Serpent in the Thorns

mouth.

Crispin rose unsteadily. “Are you Livith?”

The woman clutched her sister’s head to her breast. The girl visibly calmed and nestled there. The woman’s mouth parted, but not in the dull-witted way of her sister. Her shiny lips were ruddy, almost as ruddy as the dark spots on her cheeks. Her angular face—not soft and round like her sister’s—played out in planes of shadows and highlights, touched by long, flailing strands of ash blond hair. And her eyes. Crispin liked those eyes, shaded with hazel instead of the watery gray of the younger woman. There was a cleverness gleaming from them, even with fear shining bright. “Who the hell are you? What have you done here?”

“My name is Crispin Guest. They call me the Tracker.”

The arch of her brows showed recognition.

He glanced back at the body. “I did not kill him. Your sister came to fetch me. She believes she killed this man.”

Livith stared at the crumpled body in the corner, the arrow shaft now gleaming with a passing ray of sun. “Jesus wept!” she hissed. She pushed her sister from her bosom and glared into her face. “You stupid girl! You couldn’t have killed him. You know it!”

“But I was the only one here, Livith, and you weren’t—” She choked on a sob and hiccupped.

“I’m here now.” Clutching the girl, she turned to Crispin. “How could she have possibly shot him?”

Crispin cast about the room halfheartedly. He didn’t expect to find a bow. “Your sister has somehow twisted the truth. But there is a truth here. And a serious one.”

Livith put the girl onto the bench and stood back. “Her name is Grayce.”

Crispin made an uneven bow. “I beg your pardon. She never introduced herself—”

“And you never bothered to ask.”

He didn’t dispute it. Instead he nodded and rubbed his heavy eyes with his knuckles.

“You’re drunk. Some sarding help you are.” She thrust her hand at her hip, chin high. Even a smudge of dirt on her nose did not diminish her appearance, though Crispin was not endeared by her rough speech.

He straightened his shoulder cape over his cloak. “I am not drunk, wench. Last night I was drunk. Today . . . I am suffering from its venomous aftereffects.”

She snorted. “The great ‘Tracker.’ ”

He sighed wearily. “Do you know this dead man?’

She hugged her arms and gave the dead man a cursory glance before shaking her head. “Never saw him before.”

“And yet drunk or no, I do know that this man is a French courier. Do you know how much trouble you are in for having such a dead man in your room?”

“I’m beginning to.” She bit her fingernail.

He thrust his thumbs into his belt and tapped the leather. “Your sister admitted to killing him.”

“But she didn’t! Christ!”

“So it would seem. But the sheriff will not be as understanding as I am.”

The defiance drained from her sharp features. “Then what are we to do?”

“I’m thinking.” He turned back toward the dead man, and then stared up at the window. “Why would he have cause to come down here?”

“He was drunk,” Livith offered.

“Or looking for someone, perhaps, and came to the wrong room.”

Livith followed his gaze to the window. She pointed. “The window. Someone could have shot him from there.”

Crispin examined the angle. “And yet it does not explain what he was doing in here.”

Livith turned to Grayce sitting in the bench. She knelt at her feet and placed her hands on Grayce’s knees. Her harsh voice gentled. “Now Grayce, you went and fetched this fine gentleman. You must tell us what happened.”

Grayce, who had calmed during Livith’s arrival, now arched forward with taut shoulders. Her hands curled into claws before her face. “I told him already.”

“No, love,” cooed Livith. “You didn’t tell him. You only made some cockeyed confession. Now you know you couldn’t have killed him. Ain’t that right?”

Grayce’s hands plunged into her hair. She matted it into a bird’s nest. “You’ve got me confused.”

“Now, now Grayce. Just tell the gentleman what happened.”

“Yes, Grayce.” Crispin tried to smile. “Just tell me.”

Grayce looked from one face to another. Her eyes rested at last on the body. “I killed him, that’s all. I killed him! Stop asking me!”

Livith grasped Grayce’s shoulders, opened her mouth, but said nothing. With an expelled breath of frustration, she released her and rose. “She can’t say nought. When she gets like this, there’s no getting through to her.”

Crispin stared at the girl. She clasped her arms and rocked herself, whimpering. Gracious Jesu. That wasn’t much to tell the sheriff, and Simon Wynchecombe was a man likely to hang them first and ask questions later. Unless he could manage to talk to the other sheriff, John More, first . . . No. The man deferred all unpleasant work to Wynchecombe. There was no getting around it. He sighed and looked at the dead man again. He knelt beside the body, grasped the courier pouch, and unbuckled its leather straps. Inside was a carved wooden box resembling a reliquary. He lifted it from the pouch and set it on the table.

Locked.

Crispin went back to the man and rummaged through his other pouches and purses. He found gold and silver coins, letters of passage in French, and a key. He scanned the letter, but it told him what he already surmised: the man, along with two others, was a courier for the French court and was to be given safe passage across France and England. Their intended destination was London. “Well,” he said to the corpse, “you’ve arrived.”

3

CRISPIN TOOK THE KEY to the box, fit it in the lock, and turned it. He lifted the box’s lid. Within sat another box made of gold, studded with gems. Livith stepped closer.

“Mary’s blessed dugs!” she whispered over his shoulder. “That’s solid gold, that!”

“I doubt it is solid gold,” said Crispin. But he felt as excited as any thief peering at the royal treasury. With both hands, he lifted the golden casket free of the wooden box and set it on the table.

“Was he killed for this?” she asked.

“If that is so, he was killed in vain.” The courier’s letter mentioned other companions and Crispin wondered about those men. Where were they? Also dead? Or perhaps simply guilty of murder.

“Could he have been shot outside and made his way in here?”

Crispin glanced along the earthen floor to the entry and saw no blood, no scrapings of staggering steps along the dirt. “The evidence does not bear it out.” He grasped the lid and opened. The box was lined in red velvet. In its center indentation sat a wreath made of rushes woven in a decorative pattern of diamonds and zigzags. Large black thorns were thrust here and there within the rush circlet, some three to four inches long. Crispin ran a finger along one of the pronged spikes. “Curious.”

“What is it?”

“I have no idea. It looks like some sort of circlet . . . with thorns. Very unpleasant.”

“A crown of thorns?”

“Crown of thorns?” He looked at her. “You may be right.”