‘But that’s not all he’s teaching you,’ Jack said quietly.
I felt myself blush. ‘What do you mean?’ I hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory, but I was on the defensive.
Jack sighed. He stoked the fire, checked on the water, then said, ‘Lassair, your Gurdyman is a very private person, discreet, subtle and quite clever enough to perceive that if the inhabitants of this town knew what he really was they’d flush him out like a rat from a sewer and drive him far away.’
‘He’s not!’ Stupidly I denied the accusation before Jack had made it. ‘He’s good, and no threat to anybody! He’s quite harmless, and – and-’
Harmless? Even I baulked at that.
Into the abrupt silence Jack said calmly, ‘He may well be good but he certainly isn’t harmless. The fact that he doesn’t do harm isn’t because he can’t but because he doesn’t choose to, which emphasizes his goodness.’
Jack waited for me to comment, but I couldn’t speak.
‘Now I have been quietly studying Gurdyman,’ he went on after a while. ‘Not that it’s easy, for he is a recluse and extremely careful who he chooses for friends. But I keep my eyes and ears open and I’ve spent a lot of time with you-’ I must have made some faint sound of protest, for he said swiftly, ‘Oh, don’t worry, you have been very discreet and barely said a word about him, but you can’t help what you are, and you reveal all the time that someone other than your village aunt has been teaching you.’
‘Edild is a fine woman!’ I protested. ‘She’s-’
But Jack held up a hand. ‘I know, Lassair. I’m not demeaning her, I’m merely stating that your mind has been opened and developed far beyond the range of anything she, or anybody else come to that, could do.’ Reluctantly I turned to look at him. ‘Gurdyman is extraordinary,’ he said gently. ‘You cannot know how much I envy you, being his adept.’
I felt as if my heart had stopped. Then it gave a powerful, almost painful lurch. I whispered, ‘You know, don’t you?’
He gave me a very sweet smile. ‘Of course I know.’
It was as if a careful, secure construct that I’d built around myself had come tumbling down. I’d imagined, in my fond arrogance, that the land into which Gurdyman was leading me – that fascinating, wonderful, dangerous, mysterious, magical and frequently terrifying land – was like a foreign country which, when I left it and returned to the everyday world and the doltish, blinkered people who inhabited it, left no sign on me to show I’d ever been away. I’d thought myself so special, hugging my growing store of arcane knowledge and, yes, my increasing array of skills, believing everyone I encountered thought I was a simple village girl who was learning to be a healer.
But not everyone had been fooled.
‘Do – do they all know?’ I whispered. I could hardly bear to ask.
‘No!’ Jack replied instantly. ‘Oh, no. You’re that healer girl. Renowned as trustworthy and hard-working, I might add, and your reputation grows.’
‘But that’s all?’ He nodded. ‘You swear it is so?’ I pressed urgently.
‘I swear,’ he said solemnly. Then: ‘I wouldn’t lie to you about this, Lassair. You have learned well from Gurdyman that the other studies you undertake with him are not to be advertised; that to speak of them is potentially dangerous, for both of you.’ He looked straight into my eyes. ‘I will never do anything to put you at risk.’
Perhaps it was just the emotion of the moment that had made him speak with such quiet, powerful intensity.
He, too, must have felt the awkwardness. He got up, tested the water again and then set about mixing drinks for us. He took longer than usual about it, and I guessed he was giving us both time to recover.
When once more we were seated side by side beside the hearth, he said, in very much his normal voice, ‘So, we now suspect that Morgan too was robbed, probably of cinnabar and maybe also of his hidden stash of emeralds. We know too that although the thief or the killer – perhaps both, and perhaps they are one and the same – must have been desperate to find Osmund’s secret workroom, they didn’t succeed, for the emeralds are still there.’ He glanced briefly at me. ‘I am guessing that you have a fair idea what these people – Osmund, Morgan and Cat, maybe your own beloved Gurdyman – have been up to. I’m surmising that it’s an experiment of some kind, and that it is somehow extremely important. Perhaps it holds out the promise of vast wealth; perhaps its riches are spiritual. Robert Powl, I suggest, was shipping certain very special ingredients into the town, and somehow he came to understand that what he carried – in all innocence, probably – was a great deal more valuable than he had imagined. Perhaps he sold some of these substances before he realized; Mistress Judith seems to have had them in her store.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Our thief, then, is motivated simply by greed. Our killer, for some reason of his own, doesn’t want the experiments to continue. Or, as I just said, maybe thief and killer are the same, united in a single evil man – or woman – who operates under the Night Wanderer disguise.’
I put down my mug and dropped my face into my hands. All at once I was exhausted. I’d come all the way from Aelf Fen that day, discovered Gurdyman was still worryingly missing, been surprised and jumped almost out of my skin when Jack burst in on me, thought I was safely indoors for the night at his house only to be dragged out again to revisit the scene of gentle Morgan’s and innocent, pitiable Cat’s deaths and then creep along in the shadows to investigate poor Osmund’s pathetic hidden workroom.
Now, back once more in the warmth and security of Jack’s house, I’d been brought face to face with the fact that he knew far more about me than I’d thought he did, and then, on top of that, he seemed to be asking me to conduct a full analysis of the Night Wanderer’s crimes. It was too much; far, far too much.
And through it all I kept seeing Morgan’s and Cat’s bodies, the young apprentice thrown across his master as if he’d given himself in a futile attempt to save the beloved old man’s life. Jack knew that Gurdyman was engaged in the same work as Morgan – how many others knew too? Did it mean what I was so very afraid it meant, that Gurdyman was also in danger? Already dead? Hrype had told me he was safe, but that had been days ago, and, besides, I didn’t think Hrype was above lying if he felt it was for the right reasons.
I didn’t know how I would even begin to cope with it if Gurdyman suffered – had already suffered – the fate of the Night Wanderer’s other victims.
I held my emotions at bay for as long as I could, but anxiety, fatigue and grief were overcoming me and I had nothing left with which to fight. A sob broke out of me, and very soon I was crying in earnest.
Jack’s arms went round me, and he made an inarticulate sound of dismay and sympathy. ‘There’s no reason to believe he’s been harmed,’ he said gently. How did he know? I wondered wildly. ‘Every other victim has been left in plain sight, almost as if the killer wants them to be quickly found, so why should he suddenly change his habits?’