Authors: Jeri Westerson
Instead, he sighed his frustration, feeling the hollowness of the purse at his own belt. “Very well. What is it you wish me to do?”
Walcote’s words spilled out. “Watch the house. See where she goes or who appears when I am out. Report to me what you find. I shall take care of the rest.” He wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “What is your fee for such a commission?”
“Sixpence a day, plus expenses.”
“I will pay that and more. Here is a good-faith payment.” He reached into the purse at his belt and withdrew three coins. “Half a day’s wages now. More for however long it takes.”
Crispin looked at the coins in Walcote’s moist palm. Three silver disks. To refuse them meant starvation. Nothing new. He had starved before. If he accepted them, it meant creeping in shadows, little better than a voyeur. But it also might lead to better appointments, better opportunities. Perhaps even through the Walcote household itself, and a rich household it was.
With a bitter heart, his fingers scooped up the coins and dropped them into his purse.
“How shall I know your wife?” asked Crispin. “May I see her?”
“Oh no! That will never do.” Walcote went to the sideboard and opened the doors. He took a small object from a back shelf and cupped it in his hand, gazing at it. Reluctantly he handed it to Crispin. “This is a portrait of Philippa. It is the best likeness.”
Crispin examined the miniature. A young brown-eyed woman in her early twenties looked out at him. Her hair was a brassy gold and parted in the middle. Two ring braids draped over her ears.
A fetching lass
. And younger than Walcote, who appeared to be in his late forties.
Little wonder he worries.
Crispin handed the portrait back, but the merchant shook his head. “Keep that for now. I would have you be certain.”
Crispin shrugged and stuffed the small portrait through the opening of his coat.
“I want you to begin tonight,” said Walcote distractedly. “And tell me whatever you discover as soon as possible.”
“Let us hope your worries are for nought.”
“Yes.” He wrung his hands and turned his back on Crispin to face the fire. “Adam will let you out.”
Leaving the Walcote courtyard, Crispin could not help but look back over his shoulder at the grand stone structure.
He passed through the gatehouse and acknowledged the porter inside with only a curt nod. Pulling his leather hood up, he gathered his cloak about him. The autumn sky hung gray and sullen. He felt grateful the rain had stopped but his breath still fogged his face.
If Walcote wanted him to start tonight then now seemed as good a time as any. He walked across the street to warm himself over a shopkeeper’s brazier and nodded to a man already standing there. The man gestured toward the house. “Been looking for a job?” A thick-as-fog Southwark accent, but his manner rubbed a little too feminine for Crispin’s tastes.
Crispin gave a brief smile. “Yes. Do you know them?”
“Aye. Me cousin used to work for them.”
“Used to?”
“Aye. He says they’re a curious lot. I just girded me courage to ask for work there m’self, even though me cousin Harry warned me not to. A man can’t be too particular when he needs to earn a living.” He was a thin man with a hollowed face, pale hair, a hawk nose, and watery blue eyes. The man pulled his hood down to his brows with long fingers, and stiffly clutched the material closed below his chin.
“And the outcome?”
“I talked to the mistress of the house. She’s a stern one, she is. I don’t know what she thought. I’m to return on the morrow.”
Crispin said nothing. He glanced back at the house. Its proud exterior slowly disappeared behind an encroaching mist, leaving only a hazy gray rectangle with darker rectangles for windows.
The man measured Crispin’s shabby rust-colored coat, patched stockings, and worn boots. “Did they hire you?”
Crispin shivered and drew closer to the flames. He shook his head.
“Gluttonous sot,” muttered the man. “Walcote has more money than Solomon. You can’t take your riches into heaven!” he said to the house, fist raised. He lowered his hand and swiped at the air. “What’s one more servant to him?” He leaned toward Crispin. “They say,” he said softly, “that he only leaves the house to travel out of the country and buy his cloth. But there’s some who say he don’t go nowhere at all. Conjures the stuff in his cellar. It’s devil’s work, that much money.”
“Some men are simply good at what they do.”
The man sniffed and wiped his fingerless glove across his nose. “Well, I ain’t good at much. What are you good at?”
Crispin grinned crookedly. “Oh, a number of things. And none of them pay me enough.”
“Ain’t that God’s truth. And times is hard, ain’t they?” The man rubbed his hands and wrapped his cloak over his chest. “I think we should both forget our troubles for now.” He put out his gloved hand. “The name’s John Hoode. Shall we share a beaker of ale?”
Crispin glanced at the silent house, each door in or out locked tight. He measured the sky. It wouldn’t be nightfall for a few hours. Didn’t trysts usually happen at night?
Maybe the man had information on the Walcotes he could use. He clasped the man’s hand and shook it once. “I
will
accept your kind offer.”
“Well now!” The man motioned for Crispin to follow and they walked a block to the nearest tavern.
They settled in. Crispin pushed back his hood, running his fingers through his damp, black hair. Hoode talked merrily about London and his amusing adventures as a workingman. Crispin let him talk, only half-listening. He studied him with slate gray eyes, sipping slowly of his ale. He didn’t share as much about himself, saying only that he did a variety of jobs to keep food on the table.
“Tell me,” said Crispin, slipping in between the man’s chatter. “What was your impression of Madam Walcote?”
The man slurped from his beaker and frowned. “A pretty thing. Young. Steadfast.”
Crispin drank. Steadfast? Then why should Walcote suspect her?
“Thinking of getting around
him
and going through
her,
eh?” he asked Crispin. “I wouldn’t. She’s loyal to the bone. What’s good for him is good for her. Like I said. Steadfast.”
Crispin dipped his face in his cup and said little else. He wanted to look at the portrait again but that was impossible in Hoode’s presence. Perhaps he should have questioned Walcote more rigorously as to why he had his suspicions, but Crispin’s personal distaste for this kind of task got the better of him. He shook his head at it. He should know better than that.
What matter could it have been that got Walcote’s hackles up? Was there someone loitering near the house, perhaps? Or did she hire servants who were more comely in appearance than Hoode here?
After almost two hours of nursing a beaker of watery ale and listening to Hoode chatter about this and that, Crispin thanked the man, wished him well, and left the tavern. He sauntered down the chilly street, now black and silver under the indistinct glow of a clouded moon.
He reached the brazier across the avenue from the Walcote gatehouse where he first met Hoode, but the dead fire left only gray ashes swirling at the bottom of the iron cage.
For hours he stood in the darkness. The moon had long gone, making the night seem colder. Finally, a small figure appeared near the gatehouse. If the guard had not brought forth his torch to show her face, Crispin might not have recognized Philippa Walcote, but he saw a flash of brassy gold hair and remembered it from the miniature portrait.
She set out alone along the street, looking back over her shoulder at the house, now dark. Crispin let her get a bowshot away before he ducked his head into his hood and followed.
She walked quickly. The shadows of the narrow lane soon swallowed her slim form, but Crispin’s eyes caught the movement. Distantly, he followed her through a stone archway, slick with mist and stinking of mold. Her footsteps echoed within the structure and Crispin waited until they fell away again before he ventured through. She stepped onto a street that gently curved away from the eye, like a river. Tall shops of several stories or lofts towering over one another lined the street, shoulder to shoulder. Their frames seemed squeezed by proximity and they loured over the avenue in stiff indifference to her flight, closing off the black sky. Doors were bolted and shutters closed against the warm, golden light Crispin could just see peeking through the seams. The damp street was deserted, except for the mysterious woman and her shadow.
She stopped and looked back.
Crispin jammed himself against the wall of a stone house, its rugged surface digging painfully into his back. Barely breathing lest the cloud of breath betray him, he quested a cautious eye past his hood to watch her.
She seemed satisfied that she was alone and turned. She gathered her cloak around herself and stepped along the uneven paving stones and sometimes into the mud.
Crispin took a deep breath, allowed her to turn a corner, and hurried, keeping amid the shadows of the eaves like a rat. He slowed when he approached the corner where she had turned and he clutched the lime-washed timber, peering carefully. He saw the hem of her cloak flick as she scurried, watched her tramp across the bridge over the Fleet Ditch, and grimaced. She was making her way south toward parts of London a lone gentlewoman should not go. Crispin snorted.
Foolish woman! You’ll get yourself killed. Or worse.
She trailed her hand along a wattle fence and stepped up onto a granite paving stone situated before a busy inn. She looked once back behind her before ducking inside. Crispin stopped and watched the door open to admit her. A bright rectangle of light briefly lit the dark street before the door closed again.
A few moments later a candle was lit in an upper window, its light streaming through the cracked shutter. Crispin approached and craned his neck, but the sill was too high.
He stumbled through the inn’s pitch-dark courtyard, searching for a ladder, and found one leaning against the stable door. Carefully, he carried it back to the window and laid it against the wall, just to the side of the closed shutter. He climbed the rungs—stopped with a wince when they creaked—then made it the rest of the way to the top and peered in through the shutter’s cracks.
Philippa Walcote stood facing the window. This time he could see her features clearly. She was, indeed, young and quite beautiful. Her pale skin seemed smooth, almost translucent. Her dark eyes were large under heavy lashes, though they were draped by drowsy lids. He recalled from the miniature that same pert nose and small mouth whose lips were perfectly shaped in two opposing bows. Her hair, redder than in the painting, shone with bright flashes of wheat when the firelight caught it.
Why would a rich woman go to such a low tavern? It seemed a strange place to conduct an affair, if affair it was.
She unhooked the agrafe at her throat that held the cloak in place and tossed the mantle on the bed. Her blue samite dress was decorated with embroidery along the scooped neckline and displayed both her long neck and her high and pronounced breasts, made more conspicuous by the satiny fabric with its shine and shadow.
Crispin almost felt sorry for such a pretty thing, and he wondered why, with Walcote’s many locks, he could not manage also to confine his wife.
A shadow passed over the woman, and a man stepped into view. He stood behind her and without preamble ran his hand over the back of her neck. His features were dark, with a wide unpleasant mouth and small eyes. He needed a shave and possibly a bath, for his hair hung about his face in greasy, curled locks.
Crispin watched her passive face. It reflected neither lust nor affection, and kept its steady gaze settled somewhere on the floor, lids at half mast. Not quite the expression he expected.
An unusual tryst, to be sure
.
The man attacked the laces on the back of her gown. He tugged, and her body jerked like a straw manikin, but she did not seem to wish to help him expedite his efforts. He growled, mauling her neck, and the only indication that she acknowledged his presence was a slight wince. The dark hand covering her creamy skin slid to the front of her gown and clawed her breast. At last, the laces opened and her gown slipped, loosened about her shoulders. His long fingers grasped the material and yanked it down. The dark gown crumpled to her waist, revealing her white shift beneath. Those large hands kept roving along her body, pinching and pulling at her. Her eyes betrayed the merest hint of impatience…or was it irritation? Those hands bunched the cloth of her shift in two fists and pulled downward. There was a sound of tearing cloth and Crispin suddenly got an eyeful of white, pink-tipped breasts.
He slipped off his rung.
“God’s blood!”
Arm linked around the ladder, he swung underneath it and hung for a moment, breathing hard. He rested his forehead against a damp tread and waited. Nothing. They had not heard him. No one gave the alarm. They were, no doubt, preoccupied. He shook his head. It had been too long since he had seen a woman that beautiful and in that state of undress. He cautiously pulled himself around to the front of the ladder and made his unsteady way down.