by Alys Clare
I met his bright blue eyes. ‘How did you know?’
‘I sensed a great upheaval …’ he began in a soft chant. But then he grinned. ‘No I didn’t. But, child, you were summoned at twilight by a lad in a blind panic who said there was a body lying soaked in blood and the healer had to come as fast as she could, so obviously you weren’t summoned to pick daisies.’ He spoke lightly, but his eyes, still on me, were watching me with anxious intensity. ‘Was it bad?’ he asked softly.
I nodded. I went on sipping. The brew was wonderfully comforting, and I was already beginning to feel sleepy. Gurdyman stepped towards me and briefly rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘Go to bed, Lassair. I shall return to my workbench.’ And that’s where I’ll be if you need me, hung unspoken in the air. He trotted off along the passage. ‘We shall talk in the morning,’ his voice floated back.
‘In the morning,’ I repeated softly. Then, my eyelids drooping, I finished the drink, made my brief preparations and then clambered up the ladder that leads to my little attic room above the kitchen. I took off my boots and my outer garments, then fell into bed. Whatever soporific Gurdyman had put in my drink, he’d added it with a generous hand. I was asleep within moments.
The sound of voices woke me. I opened my eyes to see sunshine pouring in through the windows that overlook Gurdyman’s sheltered little inner court. It was full day; my mentor had kindly left me to sleep on.
Voices … Two male voices, Gurdyman’s and another.
Shocked into wakefulness, I leapt out of bed, filled the bowl with water from the jug beneath the window, washed my face and hands and then, putting more water in a cup, took up one of the little twigs I cut specially and cleaned my teeth. My herb-induced sleep had been heavy, and my mouth felt as if it was lined with fluff. I pulled on my gown, re-braided my hair, tied on a clean head band and arranged my small coif, trying all the time to keep my movements restrained and quiet; I really didn’t want to give the impression that I was taking particular care with my appearance, even though of course I was. Then, boots in my hand, I climbed barefoot down the ladder.
My attempt at nonchalant sophistication was somewhat spoiled by the fact that I missed my footing and slipped down the last few steps, landing in a heap on the floor.
The conversation out in the court abruptly stopped and Gurdyman said, ‘Are you all right in there, Lassair?’
‘Fine!’ I said, my voice a squeak.
There was a pause, then he said – and I could hear he was smiling – ‘Aren’t you coming out to join us?’
So I did.
He and Jack sat opposite each other on wooden benches, with Gurdyman’s portable working board set up between them. Gurdyman was smiling at me indulgently. As for Jack, when I nerved myself to meet his eyes, I saw with a lift of the heart that he looked as glad to see me as I was him.
He got up as I approached and gave a sort of bow. He said quietly, ‘I heard you were back.’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
Gurdyman endured a few moments of Jack and me looking awkwardly at each other, then said firmly, ‘Lassair, I expect you can guess why Jack is here. Come and sit down, for he wants to talk to you.’
I hesitated. If I sat next to Gurdyman, Jack might think I didn’t want to be near him, and if I sat next to him, it might make me appear too forward. So I pulled up a third bench and sat on that. Gurdyman shook his head in exasperation. Then, turning to Jack, he said, ‘Go on, then.’
Jack was watching me closely. ‘You were called out yesterday evening to attend to a wounded man down by the river, Gurdyman tells me.’
‘He was dead. The wounded man, I mean. I think the people who found him panicked, and sending for a healer was the first thing they thought of.’
‘He had been dead some time?’
‘Yes.’ I explained about the cold ground and the congealing blood.
‘I’ve taken a team out there this morning and organized a proper search,’ Jack said with a frown – of criticism for the inadequacies of the colleague I’d met yesterday? – ‘but we found nothing.’
‘I looked, last night,’ I said quickly. Had that been the right thing to do, or should I have left it to Jack? ‘I didn’t find anything either.’
‘What of the others who were there?’ Jack asked. ‘There were some lads, and a young couple, I believe. Would any of them have noticed anything, or picked up some object?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘The two boys had barely got to the scene before one of them raced off to fetch me, and I don’t think it would have occurred to either of them to start searching; they were far too shocked. As for the courting couple, before they found the body they were only interested in each other, and afterwards, his sole concern was to take care of her.’
‘You don’t think it would be worth my while to find them and talk to them?’
‘No.’ He’d learn nothing, I was sure of it, and I would save them from the ordeal if I could.
Jack seemed to accept that. Still watching me closely, he said, ‘What are your thoughts?’
‘Er – What do you mean?’
‘Tell me what you observed, and what you conclude from it.’
I paused, trying to sum up my impressions and work out how to express them in a way that would be helpful. It wasn’t easy, especially when he was staring at me so intently. I had forgotten the clear green of his eyes. Get on with it, I ordered myself.
‘The man was wealthy and enjoyed a rich life, with plenty on the board and in the larder,’ I began. ‘He could afford good clothes, and he had recently treated himself to a costly robe.’ The wool had had that distinctive, new-cloth gloss and smell. ‘He wore fine boots, although he wasn’t much of a walker, for the wear on the soles and heels was uneven, and he probably turned his toes out at quite an awkward angle. He had a purse attached to his belt, as well as a dagger in a nicely decorated sheath.’ I stopped, thinking. ‘Whoever attacked him didn’t do it to rob him, because the purse was still bulging, and they took him by surprise. He didn’t have time to get his dagger out.’ I paused again. ‘The assailant jumped on him from behind and he dug in his heels as whoever it was pulled him over backwards. The killer tore out the throat, I would guess in one savage movement and probably with the right hand, destroying the windpipe, the gullet and the blood vessels on the left of the neck. The man would have died instantly.’ Suddenly I could see that awful wound again. I swallowed, fighting the light-headedness. ‘I can’t begin to imagine the weapon,’ I said. ‘You’d think it was the huge paw of some wild creature, only I don’t know anything that comes that big.’
Silence. I heard my last words, over and over in my head, like a fading echo. Anything that comes that big. Comes that big. That big. Big. How stupid I sounded.
Then, after what seemed hours, Gurdyman stirred and addressed Jack. ‘You have seen the body?’ Jack nodded. ‘Do you know who he was?’
Jack sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘His name was Robert Powl. As Lassair surmised, he was indeed a wealthy man, building himself a fine new house out to the north-west of the town, not far from where the quayside starts to peter out.’
‘He was a merchant?’ Gurdyman demanded.
Jack shook his head. ‘No. He had a fleet of river craft, and his business was the transportation of cargoes – goods, livestock, people – around the fenland waters and up and down the rivers between here and the coast.’
‘A lucrative business,’ Gurdyman observed.
‘Yes,’ Jack agreed. ‘He seemed to be doing very well.’
‘Has he family?’ I asked, somewhat sharply. It seemed more important to ask about the people left behind to grieve than about the poor man’s prosperity.
Jack met my eyes, and I sensed he knew exactly what I was thinking. ‘He was a widower,’ he said. ‘His wife died five years ago, and they had no children. He lives with a small household of staff, who have been informed of their master’s death and the manner of it, and are deeply shocked.’
‘And can
any of them suggest why their master was killed?’ Gurdyman asked. ‘Had he enemies? Somebody he had crossed in business?’
‘We are enquiring, but it appears not,’ Jack replied. ‘Robert Powl liked to make money, and he was keen to use that money to make more, but then so do all successful men of affairs.’
‘Why, then, was he killed?’ I asked in a small voice. And in such a terrible manner …
Jack looked at me, his face full of sympathy. ‘I don’t know, Lassair.’ But. I could hear the but, although it wasn’t spoken.
So could Gurdyman. ‘But you have your suspicions?’ he said.
Jack looked from one to the other of us. ‘I have—’ he began, then stopped.
‘Go on,’ Gurdyman urged. He glanced at me. ‘You won’t scare Lassair. She is made of stern stuff.’
Jack drew in a breath. Then very quietly he said, ‘This death is not entirely unexpected.’
Gurdyman saw what he meant before I did. Leaning forward, he said, ‘There have been others, killed in the same manner.’
But Jack shook his head. ‘No – not people,’ he replied, in the same barely audible voice, as if he feared eavesdroppers out in the alley on the far side of the high enclosing wall.
‘Not people?’ Gurdyman echoed. ‘What, then?’
‘A rat, then a cat, and finally a dog. The rat was found by St Bene’t’s Church, under the tower. The cat was on the quayside, hidden under a pile of wood shavings left by a shipwright. The dog was curled round the lip of the Barnwell spring.’
I shivered suddenly, for all three locations seemed to be significant. St Bene’t’s has a well, said to be very old, in its churchyard. The tower, built by the Saxons, soars above it, and people say it’s haunted. The river can appear deeply sinister when you’re there alone, with the dark waters flowing silently by. And the Barnwell spring – the name is a corruption of bairns’ well, for traditionally boys and lads met there on the eve of St John the Baptist’s Day to wrestle and play – is very, very old. Legends abound concerning its origins and although nowadays it has lost much of its old magic, if you go there at sunrise, when the mists are gently floating above the grass, there is still an atmosphere; a whisper of ancient things.
And now dead animals had been left at each place.
‘Were they killed like the dead man?’ I asked.
Jack turned to me. ‘Yes.’
‘Throats ripped out as if by a sharp-clawed hand?’ For some reason I needed to hear it confirmed.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you any idea why?’ Gurdyman spoke quietly.
‘I—’ But Jack stopped, shaking his head.
‘Theories, then,’ Gurdyman snapped with uncharacteristic impatience. ‘I cannot believe you haven’t got a theory.’
Jack straightened up, gazing over Gurdyman and me at the wall beyond. ‘I understand that something similar has happened before.’ He didn’t want to tell us. You could clearly hear the reluctance in his tone.
‘When?’ Gurdyman spoke the single word like a bark.
‘A long time ago,’ Jack said. ‘But the pattern was the same. A mouse first, savagely killed and left in a churchyard. Then a hare, left by the river. The dog was found in a well that used to exist at the corner of the marketplace.’
‘And then a man? Precisely as has just happened?’ Gurdyman demanded.
Jack snapped his full attention on to him. ‘Yes, exactly the same,’ he said slowly. ‘As far as these present events have gone, it appears that this is an exact copy of what went on before.’
‘As far as—’ Gurdyman was saying.
But I didn’t need to listen to the rest of his exclamation, nor to Jack’s answer.
For I already knew.
The brutal murder of Robert Powl would only be the first.
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.’