Until Jack finally spoke.
“Master Crispin,” he said quietly. “Forgive me. I don’t always understand courtly ways. But . . . did you not lose your family estate some years ago when you was . . . was banished from court?”
Crispin’s curt “Yes!” cut knife-sharp into the room’s stillness.
“So why does it fret you so now?”
The wine was heavy in his belly but it did not muddle his mind as much as he had hoped. “Of course it was the king’s to dispose of as he would. But . . . my home, Jack!”
“I know, Master. It is a sour thing. But . . . so long ago.”
“For generations, the Guests have lived there. The barony, too, was granted to my ancestor by King Henry II and each generation has been knighted in turn—” His broken voiced unmanned him and he shot from the chair. But the wine had addled him more than he realized and he stumbled. Jack caught him with a surprisingly strong hand.
“Go to bed, Master Crispin. It will be better in the morning.” He pulled Crispin toward his small bed and pushed him down. “Shall I help you with your clothes?”
He waved him off. He fell back against the straw-stuffed pillow and closed his eyes. Yes, perhaps sleep was what he needed. God grant him a dreamless sleep. For once.
He woke badly. His head was pounding and his tongue felt thick and dry, his belly queasy. A pot rattled against another, sounding like the gong of a bell. “Stop that godforsaken noise!” he bellowed.
The pot crashed hard into the hearth. Crispin cringed and squinted at it. Jack stood with fists dug deep into his boney hips. He was scowling.
“I must care for you, drunk or no, or whether you suffer from its ill effects, because you are my master. But you must stop growling at me! I’m doing me best. If you didn’t drink so much . . .” He let the sentence linger, never finishing it. He grabbed the pot again and hoisted it with a grunt onto its hook over the flames, nudging another smaller clay cauldron sitting on a grate, the flames licking its bowed sides. Crispin watched the steaming water slosh into the pitiful fire, hissing as it met orange coals.
Vaguely, he thought of apologizing, but he was still awash in too much self-pity to utter the words. “Hmpf” was what he managed instead, and threw his legs over the side of the bed, wrapping the blanket around his shivering shoulders.
“Now then,” said Jack, standing over him and thrusting a steaming bowl toward his face. “I’ve made peas porridge. It ain’t much and it’s a bit watery, but thank the saints we have something to eat.” He waited as Crispin stared at it. Finally, he lifted a hand and cupped the bowl in his fingers. Porridge again. He brought it to his lips and drank. Jack was right. There was more water than grain and meat, but it warmed and managed to still his belly.
“Thank you,” he grumbled.
Jack nodded and poked at the fire. “The water for your shave will be ready anon.”
Crispin sighed. It was times such as these that he realized how much a luxury it was having Jack at his side. A man in his present position could surely never afford the likes of a servant. Though he had not thought so at the time, saving Jack from the sheriff all those months ago and finding the boy in his service had been fortunate indeed.
A knock on the door made them both jump. Jack was on his feet, the poker in his hand like a weapon. He looked at Crispin to see whether he should answer it.
He nodded to him. Dropping the blanket, he stood unsteadily on his stocking-clad feet.
Jack timidly opened the door, hiding the poker behind it, and then pulled it opened wider.
A man wearing the livery of the Sheriff of London stepped into the threshold and looked around, a dubious expression on his face. “I seek Crispin Guest.” The tone of his voice seemed to convey that he would not find such a person on these premises.
Crispin straightened and mustered as much dignity as his mussed hair and slept-in clothes could impart.
The man frowned. His eyes flicked toward each corner of the modest room; from ramshackle bed, to chest, to table. “Very well,” he muttered. He pulled the pouch slung over his shoulder toward the front and threw open the flap. Reaching inside, he withdrew several scrolls. He looked first at Jack and then at Crispin, not quite knowing to whom he should give them. He settled on placing them on the table. “From the sheriff,” he said unnecessarily.
Crispin and Jack stared at the man a moment longer before he seemed to decide his presence was no longer needed. He bowed and backed out of the room, rumbling down the rickety stairwell.
Jack closed the door and Crispin fingered the scrolls. His head was still unsettled but the face of that dead boy in his mind did much to sober him. Sitting, he reached for a scroll and unrolled it. Jack pulled up beside him on his stool and peered over his arm, staring at the tight scrawl. Crispin had begun to teach Jack to read Latin, French, and English, and though the boy was a quick study, he had little patience for his lessons. But Crispin supposed that crime was more intriguing fare, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as Jack’s lips worked over the words.
Crispin read for himself. These were copies of the Coroner’s rolls: the people he had questioned, the answers they gave, the Coroner’s conclusions based on these questions and answers. It was plain that the Coroner did not know who the dead boy was and was no closer to finding his killer than was Crispin.
He grabbed another scroll, leaving the last in the hands of Jack, who was still mouthing his way through it, ginger brows furrowed deep into amber eyes.
Another dead boy. Not the one Crispin had seen. This corpse was found two months prior, though not in London. Again, he had been fished from the Thames but more upstream. Perhaps, then, the murders were not committed in London after all, but further afield.
But the body Crispin had seen was not waterlogged. It could not have traveled down the Thames too far, not as far as this other one. When he read the accounts of the other dead boys, they were found even further up the Thames. It seemed the killings approached London slowly over the course of a few months. Where had this killer been? And why had he come to London?
“It’s the Devil,” whispered Jack, his face pale. He was reading over Crispin’s shoulder again. “Unspeakable.”
“Yes.” These boys were all Jack’s age or younger and none of them seemed to be notable sons of noble families. It was possible they were the sons of merchants, but no one had claimed them. Crispin suspected they were lowlier than that. They were the invisible. Beggar boys, possibly. Wayward apprentices. He felt Jack’s warmth at his side. The thought that a similar fate could have befallen Jack Tucker made his skin crawl.
He rolled up the parchments and set them aside. Staring into the fire, he tossed the cold facts inked on those parchments back and forth through his brain. “Four boys. Dead. Spaced apart in a matter of months. What links them, Jack? What did they have in common?”
“It does not say, sir.”
“Nor would it. But there is something that is common to all of them. And through this knowledge, we shall come close to finding their killer.”
A knock on the door drew both their heads swiveling sharply. The sheriff’s messenger again? Perhaps a client? He nodded to Jack’s questioning eyes, and the boy hurried to the door, opening it.
A boy, a page, shifted uncomfortably on the landing. “I . . . I seek Crispin Guest.”
This is the day for it, thought Crispin. “I am he,” he said, rising and approaching the door.