They were in a confined space and swords would be no good. I saw Gaspard Picot reach for his dagger and, quick as lightning, Jack did the same. Both were right-handed; both had a blade in one hand, the other empty.
They circled each other, briefly coming together in an attack which had the violence of two stags clashing head-on, wrestling, each trying to disarm the other. Then they fell back, both panting.
I saw something glinting on Gaspard Picot’s left hand. I thought it was his gold ring.
But it wasn’t gold, it was silver-coloured. It was steel.
Gaspard Picot carried a concealed knife up his left sleeve, and he had just slid it down into his hand.
Before I could scream out a warning, he leapt on Jack. I thought it was all right; I thought Jack was ready for him, for it seemed he had knocked the left hand and its blade away.
They were clutched together again, their deadly embrace unyielding, and I heard Gaspard Picot cry out. He sprang back, then leapt up on to a bench and launched himself on Jack, knife in his right hand aimed straight at Jack’s chest.
But Jack held up his own knife, arm extended, and as Gaspard Picot descended on him, his own momentum drove Jack’s blade straight into his throat.
He fell, on to the bench, then down to the floor. Blood poured out of his neck, and he was making terrible gurgling sounds. He lay on his back, then, as the struggle for air became more desperate, began to thrash about, left, right, left.
Now others were pounding down the passage. Walter crouched at Gaspard Picot’s side, then he looked up and said swiftly ‘We all saw what happened, Jack. A whole band of people were witness, and all will swear you acted in self-defence, and he attacked first.’ Fat Gerald stood behind him, Ginger, Luke, Henry and a man I didn’t recognize crowding in behind him. If they were afraid Gaspard Picot was going to leap up and run away, they were wrong. Gaspard Picot was dying.
After what seemed quite a long time, the awful bubbling sounds ceased. Walter reached down and drew a fold of the luxurious cloak over the white face. ‘He’s dead,’ he said.
One or two of the men uttered a response. Someone even said, ‘God have mercy on him.’
Jack didn’t say anything.
Cold suddenly, I leapt to my feet and flew up the passage. Jack was sitting down beside Gaspard Picot’s body. He, too, was deathly pale. He had a hand under his leather jerkin, inside his tunic.
I took him by his shoulders and laid him down. His eyes closed, fluttered open again, closed. I wasn’t sure he had recognized me.
I put my hand inside his undershirt, pushing his away.
I felt the fast pulse just beneath his skin. Felt the blood pumping out between my fingers. Something detached and professional took me over. I unfastened my satchel with my free hand, took out a thick wad of soft fabric and pressed it very hard against Jack’s chest.
At the back of the crowd – which was rapidly growing as news of the drama spread along the quayside and off into the town – stood a fair-haired man with dark eyes.
He had been watching for some time and had seen every move made by the two men at the far end of the passage. But now he had eyes only for the young woman who knelt with the wounded man’s head in her lap. She was pressing down on his chest with all her strength but already there was a pool of blood soaking into her skirts.
It seemed as if some of the men at the back of the crowd didn’t yet understand what had happened. ‘We’ll have to swear to it that Picot struck first,’ someone said, too loudly. ‘Jack will require all of us to confirm he had no option but to fight back.’ Then, when nobody answered, the man said in a doubtful voice, ‘He did strike first, didn’t he?’
The girl cradling the wounded man heard. She looked up, and the fair-haired man saw her face. She screamed, ‘Look how he’s bleeding!’ and held up her hand, soaked red. ‘Of course he struck first! He had a second blade, hidden in his left sleeve, and Jack didn’t see it.’ She was waving her hand now, as if demanding they all look. ‘What further proof do you want?’
Now others were kneeling round Lassair and Jack, forming a protective, concealing group, and the fair-haired man could no longer keep her in sight. He didn’t need to. He had seen her expression, heard that terrible fear in her voice because she thought the man was dying right before her eyes and there was nothing she could do to hold on to him.
It told Rollo all he needed to know. He turned and walked away.
NINETEEN
Gurdyman sat by the hearth in Mercure’s house. Dawn had broken and he was alone, for Hrype still had not returned and Mercure was, as so often, out in his workroom, where Gurdyman suspected he had been all night. There was a sweet smell in the air, which Gurdyman thought was burning apple wood. He was tired, strained; he could still feel Hrype’s fury in the little room, for all that many hours had passed since his abrupt departure. Gurdyman fancied he could see the anger as jagged, brilliant blue lines that cut across the soft early light.
He slipped into a daydream, on the edge of a doze. He had hardly slept, and he knew such states were easier to enter when the mind was fatigued. He thought about Hrype, and the dislike of Lassair that ate into him. He is jealous of her, a calm voice said in Gurdyman’s head.
Then his mind slowly filled with images of Lassair. She was in deepest distress and he made an involuntary movement, as if his body had already made the decision to find her, help her, support her…
But he didn’t move.
The sweet woodsmoke smell intensified. Gurdyman’s mind relaxed. He saw shapes, coalescing into vague human form. A tall, pale figure, black-shrouded, which slowly melted and re-formed.
Some time later – he thought only a short time had elapsed, but then he noticed the sunshine outside, although, strangely, that observation seemed to go as soon as it had come – Gurdyman woke. Mercure was bending over the hearth, stirring something that spattered in hot fat in a shallow pan, and an appetizing, savoury smell filled the air.
Gurdyman looked at him, still confused. I was more deeply asleep than I imagined, he thought, for I know I am awake, yet I am disoriented.
Mercure turned to him, smiling. ‘I have been neglecting you, old friend,’ he said. ‘Now I intend to make up for it, for I am preparing eggs and black pudding, and we shall sit by the fire together and speak of the long years of our acquaintance.’ He paused. ‘Where is Hrype? I am cooking for him, too, so perhaps we should call him?’
‘He’s gone.’ Gurdyman was mildly surprised that Mercure hadn’t noticed.
‘Gone?’ Mercure spun round, and Gurdyman caught a glimpse of his expression. But then Mercure smiled, and, in a tone of casual interest, said, ‘He comes and goes according to some deep and complex plan of his own, that one.’
‘Indeed he does,’ Gurdyman agreed. ‘Just now, I suspect he is somewhere out in the wilds, quite alone, for I told him some truths about himself that I do not think he wished to know.’
Mercure nodded. ‘Ah, but it is ever our lot, my old friend, to see beyond the vision of normal men, and, when we relate what we see, our words are seldom accepted in the spirit in which they are delivered.’
‘Hrype is far from being a normal man,’ Gurdyman observed. He knew exactly what Mercure meant by the word.
Mercure looked at him with interested eyes. ‘So it is as I suspected,’ he murmured. ‘We proliferate, do we not?’
Gurdyman watched him. He looks weary beyond endurance, he thought with a surge of pity, as if his work demands more of him than he has left to give.
‘Sit and eat,’ he urged. ‘I worry about you, Mercure. Working alone as you do, you have nobody to regulate your days.’