“I don’t know.”
“Was it . . . was it the same man from before?”
“It . . . might have been.” Crispin truly wasn’t certain.
“God blind me!”
And if it were, what did it mean? Crispin peered deep into the shadows, willing his ears to hear any faraway footsteps, anything that could yield a clue. He barely noticed Jack dropping to his knees into the shadowy snow.
The lad scrabbled about and gasped. Crispin could not see in the dim light what he was up to, but he could detect the boy trembling.
“What is it, Jack?” The boy didn’t answer right away but he had something in his hand. He leaned over him, trying to see. “Jack? What is it? What have you found?”
Slowly, he rose. He was looking into his hand. In the darkness, Crispin tried to make it out. Was it a stone?
Jack was still trembling. “Holy Mother protect us,” he whispered. He lifted his hand for Crispin to see but the dim light made it impossible. “M-master,” he said.
“What is it, Jack?” He grasped the boy’s hand and yanked it higher.
“See, Master Crispin. Clay!”
7
Impossible. Yet hadn’t Crispin witnessed many impossible things in the last few years? Was this not merely one more?
This was madness. There was a perfectly logical explanation for the presence of clay. His mind was simply having difficulty coming up with a plausible reason. He motioned for Jack to clean the clay from his hands.
“It’s the Golem!” rasped Jack, voicing both their thoughts and pushing his soiled palms down his cloak. “Holy Mother of God!” He began a litany of poorly mouthed prayers.
“It is no such thing!” Crispin blew a cloudy breath, one hand on his dagger hilt, the other holding his cloak closed. He peered again into the darkness, up the street and down. If he had not seen the man for himself, Crispin wouldn’t have believed he had been there. Except for those droplets of clay upon the snow like blood. That damnable clay.
“Let us get back to London, Jack. We need our beds.”
He pressed ahead but Jack still shivered in the snow, looking behind.
“Jack! JACK!”
A flicker of light sputtered to life in a window and its shutter opened a crack. Crispin grabbed Jack by his hood and dragged him into the shadows. A figure leaned out of the window and looked about before shivering and shutting it again.
“Come along!” he whispered.
He tramped heavily over the crunchy snow. After a time he no longer had need to drag Jack. The boy cleaved tight to him and they walked within the same shadow under the disappearing moonlight.
When they reached London’s walls they headed north to Newgate. Jack cringed on seeing the rigid towers crawl up into the sky, frost gleaming in pale patches across its stony surface. “Master Crispin! We ain’t going in there, are we?”
“It is the only gate I am certain to be able to pass through.”
“But can we pass out of it again?”
A good question. One he did not wish to ponder.
Without thinking further on it, Crispin raised his hand and knocked on the heavy wooden door. After waiting an interval he knocked again. This time he heard footfalls and a small door opened in the larger iron-clad portal. A man, face dented from sleep and wearing a skewed leather cap over scruffy hair, squinted at him. He held a clay oil lamp and pushed it forward. “Mary’s blessed veil,” he swore. “Master Crispin? What would you be doing here this time of night? And on the other side of the gate?”
“Trying to get in,” he answered curtly.
The man shook his head. “The sheriffs have gone home, Master. They wouldn’t like being sent a message at this hour.”
“I do not need to speak to either sheriff. I merely have need to pass through to London.”
The man scowled. “It’s past curfew.” But Crispin was ready with a farthing. The man’s face brightened when he saw the disk in his lamplight. “Aw now! Maybe it ain’t so far past!” His dirty fingers closed over the coin and snatched it from Crispin’s hand. With a mocking bow, he stepped aside. “Right this way, Master.”
Crispin urged Jack in ahead of him. He stumbled over the stone threshold. Crispin took the lead after that, trying not to think of what lay above him in the towers or below in the murky cells.
They reached the London side in a matter of moments. There, the sleepy porter gave Crispin a cursory glance before he grunted to his feet. “It’s past curfew,” he muttered.
“I know,” said Crispin. He waited while the man seemed to sample almost every key on his ring before opening the small door. “Mind the Watch,” cautioned the porter and gestured into the black hole.
Crispin looked and saw no one along the dark avenue. No lantern that would indicate the Watch, no footsteps, and definitely no hulking figures.
Jack poked his head out and looked, too, likely wondering the same thing.
Crispin motioned him to follow and they hurried through the battered snow down Newgate Market to the Shambles.
Once home, Jack stoked the fire until they were warmed through, then he banked it and they settled down for the night, but a disturbed sleep followed. When morning finally crept into the small room with gray light, Crispin rubbed the exhaustion from his crusty eyes. A quick glance into the straw-piled corner told him that Jack was not there. Where did that boy go? he wondered. A kettle hanging over the fire bubbled with something smelling like food and he threw his legs over the side of the bed and curled the blanket over his shoulders to lean toward the hearth and peer into the pot.
Turnip porridge. He cursed and rose, reaching for the spoon and the wooden bowl that was waiting for him by the hearth. He tipped the damnable porridge into it, blew on it, letting the steam warm his face, before he took a tentative sip. Awful. He downed it quickly.
Crispin heated some water for his shave and quickly finished his toilet, thinking all the while how he was to approach asking his questions at court.
With these murders somehow tied to those missing parchments, they seemed to be beyond his ability to solve. He knew from past experience that without reliable witnesses, murders often passed without justice. A murder in a parish happened when two angry individuals fought. Or one party tried to cheat the other, or some other misfortune that was well known to all the inhabitants. It was easy for someone to point the finger on well-known circumstances.
But the secret murder of children . . . This had gone unremarked for months! If witnesses there were, they were silent on it. Perhaps they lived in fear of retribution. Or had to protect someone.
This theft, on the other hand. Now this was something else, something Crispin could possibly sink his teeth into. A man invariably boasted about the thing he stole, giving himself away. But even if the thief did not boast, someone surely noted that another party was in possession of such a thing. A servant, perhaps? Yes, he would have to find servants and speak with them. And if indeed this theft was tied to murder then he would nab the miscreant himself.
Crispin waited impatiently for either Jack’s arrival or the servant from Lancaster. But when neither made an appearance by late morning, he grabbed his cloak and headed out. He could still talk to someone who might have seen something down by the river, someone he had missed before.
He trod quickly down the narrow stair and walked out onto the muddy street, heading toward Westminster.
He pulled his cloak closer. Damn but it was cold! Saint Nicholas’ Feast was close and that meant that another Christmas would come and go. Another solitary Christmas. Gilbert and Eleanor had asked him on more than one occasion to celebrate a humble Christmas dinner with them at the Boar’s Tusk. He had always declined. The memories were too dear of warm feasts in the company of his fellow barons and lords. The Yule log would burn bright and hot in those impossibly large braziers set all about the Great Hall in Westminster. The warmth and camaraderie would keep the winter at bay. Roasted boar’s heads would be served to one and all, along with cheese pies, pasties dripping with gravy, loaves of warm, white bread. Bittern and quail swimming in rich broth. And puddings with Spanish raisins along with honeyed cakes.