The Demon’s Parchment

walked for nearly half an hour down long, snowy lanes toward the city of Westminster and the palace. As they entered each parish, they heard the echoing timbre of church bells even above the howl of wind, each tower with its own characteristic sound. The deep tones of St. Paul’s, whose shadow hovered over the Shambles, soon dispersed and they entered into the domain of the tinny jangling of St. Bride. A few more streets and then St. Clement Danes’ urgent claxon gave way to St. Martin-in-the-Fields’ timid pealing before even that sound was finally overshadowed by the rich resonance of the bells of Westminster Abbey.

Charing Cross stood rigid in the icy cold of the crossroads. Its cross and steps were snowcapped and solemn. Jack’s admonishment kept preying on Crispin’s mind: You’re taking money from a Jew? Was he that desperate? The answer came swiftly. His rent was due in a few days and he had no money with which to pay it. Martin Kemp, his landlord, was kind to him and often did not demand the rents on time, unlike his shrewish wife, Alice, who enjoyed constantly harrying Crispin on that very point.

Money. It had never been an issue before. Not before his ill-fated decision to join with those conspirators seven years ago, at any rate. There was money aplenty then. Shameless amounts of it. Wasted on trinkets for foolish women and wine with dubious friends. Where were those friends now? And where the women? He had tossed coins so carelessly to bards and beggars. He sunk sackfuls of it on gardeners for his estates in Sheen. His former manor was not far from the royal residence and appearances had to be maintained. If the king wished to stay at the Guest Manor, then it must be as well appointed as the king’s own. He recalled one year when he harassed the tenants for their rents early in order to supply his kitchens for the king and his retinue. There was many a time he had nearly paupered his own household in order to feed and house all of court. But he had not complained, for this had been for the old king, Edward of Windsor, King Richard’s grandfather. For the old king, he would have done anything. Even commit treason so that his son John of Gaunt and not his grandson Richard could sit on the throne.

Alas. Those days were long, long gone. His lands had been taken along with his knighthood, and the loyal tenants on the Guest estates called another man their lord. Crispin knew not who, nor did he care to know.

He glanced down at his own seedy coat and the sturdy cloak that hid its shabby appearance from view. Yes, that was a long time ago.

Flurries arrived with the waning sun and Crispin quickened his step to keep warm. They followed the Strand now, heading out of London toward the palace. The shops and houses did not seem as crowded and the street opened onto a wider avenue where the spindly trees of gardens could be spied beyond the rooftops.

Crispin set his mind to the task at hand. What papers could a Jew value so much that he would seek him out? He must be desperate to venture from court, knowing that he would not be welcomed outside of it. He almost laughed. And to seek a man who was not allowed into court! A fine pair they were.

It was a simple theft, no doubt. Someone inquisitive about the Jew. Perhaps it was stolen as a simple prank. That made one of two possibilities: The papers were long gone, destroyed. Or someone thought them valuable enough to try to sell to a third party. If the latter was the case then they still might yet be recovered. If the former, well, he’d take his money from this Jew and be troubled by him and court no more.

The freezing wind was angry, whipping off the white-capped river, and shrieking down the alleys, whirling through the lanes and taking with it the last brown leaves of an autumn that was just a memory. Ice pelted Crispin’s face like tiny shards of glass. He squinted into the weather, head ducked down and encased in a hood that he wished for the thousandth time had been lined with fur.

But even above the baying wind and the churning foam of the river hissing against the stony embankment, Jack and Crispin heard it at the same time. A plaintive cry from the direction of the Thames. Crispin paused, wondering about it when the sound lifted up into the cold afternoon a second time. People on the street near the embankment stopped and moved toward the edge. Crispin watched as some men scurried down the bank and disappeared from view. Others took up the cry and Crispin found himself running.

Men with poles were trying to pull something in. The Thames wrestled with them, spitting icy water up into their faces, dampening their stockings and boots with freezing water. It wasn’t until Crispin pushed some onlookers out of the way that he saw what it was the men were heaving onto the shore.

Hurrying down the embankment, Crispin helped pull up the small form.

A boy. About Jack’s age.

Naked. Bruised. Dead.

2

They laid the boy on the rocky shore. Men with wet stockings knelt beside him. Everyone crossed themselves. Women wept and many went running. Crispin knelt and looked over the boy’s body. “Has someone gone and fetched the sheriff?” he inquired, his voice hoarse.

“Aye,” said a man beside him, shivering. His shoes were soaked through. He was one of the men who had plunged into the freezing Thames to bring forth the body. “My boy went to get him. Was it an accident, you think?”

The body had not been long dead, Crispin decided. No bloating, no nibbling from fish. It was recent. There were bruises on his arms and wrists and a deep bruise around his neck, so deep that whatever had strangled him left a profound indentation. A slice up his abdomen was done neatly with a knife. It was deep. “This was no accident,” said Crispin.

“Shall I call the hue and cry?” asked the man.

Crispin nodded, his gaze never leaving the wide-open eyes of the boy. Eyes that had been blue, their cloudy whites webbed with broken blood vessels. Eyes that would see no more.

The man left their side and began to shout to the nearest shops and houses. He was joined by others. Crispin did not know whether such a move would prove useful. The boy might have been killed last night, the culprit long gone. The cold of the water left the time of death in question. Why he had not sunk to the bottom was also a mystery . . . and a blessing.

Crispin removed his cloak and covered the boy’s nakedness. He shivered. He did not know if from anger or from cold, or which was the greater.

He noticed Jack beside him. Jack was shivering more than he. “God help us,” the lad murmured.

Crispin stood and, for the first time, eyed the crowd surrounding the boy. Some were standing quite near while others were perched up on the embankment, leaning in. His gaze roved over the faces, those in quiet despair and sympathy over the loss of one of God’s innocents, and those with prurient curiosity glowing from their cold- etched faces. Did anyone look particularly guilty, he wondered. Did anyone look overly interested? It was possible that the devil was there among them, watching as his victim was discovered, taking hellish delight in the misery dropped like a stone into their midst. But even Crispin’s sharp eye could not see into men’s hearts. No one within his vision seemed to fit his ideal of such a monster that would kill a child.

The men about Crispin kept their vigil, murmuring prayers quietly beside the stricken boy. Crispin uttered no prayers. He could not. He found it hard to ascribe to a God who would allow mere men to debase such innocence. Who would murder a child? And in such a way? Not out of sudden anger with a blow to the head to teach him better, an accident perhaps. But in a deliberate act of cruelty and barbarism, for surely such steady strangulation, looking into the eyes of the child as he struggled to breathe, was not the act of a man. Not a man who walked the earth among other men. No one who breathed the same air, ate the same food, watched the same stars ebb and flow across the sky.

And the knife cut. What did that mean? With only a cursory glance, Crispin had noticed the hollowness of the