by Alys Clare
I sat back, thinking what I needed. ‘Heat some water, please,’ I said, to nobody in particular.
‘Already being done,’ someone said.
‘I need splints and cloth for bandages,’ I went on. ‘Straight lengths of wood,’ I elaborated, ‘the length of a forearm.’ I reached for my satchel, mentally going through the contents. Everything else I needed, I had.
Ginger remained unconscious while I treated him, which was just as well since it took quite a lot of effort to straighten the bones in his wrist, and in the end Jack had to help me.
I hadn’t been aware of time passing, but the sun was shining halfway up the sky by the time I had finished. Somebody brought me a drink – it was a pretty, plump-faced young woman, and, from her cheerful banter with Walter’s men, I guessed she worked in the tavern.
‘Will he be all right?’ she asked, jerking her head towards Ginger. He was snoring now.
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘It’s difficult to say, though, with blows to the head, and we won’t really know till he wakes up.’
She nodded. ‘We won’t mention anything to his old mother yet, then,’ she murmured. ‘Shame to make her worry till we know if it’s necessary,’ she added wisely.
‘I’ll sit with him,’ I said, returning the empty mug to her.
‘You all right on your own?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
I realized then that the men had all gone. I had a vague memory of Jack bending down and saying something about having to go and check on something, but I couldn’t remember the details. I made myself comfortable and waited for Ginger to open his eyes.
I didn’t have long to wait.
He looked up at me, eyes bloodshot between the grossly swollen lids. ‘Fuck, my balls hurt like buggery,’ he muttered. Then he closed his eyes again.
The second time he opened them, he looked at me with recognition and said, aghast, ‘Did I just say what I think I did?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry.’ I put a hand to his forehead to check if he was hot. ‘I’ve heard far worse.’ Reassured that, as yet, he showed no sign of fever, I reached in my satchel for a palliative. I would make it strong.
‘They came on me like shadows,’ Ginger muttered. ‘I’m quick on my feet, but I didn’t stand a chance. One behind me, two in front, and a little runt of a fellow who didn’t do much. Caught me like a rat in a gulley.’
‘Did they want to know if you’d found anything in Osmund’s room?’ I suppose I should have left it to Jack to ask, but I was too impatient.
‘Yes. I didn’t tell them anything, miss,’ Ginger said with sudden urgency.
‘You couldn’t when you didn’t know anything.’ I held the cup of pain-killing medicine to his lips, and he sipped it. ‘I’m so sorry, Ginger.’
He tried to smile. ‘Not your fault. Nobody’s fault, really, except those bastards that beat me.’
Four of them. I was puzzled, and very anxious. If Ginger was right, then the Night Wanderer had accomplices. That was worrying, because for some reason I had it fixed in my head that he worked alone. If Ginger was wrong, it could mean either that he’d exaggerated to make it less shameful to have been overcome, or that his memory was faulty. And that, really, was the worst possibility, because it could suggest he had sustained much more damage than I thought. I really didn’t want that to be the explanation. I had discovered that I really liked Ginger.
The long day eventually passed. Jack, Walter and the others filtered back in ones and twos, till they were all gathered again in the room in the tavern. Food was served and for a while everyone was too busy eating to talk. When we’d finished, Jack said to me, ‘Do you need to stay with Ginger?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s as good as I can make him. He’ll heal, with luck, although we should keep an eye on him over the next day or so.’
‘And look for what?’
‘Dizziness, vomiting, confusion.’
‘Better not take him out on the piss, then,’ Fat Gerald said, ‘since that’s how he usually ends up.’
‘I resent that!’ came Ginger’s voice from the little room beyond. It was good to know he was up to retaliating.
‘I’ll watch him,’ Walter said quietly. He must, I reflected, know Jack very well, since he had detected before I had that Jack wanted to take me off somewhere.
Jack looked at me. ‘Come on, then.’
Gurdyman resumed his pacing. The little house on the island at the end of the causeway was very quiet. Darkness had fallen, and it had acted like a blanket and deadened even the usual small sounds from the wide fen that stretched out on three sides of the island.
‘You are wearing a path in the reeds on the floor,’ said a quiet voice ironically.
Gurdyman stopped. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. He sat down by the hearth, emitting a deep sigh that seemed to express frustration, anxiety and irritation. ‘But, oh, how I tire of these four walls.’
Hrype reached out to turn his boots, slowly drying in the heat from the fire. He had arrived as the sun set, and the water had in places been lapping up over the causeway. ‘You are safe here.’
‘Safe but bored,’ came the swift reply. ‘I am not used to being away from my own house.’
‘From your own workroom,’ Hrype corrected.
Gurdyman gave a short laugh. ‘True.’
Hrype glanced at him. ‘You have not asked Mercure if you might work with him? You’d have to assist him in whatever project he is pursuing rather than carry on with your own work, of course, but would at least take your mind off the tedium of having to be here when you long to be elsewhere.’
‘I haven’t asked and I shan’t,’ Gurdyman said. ‘Mercure works alone. He always has, and no doubt he always will.’
‘Do you know what absorbs him so?’ Hrype asked. ‘He does appear here in the house from time to time, I take it?’
‘Oh, indeed, quite frequently. He is the most kindly and hospitable of hosts, when he remembers he has a guest. I am free to eat and drink what I like; to make free with his books; to borrow anything of his. For a recluse, he is surprisingly well-equipped here.’
‘No doubt the pedlars include him on their rounds,’ Hrype remarked. ‘Several come to Aelf Fen, and here on the southern edge of the fens we are closer to the town than they are out there.’
There was a short silence. Then, ‘They,’ Gurdyman said softly.
‘Hm?’
‘You refer to the inhabitants of Aelf Fen as they, yet it is your home too, so surely it should have been we.’
‘I make no place my home,’ Hrype said roughly.
Gurdyman let that pass.
After a while he said, ‘I don’t believe anybody ever comes right out here to Mercure’s island. Your pedlars, I would guess, announce their presence at the landward end of the causeway, and Mercure trots along to purchase what he needs.’
Hrype shrugged. He was clearly indifferent to Mercure’s domestic arrangements. But Gurdyman was still thinking, and eventually he said, ‘I don’t think Mercure sees anyone. We are probably the first people he has spoken to for a long time.’
Now Hrype looked up. ‘What is he working on? What is it that so absorbs him that he is content to act as if the rest of humanity doesn’t exist?’
Gurdyman muttered something that might have been lucky man. But he was smiling; in his heart, he knew he could not have lived contentedly in isolation like Mercure’s. Then, aloud, he said, ‘The same thing. Like others who have set their feet on that path, he seeks a way to refine the human soul; to rid it of its many imperfections and render it pure.’
‘The work is gravely misunderstood,’ Hrype commented. ‘The few who even suspect its existence believe it is all about turning base metals into gold.’
‘The smoke screen is deliberate,’ Gurdyman said. ‘The real goal is only for the most devout of initiates, and ever they disguise the work behind symbols and careful, convoluted codes designed to mislead.’
The yearning was clear in his voice. Lo
oking at him with sympathy, Hrype said, ‘You will be back in your crypt. There have been no more killings, and it is to be hoped that the murderer has now slain all those he deems deserving of death, or perhaps, aware that the forces of law and order are hunting him, he has decided to go to ground.’
Gurdyman shot him a swift look. ‘You have a higher opinion of those forces than they warrant. Sheriff Picot is not a man to inspire fear in the criminal mind, and his nephew thinks only of his own advancement and enrichment. Furthermore, the one man capable of ferreting out who is responsible for the atrocities has been banned from doing so. Or perhaps that is not still the case?’ He looked hopefully at Hrype.
‘It is,’ Hrype replied. ‘Jack Chevestrier is not involved.’ He paused. ‘Not officially.’
Gurdyman’s face brightened. ‘Aaah,’ he said with a smile.
Hrype was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘She is back in Cambridge.’
Gurdyman’s smile vanished. ‘But I thought she had gone to Aelf Fen?’
‘She crept out of the village and returned to the town. She sought out Sibert and told him to inform her parents that evening, and the fool of a boy didn’t try to stop her and simply did as she asked. She didn’t want her family to think she’d disappeared and start worrying.’
‘But she is with Jack?’ Gurdyman demanded. ‘She’s safe with him?’
‘She’s with him, yes. Safe? I imagine so. As safe as anybody else in Cambridge.’
‘Sibert is not a fool,’ Gurdyman said after a short silence. ‘It might have seemed wiser to you had he informed Lassair’s kin straight away that she had gone, but he is not you, and he put loyalty to a friend above wisdom.’
‘He thinks a great deal too highly of her,’ Hrype said coldly. ‘She’s not for him. He could do far better.’
Hrype was staring into the hearth, watching the flames lick along a length of well-seasoned oak. Gurdyman studied him for some time. Then he said, his tone mild and quite without reproof, ‘You are surely wrong, my friend, when you say she is as safe as anybody else. Few people, indeed, know of her connection to me, but I fear that knowledge may have reached the attention of the very eyes from which it should at all costs have been kept.’
‘The Night Wanderer?’
‘Yes. It – he – knew about Morgan and poor Cat. They lived a quiet, self-contained life, and their true work was known to very few, yet that was no safeguard.’
‘You surely do not compare Morgan and Cat with yourself and the girl!’ Hrype protested. ‘She cleans for you, keeps house for you, and you share with her some of your vast store of medical and healing knowledge, but that’s all.’ He stared at Gurdyman, eyes blazing. ‘She is no Soror Mystica!’ he spat.
Gurdyman met his eyes calmly. ‘Oh, Hrype,’ he said sadly.
But Hrype ignored the gentle interruption. His mounting anger overcoming him, he hissed, ‘You have no need of any such assistance! You have always been alone, all the long years I have known you, an entity contained within yourself.’
‘I cannot—’ Gurdyman began, but Hrype overrode him.
‘Mercure works alone,’ he cried, thumping a fist against the floor for emphasis, his normally pale face flushed with fury. ‘He has no need of any girl apprentice. Morgan, I admit, was the exception among the three of you, for he had Cat, but at least he had good sense and chose for his adept someone of his own sex!’
Gurdyman studied him. Hrype, eventually finding the steady gaze uncomfortable, looked away. ‘The pairing is normally a male and a female,’ Gurdyman said mildly, ‘for both animus and anima should be present. Whilst it is true that the usual arrangement is for the master to be male and the pupil female, it is not always so.’
Slowly Hrype turned his head to meet the steady blue eyes. ‘What are you telling me?’ he said, his voice very soft. There was a note of apprehension in it; fear, almost.
‘Morgan lived a reclusive life,’ Gurdyman said, ‘and saw few people other than Cat and one or two like-minded souls, myself and Mercure included, although Mercure rarely ventures far away from the safety of his sanctuary here. It was always, therefore, quite easy for Morgan to present himself to the small portion of the world who ever saw him as he wished to be seen, not as he truly was.’ He looked expectantly at Hrype, like a teacher encouraging a promising pupil to come up with the right answer.
After a moment, a sudden explosive curse emerged from Hrype’s tight lips. Then he said, ‘Great gods, are you telling me what I think you are?’
And Gurdyman nodded.
The silence lasted for some time. Then, reaching out a hand and briefly touching Hrype’s shoulder, Gurdyman said, ‘Hrype, my friend, I believe you are allowing your misogynistic sentiments to get the better of your good sense and your intelligence.’ Hrype began an angry reply, but Gurdyman did not let him speak. ‘You do not like or trust women. This is not worthy of you.’
‘They give me little reason for affection or trust.’
One woman does, Gurdyman thought.
Presently he said, ‘If I may be allowed to say so, you live a wrong life, Hrype. Your heart is given to a woman whom you cannot love openly, and you live with one you do not much like but with whom you remain through a sense of loyalty. Have you never considered that both you and Froya, and probably Sibert, not to mention Edild, would all be happier if you confessed the truth?’
‘I cannot,’ Hrype said baldly. ‘Froya was my brother’s wife, and I lay with her when my brother was sick and dying.’1
‘You bedded her once, at a time when both of you were in dire need of comfort.’ Gurdyman spoke softly. ‘When you told me, my instinct was pity for the pair of you, not accusation.’
‘You do not live in a small isolated village in which gossip is the sole entertainment,’ Hrype flashed back. ‘And if you believe the Aelf Fen villagers would treat such a revelation with compassion and generosity, it merely demonstrates how little you know of human nature.’
‘So let them gossip, let them point the finger of blame, let them amuse themselves saying how wicked you are,’ Gurdyman replied. ‘It will not last. And, perhaps, the worthier among them will balance their righteous indignation with the thought that you have remained true to your brother ever since by caring for his widow and her son.’
‘My son.’ The two words were barely audible.
Gurdyman sighed. ‘So I have long suspected,’ he said. Then, briskly, he went on, ‘Face the disapproval of your village, Hrype. Tell the truth, hold your head high, and weather the storm.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You must, my friend.’ Now Gurdyman spoke urgently. ‘You are living a lie, and poisoning your very soul.’
Hrype went as white as if a knife point had pierced his heart. He stared at Gurdyman for a long moment. Then, muttering an incoherent sound, he gathered up his boots and flung himself out of the house.
SEVENTEEN
‘Where are we going?’ I asked Jack as we set off. It was almost fully dark and, save for lights in a few of the taverns along the quayside, there were no signs of life.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Jack replied. ‘As I told you this morning, I’m almost sure someone was watching Ginger and me when we went back for a second search of Osmund’s cell but, with all the drama over poor Ginger and his beating, I didn’t pursue it.’ He frowned. ‘To be honest, I forgot, which I shouldn’t have done, because I think it was important. Anyway, I’ve come up with a theory, which I think we ought to test.’
‘Right,’ I said, panting a little in the effort to keep up with him. ‘So what is this theory?’
‘We know that Ginger didn’t tell his assailants anything because he didn’t know about the key,’ Jack began. ‘But the men – or, rather, their master – must have suspected there’s another room somewhere belonging to Osmund, where he works in secret, and that’s what they were trying to find out about.’
‘Why—’ I said.
But Jack was in full spate. ‘It would have been very evident
that there was nothing of value in Osmund’s cell, and wherever he did his work it wasn’t there in the priests’ house that he shared with other young clerics, under a very strict regime. Ginger and I were spotted going back for a second search, and the man behind the attack on Ginger surmised we’d found something; or, at least, our actions proved there was something there to be found.’
‘But—’
‘Ginger, even suffering the agony of a severe beating, went on insisting he had nothing to tell them,’ Jack went on relentlessly, ‘so what I’m pinning my hopes on is that they’ll conclude we really didn’t come across anything relevant, and so whatever there is to find is still there.’ He looked at me. ‘Did I make that clear?’
I grinned. ‘Yes.’
‘Good. The only trouble is that, even if we replaced the key in some more obvious place for them to find, there’s no real possibility that they would guess what door it opened. You did,’ he glanced at me again, almost shyly this time, and the expression in his eyes moved me profoundly, ‘but they are not you.’
It took a moment or two before I thought I could speak without giving myself away. ‘We could leave them a more informative clue, I suppose,’ I said tentatively, ‘but why would we want to reveal – oh!’ Suddenly I understood.
‘Quite!’ said Jack with a smile. ‘They thought Ginger and I discovered something when we went back to search Osmund’s cell again. But Ginger said otherwise, because he didn’t know about the key. If they believed him – and we have to hope they did – then their next action may well be to go to Osmund’s cell themselves, in the hope of finding what we missed. And we—’
‘We are on our way to make quite sure they do just that,’ I finished for him. ‘What have you in mind? And where should we hide it?’
We were hurrying now, out on the open road crossing the Great Bridge, and he waited until we were safely over and had dived off into the network of alleys and passages surrounding the centre of the town. Then he leaned down and whispered the details of his plan into my ear.
