Serpent in the Thorns (18 page)

16

LANCASTER’S EYES ROUNDED AND his lips went white.

Crispin did nothing. He neither smiled nor implored with his eyes. If he were a dead man, then he’d rather get it over with.

Lancaster took the full goblet, put it to his lips, and drank deeply. He drank it down, but did not offer it up for a refill. He dismissed Crispin by curling his hand around the goblet and leaning on his arm.

Crispin wanted to ask him, wanted to cast the arrow pieces on his trencher and demand an explanation. Though he imagined Lancaster had his own questions for Crispin about now.

Instead, Crispin ducked his head and took the opportunity to slip down the steps to return to the main hall. He felt Lancaster’s gaze on him but he couldn’t worry over it. He had other things on his mind. He had to keep his eyes on Miles.

He turned toward the low tables and his heart lurched for the second time.

Where the hell
was
Miles?

Crispin hurried through the benches and people and stared at the place where Miles once sat, but it was empty like an open pit. He risked raising his head to look about the room, but he didn’t see him.

“God’s blood!” he hissed.

“Wine, here!” someone called over his shoulder.

Crispin cringed. Not him! Why did
he
have to be here? Crispin shook his head. Better and better. He lowered his face until the leather hood caressed his cheeks. He pivoted.

Simon Wynchecombe sat with his cronies at a low table and lifted his clay cup toward Crispin. Deep in conversation with the man beside him, the sheriff never raised his eyes. Crispin poured quickly and hustled away before anyone else at the table could ask him to serve them.

He looked for Miles in earnest. The man had simply vanished. How had he done it? Should he ask? No, that would be dangerous and someone was sure to recognize him. He slid as quickly as he could through the crowd, looking over heads, searching faces.

Suddenly everyone stood.

The duke had risen from his seat and was making some sort of pronouncement with his wine cup raised. Crispin was at the other end of the hall by then and Lancaster’s voice did not carry. But he surmised that Lancaster had called for a toast to the king. Everyone raised their cups.

Crispin put down the wine jug on a table. He didn’t want to be bothered with any more requests. He
had
to find Miles and quickly.

A juggler blocked the aisle but Crispin shoved him aside, and one ball fell and rolled under a table. The man swore an oath and Crispin pressed forward, moving toward the edge of the room.

Lancaster talked on.

Miles had to be here somewhere! Crispin shoved courtiers out of his way. It didn’t matter anymore if they saw him. What did it matter if he couldn’t stop Miles, for he knew with the blood singing in his bones that Miles would make another attempt sometime this night.

Had he seen it? There was an abundance of jewelry on both men and women alike; men with their swords in decorated scabbards and women with jeweled baselards secured at their girdles. With all the glittering finery, he couldn’t be certain he saw a flash of something. He wasn’t even sure in what direction he saw it. Whatever it was it didn’t belong, but he couldn’t make his mind locate it a second time.

Frantically he searched, saw it again, and froze for the span of a heartbeat.

The tapestries. They fluttered throughout the hall from the movement of the diners and the servants, from the heat of the fires and candles. But this one, hanging on the south wall halfway between the king’s dais and the exit, did not flutter. It bulged.

And an arrow was slowly edging its way farther and farther from behind it.

All sound—diners clinking goblets, trilling laughter and hoarse guffaws, music piping merrily—were all suddenly swallowed up by the quick inhale of the universe. The racing thump of Crispin’s heartbeat replaced them; a hollow thud growing steadily faster.

He sprinted forward.

With an unapologetic heave, Crispin shoved a servant. His tray of cooked peacock dressed in its indigo plumage tumbled to the floor. The peacock’s head snapped off and rolled between the legs of a merchant who stumbled to get out of its way, and in turn, tripped a woman behind him. She screamed and teetered backward and fell into the arms of the juggler. The four balls scattered. One bounced into a large kettle of pottage. Two others rolled under the feet of two men carrying in the confection, Onslow’s prized creation of the city of London in spun sugar and cakes.

The man carrying the front of the bier stumbled but recovered. But the man behind him was not as lucky. He tried to right himself but couldn’t without dropping his end of the bier. He let one handle go as he flung a hand outward to steady himself. The shifted weight dislodged the first bearer and he slid backward. The bier tipped and, in slow degrees, the whole confectionery slid off the bier and crashed in upon itself onto the floor in splatters of frosting and crackling sugar. The horrified forward bearer stared at it helplessly. The other slipped on a wayward cake and fell face first into the rest of it.

Crispin dived through the crowd; his only thought was to stop the arrow from launching. But there were too many damned people in his way!
Move!

In the back of his mind, he could hear that Lancaster had stopped speaking. A buzz of conversation amid high-pitched yelps of surprise followed in his wake. None of it mattered. All his concentration was centered on that tapestry.

The bow advanced. He could see it now peeking from the tapestry. If he couldn’t make it in time—No! He wouldn’t think of it. Couldn’t. He doubled his efforts and threaded quickly between the courtiers.

Finally shoving his way past the last stragglers at the crowd’s hem, Crispin leapt for the tapestry, grabbed the exposed weapon, and slammed it to the wall.

The arrow shot forward, drastically off target from its intended mark. It flew and stuck in the wall just above the king’s chair.

Richard leapt to his feet and snatched his wife’s hand, pulling her behind him. Someone screamed. The men on the dais threw themselves before the king, drew their swords, and whipped their heads around, searching.

By then, the archer had released his grip on the short bow and rumbled behind the banners and tapestries to make his escape. The tapestry flew up, furling like a sail. Footsteps ran.

Crispin tried to get to him, but now there was a crushing throng pushing against him. He stumbled. He reared up. His hood fell back, but it was too late. The crowd closed up again. Confused heads turned every which way. Women were wailing and everyone seemed to be shouting.

And then someone gasped. Before Crispin knew what was happening, the crowd parted and left a wide circle around him. He suddenly and unaccountably found himself alone.

Not so unaccountable. With a sinking feeling in his gut he knew exactly why.

Crispin stared back at the anxious and horror-struck faces. A trickle of sweat dribbled down his temple to his cheek.

“It’s Crispin Guest!” said a voice, shock spinning it to a whisper. The hall fell silent.

Crispin didn’t need to look down at the guilty bow still clenched in his left hand.

“Holy Christ,” he muttered.

17

AS CRISPIN SAW IT, there were only two choices: he could stay as he was and get captured and executed for a crime he didn’t commit—or he could run.

He chose the latter.

He threw himself forward into a knot of women. Screams filled his ears, but at least the women had no weapons. He felt the cascade of silk and satin on his hands, smelled their perfumes and sweat, and pushed ahead, crisscrossing amid the tight throng. All at once, he burst free of the crowd. Men with swords approached from one side, guards with guisarmes from another. The crowd of people shrank back.

He looked at the short bow still in his hand and cast it away. At his back, a tapestry and a solid wall.

This was not good.

His eyes searched, mind churning. Escape. There had to be a way. There was always a way.

He looked behind him at the tapestry, up to its stern iron rod, to the windows above.

The men were coming, murder in their eyes. He was done for. No trial. No gaol. Just a bloody death right here in the great hall.

Crispin spun. He grabbed the edge of the tapestry with both fists and pulled himself up, hand over hand. A spear whistled past his ear, moving his hair. He stopped only long enough to stare wide-eyed at the quivering shaft imbedded in the plaster before he threw his strength into reaching higher.

The iron rod. He felt his hand curl around it and then the other hand. Now he dared look up and saw the window. It was farther than he thought.

Another spear clanged against the wall just below his right thigh. He swung his leg up and his boot managed to just grab the rod. He’d have to stand on it to reach the window.

He felt a tug on the tapestry and looked down. Two guards climbed up below him.

No time to think. He pulled his other leg up and crouched on the rod like a frog, both sweaty hands clutching the rod between his feet. He walked his hands up the wall until he stood.

He lurched. Why was the rod suddenly leaning? At his left, the rod hung precariously from its hanger imbedded in the plaster-covered stone. The damned thing was pulling away from the wall! Too much weight.

A bit of plaster fell from the hanger. The rod lurched again as it slipped farther.

“Better and better,” he muttered, shaking his head.

He looked up at the window. There was a sill but it wasn’t very wide, only enough for his feet. He reached up to grab it.

Too far.

He heard a grunt and told himself not to look down, but in the tense state his mind was in, he didn’t listen very well to himself. One of the guards climbing the tapestry had almost reached him. He thought of kicking him in the face but a better idea occurred to him.

The man stretched his hand forward and gripped the rod. The whole tapestry shifted again. The man raised his head and looked over at the unstable hanger. His expression opened into fear. It was a good fifteen feet to the floor. He looked up at Crispin and whitened his knuckles on the rod.

Crispin smiled and slid along the rod toward him. The man’s features changed to one of horror as he saw what Crispin was about to do, though he misunderstood the reason.

Crispin raised his foot, but instead of kicking the man’s face, he stepped up onto his head. Crispin’s boot slid on the man’s hair and the human stepping-stone heaped a set of fine old curses upon Crispin, questioning his paternity as well as his sexual practices.

Crispin ignored it. Now tall enough, he reached up and grabbed the sill. He pushed away from the man’s head to get a good grip. That was also enough to dislodge the guard. The man lost his hold, tried to regain it, and tumbled down. He knocked the other guard free and landed on a knot of men gathered below. Then the entire rod let loose from the wall. The men below scrambled out of the way before the rod and tapestry clanged heavily to the floor.

Crispin dangled like a plucked goose from the windowsill. Halberd heads clanked against the wall in an attempt to reach his feet. If he couldn’t swing up to the window, he was as good as a dead goose.

He grit his teeth and swung his foot, missed, swung again.

Got it! He pulled his body up on the narrow ledge. For once grateful at his meager diet, he stood, facing the window. Unable to resist, he turned his head and got his first look at the hall.

Chaos. All its inhabitants glared up at him, curses on their lips. Spears shook, swords flashed. They wanted his blood, that much was certain.

With his chest pressed to the glass he felt the window with his fingers, the edges of glass, the lead dividers, looking for a latch or hinge.

Then his heart burst with a shot of warmth. The window didn’t open. He
was
a dead man.

He looked back down and wondered who he should land on for the best effect. It would be the last choice he ever made so he wanted it to be a good one.

He saw it like a story woven into a tapestry. The man below cocked back his arm and took aim at Crispin. The spear released in a long and graceful arc, straight at him. If he didn’t move it would surely pierce him, and he wondered in the few heartbeats it took for the spear to leave the guard’s hand, if he shouldn’t let it do its work. The aim was good and would, no doubt, do great damage to his chest. All he had to do was stand as he was and make no attempt to move. A simple thing. Better than the death Richard would choose this time. Crispin ruminated on the possibilities—on who would mourn him, where his miserable body might be buried if allowed such an ennobling thing as burial. But then his instincts took over, made the decision, and forced him to lean to the side just as the lethal missile slid past him. The spear crashed through the window in a barrage of broken glass and twisted lead.

Crispin windmilled his arms, trying to keep his balance. He stared at the window’s suddenly gaping hole. That would do.

He closed his eyes, gave in to faith, and hurled himself through.