A gasp went up from those who were not too blinded by the smoke to see. Contrary to what they expected, there was no mage hiding behind it. Baldwin yanked aside the canvas flap at the back of the stage and jumped down. He could be heard cursing as he fell among some barrels. By now his cronies were barging onto the stage as well. There were confused murmurs from the crowd. From her position on the edge it was easy for Hildegard to slip between the booths. She came out into a passage between the back of the row and some tenements in time to see Baldwin and his men searching with baffled expressions among a miscellany of rubbish. Of the mage there was no sign. There was little space among the barrels and sacks for a man to hide himself. Some way farther down, a cart was being unloaded by a brawny, bareheaded fellow in a woollen tunic. Hildegard heard him give a derisory laugh when one of the group asked if a man in a spangled cloak had been seen running his way. The driver of the cart, a grey-bearded old man with an old sack over his shoulders jiggled the reins of the stock pony between the shafts as if impatient to be on his way.
