St Mungo's Robin (20 page)

Gil shielded his eyes from the candles and examined the marks again. Ridges and hollows marked the skin, showing up in certain angles of the light. He touched the cold flesh, but could make no
sense of the impressions.

‘I wonder, should we draw it?’ he suggested, ‘since it will fade, as you say.’

‘A good idea,’ agreed Maistre Pierre with enthusiasm, extracting his tablets from his sleeve. ‘I do that, while you inspect his clothes yonder. I hope that excellent woman has
not brushed and shaken them already,’ he added in guarded tones.

Gil lifted the pile of tawny woollen and stained linen and took it to the daylight, where he turned the garments cautiously one by one. The furred gown offered no new information, other than a
few pulled threads in the dark brown stuff of one sleeve which fitted well enough with the idea that the body had been put over the wall. He shook out the stinking hose and scrutinized them,
holding them fastidiously by the points still threaded in the eyelets at the waist, and was rewarded by two more pulled threads and another scrap of straw caught in the weave. Agnew’s chamber
in the tower had left its trace.

The jerkin and shirt, stiffened with blood across the breast, were slashed where the knife had gone through them. Was this why Humphrey said the Deacon was a robin, he wondered, seeing the
extent of the dark stain. He was examining the cuts in the linen when Socrates, ranging about the yard, pricked his ears and bounded towards the entryway, tail waving. Gil heard the light footsteps
in the same moment. The whole day brightened round him, and he set down the armful of fouled garments as Alys appeared round the corner of the chapel, plaid over her head against the chilly breeze.
Socrates leapt round her, pushing his long nose under her hand, and she paused to greet him, then crossed the yard to meet Gil.

‘
Nou skrinketh rose and lylie flour.
My hands stink,’ he said, ‘I won’t touch you,’ and bent to kiss her as she tilted her face. She put up her own hand to
touch his jaw, and smiled up at him.

‘I have spoken to the painter’s man,’ she said, ‘and I thought I would come out and tell you what I learned from him. Gil, what has happened? You look as if something is
awry.’

‘Ah – Alys,’ said Maistre Pierre from inside the washhouse before Gil could answer. ‘We are inspecting the body. Come tell me what you think of this.’

Comparing her father’s competent rendering with the original impression on Naismith’s softening flesh, Alys said after a moment, ‘It reminds me of something. He has lain on
something after he died, I suppose.’ Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘But what? Not rope, but could it be string, set close together? Something with cord wrapped round it?’ She
demonstrated with her hands. ‘Where was he?’

‘I wish we knew,’ said Gil. He turned to set the pile of clothes back where he had found it. ‘He certainly went to see Agnew, and brought the proof away with him in these
scraps of straw, but after that – Pierre, is the man’s purse still in his lodging?’

‘It is.’ The mason stepped away from the corpse, bowed to it and crossed himself. ‘I think the dead has no more to tell us. Now you are here, come up and help us with these
accounts,
ma mie.
I am certain there is more to be learned from them. Gilbert, you may wash your hands at the kitchen drain if they trouble you.’

Gil, making his way obediently towards the kitchen, found Alys at his elbow.

‘I met with your sister on the road,’ she began quietly.

‘Which sister?’ he asked, pausing by the door into the building.

‘Lady Tib.’ He noted the formal reference, where Kate was always
Your sister Kate
or simply
Kate.
‘She was with Michael Douglas and the other young man, you
called him Lowrie.’ Gil nodded. ‘We stopped to pass the time of day, and she told me of the incident earlier, and also made some reference to
madame
here at the almshouse. I
wondered,’ she went on diffidently, ‘whether anything required to be smoothed over.’

They were speaking in French, but he still dropped his voice.

‘Oh, Alys. Yes, indeed.’ He moved away from the door and from the range of outhouses, and explained rapidly. ‘She wanted to help me, so I set her to question the kitchen hands,
and somehow it didn’t work. There are two women there, who began talking about witchcraft, and the kitchen-boy took fright and summoned his mistress, who was incensed.’

She nodded, her elusive smile flickering, and turned towards the buildings.

‘I’ll see what I can learn,’ she promised.

He could not work out how she did it. As they reached the kitchen door Mistress Mudie appeared from her own chamber, and cast them a glance of weary belligerence.

‘– it’s that man of law again, I hope wi no more questions, kind as he is, for my head’s as empty as a pint pot by now, and another lass wi him, is it your bride this
time, maister? That’s right kind of you to bring her to see us, and such a bonnie lass and all, but I’m no certain it’s the time of day for visitors –’

‘You must be Mistress Mudie,’ said Alys. ‘I’m Alys Mason. I’m told you are herb-wise, and I wished for your advice,
madame.’

Mistress Mudie’s expression altered. ‘– depends what you were wanting, there’s matters I’ll no deal wi –’

‘Of course there are,’ agreed Alys. She stepped into the kitchen and bobbed a neat curtsy. The two women exchanged formal kisses, and though Mistress Mudie’s conversation did
not seem to halt as she bustled in and out of her own chamber, by the time Gil had rinsed the uncompromising smell of stale urine off his hands at the stone sink in the corner she and Alys were
seated at the long table discussing a small pot of ointment, while Socrates watched alertly from the doorway and the young man hacking vegetables worked on at the other end of the board. A coin was
exchanged, Alys murmuring something about a donation, and Mistress Mudie’s dimple appeared as she smiled.

‘– oh, that’s kind, I canny take payment in course but this’ll buy a wee treat for my old men, this should sort your lassie’s hands in a day or so, dearie, Mallie
there has the same trouble and I aye give her some of this to put on when it’s bad –’ The two kitchenmaids looked round at this, then returned hastily to their work as Mistress
Mudie glared at them and chattered on, now apparently to Gil, ‘– that good of you to come out to help us when you’re as taigled, but the idea that someone made away wi the Deacon
I canny get used to, it’s surely a mistake of some sort, it’s made Humphrey sore distressed, the poor soul, you saw him the now, he’d like a wee word, if you’d be so good,
he’s still here in my chamber where his brother canny find him if he comes by again wi no warning –’

‘Maister Humphrey?’ said Gil, picking this thread out of the tangle. ‘How is he now?’

‘– oh, he’s as jumpy as a flea, and no wonder, wi his own kin making such accusations against him, so if the two of you could indulge him, lassie, Maister Cunningham, I’d
take it as a real deed of charity –’

‘I’ll speak to him, of course,’ said Gil, wondering how it was that he was still
Maister Cunningham
but Alys was
lassie
as soon as she stepped into the kitchen.
‘Alys?’

‘And I,’ she said, a little reluctantly.

Humphrey was sitting by the brazier in Mistress Mudie’s chamber, biting at his cuffs and staring anxiously at the wall. Hoccleve again,
Noon abood, noon areest, but al brain-seke
,
thought Gil. When they entered he looked round sharply, shrinking back, but recovered when he recognized a familiar face.

‘It’s you that’s asking the questions,’ he said through Mistress Mudie’s tumbling speech. ‘I saw you this morn. And this one’s your bonnie make.’
Alys, tense beside Gil, nodded in acknowledgement. ‘And I see it now, maister, you’re no a hoodie. I took you for a hoodie, but I can tell now you’re a heron.’

‘A heron?’ said Gil involuntarily. ‘Why ever a heron?’

Humphrey gave him his blank smile.

‘Oh, it’s quite clear to me. A heron that goes stepping about in all the mud,’ he demonstrated the deliberate gait with his hands, ‘watching his feet, and then
stabs!
wi his beak.’ Gil felt Alys flinch beside him as Humphrey stabbed with his beakless head. ‘And this is your make, maister. A heron like yoursel, she is.’

‘This is Mistress Mason,’ said Gil formally. A heron? he thought. In her blue woollen gown, the grey plaid over her shoulders, her plumage was the right colour, but that was all.

‘– no a very nice thing to call a bonnie lassie –’ agreed Mistress Mudie.

‘Maister Humphrey,’ said Gil, on a venture. Humphrey turned his blank smile on him again. ‘You mind you told me that Deacon Naismith is a robin, now that he’s
dead?’

‘Aye, that’s right, he’s a robin,’ agreed Humphrey.

‘So who’s the sparrow?’ Gil asked hopefully.

Humphrey shook his head. ‘No, no. There’s no sparrow here. Frankie’s a kestrel, see, and Anselm’s a coal-tit, and Cubby’s a yaffle,’ he counted on his
fingers, ‘and Barty’s a barn-owl, and Duncan’s a jay, you can tell, but there’s no sparrow in the place.’

‘And Maister Millar?’

‘Andro’s another owl,’ Humphrey said confidently.

‘Now that’s enough, my poppet, you and your games, calling folk all sorts –’ said Mistress Mudie reprovingly.

Humphrey ignored her, and looked from Gil to Alys again. ‘And you’re to be wed soon, wi kirk and Mass, Sissie tells us.’

‘That’s right.’

With unnerving suddenness, Humphrey’s eyes focused, and his expression changed to one of professional pastoral concern. He raised his right hand with its bleeding nails, and pronounced a
blessing on their coming marriage in rolling Latin phrases. Gil found his throat stopped, but Alys’s tongue was loosed. Bending her head she crossed herself and said gently, ‘Thank you
indeed, Maister Humphrey. I hope you’ll pray for us.’

‘And you for me, my lassie, if you will, for Our Lord kens I need it,’ said Humphrey. Then, abandoning sense, ‘Sissie, have you a bit fish for these two herons?’

‘They’ll eat in their own place, my poppet,’ said Mistress Mudie, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘And maybe you’d best go now, for he’s no been good the day,
it was all too much for us yesterday what wi one thing and then another –’

‘The poor man,’ said Alys as they stepped into the yard.

‘
Much sorwe I walke with For beste of boon and blood
,’ Gil quoted. ‘It seems he is mad for grief and guilt.’

She nodded, then looked around, and drew Gil to the chapel. The little building was full of shadows leaping from the two candles on the altar; nothing else moved, although it felt almost as if
someone had left as they entered. Through the roof? Gil wondered, amused at himself. There’s only the one door.

‘The two women sleep out,’ Alys was saying quietly, ‘as I suspected when you said they were talking about witchcraft. No wonder the laddie was frightened. And he sleeps under
the table or on the hearth, and saw and heard nothing moving, not even the Devil.’

‘Alys, that’s marvellous,’ he said, drawing her into his arms.

‘I do wonder,’ she went on, ‘now I have seen the boy, whether he would think to mention it if Mistress Mudie had left her chamber later. He must be used to her going in and out
at all hours if she’s needed.’

‘Difficult to find out.’ Gil tightened his clasp. ‘What did you learn from the painter’s man?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She paused, ordering her thoughts. ‘He spoke to his cousin last night, indeed she must have told the half of Glasgow about it all. The only new thing I learned is
that Naismith may have known the little girl was not his. You said the dates didn’t add up, didn’t you?’

‘Mm,’ he said, and kissed the top of her ear.

‘I wondered if her brother thought it was Naismith’s.’

‘What would that do?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. It gives him the more reason to dislike the man, if Naismith was repudiating his mistress and his child as well.’

‘Did Daidie know who is the child’s father?’

‘He said not.’

‘If this was a verse romance, it would turn out to be the mysterious watcher.’

‘Oh, Daidie mentioned him too. By today he’d become a giant with a black beard and a bloody sword.’ She looked up at him, her quick smile flickering. ‘The Watch
won’t venture along the Drygate this night, I imagine.’

‘I wonder what Bel really saw? I’m not inclined to believe in her watcher, giant or not.’

She nodded, and laid her head briefly on his shoulder, then drew away slightly. Reluctantly, he let her go, and she bent the knee to the altar and crossed herself.

‘What is my father doing with the accounts?’ she speculated. Heart heavy, he followed her out across the yard and up the sounding stair.

Maistre Pierre had all the bundles of paper arranged on the polished surface of the table, and was peering at one sheet held at a distance, his tablets in his other hand.

‘The man wrote appalling small,’ he complained as they entered. ‘This is that very profitable estate, you recall, Gil, out by Kilsyth. The total is considerable.’

‘May I see?’ Alys took the paper he held, and ran a finger down the returns. ‘Where was it all going? This alone would keep the bedehouse in comfort, I should have thought.
Whose gift was it?’

‘Now that’s interesting,’ said Gil, scrutinizing the opened packet on the table. ‘It was gifted by the parents of Humphrey Agnew, specifically for his keep.’

‘Surely that isn’t the original?’ asked Alys, looking round his shoulder.

‘No, an extract only.’ He was still studying the abbreviated phrases. ‘The parchment must be filed safe elsewhere. See, here it merely says,
ad domusdei S Servi, de Thomasi
Agnew et Anna Paterson ux suis, pro bono Umfridi fil eis.’

‘I would have expected better Latin,’ she said critically.

‘Not necessarily.’ He turned the leaf and skimmed over the other side. ‘This lists the boundaries of the land, and the buildings and tenants. It seems to include an entire
ferm-toun. Nothing here about the terms of the gift. The parchment will have the detail – what prayers are expected, and how much care Humphrey gets in return for the income.’