City of Pearl

by Alys Clare

  But Jack’s concern surely could not stem from the same place as his own, for Hrype’s fear for Lassair stemmed from a source that he didn’t believe anyone else shared; one that disturbed him more with each passing day of her absence.

  He hoped he was wrong. He hoped he had misjudged his old friend, but he couldn’t convince himself.

  And if he was right, then Gurdyman was not only showing an irresponsible lack of care for his own safety.

  He was taking Lassair into the same peril.

  SIX

  It became clear to the three of us standing with Gurdyman in the entrance to the tavern that he was swaying with exhaustion. Judging by his expression, the talk of his parents’ death had affected him deeply. He knew, of course, that they were dead – how could they not be? – but it was as if being back here in the place where they had gone about their daily lives had belatedly sparked off his grief.

  The woman muttered something to the old man, who nodded and took Gurdyman by the arm, leading him away down a low, dark passage. I followed, carrying our bags, and we emerged into what was clearly the communal sleeping room. There were some rudimentary beds, some larger wooden frames on which there were a number of thin straw mattresses, and more straw heaped at the side of the large room. There was nobody there. Iago led Gurdyman over to a little bed in the corner furthest from the door and fetched a couple of blankets. Gurdyman protested, but it was only a token resistance. Even as I stood there watching, he lay down with a long sigh, pulled up the blankets and closed his eyes.

  Iago walked on light feet to join me in the doorway. We waited, and presently heard the sound of Gurdyman’s soft snores. Iago smiled. ‘Sleep!’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, he’s sleeping,’ I agreed.

  ‘He old man now,’ Iago went on, lowering his voice still further as if he didn’t want Gurdyman to hear and be hurt. ‘Long journey, old man, not good.’ He frowned at me as if somehow it was my fault that Gurdyman had worn himself out.

  ‘It was all his idea to come here!’ I protested.

  But Iago put a hand on my arm. ‘To honour Mama and Papa, yes, I understand,’ he muttered. He gave me a gap-toothed but kindly smile. We turned away from the sleeping room and went back to the woman. She raised her eyebrows in query and Iago spoke briefly, presumably telling her Gurdyman was asleep. She looked at me. ‘I am Maria,’ she said.

  ‘Lassair,’ I replied. I had to repeat my name several times before they had it, and even then the pronunciation was one I’d never heard before.

  ‘I am going to explore,’ I said. ‘Look round the village.’

  They both nodded. ‘But not long,’ Maria said. ‘Food serve soon.’

  I had already smelt wafts of appetizing smells coming from somewhere at the rear of the inn, and the thought of a good, hot meal was almost enough to make me stay right there and make sure I had a place at the supper table. As if Maria read my mind, she said with a smile, ‘There is plenty.’

  Just then a group of three pilgrims arrived at the door and she turned her attention to their needs.

  The village was even more attractive in the fading light. Lamps were lit in windows, people began to emerge to discuss the day’s events with their friends and neighbours, and from everywhere came the smell of cooking. I returned to the village square and went across it towards the road by which we had arrived, finding a rock to perch on to observe the last few pilgrims still toiling up the slope. With dismay, I noticed that none of them was as old as Gurdyman.

  Then, at the rear of a trio of men in monks’ habits, I saw a pair of the little carts I had observed earlier. One was carrying supplies: a couple of barrels, a basket of apples, another which, by the smell, held fish. But the other one was driven by a middle-aged man and behind him sat a very old woman.

  I envisaged myself at the reins and Gurdyman seated in the body of the cart. I knew I had to find one for us.

  I followed the second cart into the village and, when it drew to a stop outside one of the hostels, tried to ask the man if it was his, where he had acquired it, if I could buy one. But I couldn’t make him understand and in the end, appreciating he was impatient to see to the old woman – now hollering at him and clearly increasingly irritated by the delay – I muttered an apology and hurried away.

  I searched the streets around the square, looking for inn yards with stabling, or for anywhere else that I could spot similar carts. There were plenty of them in evidence, but I was hampered by not being able to explain what I wanted. I gave up and returned to the inn.

  Iago was standing outside, clearly looking out for me. Berating myself for not having thought to ask him first, I hurried up to him and said, ‘Please, can you help me? I need to find one of those little carts, because I don’t think Gurd— er, Juan, will be able to walk all the way.’

  He began nodding even as I spoke. ‘It is what we say, Maria and me!’ he exclaimed. ‘I will seek.’ He thumped himself on his narrow chest. ‘I will find.’

  ‘I have money.’ I reached inside the purse at my belt and took out a handful of coins, which I held out to him.

  With a sharp frown he closed his hand around mine, his eyes darting from side to side. ‘Not show!’ he hissed. ‘Many people, not all good!’

  He was right, and in the urgency of my need I had forgotten the law of travellers, which is not to show conspicuous wealth. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘But I can pay for a cart and a good horse. Yes? It is enough?’

  ‘Yes!’ His shocked expression suggested it was more than enough, and that he was wondering how on earth I came to have so much money. I wondered what he would say if he knew about the remainder of my coins, not to mention the gold, hidden away in the belt beneath my clothes.

  Thank you, Rollo, I said silently.

  Iago ushered me inside the inn, where he indicated my hand, still clenched on the silver, and made a gesture for me to show him again. I did so. He took several of the coins, then hurried away.

  I suppressed the unkind thought that it would be the last I would see of him or my money.

  Gurdyman was revived by his sleep, and he and I joined the company for the evening meal. The long table was only about a third full, and Maria explained that the inn was much busier during the spring and summer. With a shake of the head she said, as so many people kept saying, that it was late in the year to be on the roads.

  And, yet again, I wondered why Gurdyman had chosen this moment to come.

  We sat over a last mug of ale with Maria and Iago, and in the main, out of courtesy to me, they spoke my language. But Maria kept lapsing into her own, and already I was picking up words and phrases. I was thinking about some of these, trying to commit them to memory, when I noticed that the conversation had turned to the past. Iago was laughing, clearly repeating some cheerful anecdote about Gurdyman’s father, for I kept hearing the word papa. Maria joined in – she too seemed to have known Gurdyman’s parents personally – and I understood enough to realize that the two of them had been much-loved members of the community.

  Iago was in full flow now, talking very rapidly in a mixture of tongues of the days when Gurdyman’s parents first came to the village, of how they set up in their own hostel – ‘Yes, yes, this place where we now are!’ – and of his and Gurdyman’s youthful friendship. ‘But he was smart’ – Iago leaned across as if to confide in me, tapping Gurdyman’s hand as he did so – ‘he have lessons with clever man, he learn many things, soon he too fine to work with other boys.’ Was there the shadow of an old resentment there? I wasn’t sure. ‘And then’ – Iago gave a dramatic sigh – ‘he go away, to the south and the wise Moorish men, for here not large enough for him any more.’

  A silence fell, and not a very comfortable one. I waited for Gurdyman to break it; to say modestly, perhaps, that he had been young, arrogant and eager to learn, or even that he had been persuaded by those older and wiser than himself that he had no choice but to utilize his God-given intellect. But he didn’t.

  In the end it w
as Maria who spoke. She stood up, gathering the empty mugs and the ale jug, and said, ‘Ah, we all follow our own path, and it is not easy when we are young to see where it may lead.’

  Gurdyman too stood up, muttering something about seeking his bed, and I followed. Like him, I too had earlier claimed a bed in a far corner of the communal dormitory, and I was glad now that I had done so, for almost everyone who had eaten with us had already turned in and the only spaces remaining free were on the big, shared beds.

  At the door I turned back to wish Iago and Maria a final good night. Maria nodded in reply, but Iago didn’t appear to see.

  He was staring at Gurdyman’s retreating back, and the expression on his lean face was very different from the delighted smile he had shown when first he set eyes on us.

  I didn’t like this new expression at all.

  My bed was adequately comfortable and I was glad I had selected a place by one of the few small windows, for the other bodies sleeping nearby had evidently not seen a wash cloth or clean clothes for some time. The cool little breeze blowing across my face was very welcome, and I had enough covers not to feel its chill.

  For it was a cold night: I thought as I woke briefly in the deepest of the darkness that I could smell snow in the air.

  But we were high in the foothills of the coastal mountains here, I tried to reassure myself. When we left to go on with our journey, whenever that may be – I resolved to extract some details of our itinerary from Gurdyman as soon as he was awake – our general direction would be south, and down onto the lowlands.

  Wouldn’t it?

  I realized with a prickle of alarm that I didn’t really know.

  I slept again, warm and comfortable, and the solidity of the granite walls around me made me feel safe.

  But then, as the first silvery signs of dawn were beginning to lighten the sky, something woke me. For some reason I felt afraid, and all at once the inn was no longer the secure refuge it had been. What had disturbed me? One of the other occupants of the room stirring in their sleep? Getting up, perhaps, to use the latrine outside in the back yard? I glanced around, but could spot no empty spaces among the occupied beds. Over in the far corner I made out the hump of Gurdyman, wrapped up in his blankets and unmoving.

  What, then?

  I lay very still and strained my ears. And after a moment I heard a very clear, quiet whisper that appeared to come from just outside the window. Just the one word, Brujo. Then, even more softly, the voice muttered something else. I couldn’t quite make it out but it sounded like llama azul.

  I didn’t know what brujo meant but all the same it frightened me. Perhaps it was the tone in which the word was uttered, which sounded like a long out-breath, so soft that it might have been designed for my ears alone. But that made no sense since I didn’t understand the message.

  It was a warning. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I was quite certain.

  It was a relief when the steady increase in the sounds around me suggested the morning’s work had begun. People in the dormitory were stirring, some already out of bed and packing away their belongings. Gurdyman was sitting on his little bed, his blankets neatly folded. He was putting on his boots.

  The smell of warm bread came sneaking along the passage, and as if this had been the signal, almost everyone in the dormitory hurried off to find its source. Gurdyman joined the rush, looking at me with his eyebrows raised as if to invite me to join him, and I did so. I wasn’t hungry, however: I hadn’t slept again after that sinister warning whisper, and the fear that I couldn’t seem to quell had robbed me of my appetite.

  After breakfast Gurdyman announced we were going out. Angry with myself for my continuing meek acceptance, I vowed to demand some sort of explanation from him. He led the way further up the hillside to where a church stood on a patch of flat ground overlooking the valley below, and we went inside. I wondered if he was going to pray, and I stepped back to allow him a moment to himself. But he made no move towards the altar, merely standing still and looking about him. Then he turned and went outside again.

  ‘You remember it all?’ I asked as we wandered round the humps and mounds of graves circling the church.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied.

  Presently he spotted whatever it was he had been looking for, and I followed him to a section of the burial ground where there were perhaps ten or a dozen graves, perhaps more, close together. They must have been quite old, for their outlines were indistinct.

  Gurdyman stood in silence, staring down.

  ‘Are your parents buried here?’ I asked gently.

  He turned to me with a slight start, as if he had forgotten I was beside him. ‘I believe so,’ he replied. ‘I asked Iago, and this seems to be the place he described.’

  ‘There are quite a lot of graves all together,’ I observed. ‘Did your parents die in some sort of epidemic?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, not that.’ He gave a very deep sigh, as if contemplating the manner of their death troubled him profoundly.

  Perhaps I should have backed away and left him to his thoughts. Perhaps I should for once have restrained my curiosity and, out of respect, asked him no more. But I was angry that morning. He had brought me all this way with barely a word of explanation. We had a very long way to go and I still had no clear idea of where we were going and why. It was cold and there was snow up above us in the high mountains; as people would keep telling us, it was the wrong time of year for travelling. And, as if all that wasn’t enough, very early this morning I had been badly scared by a sinister whisper right outside the window beneath which I slept.

  So I said, with rather more asperity than was appropriate, ‘So how did they die, Gurdyman? And why did these other people die with them?’

  I thought he wasn’t going to answer and I gathered my courage to repeat the question. But then he sighed again, and said very quietly, ‘There was a fire.’

  ‘A fire?’

  ‘In the inn. My parents’ inn. There used to be a room off the yard where people would gather in the evenings. Travellers would exchange their stories and sometimes there would be singing. The inn was famous for these gatherings, almost as much as for the quality of my father’s ale, and many of the villagers would look in when there was a good crowd. There was no harm in it!’ he added with sudden passion. ‘Perhaps a little too much ale would be drunk, but my father brewed a fine drop and it was too tempting to deny. Besides, those enjoying the company and the ale were for the most part pilgrims, and the remainder were hard-working locals, and did they not have a right to snatch a little pleasure at the end of an exhausting day?’

  I realized he didn’t expect me to answer.

  ‘The fire took hold swiftly,’ he said softly. ‘It’s said the flames were bright blue, a shade of such unlikely brilliance that people whispered of supernatural origins.’ He paused, and I could see that reviving the memories was very painful. ‘There was no hope for those trapped inside,’ he went on softly, ‘for the doorway was narrow and swiftly blocked by people pushing to get out.’

  I touched his arm. ‘I believe the smoke and the fumes very quickly render people unconscious,’ I said. ‘Where a fire blazes fiercely, it is the inability to draw breath that kills.’

  He turned to me, tears in his bright eyes. ‘It is what I have been telling myself,’ he said. ‘I pray you are right.’

  I hesitated, for what I wanted to ask him now was very delicate. ‘This is – have you not returned before? Did you not …’ But I couldn’t find the words.

  ‘Didn’t I come hurrying to the village when news of their deaths, and the manner of them, reached me?’ he supplied. ‘No, Lassair. I did not.’

  The silence became painful and I forced myself to break it. ‘Why not?’

  After what seemed an age, he whispered, ‘Because I was afraid.’

  Afraid! I almost laughed. Gurdyman afraid? But he was powerful, he knew spells and defensive incantations, he—

  But he was afraid. I
could see it now as I stared at him, and hadn’t I been sensing it all these weeks?

  I said, ‘Gurdyman, what does brujo mean?’

  He spun round so sharply, his face full of fury, that I thought he was going to strike me. ‘Where did you hear that word?’ he hissed. ‘Tell me!’ He grabbed my arm, shaking me.

  Angry in my turn, I pushed his hand away. ‘Gurdyman!’ I cried. ‘It’s me, Lassair! Let go of my arm! You forget yourself.’

  He muttered an apology, dropping my arm, but then repeated, ‘Where? Who said it?’

  ‘Somebody whispered it outside the dormitory window around dawn,’ I replied coldly.

  He had gone white.

  I felt very scared. ‘Gurdyman?’ I whispered.

  He let out a long breath. ‘Brujo means magician,’ he said shortly.

  ‘But why should someone speak the word just there?’ I asked. But then I thought I knew.

  He was watching me closely, and I think he saw understanding dawn. ‘Go on,’ he commanded. ‘Answer your own question.’

  ‘Because somebody knew you were within,’ I whispered. ‘And that somebody knows what you are.’

  He straightened, staring down the hillside to the village. ‘Only one person, let us hope, and so we have a little time. We must make ready to leave, child, and be away as swiftly as we can.’

  ‘But we can’t, not yet, I’ve asked Iago to—’ I stopped. I hadn’t told Gurdyman about trying to acquire a cart.

  ‘To what?’ he demanded. We were already striding away from the church.

  He’ll have to know very soon, I thought. So I told him.

  To my relief he chuckled. ‘So you do not think me capable of walking all the way?’

  My anger resurfaced. ‘No,’ I said bluntly, ‘although you still haven’t told me how far we must go. But on the way here we were slower than the slowest of our companions. It’s late in the year now and it’s getting cold. Wherever we’re bound, we should make the best speed and make sure we are safely settled in before the winter really bites.’