The Demon's Parchment (3 page)

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.

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 boy’s gut. Had his entrails been taken by animals? But no. There was no tearing, no scratches from beasts. If there were no entrails, then they had been deliberately removed from the boy.

Crispin shivered again. If God was not present, then Satan surely was.

Hoofbeats. Then the shout of two men commanding their sergeants.

“Thanks be to God,” Crispin murmured.

Simon Wynchecombe was no longer one of the sheriffs of London, hadn’t been since September. Strangely, Crispin found himself missing the arrogant man. At least he was efficient. But the roles of sheriff were now played by the lanky fishmonger Nicholas Exton and the squat mercer John Froshe, both of whom were dismounting from their horses.

They liked being sheriff no more than had Wynchecombe, but they, too, knew that such a position could only lead to better appointments. Crispin knew Wynchecombe’s sights had been set on the position of Lord Mayor, and these two were no exceptions to the ambitions of a London alderman.

Nicholas Exton was as tall as Wynchecombe, which made him a head taller than Crispin. His face was long and morose with a hooked nose and lazy brown eyes. He wore a gown whose hem reached his ankles and he was fond of poulaines with exaggeratedly long, slender toes that came to a point. He picked carefully over the rocks and crab-walked down the embankment.

John Froshe was short and thickset, with a round belly braced with a low-slung belt. His cotehardie was trimmed with ermine and his red stockings carefully conformed to his fat legs, giving them the look of sausage casings. He, too, wore poulaines of fawnskin, definitely not designed for trotting down to the river’s edge. He stood at the top of the embankment with a curious expression on his jowled face, clearly wondering whether he should bother. But when
Exton had reached the spot where Crispin stood he wouldn’t allow himself to be outdone.

Crispin watched as Froshe clumsily made his way down. His servants only belatedly followed, picking him up when he fell, and apologizing when he cuffed them.

“By God, Guest,” said Exton, wrinkling his considerable nose at the proceedings. “Must you always be here before us?”

“I came upon him by chance, just as the others had.” That was the only explanation he would offer. It was the only one the sheriffs needed.

A wheezing cough behind him and Froshe arrived. He brushed unsuccessfully at his velvet cotehardie. “You stupid oafs! I fell at least three times!”

The servants tried to look contrite but Crispin knew them better than that.

“And so,” said Exton. “What have we here?” He looked past Crispin at the small form under the cloak. His face a mask, he pushed past Crispin and knelt, lifting the edge of the covering. He quickly dropped it back in place and ticked his head. “The Coroner is on his way.” He stood again and turned to Froshe. “What do you make of it?”

“Bless me. It looks to be a dead boy, Nicholas.”

“Indeed.” He wiped his hands on his cloak. “And you, Guest. You are the man with all the answers, I hear tell. One cannot take but a few paces in London without someone mentioning the Tracker. As if you invented the very notion of Justice. Our predecessors spoke of you often but in less than glowing terms. Are we to believe all that is said of you? Shall you be declared a saint next?”

Bristling, Crispin scowled. “Hardly, my lord.”

“Then what, pray, is your assessment? My learned colleague has declared the boy dead. I concur. What do you say?”

“I say he is murdered, my lords. Most foul. It turns my stomach.” He said the latter in hopes of bringing the conversation
around to the proper comportment and it seemed to have done the trick.

Froshe waved his hand in front of his face, as if shooing some unpleasant aroma. “The Coroner is on his way.”

“And then we will move the body to Newgate,” said Exton.

Crispin wondered if he were to be included in the “we.”

The Coroner happened to be in London and came forthwith, examining the body and questioning the townsfolk who were present. His clerk took meticulous notes. The Coroner questioned the men at the houses and shops nearby and by then night had fallen. After he was satisfied, he nodded to the sheriffs, whose men surrounded him with flickering cressets on poles and their clouds of breath. The Coroner was no longer interested in the body. This was now the province of the sheriffs to take matters in hand. They would use what they learned from the Coroner to question the locals, but Crispin had his doubts it would yield anything. He wanted to inspect the corpse for himself.

He helped the sheriffs’ men carry the light bundle up the stony embankment to an awaiting cart and laid him upon the straw within. The Fishmonger Exton whipped off Crispin’s cloak and returned it to him. He covered the little corpse with a threadbare blanket.

The driver snapped his reins and the cart jerked forward. The wheels dug two dark lines in the snow, pointing the way back toward London. Silently, he and Jack walked behind the cart. As the dark cloaked the city, the cold crept in with deeper fingers, seizing Crispin in an icy grip that had as much to do with weather as with the coldness of murder.

It was more than half an hour later that the solemn procession neared the duel towers of Newgate. The portcullis creaked upward until the way lay open like a soundless maw, delivering them to the sullen mews below the prison where the boy was to be laid. The
sheriffs’ retinue carried the cressets in and mounted them in their sconces, but even that fiery light could scarcely illuminate the dank recesses of stone and shadows. The boy was laid on a table and then the sheriffs’ men left them. There remained only Crispin, Jack, and both sheriffs, though Froshe looked decidedly ill at ease.

Crispin did not wait for permission. He flipped the blanket away. Jack turned his face from the sight of the pale figure. “Bring a light, Jack,” said Crispin quietly, but even as quiet as he was, his voice reverberated in whispering echoes, hissing into icy, darkened corners.

Jack’s shuffling steps added more echoes but soon he brought the light. With a shaking hand, he held it where Crispin needed it.

Crispin closed the boy’s eyes, not wishing for their fishlike stare to consume him any longer. He studied the neck again. A dark ring surrounded the obvious indentation in the flesh. He looked lower. The boy’s pubes were not yet grown with hair. He must be ten or eleven. Delicately, Crispin touched the cut edge of flesh where the skin had been slashed with such brutal accuracy. He pulled the flap of skin aside. No entrails.

“
Guest!
” The Fishmonger’s tone was harsh and shocked. “By our blessed Mother! What are you doing?”

“Examining the body, Lord Sheriff. This child has been eviscerated.”

“It was fish.”

“No. It is cut cleanly. Look here.”

“No! I shall not. It is an abomination!”

Crispin looked up at him. Froshe stepped back and was having none of it. He looked at Exton as forlornly as Jack had done.

“This
murder
is an abomination!” said Crispin. “We must examine
all
the evidence to determine the scope of this fiend’s crime.”

Exton gritted his teeth. He did not bother to look toward Froshe, who seemed bent on warming the stone wall with his back.

As a fishmonger, Exton was used to gutted creatures, but a boy
was a different matter, to be sure. He seemed to suck up his courage and leaned over, peering into the cut Crispin indicated. He could not look long before his lips paled and sweat pebbled his brow.

“Heinous. Blasphemy.” He staggered toward the lamps in their niches, away from the little corpse.

“Yes.” Crispin continued scouring the boy, down his legs to his feet. His ankles had been bound. The marks of ropes were still there. He lifted a pale hand and examined the nails. Bitten and broken down to the quick. The cuticles were torn and there was dirt still embedded under the nails. Calluses were clearly evident on the pads of his fingers and palms. The boy himself seemed scrawny, underfed, with the evidence of protruding ribs under stretched skin. Crispin pushed the yielding lips open and saw teeth chipped and uneven.

Turning the boy over, he gasped at the bruises on his buttocks and hips. His suspicions provoked, he examined more carefully, ignoring the outraged cries of the sheriff.

“Sodomized,” he said quietly. He vowed silently in that moment to find this murderer, this slayer of the innocent, and utterly destroy him.

“God in heaven!” cried Exton. The lamplight grew even shakier until Jack could stand it no more.

“Let us leave this place, Master Crispin! Please!”

He took the light from the boy and replaced it in its sconce. Standing silently in thought, he finally raised his face to Exton. “He was strangled with something. Not with hands. There are no finger bruises to his throat. I believe the cut to his belly was done after death, else the stroke would not have been so clean. It is too precise. As for the absence of the entrails . . .” He shrugged. “I am at a loss. If he were dead, what would be the use of it? His hands show hard work. Hence he was a servant or a child of the streets. A shopkeeper’s child might not have such old calluses. And lastly, his being sodomized. We are therefore looking for a man.”