Serpent in the Thorns

6

“CRISPIN! ARE YOU MAD?” Martin tugged Crispin’s arms.

Crispin heard him distantly like a midge buzzing about his head. He did not yield. When the two men-at-arms arrived they did a better job. They swung him to the ground. Crispin sprang to his feet and the men grabbed him again.

“Master!” Jack trotted around them like a sheepdog, trying to get to Crispin.

Crispin spun out of the guards’ grip. He kicked one in the gut and slammed his fist in the other’s jaw. The first man recovered and pulled his sword. Crispin darted under the blade and grabbed the wrist holding the weapon. With hands firmly on the struggling guard’s wrist, he directed the steel toward the other man still groaning on the ground and smacked him in the head with the side of the blade. The man slumped solidly down.

With his fist still ringing the swordsman’s wrist, Crispin tried to disarm him, but the man twisted and kneed Crispin’s chest, knocking the air out of his lungs. Crispin had no choice but to release his grip and stagger backward. The man raised his sword, but Crispin whirled and landed a blow with the heel of his boot to the man’s groin. The man’s face squinted and his mouth formed a soundless “O.” Crispin threw an uppercut and smiled when the man slammed backward into the mud. The sword flung from his hand.

Crispin spun. Two more men-at-arms came running and Crispin crouched, bloodied fists clenched.

The Captain of the Archers struggled to his feet with Martin’s help and called for the men to stop. “I said hold!” he said in a more commanding voice. The men stopped and looked at one another with fists curled. “Leave us!” said the captain.

The men cast questioning looks at a scowling Crispin, and slowly departed, though not too far.

The Captain of the Archers brushed his wheat-colored hair out of his eyes. He straightened his muddied velvet surcote and adjusted his gold-tipped sword pommel. The fawnskin gauntlets, hemmed with fur, dripped with mud. Three gold rings flashed from the gloved fingers on his left hand. He wiped mud from his face and stared at Crispin with a growing smile of recognition. “Crispin Guest. I will be damned. I thought you were dead.”

“I might as well have been!” Crispin yanked his fallen dagger from the turf. Jack tried to help Crispin but he shook off the boy. “And you will be damned as soon as I kill you.”

The Captain’s lips drew back in a knife-sharp smile. He examined Crispin and shook his head. He turned toward Jack and Martin as if suddenly remembering them and jerked his head. “Do these two have to be here?”

Crispin swiped the spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand and shook his head.

Without looking at either of them, he said, “Jack. Martin. Would you be so kind as to leave us?”

“Yes, Crispin,” muttered Martin. “Come along, Jack.” A throng of men nearby also departed under the watchful scowls of the men-at-arms, leaving Crispin and the captain alone.

“I’ll be at home, Master.” Jack said it loud enough for the Captain of the Archers to clearly hear him. “Watching for you.”

Crispin ignored Jack and lifted his knife higher. “Now, Miles Aleyn. How do you want to die?”

Miles postured, one foot forward, his gloved hand resting lightly on his sword pommel. His long surcote bore the king’s arms—three yellow leopards on a red field—quartered with red arrows on yellow fields. He twisted his rosy lips, too rosy for a man’s. His dark eyes followed each of Crispin’s moves, hawklike, aware. Crispin knew from experience that those eyes were more alert than Miles’s relaxed manner made them appear. “Still so melodramatic,” Miles said, one brow raised. “One would think you would have outgrown such theatrics.”

“You son of a whore. You misled me. And then like a coward, you tucked and ran.”

Miles took a deep breath. He raised his eyes toward the distant men-at-arms. “Treason is still treason, Crispin,” he said quietly. “Not even I could have saved you. At any rate, you did only what you wanted to do. As I recall, you were one of the easiest to persuade. Still wet behind the ears.”

“I trusted you!”

Miles waved his hand and then let it fall to his side. “Alas.”

“You could have spoken up!”

“And had my bowels ripped from me? I think not.”

“Why did you do it? Why stir up the nobles against King Richard and blame Lancaster?”

“Now, now. Need we be so loud?”

“I’ll shout it to the rooftops.”

“And get nowhere. Try anything, and I will lay you low before you take a breath.”

“If you can.”

Miles chuckled. “Crispin, Crispin. Look at you. Alive. Free. I thought you’d be out of London by now. Still festering, I see. Any other man would have given up, found a life elsewhere. Not you. A glutton for punishment. Or a would-be martyr. Which is it? After all, my dear fellow, it was ages ago.”

“Ages ago? Like yesterday.”

“Not to me.” Miles adjusted his right glove, but Crispin could tell he was measuring how far away his men were.

“So why? Why betray us? What had you to gain?”

“I barely remember now. Probably someone paid me to do it.”

Crispin’s fist knotted over the dagger. “Who paid you? What coward would dare?”

“So many questions.” Miles glanced back. The men-at-arms talked furtively in a tight knot, hands on sword pommels. They looked toward Miles, awaiting his signal. “You’re a very curious fellow, aren’t you? You should have been more curious seven years ago. It could have saved your hide.”

“Who hired you!”

Miles blinked languidly. “Did I say someone hired me? I do not recall.” He looked Crispin up and down. “Why such concern? You thrive, do you not? And Lancaster did speak up for you. ‘Begged’ for your life, I think the king said. Like a good foster father should.”

Crispin snorted. “And the others all under the ax. Except you. But I shall remedy that now.”

“Kill a nobleman? They’ll put your head on a pike.”

“Better that than a coward’s life.”

“Oh be still, Crispin. You are alive and well. No worse for wear.”

“You don’t know. You have no idea what I have suffered!”

“So you lost a few shillings—”

“You were there! I lost everything, you bastard! My knighthood, my lands, my title!” Crispin opened his arms, whipping the air with his knife. “This is what the king left me!”

Miles perused Crispin’s patched cotehardie, leather hood, thread-bare cloak with its tattered hem trailing threads. “And yet you managed to make your way.”

“Make my way?” Crispin decided that stabbing him in the gut would be more pleasing. A knife thrust deep and then jerked upward. Those entrails would nicely cover the shine of Miles’s boots and golden spurs.

Crispin gestured with the dagger. His fingers curled tightly around the grip. “You seem to have done very well for yourself. The king’s Captain of the Archers?”

“I managed. I went to France and fought in Richard’s army and climbed my way into his good graces.”

“And you never sought me out, never bothered to discover how I fared?” He couldn’t breathe. “You’re a dead man.”

“I beg to differ.” Miles looked down his blunt nose. “Should you attempt to attack me, my men-at-arms would be upon you.”

“What do I care if I kill you first?”

“You didn’t scrape by all this time just to kill me. You didn’t even know I was alive. Surely your life is precious to you. You survived the king’s wrath, after all. That is certainly a feat worth note. What have you managed to do all this time? Are you a scribe, perhaps? Or does the Church suit you?”

Crispin looked back over his shoulder. Too many guards. He’d never have the chance to strike a decent blow. Disappointment stabbed at his gut with a long, slow pain, as slow as his knife blade sliding back into its sheath. He