The boy looked Crispin over with an air of disappointment. “I bear a message from the physician Jacob of Provençal. He wonders where you were two days ago and entreats you to come to the place he advised previously at the same appointed time.”
Crispin clenched his jaw. Yes, he must see to this. For the rent and his belly. “Yes, boy. Tell him I will come tonight.”
He bowed to Crispin, flicked his eye at Jack, and scurried down the steps.
There was little to do for the rest of the day except to study the Coroner’s rolls. Jack made a trip to the poulterer’s at the other side of the tinker shop and returned with an old, tough pullet that he roasted over the fire, filling the small room with the aroma of sweet, cooked flesh at last. With a stew of turnips and leeks, Jack fed them well. He produced an apple at the end of the meal and Crispin was so glad to see it that he refused to question how Jack acquired such a treat.
By late afternoon it was time to make the trek back to Westminster. They bundled in their cloaks and headed out along Fleet Street where it became the Strand outside the city walls. It was cold but not snowing. Merchants were still out in full force, calling their wares before the day was spent. Many sat bundled in their stalls, large fires glowing in their shop hearths or in iron braziers outside, while their apprentices labored in colder back rooms.
Crispin kept half an eye on Jack, who was alert and observing the activity of London with acute ears and wide-open eyes. The boy was no fool. He was clever. But what of these other boys? Were they snatched from the streets without a fight? Had they been in stews, selling themselves to perverted men? Crispin thought of the things he had done to earn a crust of bread once he had been cast from court. Mucking the privies had seemed an insult to his character but he had endured it. He had to. But a boy with few choices had either to beg, steal, or service men for coin. Such was one’s lot. Jack could have no more chosen his way in life than had Crispin.
They moved without speaking, each deep in their own thoughts. They stopped once at a meat pie seller and shared half a pie as they continued on. The bells tolled for None by the time they reached Charing Cross, though little could be seen of a sun hidden behind a dull expanse of cloud cover.
Crispin stood again at the place they had found the little corpse. He skidded down the embankment and walked along the muddy shore while the tide was out. Seagulls pecked at rocky crevices and waddled awkwardly over the stones, lumbering to stay a few paces ahead of him. Along the river, skiffs and other small boats carried fishermen or ferried workers and goods to and from each bank. He watched a dirty-faced boy sitting at the stern of such a craft, clutching the boat as an older man beside him forced the tiller into the waves. The sail flapped as it caught the wind, and the boy shivered, watching Crispin. They disappeared around a barge, heading upriver toward Westminster Palace.
The wind swept up the Thames and battered his hood, trying to pull it away from his whipping hair. “Somebody must be missing these children,” he murmured.
“Not if they was like me, sir,” said Jack beside him.
Crispin started. He had been so engrossed in his thoughts he had forgotten Jack. He looked up at the sky. Still light. Nightfall was still some hours away. He carefully climbed back up the embankment and stood with his hands at his hips, staring down the muddy streets, with their frosty rooftops and slithering smoke. “You take this street, Jack. And I shall take this one.”
“Er . . . ‘take’ it, sir? For what?”
“To question the merchants, of course. Ask them if they have heard of any boy who had gone missing. Even if it is a rumor.”
Jack gnawed on his lip and shuffled his muddy shoes. “Beggin’ your pardon, Master Crispin. But they won’t be answering any fool questions from me.”
“Hmm?” he asked, distracted. “Why not?”
“Well, look at me, sir. I ain’t in no fit state. They’d think I was a beggar.”
Crispin turned and measured young Jack, from his torn stockings to his beleaguered hood that he kept closed by pinching it tight at his chin. “Tell them you are on the Sheriff of London’s business—”
Jack guffawed, showing a chipped tooth. “Go on!”
With a sigh of resignation Crispin nodded. “Very well. Tell them you are an emissary of the Tracker. No doubt they have heard of me even on these streets.”
“Aye. That might do. But if they box me ears for impertinence, it’s on your head.”
Crispin smiled. “I shall gladly carry the burden.”
Jack nodded once and was off, looking back warily.
With a snort at insolent servants, he headed to the first shop on the street he had chosen. These were further in from the Thames; shops and houses that the Coroner had not questioned.
Crispin repeated the exercise all the way to the end of the street, where Jack met him, rubbing his arms to keep warm. The light was slanting toward the horizon now. The sparse trees in back gardens were becoming dark silhouettes against the sky. Slushy flakes began to fall, speckling the lane. “Have you yielded anything?” he asked the boy.
“No, Master. No one remembered a boy gone missing, servant or beggar.”
Crispin’s eyes adjusted to the darkening night and measured the many lanes ahead of him. “There are many more houses and shops to ask.”
“We can’t ask them all, can we?”
Crispin’s sigh created a curling mist around his face. He looked down the lane and scanned rooftops disappearing into the night. “The city is a big place. I do not see how we can ask them all. There must be another way.”
“In the meantime, we must go to meet this Jew, then.”
Crispin wound his cloak about him. Yes. He must.
The streets were becoming deserted. The merchants’ stalls had been folded up and shuttered. Even the sounds of commerce had softened from the day. The muffled fall of hoofs tramping in the new snow and the squeak of a cart pushed back to its resting spot were the only sounds left from another busy day in Westminster.
Crispin led the way to St. Margaret’s Street toward Westminster Hall. An icy mist rose from the Thames and every sound seemed to dampen beneath its heavy governance. The disquieting stillness sent a shiver down Crispin’s spine. It fell heavily around him, this sensation. He found himself stopping and looking around, bewildered. He touched Jack’s shoulder to stop him as well, and listened. It wasn’t so much something that he heard as it was something he felt. Jack looked up at him questioningly. Crispin beseeched those steady, tawny eyes, asking silently if Jack felt it, too.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Crispin spun.
For only a moment, with the light of a shopkeeper’s brazier filling the misty space behind, Crispin spied . . . something . . . against the snowy fog. A large, hulking silhouette. Broad shoulders supported a tiny head and large arms hung like hams at its sides. An unspeakable fear like none other suddenly seized Crispin’s heart. His first instinct was to grab Jack and drag his surprised form to him. His second was to draw his dagger.
He blinked. And suddenly the alley was empty.
“Master! What—”
“Be still.” Crispin trotted down the narrow lane, looking for the . . . man, for want of a better word.
The flickering brazier toyed with the shadows, sending them running in long, dancing shapes along the walls of shuttered houses. Crispin listened with all his might, stilling his own straining breath in order to hear.
Ahead. Something like footfalls.
He ran, snow flying from his heels. The quiet, narrow streets seemed to close in on him, their crowded structures twisting toward the middle, towering above Crispin’s head in their need to consume the sky.