Serpent in the Thorns

for the night.

The following morning was still raw when Crispin awoke with a start. Cold sweat covered his face and body, and he cast off the blanket and threw his naked legs over the side of the bed. He stared at the floor, dark in the absence of moonlight and a dying hearth.

Jack snored nearly beneath Crispin’s bed. His body was curled in a tight knot as far away from the Crown’s reliquary as he could get.

Crispin ran his hand through his damp hair. He hadn’t had that dream in a long time, though it truly wasn’t a dream. A memory, then, slipping into the landscape of his dreams.

He sat up and glanced across his dim room, but the half-dream, half-memory lingered. He still felt the rough ropes bite into his wrists, felt the raw wheals from the pressure, from pulling on the bindings so hard. Then the hot pincers, glowing red from the coals. They came closer, so close he could smell the damp, fetid air sizzle on them. “Tell us,” they said, over and over. “We won’t have these ‘meetings’ anymore if you just tell us the other names.” But he didn’t, wouldn’t. And so they’d touched the pincers to his flesh. And then it was the sound of skin blistering and steam rising, his own flesh cooking with an acrid odor, smoke wisping skyward.

He rose and staggered to the window. He opened the shutter, stuck his head out, and inhaled the cold, foggy air. Even now he could not fight the nausea, and he spit the sour taste out the window.

He knew why he dreamed it. Miles. Miles brought all those memories back into stinging clarity. Especially that last day. The day they took him from the cell. Crispin thought he was to be executed and even thanked God for it, that it would finally be over. But instead of marching him to the courtyard and the gibbet, he was led instead to Westminster’s great hall.

King Richard, ten years old and newly minted as king, sat his gangly frame on his marble throne. His feet did not yet touch the ground and so a cushioned stool rested beneath his long-toed slippers. His smooth face saw neither beard nor scar. Small mouth, small chin, languid lids. But no mere pup. Fire burned in those eyes. Anger. The king knew that the Plot meant his death. The others were gone, every one of them executed in all manner of foul ways. There remained only Crispin on whom to pass judgment.

Crispin staggered toward the king’s dais, barely recovered from the torture that had gone on for weeks. The iron shackles pulled his wrists down. Their chains dragged along the floor. His surcote hung torn and bloody on his weakened body.

Stiffly, like a wooden puppet, he lowered to his knees, his last obeisance to the crown at least, if not the one wearing it.

A knight with a conical helm and camail down his chin and chest stood before Crispin. He lifted something. After taking some time to focus his eyes, Crispin recognized it. His sword. The knight pulled it from its sheath and raised it.

What was happening? Was he to be executed with his own sword?

The knight whirled and the sound of steel whistled in the air. But instead of feeling the blade slice through his neck, which Crispin fully expected, he felt the rush of wind as the knight slammed the sword against the stone floor. The shock reverberated throughout the hall. He flinched along with the many lords and ladies from the inharmonious noise and its echo. But the sword remained undamaged. The knight swung it again and even a third time before the tip finally broke off and spun across the floor.

Crispin turned and watched the tip slide until it stopped several paces away. He raised his head and looked with glazed eyes about the crowded hall. Courtiers and ladies, in finery all, men he knew, women he knew better. Even his betrothed—former betrothed. The betrothal had been severed as soon as he was arrested.

All present, all staring at him, mouths agape, hands over faces.

What was this if not an execution?

The knight drew forth Crispin’s spurs, taken from his boots long before he entered the darkness of Newgate. The knight dropped them to the floor, took a mace, and smashed them to pieces.

Then Crispin understood. They were taking away his knighthood. The accoutrements of his status—his sword and spurs—were removed and destroyed before his eyes, before the eyes of the court.

He expected it then, when the knight took a dagger and stripped his surcote, bright with Crispin’s blazon and colors, from his body and tossed the rags to the floor.

So he was a knight no more. And what did it matter if he were to die? His head would join the others on its pike on London Bridge. His body parts would be scattered to the four corners of the realm. In a few years, no one would remember him. No one would speak his name except in the hushed tones of a story told to warn. He would be smashed to pieces like his hapless spurs.

And what was worse, he knew he deserved it. Treason. He hadn’t taken it up lightly. He agonized over it for weeks. But he had been loyal to Lancaster, loyal unto death. And now death was knocking.

The king rose, stepped awkwardly over his cushioned stool, and approached only as far as the edge of the dais. His clear young voice rang out. He spoke through a sneer that was all Richard’s, not his father, the famed warrior Edward of Woodstock, or his grandfather, the great King Edward of Windsor. “It is not at our pleasure that you stand before this court, Crispin Guest.”

Crispin squinted and blinked. Candles, rushlights, it was more light than he had seen for five months. Sweat dripped from his grizzled beard. The hall was warm. His cell had been cold. The stink in his nose was his own.

“It was, in fact, our pleasure to see you executed along with the other traitors to the realm. But”—Richard adjusted his belt, hooking his thumbs—“my uncle, my lord of Gaunt, begged for your life.”

Crispin’s jaw slackened at that, and he turned his eyes toward Richard’s right. Standing behind the king and almost in the shadows—John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. At first glance he appeared to be staring at Crispin, but Crispin soon discovered that Lancaster stared past him, just over his shoulder. He refused to even look Crispin in the eye! That was far worse than this child, this seedling taking from him his sword. Lancaster! He longed to rush to him, to throw himself on the ground before Gaunt. The man’s disappointment was palpable. It struck Crispin to the quick.

Of course, the Plot involved Lancaster, or at least Crispin thought it had. The plotters said Gaunt, the fourth son of the old king, was behind a scheme to depose the then Prince Richard and put himself on the throne. Gaunt’s brother Edward of Woodstock had been the heir but he had taken sick and died. That put his son Richard in the direct line. But Richard was young. Too young. Lancaster was the better statesmen, more experienced, more power, more wit.

And Crispin, raised in Lancaster’s household since he was eight years old, loved the man like a father.

Crispin followed the conspirators, never knowing Lancaster knew nothing of the Plot—until it was far too late.

He came back to himself when they removed the shackles from his wrists and ankles. Then the knight dropped Crispin’s belt with his dagger at his feet. Crispin looked down at them without comprehension.

Richard spoke again. His youthful voice broke trying to be loud enough for the immensity of the hall. “It is by our infinite mercy that you live, Crispin Guest, and only by that. Our choice was to let you rot in prison. And if not prison, then to banish you from this realm.” He blinked once at his uncle Lancaster. When he turned back to Crispin, his lips curled upward. To call it a smile was to dismiss the grimace of jackals, or the openmouthed anticipation of a buzzard. “But if live you must, then a better punishment is mete. We have decided you shall remain in England. Even London if you like.” He snorted a laugh. He looked to his courtiers to join him in his merriment, but their pale faces did not echo his high spirits. The smile soon turned to a sneer. “But not in prison.” He nodded to the knight to continue, snapped his ermine-trimmed cloak behind him, and returned to his throne. He climbed into it and settled his rump. He grasped the chair arms with bejeweled fingers and drummed. His eyes looked bored.

The knight stood before Crispin again. “Crispin Guest,” he announced. “Stand.”

Crispin concentrated on his muscles and forced them into use. He rose, his shoulders last, and he stood unsteadily, eyes taking in the king, the crowd, and the knight when he spoke again.

“By order of his most gracious Majesty King Richard,” said the knight, “you are a knight no more. Further: you have no title, you have no lands, no wealth. You are nothing.” He stepped forward and pushed Crispin with both hands. Crispin stumbled back. The knight followed him. “Let no man succor you. Let no kinsman support you, or they shall suffer the wrath of the crown.” He pushed Crispin again. “By the king’s mercy,” said the knight, arms dropping to his sides, “you may go in peace.”