We went into the house. It was cold, dark and it felt very empty. Only now that Morgan’s gentle spirit was no longer there did I realize how much it had permeated and warmed the house he had lived in for so long. The hearth still held blackened fragments of wood; the last relics of the final fire. The comings and goings of the law officers who had attended Morgan’s and Cat’s deaths had trampled ash and embers all over the floor, so I fetched a broom and swept up.
Jack lit a lamp and, wandering round the four walls, said, ‘Did it look much the same before?’
There was no need to say before what.
I looked up from my sweeping. ‘Yes, as far as I recall. Morgan and Cat were tidy, and they really didn’t use the house for much other than eating and sleeping, and Morgan didn’t sleep a lot.’ He’d had that in common with Gurdyman: two aged magicians, ancient in years and steeped in wisdom and long experience, who, perhaps sensing that the time remaining to them was all too short, elected not to waste it in sleep.
Amid my deep sorrow at the way Morgan’s life had ended I felt a sudden pang of longing for Gurdyman. Missing him, worrying about him, I realized I loved the old man.
‘I don’t think there’s anything helpful for us here,’ Jack said eventually. He put some crocks straight on a board set back against the rear wall, tied up a roll of bedding that was spreading across the floor, then turned to me. ‘You’ve done a good job.’ He smiled.
I felt embarrassed that he should comment on my sentimental act. ‘I – er, I just thought it wasn’t right to leave it all disturbed and dirty,’ I said.
Jack looked steadily at me. ‘No need to explain,’ he said softly. ‘Haven’t I just been doing the same?’
I ducked my head down, replaced the broom in its corner and led the way out of the house, across the narrow yard and into Morgan’s workroom. We stepped inside and Jack lit more candles from the lamp’s flame. The room burst into light, and we stood and stared.
I felt instantly at home. Not because I’d been here before – I don’t think I’d done more than poke my head round the door to call out a greeting – but because it was so incredibly familiar: so like Gurdyman’s crypt. The space was quite different, for Gurdyman worked in a stone-walled cellar deep beneath the ground, its roof held up by stout pillars, and Morgan’s workroom was really a rural barn. But the contents looked to be interchangeable: a long, scarred wooden bench; a stand of irregularly spaced shelves on which a jumble of bottles, jars, pots, bowls and cups jostled for position; a shady corner storage space with an array of mysteriously coloured liquids in glass bottles. And, of course, the peculiar assortment of experimental equipment that people like Morgan and Gurdyman use in their work: retorts, alembics, gourds and pelicans, and on the floor in a corner the peculiar little furnace called an athanor that is used when a steady heat has to be maintained for long periods.
Turning slowly, my eyes going all round the room, I was now facing the door by which we’d just entered. Above it hung a heavy golden chain, the bright metal of its links catching the bright light of the candle flames. It was the Aurea Catena; the symbol of the passage of knowledge, always and only by word of mouth, from master to pupil; from adept to adept. And that knowledge must never, ever, be written down, for it is secret.
Gurdyman had a similar length of chain. I was his pupil, his adept, just as poor Cat had been Morgan’s. I could have wept for all of us.
Jack seemed to pick up my sorrow. ‘Will you check to see if anything has been taken?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry to ask,’ he added quickly. ‘I can tell this is hard for you.’
Surreptitiously I dried my eyes. ‘They were different, and people regarded them with suspicion, but Morgan was kind and gentle, and Cat was so shy and awkward, and he’d found a safe haven with Morgan and was happy, as far as you could tell,’ I said. ‘For two such harmless souls to be killed as they were is just… just so wrong.’
Jack came over and put his arms round me, and I was grateful for his solidity and warmth. ‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘And all we can do to try to put things right is find out who killed them and bring him to justice.’ He paused. ‘It’s not really enough, is it?’
I shook my head. For a moment I buried my face against his chest and then, drawing strength from him, stood up and moved away. ‘Come on,’ I said decisively. ‘Hold up the lamp, and I’ll start on the shelves.’
I looked at every item. There was no cinnabar. Also, the small hidden space which Jack located at the base of one wall, just above the floor, had been emptied. What had Morgan kept in there? Had it been the same precious stuff that Robert Powl had secreted away in his stone vault?
I slumped down on a bench. Oh, how I needed Gurdyman just then. As I tore my mind apart trying to think what possible use anyone could have for a lot of cinnabar, what a magician would store in a secret hiding place and was so precious that a thief would kill for it, and what connected the two, my head began to ache and my vision blurred.
Jack, watching me closely, said suddenly, ‘We must go.’
I jerked my head up and looked at him. ‘Why?’ Terror clutching at my heart, I whispered, ‘Is someone coming?’
I’d been so preoccupied with trying to work out an impossible puzzle that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to my surroundings. Even now, was a soft-footed, cloaked figure with holes for eyes in a dead-white face creeping up on us? Would we-
But, ‘No,’ said Jack with a rueful smile. ‘We’re safe, but it’s time you stopped torturing yourself. You’ve gone quite pale.’
I stood up, stumbled, and he took my hand. We left the workroom – in truth, I didn’t need to stay any longer, for I had found out all I was going to from Morgan’s special place – and, checking that both its door and the door to the house were firmly closed, we set out across the misty fields and back to the town.
We managed to negotiate the quayside path without anyone seeing us. At one point we were startled by a sudden eruption of drunken shouting from one of the taverns further along the track, and we slipped quickly into the deep shadow of one of the tall warehouses. But whatever disturbance had broken out was soon quashed, and silence fell down again.
We reached the narrow passage between Robert Powl’s building and its neighbour. Jack took the key out of his pouch. We had brought Morgan’s lamp with us – I was sure he wouldn’t mind – and now, as we reached the far end of the tunnel-like entrance, Jack relit it, shading with his hand all but the smallest ray of light. It was enough to allow him to put the key in the keyhole. To the surprise of neither of us, it fitted and turned the lock.
We stepped inside, and Jack closed and fastened the door. Then he held up the lamp.
If, as we believed, the young priest Osmund had rented this place from Robert Powl for some private purpose of his own that had to be kept secret from his fellow clerics, it was now pretty clear – to me, anyway – what that purpose was. Here were the same items we had just been contemplating in Morgan’s workroom. Here was the athanor, with some substance in a blackened copper pot sitting on top of it. There was the store of powders, liquids, pastes and everything in between; there was the brightly coloured array of metal samples.
Osmund, it seemed, had also been an artist. Rolls of parchment were scattered all over the long wooden bench, covered with the most neat and even handwriting and illustrated with beautiful little images, brilliantly coloured: I saw a glowing patch of lapis, a quick flash of gold. And on the wall behind the workbench there were a couple of larger paintings, perhaps two hands’ lengths by three. One depicted the head and shoulders of a man, with a younger woman standing beside and just behind him; both leaned out towards the viewer, their faces intent and serious, and each had a forefinger to their lips in the universal hush! gesture implying secrecy. The other painting was strange: it too depicted a man and a woman, but they were somehow fused together, the right side of him joined to the left side of her, he dressed in tunic and hose, she in a long flowing robe. Beneath their feet was a two-headed dragon and on their joined heads was a crown.