Authors: Pat McIntosh
‘Oh, very little. They insisted they were on their ship the night we were asking about, which is patently not true, and I recall they told us a tale about how Dumbarton Rock fell from a
giant’s apron. I think they said his apron.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Gil vaguely.
‘Then the Watch came by and cleared the tavern, and you set off up the street.’ There was a gleam of humour in Maistre Pierre’s eye. ‘I thought I had best come too, and
followed you, whereat you decided that we two must go and look at Agnew’s chamber.’
Gil shook his head. ‘I didn’t. Surely I didn’t.’
‘Oh, but you did. We had two lanterns, after all, and the tower was empty and you had your key to the great door.’ He grinned as Gil’s expression turned to horror. ‘All
you lifted were the tablets.’
‘Then where are they now?’
‘You put them in your purse.’
‘No, these are mine –’ He opened the purse and reached in, and froze as his fingers encountered, not the soft leather pouch in which his own set lived, but folds of brocade and
a loop of braid. ‘Sweet St Giles protect me!’ he said. He set the alien object on the table and stared at it in deep dismay. ‘If these are Agnew’s, where are mine,
Pierre?’
‘I have them. You put them down, possibly as an exchange, which I felt to be a bad idea.’ Maistre Pierre felt in a sleeve and produced Gil’s own set in its pouch. Gil looked
from one to the other and buried his aching head in his hands.
‘This is theft,’ he said. ‘What was I thinking of? He could have me taken up by the Serjeant, or fined by the Sheriff.’
‘He need not know you took them,’ said Maistre Pierre reassuringly. ‘I am hardly like to tell him, since I was there, I am complicit in the theft.’
‘Did anyone see us in the tower?’
‘I do not think it. I saw no lights, at all events.’
‘St Giles be praised, I had no recollection of this when I saw the man here this morning. Is he still on the premises?’ Maistre Pierre shrugged. Gil stared at the brocade bag.
‘Perhaps I can put them back. Or maybe I could leave them in St Mungo’s, or the like.’
‘Without reading the notes?’
‘They may not help. Most of us use some private shorthand of broken words and odd letters, we may not be able to read his.’
‘I too,’ agreed the mason. ‘We can try.’
‘We could, I suppose.’
Almost of their own volition, Gil’s hands went out to the brocade bag and drew out the tablets it held. Maister Agnew had selected a set with covers of carved bone; the image on the front
was a Crucifixion attended by a pair of gigantic robed figures, bowed in grief like Maister Veitch and Mistress Mudie.
‘Clumsy work,’ said Maistre Pierre disparagingly. ‘You cannot tell Our Lady from the Evangelist. Local, do you think?’
‘Not a Glasgow workshop.’ Gil reluctantly unwound the strip of braid which held the covers shut, and turned back the Crucifixion to reveal the first leaf, its hollowed surface filled
with greenish wax and marked by neat lines of quickly incised notes. ‘Well, it makes sense of a sort, though his writing is not easy.’ He turned the leaf to study the other side.
‘These are notes from a few days ago. St Giles be thanked, he has dated them.’
‘What do they deal with?’
‘Not bedehouse business. A couple of dispositions. I mind my uncle mentioning this one, it’s been discussed in Chapter.’ He turned the next slat, and the next. ‘Aha! This
one is headed
Robt Nasmyth.
Yes, this is it.’
‘And what does it say?’ asked Maistre Pierre after a moment. Gil tilted the leaf towards him. ‘No, I can make little of this. Scots I can read, but abbreviated Scots is another
matter.’
‘I’d need the existing will to compare it,’ said Gil, ‘but it seems to be a fresh document rather than a codicil. He’s listing his possessions. As you said,
properties in several parts of Glasgow. The furnishings here. A gold chain and some other jewels. The chain to Andro Millar if he is still sub-Deacon, the furnishings to a kinsman in Kirkintilloch,
a property in the Gallowgait to Mistress Marion Veitch on condition, and the bulk of the rest to a Mistress Elizabeth Torrance, relict of one Andrew Agnew of Kilsyth.’
‘Brutal,’ commented Maistre Pierre.
‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘Interesting. The notes simply stop there. No sign of the residual legacy being conditional on the marriage.’ He lifted his own tablets and slid them
from their purse. ‘These must go back, somehow, but first I’ll copy the dispositions. And then – I wish I could think clearly. I don’t understand what has happened here at
all.’
‘If we go on asking questions, we may find out,’ said Maistre Pierre comfortably. ‘I have set the men to continue the search for the ladder.’
‘That’s good, though I suppose even if we do find it we may not learn much from it.’ Gil finished the copy and fastened the strip of brocade round the misappropriated tablets.
‘St Giles aid me, I must get these back without being caught.’ He lifted the brocade bag to push the tablets back in, and checked as something crackled inside it. ‘What’s
this?’
‘Yet another document,’ said Maistre Pierre as Gil drew out a folded parchment. ‘Has he been working on it, to have left it with his tablets?’
‘I don’t know.’ Gil looked at the superscription. ‘It’s a copy of the Kilsyth disposition. It must be the family copy – he would have it, of course, if the
parents are dead.’ He refolded the parchment carefully, tucked it back into the bag with the tablets, and put the whole thing into his purse. ‘We must confront Marion and possibly her
brother as well with the scarf, I must try to recall what we learned from the sailors last night. There’s all to do here. And I suppose I have to speak to Tib. But first I must return
these.’
‘Have you a pretext for calling on the man? Condolence, questions, information?’
‘Aye, that would be the best way. I’ll think of an excuse on the way round there.’ He rubbed at his eyes. ‘I’m too old for drinking sessions like that.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said his future father-in-law.
Chapter Eleven
In the event, there was no need of a pretext for calling at Agnew’s house. As they rounded the corner of the little chapel at the near end of Vicars’ Alley, a
clamour broke out ahead of them, with shouting and indignant exclamations. Socrates growled warily, his hackles rising.
‘
Mon Dieu, que passe?
’ demanded Maistre Pierre. Gil made no answer but quickened his pace as a number of people emerged from the house next to the chapel and trampled noisily
across its small garden, a powerful voice roaring at the centre of the group.
‘Ye willny take me! It wasny me killed him! Get yir hands off me!’
Doors opened along the street, heads popped out into the grey light, as servants and a few of the clerical residents responded to the noise. Socrates barked, other dogs joined in. Thomas Agnew
appeared in his doorway, hat askew, shouting hoarsely over the tumult in his yard:
‘Take him if ye can, send for the Serjeant! Send to the Sheriff!’
‘What’s ado?’ Gil demanded of the nearest figure, just as the man tripped over a flying foot and went down full length. Helping him up, Gil found he knew him. ‘Habbie
Sim, what are you at, brawling like this in the midst of the street?’
‘Agnew’s man’s dead,’ responded Maister Sim, brushing damp earth from his grey chequered hose, ‘and this fellow was found redhand wi the corp. But he’s no for
being held.’ He settled his red velvet hat straight on his tonsure and turned back towards the action.
‘Hob dead?’ repeated Gil in astonishment.
‘I never touched him! I found him like that –’ The man at the centre of the swaying, struggling group was on the ground too, pinned down among the winter kale with a captor
kneeling on each limb. Gil craned round a liveried back and the prisoner saw him. ‘Gil Cunningham! You’ll speak for me – I’d no cause to kill this fellow, I never seen him
afore in my life. Make them let me up!’
‘John Veitch,’ said Gil. ‘If they let you up, will you stand and answer?’
‘I will. I swear it.’ The big seaman wrenched at one arm, nearly unseating the fellow holding it. ‘I swear by St Nicholas’ pickle-tub. Only let me up off this
kale!’
‘No – no – he’s slain Hob,’ cried Agnew wildly. ‘He’s lying in there in all his blood, the puir chiel, and this fellow standing ower him
–’
‘He’s sworn he’ll stand and answer,’ Gil said. ‘We can accept that, maister. I know John Veitch well.’ But well enough? he wondered. The five or six men who
had taken the big seaman prisoner were reluctantly persuaded to let him stand up, and surrounded him watchfully as he lifted his plaid from the mud, then pulled his furred gown straight, replaced
his lop-eared bonnet, and braced himself to face the crowd around him. Agnew was still demanding the presence of Serjeant or Sheriff and lamenting his servant. Gil cast a quick look round the
gathering and turned to the other man of law.
‘Maister Agnew, wait a space,’ he said. ‘Here are ten of us in your yard, and five at least are householders. We can make a start on the matter, even if we still need to send
to the Sheriff when we’re done.’
‘Aye, certainly,’ said Maister Sim eagerly at his elbow, ‘and find out what’s been going on here.’
‘Bloody death has been going on,’ pronounced Maistre Pierre, appearing on the doorsill behind Agnew. He met Gil’s eye over the heads of the crowd. ‘As has been said, a
man lies within, dead in his blood and cooling fast. I would say he is dead at least an hour, perhaps two.’
‘An hour!’ repeated Agnew, turning to look at him.
‘An hour ago I was wi my uncle at the bedehouse,’ protested Veitch. ‘Send and ask him, he’ll tell you!’
‘Aye, nae doubt he will,’ said the man grasping his elbow, and there was some laughter. ‘But where were you in truth?’
‘We’ll begin at the beginning,’ said Gil. ‘Who accuses this man?’
‘Maister Agnew,’ said several voices. Agnew pulled himself together, smoothed down the breast of his dark red gown, and shooed away Socrates who was sniffing with interest at its
furred hem. Gil snapped his fingers, and the dog came obediently to sit beside him.
‘I accuse him,’ Agnew said. ‘I am Maister Thomas Agnew, as you ken well, Maister Cunningham, and I’m a man of law practising here in the burgh.’ Heads were nodded
round him in agreement. This was proper procedure.
‘And who is the man accused?’
‘John Veitch, as you ken well, Maister Cunningham,’ said the accused with a resilient gleam of humour. ‘Maister’s mate and one-third partner in the
Rose of Irvine
now lying at Dumbarton.’
‘He’s accusit,’ pursued Agnew without waiting for his cue, ‘that he slew my servant Hob, who lies in there dead, which I ken he did for I found him standing ower the corp
when I came back to the house the now.’
Some of the group nodded again, but Gil’s friend Habbie Sim objected.
‘Tammas, if the man’s been dead an hour or more, that canny be right. It’s no as much as an hour since you came running out shouting. It canny be a halfhour, indeed.’
‘Aye, very true,’ agreed the man next to him.
‘An hour, half an hour, what matter?’ exclaimed Agnew. ‘I saw him, I tell you, neighbours, standing above the corp.’
‘John Veitch,’ said Gil formally, ‘what do you say?’
‘I slew nobody this day,’ said Veitch. A strange turn of phrase, thought Gil. ‘I came to the house to seek a word wi Maister Agnew here, and found the door standing unlatched.
So I stepped in to wait, and found the servant lying in the hall,’ he nodded at the hall window, ‘and afore I could decide whether to call for help or if he was past aid, in comes Agnew
and begins shouting Murder for the Serjeant.’
‘As well I might, seeing him standing there wi his hands all bloody!’
Veitch turned up his palms and looked at them.
‘One hand,’ he corrected. ‘Just the fingers, where I touched him.’ He held out both hands to Gil; as he said, the fingers of the right were sticky with blood, but neither
the thumb nor the palm was marked. Gil pointed this out to the bystanders.
‘Aye, but it’s the man’s blood, sure enough,’ argued the man at Veitch’s other elbow, a stout fellow in St Mungo’s livery.
‘We canny tell that,’ said Gil mildly. ‘I see no other source of blood hereabouts, I agree, but it canny be proved that it is or it is not Hob’s blood. Now somebody has
to view the body.’ He looked round the gathering again. More people had joined them, including some of the few women who dwelt in this street of clerics and songmen, but the original group
would supply an assize. Selecting four of the likeliest including Maister Sim, he led them into the house. Agnew followed, gobbling indignantly.
‘Can we no get this over wi, send for the Serjeant and get the man taken away, so I can treat my poor servant decent and get his blood washed off him?’
‘It’ll no take long, Tammas,’ said Maister Sim, closing the door firmly in the faces of the interested bystanders.
The scene they encountered would give some of them ill dreams for months, Gil estimated. The hall stank of blood, and at its further end, on a crumpled heap of the fine rush matting, the man Hob
was sprawled on his belly. Beside him, incongruously, lay a bundle of yellow-green kale leaves. The mats under him were soaked dark red, and his face was turned towards them, fixed in a grimace of
astonishment. Socrates, head down and hackles up, stared warily back.
‘Aye, poor Hob,’ said one of the assize, and crossed himself. ‘He was a surly bugger, but he never deserved this. St Andrew call him from Purgatory.’
There was a general murmur of
Amen
and flurry of signings.
‘I have touched nothing save his cheek, to gauge how far he had cooled,’ said Maistre Pierre at Gil’s shoulder, ‘but so far as I can see it was several wounds to chest
and belly that have bled like this’
‘Like Naismith,’ said Gil.
‘Aye, but all by the same hand by the look of it. None was like to be his death instantly, I would say he bled to death and it may have taken the length of a
Te Deum.’
‘A good quarter o an hour,’ said Maister Sim the songman. ‘Wi all the trimmings.’