Gurdyman sighed heavily. ‘I do not know,’ he confessed. ‘I think perhaps it was indeed as he said himself: he tried to work alone, and somehow, in trying to seek out his female side and treat it as a separate entity, he disintegrated his soul and couldn’t put it back together.’ He shook his head. ‘Mercure used powerful substances,’ he said darkly. ‘He was experimenting extensively with cinnabar, that is obvious, and it seems that all three of them – Mercure, Morgana and the young priest – believed that some combination of quicksilver and emerald might yield a deep and awesome result.’ He shook his head. ‘Morgana and the priest, however, appear to have been more cautious and circumspect, but I only begin to suspect some of the poisons Mercure must have ingested. Such potent and frightening substances must be treated with a great deal more respect than he showed them, in his desperate need, for they can have terrible consequences and drive a man deep into madness.’
He paused, a thoughtful expression on his smooth, round face. ‘And yet, despite the terrible and corrupt uses to which he ultimately put his great talent and skills, we must surely admire him. Somehow he perfected the ability to change his appearance, taking on the Night Wanderer guise with dead-white face and holes for eyes, but I fear it must have taken huge amounts of concentration and magical energy to maintain it. He had depleted himself savagely, and the image he presented right at the end’ – he hugged himself, as if feeling the blast of a sudden cold wind – ‘was incomplete. He had begun to shake almost ceaselessly, and bits of his true self appeared through cracks in the facade. As, indeed,’ he added, wrapping his shawl more closely round him, ‘parts of the darkness were appearing through when he tried to present himself as Mercure.’
It seemed to Hrype that, just for a moment, a cloud of blackness floated in the passage. Then it dispersed.
Silence fell.
Hrype said after a while, ‘He began his killings with the slaughter of the rat, the cat and the dog, I imagine, in order to introduce the belief that he was indeed the Night Wanderer, returned to haunt the town and embark on the same sort of terror that he had carried out before.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I understand why he had to kill Morgana and Cat and the young priest, for they were working towards the same ends, and I imagine he wanted no competition.’
‘I believe that is so,’ Gurdyman agreed cautiously, ‘although it is hard to say, when someone is so far gone into insanity.’
‘But what of the others?’ Hrype went on.
‘The first victim brought into the town the rare and costly substance that the great work required, and the apothecary’s widow sold it in her shop. Mercure was simply stopping anybody else getting their hands on it.’
‘And the little whore?’
Gurdyman frowned his disapproval at the word. ‘Gerda was Osmund’s sister. If we could question Mercure as to his motive in killing her, I believe you would find that he thought Osmund was about to recruit her as his mystic sister; force her to adopt that role as well as being his blood sister.’
Hrype was shaking his head, a wry smile on his face. ‘How can you possibly know they were brother and sister?’
Gurdyman shrugged. ‘Margery told me. We are old friends, and I have known her for years.’
Rollo strode out of the town to the stables where he had left his horse. He found the sturdy mare turned out in a field, where she stood nose to tail with an intelligent-looking grey gelding which stared with interest at Rollo.
‘Sorry, but I’m taking your new friend away,’ he said to the gelding, gently pushing aside its questing nose.
He tacked up his mare, paid the proprietor what he owed and set off on the road south.
He couldn’t think about Lassair.
He planned to go back across the Channel, make his way to the court of Duke Robert of Normandy and sell, again, what he had learned at such cost in Constantinople and beyond. If he couldn’t have what he wanted – and how much more he wanted it, now that it appeared he couldn’t have it – he might as well use his time profitably and earn some more money.
He thought of the humble little dwelling of the wounded man, out in the empty village that would once have thrummed with life while the Conqueror’s workforce built his castle. He thought of the palatial house he intended to build for himself one day, when he had finally got travel, adventure and risk out of his blood and was ready to settle down.
He realized that, of late, he had been planning his house with Lassair in mind. How foolish that had been, when she wasn’t the sort of woman whose heart could be won by riches.
Despite his firm intentions, he was thinking about her.
Ruthlessly he shut off the images and began a mental list of everything he had ever heard concerning King William’s brother.
By evening, Jack seemed just about strong enough to risk moving him, although the process worried me deeply. But the little room off the tavern was no place for a badly wounded man. With the death of the Night Wanderer, the town was rapidly returning to normal – normal coloured by vast relief, joy at the end of the terrible anxiety, quite a lot of revelry and a great deal of drinking – and the tavern-keeper and his wife, understandably, wanted to encourage trade and not turn it away because the place had to be kept quiet so Jack could rest.
They liked and admired him, but business was business, and everyone had a living to earn.
Walter, Ginger, Fat Gerald and young Henry carried Jack on a makeshift bier, along the quay, over the Great Bridge, down the path beside the castle and through the deserted village to his house at the end of the track. For the first part of the walk, we’d had to dodge revellers spilling out of the taverns, determined to make the most of the lifting of the curfew and many of them clutching mugs of ale and already well on the way to insensibility.
It was a great relief to reach Jack’s house. Once the geese had set up their terrible racket and stopped again, it was quiet out there.
The four men gently lowered the bier and together, with me helping, we moved Jack on to the bed. He was half-conscious and he cried out in pain. Henry shot a swift look at me, and his eyes said accusingly, Can’t you do something?
Fat Gerald was already making a fire and Ginger had gone for water. I opened my satchel and took out my packets of herbs – they wouldn’t last long, I’d have to go out for more very soon – and mixed the right ones in a mug. I met Henry’s anxious gaze. ‘As soon as the water boils,’ I promised, ‘I’ll make the medicine.’
I would mix it strong. Jack needed sleep – it was probably the only thing that would mend him – and I would make quite sure he got it.
The men stayed long enough to check that the fire was going well, the water was coming to the boil, that I was adequately supplied with food and firewood and had everything else I needed. Finally they left. Walter, pausing to turn in the doorway, said quietly, ‘Don’t let him die.’
I felt something lurch inside me. Die. Oh, don’t even say the word…
I met Walter’s steady eyes. ‘I will do my best.’
He grinned, very briefly. ‘Reckon that’ll have to do, then.’
I went outside on to the track and watched them walk away.
Then I went back to my patient.
Alys Clare
aka
Alys Clare is the pseudonym of a novelist with some 20 published works to her name. Brought up in the countryside close to where the Hawkenlye Novels are set, she went to school in Tonbridge and later studied archaeology at the University of Kent.
She lives for part of the year in Brittany, in a remote cottage deep in an ancient landscape where many past inhabitants have left their mark; on her doorstep are relics that date from the stone circles and dolmens of the Neolithic to the commanderies, chapels and ancient tracks of those infamous warrior monks, the Knights Templar. In England, Alys's study overlooks a stretch of parkland which includes a valley with a little spring. The waters of this spring are similar in colour and taste to Tunbridge Wells's famous Chalybeat Spring, and it was this that prompted Alys's setting of her fictional Hawkenlye Abbey in the very spot where her own house now stands.