‘I believed it, yes.’
‘How could you have left them to their fate? Morgan, and Cat! He tried to protect his master, you know. His body was found flung across the old man’s, but it didn’t help either of them.’
Gurdyman saw my distress and held out a hand to me, but I ignored it. ‘Child, do you not think I tried?’ he said, an edge of anger in his voice. ‘I railed at Morgan with all my strength, trying to impress the horror of what I had seen just ahead, but to no avail.’
‘You could have-’
Gurdyman drew himself up. His anger increased, and just for an instant it felt as if a flame was brushing my skin. It hurt. ‘Ow!’
‘I’m sorry, child, but you are losing yourself in your own emotion, and, while your urge to demand retributive justice for Morgan and Cat is admirable, you need to know the truth. Morgan refused to leave his home and his work, and Cat refused to abandon her.’
‘Him,’ I corrected automatically.
There was utter silence. Something crackled momentarily in the air.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Gurdyman’s.
‘The name, in fact, is Morgana.’
I felt my jaw drop. ‘He – she – Morgan was a woman?’
‘Of course,’ Gurdyman said shortly. ‘Since Cat was quite clearly male, his magician had to be female. Always there must be the opposites, the poles, the two sexes. Animus and anima,’ he added.
I sank down on to the bench that stands by the wall of the inner court. ‘Why did she pretend to be a man?’
‘She was brilliant, and her powers were great,’ Gurdyman said. ‘The world – even the world of like-minded souls – was perhaps not quite ready to accept that such a leading light could be female.’
Animus and anima. I took out Gerda’s pendant and silently gave it to Gurdyman. He went pale. ‘Where did you get this?’
So I told him. Trying to be brief, I told him everything that had happened since he left.
When I finished, he joined me on the bench. ‘It begins to add up,’ he murmured.
But I barely heard. I had been thinking about the night he disappeared; the night I thought I saw him and Hrype, down in the crypt, only when Jack arrived with a light – oh, Jack! – there was no sign of either of them.
‘Were you really there that night?’ I whispered.
He knew exactly what I meant. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hrype had come to fetch me and we were on the point of leaving when you turned up. Hrype was convinced the forces of the law would soon break in – that’s who we thought you were – and that was why I’d-’
‘That’s why you tidied up the crypt,’ I interrupted, ‘to make sure there was nothing incriminating to be found.’ Nothing, I added silently, that would give away who and what you are, for that knowledge is very dangerous.
‘Yes,’ he murmured.
‘How did you do it?’ I had to know. ‘One moment you were there – I saw you – and then you weren’t, yet you couldn’t have got out because I was standing at the foot of the steps, and Jack was coming down right behind me.’ It was conceivable that Gurdyman and Hrype might have squeezed past me without my feeling their presence, but they couldn’t have got past Jack. He was too broad.
Gurdyman was looking at me, his head on one side. ‘Do you remember what I told you about this house?’ I shook my head. He had told me many things, and I wasn’t in any state to run through the store of my memories and extract the right one. ‘I said,’ he went on softly, ‘that this house of mine holds many secrets, and that you would come to know about some of them, although some would remain hidden.’
‘Is this a secret I won’t know?’ I whispered.
He smiled gently. ‘Not yet, child, for there is no need.’
‘But-’
‘Enough.’
My mind was roaming wildly, throwing up possibilities. Did he mean there was another exit from the crypt, one so well hidden that I had no idea it was there? One that, perhaps, only revealed itself when there was desperate need? Oh, but that was impossible, surely, even for Gurdyman, unless-
Quite gently and firmly, he stopped the thought. I found I just couldn’t pursue it; it had ceased. Just like that.
I stared at him. He looked so normal, sitting there in the sunshine, his wonderful, gaudy shawl wrapped round him, his blue eyes twinkling benignly. For a moment I doubted everything. He was just a rotund, absent-minded old man, and the rest was all in my imagination.
Presently I said, ‘You came back. Does that mean it’s safe now?’
But he frowned, his face darkening into anxiety. ‘Oh, no, child, it is very far from safe. I came back precisely because of that; for the peril reaches its climax now, and we shall have to fight it.’
Something suddenly struck me. I sat up straight, looking around. ‘Where’s your friend?’ I demanded. ‘The one you were staying with, in the house with the magical name?’
Gurdyman looked down at his small, plump hands, folded in his lap. ‘I do not know.’ He met my eyes. ‘Something happened this morning; an enchantment, I believe, affecting both my friend – his name is Mercure – and me.’ He frowned. ‘I believe I perceived something I was not meant to see, and then some power overcame me and obscured the sight.’ Now he looked pale. ‘I believe that power might have emanated from the Night Wanderer.’
‘Oh!’ My hands flew up to cover my mouth, muffling the sound.
‘I do not know where Mercure is,’ Gurdyman repeated, ‘for he was not there when I was released from the spell and came back to myself.’
I had an image of him, out at his friend’s house. Waking from trance, or sleep, or enchantment – whatever it had been – and finding himself alone. Desperate with worry for his friend, yet leaving the lonely, isolated house to return here.
Gurdyman nodded, as if he followed the line of my thoughts. ‘I am indeed very anxious for Mercure, but he is powerful, and wise, and better able to look after himself than almost any other.’ He reached for my hand, briefly holding it. ‘My greater fear was for you.’
I stared at him. While it made me feel warm with pleasure that he should care about me in this way, at the same time I was filled with dread because Gurdyman, whom I’d come to think of as inviolable and omnipotent, had just admitted to anxiety and fear. If a magician of his quality was afraid, what hope was there for the rest of us?
‘What should we do?’ I whispered.
‘We shall go down into the crypt,’ he said firmly, ‘where I have in mind certain defences which I shall begin straight away to-’
He was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming slowly, draggingly, along the passage. Both of us spun round.
An old man in long robes was creeping towards us. He was very white in the face, as if he had suffered a severe wound or a dreadful shock. His dark eyes stared imploringly at us. His garments – musty black, or perhaps a deep shade of brown or grey – were dirty, and the flowing skirt of his robe was torn into tatters down one side. He clutched the remnants to him, perhaps in a pathetic attempt to preserve his modesty and hide his pale and bony legs.
With a soft exclamation, Gurdyman removed his shawl and held it out to the shuffling figure, helping him to wrap it around his narrow hips. He guided the old man to the bench by the wall, encouraging him to sit down. Over his shoulder he said, ‘A restorative for our visitor, I think, Lassair, if you would be so kind.’
I couldn’t take my eyes off the old man.