Veil of Lies

“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.”

Mahmoud waved his hand and smiled.

Crispin glanced at the dead crossbowmen. “Don’t tell me you killed Walcote, or whatever his true name is?”

Mahmoud frowned, but his face wore amusement. “We wanted him dead, but we would not be so stupid as to kill him before we got the cloth back.”

Crispin wished for half a heartbeat that he was still holding the cloth and that it could tell him a lie from the truth. But he was also a good judge of men and a good judge of lies.

“Strangely,” he said, “I believe you.”

“I am gratified,” Mahmoud said.

“Yet this cloth that you so fiercely desire does not seem to belong to you?”

“Not strictly speaking, no.”

“Then we have nothing to discuss.”

“I think we do. My employers wish to make you an offer that you will find difficult to decline.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

Mahmoud rose and sauntered toward the door. His hand never left the pommel of a curved dagger in its intricately patterned sheath. “Give us the Mandyllon or the girl dies.”

A wave of panic seized Crispin, but his face only showed practiced indifference. “What if I were to negotiate directly with your masters?”

Mahmoud’s mouth flattened. “That would be ill-advised. My masters do not bargain amongst the lower classes.” He said the last with relish. Crispin fought the urge to frown.

“Would it surprise you to learn that your master is already negotiating with me?” The look on Mahmoud’s face more than made up for his last comment. “It seems he effectively cut you out of the entire process. Unless…he isn’t the master you speak of. I believe you said ‘masters.’”

Mahmoud shut his lips and strolled across the room. He stared down at one of the dead men. “That is all of little consequence,” he replied quietly.

“Truly? Will this not displease your masters, whoever they are? That at least one of them was forced to negotiate with me? That you failed?”

The Saracen looked up. “The end is still the same.”

“The end.” Crispin chuckled and leaned against the doorpost. “Indeed. The end.”

Mahmoud rushed him. He snarled, his hand on his dagger. “What have you told them?”

Crispin blinked slowly, enjoying it. “Only what I needed to.”

“They don’t know about the girl,” he growled. “I do. I suggest you surrender the Mandyllon to me before I get to her.”

“You don’t know where she is.”

Mahmoud cast his glance purposefully about the room. “Don’t I?” He saluted Crispin and rolled out of the doorway.

Crispin cast a glance at the dead men again before he dashed for the door. He got two paces on the landing before he stopped sharply.

No one was there.

“What the devil—?”

Just that moment Jack and Philippa passed the eclipse of light and shadow at the bottom of the stairway. They trotted upwards when Philippa looked up and raised a startled hand to her chest. “Crispin!”

“Didn’t you see him?”

She ascended to the landing where Crispin stood, peering past her. “Who?”

“Mahmoud. You must have just passed him.”

Philippa turned to Jack who had come up beside her. “We saw no one.”

Like smoke. Mahmoud’s threat still hung in the air. Crispin’s voice remained calm but his heart hammered against his ribs. “Where have you been?”

“Jack went with me to get some food.”

“Where did you get the money? Jack, haven’t I told you a thousand times—”

“It wasn’t him,” she said, putting a hand on Jack’s drooping shoulders.

“You said you didn’t have any money.” He looked at her hand resting on Jack. “You pawned your wedding ring.”

She covered the empty ring finger with the other hand. “What any self-respecting servant would do.”

Jack chuckled. “I like her,” he said.

“Now that you’re back we must go.”

“Go?” she cried. “Go where? What did Mahmoud want?”

Jack groaned. “She was going to cook, Master Crispin. No offense, but I am tired of your cooking, and mine.”

“She hasn’t the time.” He took her elbow and steered her down the stairs.

Dejected, Jack stood holding the poultry and sausages. “What should I be doing?” he asked.

Crispin stopped. “Oh. Jack, call for the sheriff. If he has any questions…well, it is certain he will, and I will answer to him anon. But…not at this moment.”

“Call the sheriff for what?”

“Those men in our room. I’m afraid they are dead.”

“What?”

Without looking back, he ushered Philippa away, but she dragged her heels in the mud and brought him to a