Authors: Pat McIntosh
‘Recompense!’ repeated Sir James in incredulity. ‘It’s well seen you’re a man of law!’
‘I am,’ Gil agreed. ‘So what will you do about it, sir? I’ll agree Tib should ha been better schooled, but the same could be said of Michael, who’s taken a girl of
good family to his bed without consulting his seniors or hers. There’s blame on both sides, but only the one’s been wronged, and it’s no Michael.’
‘He didny –’ Tib began.
Dorothea rose and went to her. Maggie stepped forward to join their colloquy, and Gil said politely to his godfather, ‘So I’ll ask you again, sir. What recompense will you make
her?’
There was a pause, in which the women whispered together, urgent and sibilant. Sir James said sourly, ‘What are ye after? Coin, is it? You want paid for her pearl?’
‘At its crudest,’ said Gil, ‘yes. I’d sooner see it as a way to dower her, since Michael’s robbed her of what was near her only asset. And should misfortune follow
–’
‘Oh, aye. If it should, how would we ken it for Michael’s?’
‘By the heart birthmark,’ suggested Gil before he could stop himself. Dorothea looked round with a brief, quelling glare.
‘She was a maiden when she came to my bed,’ said Michael, renewing his grip of Tib’s hand and lifting his pointed chin at his father. ‘I’ll not hear that said of
her, sir.’
‘You can be silent, you wanton,’ snarled his father. ‘Aye, well, godson, if that’s the attitude you’re taking, we’ll discuss this when it’s more
convenient. And if I can agree wi you, we’ll hear no more of this, will we?’
‘Oh, I haveny offered that, sir,’ said Gil.
‘I’ll not be bought off like a side of mutton!’ said Tib furiously past the creamy wool of Dorothea’s shoulder.
‘What’s more,’ Gil added, ‘if Michael’s to attend you to my marriage, he’ll have to encounter Tib. He canny fail to set eyes on her.’
‘Then he’ll no attend me,’ said Sir James roundly. ‘I’ll have him gated in the college till next harvest, anyway.’
‘If they will each promise,’ said Dorothea, ‘swear before my uncle’s altar yonder, no to be alone with the other in the next month, would that satisfy you the now, sir?
And meantime we may discuss it at more leisure, as you say.’
There was a pause. Maggie nodded. Tib bit her lip and looked uneasily at her lover, who gave her a reassuring smile.
‘Aye, it will have to do,’ said Douglas at length. ‘And St Bride send we’ve sorted it out by Yule.’
It was quiet in the Deacon’s lodging in the bedehouse.
Once Sir James had departed, still breathing fire and dragging his son by the arm, Maggie had begun a flood of recriminations about Tib’s behaviour which Gil could not staunch. She had
eventually been persuaded down to the kitchen by the extraordinarily useful Lowrie, while Dorothea dealt with the furious weeping her words had provoked in Tib. It seemed likely that the noon bite
would be late, or inedible, or both, and Gil had taken himself out of the house in the hope of finding distraction, the dog at his heels.
He should, he acknowledged, have gone down the hill to tell Alys this latest bitter crumb of family news, or to inform Kate, who would be tormented by guilt when she heard it, but instead he had
found himself heading round to St Serf’s with the thought of a soothing time with the accounts. Sir James did not appear to be there, for which he was thankful, but before he could reach the
upper chamber he had encountered Millar in the courtyard, in helpless discussion with Thomas Agnew.
‘Maister Cunningham!’ the man had said, in some relief. ‘It was y – it was you found poor Humphrey. Will you tell Maister Agnew –’
‘What happened?’ asked Agnew hoarsely. ‘He was well enough when I left yestreen, just afore I met you in the way, Maister Cunningham. He seemed calm and resigned, just kneeling
to his prayers. He’d asked my forgiveness for attacking me yesterday morn,’ he added, and turned his face away, wiping something from his eye. Millar made a sympathetic sound.
‘I trust for your sake he had it, maister,’ said Gil, and Agnew sighed and nodded and crossed himself. ‘I know little more than Maister Millar here. Sissie went to his lodging,
and found him hanging in the dark. I ran to help, but she had dropped the lantern, so I could see nothing. When we got him down we found he’d used the rope from the gate here
–’
‘From the gate?’ repeated Agnew. ‘How did he get that?’
‘I ca – canny tell,’ said Millar, wringing his hands again. ‘He never got out here to the yard, Si – Sissie kept that good an eye on him.’
‘He got hold of it somehow,’ said Gil, ‘and he’d used that to hang himself from one of the beams of his lodging. I would say, if he was at his prayers when you left, he
was hanging for no more than a quarter-hour, but it was long enough.’
‘Oh, my poor brother,’ said Agnew, crossing himself again. Gil and Millar did likewise.
‘So you’re saying he was calm and seemed as usual,’ prompted Gil. Agnew gave him a sharp look.
‘He wasny usually calm,’ he observed. ‘I’m saying I’d had a reasonable conversation wi him, the first in a good while, and he seemed quiet enough, resigned in his
mood, just about to kneel.’
‘Had he a light?’
‘Why, no. We’d been sitting in the light of my lantern. I offered to set his candle for him, but he’d have none of it. I suppose he’d no need of it for what he intended.
No wonder he seemed resigned,’ he added, with a painful smile, and added in Latin, ‘
I am in great terror, in terror such as has not been.
My poor brother.’
‘Resigned to what?’ Gil asked. The Psalter, he thought. Better than the Apocalypse, at all events. Agnew shook his head, and put a hand to his bruised throat.
‘His madness? The knowledge of what he could do in the wild fits? He never said.’ He turned to Millar. ‘Where is he? Can I see him?’
‘Oh – aye!’ said Millar. ‘Though I’d maybe best get Sissie away first if I can, she’ll no want to face you –’
‘St Peter’s bones, why no?’
‘She’s took it into her head you’ve something to do wi his death,’ said Maister Veitch, approaching from the door to the main range. ‘Andro, will I draw her away
for you?’
‘If you would, Frankie,’ said Millar gratefully. ‘And we’ll ne – need to talk of his burial, Maister Agnew. It’ll be a difficulty. He’ll go in our own
place, never fear that, but I canny tell when. He’s still not stiffened, but Sissie willny let us wash him yet, for all that.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Agnew. ‘I can see it’ll be an inconvenience.’
Gil watched them go off along the passage through the main building, and in a moment Maister Veitch returned, supporting Mistress Mudie. She clung to his arm, her head bowed, her linen headdress
unpinned and its folds pulled across her face, and the two figures reminded Gil of the supporters at the foot of a Crucifixion. They vanished into the kitchen; he waited, obedient to the
significant look his teacher had given him, and after a while the old man emerged into the passage again and jerked his head.
‘Anselm has a word for you,’ he said. ‘Did you catch all the man said?’
Gil nodded.
‘He never left straight away,’ said Maister Veitch, ‘whatever he lets on.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ll let Anselm tell you.’
The remaining brethren were by the brazier in the hall as usual. Gil, looking round the group, saw that this second death had shaken most of them far more than the first. Cubby’s tremor
was preventing him from speech, Duncan and Barty sat staring distantly into the charcoal glow mouthing at nothing, Maister Veitch himself looked more like a death’s-head than ever. Anselm, on
the other hand, was livelier than Gil had yet seen him.
‘There you are, laddie. I’ve to tell you this,’ he said without preamble. ‘He says so. He says you’ll ken what to make of it.’
‘What have you to tell me?’
‘I’m telling you, am I no?’ The old man reached out to pat Socrates’ head, and the dog licked his wrist. ‘See last night, laddie. That man was here, aye? Puir
Humphrey’s brither. I kent he was here, though nobody else did, for I saw him.’
‘Where did you see him, sir?’ asked Gil, since this seemed to be the expected question.
‘In the chapel,’ said Anselm, nodding triumphantly. ‘I was in there mysel, having a wee word. Times my own prayer-desk’s the right place, you see, and times the
chapel’s right.’ He grinned toothlessly as Gil showed his understanding of this. ‘Agnew came in, and knelt at the altar steps. He seemed gey ower-wrought, muttering away, asking
forgiveness for something. He never noticed me,’ he asserted, ‘for I wasny in my stall, I was outside the choir in a wee corner of my own I like to sit in. Then at the last he rose and
went out.’
‘How long was he there?’ Gil asked. ‘When was this?’
‘It was just afore you came in,’ said Anselm firmly, ‘for I rose after him and went to see if the supper was ready, and I’d just sat down when you and your friend came
in. And he’d been there a good time. Maybe the quarter of an hour, maybe as much as half an hour. And I’ll tell ye, I saw his face as he went, and I canny think he got what he
asked.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Gil. ‘It’s good of you to take the trouble.’
‘Oh, I wouldny ha bothered,’ declared Anselm, ‘but he said it was a thing you should hear of.’
Gil withdrew, and cast a glance in at the door of the kitchen where Mistress Mudie sat lost in her terrifying silence while the three servants stood watching her; then he climbed up to the
Deacon’s lodging, where at last there was the peace he craved.
He arranged the bundles of tape-bound accounts on the polished wood of the table, but he sat for some time with his hands folded on top of the nearest, staring unseeing at the bare trees of the
Stablegreen visible in the thin sunshine beyond the end of the garden, with the dog lying on his feet.
He knew he should be considering how best to amerce his sister’s appalling misdemeanour, and how to break the news to his uncle, or else dealing with the almshouse and its problems –
and what should he make of Anselm’s tale? Instead he found himself still resonant with that anger which had struck him in the hall in Rottenrow when he realized what his godfather was
implying, combined with – yes, it was envy, he admitted. It had been Tib who trysted with Michael, Tib who waited in the dark outside the gate which he could just see, for her lover to bring
the key and let her in. He shied away from imagining the embraces in privacy, the sweet surrender – but he saw again, clearly, the way she had swayed into Michael’s arms in the hall.
The way Alys used to lean on me, he thought. St Giles assist me, I must deal justly with Tib, though I don’t know what justice might mean in the case. And there’s the bedehouse to
consider too, though my head feels like a rotten turnip.
He rose and began pacing about, trying to marshal his thoughts about the bedehouse. The Deacon had almost certainly been killed elsewhere and put over the back wall an hour or two later, and
left to stiffen under the trees. Meanwhile his killer, or another, had spent the night in this lodging, slept in the Deacon’s bed however briefly, attended Mass in his cloak and hat and then
left the premises.
Why? he asked himself. The accounts, yes, but why the accounts? Why not the other papers? They were locked in the kist and the key was on the Deacon’s belt in the garden, of course. He
paused a moment to think of the killer’s reaction at that point, and looked at the bundled accounts ranged across the table. We probably have all we’re going to get from these, he
thought. The documents I took back to Rottenrow are the next step.
And Humphrey’s death last night, how did that fit? How much of Anselm’s story, which his invisible friend thought so important, should he take into account? Had Agnew talked his
brother into a state where he would hang himself, and if so was it done deliberately? Had he done more than that? Or had John Veitch called for more reason than to see his uncle? Why would John
need to dispose of Humphrey? Why would anyone, indeed, he wondered.
There were familiar footsteps on the stair up from the courtyard. Socrates raised his head and beat his tail on the floor as the door opened, then rose to greet the newcomer.
‘I went round by the house. Sister Dorothea thought I should find you here,’ said Maistre Pierre, patting the dog. He pulled another of the leather backstools up to the table and sat
down. ‘She bade me tell you she would speak to Lady Kate. A bad business, Gil.’
‘Yes,’ said Gil baldly.
‘What will you do?’
Gil shrugged. ‘Wait. Think it over.’ He pulled himself together. ‘Did you manage to avoid Maggie? She was threatening a word with you.’
‘She got it, but she seemed subdued.’
‘St Giles be thanked. She should be grateful to you for seeing me home. As I am.’
‘How do you feel this morning?’
‘Evil,’ he admitted.
‘I am not surprised. I tell you, it’s the last time I suggest an evening’s drinking. I had no idea men of law could hold so much and still stay upright.’
‘Cunninghams are hard-headed.’
‘Like sailors.’ His friend eyed him carefully for a moment, then drew a bundle of papers towards him. ‘These are the tithes from Elsrickle,’ he said, mangling the name.
‘Where is that?’
‘The Upper Ward,’ said Gil, turning his head cautiously to read the superscription. ‘Beyond Biggar. It’s wool country, the takings should be good. Aye, maybe we need to
go over these again. I’m certain there’s something in the papers I need to know.’
‘Perhaps also in the notes for the man’s new will.’
‘Well, those are in Agnew’s hands.’
‘But no. You have them.’
‘I do?’ Gil stared at him. ‘No, they’ll be in his chamber in the Consistory.’
‘They were,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, ‘but they are now in your possession. Do you not recall?’
‘Recall what?’ said Gil, in growing dismay. ‘When? What are you saying?’
‘Last night.’
‘Pierre, what are you talking about? What did we do?’
Maistre Pierre looked hard at him across the table.
‘We met the men we sought,’ he said, ‘in the fourth or fifth tavern.’
‘I recall that,’ Gil admitted, searching his memory. Details began to surface. The conversation with John Veitch had been difficult at first. It had taken a while to persuade the two
sailors that he and Pierre were friendly, but they had succeeded eventually. It seemed the pair had not identified Gil with the man who had called at their lodging. Then what had happened? There
were mariners’ tales in his head, one about a great worm that ate ships, another about fish which flew like birds. No certain information. ‘They told us little, I think,’ he
prompted hopefully.