I didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure I could have done. I stepped forward, looking down at the bench. A small purse sat at one end, the sort that is made of a circle of leather with a cord threaded around the circumference, so that the cord can be drawn up to enclose whatever is inside. I untied the cord and opened the circle of leather out, spreading it flat.
The lamp light caught a brilliant glint of green: Osmund the shy, secretive young priest had somehow managed to get hold of a small purseful of emeralds.
I picked one up. Held it to the flame. The brilliance increased, sending out a flash that made me blink with sudden, momentary blindness.
‘Are they real?’ Jack breathed from right beside me.
I was peering closely at the stone in my hand. I put it down and picked up another. Then another, till I had examined all seven. Then I said, ‘I believe they are.’
‘How can you tell?’
I’d seen fake stones; Gurdyman had instructed me in how to tell them from the real thing, as in our work there was no virtue whatsoever in anything unless it truly was what it purported to be. ‘They have inclusions,’ I said. ‘Marks, flaws, cracks, tiny patches of cloudiness. It’s impossible to fake those, and so you have to be suspicious of a perfect stone.’
Jack sank down on to the three-legged stool beside the workbench. ‘Do you think these are what were stolen from Robert Powl’s stone vault?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Not these very ones, I’d have thought, though, since it would be a bit foolish to steal from the man from whom you rented your premises and then bring the booty right there under his roof and next to his own warehouse. But these are worth a great deal of money.’ I picked them up again, one by one, stunned by their beauty. ‘If you had gone to the trouble of constructing a secure vault, I should imagine these are exactly the sort of things you’d want to put in it.’
Reluctantly I put the emeralds back in the purse and drew up the strings. With their radiant light hidden once more, the room seemed suddenly dull. I moved over to look at whatever had been going on in the copper pot on top of the little furnace. It held a dark mix that was slightly sticky in texture – I wasn’t silly enough to touch it with my finger but poked it with a glass rod lying on the bench – and, when I bent over to sniff it, it smelt somehow exotic.
I spun round, my eyes searching along the shelves. At the far end of one I found a quantity of cinnabar.
I said softly, ‘Nobody knew he rented this room. Whoever has been doing the stealing and the – the killing’ – it was even more awful to think about it here – ‘it doesn’t look as if they found out about this place. They didn’t uncover that secret.’
I stared down at the emeralds. I was just beginning to work out what had been going on here. Again, and even more intensely, I missed Gurdyman; I needed him, needed his wisdom, his ability to put awesome and potentially terrifying things in proportion. I didn’t think I could manage this – what I knew, the task that somehow I was going to have to do – without him.
I straightened the copper pot on top of the athanor and wiped my hands on my skirt. I turned to face Jack. ‘There are some things I have to tell you,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think I’d better do so here.’ It doesn’t feel safe, I could have added. This was the place where Osmund had worked so hard, pushed on deeper and deeper into mystery, disobeying his superiors and enduring harsh punishment because the force that was driving him on would not relent.
Whatever Osmund had released was still there. I could sense it, and the hairs on my head felt as if they were crawling with alien life. And that wasn’t the only danger: someone had known what he was doing and, to stop him, they had struck him down in his own church, with no regard for the sanctity of either the place or for the precious spark of Osmund’s life.
No; Jack and I were better far away from here.
I put my silent pleading for understanding into my eyes, and Jack picked it up. ‘Very well,’ he said coolly. He looked both apprehensive and just a little resentful. ‘We’ll lock up here and go back to the house.’
He reached out to pick up the emeralds, no doubt thinking that they’d be safer in his keeping than left here, where anybody breaking in would see them. But I cried, ‘No! Leave them!’
He looked questioningly at me – something else I’d have to explain – but did as I asked.
He locked the door again and tucked the key away. Then he strode off up the little passage and I hastened to follow.
I wished that the walk back to the deserted village, and Jack’s house, was twice or three times longer than it was. I knew I had to talk to him. However it had come about, he and I were working together now, and it would be neither right nor fair to keep back things that were at the heart of what was happening.
Had the secrets been mine, I believe I would not have hesitated to share them with Jack. I knew by then that I could trust him; that he was a good man. Moreover, had he been in possession of all the information he ought to have been, his clever, agile, lawman’s mind would undoubtedly have begun instantly to see links and hints that I’d missed. He knew so much more about the town, its inhabitants and how the place operated than I did, and, who knew, he might have been able to go straight to the murderer – the Night Wanderer – and apprehend him that very night.
But they weren’t my secrets.
I hadn’t actually been sworn not to divulge what I was only just beginning to glimpse behind the veil. I knew, thought, as I knew my own name, that these deep matters were not for sharing. My problem, then, was that, knowing it was my absolute duty to help Jack discover what was really happening here and bring it to an end, I was bound by another, equally profound honour, not to reveal any more than was strictly necessary.
If only we were walking back to Aelf Fen, and I had most of the night to decide what to say…
We didn’t pass a soul on the way home. We heard shouts and a brief clash of metal in the distance – perhaps one of the patrols was encouraging some unruly citizens back to their beds – but the town seemed otherwise deserted, and a deep silence hung over the village. Not even a rat stirred in the ditches.
It was a relief to get inside and watch Jack bar the door. Even as he turned to poke life into the fire, feeding it with small kindling and then larger logs, I was framing my opening words. He put water on to heat and sat down. I crouched beside him.
Then, without giving myself any time for second thoughts, I said, ‘You remember Lord Gilbert?’
Jack looked surprised, as well he might. ‘The lord of your manor. Yes, of course. Fat and rather lazy, with a clever wife.’
I smiled briefly. That pretty much summed up Lord Gilbert. ‘I can, of course, only be here in Cambridge with his permission, and he’s given it because he believes what I’m learning with Gurdyman will make me a more useful inhabitant of Aelf Fen. Isolated villages like ours need a good healer, and, while my aunt Edild is an excellent teacher, Lord Gilbert has been convinced that Gurdyman’s breadth of knowledge is wider, and he likes the idea of his village healer having wisdom above the usual run.’ I paused, thinking very hard. ‘Gurdyman is a well-travelled man,’ I went on, carefully weighing my words, ‘and, in his youth, he travelled in a land called Al-Andalus, which I think is in Moorish Spain, where he encountered the wise Arabs who were the inheritors of all the wisdom of the Greeks and the Persians, and so he knows all manner of things that nobody else does, at least, nobody in England.’ Gurdyman had told me this with such conviction that I believed him. ‘One of his main interests is medicine, and he’s taught me enough already that I can see how incredibly advanced Arab doctors are in their knowledge compared to us in the Christian north, and-’ Careful, I warned myself. ‘Anyway, I’m just telling you this so you’ll realize that Lord Gilbert’s not being misled, and I really am learning a great deal of the healer’s art from Gurdyman.’ I paused, feeling rather as if I was about to dive into deep water. ‘But-’