The Rufus Spy Read online

  I set that thought aside. I didn’t believe that even the shining stone could show me something that Hrype didn’t want me to see. It wasn’t that I doubted the stone’s power, only my own ability to understand what it was revealing to me. Hrype is the second most powerful magician I know.

  I let my mind grow quiet.

  Nothing happened for some time.

  Then I became aware that I was staring at something inside the stone. It had gone very dark, and I’d begin to wonder if its power had been withdrawn. But suddenly I was looking into a patch of brightness … It was golden, as if the sun shone down into a glade similar to the one I was sitting in. It wasn’t this clearing. I was quite sure of that, for there were many more trees, and the underlying vegetation was different. It was nearby, though, for I recognized the fenland landscape.

  In the patch of gold stood a figure. Although I had never seen him, I knew straight away who he was. I don’t know how I knew; I just did.

  He was of average height, slim-built, long-limbed. He was dressed for the wilds, in the sort of clothing that is durable, comfortable, that keeps you warm and reasonably dry and that, because of its nondescript, dark colour, lets you blend in with your surroundings. In short, he looked exactly as I’d have expected him to look.

  He wore good boots, knee-length, made of soft, supple leather. They were dirty, as if he’d been long on the road.

  He stood absolutely still. Sometimes I thought I’d lost sight of him, but then I’d spot him again. Oh, he was good! I wondered, fear making my heart speed up, if he was about to approach the island; if, even as I sat there in the clearing, he was preparing to kill …

  For the most striking thing about him was how well armed he was. A sword hung in a scabbard at his left side. He had a big knife stuck in a sheath attached to his belt, and two shorter blades hung low on his hips. One for each hand.

  He had a tightly tied bundle of bolts slung across his back and in his hands he held a crossbow.

  I loathe the crossbow. It’s a foul instrument, for it sends its bolt with such force that men hit in the leg have been known to be pinned to their horses. My aunt Edild has been forced to extract crossbow bolts, arrows too, in her time, and once she instructed me in how to do it. She commanded my father to fire a bolt and an arrow into a haunch of pork, again and again, taking me through the extraction process until she was confident I could do it.

  I stared at the crossbow that hung from the hunter’s hands. The wood of the stock gleamed as if it had recently been polished, and the light glinted off the metal that strengthened the curved bow. It was primed: a bolt lay in its groove and the string was taut.

  With a speed I wouldn’t have believed possible, the hunter swung the weapon up to his shoulder and fired. There was a noise of crashing, of falling, and an animal cry of agony. The hunter ran, leaping over tussocks, splashing through shallow water, and then, crouching, drawing out one of the smaller knives, he ended the life of the young deer whose throat was transfixed with his bolt.

  I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, the shining stone was black and empty. I folded it in its soft, protective wool, put it away in its bag and stowed it in my satchel. When I stood up, my legs were shaking.

  I made myself walk away. I had been steadily going northwards, but now I turned around. I’m not sure why: perhaps it was that my home lay in the direction I’d been following, and I didn’t want a man like the hunter anywhere near my kin and my friends.

  And anyway, I told myself, it was more likely that the hunter would approach in the same direction that Rollo and I had come from, which was from Cambridge, to the south-west. I set off, retracing my steps along the fen edge and, avoiding the island, headed back towards the familiar road between the town and Aelf Fen that I had trodden more times than I could recall.

  I walked for a long time, almost as far as the spot where the well-concealed, winding path into the fens joins the road. Then I turned and went back again, on different tracks this time, criss-crossing my outward route. I knew the ground so well that had there been anything out of the ordinary, I thought I would have noticed. I saw nothing.

  Finally, tired, very hungry, the softly falling darkness beginning to make me see odd-shaped shadows and strange shapes where in truth there were only the natural phenomena of shrubs and stunted trees, I reached the point where the neck of land leads across to Mercure’s island. It was still submerged, but the water was a little less deep. I only got wet to my knees.

  No light showed from the house. As I approached, I had the sudden, acute fear that Rollo had gone. But then the door opened the merest crack, an arm shot out and he pulled me inside.

  ‘I hope I didn’t hurt you,’ he said, eyeing me anxiously as I rubbed my arm.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I had to get you inside before you opened the door too widely,’ he went on. ‘I haven’t yet lit a lamp, but the glow from the fire will be visible from a long way off.’

  I didn’t agree with him, for the carr and the trees grew too thickly to allow good visibility. But I just said, ‘I understand.’

  He had food ready, and water steaming in a pot for making drinks. I took out some packets of herbs and made up a mixture.

  ‘You saw no sign of him?’ Rollo asked as I stirred.

  ‘No.’ I wasn’t ready to tell him what I’d seen in the shining stone.

  ‘I guessed as much,’ he said. He looked at me, smiling. ‘You’d have come racing in full of your news if you had.’

  ‘So, what have you been doing?’ I asked.

  He made a soft exclamation. ‘Ah, that reminds me.’ He got up and went outside, again opening the door the merest crack. He was quickly back. ‘I’ve set the trip wire,’ he explained as he sat down again. ‘Obviously, I couldn’t do so until you had returned. Now, though, it’s in place. It works – I tested it – and if anyone tries to come across the causeway, we’ll hear him.’

  ‘Good.’ That was reassuring news. I gave a shiver, thinking of that crossbow.

  He noticed. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m tired, and I’d got cold.’ I smiled at him. ‘Better now, and this food’s wonderful.’

  He was still watching me. ‘The trip wire isn’t the only defence,’ he said quietly. He inclined his head towards the door. Peering into the shadows, I saw a small arsenal of weaponry. His sword, three knives, a heavy cudgel, an axe, a log splitter. ‘And I thought that, after we’d eaten, we’d go through to the workroom so that you can select any materials belonging to your old wizard that could be used in our offensive.’

  ‘But I don’t—’ I was going to say that I didn’t know anything about that part of Mercure’s and Gurdyman’s work. Only then I remembered that maybe I did …

  It had been magnificent.

  More than that: but there were no words to describe it; no earthly experience with which to compare it. It had been like a vision of some far-distant star exploding into dazzling brilliance.

  As that vast, expensive, luxurious house had caught fire, the night sky had lit up as if noon had arrived unexpectedly. The flames had soared up to the stars, and the showers of sparks had been like terrible rain. The heat had been so fierce that the red, orange, yellow and finally white fires seemed to outrun and consume the billowing smoke. It had been like a storm, and he could still hear the howl of the wind as it was sucked into the vortex.

  The thrill had been sexual, and its intensity had demanded every particle of him. Afterwards, when he had staggered away and was safely in his hiding place, the sleep that ensued had been more like unconsciousness.

  Now, waking soon after nightfall of the next day, he sent out sensors through his body. He was hungry and thirsty, but both needs could be readily satisfied. He was frugal in his habits, and content with bread, water and a little cheese.

  He got up, rolling up his meagre bedding. He rarely felt the cold, and the single thin blanket was enough. Anything bulkier would have been less easily
transportable: as always, convenience and efficiency went before comfort.

  He ate his simple supper. Then, making absolutely sure that he had left no sign of his presence, he slipped out of his hiding place and jogged off to where he had left his horse. As the moon rose, he was heading out of town and towards the fens.

  FIFTEEN

  Some time around dawn, Jack woke from deep sleep, thrown into wakefulness. By a dream? He attempted to recover whatever it was that had alarmed him, trying to breathe calmly and still his racing heartbeat. Had it been some noise outside that had woken him? One within the house?

  He listened. The deserted village was utterly silent, and even his ever-attentive geese were quiet. Nobody out there, then …

  He raised himself up on one elbow and peered into the gloom of the rear room. He couldn’t make out much more than the dark hump of a shape in the bed, but, listening, he heard her steady breathing. No disturbance in here, either.

  Which meant that whatever had woken him so suddenly had emanated from inside his own head.

  He turned onto his back, folding his hands behind his head. Stilling his mind, he tried to go back to whatever dreaming thought had woken him up.

  And after a while, slowly at first but then rapidly gathering itself once again into the forceful nudge that had set his sleeping heart thumping, the same question came into his mind.

  If Batsheva had come looking for whichever of the fair young men was her lover, or protector, or whatever it was that he had been to her, why had she been watching Gaspard Picot’s house?

  Slowly, steadily, he recalled several things.

  He heard Ranald’s voice; Ranald, who knew a bit about the Picots because he’d been sent to guard the great new house while it was being built. Whose cousin’s wife’s sister Maudie had been the lady Elwytha’s maid. Ranald, who had first told Jack the lady’s name. Who said she was a short, skinny, white-faced, self-absorbed, nervy sort of a woman, with that pop-eyed, lashless look that puts you in mind of a rabbit. Who’d had narrow hips, a figure like an undeveloped girl, and, as Lard had crudely put it, no tits.

  And he heard Ranald’s voice again, speaking of his relation by marriage and saying that Maudie hadn’t had to put up with the bad temper and the violent nature of Gaspard Picot because she’d been his wife’s maid and the lady had separate quarters.

  And then he thought about Batsheva. About her firm-featured, handsome face and her intensely dark eyes. About her strong shoulders and arms, her voluptuous body and the lush, pillowy comfort that a man would be afforded by her full, round breasts.

  Very softly, the words almost mouthed rather than spoken, he said to himself, ‘I believe that, wed to a woman of great wealth and position who possessed neither good looks nor the smallest hint of sexuality, Gaspard Picot took a mistress.’ He paused, thinking carefully over what Batsheva had told him. ‘He found her in London.’ That, he thought, was quite likely, for both the sheriff and his late nephew had been known to visit the capital regularly and, many years back, Gaspard Picot had spent several months there. Neither he nor the sheriff, Jack recalled now, had ever taken their wives with them. Gaspard would have been free to seduce, pay for and otherwise bed as many women as he wanted. ‘And, meeting a young woman who he realized was in urgent need of a new protector, her father having died and left her destitute,’ Jack finished, ‘he removed her from her former home and set her up in Norwich. Which was,’ he added, ‘a great deal closer to home.’

  He thought about that for some time.

  It occurred to him that he should have asked himself why she was watching the Picot house much earlier. Last night, for example, when at last her fierce resistance collapsed and she began to tell him what he wanted to know.

  Why hadn’t he, when now it seemed so obvious?

  Because she didn’t let you, a soft voice said inside his head.

  He jerked his head, as if he hoped to hear it speak again. It didn’t.

  Was that right? Was he only able to see the obvious now because he was out of the power of Batsheva’s eyes? Was it true that, in her presence, with her watching him so intently that she could hear what he was thinking, he might have begun on that path but somehow she had diverted him?

  But that would mean she possessed some sort of mind control; some sort of magic. He didn’t want to believe that. He wasn’t going to …

  He lay still, and outside the first pearly grey crept up the eastern sky.

  In the end, he had to accept the truth.

  He was beginning to like Batsheva.

  He was deeply suspicious of her, and it was still possible that she had committed murder and arson. He was forced to admit that this was actually more likely now, for if she did indeed have some sort of power – he was still fighting the idea – then it could even be she who had implanted in his mind this belief in her innocence.

  All the same, there was something about her that he admired; or, perhaps more accurately, something that aroused his sympathy and his protectiveness. She’d been secure, living in her little Norwich house, her lover and her protector a regular visitor, until, one day, Gaspard Picot hadn’t turned up when he was meant to. And he went on not turning up, until finally she was driven to come to Cambridge and find out what had happened to him.

  He thought she was courageous to have come here. He imagined how she’d have felt when she learned Gaspard Picot was dead. He thought she was—

  No. He wasn’t going to allow himself any further down that seductive path.

  But an unpleasant truth was nagging at him. If he was right and she had been Gaspard Picot’s mistress – he was sure of it – then, before someone else did, he was going to have to tell her who was responsible for her lover’s death.

  Once more, Jack thought, she had been left entirely alone in a tough world. This time, it was because of him. He remembered how he’d felt guilty about leaving the lady Elwytha a widow. How much worse, he realized, feeling sick, did he feel about Batsheva.

  It was still early. He wondered if he could sleep again, and he decided it was worth a try. He settled down on his side, made himself relax and quite soon felt himself drifting off.

  In the sort of half-dream that flies through the mind as wakefulness battles with oncoming sleep, he saw an image of a baby, and wondered if Batsheva had borne Gaspard Picot any children. One of the two fair-haired men, perhaps? Both of them, and what’s his name, Gurdyman’s friend Hrype’s son, attacked because they’d been mistaken for him? But why would anyone want the young man, or men, dead?

  Were the ages right? Originally he’d thought Batsheva too young to be the mother, but he realized now that he had no accurate idea of the dead men’s ages. Nor of hers, come to that. He wondered who would know about the young men, and remembered that Gurdyman had seen both bodies. He’d go and speak to him later today.

  His mind veered away from the thought that the woman sleeping in the next room might just have lost both lover and sons.

  Baby.

  For just an instant, something flashed into his mind like a bright star glimpsed for the blink of an eye through a hole in a night cloud.

  But then it was gone, its presence so brief that he forgot all about it.

  I was awake before Rollo the next morning. Once again, I emerged from deep sleep to find that he was curved around me. Once again, I loved his closeness.

  I got up and went through to Mercure’s workroom, a lamp in my hand. I lit two more lamps. I needed plenty of light, because I was going to be searching through his supplies and it was very important that I didn’t mistake something potentially harmful for something innocuous.

  I had a memory of a lesson that Gurdyman had given me. I’d found him with a wooden bowl of fine black powder in his hands, and he’d told me with unusual urgency never to touch it. Since, naturally, that aroused intense curiosity, he told me what it was.

  ‘I learned of it when I was a young man in Muslim Spain,’ he began – I love his tales of his exotic youth – ‘a
nd it is a secret method brought by traders from the far side of the world. The man who showed it and its powers to me had in turn been instructed by a man with a yellow face, a long black pigtail and eyes set at a slant.’ I could barely contain myself by then. ‘In the way of so many procedures,’ he went on, ‘we mix three quite ordinary items together to produce the extraordinary; in this case, charcoal, yellow brimstone and saltpetre, which as you probably know is the exudation that comes from the old stones of dank, dark cellars.’ As he so often did, he assumed knowledge I didn’t in fact have. ‘Now once these elements have been crushed – separately, mind – in the pestle and mortar, we combine them and we make the dark powder.’ Slowly he turned the bowl in his graceful hands. ‘And, if the separate ingredients are pure enough, and if we have the proportions exactly right, we have a substance which, treated in a certain way, will disappear with a crash like thunder and a flash brighter than lightning.’

  I don’t know if Gurdyman ever put theory to the test. If he did, it wasn’t when I was close enough to witness or to hear.

  Wandering round Mercure’s workroom, I had found two of the three ingredients. There was a whole sack of finely powdered charcoal, and he had a jar containing lumps of brimstone.

  I couldn’t find any saltpetre, which was just as well. While the idea of rushing back to Rollo and announcing I had conjured up a barrel full of dark powder and knew exactly how we could use it to make our enemy disappear was very seductive, it was a totally impractical plan. For one thing, there was no saltpetre, and, even had there been a convenient stone-walled cellar where I might have found some, how on earth would I go about purifying it, and to what degree of purity? No. If I’d made the attempt, I’d probably have succeeded in blowing my hands off, to say the least.