‘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.