Authors: Shirley McKay
‘The door to the garden is left open. He leaves his cart outside, and takes the muck in barrows,’ Andrew answered. ‘Ah,’ the reasoning dawned on him, ‘now I understand.’
‘You did not mention that, when we looked round the college.’
‘For then the door was locked. But if it were then possible that someone came by night . . .’
‘Then it is more than possible, the bladders filled with blood were hidden in the tree by someone from outside. Perhaps the night before,’ concluded Hew. ‘Or perhaps when you were absent still, at the kirk assembly, for I think your chamber overlooks the tree.’
Melville answered quietly, ‘It does.’
‘A
vesica
is heavy,’ Giles remarked, ‘when it is filled with blood. And would be hard to shift. And yet a little blood may travel a good distance, and may look like a good deal. And among the leaves and blossom, it could easily be hid.’
‘If I were you,’ said Hew, ‘I would lock the door at night; or better, set a watch on it, and you may catch your devil, if he comes again.’
Melville struggled with his answer. ‘Aye,’ he spoke at last. ‘I am beholden to you, both, for you begin to lift a shadow from my mind, that I confess has haunted me, in making plain to me the source of this attack. I have not been sleeping well. And I began to fear there was some evil deep within the college; last night, I saw a spirit, moving round the tree.’
‘What sort of spirit?’ questioned Hew.
‘I almost am ashamed to say, a green and ghostly light. I went out in my nightshirt to it. It had gone, of course. I fancied it had left behind the faintest whiff of brimstane.’ Andrew forced a smile. ‘This wickedness has worked its magic on my fearful mind.’
‘A light like that,’ reflected Meg, ‘may have a natural cause.’
‘I assure you, madam, there was nothing natural in the light I saw.’ Melville was not used to women in the house, much less those who spoke to him, to offer up opinions, which differed from his own. Giles acknowledged softly, ‘You should listen to her, Andro. Meg kens more than most.’
‘There is a light that comes from the bark of a tree, or from a piece of bone, beginning to decay. A lucent, ghostly lour of luminescent green that has the scent of sulphur. Could that be what you saw?’ persisted Meg.
‘Aye, madam,’ Andrew scowled at her, ‘if dead bones and trees picked up their stumps and walked. The light that I saw was moving, steadily and stealthily.’
‘Then did it not occur to you, that someone might have carried it?’
‘Fish heads!’ broke in Hew. ‘I have seen it too, at the pit at Dysart, where the earth boils black. The miners make their lamps of scales and bones of fish, to shine a ghostly light upon the darkness there, that dare not be attempted with a naked flame, and crawl up from the molten earth as it were hell itself. And had I known no better of it, so I should believe. You never saw a place on earth more dreadful nor more desolate. Those imps of hell are children, sir. And sometimes,
it seems there is no clear mark to be drawn, between what we call natural, or unnatural.’
‘Or,’ Giles added, ‘supernatural.’
Melville cleared his throat, ‘My thanks to you all, for your explanations. That mark is a line that I would fain were drawn. It
must
be drawn, by faith, if not yet by your science. It is by God’s will, doubtless, I am shown these things.’
All credit then to God, thought Hew, and none of it to Meg. ‘If I were you,’ he said again, ‘I would set a watch.’
‘Aye, and so I shall, when we are finished with the tulchan.’
At last, Giles took the hint. He wiped his face and Matthew’s, handing Meg the child. ‘Since ye are both in cap and cope, I will go and dress. It would not do to brave the bishop in our slops and slippers.’ He left them with a wink.
Meg settled Matthew on her hip. ‘What is a tulchan, sir?’ she asked.
Though Hew sensed she was up to mischief, Melville’s guard was down. ‘A tulchan is a bishop in name only,’ he informed her, ‘as is Patrick Adamson. He is a siphon, by which the kirk’s ain revenues are leached off to the lairds.’
Meg said, ‘Oh. I did not know. Master Andro, I am richt glad you are come to breakfast with us. There are certain questions I have longed to ask you, since I heard your lessons sometime at the kirk.’
Now Hew knew for certain she was up to something. His sister had no love or fervour for reform, brought up in the shelter of her father’s land. Matthew had remained a Papist to the last. And yet he had set Hew upon a different course, sending him to school where he was raised a Protestant, a legacy that Hew found hard to understand. For though it had ensured his safe path through the world, it had kept him distant from his father’s heart. And he had felt that gulf. Raised up in a kirk which made a plain clear sense to him, he found no turning back, the gap in faith and trust was difficult to reconcile, affecting still his closeness to and sympathy with Meg. She was baiting Andrew Melville, that much he could tell.
Melville read no hint of challenge in her tone. ‘By all means,’ he encouraged, ‘if ye are inquiring on a matter of the faith. Though if you are in doubt, you might look for guidance to your ain guid husband or – perhaps more properly – to your brother Hew, who was brought up in the faith. He likely will explain what you do not understand, and will seek to reassure you, when you cannot understand, which, as you must know, is to be expected.’
Hew could not help but smile at that. But Meg insisted, meekly, ‘Yet Hew is not well studied in the doctrines of the kirk, and on its most exacting points, he may not be relied on. And I have, sir, a singular question, which requires a particular answer. Our father, you may know, was no believer in Reform. He lived and died a Catholick, stubborn to the last. He would not have his corpus buried in St Leonard’s kirk, because he felt that place had lost its sacred holiness, and chose a place outside of it, resting in its shade. My question to you is, was our father damned?’
‘This is monstrous,’ Hew exclaimed, ‘How can you think to ask it, Meg?’ He could not, for the world, see why Meg should ask that, unthinkable to any man who knew their father’s worth. But Melville answered quietly. ‘I cannot tell you that. For we cannot know, in truth, what God’s plan is for us, which of us is saved, and which of us is damned. But if you look for comfort, you may find a grain perhaps in the fact that he brought Hew up as a Protestant, which hints your father had a true reforming heart, and that somewhere deep inside, God wrought his work in him. And do not fault her, Hew,’ he turned back to his friend. ‘It is a proper question, that deserves an answer.’
‘To tell the truth,’ said Meg, as calm as Hew was furious, ‘it never had occurred to me, till one of Master Melville’s students telt me he was damned. I wanted to be sure, that that was his own view on it.’
Andrew answered patiently, ‘And as I have said to ye, that is not my view on it. One of my students, you say?’
‘I met him at our father’s graveside, where I knelt with Matthew, tending to the weeds. He did not give his name. But he telt me that
he hoped to take orders in the kirk, and he studied at the college, with that end in mind. He spoke to me most fervently,
ye maunna waste your prayers on him, for surely, he is damned. He lies there, steeped in sin
.
‘He swore he meant no ill to me, he only meant to speak God’s word, the plain and honest truth, he could not serve me better, by allowing me false hope, for to tell the truth must be the kinder thing. That he had lost a father too, and that he understood.’
‘The devil he did!’ Hew burst out. ‘That feckless fool, Dod Auchinleck. Is this down to him?’
Andrew urged him, ‘Patience, sir. Your family have been kind enough to teach me not to draw quick conclusions, you must learn the same. Some of our men show an uncommon zeal. I will look in to it; you have my word. He should not presume so much, as he could know God’s will; he could not ken or see into your father’s heart. For only God does that.’
‘That is your sole objection to it? That he does presume too much?’
‘I do not excuse it. Let me find him out, and I shall make the reprimand, I promise you, and forcefully, and I shall make him understand, where he goes wrong.’
Hew contended still, ‘And is there no wrong in the hurt to Meg? Save in his frantic fervour he has overreached himself and misconstrued the logic of a zealous mind?’
‘Peace, now,’ Andrew sighed. ‘This day looks likely to be long and trying, and I would not, for the world, begin by fighting with you. I regret the wrong that was done to your sister. Yet I cannot condemn a hurt occasioned by the truth, but only one that predicates itself upon false reason. I cannot tell her that her father is forgiven for his sins, nor give her any comfort in her hopeful prayers. Nor can I say for certain he is surely damned. For though there is little proof your father saw the light, the signs may yet be hid from us, and visible to God.’
‘So you are saying,’ challenged Hew, ‘that though the outward signs appear that he was damned, we cannot claim to know this for
a certain truth, no more can we assume a Christian man is saved? You tread a tight rope between hope and despair.’
Andrew stood up wearily. ‘We take comfort in the light that God has shown to us. Tis only the blackest hearts that sink in to despair, for they will not understand, what was never meant for them. I will find out the faulter, and amend him. Meanwhile, since my purpose here is to visit Patrick, I will leave you to your breakfast now, and wait for you outside. Tell Giles Locke, when he comes.’ He touched Hew on the shoulder as he passed. ‘I have no wish to quarrel, Hew. But you perhaps should ask yourself, why you are so aggrieved at this. Your sister is quite calm. And, I have no doubt, she kens her ain answer. It is in her heart.’
Matthew had begun to whimper, startled by Hew’s frantic mood. ‘Whisht,’ said Meg, ‘you frighten him.’
‘For pity, Meg,’ Hew whispered. ‘Why did you not tell me?’
‘I was not offended at it. I did not for a moment think it might be true. But . . .’ she hesitated, ‘I did not tell Giles, because I was afeared that it would cause a storm, and I did not tell you, because I was afeared that you might think it too, since you are of that faith. And if you thought it too, I could not bear it, Hew.’
He stared at her. ‘You cannot for a moment think I thought our father damned! I could not believe, not for the briefest moment, that he could be damned. For as a man cannot will to be good, so he cannot escape God’s will, God willing him be good. Matthew was a good man, and he was good, despite himself, and he could not be good without it were God’s will.’ And that must be the truth of it, for nothing else made sense to him.
Meg’s eyes were bright. She hushed and rocked her child. ‘You have not lately seen his grave.’
Their father had been buried in the hard and frozen earth, in the dead of winter, shrouded from the sun. In his mind’s eye Hew revisited, and he had no desire to come back to that place, bleak and cold and desolate.
‘He lies there in the quiet shade, and all around are trees and flowers. It is not bare, as it once was.’
‘I do not need to see,’ he said, ‘to know that you have done him proud. But I will come, and see your flowers.’
‘I take no credit for them, Hew. They grow there naturally.’
Chapter 8
The Abbot of Unrest
The three men met like crows. They did not, like the rook, cry croaking to the wind, but settled darkly brooding at the castle gate, the lawyer and the doctor and the scholar kirkman, huddled in their gowns. Andrew was intent and thoughtful. Hew was out of sorts. Giles remained the keenest and most sanguine of the three. He brought with him a leather case in which he kept his instruments, or what he called his
equipage
, fine blades and tiny scissors, sharpened to a pin. Giles was a physician, and a pure anatomist, exquisite in his diligence, and not a barber-surgeon ready with his hands.
The castle was enclosed within an outer wall, extending to the Swallow Gait. The port upon the Kirk Heugh side, the closest to the house, stood open to the street. The three men stepped inside, where they were spied at once, and welcomed by a figure standing at the ditch.
‘Good morrow to you, masters. Wait there, if ye will.’
The sentry seemed at ease, a cheerful, red-haired soldier in his early twenties, in a saffron-coloured shirt with leather jak and breeks, and a buckled broadsword swinging at his belt. He was whistling as he came, a mellow little tune. ‘I will squire ye, sirs, if you would cross the bridge. A plank has rattled loose. A carter’s wheel was caught in it,’ he warned them, pleasantly.
He knew them, Hew supposed. All three of them had come in academic dress. Melville and Giles Locke were well known in the town, and, to Hew’s surprise, the man appeared to know him too,
and count him for a friend. His willingness to help was marked and unexpected. ‘Is the archbishop expecting you?’
‘I think it fair to say,’ said Andrew, ‘he is not expecting us.’
‘Then he will be asleep. If ye come back in an hour, it may please him to receive you.’
‘He will receive us now, if it pleases him or not. For if he does not receive us, it will please him less. Our business cannot wait.’
The soldier did not seem perturbed, nor vexed at Melville’s tone. ‘Then follow, an’ ye will, an see what may be done for ye.’
He took them to the bridge that reached across the fosse – a steep ditch lined with earth and rubble – to the central tower. The bridge was a gangway of thick wooden planks, strong enough to bear the strain of several men on horseback, and broad enough to take the width of one or two small carts. Several of the planks were loose, so that they could be taken up, in the event of an attack, and others had dislodged, by wear or else by accident, and threatened to fall down. These the soldier pointed out. ‘Steady as you go. You wouldna want to wreck your ankles, falling doun the dyke.’
As they approached the castle, Hew felt his spirits lift, curious to see what treasures lay inside. The ancient stronghold of the bishops had been rebuilt many times, its most recent incarnation now a wallowed winter ghost. It owed its courtly grandeur to the late Archbishop Hamilton, its bleakness to his fall.
The brig swept to the entrance pend, a grand triumphal central arch, with panels for a coat of arms, and five foils cut in tracery, still faintly flecked with gold. Harling and white paint had weathered to bare stone. The doors were vast and solid, fast and firmly closed.
The soldier read Hew’s mind, for he said sympathetically, ‘The pity is, ye canna make your entry wi’ a proper pomp. But it will save ye trouble, and a deal of time, if ye come in through the wicket. And if you set your hearts on passing through the pend, the great door may be opened by the time you leave. The porter has this moment sat down to his breakfast, sirs.’ He showed them through a narrow postern, opening to a vaulted tunnel on the eastern side. And here,
all progress stopped. For here they met Tam Fairlie, sergeant of the guard.
‘Three gentlemen are come to speak wi’ the archbishop, fae the university. Masters Andrew Melville, o’ the New College, and Giles Locke and Hew Cullan, o’ the Auld College,’ their guide imparted flawlessly. The sergeant said, ‘
Oh aye?
’ Hew marvelled at the work to which he put the words, so small to bear the strain of it.
‘I thocht to leave them here, and fetch down Master Scrymgeour.’
‘Ye thocht right,’ said Tam.
The soldier disappeared and left them with the guard, inhibited from moving further in or out. Melville tried to follow him, to find his way was barred. ‘Patience, my masters. Ye may tak a seat.’
The guardroom was equipped with a single narrow bench, where a second man was sitting, eating bread and cheese. The porter, Hew supposed. ‘We must see your master,’ Andrew Melville flustered.
‘When Harry comes back, sirs. A’ in guid time.’ The sergeant was a shank of muscle, neither broad nor tall, hardened to the temper of his battered leather black jak and as difficult to penetrate. There could be no shifting him. ‘While ye are at your ease, I will have your weapons.’
‘What weapons?’ Andrew snapped. ‘We are come as scholars, and we do not carry arms.’
The sergeant laughed at that. ‘Then you will be the first, that never speared a piece of meat, nor cut hisself a pen. Your
quhingars
, if you please. Lift up your belts and coats.’
Hew laid down his dagger, and the little quill knife he kept tucked up in a pocket. Giles protested bitterly, for giving up his scissors was like giving up his thumbs, and made the soldier swear that he would guard them with his life. ‘Tis likely I will want them, in my dealings with your lord.’
‘Then my lord will call for them. Your weapons will be safe.’
‘They are not weapons, sir.’
Andrew had no blade of any kind, and expressed his outrage at the search. ‘That man is gone too long,’ he hissed to Giles and Hew. ‘Patrick is prepared for us.’
‘What do you imagine, sir? His chambers are swept clean, of claret and of concubines?’ Giles Locke was affronted still, at forfeiting his tools.
‘That is what I fear.’
Melville’s agitation soon became infectious. Hew began to wonder whether Harry would come back, or whether he had snared them in some subtle trap. He felt bare without his knife. But he did not have long to fret before the soldier reappeared, with a shadow at his back. ‘This is Ninian Scrymgeour, the archbishop’s privy secretar.’
Ninian Scrymgeour blinked at them, the startled rapid squinting of a man with failing eyes, who has come without his spectacles, and strains to see the world.
‘The archbishop is not well, and he is abed. I am however authorised to act on his behalf on any business that concerns the kirk or university, sin I am his notar, and his secret clerk.’
‘And does he also trust ye,’ Andrew Melville challenged, ‘to safeguard his soul?’
The clerk was faintly shocked. ‘No, indeed, dear me. I do not believe so.’ Ninian had the look of a relic left behind, ignored by the reformers and forgotten by the monks. He wore a brown wool kirtle, knotted with a rope, and simple leather sandals, without breeks or hose. Against Andrew’s fierceness he was ill-equipped, powerless as a fluff ball in a spider’s web.
‘We are come to see your master, on a private matter. We maun speak with him in person, and speak with him at once. Doctor Locke is here, to tak care of his health.’
Ninian buckled. ‘Yes, I see. Then I will tak ye to him.’
The humble clerk was no defence; Hew wondered, after all, whether he was meant to be, or if the castle watchmen simply played for time, and had stalled them long enough. Andrew thought so, plainly, for he muttered, ‘Damn the man,’ of no one in particular. The sergeant’s part was done; he stood to let them pass. As they left the guardroom Hew caught Harry’s eye, and for a second could have sworn he saw the soldier wink at him.
Ninian took them through the tunnel to the open air. But Hew did not have long to take in his surroundings, for the clerk turned sharply left, and through a second doorway to a turnpike stair. He stumbled as they followed up the flight of steps. Hew snatched at his arm, and felt the slight frame quiver, shrinking from his hand. ‘Ye maun excuse me, masters. You caught me at my ease, and I do not have my spectacles. Wait, sirs, please to wait.’
They were left alone a moment standing in the garderobe that served the bishop’s chamber on the western side. The residence was long and narrow, built into the corridor between the southern towers, and divided in compartments twenty foot in length, the central two combined, where the archbishop lived and slept. Four large windows let in light, and looked south to the town; four small ones on the north side looked down on the cobbles of the castle court. Before Hew could investigate, the little clerk returned, to show them through the door. ‘He will see you now. But ye manna keep him long.’
Patrick Adamson was laid out upon a bed of state, propped up on its pillows, in a strange state of undress. He wore a ruffled nightshirt underneath a cope, a muffler at his throat, as prophylactic barrier to the morning air, and on his head a crimson flannel cap offset the mottled hollows of his fleshly cheeks, which were pinched and flushed. The bed was heaped with blankets, bolsters, cods and quilts. The chamber where it stood was airy, large and bright, lined with light oak panelling a little scuffed and worn, and hung with antique tapestries, faded in the sun. The ceilings and the window-sills were carved from darker wood, with Hamilton’s device picked out in yellow paint. It might have been a pleasing, once impressive room, had it not smelt persuasively of ordure and decay. The herbs strewn round the sickbed too were withered and defunct. Though Patrick had had time enough to stage the room and bed, the odour of the charnel house could scarcely have been faked.
Giles prescribed a breath of air. Hew threw the windows open, happy to drink deep.
Patrick murmured from his pillow, ‘Guid morn to you, guid sirs. I ken you will not tak it ill, that I do not get up. Your visit here is unexpected, and I am not well.’ His tone was dry and languid.
Melville shot back sharply, ‘Wherefore we have brocht the doctor.’
‘Doctor Locke, I see. I cannot call you welcome here. For when a man awakes, to find a doctor and a lawyer and a kirkman at his bedside, then he has cause to fear that he may not have long left in the world. Good morrow to ye, Andro. What is your intent? The lawyer come to make my will, the doctor to pronounce me dead, as for your ain self, to hound me to my grave? Master Cullan, as I fear, will mak no profit from his client. This living, Andro, is not what it was.’
He smiled at Melville then, a wicked, teasing glint. Andrew kept his temper, Hew thought admirably.
‘Doctor Locke has come here to examine you.’
‘Then I fear that he has wasted his journey.’ Patrick closed his eyes. ‘For I am done with surgeons, and physicians too. I have seen enough of them to last me for a lifetime. Ask Ninian where that steward is. I have not had my breakfast yet. A few light morsels on a tray. Close the door as ye go out.’
Giles was looking through a bank of vials and bottles lined up by the bed. He opened one and sniffed. ‘Who is your apothecar? This physick bears no name.’
‘There have been so many that I cannot mind. I have done with them all. And now I am resolved to die, peacefully and privately. Perhaps my old friend Andrew here will kneel to say a prayer with me, to see me on my way.’
‘I have come with report from the General Assembly,’ Melville said, ignoring him, ‘where I excused your absence, on account of sickness.’
‘
Good of you
.’
Hew began to see how Patrick worked on Andrew, each small barb and insult pricking at his skin. Melville bore it patiently.
‘And I felt sore ashamed.’
‘Shamed were ye, Andro? Petuous as ye are? Ah, but surely not!’
‘This flyting will not move me, Patrick, nor put me from my purpose here. Conscience will not cower from words and waggish wit. Are ye sick, in truth? Or are you feigning sickness, while men move against you?’
‘Ye think it is a fraud? Andro, I am hurt! And yet a little touched, that ye would think to lie for me.’ Patrick taunted him.
‘God kens,’ Andrew swore, ‘that I would not have lied for you, willingly and knowingly. No more, sir, of this wantonness. I pray ye will pay heed to what I have to say. As I spoke for you last week before the hale kirk brethren, so I come to ye, and speak for all o’ them. I made your plea to them, and this is their reply. Good Master Hew is here to see it is delivered to you, honestly and fairly, since he is a lawman, with no interest in the matter.’
‘I never met a lawman yet,’ said Patrick with a snort, ‘who had no interest in a matter, where that interest was not in the lining of his purse.’
‘Then clearly,’ interrupted Giles, ‘you have not met Hew.’
Andrew said, ‘Enough. He is impartial here. And his goodwill and charity are more than ye deserve. Your present plea of sickness is suspected by the kirk, and it must be tried here by Professor Locke. If ye will not submit to trial, your guilt shall be assumed. And you will be cursed and put out from the kirk.’
‘Ah, but that is cruel. Andro, that is harsh,’ Patrick’s wail of protest had a serious ring to it, and Andrew answered earnestly.
‘The time for play has passed. Believe me when I tell you I have come in friendship, for sake of that guid man I know that you once were. But you have let greed and desire steal upon ye, to poison your spirit and blacken your heart. I pray that you are sick, as all appearance shows, and do not lie to God. I pray that Doctor Locke can somehow make you well, whatever ails your body, and that God may mend your soul.’
Patrick answered wearily. ‘If I must, I must. For I would not meet my maker cast out from the kirk, when, God only knows, I suffer for my sins. Doctor, do thy worst. And if thou cannot satisfy that savage flock of crows, that style themselves my brethren, then I can have no hope of ever finding comfort in this world.’ The fight and strength were sapped from him, and he looked sick indeed.
‘As to the doctor’s cure, I hold no hope of that. I have seen physicians, and several surgeons too. I have bled them a gallon of blood and pissed them a gallon of piss. I am too hot, or too cold, too moist, else too dry. I must be warmed or else cooled. I must be vomited, I must be purged. It is the choler, the phlegm, the black bile, the colic, the flux. I am too sanguine, or else too melancholy. Louse-leeches, potingars, joukerie-pokerie, I have consulted them all.’