Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

He was watching me, his dark eyes intent. ‘I am reluctant to ask you,’ he muttered, ‘but I have the feeling that I’m not going to be able to fulfil my mission without your help.’

‘I will do anything,’ I said softly.

He made a sound in his throat, half anguish, half a moan of happiness. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That is why I don’t want to involve you.’

‘I can take care of myself,’ I said gently. ‘Remember who it was who got us away from the storm at the end of the path?’

He smiled grimly. ‘I’m not likely to forget.’

We studied each other for some moments. I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking. It must have come hard, for a man such as he to face the fact that a skinny village healer could do something he couldn’t do, and that, in truth, he still had need of her assistance.

In the end he gave a sigh, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop the grin spreading over his face. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

It was not what I was expecting, but I was, very. ‘Starving,’ I said.

‘Me too.’ He reached down for my hand, gave it a squeeze and released it. ‘Let’s pack up and head off for some place where they’ll serve us breakfast. I’ll treat you to anything and everything you fancy — ’ he patted a purse at his waist and I heard the chink of coins — ‘and when we’ve eaten all we want, I’ll tell you why I’m here and what I have to do. What do you say?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Gurdyman leaned back in his chair, kneading the flesh of his brow as if his head hurt. Watching him, Hrype would not have been surprised if it did. The intense concentration he had brought to bear on the matter, and the awful, underlying sense of urgency spurring them both on, were enough to give anyone a headache.

‘If the man at Chatteris isn’t Father Clement,’ Gurdyman said heavily, removing his hand, ‘then who is he? And if we are right in our conclusion that the dead man is Father Clement, then what was he doing over in the eastern fens? Was he killed at the spot where he became entangled with the boat, or did the murderer take the body there because it was a fitting place for his sacrifice?’

Hrype gave a brief sound of frustrated irritation. ‘Too many questions, Gurdyman,’ he said shortly. ‘I can give no answers other than useless speculation.’

Gurdyman smiled. ‘Your speculation is never useless, old friend,’ he murmured.

Hrype barely heard. ‘It would be quite possible for anyone with a boat to have done the killing in one place and then transported the body to the spot where it was found,’ he said slowly, ‘but my heart tells me it was not done like that.’ He hesitated, trying to catch the nebulous impression that so convinced him and put it into words. ‘From what you have told me, I have a picture in my mind of a body, naked and suffering the marks of the Threefold Death: the stab to the neck, the garrotte, the drowning. In his stomach are the remains of his last meal; the powerful substances that rendered him unconscious have done their work all too well. The killer forces hazel stakes into the soft ground at the fen edge, lashing his victim to them with honeysuckle ropes. This was not so much a killing, Gurdyman, as a performance, done for the benefit of the only witnesses.’

‘The spirits. The gods of the place,’ Gurdyman said softly.

‘Yes. Our killer was making an offering to them because he wished something from them; perhaps because, having already been granted whatever he had asked for, he was giving thanks. Either way, this performance would have been enacted in its entirety in the place where the body was found.’ He added, with quiet conviction, ‘I am quite certain of it.’

Gurdyman nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I, too, see it that way,’ he agreed.

‘So, let us ask the question again,’ Hrype said. ‘Why was Father Clement over on the east side of the fens?’ Abruptly, he stood up, moving to the side of the sunny courtyard so that he could look up into the sky. ‘Not long past midday,’ he murmured. ‘If I leave now, I should be there by noon tomorrow.’

Gurdyman got to his feet. Stiff after sitting still for so long, he pressed a hand to the small of his back. ‘It is a long way,’ he said. ‘I will pack some provisions for you.’

He did not need to ask where Hrype was going; if they were to find out what reason Father Clement had had for journeying to the area where his body was left, then one of them must go and ask at the last place where he was known to have been: Crowland Abbey.

Hrype had lived for much of his adult life in the fen country, and he would have said that he was immune to the fears and the superstitions of outsiders. He had visited the Crowland area twice before, but the first time had been before the latest fire, when the abbey was bustling with life, and on the second occasion, he had been intent on a specific mission — to find out more about Father Clement from locals in the vicinity — and he had not taken much notice of his surroundings. Now, however, when in the early afternoon of the following day he finally reached Crowland, he discovered he was wrong. He was as susceptible to irrational fears as anyone.

He was entirely alone. He was exhausted, for yesterday he had walked for almost twenty-five miles before giving in to his hunger and fatigue and finding a place to sleep for what remained of the night. Today he had travelled sometimes on foot and occasionally by boat, in the places where the waters were too wide to jump over or ford. Since mid-morning, when a boatman had dropped him off after ferrying him over a meandering river, he had not seen a living soul. The sky was cloudy and lowering, heavy with the threat of rain. Spirals and twirls of white mist rose up from the damp fen, coalescing into a sort of pale layer lying just above the ground. Looking down, Hrype had the impression that he had no feet. Or, perhaps, was walking on cloud. .

He shivered, wrapping his cloak more tightly around him. From somewhere quite close there was a sudden booming sound, like someone blowing across the top of a large jar. The reed beds and the swampy conditions were perfect for bitterns, but such was Hrype’s state of mind that it took him several moments of heart-pounding fear to remember that. He stood quite still, and presently the sound came again. It was spring, Hrype mused. The bird was seeking a mate.

He trudged on. Peering ahead, he could make out a hump of higher ground ahead. The intervening terrain was sodden but not actually under water, or so he thought. But then, still some hundred or so paces from the island, he realized that it was, in fact, surrounded by water. Not very deep, and clogged with reed banks, but nevertheless he was going to have to get his feet wet. Reaching the water’s edge, he stopped and looked around. Now he could make out the fire-blackened ruins of the abbey, but they appeared to be deserted. If there was anyone in residence — there had to be, he told himself firmly, refusing to believe he’d come all this way for nothing — then they were not keeping a lookout for visitors and preparing to send out a boat.

He noticed that there was a line of stakes sticking out of the water. Hoping that these had been placed to mark the shallow way across to the island, he sat down, removed his boots, rolled up his hose and stepped into the water.

He was too busy watching where he put his feet and trying to avoid the deeper water to look up, so when a voice hailed him from the far shore, it took him by surprise. It was only then, when he had evidence that there was someone there other than himself and the spirits whom he sensed crowding around him from all sides, that he let himself acknowledge how the atmosphere of the place had unnerved him.