He moved so quickly. He lowered his right arm, seemed to reach deep within his voluminous garments, then raised it again.
It was no longer a human arm.
The forelimb was bright, shining silver, and the hand was the paw of a savage animal, with long downward-curving claws that glittered sharp as blades.
One of those dread claws had a small chip on the tip.
He made an inarticulate, bestial sound and lunged at Hrype. He swung the clawed limb, and I heard the whistle as it descended down through the air.
Hrype stepped aside.
Mercure, his own momentum forcing him on past Hrype, turned and tried again. But just as the raised claw was about to home in on Hrype’s throat, a hand caught it from behind.
Twisted it, bent it, caused Mercure to roar with pain as his shoulder dislocated.
He looked wildly around, and his dark presence seemed to fill the narrow passage so that I could not see who had stopped his murderous attack. Then he gave a great cry, and, the pain making him retch, he drove his claw of an arm up towards his own throat and tore it out.
He must have died almost instantly. Released, all the strength – his strength – left me and I fell to the ground. I felt arms around me, and Gurdyman’s voice in my ear whispered words of comfort, reassurance.
I looked up. Hrype stood over us, and I couldn’t read the expression on his face. He seemed different, but I did not know what had changed.
But there had been someone else…
Mercure had had the ascendancy, for Gurdyman and I were already under his spell and Hrype surely could not have held out for long. Another’s hand had grabbed Mercure’s wrist, and that action had saved us all.
My eyes flew past Hrype, trying to look everywhere at once, searching, searching.
And then I saw him.
Behind Hrype, leaning against the stone wall of the passage, stood Rollo.
It felt like much later, but only a short time could have elapsed, for although the body of the Night Wanderer had been removed by some of Sheriff Picot’s men, his blood was still wet on the floor of the passage.
Gurdyman and Hrype had disappeared down to the crypt. Rollo and I sat in the inner court, and the sun shone on us.
He had told me how he’d been watching me for days. How he’d gone out to Aelf Fen and overheard what I’d said to Sibert about being safe with Jack. Guarded my footsteps as I returned to the town, aware that there was a grave threat and wanting to keep me from harm.
Watched me with Jack.
Seen me as I cradled his head in my lap, taken in every detail of my expression as Jack’s life blood soaked into my skirts.
He didn’t actually phrase it like that, but I knew what he must have seen.
‘Do you love him?’ he asked me now.
‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’
Rollo smiled briefly. ‘That covers every possibility,’ he remarked.
I truly had no idea what I felt. I was numb with shock, for I had just been under the spell of an exceptionally powerful man who had bent me to his will as easily as if I’d been a blade of grass. I’d seen him take his own life, right before my eyes. On top of that, as if it wasn’t enough, I was exhausted and I wanted to be with Jack because I knew he was in grave pain and perhaps he was dying, and here I was, half a mile or more away from him, and it hurt so much I couldn’t bear it.
I took a deep breath. Rollo had every right to ask me to explain, and I must do my best.
‘I love you too,’ I said. ‘As well as Jack, I mean.’ Normally I love you too is the response when someone has just declared their love for you, and I had no idea how Rollo felt about me now. ‘When you went away, I had no idea when I’d see you again, although you promised you’d come back and I believed you.’ I paused. He didn’t interrupt – for which I was very grateful – and after a moment I went on. ‘I’d had every intention of waiting for you, and it wasn’t too bad, really. But then I met him – Jack – and I liked him, because he’s a good man doing a hard job in a town that’s dirty with corruption, and-’
Of all things, an image of Jack’s geese floated into my head. Those guard geese, that he kept because he lived all alone and there were a lot of men who would rather he was dead because he spoke up for honesty and decency and the weak and the helpless, and he was never going to accept the right of powerful men to override all those things just because it made them rich.
That attitude, in a town where the law was corrupt and weaker men chose the easy path over the tough one, created a lot of enemies.
My hands in my lap were wet and I realized I was crying.
‘Rollo, he’s so very lonely.’
Rollo’s arms were round me, but there was comfort and kindness in the close hug, and, just then, nothing else. Thankful for his presence, for his strong heart beating against me, I surrendered to all the pain inside me and wept.
He went away.
‘I’m not going far,’ he told me firmly, ‘or, at least, not as far as I went last time.’ He smiled at some private thought. ‘But there’s something I have to do, and now seems a good time.’ He took my hand, holding it in a brief, hard grip. ‘Your man here is hurt, and I don’t think you can think of anything but that at the moment. If you find you love him, you can tell me so when I come back.’
He turned away.
‘I’m sorry that-’ I began, but he stopped me.
‘No recriminations, Lassair,’ he said. ‘I’ve been away a long time, and I sent you no word. If you got lonely, and took comfort in the love of another man, then the responsibility is as much mine as yours.’
He was being very fair. It was nice of him, I reflected, to say responsibility and not blame.
I looked at him, at the blond hair now threaded with strands of grey, at the dark brown eyes with unfamiliar lines around them. Wherever he’d been, it hadn’t been easy. He had suffered, and I read it all through his lithe body.
I loved him; there was no doubt of it.
But all I wanted to do was go to Jack.
So that’s what I did.
Down in the crypt, Hrype and Gurdyman heard the slamming of the door.
‘She has gone back to Jack,’ Gurdyman said.
‘She cannot do anything else,’ Hrype replied. Then, after a brief pause, ‘Do you detect it too?’
Gurdyman nodded. ‘As soon as I saw her.’
‘Does she know?’
‘No.’
The two men fell silent.
Then: ‘The other one has gone too,’ Hrype said. ‘And that is wise of him, since at present she is given over entirely to the care of the injured one.’
‘It is also kind,’ Gurdyman said with a faint note of reproof, ‘since to add to her burden by forcing her to decide between the two of them would be cruel.’
‘You think the Norman is kind?’ Hrype demanded. ‘It is not a word I use when speaking of his sort.’
‘And you are too blinded by your prejudices,’ Gurdyman flashed back. ‘In any case, both men are Normans. Lassair has the ability to look beneath that, and see them for what they really are.’
Hrype opened his mouth to give a stinging retort, but then he closed it again.
After a while, Gurdyman said, ‘I believe that since both Lassair and Rollo have gone, and their private conversation is therefore over, we may return upstairs.’ He led the way up the steps, Hrype following.
‘Where will you go now?’ he asked as, in the passage, Hrype turned towards the door.
Hrype looked at him for a long moment. ‘I’m going back to my village.’ He laid a slight emphasis on my, and Gurdyman smiled faintly. ‘As I walk along, I shall be thinking of the right way to say what I must say to Froya.’
Now Gurdyman’s smile was wide and delighted. But he spoke with careful restraint, for Hrype was a proud man. ‘I am glad, my friend,’ he said.
As if that short exchange was more than enough, Hrype abruptly changed the subject. ‘What happened to him? Mercure, I mean?’