The Night Wanderer

TWO

I walked with Jack to the door. For all sorts of reasons, I didn’t want him to go. He stepped into the alleyway, looking up at me as I stood on the doorstep, and I felt glad because I realized he felt the same.

Then I sensed there was something he wanted to say. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Don’t-’ he began, then stopped.

‘Don’t what?’ I felt fearful suddenly. He wasn’t hanging around purely for the pleasure of my company.

He didn’t speak for a moment. Then, in a quiet, urgent voice, he said, ‘People are already scared. The fear will get worse as the news spreads, and that will happen very swiftly.’ He frowned. ‘Otto’s a fool. He ought to know better than to go drinking and allow his tongue to run away with him.’

Otto must be the officer I’d met yesterday. ‘It shook him,’ I said gently. ‘It was an awful sight, and he was unmanned. He couldn’t get away fast enough, and no doubt he thought a few mugs of ale would restore him.’

Jack’s clear eyes stared up into mine. ‘Otto is an officer of the law,’ he said sternly. ‘He has no right to be unmanned by dead bodies.’ Then, more kindly, ‘You weren’t.’

‘In general, I am used to death, and I don’t fear it,’ I replied. ‘But yesterday’s discovery was ghastly. If you think I was unaffected, you’re wrong.’

‘I’m not wrong. Of course you were affected, but you didn’t allow your emotions to overcome you.’

‘How do you know?’ I countered. I was starting to feel quite sorry for Otto.

‘I know,’ Jack said softly, ‘because you obviously kept your head. In there just now’ – he nodded towards Gurdyman’s house – ‘you gave me the sort of careful, detailed, observant description of the body as it lay that I should have had from my own officer.’ He glared at me, although I knew his anger was with Otto. ‘I don’t believe he even looked at the corpse.’

He didn’t, I could have said. But I held back. Otto seemed to be in enough trouble already this morning, and he was probably nursing a drinker’s headache and queasy stomach into the bargain.

There was a brief silence. Then Jack said, ‘Lassair, I was about to say that there will soon be rumours spreading, and people will vie with each other to come up with the most lurid version. They’ll – well, you know what people are like when they’re frightened. There’s an almost irresistible need to talk about the thing that scares them, and everyone exaggerates. They’ll link these events with what happened before, and every last man and woman will draw parallels which may not necessarily exist.’ He hesitated, then, in a carefully casual tone that didn’t fool me for a moment, added, ‘No doubt the old grandfathers and grandmothers will be in great demand as their younger kin demand to hear the old legends and stories, and they’ll all make the most of their brief popularity and indulge every request.’ He tried to smile, but it wasn’t up to his usual standard.

I heard several things that he hadn’t actually said. That Otto’s tongue had run away with him in a tavern full of avid listeners, and so by now everyone was talking about Robert Powl’s terrible death. That already the story was being embellished, as people used their own fertile imaginations to furnish the details they hadn’t been told. That, with typical pessimism and determination to see the very worst in a situation, people were already anticipating more deaths, no doubt describing them in increasingly sensational and dramatic detail.

And, most frighteningly, that there was some horrific legend in the town’s past which was even now being resurrected…

‘I’d like to-’ I began.

But he interrupted me. Leaning closer, his face tense, he said, ‘Please, don’t listen. Close your ears to the gossips and the storytellers.’

‘But-’

‘If we lose ourselves in dread and terror, how can we act with good sense and logic?’ he demanded. ‘Some of my men are already worrying about leaving their homes undefended while they’re on duty, especially the night watch. I’ve had to reorganize the rosters, and few are happy about it. I need you to-’ He stopped.

I need you to keep your head because I depend on you. Foolishly, I hoped that was what he’d been about to say.

‘I can’t promise not to hear the rumours,’ I said carefully, ‘but I have taken your warning to heart, and I will do my best to put them in the context of a frightened populace trying to comfort themselves with a bit of exaggeration and sensationalism. Will that do?’

Now, finally, he smiled properly. ‘I suppose it’ll have to.’ Then he turned and hurried away.

Gurdyman and I got straight down to work. He set to with single-minded absorption; he was instructing me on the four elements, earth, water, fire and air, and the mysterious fifth one known as quintessence, the spirit that fills the world and the heavens with life. He had drawn the symbol for this concept, which was a circle divided into four by a cross. This had led him off into one of his customary side roads, and now, as he compelled my attention in the wake of Jack’s departure, swiftly he filled an old, much re-used piece of vellum with other symbols. ‘For this is a secret art, child,’ he said, pausing from his work to look up and fix me with a penetrating blue gaze. ‘Whether we are referring in our work notes to an element, a substance, a metal, a plant, an animal, or one of the tools of our trade’ – he indicated the workbench, crowded with vessels of all shapes and sizes, jars and pots, a crucible set on a tripod above a flame, a still and alembic – ‘we never use the name, but instead employ a symbol whose meaning is known only to us.’ He had been drawing the objects’ secret symbols as he spoke. ‘You’ll have to learn all these,’ he added offhandedly.

I was fascinated. He knew, of course, that I would be, and that was undoubtedly why he had embarked on teaching me something so mysterious. He’s got a kind heart, old Gurdyman, and he wanted to distract my thoughts from that wrecked, brutalized body.

We stopped at some point to go upstairs and eat bread and cheese, sitting outside in the inner court. From the position of the sun, I thought it was a little after noon.

We returned to the crypt, and I pleased my mentor by drawing a set of twenty symbols with adequate accuracy and reciting – very softly – the name of each one. Then, taking me utterly by surprise, Gurdyman said, ‘Enough of that for now. Go and fetch the shining stone, child, for it is time you told me of your progress with it.’

I obeyed him, but only because I had to. That day of all days, close involvement with my magical stone – the heirloom handed down to me by the huge awe-inspiring old Icelander whom I have only quite recently known is my grandfather – was the very last thing I wanted.

The shining stone is made of a strange substance that I had never heard of before encountering it. Gurdyman told me it is formed out of the red-hot, white-hot matter that is hurled out of the depths of the earth when a volcano erupts, and the heat is so tremendous that the very rock turns liquid. That is the first change. But then, when this newly molten substance cools – when, for example, it meets water – it turns to black glass. That is the second change.

No wonder there were strange, arcane forces at work inside the shining stone. It was, it seemed to me, the epitome of the sort of achievement men like Gurdyman strived for: one substance turned, or, as he would say, transmuted, into another. In the case of the stone, it wasn’t just the one transmutation.

Sometimes when I look deep inside it – at first glance it is plain, glossy black, but then after a while you can make out sinuous, winding strips of brilliant green and fiery gold – I find myself speaking to it. You were once rock, I say, and you lived in a place so far away that I can barely imagine the distance. My grandfather Thorfinn told me the stone came from a land beyond the sunset, where men’s skins are dark and they wear feathers in their long black hair. Then the earth caught fire, I continue, and the heat melted you, but your agony stopped and you grew cool again, and found yourself changed out of all recognition. I always feel sorry for the stone when I think about that. How does it feel, to be here with me so far from your home? Are you happy?

It may sound foolish to ask an inanimate object if it’s happy. Unless you had actually held my shining stone in your hands, you couldn’t understand, but there is life inside it, and I know it. It has the power to make you see the truth; it is ruthless; if you have the strength, it will enable you to reach out to the spirits and ask for their help. Of course it’s alive.

Understandably, I think, I’d been in awe, not to say terrified, of the stone for quite a long time after it came into my hands. But gradually, over the weeks and months, curiosity had overcome fear. What had really prompted me to stop being such a coward and get on with it had been when someone else – my grandfather, to be exact – had tried to make me use the stone to find out something he needed to know. Then I had been hit by a powerful combination of anger, indignation, resentment and possessive pride: You would have me use the shining stone for your own purposes, I yelled at him the last time I saw him. If you had a use for it, you should have held on to it.

I have regretted my cruel outburst ever since. I know my words hurt him deeply, for he loves me, as indeed I do him. I hope very much I shall see him again, and soon, in order to apologize and make things right between us.

But oh, he did me a favour. The power of my emotions that day acted like a cleansing fire, and afterwards I knew, as plainly as if it had told me, that the shining stone was truly mine. I had risked one peep into it since coming to this wonderful realization, and what I saw then shook me to my core. That had been back at home, in Aelf Fen, and I had resolved not to make a further attempt till I had Gurdyman beside me.

I found that I had wandered through the house to the foot of the ladder leading up to my little attic room, where I keep the stone concealed. Well, I thought, it looks as if the moment has come. Squaring my shoulders, I climbed up, knelt down and reached under the bed to the loose board beneath which the stone lay, safe in the soft leather bag that I had made for it. I took it out, held it briefly to my heart, and went back to the crypt.

With Gurdyman’s eyes on me, I took the stone out of its wool wrappings and laid it on the workbench. He had already cleared a space, as if perhaps he felt that the shining stone was too awesome an object to be placed among the clutter of the working day. Reluctantly I lowered my eyes and stared at the stone.

Perhaps it picked up that I wasn’t in the right mood to be allowed a glimpse into its depths; I don’t know. I hope that was the case, because I like the thought that we are becoming close, the stone and I, and that it is aware of my feelings as I try to be aware of its own. Whatever the reason, I saw nothing. I went on staring, but the stone didn’t allow me in, and all I saw was my own faint reflection in its glossy black and, today, impenetrable surface.

After a while Gurdyman said quietly, ‘Why are you unwilling, Lassair?’

I raised my eyes and met his. Was it so certain that it was my reluctance that was not allowing anything to happen? Why did he not consider that the blame lay with the stone, shutting itself away from me?

There didn’t seem any point, however, in arguing. ‘I don’t know,’ I muttered.

‘I think you do,’ he countered, although not unkindly. ‘I can think of three reasons. First, you have been badly affected by the body you were summoned to look at yesterday, and your sensitivity has been temporarily blunted.’

‘No!’ The response was instinctive; I didn’t like to think of my sensitivity being blunted, even if it was only temporary. Besides, although seeing the body had been a shock, it wasn’t true to say that it had badly affected me.

‘Very well,’ said Gurdyman. ‘The second reason is that it is I who am asking you to look into the stone, and you are no longer willing to do so at anyone else’s behest.’

Again, I met his cool gaze. I wondered if he knew about what had happened between my grandfather and me. It was quite possible. My aunt’s lover Hrype – another mystical figure who is almost as powerful as Gurdyman and, at times, far more threatening – had been present when I’d yelled at Thorfinn, and Hrype also knew Gurdyman. I found that the prospect of Gurdyman knowing how I’d behaved was both something to be pleased about – because he’d know that at last I’d stood up for myself – but at the same time a little shaming. It wasn’t right to treat people you loved in that way.

But Gurdyman was waiting for me to answer.

‘Er – it’s true that I’m not prepared to use the stone to find out things for other people now.’ I sought the right words to explain. ‘It seems a betrayal of the stone, or perhaps of the relationship we’re building between us.’

Gurdyman nodded. ‘I think that is right,’ he remarked.

‘But this, now, isn’t quite like that,’ I hurried on. ‘I don’t believe you want me to find anything out on your behalf. I think you want to help me, and, indeed, I do need your help.’

‘And you shall have it,’ he replied. ‘So, we come to the third reason, which is that, some time recently, you have looked into the stone by yourself, for yourself, perhaps with the tentative purpose of finding something out, and been somewhat shocked by what the stone showed you.’

He had found the truth, as I suspected he would. Very little escapes Gurdyman. I had indeed looked into the stone, a few weeks back, just after I’d walked out to the place where my grandfather’s boat had been moored and found him gone.

I saw a ship, very like my grandfather’s beautiful longship, the original Malice Striker. Yet I didn’t believe it was Thorfinn’s ship: somehow I knew – perhaps the stone told me – that this was a craft that flew over the dark blue waves there and then, at the very moment that I was watching it, and so couldn’t be my grandfather’s craft because that was a wreck on an Iceland beach. I knew that was true because I’d seen it there.

I also knew because on board that ship I perceived within the stone – or I assume that’s where he was – I saw Rollo.

Rollo is a secretive Norman, and, for want of a better description, I suppose you could call him a spy. He finds things out for the very important and the very wealthy of the land – I dare not think just how important and wealthy. He is my lover, or I should say he was, for a while, a year ago. Since then he has been away, presumably on some mission or other, and I have had no word from him.

The stone showed him to me, though, on that swift, beautiful ship. He looked straight at me, and then turned away.

I have wondered since whether he did that because he knew I had met Jack Chevestrier. That I liked him; admired him; enjoyed his company and had come hurrying to Cambridge to seek him out.

I didn’t feel I could say any of that to Gurdyman, so I just muttered, ‘Yes, that’s what happened.’

He waited. ‘You saw something that frightened you?’

‘No, I wasn’t frightened. I-’ But then I thought, I do not need to reveal this to him. It is not his concern. I looked at him and said, ‘I don’t wish to tell you, Gurdyman. It’s private.’

His eyebrows shot up, and just for a moment I thought I saw admiration in his face. I was tempted to feel proud of myself, but then I realized, with a thrill of awed respect, that it was undoubtedly the stone’s strength, not mine, that had prompted that firm refusal.

Gurdyman had turned aside. ‘Put the shining stone away, child,’ he said evenly. ‘We’ll try again when you wish to.’

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I detected a faint emphasis on you.

We were eating a late supper, sitting beside the hearth in the cramped little kitchen, when there was a knock at the door. I made to get up, but Gurdyman shook his head, already on his feet and, still chewing, heading off along the passage. I heard the heavy bolts being drawn back, and the door creaked open. Voices: the same ones I’d heard that morning as I awoke.

Gurdyman came back to the kitchen, and Jack was behind him. He nodded a greeting, looking slightly abashed.

‘Jack has come to ask our help,’ said Gurdyman.

‘I didn’t say Lassair!’ Jack protested. ‘She doesn’t have to come.’

Gurdyman turned calm eyes to him. ‘Lassair is my pupil,’ he said in the sort of voice you don’t argue with. ‘It is my duty to share every aspect of my work with her, including that which is distasteful.’

Distasteful?

Gurdyman turned back to me. ‘Jack will escort us to the room beneath the castle where the body of Robert Powl has been taken,’ he said. ‘The castle is quiet now, with only the night watch on guard, and very likely we can slip in and out again without being seen.’

There were many thoughts flashing through my mind, most of them to do with the fact that I really didn’t want to look at that mutilated body again, but I said, ‘Why mustn’t we be seen?’

Gurdyman bowed to Jack, as if to say, Go on, tell her.

‘Sheriff Picot is dismissing the death as the result of a wild-animal attack, and he has made it clear that he does not wish anybody to question this,’ Jack said, his voice carefully neutral and not giving away what he must obviously think of the sheriff’s absurd conclusion. ‘He is trying, I believe, to stop the rumours; hoping, by supplying a reasonable explanation, to halt the rising panic.’

‘But it’s not reasonable!’ I protested. ‘No animal exists that could have made such a wound!’

‘Not so,’ Gurdyman corrected, ‘for I have heard tales of savage creatures like enormous cats that roam the mountains far to the east, and other, similar beasts that live in the hot lands to the south. There are huge white bears, too, in the permanently icy lands to the north.’ Jack caught my eye for a moment and we both smiled. Gurdyman must have noticed. ‘But it is, I agree, unlikely that any such animal should be found hereabouts.’

I looked at Jack, for I had guessed why he was here. ‘You want us to investigate the damage to the corpse, and suggest how it was done, don’t you?’ I demanded. ‘Is that it?’

Jack winced at my words, but he nodded. ‘Pretty much, yes. I’d really value your opinion,’ he added.

Gurdyman looked at me enquiringly. Filled with a mixture of fearful apprehension and a growing excitement, I got up. ‘I’ll go and fetch my shawl.’