He turned to see Mrs Puddinge glaring at him from the door, her arms bearing enough cloths to swaddle a small army. ‘A man would have to be foolish indeed to reject that invitation,’ he replied rakishly.
She blushed again, but couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘Get along with you.’
Once he was seated on the edge of the bed, she tended to his shoulder with practised efficiency, first cleaning the wound again, then placing a folded cloth over it, which she secured with a long strip of cloth wound about his torso. He had intended to ask her to have a look between his shoulder blades, but, as it turned out, there was no need.
‘Merciful heavens!’ she cried out.
‘What is it?’
‘Why, another wound. A worse one. Much worse! Can you not feel it?’
‘No. Or rather, a slight discomfort only between my shoulder blades, like an annoying itch I cannot scratch.’
‘That would be the scab. Here, let me show you …’ She fetched the mirror down from the wall and returned to the bed, where she held it at such an angle as to give him the clear view he had been unable to acquire for himself.
What he saw both shocked and fascinated; it felt strangely removed from him, or he from it, as though he were looking at someone else’s body, or, as in a dream, gazing down at his own from a superior vantage like a ghost or angel. Nestled between his shoulder blades was a blood-crusted incision no more than an inch long. The skin to either side was as purple as the petals of a violet, yet also streaked with scarlet and yellow and a sickly, algal green. It was a wonder that his fight with Aylesford had not reopened the wound. A clammy sweat broke out on his skin, and he felt as if he’d swallowed a knot of writhing eels.
‘Are you all right, Mr Quare?’ Mrs Puddinge asked in concern at his sudden pallor.
He took a deep breath and looked away. ‘I’m well,’ he said, but the croak of his voice belied it. Obviously, Aylesford had failed to pierce his heart with his knife thrust in the dark. But even so, Quare felt sure that a wound such as this should have done more than merely itch. It seemed the sort of wound one might see upon a corpse. Yet there was not even a twinge of pain. His heart was beating strongly, rapidly, and his lungs had no difficulty drawing breath. He didn’t understand it.
‘I’m afraid that’s beyond my poor skills,’ said Mrs Puddinge, shaking her head. ‘You’ll need a surgeon to sew that up, you will.’
‘I’ll have it seen to at the guild hall,’ he promised; now that he wasn’t looking at the wound, he was able to think more clearly, though the nausea showed no sign of receding. ‘Can you just bind it up for now?’
‘I’ll try, but God help you if it opens again.’ She set to work. ‘This is older than the one on your shoulder,’ she observed as she twined a strip of cloth about his chest. ‘You must’ve got it at the Pig and Rooster, a craven blow from behind, in the midst of the brawl.’
‘No doubt,’ he said. Perhaps it was the sensation of her hands upon the skin of his back, but he began to feel the stirrings of memory; or, rather, it was as if his body remembered what his mind could not. He began to tremble.
‘There, there,’ Mrs Puddinge repeated. ‘Almost done …’
No, it was not memory. More like the way he had seemed, upon being shown the crusted wound, to separate from his own skin. So now did he see in his mind’s eye the stark tableau, lit by moonlight, of himself and Aylesford pressed close on Clara’s bed in a travesty of intimate congress. He seemed to feel the other man’s body cleaving to his own, his hand clamped over his mouth; saw, or imagined that he saw, the wide eyes of Clara gazing at them, and then her knowing smirk as she turned away into shadows and tangled bed-sheets.
He rose to his feet and rushed to the open window, arriving just in time to spew the contents of his stomach into the alley below. Ignoring Mrs Puddinge, who, after an initial exclamation, had hurried to stand at his side, one hand stroking his arm, her touch like sandpaper despite her kindly intent, he leaned forward, arms bracing himself on the sill, closed his eyes, and let the cool city air – carrying its quotidian stinks of coal smoke and river stench and the waste of animals and human beings, odours that had sickened him during his first days and weeks in London, but which were now as familiar as the smells of his own body, and as reassuring – play over his face and torso. He was alive, damn it. Despite Aylesford’s efforts. And he had work to do.
Taking a breath, he straightened and pulled away from Mrs Puddinge. ‘I’d better have a look at Aylesford’s room,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t I call for a doctor, after all?’ she asked, concern in her voice and in her eyes.
He shook his head. ‘Please, Mrs P. I’ve no time to argue.’ He crossed the room and pulled a clean shirt from amidst the scattered pieces of clothing Aylesford had strewn about in the course of ransacking his trunk. ‘There is more at stake here than one man’s health. At any rate, as I told you, I’m perfectly well.’ He turned away from her and drew the shirt over his head with a grimace, but schooled his expression to equanimity when he faced her again. ‘Now, if you will lead the way …’
‘Perfectly well, he says,’ Mrs Puddinge muttered as she preceded him out of the room, down the still-empty landing and up to the fourth floor. ‘With a hole in his back and a shoulder sliced open like a side of roast beef.’ She stopped before a door, produced her ring of keys from somewhere beneath her apron, and glared up at him. ‘You’re not a well man, Mr Quare. Deny it all you like, but the longer you do, the worse price you’ll pay. Heed your stomach, sir. It’s wiser than you are.’
‘The door, if you please, Mrs P.’
Scowling, she fitted the key to the lock. ‘Why, it’s unlocked!’ She pushed the door open. ‘Here you go, then, Mr Quare. I hope you find enough to hang—’
She broke off, and Quare pushed past her into the room, his hand on the pommel of his sword.
The room was empty, which was no more than he had expected. But it was not simply empty of Aylesford – it was empty of all trace of the man.
‘Why, his things … they’re gone!’ Mrs Puddinge said from just behind him.
‘What things?’ he asked, turning to her.
‘He had a small trunk that he carried in on his shoulder last evening,’ Mrs Puddinge said. ‘It was still here this morning – I’m sure of it. He … Oh, dear Lord in heaven!’ She looked as if she might faint, and Quare reached out to steady her. ‘There on the floor!’ She pointed with the hand that held the keys; they rattled with her shaking. ‘Blood, Mr Quare! He must’ve come back here after he fled your room! He must’ve come back here and waited until you had satisfied yourself that he was gone from the house! Then, when you returned to your room, he must have taken his trunk and crept out of here as quiet as a mouse!’
Quare felt close to fainting himself. Mrs Puddinge was right. The drops of blood on the wooden slats of the floor confirmed it. He’d assumed that Aylesford had escaped into the bustling streets, but instead he’d retired here, to this room, biding his time until Quare had given up the chase. Then – he could picture it as clearly in his mind as if he’d witnessed it himself – he’d hoisted his trunk onto his shoulder and left … along with any evidence that might incriminate him or shed light on his mission. Quare cursed – he had badly misplayed the situation. Master Magnus would not be pleased.
Master Magnus!
Aylesford had said the master was dead. Murdered in the night, like Mansfield and the rest. Quayle prayed to God that it was a lie, but he was forced to admit that everything Aylesford had told him this morning had thus far turned out to be true. He had to get to the guild hall.
Mrs Puddinge, meanwhile, was edging into hysterics. ‘Why, he could have slipped back into your room while you were searching the street outside and slit my throat! Or when I went to fetch bandages, I might have met him in the hall or on the stairs, and what then? Oh, Mr Quare, he might still be lurking about, waiting for the chance to finish me off!’