CHAPTER XXXI
To Coby’s relief, Mal returned safely with the university’s own watchmen, and the soldiers were escorted away to the prison in the old castle gatehouse. That night all five of them slept in the bedchamber Mal had rented; in truth the bed was big enough for them all, though Sandy ceded his place and instead sat in a borrowed armchair all night, whilst he used his magics in search of Kit.
Next morning they held council over a breakfast of yesterday’s bread and flagons of small ale. The landlord had returned in the night and, whilst grateful to be rid of the “foreign ruffians” who had expelled him, had rightly guessed that it was Mal who had drawn them there in the first place, however unwittingly.
“We should find another place to stay,” Coby said, grimacing as she tore the heel of the loaf in two.
“I hope there won’t be need,” Mal replied. He turned to Sandy. “Did you find anything last night?”
Sandy yawned and sank his head into his hands.
“Not a thing. Monkton and his men have never even heard of Shawe, and though I searched the entire town I found no sign of a skrayling soul, not even a dormant one. My amayi is not here.”
“Damn.” Mal got to his feet and brushed crumbs from his lap. “I’d better visit my old college and try to find out if he’s been seen here. Coby, you can come with me; Sandy, get some rest. You can try further afield tonight if need be.”
“What about us?” Ned asked, putting his good arm around Gabriel’s waist.
“You should stay here and rest as well,” Coby said quickly. Someone ought to keep an eye on Sandy. “You look like you’ve been to Hell and back.”
Ned bristled. “We didn’t come all this way to sit on our arses. We’re fond of the lad too, you know.”
Coby turned to Mal in wordless appeal, but he was too busy fussing with his rapier hanger to notice.
“Very well,” Mal said. “Take our horses to the livery stable in town and hire fresh ones. If I get news of Shawe or Kit, I want to be able to leave immediately.”
“Just don’t be long,” she told Ned as Mal left the room. “Monkton might not be the only one on our trail, and I don’t want to be the one scraping you off the cobbles.”
They walked back into town, retracing their steps to King’s College Chapel and thence past more college buildings of red brick or creamy-yellow stone, until they reached the gates of what Coby assumed must be Peterhouse. Mal led the way inside, pausing in the lodge to speak to a grizzle-jawed porter who looked almost as ancient as the building he tended.
“Doctor Lambert?” The porter’s wrinkled face creased still further, though not in what Coby would call a smile. “Aye, he lives, sir. Ye’ll find him in the Old Court, in the same chambers he’s had these thirty years.”
Mal thanked him and led the way around an L-shaped courtyard surrounded by buildings that looked easily as old as Saint Thomas’s Tower. Their rooflines were edged with battlements like a castle’s, though their walls were pierced with many large arched windows framed in delicate stonework.
“This is where you lived and studied?” Coby asked as she trotted along at his side.
“Of course. Though it was smaller in my day.” He pointed out a window high on the righthand side. “Those were my chambers. Well, mine and three other lads. I remember one time…”
“What?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s a story for another day. Come, let’s find Lambert.”
Coby paused for a moment, staring at the distant window and wondering what mischief her husband could have got up to in his youth. A pity they were here on such serious business, or she would have wheedled it out of him on the spot.
The master’s rooms were on the ground floor, just off one of the stairwells. Mal knocked and waited. When no one answered, he knocked again, more loudly this time.
“The poor old fellow’s probably deaf by now, or blind,” Mal said in a low voice. “Or both.”
After several minutes’ waiting the door opened, and a man of about sixty peered out. His bald head was covered by a black linen coif, its strings tied awkwardly under his chin so that they tangled in his long silver beard.
“I told you not to disturb me when I–” He squinted up at Mal. “You’re not one of my students. Do I know you?”
“Maliverny Catlyn, magister. I came here in the autumn of eighty-three…”
“Catlyn, Catlyn…? Ah, yes, I remember. That business with Ponsonby and the bucket of eels–”
“Yes, that Catlyn.”
Coby shot her husband a quizzical look. I’ll tell you later, he mouthed. I swear.
“Well, come in, lad, come in.” Lambert peered at Coby. “Though you seem to have a lad of your own now. Come to put him forward for the college, eh?”
“Aye. That is, no.”
Mal glared at Coby, who shrank back a little, confused by this sudden turn of events. Was the old man so dim of sight that he really thought her a boy young enough to be starting college? She supposed it made a change from being a servant.
“The truth is, magister,” Mal went on, as Lambert ushered them inside. “My son here neglects his studies atrociously, and I thought that a glimpse of the opportunities he is missing out on might spur him to greater efforts.”
“Opportunity” was not the first word that sprang to Coby’s mind upon entering the academic’s chamber. “Squalor” was one, though “labyrinth” came close on its heels. Apart from a small bedstead in the far corner, little furniture could be seen, though she supposed it must be there somewhere, under the piles of books, boxes, and elaborate brass instruments which appeared to be sextants that had mated with clocks. Maps, of the night sky as well as the Earth and seas, covered the wall panels, and there were even objects hanging from the ceiling: model ships, bunches of desiccated herbs and, near the window, the skeleton of some flying creature, its bones cunningly reunited as in life. The place looked like a cross between Gabriel’s old lodgings and an alchemist’s workshop. No wonder Mal thought Lambert might be able to lead them to Shawe.
“You should beat him more often,” Lambert said, clearing a pile of debris from what turned out to be a stool. “A good lashing sharpens the mind like a whetstone to a sword.”
“Aye, magister. It always had that effect on me.”
Lambert barked a laugh. “So I recall. Why are you here, then, if not to present your son?”
Mal took the offered seat, and Lambert lowered himself into a chair opposite, crushing several rolled-up documents in the process.
“I’m up here on the King’s business,” Mal said. “You know. The usual game.”
Lambert ran a tongue around his gums and leaned forward. “Taken over from Walsingham, have you?”
“Could say that. So, do you have any likely lads among your students?”
Coby realised Mal was talking about recruiting spies. Had Walsingham come here just like this, twenty years ago, and been given Mal’s name?
“There could be one or two. Though boys these days are not what they were.” Lambert frowned at her, and Coby dropped her gaze, remembering she was playing the dutiful child. “Most of them are mutton-heads and wool-gatherers, and the ones from the Priory are the worst.”
“The Priory?”
“Anglesey Priory. It’s a new school out at Stow. Headmaster reckons he only takes the brightest boys, but I’ve yet to see one who was so much as your equal, Catlyn. And don’t take that as a compliment.”
“Of course not, magister.” Mal got to his feet. “Well, that’s a pity. I seem to have come all this way for nothing. Perhaps I should try one of the other colleges–”
“I did not say I had no one for you. But you will be the best judge of his suitability, I dare say.”
“Is he here now?”
Lambert shook his head. “Gone home for the Long Vacation. You’ve chosen a bad time for such a venture.” His eyes narrowed. “Indeed, a man clever enough to take over from Walsingham would have chosen almost any other time to come here.”
Coby exchanged glances with Mal. The old man’s wits were sharper than his eyesight, that was plain.
“You said yourself, magister, that I am not a clever man.”
Lambert’s mouth quirked. “So I did.”
Mal walked over to what was probably a desk, hidden under drifts of paper.
“Your astronomical studies look to be a good deal advanced since I was last here,” he said. “Are you acquainted with Thomas Harriot?”
“And now we come to the truth of the matter, eh?” Lambert eased himself round in his chair to watch Mal sifting through the papers. “I’ve corresponded with Harriot a little since he came back from the New World laden down with new-fangled devices and wild ideas. You know he claims there are spots on the sun? Blasphemous nonsense.”
“Don’t worry, magister, I’m not here to enquire into your orthodoxy.”
“No? That’s how you fellows proceed, is it not?”
Mal sighed and put down the document he had been perusing. “I shall be blunt, Master Lambert. I’m looking for a man named Matthew Shawe, an acquaintance of Thomas Harriot. And yes, I seek him on the King’s business.”
“Shawe… Shawe…”
“He is an alchemist, among other things.”
Lambert started. “Matthew Shawe, you say? Could it be…?”
“What?”
“A Matthew Shawe is the headmaster of Anglesey Priory School, the one I was telling you about.”
“He is?” Mal turned to Coby. “That could well be our man.”
“Excuse me, Master Lambert,” Coby said, “but you mentioned you had boys from the Priory school here at the college.”
“Yes, one or two. Why?”
“I think we should talk to them,” Mal said. “If they’re still here.”
“As it happens there is one, but he’s no longer a student. Sad case.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Lost his wits, poor fellow. We thought perhaps whoever was paying his college stipend would take him back in, but then the money dried up. It was as if he had been disowned.” Lambert shook his head. “We found him a position among the college servants rather than see him turned out to starve.”
“I’d still like to talk to him, if I may,” Mal said.
“Of course. You’ll have to wait until he’s finished in the kitchens, but perhaps you’d care to dine with me in the meantime?”
“I’d be honoured, sir, but I fear our business is very urgent. I’d like to see the boy now.”
“Very well, if you must,” Lambert muttered. “But much good it may do you.”
“I hope you don’t mind waiting here, sir,” the porter said, showed Mal and Coby into an office at one end of the kitchens, “only Master Lambert thought it might alarm young Martin to be summoned to his lodgings.”
“Of course,” Mal said.
He sat down at the desk, where the college account ledger lay open. Out of habit he perused the recent entries: a late payment of a buttery bill from the end of the Easter term; deliveries of flour from the first wheat of the harvest, twelve dozen eggs from one of the college’s farms in the village of Cherry Hinton, a side of beef from a butcher in King’s Ditch. Nothing suspicious there.
Footsteps sounded in the passageway and the servant reappeared with a young man of twenty or so, bone-thin and stinking of woodsmoke and grease from his labours in the kitchens. Martin stared at the floor, work-reddened hands clasped before him. Mal gestured to the servant to leave them.
“You’re Martin, the kitchen lad, aren’t you?” Mal said gently.
The boy made no answer. He reminded Mal a great deal of Sandy back in Bedlam, at once oblivious to his surroundings and yet alert and on edge, if expecting a beating any moment.
“I won’t hurt you,” Mal said. “I just want to ask you a few questions. About the time before you came here. When you were at the school, Anglesey Priory.”
Martin began to shake. “Don’t take me back there, sir. I don’t want to go back.”
“I’m not here to take you back. I just want to know–”
Martin shook his head and flailed his hands before his face, like a man trying to shake off a troublesome wasp, before lapsing once more into immobility. Mal looked to Coby in mute appeal. Perhaps someone nearer his own age could elicit some sense?
“Martin…” she began.
“Aye, Martin,” he muttered. “That’s what they called me. Like the little bird in the eaves. Black and white; day and night. Except there’s no day or night there, no sun or moon.”
Mal stared at the boy.
“You’ve seen the dreamlands?”
Martin looked up at last. He stared at Mal for several heartbeats, then his blue eyes rolled upwards in their sockets. Mal dashed forward and caught him before he fell. He lowered the boy to the floor. Martin was twitching and moaning, rather like Sandy in one of his fits.
Coby hunkered down at Mal’s side.
“I think it’s pretty clear what we’re up against,” she said. “Guiser magic.”
“Yes, but what kind?” Mal replied. “He’s just a normal boy. Unless Sandy was wrong.”
He gently brushed the hair back from Martin’s face, studying the gaunt features as if that might give him a clue as to the boy’s identity. He had said “they” called him Martin, so perhaps it wasn’t his real name.
“What’s that?” Coby pointed to the side of Martin’s head, where the lower part of one of the boy’s ears had been cut away.
“A self-inflicted injury, or perhaps a kitchen accident?”
“Perhaps. A kitchen is no place for a madman to work, with so many sharp blades and hot irons around.”
“Irons…” Mal nodded thoughtfully. “If there’s guiser magic at work here, he might be calmest where there’s plenty of iron.”
“I think we’ve learnt as much from him as we’re going to,” Coby said. “We should call the servants and have him carried to his bed.”
“Aye. Poor fellow.” He got to his feet and took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his greasy hands. “We’d best get back to the Pickerel and plan our next move.”