Puzzled by how Hugh knew where to find him and wherefore no one seemed to take any notice of the hunchback with the slightly deformed countenance, Colman asked the Chieftain of the Walking People: "How did he know where to find me?" Even Ruby wished to know that answer. How did Hugh know where the Walking People of Dublin were located?
"Your mentor knows this place well." Answered the Chieftain of the Walking People, taking out a knife and proceeding to carve something out of a piece of wood. "In his hedonistic days he would come here often as FitzGerald's guest."
"H-His guest?" asked Ruby, completely incredulous towards what she was hearing. "You can't possibly mean there is a friendship between those two!"
"Friendship, alliance, whatever word you choose, that is what is between them." Stated the Chieftain of the Walking People.
"He could have killed me…" muttered Colman.
"It would not have been the first time that FitzGerald has killed one of your mentor's students, boy." The Chieftain of the Walking People continued on with his carving, never once looking away as he spoke. "Did Master Gardiner not care?" asked Colman, wondering what would follow if he were to inform his mentor.
"Only when the student in question showed promise."
The Young Poet could not think of anything to say. Would Gardiner have cared if FitzGerald had succeeded in hanging him? Did his mentor think of him as a student who showed promise? Who were these past students? Had they been like him? Had they too been orphaned by the Tudor Conquest? Those were questions he would have to ask when he next met his mentor.
"Did you know Master Gardiner when he would come here?" inquired Ruby.
"I did not know him personally." Replied the Chieftain of the Walking People, now struggling to get his knife free from the wood. Immediately, Colman and Ruby both stood up and chose seats farther from the man. It was clear that his skill in woodcarving was at most only half of what it should have been, as the carving only vaguely resembled something that the Young Poet and the Walking Girl would have recognized as a horse. "Though I knew of him! He would converse with the robbers, the panhandlers, the unfrocked priests and the wastrels, but we Minceiri he would never pay any attention to, thinking more of the others in this community than us."
"Wherefore?" asked Colman.
Getting his knife free, the Chieftain of the Walking People shrugged and said: "I don't know, perhaps I never will. Your mentor has been a citizen of Dublin for twenty-five years, lad, and in those twenty-five years, the Minceiri of Dublin have seen nine leaders come and go. Though he is old, I do not doubt the possibility I may predecease him as well and you may predecease him as well, lad. With the number of students that he has lost, what makes you think that you truly will see him buried before he sees you buried?"
Colman knew not how to answer that. Even Ruby did not know what to say on Colman's behalf. Though the Walking Girl had known many a palm reader and fortune teller, the fact of the matter was those people were more often wrong that correct. Today she had found a friend, but were she to lose him so soon? Perhaps not that night, not tomorrow, not that week, month or year, but was it possible that Gardiner would outlive ever student he ever had?