‘Aye!’ the helpers cried, taking up the idea with enthusiasm. ‘Let him throw back his hood and show himself!’
The crowd that now filled the alley was fifty or sixty strong. As those at the back began to chant, ‘Show! Show! Show!’ the brown-robed senior gathered himself as if for a fight, and spoke as directly as his station would allow. ‘Can it be this lowly servant has not heard our friends a-calling? Let him show himself! Or must these same friends force him to uncover?’
‘Force?’ There was scorn in the reply. ‘Such an ugly word. Shall it be said that these friends are going to force a lowly Fellow who is doing his duty by the Iron Rule, who moves in zeal and commits nothing contrary to the holy principle that binds all members of the Happy Family? Force, is it?’
The Elder trembled with fury. He was not used to backing down. He cried, ‘How best to put an order such as this? Come now, friends: the lowly Fellow cannot kill us all! Now let him prove himself. Show, show, show!’
The chant started again, but Eudas stood unmoving in the face of it, until it died away. Then he said, ‘The lowly Fellow has stated his case: the beggar belongs to him. However—’
A moment passed. The chain continued to circle over-head, but then Eudas snapped his wrist and brought it snaking down into a dead heap beside him. With the next movement he put his hands to his hood and pulled it back onto his shoulders.
Those who stared gasped at what they saw. From where Will crouched he could not see what had caused the reaction, but there were many in the crowd who turned away, while the rest goggled in frank horror.
The Elder’s fingers reached out briefly, then he nodded, disappointed that the orbits of Fellow Eudas’ eyes were indeed vacant. The realization struck a dull note of fear in Will’s belly as he huddled lower against the foot of the chapter house door. Above him the brazen arm reached down as far as it could in a vain attempt to seize him.
‘Is it not wholly as the lowly one said?’ the big man asked in his quiet, deep voice. ‘Now, if the exalted ones please…he may be left to his work, and may peace attend all.’
‘There is peace only in Heaven,’ the brown-garbed one cried, making a sign in the air. ‘Perhaps this is something the lowly Fellow forgets!’
‘One may say he knows which of those gathered here upholds the Iron Rule, and which is trying to break it. How if someone should take report of what has passed to the Council of High Wardens? How if due consideration was made upon the facts?’
Will watched as heads were bowed in fear, but then a voice at the mouth of the alley shouted, ‘This way, everybody! The bone demon went down Fish Street!’
When the last of the crowd had bled away, the big man quickly pulled up his hood and hid the face that had so horrified the crowd. He stooped and picked up the chain, feeding it artfully inside his sleeve and across his shoulders. Will watched him, his mind still crawling with fears, certain that his best hope was to remain an old beggar for the time being.
But there was another danger to be handled now.
‘I thank you, sir. I thank you for my life,’ Will muttered, rising. He made humble nods, gathered his tattered coat about him, and began to make away, but the Fellow moved across his path.
‘If you really do want to thank me for your life,’ he said simply, ‘there is only one way to do it.’
‘No, no,’ Will said, trying again to slide past. ‘I’m truly grateful that you’ve helped me, but I’ve no wish to spend my latter days inside a chapter house. Kind though your offer undoubtedly is, I—’
‘Hear me out, friend.’
Will shivered with revulsion. ‘Oh, but the life would be hateful to me. In fact, it would be worse than the death from which you’ve just saved me.’
But Eudas placed a staying hand on Will’s breast. ‘I also have made that choice.’
That brought Will up sharp. ‘What did you say?’
‘I am trying to tell you that I have escaped the Fellowship.’
Astonishment made Will stare. ‘But how can that be? Once a Fellow, always a Fellow – isn’t that part of the Iron Rule? No one ever leaves the embrace of the Sightless Ones.’
‘I did.’
Will began to feel the integrity of his disguise running thin. Very slightly, the mottling of age on his hands had started to lighten…
Hands! Of course!
‘Let me see your hands,’ he told the Fellow.
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘Do you blame me for that?’
Straight away, Eudas unwrapped the dirty cloth strips that were bound over his hands. Will’s fast-improving eyesight could see that the knuckles were not as cracked and red as those of other Fellows, and the nails, always horn-hard and yellow, had begun to grow out normally.
Will dropped the hands, amazed. ‘You’ve stopped washing.’
The dark hood gave a single nod. ‘I have.’
‘You’ve abandoned the ritual!’
‘I have not washed in a month.’
‘But that’s impossible! The strength of mind that would be required to break free from such coils as the Fellowship winds around a man’s spirit…’
‘It has not been easy.’
Will knew it was time to put aside his astonishment and ask the crucial question. ‘But tell me, ex-Fellow Eudas, if you are not recruiting lost souls to your house, why did you risk yourself to help a worthless beggar?’
There came a growl from deep inside the big man’s chest, and his strangely accented words gave Will even more to think about. ‘There was little risk. If they had not gone away I would have killed them all. And if there is justice in the world, it will be you who helps the worthless beggar.’
By now, Will’s suspicions were fully aroused. He peered hard at the hooded Fellow, trying with all his mind to penetrate the disguise. There was more to this man than met the eye.
‘You must forgive an old man,’ he said, sticking to his story. ‘I’m in no position to help anyone. Now, if you don’t mind—’
The big man seized him by the shoulders. ‘The worthless beggar I want you to help is…me.’
Will imagined that in a moment he would slap the Fellow playfully on the shoulder and say, ‘Come now, Master Gwydion, without your staff you are not so nimble in magic as once you were. Don’t you think I can see through your disguises as well as you see through mine?’ But that moment was not to be, for it seemed there was something even stranger than magic about this man.
‘Who are you?’
‘If you would know that, then listen and I will tell you.’
The big man sat down on the steps and began to lay out his life’s tale, and Will, unable to do otherwise, sat down beside him and listened.
‘I have always been lucky. My given name was Lotan, which in my native tongue means “the fortunate one”. I was born seven-times-seven years ago in a land far beyond the Narrow Seas, in a country that you call the Tortured Lands. One day, when I was still a child, all my family was murdered. It was my good fortune to be the only one who escaped alive.’
‘Good fortune indeed,’ Will murmured, though the irony