Crispin turned toward the far end of the hall. At the middle of the high table on a fine wooden seat sat Richard himself.
Crispin drew closer even though his good judgment told him not to.
Absently, he poured wine for those who motioned him over, careful to keep his head down and say nothing. He moved between the benches and edged nearer to the high table.
Richard, now seventeen, was pale and round-faced, with those same heavily lidded eyes Crispin remembered. His fair hair fell in curls about his face, not quite long enough to reach his gold-embroidered collar, or his shoulders in their red velvet coat patterned in foliated circles. He wore a crown, a simple gold circlet with trefoiled points. He sported the beginnings of a goatee and faint mustache. He listened to the other diners as they talked, but his attention seemed to be diverted by his diminutive bride of over a year, Anne of Bohemia.
Sixteen years old and possessed of a simple face, Anne could have been the daughter of a merchant. There was nothing particularly regal about her. Perhaps that was what Richard found so appealing. Surrounded by the likes of his very regal mother Joan of Kent, his uncle John of Gaunt, his Chancellor Michael de la Pole, his chamberlain Robert de Vere, and his tutor Simon Burley, it was as imposing an entourage as one could endure.
Crispin tried not to stare at Gaunt. The duke’s face was flush in a healthy if not slightly inebriated glow. His wife, Constance, sat several chairs away and kept a solicitous eye on him. Crispin couldn’t help but suffer a strange feeling in his gut about Lancaster.
This was foolish. To be so close to the head table. Crispin knew he was asking for trouble. He should keep close to Miles and he turned to do just that when Joan, the queen mother, called out to him.
“Bring the wine, man.”
Crispin would have clouted himself if he’d a free hand. He couldn’t just run, could he?
He pivoted slowly. His heart hammered and he steadily approached the dais. He kept his head down and moved up the steps as if they were a gibbet.
Joan had kept her pert beauty, though now her face was etched with grooves, particularly at the eyes and mouth. She did not look at Crispin as she raised her goblet. Several of the others also indicated they needed wine and Crispin bowed his head so low he feared he might stumble.
He filled Queen Joan’s goblet and then Richard raised his.
Crispin hesitated for a moment. Of all the places he could have been, of all the things he could be doing, he didn’t imagine he’d be serving the king wine. Mildly he thought of poisons as the red liquor drawled into his Majesty’s cup.
He breathed again when it appeared safe enough to leave. Wiping the jug’s lip with his fingers, he turned on his heel when he noticed that his mentor the duke had raised his cup. Crispin paused. No. Don’t stay! Crispin pretended he had not seen the duke’s gesture and made to leave, but a page stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Knave,” the boy hissed at him. “The duke of Lancaster needs wine.”
Crispin stared wide-eyed at the boy, that whelp in his way, hindering his escape. The boy’s audacious grip tightened on Crispin’s arm. “Are you deaf?” Without warning, he spun Crispin around and pushed him toward Lancaster.
Crispin swayed for a moment. It wasn’t fear exactly that froze him to the spot but an overwhelming sense of stupidity, that he could have avoided this. With a fatalistic sigh, he edged behind the throne and reached toward the duke as far as he could without getting closer. He tilted the jug and clapped its spout to Lancaster’s raised cup. The pouring of it seemed to take the length of a small eternity. But once the cup was finally filled, he lifted the jug away and let out a long breath and even a chuckle. That wasn’t so hard. At last. He was free to depart and no one had been the wiser. God be praised.
But then the duke looked up.
16
LANCASTER’S EYES ROUNDED AND his lips went white.
Crispin did nothing. He neither smiled nor implored with his eyes. If he were a dead man, then he’d rather get it over with.
Lancaster took the full goblet, put it to his lips, and drank deeply. He drank it down, but did not offer it up for a refill. He dismissed Crispin by curling his hand around the goblet and leaning on his arm.
Crispin wanted to ask him, wanted to cast the arrow pieces on his trencher and demand an explanation. Though he imagined Lancaster had his own questions for Crispin about now.
Instead, Crispin ducked his head and took the opportunity to slip down the steps to return to the main hall. He felt Lancaster’s gaze on him but he couldn’t worry over it. He had other things on his mind. He had to keep his eyes on Miles.
He turned toward the low tables and his heart lurched for the second time.
Where the hell was Miles?
Crispin hurried through the benches and people and stared at the place where Miles once sat, but it was empty like an open pit. He risked raising his head to look about the room, but he didn’t see him.
“God’s blood!” he hissed.
“Wine, here!” someone called over his shoulder.
Crispin cringed. Not him! Why did he have to be here? Crispin shook his head. Better and better. He lowered his face until the leather hood caressed his cheeks. He pivoted.
Simon Wynchecombe sat with his cronies at a low table and lifted his clay cup toward Crispin. Deep in conversation with the man beside him, the sheriff never raised his eyes. Crispin poured quickly and hustled away before anyone else at the table could ask him to serve them.
He looked for Miles in earnest. The man had simply vanished. How had he done it? Should he ask? No, that would be dangerous and someone was sure to recognize him. He slid as quickly as he could through the crowd, looking over heads, searching faces.
Suddenly everyone stood.
The duke had risen from his seat and was making some sort of pronouncement with his wine cup raised. Crispin was at the other end of the hall by then and Lancaster’s voice did not carry. But he surmised that Lancaster had called for a toast to the king. Everyone raised their cups.
Crispin put down the wine jug on a table. He didn’t want to be bothered with any more requests. He had to find Miles and quickly.
A juggler blocked the aisle but Crispin shoved him aside, and one ball fell and rolled under a table. The man swore an oath and Crispin pressed forward, moving toward the edge of the room.
Lancaster talked on.
Miles had to be here somewhere! Crispin shoved courtiers out of his way. It didn’t matter anymore if they saw him. What did it matter if he couldn’t stop Miles, for he knew with the blood singing in his bones that Miles would make another attempt sometime this night.
Had he seen it? There was an abundance of jewelry on both men and women alike; men with their swords in decorated scabbards and women with jeweled baselards secured at their girdles. With all the glittering finery, he couldn’t be certain he saw a flash of something. He wasn’t even sure in what direction he saw it. Whatever it was it didn’t belong, but he couldn’t make his mind locate it a second time.
Frantically he searched, saw it again, and froze for the span of a heartbeat.
The tapestries. They fluttered throughout the hall from the movement of the diners and the servants, from the heat of the fires and candles. But this one, hanging on the south wall halfway between the king’s dais and the exit, did not flutter. It bulged.
And an arrow was slowly edging its way farther and farther from behind it.
All sound—diners clinking goblets, trilling laughter and hoarse guffaws, music piping merrily—were all suddenly swallowed up by the quick inhale of the universe. The racing thump of Crispin’s heartbeat replaced them; a hollow thud growing steadily faster.