“It is merely a notion I had in passing, my lord. I have no basis for this theory.”
“Evil witchcraft, more like, targeting the children for some offense. I would pay you to find the source, Master Guest, but I am but a humble priest.”
Crispin eyed his fur-trimmed gown and his rings without comment. “As it happens, I would happily investigate for you on my own. As a concerned citizen.”
“Is it witchcraft, then? How can I help our flock?”
“I know nothing of witchcraft, but something of poisons.”
“Do you persist in this notion, then, of poison?”
“It is not any stranger a notion than witchcraft, is it, Father?”
He shrugged and becrossed himself again.
“Perhaps you could tell me the names and streets that are mourning a loss,” said Crispin. He turned to Jack, who looked back at him with puzzlement before he figured out what Crispin wanted and scrambled to the coffer. The boy opened it and pulled out parchment, quill, and ink. He set them on the table, and when he saw that Crispin had no intention of taking them up, he set them up himself by smoothing out the parchment and uncorking the ink from its clay pot. He dipped the quill in, and with tongue set firmly between his lips, he waited.
The old priest recited names and the streets where the families could be found. Crispin listened to the litany and scrubbed at his eyes. God’s blood, but he was weary. Madam Perenelle’s fate was dire, but these random citizens had all been targeted with death. Something had to be done. But he and Jack needed rest.
Once the priest was finished, Jack stoppered the ink and set the quill aside, glancing over the tiny scrawl of his writing.
“Father Edmund,” said Crispin, “I thank you for coming and assigning me this task. But you must excuse me and my apprentice. We were up the whole of the night on another grim matter. We need a little sleep.”
“Not me, Master. I’ve got a second wind, as it were. Let me go in search of … er…” He looked at the priest eyeing him suspiciously. “You know who,” he said cryptically to Crispin.
Yes, the preacher Robert Pickthorn. The man needed to be found. “Good Father, have you seen this lay preacher, this Robert Pickthorn, again? We would very much like to speak with him.”
“Do you? I daresay he could tell you a kettle full of the sin and vile corruption that permeates the city.”
“Do you know where he is staying? With the bishop or some other worthy?”
“Dear me, no. I know nothing of him. But he is a fiery speaker, so they say.”
“So I have seen.” He turned to the boy. “Go on, Jack. I need at least a few hours’ rest. Come fetch me when you’ve found anything of this Pickthorn.”
Jack nodded, bowed to the priest, and fled out the door.
Father Edmund rose. “Then I shall leave you as well. It seems your hands are full at the moment. I pray that you have the strength to do all you must, Master Guest. I shall light a candle for you.”
Crispin took a coin from the table and pressed it into the priest’s hands, even as he scooped up the others and the golden objects and dropped them again into his pouch. “Do that, my lord. I could use all the help I can get.”
He slept for several hours, waking only when the bells tolled for Sext. Groggily, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. He rinsed his mouth with the leftover wine from the priest’s bowl, brushed and straightened his cotehardie, and left his lodgings.
With Jack’s parchment in his hand, he made his way to Threeneedle Street. He asked some shopkeepers which house it was and was soon led to a weaver’s. When he knocked, a maiden let him in.
“Is this the house in mourning?” he asked of the young woman. The walls had been hung with cloth, and shelves were stocked with bolts of varied weaves and colors.
“Aye, sir,” she said sadly. “My younger brother. Three days ago.”
A baby cried in the next room, a lusty, healthy cry.
She looked in that direction, raising her chin. “My other brother.”
“Has anyone else taken sick?” Her wary expression gave him pause. “My apologies, damosel. I don’t ask out of prurient interest. I am Crispin Guest. You may have heard of me. I am called the Tracker.”
Her eyes widened. “I shall fetch my father.”
She departed through the other door, and he was uncertain as to whether this was a good sign or not. Presently a man emerged. His tunic was covered in bits of varied-colored threads cast off during his time at the loom. “My daughter said you were that Tracker man we hear tell about. Is this true?”
He bowed. “It is, good Master. Can you tell me about your son’s illness?”
“Are you investigating that? Don’t waste your time. It was a sickness that took my boy. If it were anything but God’s will, I’d have called in the sheriffs.”
“It is merely my own fancy that leads me here. And the priest Father Edmund. And so. Can you tell me of his illness?”
The man shook his head and becrossed himself. “It was sudden-like. Over before it began. He felt unwell, too sick to work. A bad stomach. He was a good lad, God preserve him, not like to shirk, even though he had always been a slight lad. He got worse, over a span of two days. And then it was done.”
“Did anyone else feel unwell?”
“Well, Mary, here,” he said, motioning toward his daughter. “Headache and bellyache. But she felt better after the cure. But no one else.”
“Cure?”
“Mother said it would settle my belly,” she said. “Drank raw eggs and chewed garlic.”
Crispin winced. “I see. A good cure, then.” He touched her chin to look at her face. She still looked listless but did not seem worse for wear. He let her go. “I am heartily sorry for your loss. I pray that all will be well.”
“God’s blessings on you, sir.”
He left a coin with them for their loss, looking back at the humble shop as they closed the door. Nothing unusual about it. And as he visited three more homes, he heard much the same. The elderly had died, grandfathers and grandmothers. The youngest ones were also afflicted, especially the weakest. Yet the babes in swaddling or toddlers went unaffected. Nor did anyone else in the household feel ill or aggrieved, except by their great loss.
Something was tapping at the back of his mind, and the notion emerged once again that it sounded to him like a poisoning. But why on earth target those humble people? None of them were important, they did not know one another, and they did no harm. They had nothing in common except as hardworking citizens. What good would it do to kill the children of a weaver, a corn merchant, or a chandler? Or any number of these others on his list that he had not yet talked to?
He walked slowly through the streets, ignoring those around him to immerse himself in his thoughts, or, as he had told Jack, to walk through the facts.
The youngsters or elderly. As long as they were the weakest. But by far, most were children.
He sat on a stone step that led to the cistern near Cornhill. Christ, but he was tired. He ran his hand through his hair under his hood and leaned back against a post. Absently, he watched a boy trying to lift his coneys away from the yapping of a dog at his heels. Two nuns walked side by side, the wet hems of their brown habits rippling over patchy snow. Water carriers hurried up and down the steps, giving Crispin a sneer as they skirted past him, for Crispin sat in their way. Heavy yokes burdened their shoulders, each with a heavy water skin hanging from either end. Boys like these were paid to quickly fill their buckets from the cisterns throughout the city, for the water of the Thames was not fit to drink, with its privies and butchering stalls along its banks.
An old man was moving a hog through the streets and he beat it as the pig stopped near a turnip seller’s cart and began rooting through it. An argument ensued between the pig man and the turnip dealer, and Crispin watched dispassionately, wondering idly if it would come to blows.
He had rested enough and was ready to depart until he saw a cluster of small children running up to the cistern. Each took a drink from the ladle that was there and then let it fall again into the font. One of the children, the smallest, wasn’t running as fast as the others and had to stop to catch his breath before he hurried to keep up. He did not look well.
A notion struck Crispin. A foul, diabolical notion. He looked back at the water carriers trudging to their duties. Others, maids and housewives, also moved under the burden of heavy buckets or skins swollen with chilled water from the cistern.
No.
Crispin leapt to his feet and ran back the way he had come, knocked on the doors of the grieving houses he had only just visited to ask one question: Which cistern did they use to get their water?
Each section of London had its own cistern. There was the Standard down Cheap, where Crispin got his water, and the Mercery near the hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, and the Tun up Cornhill way, and numerous other smaller cisterns and conduits. Some of the wealthier patrons even had running water through pipes, a rare innovation stolen from the ancient Romans, as Crispin had seen in his younger days in Bath and in Lancaster’s castles.
But the three families afflicted used the water from the Tun. Crispin looked down at the parchment in his hand. Unmindful of the stares, he raced down the lane in search of the others.