by Alys Clare
‘I don’t know,’ Jack admitted. ‘Margery didn’t say. Do you think it’s important?’
Yes I do, I wanted to say, because the question just popped out of my mouth without my having thought about it, as if someone – something – else wanted to know the answer.
But I didn’t know Jack well enough to tell him about the strange forces that increasingly seemed to be lined up on my side; forces which, I strongly suspected, originated from the shining stone.
‘I think it would be interesting to find out,’ I said carefully.
‘Then we will,’ Jack said. ‘We should also discover if the dwellings of our other three victims were also searched, and if anything was taken. We must visit Morgan’s house, and also the young priest’s room.’
‘But I thought your friend Walter already checked the priest’s cell? He said it was as if nobody lived there, and there was just a bed and a cross on the wall.’
‘Yes, quite right,’ Jack agreed. ‘Do you recall what else he and Ginger found out?’
‘Yes.’ I concentrated, bringing the details to mind. ‘His name was Osmund, he wasn’t local, he hadn’t been in the town long, and he was hard-working and kept himself to himself. He was frequently late for the offices but being quite harshly punished for it didn’t make him improve. He was known to go down to the river, and I can’t remember if anybody found out what for or why, although it seems to be a question begging for an answer.’
‘It was Ginger who found out about the connection with the river,’ Jack said, ‘and he too thought it ought to be followed up. He spoke again to his young cleric, who admitted that he hadn’t followed Osmund very far, only to where the path goes down towards the river, but he was able to say which direction Osmund took. Ginger and I went out last night to see what we could discover, but we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Osmund can’t have gone far, because his friend said he was back in time for the evening office and for once he wasn’t late, so his purpose in going to the river remains unclear.’
‘Was the place he went near to Robert Powl’s house?’
‘No, not very.’
‘Or Margery’s establishment?’ Young clerics were, I was sure, visited with the same temptations as other men.
Jack grinned. ‘No.’
‘Maybe he went to meet someone. Or perhaps he finds the smooth flow of the water soothing.’ I clenched my fists in exasperation. ‘I don’t know!’
‘It’s flimsy, I agree,’ Jack said. ‘Which is why Ginger and I also made a surreptitious visit to the priests’ house and had a good look round Osmund’s cell.’
‘Oh, well done! And what did you discover?’
‘Not much,’ Jack admitted, ‘for it was as sparse and tidy as Walter said. But we found this.’ He reached inside the purse at his belt and held up a big iron key.
‘That looks very like a door key!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do we conclude, then, that he had another room somewhere?’
‘It appears that he did, but so far I have no idea where it is.’
But from somewhere deep in my mind a memory surfaced, and I thought perhaps I knew. I saw a dark passage between two big buildings, and at the end a low door. ‘Robert Powl’s warehouse,’ I said.
Jack frowned. ‘But we looked there. It wasn’t locked, if you remember.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t mean the main building. There was an alleyway going along between Robert Powl’s warehouse and the next one, with a door at the far end. I thought the door must be the way into the neighbouring building, since access to Robert Powl’s was through the open area facing the quayside, and why would you need another entrance?’
‘Unless it was to a separate part of the warehouse,’ Jack said slowly.
‘One that had to be kept locked,’ I added eagerly, ‘and whose key was found in the possession of a secretive and reclusive young priest who’s just been murdered.’
FIFTEEN
Jack stood. He looked down at me expectantly.
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘We should get going!’ he said, in a tone that suggested it should have been obvious.
I had a feeling I knew the answer to the next question, but I asked it anyway. ‘And just where are we going?’
He had put out a hand and was hauling me to my feet. ‘It’s not that late and the quayside may well still be quite busy, so we’ll leave seeing if you’re right about this’ – he held up the key – ‘till last. First, we’ll head out across the fields and see what we can discover in Morgan’s house.’
There were still signs of activity up at the castle, so Jack led us out of the deserted workmens’ village via a different path; one that passed a row of one-room wattle-and-daub dwellings quietly sinking back into the earth, their poor-quality thatch in tatters and many of the roof supports missing. Good timber isn’t that easy to come by in the fens, and people in need are always ready to help themselves.
We went round the eastern side of the priory, emerging on to the road just before the Great Bridge. We waited in the shadows while a patrol came across, presumably heading back to the castle. The guards’ muttering voices sounded unnaturally subdued: this was a town under the influence of evil, and people – even well-armed guards marching in a phalanx of a dozen – were jumping at their own shadows.
When the guards had gone, Jack and I sprinted across the bridge and past the quay, running on down the road until we could branch off across the fields. Now, at last, we were out of the danger of being spotted by Sheriff Picot’s patrols, and we ought to have felt a release of anxiety. But we were hurrying towards another, far worse peril, for ahead of us was the sacred well, and close beside it the house where the two latest victims of the Night Wanderer had been slain.
I wished, as my frightened thoughts circled round and round in my head, that I could say the last victims, but I was almost sure there would be more …
Presently Morgan’s house materialized before us. It was a clear night, with enough moon to give good light, and a soft mist was rising up out of the grass, so that the low, humpy shape of the little dwelling seemed almost to be floating. The door still stood open, but no bodies now lay across the threshold.
Impulsively I said in a furious whisper, ‘They might have shut the door!’
Jack didn’t answer, save by a brief, companionable hand on my shoulder.
We went into the house. It was cold, dark and it felt very empty. Only now that Morgan’s gentle spirit was no longer there did I realize how much it had permeated and warmed the house he had lived in for so long. The hearth still held blackened fragments of wood; the last relics of the final fire. The comings and goings of the law officers who had attended Morgan’s and Cat’s deaths had trampled ash and embers all over the floor, so I fetched a broom and swept up.
Jack lit a lamp and, wandering round the four walls, said, ‘Did it look much the same before?’
There was no need to say before what.
I looked up from my sweeping. ‘Yes, as far as I recall. Morgan and Cat were tidy, and they really didn’t use the house for much other than eating and sleeping, and Morgan didn’t sleep a lot.’ He’d had that in common with Gurdyman: two aged magicians, ancient in years and steeped in wisdom and long experience, who, perhaps sensing that the time remaining to them was all too short, elected not to waste it in sleep.
Amid my deep sorrow at the way Morgan’s life had ended I felt a sudden pang of longing for Gurdyman. Missing him, worrying about him, I realized I loved the old man.
‘I don’t think there’s anything helpful for us here,’ Jack said eventually. He put some crocks straight on a board set back against the rear wall, tied up a roll of bedding that was spreading across the floor, then turned to me. ‘You’ve done a good job.’ He smiled.
I felt embarrassed that he should comment on my sentimental act. ‘I – er, I just thought it wasn’t right to leave it all disturbed and dirty,’ I said.
Jack looked steadily at me. ‘No need to explain,’ he
said softly. ‘Haven’t I just been doing the same?’
I ducked my head down, replaced the broom in its corner and led the way out of the house, across the narrow yard and into Morgan’s workroom. We stepped inside and Jack lit more candles from the lamp’s flame. The room burst into light, and we stood and stared.
I felt instantly at home. Not because I’d been here before – I don’t think I’d done more than poke my head round the door to call out a greeting – but because it was so incredibly familiar: so like Gurdyman’s crypt. The space was quite different, for Gurdyman worked in a stone-walled cellar deep beneath the ground, its roof held up by stout pillars, and Morgan’s workroom was really a rural barn. But the contents looked to be interchangeable: a long, scarred wooden bench; a stand of irregularly spaced shelves on which a jumble of bottles, jars, pots, bowls and cups jostled for position; a shady corner storage space with an array of mysteriously coloured liquids in glass bottles. And, of course, the peculiar assortment of experimental equipment that people like Morgan and Gurdyman use in their work: retorts, alembics, gourds and pelicans, and on the floor in a corner the peculiar little furnace called an athanor that is used when a steady heat has to be maintained for long periods.
Turning slowly, my eyes going all round the room, I was now facing the door by which we’d just entered. Above it hung a heavy golden chain, the bright metal of its links catching the bright light of the candle flames. It was the Aurea Catena; the symbol of the passage of knowledge, always and only by word of mouth, from master to pupil; from adept to adept. And that knowledge must never, ever, be written down, for it is secret.
Gurdyman had a similar length of chain. I was his pupil, his adept, just as poor Cat had been Morgan’s. I could have wept for all of us.
Jack seemed to pick up my sorrow. ‘Will you check to see if anything has been taken?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry to ask,’ he added quickly. ‘I can tell this is hard for you.’
Surreptitiously I dried my eyes. ‘They were different, and people regarded them with suspicion, but Morgan was kind and gentle, and Cat was so shy and awkward, and he’d found a safe haven with Morgan and was happy, as far as you could tell,’ I said. ‘For two such harmless souls to be killed as they were is just … just so wrong.’
Jack came over and put his arms round me, and I was grateful for his solidity and warmth. ‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘And all we can do to try to put things right is find out who killed them and bring him to justice.’ He paused. ‘It’s not really enough, is it?’
I shook my head. For a moment I buried my face against his chest and then, drawing strength from him, stood up and moved away. ‘Come on,’ I said decisively. ‘Hold up the lamp, and I’ll start on the shelves.’
I looked at every item. There was no cinnabar. Also, the small hidden space which Jack located at the base of one wall, just above the floor, had been emptied. What had Morgan kept in there? Had it been the same precious stuff that Robert Powl had secreted away in his stone vault?
I slumped down on a bench. Oh, how I needed Gurdyman just then. As I tore my mind apart trying to think what possible use anyone could have for a lot of cinnabar, what a magician would store in a secret hiding place and was so precious that a thief would kill for it, and what connected the two, my head began to ache and my vision blurred.
Jack, watching me closely, said suddenly, ‘We must go.’
I jerked my head up and looked at him. ‘Why?’ Terror clutching at my heart, I whispered, ‘Is someone coming?’
I’d been so preoccupied with trying to work out an impossible puzzle that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to my surroundings. Even now, was a soft-footed, cloaked figure with holes for eyes in a dead-white face creeping up on us? Would we—
But, ‘No,’ said Jack with a rueful smile. ‘We’re safe, but it’s time you stopped torturing yourself. You’ve gone quite pale.’
I stood up, stumbled, and he took my hand. We left the workroom – in truth, I didn’t need to stay any longer, for I had found out all I was going to from Morgan’s special place – and, checking that both its door and the door to the house were firmly closed, we set out across the misty fields and back to the town.
We managed to negotiate the quayside path without anyone seeing us. At one point we were startled by a sudden eruption of drunken shouting from one of the taverns further along the track, and we slipped quickly into the deep shadow of one of the tall warehouses. But whatever disturbance had broken out was soon quashed, and silence fell down again.
We reached the narrow passage between Robert Powl’s building and its neighbour. Jack took the key out of his pouch. We had brought Morgan’s lamp with us – I was sure he wouldn’t mind – and now, as we reached the far end of the tunnel-like entrance, Jack relit it, shading with his hand all but the smallest ray of light. It was enough to allow him to put the key in the keyhole. To the surprise of neither of us, it fitted and turned the lock.
We stepped inside, and Jack closed and fastened the door. Then he held up the lamp.
If, as we believed, the young priest Osmund had rented this place from Robert Powl for some private purpose of his own that had to be kept secret from his fellow clerics, it was now pretty clear – to me, anyway – what that purpose was. Here were the same items we had just been contemplating in Morgan’s workroom. Here was the athanor, with some substance in a blackened copper pot sitting on top of it. There was the store of powders, liquids, pastes and everything in between; there was the brightly coloured array of metal samples.
Osmund, it seemed, had also been an artist. Rolls of parchment were scattered all over the long wooden bench, covered with the most neat and even handwriting and illustrated with beautiful little images, brilliantly coloured: I saw a glowing patch of lapis, a quick flash of gold. And on the wall behind the workbench there were a couple of larger paintings, perhaps two hands’ lengths by three. One depicted the head and shoulders of a man, with a younger woman standing beside and just behind him; both leaned out towards the viewer, their faces intent and serious, and each had a forefinger to their lips in the universal hush! gesture implying secrecy. The other painting was strange: it too depicted a man and a woman, but they were somehow fused together, the right side of him joined to the left side of her, he dressed in tunic and hose, she in a long flowing robe. Beneath their feet was a two-headed dragon and on their joined heads was a crown.
I didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure I could have done. I stepped forward, looking down at the bench. A small purse sat at one end, the sort that is made of a circle of leather with a cord threaded around the circumference, so that the cord can be drawn up to enclose whatever is inside. I untied the cord and opened the circle of leather out, spreading it flat.
The lamp light caught a brilliant glint of green: Osmund the shy, secretive young priest had somehow managed to get hold of a small purseful of emeralds.
I picked one up. Held it to the flame. The brilliance increased, sending out a flash that made me blink with sudden, momentary blindness.
‘Are they real?’ Jack breathed from right beside me.
I was peering closely at the stone in my hand. I put it down and picked up another. Then another, till I had examined all seven. Then I said, ‘I believe they are.’
‘How can you tell?’
I’d seen fake stones; Gurdyman had instructed me in how to tell them from the real thing, as in our work there was no virtue whatsoever in anything unless it truly was what it purported to be. ‘They have inclusions,’ I said. ‘Marks, flaws, cracks, tiny patches of cloudiness. It’s impossible to fake those, and so you have to be suspicious of a perfect stone.’
Jack sank down on to the three-legged stool beside the workbench. ‘Do you think these are what were stolen from Robert Powl’s stone vault?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Not these very ones, I’d have thought, though, since it would be a bit foolish to steal from the man from whom you rented your premises and then bring the booty right th
ere under his roof and next to his own warehouse. But these are worth a great deal of money.’ I picked them up again, one by one, stunned by their beauty. ‘If you had gone to the trouble of constructing a secure vault, I should imagine these are exactly the sort of things you’d want to put in it.’
Reluctantly I put the emeralds back in the purse and drew up the strings. With their radiant light hidden once more, the room seemed suddenly dull. I moved over to look at whatever had been going on in the copper pot on top of the little furnace. It held a dark mix that was slightly sticky in texture – I wasn’t silly enough to touch it with my finger but poked it with a glass rod lying on the bench – and, when I bent over to sniff it, it smelt somehow exotic.
I spun round, my eyes searching along the shelves. At the far end of one I found a quantity of cinnabar.
I said softly, ‘Nobody knew he rented this room. Whoever has been doing the stealing and the – the killing’ – it was even more awful to think about it here – ‘it doesn’t look as if they found out about this place. They didn’t uncover that secret.’
I stared down at the emeralds. I was just beginning to work out what had been going on here. Again, and even more intensely, I missed Gurdyman; I needed him, needed his wisdom, his ability to put awesome and potentially terrifying things in proportion. I didn’t think I could manage this – what I knew, the task that somehow I was going to have to do – without him.
I straightened the copper pot on top of the athanor and wiped my hands on my skirt. I turned to face Jack. ‘There are some things I have to tell you,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think I’d better do so here.’ It doesn’t feel safe, I could have added. This was the place where Osmund had worked so hard, pushed on deeper and deeper into mystery, disobeying his superiors and enduring harsh punishment because the force that was driving him on would not relent.
Whatever Osmund had released was still there. I could sense it, and the hairs on my head felt as if they were crawling with alien life. And that wasn’t the only danger: someone had known what he was doing and, to stop him, they had struck him down in his own church, with no regard for the sanctity of either the place or for the precious spark of Osmund’s life.
