“Jack!” he gasped. “God’s blood!”
“It’s me treasure,” he said sheepishly. “For my retirement. A man can’t be a thief all his life.”
Crispin laughed and touched the boy good-naturedly on the shoulder. “No indeed. My hope is that no new items of late have been added to this cache.”
Jack lowered his face and muttered, “‘Of late’? Well, that depends on what you mean by that.”
“Never mind for now. How is it I missed these things when I caught you that night?”
Jack smiled. “It’s a clever thief with more than one place to hide his spoils.”
Crispin eagerly scanned the cache again. “Which one belonged to the servant?”
“Now let me think.” Jack picked through his bounty and finally weighed something in his hand, nodding. “This one. I think it is this one. With the bird.”
Crispin took the broach and stared at ivory and silver. A bird, a crane. His mind put it together and he shook his head. “Oh, Jack. What a pity.”
“Eh? Someone you know, then?”
“Yes. Someone I know.”
He took his cloak but left his hood behind and said over his shoulder, “Jack, you’d best come with me.”
Crispin struggled to remember. He put himself back in the setting of the Boar’s Tusk almost a week ago; watched the servant in dark livery-certain now it was blue. The man would be familiar, but Crispin’s position across the room and his drunken state contributed to his not recognizing him.
When they reached the White Hart, Crispin told Jack to stand guard at the door until called. Crispin entered and stood in the doorway to get his bearings and to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the dimness. He scanned the room and strode across the tavern until he reached a table near the stairwell. A man sat alone, staring into his bowl of wine. His dark blue coat had a high collar and buttoned up the throat. The skirt, split in the middle, made it easier for him to run and better serve his masters. A black leather belt cinched his waist. A lengthy strap of leather, it wrapped around him almost a second time and folded and tucked over the buckle. It sported a scabbard with a dagger and a leather scrip at his hip near his back. An embroidered crane eyed Crispin from the left breast, the signet of Rothwell.
“Jenkyn,” said Crispin.
He jerked up his head and stared. Crispin made his way to the table and sat opposite him. “What do you want?”
“Now, Jenkyn. Is that any way to talk to an old friend?”
Jenkyn stared up at Crispin with cool gray eyes. Not steel gray like Crispin’s, but light with just the barest blue tint to them. His bushy brows hung over his lids. His nose, straight and aristocratic, belonged more to his betters than his long lineage of servants serving the St Albans household as far back as anyone could remember. His hair, slightly wilder than fashion called for, shined darkly, but gray streaks tangled through it and the hairline shot high up his lengthened forehead. “I was not your friend,” he said. “I was my master’s servant. And now I am the servant of my mistress.”
“Just so. We were never friends, but I feel I know you.”
“No, you don’t. You were just another lord like all the rest, and now you’re not even that. Begone. I have no use for you.”
Crispin curled his fingers into fists. He would have struck the man, but Jenkyn was in the right. Crispin was no longer a lord. He could talk to Crispin any way he liked.
“So that is how you truly feel? Interesting. If only our masters could hear what is in our heads, eh? We’d all be released from service.”
“Then it’s a good thing none are mind readers.” He took up the bowl but still did not drink.
Crispin watched him. “You do not drink.”
“I am not thirsty.”
“Yet you ordered wine.”
Jenkyn looked at the bowl in his hand as if recognizing it for the first time. Hastily he put it down. “Habit.”
“Perhaps you have no more taste for drinking wine in taverns. To see a man die from such imbibing…”
Jenkyn rose but Crispin drew his blade and motioned for him to sit again. “I do not believe I am done talking with you,” he said and slowly sat again, echoing Jenkyn’s cautious movements. He kept the knife in plain view. Jenkyn stared at it. His forehead beaded with sweat and his breath became hard and rasping.
“Why don’t you tell me about that night,” Crispin urged.
Jenkyn wrung his hands. “Jesus mercy,” he muttered. “I don’t want to hang.”
“That is the punishment for murder, is it not?”
“Have I not been a loyal servant? Have I not served the house of St Albans for most of my life?”
“There is no denying it.” Crispin’s stomach turned. He had no belly for what was to come; for the pleading and the crying. A man should take his punishment. He knew he should be angrier at Jenkyn for all the flurry he’d caused, for Crispin’s sometimes disastrous meetings with Lady Vivienne and for his trouble with Stephen. And even for Crispin’s encounters with Templars and de Marcherne. Jenkyn had given him a merry chase and now was time to finish it. “Tell me what happened.”
“Oh my poor Lady Rothwell. He was a devil. He…he…”
Jenkyn succumbed to weeping and laid his head on his arms. Crispin sat back and sheathed his knife. He glanced at the others who turned to look. “Pull yourself together. You were surely defending your mistress’ honor.”
“Yes, yes. That is so!” He raised his wet face. His trembling hands opened and closed until he finally grasped them together and dropped them into his lap. “She has been good to me. So good. When I discovered what that knave intended…”
“There’s no need to speak of that,” Crispin interrupted. He looked behind at the curious faces and suddenly thought better of a public encounter. “Come now. We will discuss this with the sheriff.”
Jenkyn’s face drained of its ruddiness and became flat and white like a plaster wall. “The sheriff? Gaol? Oh, Sir Crispin! You don’t mean to turn me in, do you? Was I not equally loyal to you, good sir?”
So swiftly Crispin changed from a troublesome nobody to “Sir Crispin” again. He had no time to enjoy the irony. “Though that is true, there has been a crime, Jenkyn. As a knight…well, even though a knight no more, I still have sworn to uphold the king’s laws, and I must.”
The servant’s speed caught Crispin off guard. Jenkyn sprinted from the table and zigzagged through the benches and chairs. Crispin snapped from his seat to pursue, but the man was always an arm’s length out of reach. Just as Crispin almost caught up, he got tangled in a crowd of men playing dice, and tried vainly to shove them aside.
Jenkyn slipped out the door, knocking down Jack Tucker. Crispin called out, “Get him, Jack!” but Jenkyn disappeared far from sight by then, having ducked down a nearby alley.
When Crispin reached the door he scowled at Jack. “Did I not tell you to be on your guard?”
Jack picked himself up and wiped the mud from his sagging stockings. “I’m sorry, Master. Forgive me.”
Crispin glared down the bleak avenue, with its few passersby, and thrust his fists in his hips. “No, Jack, I was at fault. I am the one who was not on guard. But there is nowhere for him to run. We will wrest him yet.”
“Is he the murderer?”
“Yes, Jack. Right under our very noses all along.”
“Why’d he do it? Did he know the gentleman?”
“He knew him. He did it for his mistress’ honor,” he said, looking up at the threatening sky. He remembered he left his chaperon hood back at his room. “But he will tell all when we apprehend him. We must go to Newgate and inform the sheriff.”
“He won’t like this. Will he believe you, I wonder? Enough to release Sir Stephen?”
“I don’t know. Pray he does. Then this whole matter will be over with.”
“Except for one thing.” Jack glanced behind him as if expecting doom to descend upon him with his utterance. “The Holy Grail.”