She can’t go far.”

“Indeed,” the sheriff chuckled. “Very well, Guest. She is your responsibility. If I decide to arrest her and she can’t be found, then I suppose you shall hang in her stead. It looks like everyone wins.” He clapped his hand on his sword hilt. “I will, of course, require a surety to allow her into your custody.”

She shook her head at Crispin. He knew it would be a rich sum. He also knew she recently paid him with a full pouch and probably had nothing left on her person.

With reluctance, Crispin reached into his purse and pulled out the coin pouch.
Easily gotten, easily gone
. “Will this be sufficient?”

The sheriff took it and measured it in his palm. He smiled. “Why Crispin. You are full of surprises today.” The sheriff’s smile took in everyone before he pocketed the money pouch, turned, and swept out of the room.

Once the sheriff left, the Walcotes moved collectively to one side of the room opposite Philippa; an army taking its defensive position.

“I think it time the wench leaves,” said Maude.

“I will help her collect her baggage,” said Crispin, but Lionel harrumphed himself forward and waved his hand in the air.

“No, no, no. None of it belongs to her, after all, now does it?”

“I suppose you’d like me to go off naked!”

Both Lionel and Clarence raised their brows but Maude slapped her husband’s shoulder and offered an insincere smile. “She may take what she is wearing and return it when she can.”

“Very charitable,” muttered Crispin. Philippa looked up at him defiantly, and he motioned for her to go. “Masters, mistress,” he said in parting. “I trust you do not mind seeing me again. I am still investigating a murder.”

“So you say,” said Maude, staring meaningfully at Philippa. “But it seems to me that you put yourself to far more trouble than necessary.”

17

Crispin reached the fresh cold air of the courtyard and his shoulders finally relaxed. He led the silent Philippa beyond the gatehouse and they stood undecidedly at the muddy crossroads in front of the Walcote manor.

Crispin tried to speak several times, but he did not think he could manage his anger.

Abruptly she turned to him. “Say it all. You want to. You probably even think I killed him.”

“Did you?”

“You already asked me that. Didn’t you believe my answer?”

“That was then.”

“And now? Not just a chambermaid and an adulteress, but a liar, a thief, and a murderer. Is that it? Or maybe I left out whore.”

Crispin eyed the street peripherally. Perhaps this wasn’t the best place for this discussion. He longed for a drink. “I don’t like being lied to.”

“I didn’t lie to you. I, well, I tried not to. There were just some things I couldn’t tell you. Can’t you understand why? Everything that happened in that room was all that I feared. That is my home, Crispin.” Teardrops beaded her lashes. “I can’t even be a servant there no more. I haven’t two pence to rub together. Even these clothes—That bitch wants them back, and I’ll send them, mark my words!”

Crispin’s throat felt thick. He wanted nothing more than to leave her in the street and get himself drunk at the Boar’s Tusk, but with his name on a surety he had no recourse but to keep an eye on her. “Where does your family dwell? I will take you there.”

“I ain’t got a family. I got nowhere to go.”

“Nowhere? No one?”

She stood red-faced and tearstained, but still striking, still unashamed and defiant.

God help me.

She wiped her face with her hand. “I don’t need no one.”

“I suppose…you may stay with me. Temporarily. I have nothing but the floor to offer you.”

“I’ve had worse.”

The sun lay far below the horizon by the time they neared the Shambles. Crispin noted a man in livery following them, but when Crispin stopped on the pretense of taking a pebble from his boot, the man vanished.

Long shadows blended with the darkness, crossing over one another in a thatching of dismal contours. Philippa had stopped weeping a long time ago, and they hadn’t spoken since leaving the manor. When he looked past her, a hunched figure emerged from the dark.

“Wait here,” he said to her before he joined the short man.

Lenny’s bulging eyes winced furtively up and down the street.

“What’s the news, Lenny?”

“Good ev’n, Master Crispin,” he said with an abbreviated bow. He gestured toward Philippa rubbing her arms in the cold. “Don’t mean to interrupt your doings.” He added a wink.

Crispin scowled. “Just tell me what you have for me.”

“Well, I seen that Moor leave his lodgings and I followed him.”

“Indeed. Where did he go?”

“Hired himself a messenger. Gave him a paper and sent him off.”

“And where did this messenger go?”

“Ah! I thought you’d want to know that. So I followed him to the Walcote manor. That big stone house? Didn’t see nought else after that.”

“Interesting. And when did all these mysterious doings take place?”

“Last night around dusk. Then I went back to the Thistle to see if that Moor was still there.”

“And was he?”

“All at ease in his room, he was. The knave.”

“Much thanks, Lenny.” Crispin managed to find a farthing in the corner of his purse and handed it over.

“Oh, indeed!” said Lenny, saluting with the coin. “Right you are, Master Crispin. Any time, good sir. Am I to keep an eye peeled still for this Moor?”

“If you would. Off with you now.”

“Fare you well. And good luck with the lady.”

Why would Mahmoud send a messenger to the Walcote manor? Sending a missive to Philippa? Crispin glanced at her. She seemed small and lost in the pall of her cloak. It covered all of her. Only her sheltered head and shoulders marked her shape.

By the time he looked back, Lenny had vanished.

“Who was that?”

Her pale skin looked blue in the cloud-veiled moonlight. She composed herself but without the sparkle he knew before.

He pulled his hood forward and sniffed at the cold. “An associate.” He strode forward and she followed.

“You deal with many questionable characters.”

He hurried his pace. “Yes—cutthroats, cutpurses, and the like. That is the scope of my universe,” he said tightly.

“And now I am one of them.”

He said nothing to that. The resignation in her voice might have been justified, but it rang inharmoniously on his ear.

They reached the Shambles, which gave up its particular fragrance even in the darkness. No mistaking the odor of death and butchering. Even when the wind changed direction, the street was not spared. Tallow vats billowed their perfume skyward, clouds of it roaming lazily.

Ahead lay the tinker’s shop, and Crispin directed Philippa and took out his key. They climbed the stairs, reached for the room’s lock, and the door flung open. “It’s about time, Master! I was worried—”

Jack Tucker froze in place and stared at Philippa, her face streaked with old tears, one braid draped limply over a shoulder.

Crispin leaned toward Jack. “Jack, would you do me the favor of finding other lodgings tonight? Mistress Wal…Philippa is going to be my guest.”

Jack blushed and straightened. “Oh, right then. As you will.” He recovered quickly, licked his lips, and scratched his head. Freckles that took on a merry life of their own in the sunlight disappeared in the darkness of the landing. He thumbed behind him into the shadows. “I’ll just be going now, will I?”

He backed out the door and Crispin closed it on him, but not before jutting his face between the slash of door and jamb. “I’ll make it up to you, Jack.”

Jack winked, found a place in the corner of the landing, and curled up under his cloak.

When Crispin turned back, he saw Philippa warming herself halfheartedly by the fire. He detected very little of the spirited woman she had been, but it was hardly unexpected.

He realized he tended to her as if she were a highborn lady. Servants were accustomed to sleeping several in a bed, sometimes male and female together. Surely Philippa had done so. No need, then, to send Jack out, yet he made no move to call him back.

He sat on the bed, pulled off his boots, and rubbed his feet. “Jack usually sleeps in that corner where the straw is. You’ll find it comfortable enough.”

She nodded. Skirt folding beneath her, she sank down before the fire and unbraided her hair.

Crispin tried not to watch and got up in his stocking feet to rummage among the jars and sacks on his pantry shelf. Finding a hard-crusted pasty leaning against a crock of pickled onions, he grabbed it, sniffed its slightly stale crust, and broke it in two. He laid one half on the table and pushed it toward her. He returned to the bed, laid down on his back, and tore into the stale meat pie.

He chewed in silence for an uncomfortable moment before he glanced her way.

The fire glazed her brassy hair, and the newly unbound tresses frizzed about her face in a golden halo. She raked her fingers through it, trying to comb out the curls. The action only served to soften her features. Her white face, fragile and alluring, shimmered in the firelight.

The dry dough stuck in his throat. He sat up, hoping wine would help. “That one on the table is for you.”

He reached for the wine jug and made a prayer of thanks when he lifted and found it full. He poured a bowl for himself and one for her. He scooted the chair to the table.

Philippa held the pasty but did not eat.

“You’d better eat that. That surety money was to pay for food. There isn’t any more.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Crispin sighed. “Don’t vex yourself.”

“You must hate me.”

“No. I’m angry, but I don’t hate you.”

“Surely you see how I couldn’t tell you. You’re honest. You would have had to report to the sheriff that my husband was not Nicholas Walcote. That’s why when Mahmoud threatened to tell—”

She pressed her lips closed, frowned, and gingerly put the pasty to her trembling mouth.

Crispin froze. He felt like a fool. Worse. “I’m an idiot,” he told the rafters.

“I lay with that vile man as much to protect Nicholas as me. It was nothing to me,” she said, eyes closed over damp lashes. “I was
not
there with Mahmoud. I was anywhere but there.” She opened her eyes again and fixed them on Crispin. “Whatever else he was, Nicholas was good to me. I won’t forget him for that. I did it for him. I owed him. He would’ve understood that, wouldn’t he?”

He shook his head. “I know not. This is a very sad affair.”

“Do you think those Italians killed Nicholas? He was afraid they had followed him. He said as much.”

When he’d dispatched the pasty he wiped his hands down his coat. Mahmoud’s missive recently sent to the Walcote Manor rose up in his mind. “Well, one thing is certain: Mahmoud will no longer extort you.”

She sighed, her first sound of relief. She looked up at him from her place by the fire.

Mahmoud. A vile man with vile habits. A Saracen. He glowered at her, wanting to know, yet not wanting to ask. “How could you do it?” he blurted. “Give yourself to a stranger. To a
Saracen
! What of your virtue—”

“Virtue? Do you think I was a maiden when I met Nicholas, or whatever the poor bastard’s name was?” She pulled a piece of the crust away with her fingers and stuffed it in her mouth. “Life’s hard in the scullery,” she said, cheek bulging. “You do a lot for an extra scrap of bread.”

“You said you were a chambermaid.”

“I was at the Walcote manor, but I didn’t start that way. Me mum was a scullion. I worked alongside her. Don’t remember when I didn’t. One day, she was stirring a cauldron when the chain holding it above the fire broke. I remember water and steam everywhere. And I remember her screaming. It scalded her to death.” She chewed thoughtfully. “When I buried her, I vowed I’d get m’self out of the kitchens, and I did. I’d never thought to reach so high.” She sighed with her entire body. “Maybe it was only a dream. You can take the girl out of the scullery, perhaps, but you can’t take the scullery out of the girl.”

Crispin tried hard to remember his own servants and could not recall if he had ever set eyes on a scullion in his manor in Sheen. He felt ashamed.

He leaned on his arm and studied her. “You rose from the very bottom. You can even read. Remarkable.”

“I’m a fair remarkable wench,” she said, smiling briefly. She finished the rest of her food in silence. She collected her wine bowl, pulled a stool to the table, and sat opposite him. “You’re fair remarkable yourself. So why’d
you
do it? Take me in, I mean.”

“You remind me of someone.”

“Oh? Who?”

He smiled. “Me.”

Her eyes brightened and she reached her hand across the table to touch his. Before she could, Crispin shot from his chair and moved away. She rose and edged toward him.

“It don’t matter why.”

“Philippa…”

“What matters is you did. ’Cause you’re decent and true.” She stood toe to toe with him and looked up unafraid. He recognized that confidence, and it twisted a knot in his gut. Her hair, like fleece, curly and wild, was edged with gold from the firelight raging behind her. Her lips glistened with wine, but it wasn’t just the liquor that gave them their rosy hue.

He stared at her for a long moment. Before he had time to question the sanity of it, he took a step toward her and dipped his face and kissed her soft lips, drawing on them until nothing remained but the taste of her. Hands found her back and he lifted her toward him, pressing her warm body against his, savoring the length of her, each dip and valley. The kiss grew harder, almost cruel. But she gave as good as she got and used her teeth and tongue like weapons. His hands slid about her waist. Her soft body melded to his like a tight-fitting garment and he smothered himself in her, rejoicing in that brassy fleece cascading about his cheeks. He grasped her head with one hand, allowing the tresses to tickle his wrist. He sealed his mouth to hers and feasted, nose inhaling sweat and sweetness and woman.