‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘It’s difficult to say, though, with blows to the head, and we won’t really know till he wakes up.’
She nodded. ‘We won’t mention anything to his old mother yet, then,’ she murmured. ‘Shame to make her worry till we know if it’s necessary,’ she added wisely.
‘I’ll sit with him,’ I said, returning the empty mug to her.
‘You all right on your own?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
I realized then that the men had all gone. I had a vague memory of Jack bending down and saying something about having to go and check on something, but I couldn’t remember the details. I made myself comfortable and waited for Ginger to open his eyes.
I didn’t have long to wait.
He looked up at me, eyes bloodshot between the grossly swollen lids. ‘Fuck, my balls hurt like buggery,’ he muttered. Then he closed his eyes again.
The second time he opened them, he looked at me with recognition and said, aghast, ‘Did I just say what I think I did?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry.’ I put a hand to his forehead to check if he was hot. ‘I’ve heard far worse.’ Reassured that, as yet, he showed no sign of fever, I reached in my satchel for a palliative. I would make it strong.
‘They came on me like shadows,’ Ginger muttered. ‘I’m quick on my feet, but I didn’t stand a chance. One behind me, two in front, and a little runt of a fellow who didn’t do much. Caught me like a rat in a gulley.’
‘Did they want to know if you’d found anything in Osmund’s room?’ I suppose I should have left it to Jack to ask, but I was too impatient.
‘Yes. I didn’t tell them anything, miss,’ Ginger said with sudden urgency.
‘You couldn’t when you didn’t know anything.’ I held the cup of pain-killing medicine to his lips, and he sipped it. ‘I’m so sorry, Ginger.’
He tried to smile. ‘Not your fault. Nobody’s fault, really, except those bastards that beat me.’
Four of them. I was puzzled, and very anxious. If Ginger was right, then the Night Wanderer had accomplices. That was worrying, because for some reason I had it fixed in my head that he worked alone. If Ginger was wrong, it could mean either that he’d exaggerated to make it less shameful to have been overcome, or that his memory was faulty. And that, really, was the worst possibility, because it could suggest he had sustained much more damage than I thought. I really didn’t want that to be the explanation. I had discovered that I really liked Ginger.
The long day eventually passed. Jack, Walter and the others filtered back in ones and twos, till they were all gathered again in the room in the tavern. Food was served and for a while everyone was too busy eating to talk. When we’d finished, Jack said to me, ‘Do you need to stay with Ginger?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s as good as I can make him. He’ll heal, with luck, although we should keep an eye on him over the next day or so.’
‘And look for what?’
‘Dizziness, vomiting, confusion.’
‘Better not take him out on the piss, then,’ Fat Gerald said, ‘since that’s how he usually ends up.’
‘I resent that!’ came Ginger’s voice from the little room beyond. It was good to know he was up to retaliating.
‘I’ll watch him,’ Walter said quietly. He must, I reflected, know Jack very well, since he had detected before I had that Jack wanted to take me off somewhere.
Jack looked at me. ‘Come on, then.’
Gurdyman resumed his pacing. The little house on the island at the end of the causeway was very quiet. Darkness had fallen, and it had acted like a blanket and deadened even the usual small sounds from the wide fen that stretched out on three sides of the island.
‘You are wearing a path in the reeds on the floor,’ said a quiet voice ironically.
Gurdyman stopped. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. He sat down by the hearth, emitting a deep sigh that seemed to express frustration, anxiety and irritation. ‘But, oh, how I tire of these four walls.’
Hrype reached out to turn his boots, slowly drying in the heat from the fire. He had arrived as the sun set, and the water had in places been lapping up over the causeway. ‘You are safe here.’
‘Safe but bored,’ came the swift reply. ‘I am not used to being away from my own house.’
‘From your own workroom,’ Hrype corrected.
Gurdyman gave a short laugh. ‘True.’
Hrype glanced at him. ‘You have not asked Mercure if you might work with him? You’d have to assist him in whatever project he is pursuing rather than carry on with your own work, of course, but would at least take your mind off the tedium of having to be here when you long to be elsewhere.’
‘I haven’t asked and I shan’t,’ Gurdyman said. ‘Mercure works alone. He always has, and no doubt he always will.’
‘Do you know what absorbs him so?’ Hrype asked. ‘He does appear here in the house from time to time, I take it?’
‘Oh, indeed, quite frequently. He is the most kindly and hospitable of hosts, when he remembers he has a guest. I am free to eat and drink what I like; to make free with his books; to borrow anything of his. For a recluse, he is surprisingly well-equipped here.’
‘No doubt the pedlars include him on their rounds,’ Hrype remarked. ‘Several come to Aelf Fen, and here on the southern edge of the fens we are closer to the town than they are out there.’
There was a short silence. Then, ‘They,’ Gurdyman said softly.
‘Hm?’
‘You refer to the inhabitants of Aelf Fen as they, yet it is your home too, so surely it should have been we.’
‘I make no place my home,’ Hrype said roughly.
Gurdyman let that pass.
After a while he said, ‘I don’t believe anybody ever comes right out here to Mercure’s island. Your pedlars, I would guess, announce their presence at the landward end of the causeway, and Mercure trots along to purchase what he needs.’
Hrype shrugged. He was clearly indifferent to Mercure’s domestic arrangements. But Gurdyman was still thinking, and eventually he said, ‘I don’t think Mercure sees anyone. We are probably the first people he has spoken to for a long time.’
Now Hrype looked up. ‘What is he working on? What is it that so absorbs him that he is content to act as if the rest of humanity doesn’t exist?’
Gurdyman muttered something that might have been lucky man. But he was smiling; in his heart, he knew he could not have lived contentedly in isolation like Mercure’s. Then, aloud, he said, ‘The same thing. Like others who have set their feet on that path, he seeks a way to refine the human soul; to rid it of its many imperfections and render it pure.’
‘The work is gravely misunderstood,’ Hrype commented. ‘The few who even suspect its existence believe it is all about turning base metals into gold.’
‘The smoke screen is deliberate,’ Gurdyman said. ‘The real goal is only for the most devout of initiates, and ever they disguise the work behind symbols and careful, convoluted codes designed to mislead.’
The yearning was clear in his voice. Looking at him with sympathy, Hrype said, ‘You will be back in your crypt. There have been no more killings, and it is to be hoped that the murderer has now slain all those he deems deserving of death, or perhaps, aware that the forces of law and order are hunting him, he has decided to go to ground.’
Gurdyman shot him a swift look. ‘You have a higher opinion of those forces than they warrant. Sheriff Picot is not a man to inspire fear in the criminal mind, and his nephew thinks only of his own advancement and enrichment. Furthermore, the one man capable of ferreting out who is responsible for the atrocities has been banned from doing so. Or perhaps that is not still the case?’ He looked hopefully at Hrype.