‘Yes,’ I said absently. I was thinking about possibilities: in particular, whether someone in Gerda’s lost family had been connected with magic.
And quite how I was going to find that out, I had no idea. Return and talk to the girls, once they were up? But I’d done that before, and they’d been able to tell me very little.
I turned to go. ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘How’s he doing?’
I shrugged. ‘He’s lasted the night and he isn’t feverish.’
She met my eyes. Both of us, I’m sure, were thinking the unsaid word: yet. ‘You take good care of him,’ she commanded. ‘Worth saving, that one.’
I was outside, just joining the track that led back along the quay, when I heard someone behind me. Someone called my name in a sort of whispered shout, and, turning, I saw the skinny blonde girl with rats’ tail hair and greasy skin who had been so scared by the Night Wanderer legends. She still looked terrified, and as she held out her hand to stop me, I saw that she had bitten her nails so harshly that the tops of the fingers bulged out over what was left.
‘Hello, Madselin,’ I said.
‘Hush!’ she hissed, although I hadn’t spoken loudly. ‘Come over here, where we won’t be seen or overheard.’ She grabbed my sleeve and pulled me over behind a half-ruined boat shed.
We stood in awkward silence for a while, and I found her wide, frightened gaze disconcerting. Also, I wanted very much to get back to Jack. ‘What do you want with me? I said, perhaps too impatiently, because her lips trembled and tears filled her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘How can I help?’
She seemed to gather herself together, as if for a tremendous effort, then said, ‘I heard you just now, talking to Margery. I had to come after you! I should have spoken up before, should have told what I knew, but I was too afraid.’ The tears spilled over her eyelids and ran down her thin cheeks.
I took her cold hands in mine. ‘What should you have told?’
‘I heard them, see!’ she burst out, wringing her thin hands in distress. ‘It was the night before – before she died.’ Madselin swallowed a sob. ‘I was out with – well, never mind who it was, but he likes to do it in the open air when the weather allows and it was mild that night. Anyway, he’d finished his business and was away back to his wife and children, and I was making my way back to Margery’s, and I heard them!’ She looked pop-eyed at me, as if I should have known.
‘Who did you hear?’ I asked, fighting my desire to shake her.
‘Gerda and him! They were having a row, I reckon, and both of them were angry, yelling at each other. I wasn’t eavesdropping,’ she added hastily, ‘you could hear them a mile off! Anyway, I was quite close, so I stopped and watched, and I saw it all, though I didn’t let them see me.’
‘What was the row about?’ I could have asked her who the other person was, but I had a feeling I already knew.
‘He was so furious with her! Kept saying again and again how she was really sinful, and how wrong it was in God’s eyes to live the life she did, and how would the lord Jesus feel about her defiling her flesh? He was trying to persuade her to leave Margery’s and move into the little room he was renting as a workroom. It wasn’t much, he told her, and not very comfortable, and he wouldn’t be able to get her much food, but she’d be honest, and she could make her confession to his old priest and do her penance and God would forgive her and receive her back.’
‘What did she say to that?’ I asked when Madselin paused for breath.
‘She said, not bloody likely!’ Madselin answered with a feeble grin. ‘Then he started going on about how she could help him in his work and be useful to him, only I didn’t understand that bit, when you think what she did and what he was.’ She frowned. ‘But it sounded from his tone as if he really needed her.’
‘And she still refused?’ I prompted.
‘Oh, yes. Told him he could disapprove all he liked but she was happy at Margery’s, because they were kind to her and they didn’t try to bully her. She said she didn’t mind the old girl – Margery, I mean – and she really liked the other girls, and they were her family now.’
I thought about that.
‘Then he reached forward and stuck his hand down her gown, and I wondered what was going on,’ Madselin continued, ‘but he was just pulling out the pendant she wore, on its chain. I’ve been good to you! I gave you this! he yells at her, shaking it in her face’ – Madselin’s voice rose dramatically – ‘and then she pulls it up over her head and thrusts it at him. You can have it back! she cries. It’s old and it’s nasty, and I hate it!’
‘And he took it?’
Madselin nodded. ‘Yes! She flung it at him and stalked off, and I watched him pick it up. He looked so sad,’ she murmured. ‘I felt sorry for him, even though he’d been unkind to her.’
‘And she was killed the following night,’ I said slowly, half to myself. I thought that perhaps, at last, I was starting to understand why.
The Night Wanderer, it seemed, had believed her to be something she wasn’t; something of vital importance to Osmund’s secret, other life…
I should have thought more carefully before I spoke, for Madselin was weeping in earnest now, the hands with their poor bitten nails up to her face in a hopeless attempt to hide her distress. ‘I know,’ she sobbed, ‘and I should have said what I’d seen, only I was so frightened! I thought he’d come back and do for me, too, if I spoke up!’
I put my arms round her and hugged her. ‘I don’t think it would have made any difference,’ I said. ‘And you were scared, like we all were, and nobody is at their best when they’re frightened.’
She seemed to take comfort from that and her sobs slowly subsided. When she was sufficiently calm, I walked with her the short distance back to Margery’s and saw her safely inside.
Then I hurried back down the quay.
I kept hearing Madselin’s voice when she told me what Gerda had said about the other girls: that they were her family now.
I thought about what I’d first been told about the Night Wanderer’s fourth victim: he was an outsider, new to the town, studious, quiet, kept himself to himself. New to the town… And Gerda, they’d said, wasn’t a local girl but had come to here after the deaths of both parents. She’d been the youngest child, still at home when the older siblings had gone, and none of those siblings could take her in when she was left alone.
She and Osmund were brother and sister.
Osmund had frequently been late for the offices and had been known to go down to the river. We knew about his workroom, but going there wasn’t the only reason he absented himself from the priests’ house. He used to slip out to meet his sister.
He hated what she did for a living but couldn’t supply the necessary support to get her out of it. Perhaps he felt guilty that he couldn’t offer her a home; that her being a whore was at least in part his fault. Who could say?
He had been trying to persuade her to become his assistant. His adept; his Soror Mystica; his sister in the great work, just as she was in the flesh and in the blood.
But she was afraid and unwilling. She had been killed, and then, only a few days later, so had he.
I was almost back at the tavern. I was running now, my satchel bouncing on my hip. Suddenly it felt as if a shock had run through me. I skidded to a halt, put my hand inside my satchel and felt the shining stone, almost too hot to touch.
The compulsion to look into it was irresistible. I ran to the line of warehouses, slid between two of them and took out the stone.