“I will help her collect her baggage,” said Crispin, but Lionel harrumphed himself forward and waved his hand in the air.
“No, no, no. None of it belongs to her, after all, now does it?”
“I suppose you’d like me to go off naked!”
Both Lionel and Clarence raised their brows but Maude slapped her husband’s shoulder and offered an insincere smile. “She may take what she is wearing and return it when she can.”
“Very charitable,” muttered Crispin. Philippa looked up at him defiantly, and he motioned for her to go. “Masters, mistress,” he said in parting. “I trust you do not mind seeing me again. I am still investigating a murder.”
“So you say,” said Maude, staring meaningfully at Philippa. “But it seems to me that you put yourself to far more trouble than necessary.”
17
Crispin reached the fresh cold air of the courtyard and his shoulders finally relaxed. He led the silent Philippa beyond the gatehouse and they stood undecidedly at the muddy crossroads in front of the Walcote manor.
Crispin tried to speak several times, but he did not think he could manage his anger.
Abruptly she turned to him. “Say it all. You want to. You probably even think I killed him.”
“Did you?”
“You already asked me that. Didn’t you believe my answer?”
“That was then.”
“And now? Not just a chambermaid and an adulteress, but a liar, a thief, and a murderer. Is that it? Or maybe I left out whore.”
Crispin eyed the street peripherally. Perhaps this wasn’t the best place for this discussion. He longed for a drink. “I don’t like being lied to.”
“I didn’t lie to you. I, well, I tried not to. There were just some things I couldn’t tell you. Can’t you understand why? Everything that happened in that room was all that I feared. That is my home, Crispin.” Teardrops beaded her lashes. “I can’t even be a servant there no more. I haven’t two pence to rub together. Even these clothes—That bitch wants them back, and I’ll send them, mark my words!”
Crispin’s throat felt thick. He wanted nothing more than to leave her in the street and get himself drunk at the Boar’s Tusk, but with his name on a surety he had no recourse but to keep an eye on her. “Where does your family dwell? I will take you there.”
“I ain’t got a family. I got nowhere to go.”
“Nowhere? No one?”
She stood red-faced and tearstained, but still striking, still unashamed and defiant.
She wiped her face with her hand. “I don’t need no one.”
“I suppose…you may stay with me. Temporarily. I have nothing but the floor to offer you.”
“I’ve had worse.”
The sun lay far below the horizon by the time they neared the Shambles. Crispin noted a man in livery following them, but when Crispin stopped on the pretense of taking a pebble from his boot, the man vanished.
Long shadows blended with the darkness, crossing over one another in a thatching of dismal contours. Philippa had stopped weeping a long time ago, and they hadn’t spoken since leaving the manor. When he looked past her, a hunched figure emerged from the dark.
“Wait here,” he said to her before he joined the short man.
Lenny’s bulging eyes winced furtively up and down the street.
“What’s the news, Lenny?”
“Good ev’n, Master Crispin,” he said with an abbreviated bow. He gestured toward Philippa rubbing her arms in the cold. “Don’t mean to interrupt your doings.” He added a wink.
Crispin scowled. “Just tell me what you have for me.”
“Well, I seen that Moor leave his lodgings and I followed him.”
“Indeed. Where did he go?”
“Hired himself a messenger. Gave him a paper and sent him off.”
“And where did this messenger go?”
“Ah! I thought you’d want to know that. So I followed him to the Walcote manor. That big stone house? Didn’t see nought else after that.”
“Interesting. And when did all these mysterious doings take place?”
“Last night around dusk. Then I went back to the Thistle to see if that Moor was still there.”
“And was he?”
“All at ease in his room, he was. The knave.”
“Much thanks, Lenny.” Crispin managed to find a farthing in the corner of his purse and handed it over.
“Oh, indeed!” said Lenny, saluting with the coin. “Right you are, Master Crispin. Any time, good sir. Am I to keep an eye peeled still for this Moor?”
“If you would. Off with you now.”
“Fare you well. And good luck with the lady.”
Why would Mahmoud send a messenger to the Walcote manor? Sending a missive to Philippa? Crispin glanced at her. She seemed small and lost in the pall of her cloak. It covered all of her. Only her sheltered head and shoulders marked her shape.
By the time he looked back, Lenny had vanished.
“Who was that?”
Her pale skin looked blue in the cloud-veiled moonlight. She composed herself but without the sparkle he knew before.
He pulled his hood forward and sniffed at the cold. “An associate.” He strode forward and she followed.
“You deal with many questionable characters.”
He hurried his pace. “Yes—cutthroats, cutpurses, and the like. That is the scope of my universe,” he said tightly.
“And now I am one of them.”
He said nothing to that. The resignation in her voice might have been justified, but it rang inharmoniously on his ear.
They reached the Shambles, which gave up its particular fragrance even in the darkness. No mistaking the odor of death and butchering. Even when the wind changed direction, the street was not spared. Tallow vats billowed their perfume skyward, clouds of it roaming lazily.
Ahead lay the tinker’s shop, and Crispin directed Philippa and took out his key. They climbed the stairs, reached for the room’s lock, and the door flung open. “It’s about time, Master! I was worried—”
Jack Tucker froze in place and stared at Philippa, her face streaked with old tears, one braid draped limply over a shoulder.
Crispin leaned toward Jack. “Jack, would you do me the favor of finding other lodgings tonight? Mistress Wal…Philippa is going to be my guest.”
Jack blushed and straightened. “Oh, right then. As you will.” He recovered quickly, licked his lips, and scratched his head. Freckles that took on a merry life of their own in the sunlight disappeared in the darkness of the landing. He thumbed behind him into the shadows. “I’ll just be going now, will I?”
He backed out the door and Crispin closed it on him, but not before jutting his face between the slash of door and jamb. “I’ll make it up to you, Jack.”
Jack winked, found a place in the corner of the landing, and curled up under his cloak.
