Mahmoud waved his hand and smiled.
Crispin glanced at the dead crossbowmen. “Don’t tell me you killed Walcote, or whatever his true name is?”
Mahmoud frowned, but his face wore amusement. “We wanted him dead, but we would not be so stupid as to kill him before we got the cloth back.”
Crispin wished for half a heartbeat that he was still holding the cloth and that it could tell him a lie from the truth. But he was also a good judge of men and a good judge of lies.
“Strangely,” he said, “I believe you.”
“I am gratified,” Mahmoud said.
“Yet this cloth that you so fiercely desire does not seem to belong to you?”
“Not strictly speaking, no.”
“Then we have nothing to discuss.”
“I think we do. My employers wish to make you an offer that you will find difficult to decline.”
“Oh? And what is that?”
Mahmoud rose and sauntered toward the door. His hand never left the pommel of a curved dagger in its intricately patterned sheath. “Give us the Mandyllon or the girl dies.”
A wave of panic seized Crispin, but his face only showed practiced indifference. “What if I were to negotiate directly with your masters?”
Mahmoud’s mouth flattened. “That would be ill-advised. My masters do not bargain amongst the lower classes.” He said the last with relish. Crispin fought the urge to frown.
“Would it surprise you to learn that your master is already negotiating with me?” The look on Mahmoud’s face more than made up for his last comment. “It seems he effectively cut you out of the entire process. Unless…he isn’t the master you speak of. I believe you said ‘masters.’”
Mahmoud shut his lips and strolled across the room. He stared down at one of the dead men. “That is all of little consequence,” he replied quietly.
“Truly? Will this not displease your masters, whoever they are? That at least one of them was forced to negotiate with me? That you failed?”
The Saracen looked up. “The end is still the same.”
“The end.” Crispin chuckled and leaned against the doorpost. “Indeed. The end.”
Mahmoud rushed him. He snarled, his hand on his dagger. “What have you told them?”
Crispin blinked slowly, enjoying it. “Only what I needed to.”
“They don’t know about the girl,” he growled. “I do. I suggest you surrender the Mandyllon to me before I get to her.”
“You don’t know where she is.”
Mahmoud cast his glance purposefully about the room. “Don’t I?” He saluted Crispin and rolled out of the doorway.
Crispin cast a glance at the dead men again before he dashed for the door. He got two paces on the landing before he stopped sharply.
No one was there.
“What the devil—?”
Just that moment Jack and Philippa passed the eclipse of light and shadow at the bottom of the stairway. They trotted upwards when Philippa looked up and raised a startled hand to her chest. “Crispin!”
“Didn’t you see him?”
She ascended to the landing where Crispin stood, peering past her. “Who?”
“Mahmoud. You must have just passed him.”
Philippa turned to Jack who had come up beside her. “We saw no one.”
Like smoke. Mahmoud’s threat still hung in the air. Crispin’s voice remained calm but his heart hammered against his ribs. “Where have you been?”
“Jack went with me to get some food.”
“Where did you get the money? Jack, haven’t I told you a thousand times—”
“It wasn’t him,” she said, putting a hand on Jack’s drooping shoulders.
“You said you didn’t have any money.” He looked at her hand resting on Jack. “You pawned your wedding ring.”
She covered the empty ring finger with the other hand. “What any self-respecting servant would do.”
Jack chuckled. “I like her,” he said.
“Now that you’re back we must go.”
“Go?” she cried. “Go where? What did Mahmoud want?”
Jack groaned. “She was going to cook, Master Crispin. No offense, but I am tired of your cooking, and mine.”
“She hasn’t the time.” He took her elbow and steered her down the stairs.
Dejected, Jack stood holding the poultry and sausages. “What should I be doing?” he asked.
Crispin stopped. “Oh. Jack, call for the sheriff. If he has any questions…well, it is certain he will, and I will answer to him anon. But…not at this moment.”
“Call the sheriff for what?”
“Those men in our room. I’m afraid they are dead.”
“What?”
Without looking back, he ushered Philippa away, but she dragged her heels in the mud and brought him to a halt. “Crispin! I will not take one more step until you tell me where we are going! And what did that terrible man want?”
“You are going to a safer location and stay with some friends of mine.”
“But Crispin.” She melted naturally into his arms. Her touch brought an instant response. “I thought you wanted me all to yourself.”
He wanted to kiss her, but the reality of their public surroundings sunk in. He gently pushed her back. “I want you alive.” He glanced up and saw a few turned heads. It took all his strength to step back. “You have enough scandal to contend with without talk of your living with a man.”
She set her jaw and planted a fist at her hip. “What’s the matter? What tidings have you heard?”
“Mahmoud threatened you.”
She laughed, a hearty, throaty sound, one that made him tingle with desire. He had felt that laugh tremble against his chest only last night. It almost made him lose his resolve. “He can’t have me anymore,” she said triumphantly. “That game is done!”
“He wants the cloth.”
“You didn’t give it to him!”
“No, nor will I. It is a tangled tale, to be sure. There is more than one syndicate at work here. Yet there is one thing I am certain of. Neither killed your husband.”
“But they must have. Who else could it be?”
“I’m afraid it puts the murder back on you.”
“Crispin! I did not kill Nicholas!”
“Others will not see it that way. Who else knew about Nicholas Walcote’s true nature?” He gently steered her up the road toward the Boar’s Tusk. They picked their way over the rutted, muddy lane. Shopkeepers’ apprentices called out their wares. A boy—a servant—was holding up a coney by its back feet and waving the limp creature to the passersby. The long ears flopped from side to side.
“Adam did,” she said reluctantly. “He found out accidentally. He overheard us talking.”
He pulled Philippa out of the way of a cart moving quickly up the street toward Newgate Market. “What did Adam do?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. He is very loyal.”
“To you.”
She glanced sideways at him. “Jealous?”
Crispin ignored the comment. “He could have made trouble for Nicholas. It could have come to a head.”
They reached Foster Lane and the smells of the fish market swelled like a tide of the Thames. Some boys, hefting a basket of eels between them, stopped at the nearest seller and began to bargain. A woman nearby, having just left the steps of a well, lifted a dripping water-bouget to a man astride a draft horse. He fitted it behind him on his makeshift saddle.
“No, Adam is no such man,” she said, watching the handsome man on the horse lean down to kiss the water girl farewell. “And I doubt he knew about the secret passage.”
Crispin brooded. Adam Becton could easily have discovered such a passage. He was the household steward, after all. It was his business to know the doings of the house. That would also give him access to the ledgers.