The Night Wanderer

THIRTEEN

I spent two more days at Aelf Fen.

They were uneasy days. Apart from the fact that I longed to be back in Cambridge – despite the reassurances from Hrype, I was still anxious about Gurdyman and, most pressingly, very worried about Jack – I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. I tried to reassure myself: I was in my own home village, where I knew every inhabitant, every house, every hiding place and winding track through the waters.

But I couldn’t convince myself. Even though I couldn’t see them, I was still utterly certain somebody was watching me.

I’d had an identical sensation not many weeks back, when Jack and I were in the fenlands together, and I wondered if the same eyes were on me now. Was Jack also absent from the town – not with me, but on some private errand of his own – and was Gaspard Picot spying on me because he thought I’d lead him to Jack?

I was horribly afraid it was so. Rather than go on suffering in doubt, however, I decided to try to find out.

In the late afternoon of the second day I slipped out of Edild’s house, the shining stone in my satchel, and took a path leading to the fen edge. I followed it down to one of my favourite places, opposite which is the little island where many of my forebears, including my Granny Cordeilla, lie buried. I wasn’t planning to cross over to the island this time, for the day had turned cold and I didn’t welcome the idea of getting wet to the waist. Instead, I sat down cross-legged, face to the island, and got out the stone. I laid it in my lap, on the fabric of my gown stretched between my knees, and, my hands placed lightly on either side, stared down into it.

I felt the instant when it became aware of me and responded. Felt and saw it: there was a very faint sort of thrumming in the rapidly warming stone in my hands and a flash of brilliant green from its dark depths. Very softly I said, ‘Greetings.’

Straight away an image appeared: I saw eyes, shaded under a hood, staring at me out of the shadows. It might have been because the fear of someone watching me was uppermost in my mind; the stone could simply have been reflecting my own concerns back at me. I’d all but convinced myself that was so when I saw something else.

Fear raced through me. For now there was a second watcher, and if the motives of the first were unclear, there was no doubt at all that this one had nothing but malice – evil – in mind.

I quelled my fear as best I could and strove for the sort of neutral state of mind that is best for staring into the shining stone. As my anxiety subsided, I realized that my first panicky impressions were right. One set of eyes looked at me with love: It’s Jack, I thought with a surge of joy, and he’s come back secretly to make sure I am safe. I felt a warm happiness spread through me, and the stone too felt suddenly hotter.

But then I saw the other eyes, and I cried aloud.

They were hostile: whatever Gaspard Picot wanted with me, he didn’t mean me any good. His face was in shadow and I could barely make out any details. He was deliberately keeping well hidden. He had no way of knowing I had suspected he was near, nor, of course, that I had a powerful ally in the shining stone. Well, forewarned was forearmed, and I would-

But then all thoughts of Gaspard Picot were driven out of my head.

The images came swiftly, one after another, flash, flash, flash. I saw again those terrible corpses, their throats torn out: Robert Powl; poor, pretty little Gerda; Mistress Judith; the young priest I’d seen die with my own eyes; Morgan and Cat.

The vision-sight seemed to linger on Morgan. Something strange was happening, and it felt as if my mind was unable to interpret what I saw. Morgan was dressed in his usual dark robe, high-fitting at the neck until the killer had torn it away to get at his throat. He was Morgan, his sad old face showing still the shocked expression of brutal death. But then he wasn’t quite Morgan: he was subtly altered. The slash in his robe was now extending, right down to the waist and beyond, and I saw…

‘No!’ I shut my eyes tightly. I didn’t want to see what the shining stone seemed to want to show me. Morgan’s body had been decently clad when I saw him in death, and I didn’t want to see what lay beneath his garments. Death robs men and women of so much, and I surely owed it to Morgan not to look.

The shining stone went cold.

Just like that, in an instant.

It was icy in my hands, and, wincing, hastily I wrapped it in its sheep’s wool and replaced it in the leather pouch, putting it in my satchel and fastening the strap.

Shaken, I stood up and hurried back to the village and the safety – or so I fervently hoped – of Edild’s house.

I said nothing to my aunt about what had happened. As we sat beside the hearth with our bowls of savoury gruel that evening, however, I think she was aware something was amiss. Well, I’d have been surprised if she hadn’t been, for she is an astute and sensitive woman and knows me well.

I cleared away and washed our supper crocks and was just stacking our bowls in their accustomed place ready for the morning when we heard running footsteps on the path outside. A moment later, there came a frantic banging on the door and my elder brother Haward’s voice cried out, ‘Edild! Lassair! You must come at once, Squeak and Leir have been attacked!’

My aunt and I grabbed our satchels and she flung open the door. Haward looked awful: wide-eyed with shock, hair on end, face flushed and sweaty from exertion. ‘Come on!’ he yelled.

We gathered up our skirts and flew down the path behind him.

As we ran, I tried to go over in my mind what sort of injury my brothers might have sustained. Squeak, fourteen years old, worked with my father with the eels; out in all weathers, often up to his neck in water, vulnerable to all the unseen obstacles that lay half-buried in the dark mud. And eels have teeth… But no, I told myself, the eels were largely dormant now, retreating down into the black fen depths to see out the winter before spring, and the longer, lighter days, called them up again.

And what hurt could have come to Leir? He was still a little boy, for all he yearned to work beside Squeak and my father at a man’s job. But Leir was Squeak’s shadow: everybody knew that, and the village smiled indulgently at the sight of the small figure trotting along behind the boy on the cusp of manhood, trying in vain to make his short legs match his elder brother’s long strides.

My mind and my heart full of my brothers, I realized how much I loved them. Fear for them put new life in me and, outpacing even Haward, I was the first to reach my parents’ house.

The door opened as I approached, and my father looked out. ‘Do not worry,’ he said calmly, ‘neither of them is going to die.’

I threw my arms round him in a brief, tight hug. Then he released me and gently pushed me inside. Haward and Edild came in behind me, and Edild and I knelt down beside the grouped figures by the hearth.

My mother held Leir in her arms, cradling him to her broad comfortable bosom as if he was a baby again. He, too, had set aside all aspirations to be older than his years. His thumb had crept into his mouth, and he was twiddling a stray strand of my mother’s long fair hair between the fingers of his free hand. His eyes, wide and intensely blue, were red-rimmed from weeping and his nose was running.

Squeak lay flat on his back. The lacings of his tunic were open, revealing a long cut all the way from the top of his shoulder to his breast, where it stopped just above his heart. It was pouring blood. Edild gave a short exclamation, reaching in her satchel for a pad of clean linen, which she folded and pressed hard against the wound. It would need stitching, I thought. That was going to hurt.

Save for Edild’s quiet words of command to me, and my occasional replies, there was silence in the room. My aunt and I had performed these tasks so often together: the wash with hot water and lavender, the careful checking of the cut for dirt, grit, and other minute objects whose presence would interfere with healing and perhaps set off infection, and then the closing of the wound. Edild’s needle was very sharp and her hands were deft and swift, but nevertheless Squeak had to bite his lips raw to stop himself crying out, and the poor boy was only partially successful.

Eventually, though, it was done. Edild washed the blood off her hands and packed away her equipment, while I put a fresh pad on my brother’s chest and bandaged it carefully in place. ‘Will it leave a scar?’ Squeak asked hopefully, with a flash of his old spirit.

‘Oh, dear Lord, yes!’ I assured him. ‘You’re marked for life, little brother. The girls will flock from miles around to see.’

He smiled in satisfaction.

But not for long, for, now that his injury had been treated and the immediate emergency was past, it was time for the questions. My father fixed Squeak with a steady look and said, ‘Now, son, what happened?’

I could see what an ordeal it was going to be for Squeak to relate his story. He looked, if anything, even more fearful than when Edild had hovered over him with needle and stitching gut. But he pulled himself together, brave boy that he was.

‘You’d left me to watch that little tributary at the far end of the main stream,’ he reminded our father, ‘in case there were any signs that the eels that live there were still active. I didn’t spot anything, and after a bit Leir came to find me and said it was time to go home, so we set off. It was getting dark, and we had quite a long way to go, so we were jogging along and chatting and laughing and then suddenly-’ Abruptly he stopped, and his already ashen face grew paler.

‘What happened?’ my father prompted gently. For all that he spoke quietly, I could see the furious tension building up in his big, strong body. Somebody had attacked his child. In my father’s philosophy, that could have only one response.

Squeak swallowed. I saw the developing Adam’s apple bob in his thin throat. ‘Someone came out of the shadowy gulley beside the stream,’ he whispered. ‘He – it jumped out at us.’ He shuddered. ‘It was huge.’

‘Go on,’ my father said tonelessly.

‘It was dressed in a dark cloak, or something, with a deep hood that was drawn right forward, and all I could make out was dark, deep, staring eyes.’ He shuddered again. ‘It had something in its hand, something that glinted sort of silvery. It was sharp-pronged, like a gleeve.’

I pictured the eel-catcher’s tool: the trident-shaped gleeve with its deadly, sharpened points.

There was a pop as Leir took his thumb out of his mouth. ‘It wasn’t a gleeve,’ he piped up.

‘I didn’t say it was a gleeve, I just said it had pointy ends like a gleeve,’ Squeak snapped, with the abrupt, furious anger of someone who had just been very badly scared and was trying to hide it. Leir’s bottom lip wobbled and tears came into his eyes. My mother, anxiety all over her face, silently wrapped her arms more tightly around him. He put his thumb back in his mouth and leaned against her.

Squeak muttered, ‘It was a weapon of some sort, anyway.’

Leir, apparently restored a little by his mother’s big, warm presence, removed his thumb again and, aware of our eyes on him and looking slightly ashamed, hid it behind him. ‘It wasn’t a weapon at all,’ he said in a quiet, firm tone that carried far more weight than a screech or a yell. ‘I know because I had a good look while it was – while it was doing what it did to Squeak.’ He hesitated, then, finding his courage, said, ‘It was actually part of its arm. Like a claw.’

It felt as if a cold hand had clutched my heart.

‘He – it – the figure spoke,’ Squeak said. He stared up at his father, as if drawing strength from the steady gaze.

‘Go on, son,’ my father said calmly.

‘It said – it demanded-’

‘It wanted to know where the girl was,’ Leir interrupted, ‘and when we said we didn’t know what it was after and who did it mean because there were lots of girls, it sort of spat and said it was hunting for the girl who works for the magician, and that’s you, isn’t it, Lassair?’ He looked at me, and I had to force myself to meet his innocent gaze. ‘You work for that man with the funny name when you’re in Cambridge, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered.

My father asked the question I didn’t dare voice. ‘Did you tell him where she was?’

‘We said we had no idea what he was talking about, then I wriggled out of his grasp and we fled,’ Squeak said, pride in his voice. ‘Did we tell him, indeed! Of course we didn’t!’ he added scornfully. Then he, too, looked at me. ‘She’s our sister.’

I felt like weeping.

I don’t think any of us slept very well that night. We left Haward, his wife Zarina and their little boy bedded down in my parents’ house, where Zarina said she felt safer. My father wanted Edild and me to stay too, but Edild said she must get back and I went with her. I’d half-expected Hrype to be there; it would have been just like him to have picked up out of the air that something bad had happened and turn up at Edild’s house to protect her. But he didn’t.

Edild barred the door with a bolt of wood and we both went to bed with big sticks beside us.

In the long hours of the night I thought over all that had happened, and I quickly concluded that remaining at Aelf Fen would do more harm than good. The Night Wanderer seemed to know I was there; or, at least, I guessed he did. Anyway he clearly knew I was somewhere in the vicinity. My presence in the village was only going to bring peril to my family. Squeak had already been injured, and both he and Leir had been scared out of their wits.

I kept seeing the heart-turning sight of my smallest brother, trying to be brave as he cast his mind back to abject terror. No six-year-old should have to deal with that. Life was tough enough without sinister ghouls looming up out of the darkness with weapons for hands.

I would have to fight against my united family, however, if I insisted on returning to Cambridge. I had an idea about that, but it wasn’t much of a one, and even thinking about it made me uneasy. I resolved to sleep on it – if indeed I could sleep – and look at the problem again in the morning.

The morning, however, brought problems of its own. Edild and I went back immediately we’d eaten to check on Squeak, and to our dismay there were signs of infection in the wound.

I tried not to think where else that savage claw-hand had been, and what filth it bore on its talons.

Edild bathed the cut thoroughly, pouring undiluted lavender oil into it, and then she covered it all along its length with a thick paste of chamomile and marsh mallow. Both of these are reliable vulneraries that we use to counter inflammation and promote healthy healing. I was distressed to observe that Squeak was feverish, muttering in his sleep. I realized now, when he could no longer mask his true feelings with a display of bravado, just how frightened he had been and I was filled with protective fury. Someone had hurt my brother and I wanted to kill them.

Edild did not seem too concerned about Squeak, however; when I asked her once too often if he was going to be all right, she turned on me and snapped, ‘Yes, Lassair, as far as what skills I have and my long experience tell me, and if you want a better answer, go and ask your shining stone.’

I didn’t pester her any more after that.

But I had now made up my mind what to do and how to do it. Early the next day, when my family and most of the village would be busy setting off for work, either out on the marshes or up in the fields, or else deeply involved in their own homes, I would take my chance. I would tell Edild I was going to fetch more mushrooms, and slip out of the house with my satchel and my shawl. Then I would set off as fast as I could for Cambridge, and pray that I’d reach the town by nightfall. I knew full well that Cambridge was no sanctuary: far from it, for it was in the vicinity of the town that all the murders had been committed. But I reasoned that it had the big advantage over Aelf Fen of being full of people, many of them well-armed lawmen and one of those lawmen Jack Chevestrier.

The Night Wanderer was coming to Aelf Fen, and it appeared that he was looking for me. For everyone’s sake, including mine, it made sense for me not to be there when he arrived.