Spiteful Bones by Jeri Westerson

Author:Jeri Westerson [Westerson, Jeri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780727889997
Google: aH6WzQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0727889990
Publisher: Severn House Publishers, Limited
Published: 2021-02-02T06:00:00+00:00

TEN

Friday Street was just off West Cheap. Crispin walked the lane, its shops and houses the same as the rest of London, though it was the tanners’ street and smelled of it. Was it worse than the Shambles and the constant smell of offal and blood? Perhaps he had accustomed himself to the Shambles, for he did not smell it like he used to. But tanners … ‘God bless them,’ he muttered, adjusting the leather cape and hood sitting on his shoulders. The good leather of his hood had managed to survive the twenty-one years of his banishment. He couldn’t help but reach up and smooth the crenellated hem of the soft leather between his fingers. Even now it kept the misty rain from his head.

He leaned into an open shop window where the shopkeeper and his apprentice were working over a piece of tanned leather of the trade and marking with chalk the various scars left behind on the hide. ‘I beg your mercy,’ said Crispin. The hide worker with a hawk-like nose looked up sharply. When he saw Crispin’s demeanor and clothing, he straightened and bowed.

‘Good sir,’ he said, with a foreign accent, possibly from Flanders. ‘How can I help you?’ He still held the piece of chalk over the vaguely cow-shaped skin while his apprentice clutched the hide, holding it taut.

‘I am looking for a family – and in all truth, I do not know if any remain on this street – by the name of Courtney.’

‘Oh, indeed, they do reside here. You have only to pass down three more houses on this side of the lane to find them.’

‘I am much obliged.’

Before he turned to go, the shopkeeper called out, ‘Good sir, if I may ask, where did you acquire your fine capelet?’

‘Dear me,’ said Crispin, thinking. ‘It was many years ago, sir. But it was London-made.’

The man smiled and nodded in acknowledgment. If it had not come from this man then perhaps it was from one of his neighbors. Crispin bowed and left.

He counted down the doorsteps, and found himself before a tall, thin structure, wedged between a leather-worker’s shop and a glover’s. It had two stories above the ground floor, though the topmost was little better than a garret.

He stepped up smartly to the door and knocked. The door opened and an old man with white whiskers and wearing a long, dark blue gown shuffled to the threshold and looked Crispin over. ‘Can I assist you?’

‘You can. Is your name Courtney?’

‘Yes, and the last of them stands before you.’

‘Oh? I am looking for Thomas Courtney. I was told that he might have been a stonemason some twenty years ago.’

The man stroked his beard. His clothes were fine, if not a little worn. But Crispin had observed that some older men whose sight wasn’t as good as it used to be often didn’t take good care of their appearance. He wore few ornaments. He had a brooch at the shoulder and a necklace partially hidden by his beard.

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