The Night Wanderer

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 there 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.

No; Jack and I were better far away from here.

I put my silent pleading for understanding into my eyes, and Jack picked it up. ‘Very well,’ he said coolly. He looked both apprehensive and just a little resentful. ‘We’ll lock up here and go back to the house.’

He reached out to pick up the emeralds, no doubt thinking that they’d be safer in his keeping than left here, where anybody breaking in would see them. But I cried, ‘No! Leave them!’

He looked questioningly at me – something else I’d have to explain – but did as I asked.

He locked the door again and tucked the key away. Then he strode off up the little passage and I hastened to follow.

I wished that the walk back to the deserted village, and Jack’s house, was twice or three times longer than it was. I knew I had to talk to him. However it had come about, he and I were working together now, and it would be neither right nor fair to keep back things that were at the heart of what was happening.

Had the secrets been mine, I believe I would not have hesitated to share them with Jack. I knew by then that I could trust him; that he was a good man. Moreover, had he been in possession of all the information he ought to have been, his clever, agile, lawman’s mind would undoubtedly have begun instantly to see links and hints that I’d missed. He knew so much more about the town, its inhabitants and how the place operated than I did, and, who knew, he might have been able to go straight to the murderer – the Night Wanderer – and apprehend him that very night.

But they weren’t my secrets.

I hadn’t actually been sworn not to divulge what I was only just beginning to glimpse behind the veil. I knew, thought, as I knew my own name, that these deep matters were not for sharing. My problem, then, was that, knowing it was my absolute duty to help Jack discover what was really happening here and bring it to an end, I was bound by another, equally profound honour, not to reveal any more than was strictly necessary.

If only we were walking back to Aelf Fen, and I had most of the night to decide what to say…

We didn’t pass a soul on the way home. We heard shouts and a brief clash of metal in the distance – perhaps one of the patrols was encouraging some unruly citizens back to their beds – but the town seemed otherwise deserted, and a deep silence hung over the village. Not even a rat stirred in the ditches.

It was a relief to get inside and watch Jack bar the door. Even as he turned to poke life into the fire, feeding it with small kindling and then larger logs, I was framing my opening words. He put water on to heat and sat down. I crouched beside him.

Then, without giving myself any time for second thoughts, I said, ‘You remember Lord Gilbert?’

Jack looked surprised, as well he might. ‘The lord of your manor. Yes, of course. Fat and rather lazy, with a clever wife.’

I smiled briefly. That pretty much summed up Lord Gilbert. ‘I can, of course, only be here in Cambridge with his permission, and he’s given it because he believes what I’m learning with Gurdyman will make me a more useful inhabitant of Aelf Fen. Isolated villages like ours need a good healer, and, while my aunt Edild is an excellent teacher, Lord Gilbert has been convinced that Gurdyman’s breadth of knowledge is wider, and he likes the idea of his village healer having wisdom above the usual run.’ I paused, thinking very hard. ‘Gurdyman is a well-travelled man,’ I went on, carefully weighing my words, ‘and, in his youth, he travelled in a land called Al-Andalus, which I think is in Moorish Spain, where he encountered the wise Arabs who were the inheritors of all the wisdom of the Greeks and the Persians, and so he knows all manner of things that nobody else does, at least, nobody in England.’ Gurdyman had told me this with such conviction that I believed him. ‘One of his main interests is medicine, and he’s taught me enough already that I can see how incredibly advanced Arab doctors are in their knowledge compared to us in the Christian north, and-’ Careful, I warned myself. ‘Anyway, I’m just telling you this so you’ll realize that Lord Gilbert’s not being misled, and I really am learning a great deal of the healer’s art from Gurdyman.’ I paused, feeling rather as if I was about to dive into deep water. ‘But-’

‘But that’s not all he’s teaching you,’ Jack said quietly.

I felt myself blush. ‘What do you mean?’ I hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory, but I was on the defensive.

Jack sighed. He stoked the fire, checked on the water, then said, ‘Lassair, your Gurdyman is a very private person, discreet, subtle and quite clever enough to perceive that if the inhabitants of this town knew what he really was they’d flush him out like a rat from a sewer and drive him far away.’

‘He’s not!’ Stupidly I denied the accusation before Jack had made it. ‘He’s good, and no threat to anybody! He’s quite harmless, and – and-’

Harmless? Even I baulked at that.

Into the abrupt silence Jack said calmly, ‘He may well be good but he certainly isn’t harmless. The fact that he doesn’t do harm isn’t because he can’t but because he doesn’t choose to, which emphasizes his goodness.’

Jack waited for me to comment, but I couldn’t speak.

‘Now I have been quietly studying Gurdyman,’ he went on after a while. ‘Not that it’s easy, for he is a recluse and extremely careful who he chooses for friends. But I keep my eyes and ears open and I’ve spent a lot of time with you-’ I must have made some faint sound of protest, for he said swiftly, ‘Oh, don’t worry, you have been very discreet and barely said a word about him, but you can’t help what you are, and you reveal all the time that someone other than your village aunt has been teaching you.’

‘Edild is a fine woman!’ I protested. ‘She’s-’

But Jack held up a hand. ‘I know, Lassair. I’m not demeaning her, I’m merely stating that your mind has been opened and developed far beyond the range of anything she, or anybody else come to that, could do.’ Reluctantly I turned to look at him. ‘Gurdyman is extraordinary,’ he said gently. ‘You cannot know how much I envy you, being his adept.’

I felt as if my heart had stopped. Then it gave a powerful, almost painful lurch. I whispered, ‘You know, don’t you?’

He gave me a very sweet smile. ‘Of course I know.’

It was as if a careful, secure construct that I’d built around myself had come tumbling down. I’d imagined, in my fond arrogance, that the land into which Gurdyman was leading me – that fascinating, wonderful, dangerous, mysterious, magical and frequently terrifying land – was like a foreign country which, when I left it and returned to the everyday world and the doltish, blinkered people who inhabited it, left no sign on me to show I’d ever been away. I’d thought myself so special, hugging my growing store of arcane knowledge and, yes, my increasing array of skills, believing everyone I encountered thought I was a simple village girl who was learning to be a healer.

But not everyone had been fooled.

‘Do – do they all know?’ I whispered. I could hardly bear to ask.

‘No!’ Jack replied instantly. ‘Oh, no. You’re that healer girl. Renowned as trustworthy and hard-working, I might add, and your reputation grows.’

‘But that’s all?’ He nodded. ‘You swear it is so?’ I pressed urgently.

‘I swear,’ he said solemnly. Then: ‘I wouldn’t lie to you about this, Lassair. You have learned well from Gurdyman that the other studies you undertake with him are not to be advertised; that to speak of them is potentially dangerous, for both of you.’ He looked straight into my eyes. ‘I will never do anything to put you at risk.’

Perhaps it was just the emotion of the moment that had made him speak with such quiet, powerful intensity.

He, too, must have felt the awkwardness. He got up, tested the water again and then set about mixing drinks for us. He took longer than usual about it, and I guessed he was giving us both time to recover.

When once more we were seated side by side beside the hearth, he said, in very much his normal voice, ‘So, we now suspect that Morgan too was robbed, probably of cinnabar and maybe also of his hidden stash of emeralds. We know too that although the thief or the killer – perhaps both, and perhaps they are one and the same – must have been desperate to find Osmund’s secret workroom, they didn’t succeed, for the emeralds are still there.’ He glanced briefly at me. ‘I am guessing that you have a fair idea what these people – Osmund, Morgan and Cat, maybe your own beloved Gurdyman – have been up to. I’m surmising that it’s an experiment of some kind, and that it is somehow extremely important. Perhaps it holds out the promise of vast wealth; perhaps its riches are spiritual. Robert Powl, I suggest, was shipping certain very special ingredients into the town, and somehow he came to understand that what he carried – in all innocence, probably – was a great deal more valuable than he had imagined. Perhaps he sold some of these substances before he realized; Mistress Judith seems to have had them in her store.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Our thief, then, is motivated simply by greed. Our killer, for some reason of his own, doesn’t want the experiments to continue. Or, as I just said, maybe thief and killer are the same, united in a single evil man – or woman – who operates under the Night Wanderer disguise.’

I put down my mug and dropped my face into my hands. All at once I was exhausted. I’d come all the way from Aelf Fen that day, discovered Gurdyman was still worryingly missing, been surprised and jumped almost out of my skin when Jack burst in on me, thought I was safely indoors for the night at his house only to be dragged out again to revisit the scene of gentle Morgan’s and innocent, pitiable Cat’s deaths and then creep along in the shadows to investigate poor Osmund’s pathetic hidden workroom.

Now, back once more in the warmth and security of Jack’s house, I’d been brought face to face with the fact that he knew far more about me than I’d thought he did, and then, on top of that, he seemed to be asking me to conduct a full analysis of the Night Wanderer’s crimes. It was too much; far, far too much.

And through it all I kept seeing Morgan’s and Cat’s bodies, the young apprentice thrown across his master as if he’d given himself in a futile attempt to save the beloved old man’s life. Jack knew that Gurdyman was engaged in the same work as Morgan – how many others knew too? Did it mean what I was so very afraid it meant, that Gurdyman was also in danger? Already dead? Hrype had told me he was safe, but that had been days ago, and, besides, I didn’t think Hrype was above lying if he felt it was for the right reasons.

I didn’t know how I would even begin to cope with it if Gurdyman suffered – had already suffered – the fate of the Night Wanderer’s other victims.

I held my emotions at bay for as long as I could, but anxiety, fatigue and grief were overcoming me and I had nothing left with which to fight. A sob broke out of me, and very soon I was crying in earnest.

Jack’s arms went round me, and he made an inarticulate sound of dismay and sympathy. ‘There’s no reason to believe he’s been harmed,’ he said gently. How did he know? I wondered wildly. ‘Every other victim has been left in plain sight, almost as if the killer wants them to be quickly found, so why should he suddenly change his habits?’

It made sense but I was too far gone to appreciate it. ‘We can’t know for sure!’ I wept.

Jack’s arms tightened, and all at once I was pressed to his chest. I could hear the fast drumming of his heart. ‘You would know, Lassair,’ he whispered. I felt the touch of a kiss on the top of my head.

It’s funny how the body works. I’d been weary beyond measure, sick at heart and full of sorrow, but abruptly I was filled with something totally different.

I turned in his arms, raised my head and, putting my face up to his, kissed him. He tried to hold back – he muttered something but I didn’t listen – then, with a sort of sigh, he gave up the struggle.

I was no expert in love. Something happened that night between Jack Chevestrier and me, though, which I knew even then I would never forget, all the days of however long my life would be. I think I already knew he loved me, and there was something in his total absorption in me, his very evident wish for my joy, his care, his skill and the extraordinary, shared moment of ecstasy that we experienced, that informed me quietly how deep that love might go.

It sounded a very small note of warning.

I didn’t listen to that, either. I was far too wrapped up in him: in his beautiful, solid, strong and muscular body, in the vast relief of the warmth, comfort and safety I felt emanating out of him to enfold me.

Eventually we lay quietly, side by side in his bed. I was still in his arms – I was hugging him too, and I couldn’t let go of him – and my head was pillowed on his chest. He didn’t speak, and neither did I.

There were no words to say.