Crispin chuckled with bared teeth. “We were never friends. I loathed the air you breathed.” He waved his hand before his own sharp nose. “I still do.”
“Now, now. Rudeness? That was never tolerated when you was a prisoner here.” He grabbed Crispin’s arm.
The cold feel of the man’s fingers closing over his skin flooded Crispin’s mind with memories he had no desire to revisit. He stiffened and spun. With a much stronger grip than Malvyn’s, he captured the man’s wrist and twisted until he sank down on one knee with a yowl.
“I am no longer a prisoner here!” Crispin growled. “And I will thank you not to touch me.” Crispin twisted the arm once more simply because he enjoyed it. With a feral grunt he released him, tossing the captured hand aside.
Clumsily, the man rose and found his footing. He scowled, face reddening as he wobbled toward Crispin to spear him with his finger. “You’ll come to regret this,” he snarled.
Crispin straightened his coat and turned on his heel. He didn’t look back as he strode down the passage. “That I doubt.”
Crispin took the stairs to his lodgings two at a time. He was anxious to see Philippa and tell her…tell her what? That he loved her? He’d said it once and didn’t know how it could be true. But didn’t he feel his heart leap when he looked at her? Didn’t he admire how she had lifted herself from her hardships? He wouldn’t speak of it again. Maybe she wouldn’t either. He chuckled at that. Wishful thinking. At least she would be relieved the Mandyllon was gone.
He opened his door carelessly, expecting to find both Philippa and Jack.
He did not expect the man across the room or the one behind the door.
20
Dark-haired and dark-skinned, the men wore livery. Crispin thought he recognized them.
But more notably, they both carried crossbows, and the weapons were cocked and aimed at him.
“Gentlemen,” said Crispin. “If I knew you were coming I would have prepared better hospitality.”
“You are to please come with us,” said the one across the room. His accent was thick with the sunshine and olive oil of the southern part of the continent.
Crispin slowly shook his head. “I do not think I would profit from that.”
“It is not a matter of what you think. It is a matter of who is better armed, no?”
Both foreign men smiled and raised their weapons higher. Crispin smiled, too, and nodded, all the while wondering where the hell Philippa and Jack could be. He decided he wouldn’t fancy ending up at the bottom of the Thames with two quarrels in him. That would help no one.
The closest man made a move toward him. With blood pumping madly through his every fiber, Crispin tensed and before the man could grab him, Crispin darted his hand forward and closed it around the wrist with the crossbow. With all his strength, he slammed it hard against the wall—once, twice. The man protested in Italian and was wrenched off balance by Crispin’s unrelenting blows. He nearly fell into Crispin, still holding tight to the weapon.
With an inarticulate shout, the man across the room lifted his crossbow and aimed.
Crispin spied him over the struggling man’s shoulder. With widened eyes, he yanked his attacker in front of him.
A whoosh and a thud told Crispin the bolt struck true—and hit square in the back of the man he pinned. The man cried out, twisting, clawing at the bolt in his back. But his thrashing grew weaker. Blood darkened the back of his coat.
The face of the other man parched white in horror and he lowered his weapon for only a moment before he snapped to and struggled to reload.
With a groan, Crispin’s attacker slumped to his knees, but without missing a beat, Crispin snatched the weapon from the man’s limp hand, aimed the crossbow, and pulled the trigger.
Both bodies hit the floor at the same time.
The room suddenly fell to silence. One of the men was whimpering. Crispin could not tell which one.
Panting, Crispin stepped back and stared at the bodies now littering his floor. Blood was seeping over the floorboards. And urine. He could smell it. At least one of them was already dead and the other soon would be.
He hefted the crossbow in his hand and studied the compact weapon with a sense of giddiness at having escaped the sharp scythe of Death once more. The gears and windlass of the crossbow interested him for only a moment. A fool’s weapon. Give him a dagger or a hunting bow any day.
He dropped the crossbow on top of the closest man.
The hard stillness was broken by the sound of slow, deliberate clapping, one hand striking the other. Crispin jerked toward the doorway, his hand on his dagger.
Abid Assad Mahmoud leaned in the jamb as if he had been there a long time. Perhaps he had. He stopped clapping when Crispin glared at him.
“My compliments,” said the man. “Well played.”
“Your crossbowmen, I presume?”
“Yes, but”—he looked them over and tutted—“mine no more.”
“Have you come to finish the task?” Crispin’s hand had not left his dagger.
“No. Only to tell you how disappointed I am. The girl was a special bonus. And now, well, there is nothing left with which to extort her.”
“No, your game is done.”
“Not quite. There is still the matter of the cloth.”
“And so. You admit it at last.”
“Yet you knew all along.” The Saracen walked into the room and looked about with a sneer on his bruised face. “So what do we have left to bargain with?”
“I do not wish to bargain with your like.”
“You do not know my like. I am a very valuable man in my country. But you are an infidel. All you see is the color of my skin. I must be pasty-white like the rest of you English in order to be trusted. What a small people you are.”
“I was in the Holy Land, Mahmoud. I saw followers of Muhammad treat us ‘pasty’ English and French with inhumanity.”
“As did your crusaders to our people. The sword cuts both ways.”
Crispin closed his hands into fists. He hoped he could use them. “What do you want, Mahmoud? I tire of this. Others want this cloth. What is your claim on it? Does it belong to you?”
“The Mandyllon? In a sense.”
“In what sense?”
He blinked slowly. His wide mouth spread in a crocodile’s smile. There was still swelling and bruising about his cheek and eye. It pleased Crispin to see it. “We commissioned it,” said Mahmoud.
“What do you mean you commissioned it? How is that possible?”
“Not the original one, of course.” He touched the back of Crispin’s chair. “Will you invite me to sit?”
“No.”
Mahmoud sat anyway. He eased back in the chair with an air of indifference, but all his muscles appeared taut and ready for any move from Crispin. “The man you know as Nicholas Walcote was paid to make a copy of the Mandyllon,” he said. “He was a clever thief, though. He made his copy, and when it was time for us to collect the true one, he made a substitution. It seems he left with the real cloth and we were left with the copy. This made our masters very unhappy. And when they are unhappy, people die.”
“You never met the real Walcote?”
“Alas, no.”
Crispin mulled the information, staring blindly at the nearest dead man. Blood stained the shirt around the arrow. Masters? “Then the missing cloth is the real one?”
“Missing?” Mahmoud laughed. “Crispin, you play such coy games.”
“Why did you need a copy?”
“My master did not wish for the keepers of the cloth to know it was appropriated.”
“Stolen, you mean.”