by Alys Clare
Belladonna.
Gurdyman had been watching me and now he held out his hand. I poured water into his mug and put in two drops, but he shook his head and mouthed, ‘More.’
I didn’t know how much it was safe to give him. I shook in one more drop, then firmly put back the stopper and returned the bottle to its pocket in his bag.
He sat for a while staring out into the darkness. Then, with a sigh, he lay down and soon he was asleep.
I was far from sleep, for I was far too worried. About him, about the food supplies, about the pony, about being all alone with a sick man in an alien land with no concept of where we were heading and no idea of how to get there even if I did. I was totally dependent upon Gurdyman, and now he was failing.
What in the dear Lord’s name would I do if he died?
Go back, I answered myself. You may not know the way forward, but it would be easy enough to retrace your steps and return the way you have come.
It was reassuring.
But what about food?
If he dies, you will no longer have to share what remains.
The reply came, I think, from somewhere outside myself. It was ruthless, but it was sound.
I was wide awake.
I kept watch over the lonely, empty lands all around, Presently the moon rose.
I wondered if I should turn round straight away, as soon as it was light. Was it not far too risky to go on with Gurdyman as he was?
An image floated into my mind. Light striking black water, setting off flashes of green and gold in its mysterious depths.
And then, cursing myself for not thinking of it before even as my spirits soared, I knew what to do. I reached deep down into the depths of my satchel and took out a leather-enclosed shape. Carefully, trying not to jolt the cart, I climbed down and walked a few paces away. I sat down cross-legged, spread my skirts on the hard-baked ground and took the object out of its bag, folding back the soft protective layer of sheep’s wool.
Then, holding it in my hands, I stared down deep inside the shining stone.
As so often happens, at first there was nothing to see. I waited, for I had learned to be patient. Then all at once it was as if the moon had grown brighter, so that now I saw its reflection clearly in the blackness of the stone. And I saw that it wasn’t the light of the moon but the stone’s own interior flame. As if it felt my attention, the shining stone had awoken and was joining its energy with mine.
I saw a series of swift images. I saw buildings whose architecture was alien. I saw men with brown faces under clean white headdresses, and women in graceful robes and veils that covered them and hid them from view. I saw a long road, stretching out behind me and forging on ahead. I looked along the road ahead, and saw that it began to climb. Up, up, becoming narrow and twisting, winding its way up into the mountains.
And then I thought I saw, just for a heartbeat, a city made of creamy-white, shining softly in the moonlight. A voice seemed to say, Hush! Do not speak of it, for its location is secret and it remains ever hidden.
But I could not speak of it even if I wanted to, for there was nobody to tell.
I stared down into the stone, my eyes searching, but the picture had gone. I thought I might have imagined it; that it had been born of my extreme need.
There was something still visible in the shining stone, however, and I narrowed my eyes to focus upon it. It looked like an afterglow of some sort, and I realized it was just a vague round shape, its edges undulating slightly. It resembled a large and very beautiful pearl.
And, once again, I heard that deep hum of summertime insects and, faintly, the musical, resonating chime of metal on stone.
I sat with the shining stone in my hands for some time, deriving profound comfort simply from touching it. After a while I wrapped it up and put it back in its leather bag. I stood up, walking a few paces to and fro to get the stiffness out of my legs.
It seemed to me that the stone had been encouraging me to go on.
Should I comply?
I trusted it. It was my ally, and I knew it would not lead me astray.
But was it thinking only of what was good for me? Had it borne in mind the ailing Gurdyman?
I stood indecisive.
I knew I must make up my mind before I returned to the cart, for I would not sleep until I knew what we would be doing in the morning. After quite a lot more pacing, I reached a decision. We would go on for at least one more day. There was enough belladonna in my aunt’s bottle to last a while, and if it had improved Gurdyman’s condition as much as I hoped it would, then for sure he wouldn’t hear of us turning back. But I would insist – absolutely insist, before even I hitched the pony to the cart and set off tomorrow – that he tell me where we were going and how to get there.
With the resolution firm in my mind, I settled down in the cart in my blanket, shawl and cloak, and was very soon drifting into sleep.
Next day as we set off again, the air felt different.
The weather had turned colder.
The pony was stumbling, and for long stretches I got down from the cart and walked beside him, a hand on his bridle, speaking softly to him. I was rationing out food with an even meaner hand now, and our noon meal was disappointingly meagre. I filled our water barrel from a stream, miserably aware that if – no, when – the water froze, that resource would be lost.
Gurdyman sat huddled in the blankets. His breathing was laboured and he barely spoke, and I had to abandon my plan to make him give me the information I so badly needed. He had more drops from Edild’s bottle first thing in the morning and again at noon.
We stopped for the night. We seemed to be on a wide, treeless, shelterless plain, with the mountains away to the east. They looked much closer now, and it occurred to me that we had probably been climbing steadily all day, although the slope had not really been apparent. The pony and I, however, were exhausted, which suggested I was right. Gurdyman got out of the cart and tottered a short distance away to relieve himself. Had the exercise not been of such an intimate nature, I would have rushed to help him.
I had never seen him look so frail.
When he was settled and wrapped in his blankets once more I climbed up after him and presented the sparse amount of food that constituted our evening meal. He had turned away to rummage in his bag, and he muttered, ‘In a moment, child. First I will take a dose of—’
He gave a sort of gasp. I spun round and saw him holding Edild’s little bottle between fingers and thumb.
It was empty.
‘But there was plenty left!’ I cried. ‘When you dosed yourself at noon, I made sure to check!’ He watched me steadily, not speaking. ‘Didn’t you put the stopper back properly?’ Still he didn’t reply. I lunged towards him, blind fury soaring through me. ‘You stupid old man!’ I yelled. ‘How could you be so careless? We needed that medicine – you needed that medicine! I have nothing so potent in my satchel and I was relying on Edild’s potion to last until we find help! And I don’t know when that will be, because I haven’t any idea of where we’re going and if we’re nearly there, because you won’t tell me!’
I screamed the last words, my voice so loud that I felt something in my throat burst. I swallowed my own blood, clamping a hand over my mouth in case he saw.
The devastating, destructive anger had gone. I stared at him, his face so pale, his eyes so troubled, and an agonizing pain ran through me. ‘I’m sorry!’ I whispered. ‘Gurdyman, dear Gurdyman, I’m so sorry. It was an accident, I know, and not your fault, and I had no right to shout at you like that.’
He put out his hand and I took it. It was icy cold.
‘You are quite right to be angry, child,’ he said. His voice was a breathy whisper. ‘I am indeed a stupid old man, for in taking on a task that was over-taxing for someone of my age and in my state of health I have not only endangered myself but you too, and that is unforgivable.’
‘No! I forgive you, of course I do!’ I cried in protest. I had never se
en him weak, defeated and humble, and it felt as if my world was rocking on its foundations. If he wasn’t the strong, decisive, dependable Gurdyman I knew, then what was going to happen to us? Who was to lead us on if he couldn’t?
You.
I had no idea who spoke the word but it certainly wasn’t me.
He was struggling for breath, and I sensed he wanted to say something more. He raised his hand and feebly pointed towards the mountains over on our left. ‘The place we are bound is just there,’ he said, and I had to strain to hear him. ‘We climb quite a long way, and we come to a narrow little track that is all but invisible unless you know it is there.’ He paused to catch his breath. Then, so softly that I barely heard, ‘I know it is there.’
‘And what will we find at the end of it?’ I asked.
But he shook his head, silently indicating the water barrel. I gave him a brimming cup, and he drank it in slow sips. I offered him a strip of dried meat and he took it, but the tiny inroads he made suggested he had done so for my sake and not his.
I gave him digitalis, as much as I felt it was safe to do. I helped him to settle down, propping him up with his pillow resting on his bag. He breathed more easily in a more upright position. I watched him until he fell asleep.
I got down from the cart and went to see to the pony. He had wandered some distance off and found a small stream, on whose banks there were some patches of grass. He was tearing at them desperately and I wanted to tell him, Slow down, make that last, for there’s nothing else.
I left him to it. I didn’t even bother to hobble him. I wasn’t worried that he would run away – where would he go? – and just then I didn’t much care.
My legs were shaky, and I knew it wasn’t just from the long day’s walk. Like everyone else, I was used to walking. I wasn’t suffering from too much exercise but from not enough to eat.
My stomach was growling with hunger, and if I moved my head too quickly I felt dizzy and saw stars before my eyes. I wondered how long it was since I’d eaten a proper meal, and gave up when I got to five days. Or was it six?
I stood quite still, looking over towards the mountains. My eyes were playing tricks, for sometimes the lower slopes and the distant heights seemed to be very close and I thought I could make out the narrow track snaking its way deep into the heart of the range. Then all at once a huge gulf seemed to rush in to separate me from our goal, and the mountains seemed so far away and so tiny that I knew I would never reach them.
Perhaps I was going to die there, on that wide, desolate plain. Perhaps Gurdyman’s bones, the pony’s and mine would be found in the spring, when the snows cleared and the first of the new season’s pilgrims set out along the trail. I wondered what I should do about the shining stone. Should I leave it for its next guardian to discover? Should I bury it? I didn’t know, and the problem was far too great to deal with.
Presently I wandered back to the cart.
Gurdyman looked very peaceful, and it was good to see him deeply asleep. I didn’t want to disturb him. Trying not to make any sudden movements, I collected my satchel, my blanket and my cloak and settled down under the cart.
I dozed for a while, in the border land between being awake and being asleep. Thin threads of dreams danced and flowed through my mind. I thought I heard a voice, speaking kindly. I thought it might have been my father’s. ‘I wish you were here, Father,’ I said. I didn’t know if my waking self or my dreaming self spoke the words. ‘I’d so like to tell you how much I love you before I die.’
I was so cold.
I slept, woke to utter darkness, slept again; so deeply that it might indeed have been death.
Now my dreams were vivid and incredibly realistic, for I thought I could even feel the thump of footsteps on the hard ground beside me. I opened my eyes and saw a whirl of stars overhead, and I said, ‘How beautiful!’ The starlight was brilliant, lighting the land in shades of silver, and my dreaming mind conjured up a small knot of people filing down from the foothills, singing some lovely, soothing chant, the white of their voluminous garments flowing round them as they walked.
‘Pilgrims,’ I said.
And from somewhere very close, a deep voice murmured, ‘Too late for pilgrims.’
Then I heard the echo of every person who had warned Gurdyman and me of the folly of setting out on such a journey in the late autumn. It’s late in the season for such a voyage, said the master of the Amethyst. And It is late in the year to be on the roads, added Maria with a shake of her head. Then they all joined in, a great chorus of them, telling us disapprovingly that we had been foolhardy, taken stupidly irresponsible risks, and that our fate was our own fault.
‘I wanted to get away,’ I whispered. ‘Gurdyman believed he was helping me by taking me with him. I was desperate to set out!’
It is Gurdyman who was desperate, said the quiet voice in my head. But he could not achieve his purpose alone.
His purpose? What did that mean?
And what was this about him not being able to do whatever it was by himself? Did it mean – oh, did it mean that he had used my grief and sorrow for his own ends? That, aware of how miserable I was back in Cambridge, he had craftily proposed this alternative, knowing full well I would jump at the chance to be anywhere but where I was?
No, no, I thought wildly, it cannot be so, for he cares about me, he is my teacher, my guide, my mentor, and he would not treat me in this way!
Would he?
And the quiet voice said, Yes.
I thought of my family, my friends, the places where I had been happy, the landscape of the fens that was my home and that was deep in my heart. I thought again of my father. I thought of Rollo, his spirit gone on ahead of me.
I thought of Jack.
Then, so cold now that I could not feel my feet, no longer knowing if I was awake or dreaming, I turned my face into the soft folds of my cloak and prepared for death.
EIGHT
It was some weeks after Jack discovered the island and the blackened remains of the fire that had destroyed both the dwellings and Rollo’s body, and Cambridge was in the grip of winter. There had been hard frosts for many a morning now, and often the frozen ground did not thaw all day. Snow had threatened several times, although so far there had been no more than a few light coverings.
The gammers and gaffers hurrying out to buy provisions in the market square muttered darkly about conditions getting worse before they got better: far worse, seemed to be the consensus. It was no weather to be outside unless you had to, and then only for a short spell. Jack had changed the times of the watches so that the hours spent out in the harsh conditions were briefer than usual, and his men were grateful. Not that gratitude stopped them grumbling, and Jack had quite often found too many men huddled round the hearth in the castle guardroom when they ought to have been outside.
Without anybody actually ordering or even approving it, Jack had quietly risen to a position of greater power and influence within the ranks of the lawmen of the town. The day of the Picots – the deeply unpopular sheriff, his relations and the corrupt circle of those who had thrived on his patronage – was largely over, with the sheriff himself remaining in his post (there was after all nobody within the city to remove him from it) in name only. The real strength lay with Jack Chevestrier. The men knew him and they trusted him. The townspeople recognized him as a man of integrity. Life should have been good, but it wasn’t.
He was perched on a stool in the guardroom one icy December morning, alone after having just shooed out the morning’s patrol, when word came from the guards on duty at the outer gate that somebody wished to see him.
‘He asked for me specifically?’ Jack demanded. ‘Who is he?’
He had assumed the caller was male. Just for a moment he thought about the alternative, but that was not something upon which to dwell.
‘Yes, he did,’ the messenger said. ‘As to who he is, he didn’t give a name. He’s tallish, wearing a heavy dark cloak with a deep hood.
Got strange eyes. Sort of silvery.’ The man shot Jack a sideways glance. ‘Odd, if you ask me. Look out at you like they can see through you.’
Jack had trained his men to be observant and the brief description was perceptive, for if the visitor was who Jack thought he was, then the eyes were his most remarkable feature. ‘Tell the men on the gate to send him up,’ he ordered.
A short time later, Hrype came into the guardroom. He walked swiftly across to the hearth, holding his hands out to the blaze. Jack let him be, for it was bitter outside and he looked half-frozen. Then, as Hrype’s stiff posture began to relax, Jack stood up and poured out a pewter mug of hot, spiced ale.
‘You do yourselves well up here,’ Hrype remarked after he had drunk a few deep mouthfuls.
‘The refreshments are not a regular feature of the guardroom,’ Jack replied. ‘The barrel of small beer in the corner is a gift from a grateful townswoman whose little son my men fished out of the river when he fell through the ice. She also sent the spices, which she said would liven it up a little and put heart in us.’
Hrype raised his mug. ‘She was right.’
Jack indicated a bench pulled up beside the hearth, and Hrype sat down. ‘What can I do for you?’ Jack asked, settling beside him. He had lowered his voice, sensing already that whatever had brought Hrype to him was not for sharing. The guardroom might be empty, but within the warren of the castle’s rooms, passages and hidden corners, there was always the likelihood of someone hearing voices and quietly stopping to listen.
Hrype studied him intently for some moments. Then, equally softly, he said, ‘I know you’ve been concerned about Lassair and Gurdyman’s continuing absence.’
‘Her whereabouts are nothing to—’ Jack began.
But Hrype interrupted. ‘Your behaviour would suggest otherwise, for I have observed you checking on Gurdyman’s house, as well as at – as well as other locations with which she is familiar and where you might reasonably have expected to find evidence of her presence.’
‘They are both townspeople of Cambridge and hence my responsibility,’ Jack said stiffly. ‘If harm has come to them, if they are in danger, then it is for me to go to their aid.’