Jack tossed the knife and it landed with a harsh clatter on the table. “That is the second time I have disarmed you,” he said to Julian. “Do not pull it on my master again or you shall suffer the penalty.”
Julian sneered and made a false charge toward Jack. Jack hadn’t expected it and startled backward into Crispin. Julian laughed. “Go away, little man. I am not afraid of you. Or of you, Guest.”
Crispin slammed the door behind him. He suddenly felt winded. It was the easiest course, finding the physician’s son guilty, but the easiest was not always the wisest. Or the truest. Was he banking on William of Ockham’s the simplest explanation is the best? Yet the boy was hiding something. That room. He had allowed his own pride to sway him from forcing the youth to relinquish the key. What was the matter with him? Going soft?
Crispin hurried through the corridors, wishing that servant could have told him at once what he wanted to know. He could be using his time to search the palace, but looking at the solemn-faced Jack beside him, he knew he could not risk overstaying his welcome. The palace was full of spies, full of people both servant and noble who would recognize his face and call the alarm. He was surprised he had made it this far without being stopped. Yet Gaunt’s livery might buy him a needed reprieve. It might be assumed that the king allowed him the life of a page again. But he could not count on this thin assumption.
They ducked into St. Stephen’s chapel in order to leave secretly again. A few people knelt in prayer in the sacred space. A woman in a moss green gown pressed her forehead against her clenched hands. A man, obviously a merchant, murmured words while looking upward at the rood screen.
As he crossed the floor to the other side a shadow came up behind him. His reaction was instant.
Spinning, Crispin drew his dagger but nearly dropped it when he encountered blue eyes and a slight form. The stranger from the carriage smiled and watched each of Crispin’s careful movements as he sheathed his knife again.
He looked Crispin over, noting the new addition of his tabard. The smile broadened. “Master Guest.”
Crispin was used to hiding Jack behind his back by now. “Yes, my lord.” He bowed perfunctorily. But then the thought suddenly occurred to him. “Are you . . . following me, my lord?”
“Following you?” He smiled, his eyes taking in Jack before dismissing him. “How goes your mission, Crispin?”
The idea that this man was following him was bad enough. But that Crispin had not noticed was worse still. What had he seen? What had he heard? “As well as can be expected,” he answered slowly. “For whatever it is I am doing.” He managed a half-smile.
The man nodded in acknowledgment.
“My lord,” asked Crispin, “I am certain it was an oversight, but you neglected to tell me who you were when last we met. And since you are making it your business to know my doings, perhaps a gesture in kind from you would be mete.”
But the man seemed in no hurry to divulge anything. He slipped his hand into his scrip and withdrew a familiar coin-filled pouch. “I am still willing to pay for your services, Master Guest. Those parchments are preying heavily on my mind. It is imperative that I have them. And soon. What say you?” He swung the pouch in a tantalizing arc.
“If parchments there were,” he said casually, “what would you do with them?”
Slender fingers closed over the purse. “This amount of silver does not grant you my every thought, Crispin. It is only a fee for a job well done. I insist you take this.”
Crispin stiffened. “No.”
“No?”
“I choose my own clients, my lord. Little is left to me as it is. And so this small freedom is my own.”
“But coin, Crispin. Much more than your feeble sixpence a day. I could double it. Treble it.”
Jack whined behind him, but Crispin swung a foot, connecting with the boy’s shin to shut him up.
“An undeserved boon, surely, my lord.”
The man stared at him. Clearly, he was a man unused to being refused. He shook his head. “A very unusual man,” he muttered and dropped the pouch back into his scrip. “But there will come a time, my dear Crispin—soon, perhaps—when you will regret this decision.”
Crispin’s stomach growled. He already regretted it, but not quite enough to change his mind.
A servant Crispin recognized as the man’s driver approached. Ignoring Crispin, he bowed to the dark-gowned stranger. “Your Excellency,” he said, the rest of his words lost in whispers.
Excellency? An honorific for a bishop. But the man seemed young to be a bishop. But if he were, it might explain why he rode in a rich carriage and wore no weapon. Why then did he not wear his vestments and enjoy the full honors of his title?
The man inclined his head toward his minion and, after listening for a moment, finally straightened. “I must take my leave, Master Crispin. Forgive me for my haste.”
Crispin bowed. “Of course . . . Excellency.”
The man’s eyes narrowed slightly before their edges crinkled with amusement. He said nothing, and followed his servant out. Crispin watched them depart, waiting just long enough before he began to follow him with Jack in tow. They made it outside in time to watch as the man and driver strode across the gravel courtyard.
Crispin slipped the scrip out from under his tabard and turned to the boy. “Jack, take this and go back to the Shambles. I have other work to do.”
He started after the man when Jack tugged at his coat. “But Master! Surely there is more I can do.”
“You can go back to our lodgings where it is safe.”
“But Master Crispin—”
“I do not like repeating myself, Jack.” He strode ahead, keeping well away from his quarry, too distracted to register that Jack had not turned in the direction of the Shambles.
Crispin allowed his target to forge ahead. The man’s servant walked with him and led him to the carriage. The strange lord climbed inside while the driver swung himself up to the seat where he took the reins from an attendant. The carriage moved unhurriedly, pausing for traffic across the busy avenue before joining the throng of carts and wagons laden with wares.
Crispin kept pace. There was something dangerous underlying the man’s character. One did not give cryptic warnings without reason.
And Crispin especially did not like the idea of this unnamed man following him.
They moved steadily out of the bounds of Westminster Palace and toward Charing Cross. At a trot, Crispin tracked. They traveled a long way down the broad avenue. He soon found himself pinned behind a man moving his swine toward London. On foot, there seemed no way around the many donkey carts, wagons, and travelers. The carriage lay far ahead and he feared to lag too far behind. Though it was clear to Crispin that they were heading toward London, they could easily be swallowed by the traffic the closer they got.
Crispin looked down at his tabard. He did not wish to appear obvious. Whipping off his cloak, he slipped out of the livery, turned it wrong side out, and tugged it back over his head. No sense in losing the extra bit of warmth it allowed. With his cloak back in place, he continued his stealthy pursuit.
At last, the man with the wayward swine moved toward the river, and Crispin was free to move past him and his squealing charges. But instead of the carriage bearing toward London’s gates as Crispin expected, it veered northward.
The carriage rolled into dim alleyways. Crispin worried that the diminishing crowds would make him noticeable, but the driver’s attention lay before, not behind. He kept to the walls just in case, pressing himself into the shadows and was almost relieved to see the dusky outline of fog rolling up from the river. It swept slowly beyond him up the road like the Angel of Death and shrouded the carriage, painting it a ghostly shape with only the sound of creaking wheels and clinking harness anchoring it to reality.