CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Let me sum this up,” said Wynchecombe. He left his houppelande unbuttoned down to the waist revealing the white shirt beneath. His wide sleeves were rolled up past a hairy length of wrist. He wore no hat and his black hair lay in mussed waves. “You want me to release our prisoner because you do not believe him guilty. Instead, you wish to implicate a servant who escaped from your easy grasp. Is that the gist of it?”
Crispin gritted his teeth. His hand rested on his dagger hilt. “Close enough.”
“You must be mad!”
“Only slightly.”
“I don’t understand you, Crispin.” Wynchecombe rose to walk around the table. He planted himself firmly beside Crispin and cast a shadow, blocking the oil lamp’s flame. “Your chance at revenge. Fame for such a coup. You would give it up-”
“For the truth, my lord.”
“But as Pilate said, ‘What is truth?’ Anything can be made to be the truth.”
“Not anything. Sir Stephen is not guilty, and though nothing would please me more than to see him die, I would not have it so through a lie. In truth…” He shook his head. “I do not even know if I feel the same about my vengeance any longer.”
“Crispin! God’s teeth! A change of heart? Truly a miracle has come to pass.”
Crispin thought he knew Stephen, thought he understood his own misery, but none of it seemed to matter of late. “I know not. All I know is that I believe him when he protests his innocence. And this servant was there sitting beside Gaston D’Arcy with the means and the motive to kill him.”
“Oh? What motive was that?”
He wondered how much to divulge. Perhaps Wynchecombe could keep his tongue. “He was defending the honor of his mistress.”
“Lady Rothwell? How so?”
“My lord, discretion is tantamount. The lady is betrothed.”
“Indeed? You show an unusual amount of restraint for a man who was once betrothed to her yourself.”
Scowling, Crispin turned away. Not given permission to sit, Crispin stood at the window and gazed into Newgate’s courtyard. The rain began again, and the courtyard was bathed in gray light and misty lines of drizzle. Stagnant puddles came alive with jumping dots of raindrops, and the few wooly horses tethered there stomped impatiently for dryer paddocks. “That was a long time ago, my Lord Sheriff. I have put the matter aside.”
“Then what is this secret that must be so hushed?”
“The lady,” Crispin began in a subdued tone, “was having a love affair with D’Arcy.”
Wynchecombe’s laugh infuriated but Crispin did not turn from the window. He clutched the shutter, grasping so tightly he felt the wood crack.
Wynchecombe composed himself and merrily poured more wine in his silver cup. “Such a motive could be equally applied to Sir Stephen. Or you, for that matter.”
“Not with poison. Stephen would have slit the man’s throat. I know I would have.”
Wynchecombe chuckled and nodded. “And so would I.”
“My witness claims Jenkyn did not drink, and sat beside D’Arcy for at least a quarter of an hour.”
“Your witness? Who?”
“Jack Tucker.”
“Who is Jack Tucker?”
Crispin licked his lips. “The cutpurse.”
The cup flew across the room nearly hitting Crispin in the head. Red wine splattered on Crispin’s coat and face. He wiped his cheek.
“You whoreson! What are you playing at? Do you toy with me?” Wynchecombe pulled his dagger and advanced on Crispin. Not knowing what else to do, Crispin allowed the sheriff to back him against the shutter and hold the blade to his throat.
“How about I slit your throat, eh?” The sheriff’s wine breath puffed on Crispin’s cheek. “Wouldn’t that be the end of all my troubles? Including yours?”
“Don’t you want the truth, my Lord Sheriff? Or are half-lies better than disagreeable facts?”
Crispin felt the cold steel press to the flesh under his jaw. The sharp edge sliced him by his mere breathing. He waited interminably for the sheriff to pull away, and when he did not, Crispin wondered if he ever would.
Then be done with it! Let me leave this world while I have tried to do justice in it. Then maybe God, if not my fellow man, will forgive me.
Wynchecombe breathed raggedly and began to loosen his grip. With reluctance in his eyes, he lowered the dagger.
Crispin reached up to his throat and wiped away the blood.
“You are a damnable man!” the sheriff bellowed. He threw his knife into the table where it stuck. “What am I supposed to do now? I trusted your judgment. I arrested Sir Stephen on your word. I will have the king down on my head because of you.” Wynchecombe faced him. “You’ve betrayed me!”
“Not so, my lord. I have done good work for you in the past. Our history together must surely-”
“History means nothing!”
Crispin surprised himself with the vehemence of his reaction. It bubbled up out of nowhere, yet always it lay just below the crust of emotions. “Nothing?” he cried. “History is everything!”
Wynchecombe drew back, startled, but Crispin didn’t bother with civility any longer.
“How you can stand there and tell me…” Crispin held out his arms showing himself in all the rags and shabby finery of days past. “Look at me, Wynchecombe. I am nothing but history!” He laughed, slightly hysterically, and dropped his arms to his sides. Advancing toward the table he smiled when Wynchecombe subtly retreated. “You are not a brilliant man, Wynchecombe. But surely even you must recognize that history plays the most important part in a man’s life. Mine especially. If it were not so, I should have taken a sword to you years ago.”
Wynchecombe said nothing. He hovered over the table, eyeing his knife. His sword and baldric lay out of reach. “You’d take a sword to me, eh?” asked Wynchecombe warily. “Why? Because I give you the insolence you deserve?”
Crispin nodded. His face felt hot. Anger reddened it and forced his mouth into a grimace. “The insolence I deserve,” he echoed, thinking about the words. “Who knows what I deserve? Perhaps I taunt you so that you will thrust that knife into my gut. You want to, don’t you? Why don’t you take it up? I won’t stop you.”
Wynchecombe grasped the dagger hilt and pulled it free of the wood. He held the blade but not to strike. Crispin could imagine the heft of it. He knew it was well made with soft leather strips carefully wound about the wooden grip. A red gem crowned the pommel.
The dagger hanging from Crispin’s belt was the same he owned for three decades. They did not see fit to take it from him when they stripped him of everything else. It was as fine a thing as Wynchecombe’s blade.
But Crispin made no move to retrieve it. He was as anxious as Wynchecombe to discover what would transpire next.
“Enough of your arrogance,” the sheriff said at last. “Yes, you have a history. You are not a great lord anymore. You are not a knight. You are…what? What are you now, Crispin? A day ago you were my lackey. Is that what you are?”
All the vitality and anger released from him, rushing out with a long, ragged sigh. “Yes,” Crispin said gravely. “That is what I am. That is all I will ever be.”
The sheriff toyed with his knife. He touched the blade’s tip with his finger and turned the hilt, catching the light in flashes on its polished brass. All at once he laughed.
Crispin drew himself up and stared at the sheriff’s ruddy countenance: eyes squinted, teeth bared, mustache lifted up at the corners.
Has he gone mad, too?
“Crispin, you sorrowful bastard!” He slammed the knife into its scabbard and stood back, looking at him.
Crispin knew he had done a terribly stupid thing. Not only had he been uncivil and rude to a better, but he showed his hand, revealed his vulnerability. In a fight, he never would have done so. But in a true fight, he would have been better armed.