Veil of Lies (6 page)

“Christ Jesus.”

“A man hired me to discover if his wife was unfaithful. She was. The next day he’s found murdered.”

“’Slud! She did it, then!”

“Possibly. But not without help. This morning I saw her in the same gown as the night before. She would have had to divest herself of her gown, killed him, and changed back into it.”

“Why, Master?”

“Because I saw a bloody knee print on the floor. It should have been evidenced on her gown.”

“Her lover, then?” He thumbed back over his shoulder toward the Thistle, now out of sight around a bend. “He did it.”

“Perhaps. The trouble is, her husband was murdered in a room where the door locked from the inside with no other way in or out.”

“Blind me! That’s a puzzle.”

“Indeed.”

“Who’s the dead man?”

“Nicholas Walcote.”

“Not the merchant? ’Slud!” Jack shook his head. His face slowly changed from shock to an expression of pride. “Are you going to find his murderer?”

“I do not like being cheated out of a client. Especially a wealthy one.”

After a quarter of an hour they reached the Walcote gatehouse and Jack whistled at the size of the walls and the number of chimney stacks. Upon recognizing him, the porter let Crispin pass through the gatehouse, though he gave Jack a sour eye.

Instead of going directly to the front door, Crispin made a circlet of the outside of the manor, gazing up its encircling garden walls until he spotted the upper-floor window of the solar. Even after walking the length of the enclosure he still found no entrance. He inspected the vines that clung to the wall and experimentally pulled on them, hanging with his full weight.

“Master,” said Jack in a nervous whisper. “They’ve let you in the gate. Why are you trying to break in?”

“I wish to inspect that window,” he said, jerking his head upward. He grasped the vines, pushed himself off from the mud, and climbed. Some of the vines were stronger than others. The lesser stems broke off in his hand or snapped under foot, pelting Jack who was climbing directly behind him. With a grunt Crispin reached the top of the wall with his fingers and touched wet granite. He peered over the edge, slid his body out along the top, and jumped heavily to the other side.

Jack fell with a thud beside him, looking unhappy and a little in pain.

“Are you well?” Crispin asked.

Jack got to his feet and rubbed his backside. “Aye. A little worse for wear is all. Garden walls ain’t my specialty.”

“If I find a purse to cut I’ll let you know.”

Crispin glanced about the little garden with its short hedges trimmed down to perfect box shapes and other shrubs cut into ornate cones and spirals. The rest lay dead under an early autumn frost. A few fruit trees divested of leaves lined a far wall. A willow stood near the house, draping its long branches like a maiden’s hair toward a gravel path.

The earlier mist turned to icy drizzle but Crispin did not put up his hood. Instead, he craned his neck to peer at the window, one of three along the face of the damp stone. Tall, arched, the windows’ carved stone sills were dented with ridges and floral carvings.

“Give us a boost, Jack.”

Jack looked at him sideways. He was shorter than Crispin by almost two feet and slight of build. Crispin shrugged and climbed as far as he could up the jutting plinth foundation on his own. He examined the stone sill and the wall below the window, running his fingertips along the stone. He could not reach above the arched window, but he looked along the upper perimeter. He could see no telltale scratches, no ropes, no ladders, and no broken tiles from the roof.

Jumping back down to the gravel path, he stared at the window and the one beside it some four feet away. A third window stood only three feet from the solar window. He looked from one to the other and back again.

Jack patted his arms and stamped the ground to keep warm. He blinked away the raindrops though one dangled from the tip of his blunt, reddened nose and seemed to freeze there. “Master, are we done here?”

Crispin studied first the wall and then the windows again without moving.

“Master, we’re getting wet. And it’s cold.”

When he turned at last to Jack, the boy’s pleas finally registered. “Of course. Let us go to the house.”

Crispin climbed up the wall again. Straddling it, he leaned down, grabbed Jack’s arm, and hoisted him over. Together they walked in the drizzle to the front entrance.

Jack’s earlier revelry fell subdued under the specter of the enormous entry. “Shouldn’t we be going round to the kitchen door?” He peered anxiously at the dark windows.

“No, Jack. We are front-door guests today.” Though when he heard the bolt thrown back, Crispin belatedly realized how muddy his foray into the garden made him. He brushed off as much as he could before Adam opened the door.

“I would talk to you, Adam,” said Crispin, pushing forward.

Adam tried to close the door on him, but Crispin used his weight to wedge himself forward. He slammed Adam against the wall. “We could do this the easy way or the hard way. Which is it?”

Adam’s jaw tightened. “What do you want?” he said between clenched teeth.

Crispin released him and brushed off the man’s coat. “Now that’s not a very civil attitude. I merely come to seek answers to why your master was killed. Don’t you wish to help in this matter?”

Adam pushed Crispin’s hands aside. “Aye. I would see justice served.”

Crispin measured his brooding countenance. “You told me you served in this household five years. What happened to the previous steward?”

Adam looked once at Jack and then dismissed him. “I don’t know. I think he was transferred to my master’s estates in the north.”

“Is that where you are from?”

“Aye. Though not from his household. I received a missive that I was to be his new steward in London, so I journeyed here and presented the steward with documents from my master stating that I should replace him. And shortly thereafter, I replaced all the servants.”

“Replaced all the servants? Why?”

“Because my master wished it. Who knows why the rich do what they do.”

“You appear rather insubordinate to me, Becton. You speak of your betters this way?”

“It is no secret about the wealthy. They are all of the same ilk. Doesn’t matter where they come from. They all end up the same.”

“You did not love your master?”

Adam looked down. “It isn’t proper to speak ill of the dead.”

“But confidentially, you could do so to me.”

Adam snapped up his chin. “And why should I care to do that? You aren’t the sheriff.”

“Sheriff Wynchecombe and I often work in concert. You would do well to speak to me.
His
interrogations usually involve white hot irons.”

Adam’s eyes rounded and his jaw slackened. “I do not need to be questioned by the sheriff,” he said in a rush. “I’ve done nought.”

“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?”