“Aye. That might do. But if they box me ears for impertinence, it’s on your head.”
Crispin smiled. “I shall gladly carry the burden.”
Jack nodded once and was off, looking back warily.
With a snort at insolent servants, he headed to the first shop on the street he had chosen. These were further in from the Thames; shops and houses that the Coroner had not questioned.
Crispin repeated the exercise all the way to the end of the street, where Jack met him, rubbing his arms to keep warm. The light was slanting toward the horizon now. The sparse trees in back gardens were becoming dark silhouettes against the sky. Slushy flakes began to fall, speckling the lane. “Have you yielded anything?” he asked the boy.
“No, Master. No one remembered a boy gone missing, servant or beggar.”
Crispin’s eyes adjusted to the darkening night and measured the many lanes ahead of him. “There are many more houses and shops to ask.”
“We can’t ask them all, can we?”
Crispin’s sigh created a curling mist around his face. He looked down the lane and scanned rooftops disappearing into the night. “The city is a big place. I do not see how we can ask them all. There must be another way.”
“In the meantime, we must go to meet this Jew, then.”
Crispin wound his cloak about him. Yes. He must.
The streets were becoming deserted. The merchants’ stalls had been folded up and shuttered. Even the sounds of commerce had softened from the day. The muffled fall of hoofs tramping in the new snow and the squeak of a cart pushed back to its resting spot were the only sounds left from another busy day in Westminster.
Crispin led the way to St. Margaret’s Street toward Westminster Hall. An icy mist rose from the Thames and every sound seemed to dampen beneath its heavy governance. The disquieting stillness sent a shiver down Crispin’s spine. It fell heavily around him, this sensation. He found himself stopping and looking around, bewildered. He touched Jack’s shoulder to stop him as well, and listened. It wasn’t so much something that he heard as it was something he felt. Jack looked up at him questioningly. Crispin beseeched those steady, tawny eyes, asking silently if Jack felt it, too.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Crispin spun.
For only a moment, with the light of a shopkeeper’s brazier filling the misty space behind, Crispin spied. . something. . against the snowy fog. A large, hulking silhouette. Broad shoulders supported a tiny head and large arms hung like hams at its sides. An unspeakable fear like none other suddenly seized Crispin’s heart. His first instinct was to grab Jack and drag his surprised form to him. His second was to draw his dagger.
He blinked. And suddenly the alley was empty.
“Master! What-”
“Be still.” Crispin trotted down the narrow lane, looking for the. . man, for want of a better word.
The flickering brazier toyed with the shadows, sending them running in long, dancing shapes along the walls of shuttered houses. Crispin listened with all his might, stilling his own straining breath in order to hear.
Ahead. Something like footfalls.
He ran, snow flying from his heels. The quiet, narrow streets seemed to close in on him, their crowded structures twisting toward the middle, towering above Crispin’s head in their need to consume the sky.
Before he turned a corner he scoured the ground under the fitful moonlight. Large indentations in the snow could have been footprints, but they were quickly filling with new flakes.
He ran to the rhythm of his own beating heart for several more paces before he slowed to a stop. He listened again.
Nothing.
Jack came up behind him, beating the ground, skidding in the snow to grab hold of Crispin’s cloak. “Master!” He panted, eyes wide disks. “What was that?”
Crispin rolled the dagger’s handle in his sweaty hand once before sheathing it. Baleful apprehension would not allow his heart to slacken. “Jack, by the Holy Rood, I. . do not know.”
4
Disturbed more than he could say, it was after some minutes of searching-for what he knew not-before Crispin allowed them to return to the Great Gate. He took careful measure of the sounds and sights on the street, and when they backtracked, he tried Jack’s patience by keeping his eyes to the ground and even returning to the street where the pursuit had ended.
Jack thumbed his dagger and kept licking his chapped lips. Crispin continued to look over his shoulder.
When the gate was in sight again, Jack crossed himself for the hundredth time. “Let us hurry and meet this Jew, Master. I would be home in me own bed.”
“Yes,” he answered distractedly before shaking it off. What was the matter with him? This business of dead boys was touching his mind. That was only some man going home to his warm lodgings. Some large man. Perhaps a blacksmith or a mason. How the shadows can make the ordinary sinister! He almost laughed at himself, but the lingering sense of disquiet would not allow it. He merely led Jack to the Great Gate and when they walked silently across the vast outer ward, they stepped up to an arched portico at the front steps. Under the arch, a porter warmed his hands over a brazier with several pages standing beside him.
Crispin approached, breaching the light cast by the brazier. The porter spied him and turned, grabbing his pike. “Hold there!” he warned.
Crispin bowed. “I have a message for Jacob of Provençal. I was to meet him here.”
The porter glanced at the pages, who looked reluctant to move.
“I can send my servant if you do not wish to fulfill your obligations,” said Crispin, gesturing toward a scowling Jack.
A page, with hair as black as Crispin’s, straightened and pulled at his tabard. “I shall go to the Jew. Whom shall I say is at the gate?”
Crispin smiled. “He will know.”
The pages shared a look with the porter, but the dark-haired one soon trotted to do his business.
Unfortunately, the brazier was within the stone portico. Crispin and Jack were obliged to stand in the snowy courtyard without benefit of a fire. Jack trotted in place to keep the cold away. Crispin stood stoically under his cloak. He had long experience waiting in all manner of weather for a battle. This was no different.
In time, the page returned with the physician. The man looked none too pleased and quickly scampered into the courtyard to meet Crispin in the shadows.
“You are tardy, sir,” said the man in a severe tone.
“I am here now. How am I to get into court?”
Jacob looked back at the porter and pages and drew Crispin and Jack deeper into the shadows of the courtyard’s wall. “We will exchange cloaks.” He showed Crispin his. On it was the yellow rouelle designating him as a Jew. “Your servant and I will enter at the Queen’s Bridge, while you return this way.”
“A feeble ruse,” said Crispin, eyeing the man’s full beard while rubbing his own clean-shaven jaw.
“Keep your head bowed. I am all but ignored. No one sees me unless they must.”
Crispin digested this even as he unbuttoned his cloak. He handed the garment to Jacob just as the old man passed his to Crispin. Crispin allowed a wave of discomfort before he spun the cloak over his shoulders and lifted his hood, hiding his face.
“The corridor by the Painted Chamber,” said Jacob before he hastened out of the courtyard. The Painted Chamber? That was in the royal quarters, by the king and Lancaster. Crispin’s heart thrummed in his chest. But he turned to Jack and urged him without words to follow the man. Jack grimaced his distaste but nonetheless followed.
Keeping his head down, Crispin walked like an old man, striding under the gate arch without the porter or any of the pages questioning him.
Glancing back, he snorted. So, the old Jew was right. He wasted no more time and headed down the familiar corridors toward the southern end of the palace. Crispin had managed to slip into the palace on other occasions, but after the latest incident with the king, he doubted his presence would be greeted with much joy.