Crispin pounced, tackling the man to the frozen ground. Sheep bounded out of the way, and the drover, a boy of only eleven or so, shook his fist and swore at them like a whoremonger.
Crispin ignored him and struggled, subduing the preacher. “Stop! Stop your struggling.” He hauled the man to his feet and untangled his wet cloak from Pickthorn’s, whipping it behind him. He pushed the man against a wall and pressed him there.
“Let me go, you ruffian.”
“If I let you go, will you talk to me?”
“It depends on what you have to say.” Crispin mangled the man’s coat in a tight grip and twisted until Pickthorn choked. “Yes, I yield! God have mercy!”
With a sneer, Crispin released him, stepping back to give the man room. “Why did you run from me?”
“You can be a frightening man. Witness for yourself what you have done to me.” He wiped down the mud from his coat and valiantly tried to right his twisted cloak.
“My apologies,” said Crispin without meaning it. “But I have been seeking you for some time.” As the man straightened his clothes, Crispin spied a crystal phial hanging around his neck on a knotted red thread. It appeared to be empty. He grabbed for it and held it up. “What is this?”
The man snatched it back and clutched it in his hand. “What business is it of yours?”
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps much. Tell me, what were you doing harassing that poor guard? He was merely performing his appointed task and guarding the cistern from mischief.”
“Mischief indeed!” the man scoffed indignantly. “That guard was set there by those commissioners appointed by Parliament, that which is led by Lancaster’s son.” He said the last with such vehemence that Crispin pulled back. “It is sedition, is what it is,” he went on. “Nothing more, nothing less. The Devil has whispered in the ears of these noble men and seduced them with lies and their own greed for power. The water doesn’t need guarding. It needs renewing with God’s gentle grace to allow the people to be reborn with the Water of Life.”
Crispin wanted dearly to smack the man but held himself back. “That water has been killing people. Someone has poisoned it.”
“What? Absurd. You, sir, fall into the same trap of believing what these commissioners say rather than the good king. Nothing whatsoever has happened to the water of this city-”
“I tell you the water was poisoned. At the Tun. It was infused with arsenic. Many young and innocent died from it. The guards are there to prevent it from happening to the other cisterns.”
The man paused, eyes flicking over Crispin’s face in disbelief. “No! That is foolish talk.”
“I tell you I saw it! I saw the proof of it with my own eyes.”
Pickthorn froze. He looked down at the phial in his hand, looked up once at Crispin, then down at the phial again and shook his head.
Crispin opened his mouth to ask but nearly bit his lip when Pickthorn shoved him back. Not expecting it, Crispin lost his balance and toppled backward, biting out a curse when he hit the ground hard.
By the time Crispin sat up, Pickthorn was gone, with only the sound of his escaping footsteps echoing in the alley.
22
Crispin jumped to his feet and ran hard. He spied the man up ahead at the curve of the road. Pickthorn was older than Crispin, so Crispin had that advantage, at least. How far could the man go? Yet he had run quite a way and Crispin wasn’t gaining on him.
Ahead, Crispin spotted a broom propped against a wall. As he ran by, he reached out and grabbed it. Cocking his arm back, he took aim and then heaved it forward. After spinning in the air, it slammed into the man’s feet and over he went, skidding shoulder first along the muddy lane.
Crispin caught his breath as he stood over him. “Up you get,” he grunted. He grabbed the man by his shoulders and shoved him into the nearest wall.
An old man with a basket of bread looked on as Crispin smacked the preacher in the face. “I don’t like it when people run from me. Makes me angry.”
Pickthorn touched his stinging cheek and ran his narrowed-eyed glare over Crispin’s features. “You dare! I preach the good Lord’s word and you dare to lay hands upon me!”
Crispin smacked him on the other cheek with the back of his hand. “You’ll get more if you don’t answer me.”
“Hold! Stop! I … I don’t know what you want.”
“Yes, you do. This.” He grasped the empty phial from the man’s neck and held it up. “What was in here? What did you do?”
“I … I did not poison anyone.”
Again, the flat of Crispin’s hand struck up at his chin, knocking Pickthorn’s head back against the wall. There were tears of pain in his eyes when he glared back at Crispin.
“I can show you the graves that tell me otherwise. What did you put in the water at the Tun?”
“Nothing harmful, I swear by almighty God!”
“For the last time, answer me, or I shall shove this down your throat. What was in the phial?”
“A … a harmless concoction of holy water and pulverized herbs. The man assured me that it would put the people in an amenable mood, to make them gentle as lambs so that they would be open and heed the word of the Lord.”
“Holy water and herbs? Are you mad? It was poison!”
Pickthorn looked confused. “No. No, it couldn’t have been. They did listen. They repented. The solution was working!”
“I tell you it was killing them. Had I not had the cistern closed, you would have killed more.”
He blinked, eyes glistening with filling tears. “Jesus, mercy,” he whispered. “What have I done?”
Crispin released him and stepped back. He watched the man’s face collapse in despair. “Dead,” he gasped. “Because of me?” He crossed himself and murmured his prayers into his tightly folded hands.
Crispin watched for a moment and sighed. “You were deceived. Now you must make it right.”
“Yes, yes.” He bent forward and wept into his prayerful hands. “Will I … will I hang for it?”
“That is for the law to decide. But I do not have in mind to turn you in to the law. Yet.”
“What must I do?”
“Did you get this ‘solution’ from an alchemist?”
He looked up, face streaked with dirt and tears. “I did. I was preaching one day, and after I was done, he approached me, told me he could help me. I went to his shop and he gave me this phial and said to put it in the cistern and what it would do.”
“Why did you believe him?”
“Because he seemed genuinely sincere. Told me that my words had changed his life and he was going to give up his sorcery.”
“‘Sorcery’? Is that what he said?”
“His words, I assure you, good Master. But now I see…” He straightened, a new determination lighting his eyes. “The Devil had taken hold of him. A damned man if ever there was one. Who but such a one who schemed with Satan could manufacture as diabolical a plot?”
“Indeed. And what of the sigils on the walls of London? What had you to do with those?”
“Why … nothing whatever. I saw them and knew they were the signs of the Demon.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“You … you are the one that they speak of. You are the Tracker.”
“Yes. And when you saw me some days ago, you said I was emerging from the alchemist’s lair. How did you know that that was an alchemist’s shop?”
“I was told it. By that other foul sorcerer.” He frowned. “Oh, the Deceiver is clever and uses honeyed words, but they are all lies. I thought he had turned a new leaf. I thought he had repented and was declaring war on the others of his ilk. He told me about this other alchemist and that’s why I chose that corner to do my preaching, to catch him. I thought at first it was you, but later I learned who you were.”