“That is true, Jack. We do our best, we say our prayers, we ask forgiveness of the Almighty, and we serve the least of our brothers. What more can a man do?”
“Just so. But that man didn’t have no good words for nobody. According to him, we’re all going to Hell, no matter what.”
“That may be true for some, Jack. For those who do not repent.”
Jack glanced over his shoulder toward the door just as Avelyn returned. “Repent, eh?” He grinned.
Crispin was tempted to snap his belt at the boy but buckled it around his waist instead. He unbuttoned the sleeves of his coat, pushed up his shirtsleeves, and dipped his cupped hands into the basin of hot water, sluicing his face. He reached for the soap cake and the razor, but Avelyn was faster and urged him to sit.
Jack looked on amused as he poured the hot watered wine into two bowls. He sipped his and slid the other near Crispin. Crispin first offered it to Avelyn, who shook her head vigorously while she readied his razor.
Jack gestured with his steaming bowl. “Do you suppose she knows what she’s doing?”
Crispin sipped the warmed wine, savoring the heat. “We’ll soon see. Either I will be well shaved or no longer burdened of this workaday world.”
Jack hovered, suddenly looking worried. Crispin kept his expression neutral as the woman, with fierce concentration, steadily ran the razor over his soaped-up jawline.
“You were telling me of the preaching man, Jack.”
“Oh, aye.” He sat back, sipped his wine, and then set the bowl down with his hand still wrapped around it. “Robert Pickthorn is the scoundrel’s name. He is a lay preacher. New to London. I followed him as he preached. Didn’t even stop to take a piss. He talked on and on. And then he just … disappeared.”
“What do you mean?”
“The crowd had gathered, he said his piece, and then, even as I watched, he slipped away.”
Crispin jerked in his seat. Deftly, Avelyn took the razor away from his skin before he cut himself. He pushed her back and wiped his face with a rag. “He what?”
“I’m sorry, Master, but he got away. I questioned all and sundry, but no one had seen him go and none knew where he lives. I searched and searched.”
“And when was it that he disappeared, Jack? What time of day?”
“Well, let me think.” He scratched his head. “Round about Sext, by the church bells ringing not long thereafter.” He looked up, alert. “What of the ransom drop, sir? What happened? After I searched for the whoreson, I returned to Master Flamel’s shop in the hopes that you would be there, but you had gone. He said … he said the man had failed to show. Is that what happened, sir?”
Crispin stood at the table and consumed the rest of his now lukewarm wine. “Not exactly. Someone did come to claim the ransom.”
Jack finished and set his bowl aside. “Well? Who was it?”
The sick sensation swooped in his belly again. “It was Henry Bolingbroke,” he said, voice rough.
“Oh, Master! It couldn’t have been.”
With a surge of frustration, he heaved his wooden bowl into a corner. Wine fanned across the table. The bowl clattered against the floor, spun, and finally came to rest. “It was him, dammit! Don’t you think I know my own-” Family? Charge? Whatever it was he meant to say died in the smoky room.
“But why, sir?”
“I don’t know. I … I confronted him. He told me in so many words to back off. That I was not seeing what I thought I was seeing, or some such nonsense. He claimed to know nothing of the ransom, but he was there, Jack, at the statue with his hand there at Saint Paul’s feet, as guilty as any rogue. He knew. I know he did.”
Jack slumped onto his stool. “Blind me.” He shook his head in disbelief and stared at the floor.
He and Crispin both looked over at Avelyn as she noisily mopped up the spilled wine and retrieved the upturned bowl. She turned it in her hands, looking for cracks, he presumed. Satisfied, she returned it to the pantry shelf and waited, looking only at Crispin.
“You must go home now, Avelyn.” He made the hand movements for “home.” Jack watched, rapt.
She stubbornly shook her head and made a series of signs.
“I don’t understand you,” he growled. He took her by the shoulders and propelled her roughly toward the door. “You must leave!”
She shook him off and gritted her teeth in frustration. She looked around the room and ran from corner to corner, etching more signs on the walls with her fingers.
“She’s gone mad,” said Jack in a whisper.
“She is trying to tell me something, but I don’t have time to decipher it.” He ran his hand over his face. He had passed quite a pleasant night with her. It cheered his heart and made some of the pain go away, but now the light of day had arrived and the fancies of the night were best forgotten.
Night. He looked at his apprentice, who kept his eyes on the young woman. “Where were you most of the night, Jack?”
“I was at Master Flamel’s, sir. I thought I should await a message from the abductor since the ransom was not taken.”
“And was there a message?”
“No, sir. None. And Master Flamel was having a right fit. I spent most of the night calming him down. I thought to spend the night, as Avelyn had not returned.…’Course, now I see why. But I thought you would want me back, so though it was late, I returned. But Master Crispin, if it was Lord Henry in St. Paul’s to collect the ransom and you caught him at it-”
“I am not convinced he is involved.”
“Oh. Well. Perhaps. But if not him, then who?”
“I don’t know. They want this precious stone. And yet Flamel exchanged the ransom for one of no value. He told me it was to buy time, but that is a very unsatisfactory answer.”
“Wait,” said Jack, eyes pinging back and forth between Avelyn’s still frantic movements and Crispin’s stillness. “Why would Lord Henry have need for a valuable commodity such as that broach? He has his own wealth, almost as rich as the duke.”
“I know. I did wonder that, too. Which makes me all the more convinced that Henry had little to do with it.”
“A coincidence his being there, then?”
“No, not a coincidence. I don’t believe in those.”
“What, then?”
“I haven’t worked it out yet, Jack. What of this Robert Pickthorn? He left about the time the ransom was to be collected.”
“Did you see him at the cathedral, sir?”
He slammed his fist to the table. “I must admit, once I laid eyes upon Henry I did not look anywhere else. He could have been there and I missed it. But once I left, I took the ransom with me. The false ransom, that is.”
“‘Buy him time.’ What could that mean?”
“I don’t know. Best to- Will you stop that, you insufferable woman!”
But of course, Avelyn could not hear him as she continued her strange dramatics. Finally, she threw herself at his feet, hiked up her skirts, and lay on the floor.
Jack backed away. “What is she doing now? Is it a fit?”
But Crispin finally looked. She had positioned herself upside down, head at his feet, with one leg crooked behind the other … just as the dead apprentice had looked. “Jack, she’s showing us Thomas Cornhill.”
“The dead man?”
“Yes.”
Once she saw that Crispin understood, she jerked her head in a nod, jumped to her feet, and began to repeat her wall drawing in the corners.
“Wait. Jack, those drawings. She is trying to show us something of those symbols. I have seen them in several spots throughout London.” Two strides took him across the room. He grabbed her arms and spun her to face him. To her eyes he said carefully, “Avelyn, what is it you wish to show me?”
She made a huffing noise and nodded, satisfied at last. Grabbing her cloak from the peg, she cast open the door, and headed quickly down the stairs.