Crispin shook his head. “My lord, I must leave now.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
Crispin would never understand the sheriff. Here was a puzzle of great import and he had no interest whatsoever in any of its intricacies. Did he not wish to know who captured and detained Stephen, the same who did so to Crispin? Had he no curiosity at all about the grail? Be myth or reality, dangerous men sought it, were willing to kill for it. Wynchecombe didn’t care. If it didn’t fall within his usual sphere of rogue, cutpurse, or murderer, he had no use for it.
Quickly, before he changed his mind, Crispin scraped the coins from the table into his hand. No use letting them go to waste. With a curt bow to hide his embarrassment, Crispin took his leave. He dropped the coins into his money pouch on his way down the stairs, and soon finally stood outside the prison. He looked up, scanned the walls. His eyes lit momentarily on each slotted window in the gate tower. Stephen’s cell would be the one on the far left overlooking Newgate’s sewage run-off that slipped in green tendrils toward the Fleet.
Why was Stephen so stubborn? What did he hide? He had concentrated so tightly on events surrounding Gaston D’Arcy and the grail that he’d quite forgotten to ask about Vivienne. No matter. Stephen was going nowhere and there would be time enough to discover what Lady Stancliff and Stephen had in common, as well as the subject of Stephen’s earnest conversation with Rosamunde.
Rosamunde. He wondered if there would ever come a day when he thought of her name without a pang of longing in his heart.
He tried, with little success, to think of her in the abstract all the way back to his lodgings. When his boot touched the bottom step, he paused. Visions of Rosamunde fled.
A man. He felt more than saw him in the shadows at the top of the landing. It wasn’t Jack, but that was all he knew. The landing above creaked and confirmed what his gut told him.
He braced himself against the railing, held his breath and shot up the stairs like a quarrel from a crossbow. The man had no time to escape-where was he to go? — and Crispin pinned him against the wall so hard the plaster gave way and flecked on the man’s shoulders. The man groaned and hung his head.
“You have to the count of three to tell me who you are,” Crispin rasped, cocking his fist at the man’s eye level. “One…two…thr-”
“Hold! Hold! I am the sheriff’s man!”
Crispin’s gnarled fist remained near the man’s face. “Say again.”
“I am the Lord Sheriff’s man!”
“Why have you been following me?”
“I was under orders.” His gaze darted from Crispin’s fist, to his face, and back again.
“Orders?”
“To follow you. My Lord Sheriff did not trust you to find Sir Stephen and report it immediately.”
Crispin clenched his fist, wanting now more than ever to mash it into the man’s face, but it was really Simon Wynchecombe he wanted before him.
He lowered his hand, released the man’s shirt and stepped back. “Then your charge is done,” he said coldly. “Get back to your master and never let me see you again.”
“Aye,” he grumbled. He straightened his cotehardie and skirted warily past Crispin down the stairs.
Crispin heaved a sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “Damn the man,” he hissed, thinking of Wynchecombe and his suspicions. He took another breath to relax and lifted the key from his pouch. He pushed the door open, but stopped on the threshold, neck tingling.
Too late he sensed the men in the room. They dragged him forward, and slammed the door shut behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The hearth had burned down to an undulating sea of red embers. Crispin could not see the men clearly. They moved like phantoms in the ragged light. He counted five men, possibly six. They wrestled him into his chair but did not bind him.
No use in angry protestations. Crispin simply sat where they put him and waited.
“I think you know who we are,” said a chillingly familiar voice.
Crispin surprised himself by his composure. “You are the one who flogged me.”
The man chuckled and ordered another man to stoke the fire. The room remained quiet except for the sounds of wood being moved. Sticks cracked over a knee and landed on the red coals. A man knelt and blew on the embers. It lit his profile and reflected on his cheeks and nose, giving him an uncanny resemblance to a demon. The coals awakened and ignited the sticks. White smoke curled around the man’s still indistinguishable features and drifted in dispersing billows into the room. Someone stacked another square of peat onto the shimmering flames and illuminated the rest of the shadows, revealing the five men who stood along the perimeter.
One man leaned toward Crispin. An old scar ran from his left eyelid down to his lip, raising it slightly and revealing his white teeth. A face to the voice. “Now you see us,” he said.
“I see you.” He scanned the rough faces of the others. Many wore day-old beards and some sported bruises on their chins and around their eyes. Those were probably the men he encountered when rescuing Stephen. “What now?”
“It has occurred to me that you were unaware of the nature of the object which we seek.”
“Indeed. What has this to do with me?”
The man smiled. His scar reddened and seemed to smile, too. “Are we to play games?”
“Why should I play games with the anti-pope’s men?”
“Anti-pope?” The man straightened and toyed with the long chain that hung over the breast of his elaborately patterned cotehardie. The coat gleamed blood red in the firelight. The tippet sleeves dragged along the floor almost meeting his long-toed slippers.
The man’s dark hair framed his face in its coifed perfection; fringe perfectly straight, ends of his brown locks curled inward. His men, however, were dressed like monks in long, dark robes that hid-Crispin was certain-their armor. “He is the rightful successor of Peter duly elected by the cardinals. You would call his holiness Clement VII the ‘anti-pope’? You should be flogged for such insolence. And yet….” He chuckled again. “You already have been.”
“Yes,” said Crispin. “I have been. So what now? You know I do not have the grail so why trouble me?”
“The grail?” The man pretended to examine his manicured fingernails and flicked them once before returning his attention to Crispin. “So you do know.”
“Come, sir. I tire of this. Begin the torture, if you will. My patience for talking has expired.”
“I told you. We have not come to torture.” He approached the fire and warmed his hands in its amber glow. “My name is Guillaume de Marcherne. I know you have never heard of me. I, on the other hand, have heard a great deal about you since our last encounter.”
“Oh? Am I expected to be flattered?”
De Marcherne smiled. The scar lifted it higher. “You are a brave one. One wonders how you withstood the shame of your dishonor; how you continue to live despite the humiliation that must be repeated in a thousand different ways each day.”
The men in the shadowy perimeter laughed in low growls.
Crispin smiled. “And yet, I am not the one working for the anti-Christ.”
De Marcherne frowned for the first time. He walked to the coffer by the door and sat, facing Crispin. “Let me tell you a tale, then you may decide if I am in the employ of the ‘anti-Christ’ or not.”
“Everyone wants to tell me a tale,” Crispin grumbled. He shrugged. “Well, why not?”
De Marcherne settled on the chest and leaned forward, resting his fists on his thighs. “When our lord Pope Gregory died in 1378-requiescat in pace-” he becrossed himself-“the cardinals assembled in conclave in the papal palace in Rome. Immediately there was an uproar in the city. Bells in every tower rang out and the people clambered up the palace steps and overtook the guards. Some entered the precincts and, with a force of hundreds, demanded the cardinals elect a Roman or Italian pope. What could they do, poor clerics that they were? They feared for their lives. Forthwith, they elected Edwin, Bishop of Bari. They believed, under the circumstances, that he would reject the vote, telling the mob that popes are not elected by the threats of criminals and villains. But much to their chagrin, he did not decline their hasty election. He allowed Man’s frail ambition to sway him to the detriment of his soul. He all but seized the crown and the seat of Peter. Can you blame the cardinals for retiring to a safe haven outside Rome to set things aright? Even after Robert of Geneva was hailed the new pope, Bishop Edwin would not step down. It is he who is responsible for the divisions we now see in Christendom, not Clement VII.”