‘And you shall have it,’ he replied. ‘So, we come to the third reason, which is that, some time recently, you have looked into the stone by yourself, for yourself, perhaps with the tentative purpose of finding something out, and been somewhat shocked by what the stone showed you.’
He had found the truth, as I suspected he would. Very little escapes Gurdyman. I had indeed looked into the stone, a few weeks back, just after I’d walked out to the place where my grandfather’s boat had been moored and found him gone.
I saw a ship, very like my grandfather’s beautiful longship, the original Malice Striker. Yet I didn’t believe it was Thorfinn’s ship: somehow I knew – perhaps the stone told me – that this was a craft that flew over the dark blue waves there and then, at the very moment that I was watching it, and so couldn’t be my grandfather’s craft because that was a wreck on an Iceland beach. I knew that was true because I’d seen it there.
I also knew because on board that ship I perceived within the stone – or I assume that’s where he was – I saw Rollo.
Rollo is a secretive Norman, and, for want of a better description, I suppose you could call him a spy. He finds things out for the very important and the very wealthy of the land – I dare not think just how important and wealthy. He is my lover, or I should say he was, for a while, a year ago. Since then he has been away, presumably on some mission or other, and I have had no word from him.
The stone showed him to me, though, on that swift, beautiful ship. He looked straight at me, and then turned away.
I have wondered since whether he did that because he knew I had met Jack Chevestrier. That I liked him; admired him; enjoyed his company and had come hurrying to Cambridge to seek him out.
I didn’t feel I could say any of that to Gurdyman, so I just muttered, ‘Yes, that’s what happened.’
He waited. ‘You saw something that frightened you?’
‘No, I wasn’t frightened. I-’ But then I thought, I do not need to reveal this to him. It is not his concern. I looked at him and said, ‘I don’t wish to tell you, Gurdyman. It’s private.’
His eyebrows shot up, and just for a moment I thought I saw admiration in his face. I was tempted to feel proud of myself, but then I realized, with a thrill of awed respect, that it was undoubtedly the stone’s strength, not mine, that had prompted that firm refusal.
Gurdyman had turned aside. ‘Put the shining stone away, child,’ he said evenly. ‘We’ll try again when you wish to.’
It might have been my imagination, but I thought I detected a faint emphasis on you.
We were eating a late supper, sitting beside the hearth in the cramped little kitchen, when there was a knock at the door. I made to get up, but Gurdyman shook his head, already on his feet and, still chewing, heading off along the passage. I heard the heavy bolts being drawn back, and the door creaked open. Voices: the same ones I’d heard that morning as I awoke.
Gurdyman came back to the kitchen, and Jack was behind him. He nodded a greeting, looking slightly abashed.
‘Jack has come to ask our help,’ said Gurdyman.
‘I didn’t say Lassair!’ Jack protested. ‘She doesn’t have to come.’
Gurdyman turned calm eyes to him. ‘Lassair is my pupil,’ he said in the sort of voice you don’t argue with. ‘It is my duty to share every aspect of my work with her, including that which is distasteful.’
Distasteful?
Gurdyman turned back to me. ‘Jack will escort us to the room beneath the castle where the body of Robert Powl has been taken,’ he said. ‘The castle is quiet now, with only the night watch on guard, and very likely we can slip in and out again without being seen.’
There were many thoughts flashing through my mind, most of them to do with the fact that I really didn’t want to look at that mutilated body again, but I said, ‘Why mustn’t we be seen?’
Gurdyman bowed to Jack, as if to say, Go on, tell her.
‘Sheriff Picot is dismissing the death as the result of a wild-animal attack, and he has made it clear that he does not wish anybody to question this,’ Jack said, his voice carefully neutral and not giving away what he must obviously think of the sheriff’s absurd conclusion. ‘He is trying, I believe, to stop the rumours; hoping, by supplying a reasonable explanation, to halt the rising panic.’
‘But it’s not reasonable!’ I protested. ‘No animal exists that could have made such a wound!’
‘Not so,’ Gurdyman corrected, ‘for I have heard tales of savage creatures like enormous cats that roam the mountains far to the east, and other, similar beasts that live in the hot lands to the south. There are huge white bears, too, in the permanently icy lands to the north.’ Jack caught my eye for a moment and we both smiled. Gurdyman must have noticed. ‘But it is, I agree, unlikely that any such animal should be found hereabouts.’
I looked at Jack, for I had guessed why he was here. ‘You want us to investigate the damage to the corpse, and suggest how it was done, don’t you?’ I demanded. ‘Is that it?’
Jack winced at my words, but he nodded. ‘Pretty much, yes. I’d really value your opinion,’ he added.
Gurdyman looked at me enquiringly. Filled with a mixture of fearful apprehension and a growing excitement, I got up. ‘I’ll go and fetch my shawl.’
THREE
It was not long after sunset, but already the streets were deserted. Lights flickered in some of the windows as we hurried along between the huddling houses, and at one point someone who had presumably heard our approaching footsteps reached out and firmly closed the shutters.
The body had only been discovered last night, and already fear was spreading like a contagious miasma.
As we crossed the Great Bridge, the quays stretching out on either side of the river down to our right, Jack, who had been pacing ahead, fell into step beside Gurdyman and me. ‘Sheriff Picot is talking of imposing a curfew,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘but I think there will be no need.’
How right he was. Glancing down at the river, I noticed that even the ships’ captains and crews, usually sociable in the evening and often to be seen assembled around a makeshift hearth or a brazier, drinking, sharing their food and chatting, were nowhere to be seen. The craft that lined the quays were closed up, their occupants safely inside.
Jack led us on past the new priory on our right and shortly after we turned off the road towards the castle, up on its hill. Well, we call it a hill, but by any other than fenland standards, it’s more of a shallow rise. The main entrance was imposing, leading over a wooden drawbridge to a gateway with a heavy iron grille and a couple of guards outside. However, we were not, it seemed, to go in that way. Jack dived off down a narrow little alleyway that ran around the base of the rise – it was bordered by the huge rampart surrounding the castle hill on the left and by stone walls on the right, and was in fact more like a tunnel than an alley – emerging after fifty or sixty paces into a small open space surrounded by hovels, animal pens, storerooms and a ramshackle stable.
‘This used to be the workmen’s village,’ Jack said softly. ‘When the castle was built, the masons, carpenters and their teams lived here.’
Gurdyman nodded. ‘And this is where Sheriff Picot has instructed that the corpse be stored,’ he murmured.
It made sense, I realized, for a man determined on stopping gossip and rumour in their tracks to remove the source to a place where men didn’t have to walk past it, look at it and smell it every day. Nevertheless, it seemed a little hard on the unfortunate Robert Powl.
‘He’s not in one of the pig pens, is he?’ I asked with a nervous laugh.