The Demon’s Parchment

“I’ll kill you if you don’t. Tell me!”

“Oh God! Oh blessed Jesu! What have we done?”

He backhanded the man anyway. He felt the blood and spittle on his knuckles. The man began to shake and hug himself. “Holy Mother,” he whispered hoarsely. “He made me do it.”

“Damn you! DO WHAT?”

Crossing himself, he muttered in a foreign tongue that Crispin did not understand, rattled on and on before Crispin grimaced at him and knocked him in the side of the head.

“English, you cur!”

The astrologer barely acknowledged the cuffing. But his mutterings switched to heavily accented English. “I lured those boys. I brought them to him. Holy Mother grant me mercy, but I promised their parents that they would learn to read and write, that they would be gentlemen. Instead I brought them to him. Oh God! The blood!” He dropped his face in his hands and wept, snorting loudly through his bloodied nose.

Crispin grabbed his hair and jerked his face upright. A crimson smear painted the man’s cheek. “What did he do?”

“Oh God forgive me!”

“He sodomized them. He murdered them.”

Cornelius’s eyes were almost all whites now. “How did you know?” he gasped.

Crispin barely believed it. But if he allowed his emotions to come into play, he could not deal with the astrologer as coldly as he needed to. With some measure of satisfaction, he realized that this was his evidence. “You must testify that Radulfus forced you to bring him these boys.”

Cornelius looked up with bewildered eyes. “Radulfus?”

But in the next moment, the door burst open, and Crispin realized how fragile his predicament was.

18

Radulfus and Giles pushed their way in and stopped when they spied the situation.

Crispin leapt back and held his dagger uncertainly.

Eyes flicking back and forth between the weeping astrologer and Crispin, de Risley motioned for his cousin to close and bar the door. “What goes on here?” His gaze encountered the clothes and parchments now strewn across the floor.

“Much,” said Crispin.

Giles reached for Cornelius, hauling him to his feet. “What have you done, you whoreson!”

Cornelius blubbered, trying to speak through his sobs.

“Your cousin, Giles,” said Crispin. “Vile things he has done right under your nose.”

Giles looked back at Radulfus. “Has he now?”

“The testimony of this astrologer will most certainly condemn your kinsman. I am sorry, Giles. But you must learn the truth.”

“Testimony? I do not know what you are talking about, Crispin.”

“The murder of boys. Murder and sodomy, it grieves me to say. I will make certain your name does not come into it, Giles.”

Giles’s steady gaze on Crispin might have been unnerving, but Crispin could see his mind working like a millwheel. “Radulfus?” He looked from Cornelius to Radulfus. “Murder and sodomy? There must be some mistake.”

Radulfus glared.

Giles shook his head. “It’s unbelievable. This can’t be true. Cornelius? Did you know of this?”

Cornelius turned away from him and sobbed.

Giles blinked hard at the man and then spied the bloodied clothing on the floor. He stooped and gingerly took up a tunic in his hand, turning it over and over. “Horrible. You would give testimony against my cousin here? Yes, surely you must.” He took Cornelius’s arm again. “Except for one thing.”

Cornelius jerked and gurgled, twisting like an eel on a spit. He fell to the floor with a flood of blood and bile rushing from his side. With a dispassionate flick of his brow, Giles looked down at his own bloodied dagger and sleeve.

Cornelius choked and writhed, face wet with blood and tears. He reached his hand toward Crispin, tendons straining against his pale hand, eyes beseeching. It had happened so fast. There was nothing Crispin could do. He watched in horror as the man sunk down, twisting as death took hold. He bled out, his cheeks growing pale, until his eyes rolled back.

Giles coldly wiped the blood on the child’s tunic and dropped it to the floor. “So much for your witness.”

“Giles!” The horror of it finally reached him. Cornelius had been surprised that Crispin thought Radulfus was the culprit.

He had not meant Radulfus at all.

Giles sheathed his dagger and shook his head. “Crispin, Crispin. Why could you not leave it alone?”

“Giles.” It was a nightmare. How could it be true? Friendly rivals they had been, even stubborn rivals. Giles had stolen away Crispin’s lover and there had been words and fists exchanged. But that had been young men out to best the other. Surely Giles was not capable of this horror. He was not that man.

Was he?

Giles strode up to Crispin and grabbed him by the tabard, twisting the cloth in a fist. His bloody hand imprinted the material even as his breath ghosted over Crispin’s face. “Why couldn’t you leave it alone? We must have no witness, Master Guest. And no arrest.”

“But Giles. For God sake. Why?”

He took in his pale-faced cousin to his right. “Why? Oh Crispin. So much has happened over the last seven years. So much. When Margaret died in childbed, there was much to think about. She had brought a fine dowry to the marriage, as you know. But gold seemed to slip through my fingers. My coffers emptied. There was ruin around every corner, until—”

“Cousin,” warned Radulfus.

Crispin lunged forward. “Giles! I beg you. You must stop these vile crimes! To kill these innocent boys! To . . . to do the things you are doing to them—”

“But I like doing what I am doing to them!” he screeched, his voice slightly hysterical. Gone was the innocent mask he had worn. Crispin saw him as he now was. Something had changed him. Something had rotted him from the inside. He was not the man Crispin had known, and the fearful realization of that stilled his heart and sickened his belly.

Giles drew himself back and barked a laugh, bringing his cousin into his shared laughter. “The quivering flesh of these young, fresh-faced creatures. It is like taking a maiden, Crispin. Better. You should try it. I think you will find it pleasing.”

“You disgust me!”

“And the blood. No, I never thought to find such enjoyment in it. The young boys, yes. I have had that proclivity for some time. Even before Margaret. Oh she was a prize, indeed. Something to best you at. I never thought to find such success. I had finally beaten you at something. How it burned me to fail again and again. But Margaret was a willing sacrifice. And I saw how it hurt you.” He smiled. “Did she die in childbed? Did she?” Crispin tasted the bile in his throat but he could not lose himself to retching. He had to stay alert.