Authors: Pat McIntosh
‘What, the Deacon of St Serf’s? Robert Naismith?’ said Gil. ‘And he’s been stabbed?’
‘Naismith? Is that him,’ said Daidie with relish, ‘that keeps Marion Veitch as his mistress? The bairn’s three year old, and another on the way, poor soul. My cousin Bel
works in her kitchen,’ he explained, finding everyone looking at him.
‘Can you come, maister?’ said Lowrie. He indicated his muddy feet. ‘It’s raining hard. The old men were all for moving him at once, and I don’t know how long
Maister Kennedy can hold them off, though Mistress Mudie was offering them spiced ale for the shock to get them indoors.’
‘You must go, Gil,’ said Alys. ‘But – will you come back later? There’s still something.’ She hesitated, seemed about to go on, then said only, ‘You had
better go.’
He nodded with reluctance. ‘I suppose I must. As Lowrie says, it’s within the Chanonry and I’m Blacader’s man.’ He gathered up the plaid which hung over his arm.
‘I’ll take the dog with me, and come down again as soon as I can.’
‘Who was there?’ said Lowrie, hunching his shoulders against the rain. ‘Well. You ken Maister Kennedy’s got the St Serf’s chaplaincy? Seems it
usually goes to someone from the college, and in the changes after Father Bernard was transferred, he was next in line. Worth quite a bit, I hear, so he takes the duties seriously. And as often as
not he brings Miggle – er, Michael, and me to serve for him –’
‘Michael Douglas? Your chamber-fellow?’
‘The same. We’d come up as usual after Prime to say Mass for the old men, at least Miggle was here already, so they were all there too, and Mistress Mudie, and Maister Millar
–’
‘That’s the sub-Deacon, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve met him.’
‘Aye. He’s studying Theology.’ Lowrie, nearly as tall as Gil, kept up with his long strides without effort, the skirts of his narrow blue gown flapping round his calves.
‘Sometimes there’s other folk to hear the Mass, but that’s just in the chapel, they don’t come within the almshouse itself.’
Gil whistled to Socrates and bore left-handed at the crossing called the Wyndhead, heading up the hill towards the Stablegreen Port.
‘And what happened? When was he found?’
‘After the Mass.’ Lowrie looked away to their right through the drizzle, beyond the castle walls to where the towers of St Mungo’s cathedral loomed grey against the sky.
‘Is that Miggle coming there? We were still laving the vessels and putting them past, see, when one of the old men came tottering back into the chapel to say they’d found a dead man,
could we come and see to it. We were just in time to stop them lifting everything into the hall where the light was. Then Maister Kennedy found the blood on him and sent Miggle over to St
Mungo’s, and I went to Rottenrow and they said you were likely down the town.’ He paused at a narrow arched gateway, pushing open the heavy wooden yett. ‘Here we are.’
Gil looked about him. He had never paid much attention to St Serf’s almshouse, nor had it obtruded on his professional life, unlike the larger house of St Nicholas or the two pilgrim
hostels. Its aged inmates were law-abiding and eschewed litigation, so it had not come to his uncle’s attention as senior judge of the diocese, and its property and financial matters were
handled by one of the other men of law about the Consistory Court.
The almshouse occupied one of the long narrow tofts which ran between Castle Street and the open land of the Stablegreen. Beside the gate the east end of the chapel faced the street; there was
no other break in the frontage, apart from the chapel’s east windows which were now catching the grey light. By the same light, he made out lettering on the archway: YHE HOVS OF LEIRIT
PVIRTITH. Yes, of course, he thought, appreciating the conceit. The House of Learned Poverty would be dedicated to St Mungo’s teacher.
Beyond the archway, Socrates was already exploring a constringent passageway which ran between the boundary wall and the south face of the chapel, and seemed to open out into a wider space.
‘Do they lock the yett?’ he asked. ‘Can anyone walk in?’
‘Only in the daytime, and only so far as the chapel and the Deacon’s house,’ said Lowrie, answering the second question. ‘There’s a door each end of the passageway
between the two yards, you’ll see it in a moment, and there’s the iron gate in the back wall of the garden. I think they lock them all at night.’
Gil followed his dog along the flagstones past the eaves-drips, Lowrie behind him, their boots ringing loud in the narrow way. At the far end, they came out at one corner of the outer courtyard
and Gil stopped again to look round.
The small space was bounded on their left by the wall. Immediately on their right the door of the chapel stood open, shedding light on to the wet paving-stones. In front of them, opposite the
chapel, was a substantial two-storey range, in whose stone-built lower portion were more lights, and argumentative voices. On the fourth side of the yard, next to a row of storehouses, a wooden
fore-stair led to the timber-framed upper floor whose row of unlit dormer windows in the thatch gave it a top-heavy, important appearance.
‘The Deacon’s lodging?’ Gil hazarded, nodding towards the stair.
‘The same,’ agreed Lowrie. ‘This way. They’re all in the hall.’
He strode confidently into the passage which led through the main range and in at the doorway of a long, low-ceilinged, sparsely furnished hall. At the far end a number of elderly men in black
cloaks sat arguing round a table by a branch of candles.
‘It’s not right,’ one of them was saying tremulously as Gil entered. ‘He should be laid out like a Christian soul, no left lying under a tree wi his breast all bloody.
Sissie could be doing that while we’re waiting. And has he had any sort of absolution? We should be seeing to that and all.’
‘What did he say?’ demanded another voice.
‘Far’s Frankie gaed?’ said a third, inexplicably.
‘The man is here,’ said another, in Latin. ‘It’s a great hoodie-crow,’ it continued, in Scots, ‘come to peck out our living een, for the robin willny rise
up.’
‘What did he say?’
One of the black-cloaked figures rose and advanced towards them, but was forestalled. A familiar voice said, ‘Aye, Gil,’ and Maister Nicholas Kennedy of the University of Glasgow
emerged from the shadows behind the door, another man with him. ‘We need a lymer here, no a sight-hound,’ he added, catching sight of Socrates at Gil’s heel.
‘Aye, Nick,’ Gil answered. ‘What have you found, then?’
‘Oh, it wasny me that found him,’ said Maister Kennedy.
‘It was Maister Duncan,’ said the other man. He was taller than Maister Kennedy, with a lean face, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a shock of light wiry hair which stuck out from
under his floppy hat. He waved a bony hand to indicate the arguing, black-cloaked group, all seated again. ‘One of our – one of our brothers. I’m Andro Millar,’ he added,
‘I’m the sub-Deacon here, I suppose I’m in charge if – if – if Maister Naismith’s not able,’ he finished with a slightly hysterical laugh.
‘It’s good of you to come so prompt, Maister Cunningham.’
‘It’s what Robert Blacader pays him for,’ said Maister Kennedy, ‘so he’d as well get on with it. He’s out yonder by the gate, Gil. You took your time getting
here, but at least it means there’s near enough light to see by now.’
‘So what’s happened?’ Gil asked.
‘We – we – we found him, just after the Mass,’ explained Millar. ‘Out in the garden, by the back yett, I can’t think how.’
Gil met Maister Kennedy’s eye in the grey light from the near window.
‘As near as I can make out,’ supplied his friend gloomily, ‘they all went out to their wee houses for ten minutes’ contemplation afore their porridge was ready, and
Maister Duncan saw something under the tree by the back gate and went to see what. And when he saw what, he raised the cry, and fetched Andro here, and then they came to fetch us.’
‘And you were still laving the vessels by then?’ Gil asked, raising one eyebrow. ‘How long does it take you?’
‘Aye, well, we’ve to wait till they’re well out of sight afore we start,’ said Nick, apparently feeling that this was adequate explanation. ‘So when I found the
blood, I sent the boys for you and Maister Mason –’
‘That will save time, if Pierre is on his way already.’
‘– and made them put a piece of sacking over the body.’
‘Good.’ Gil glanced at the gesticulating group round the table. ‘I’ll need to speak to Maister Duncan at the least, but we’ll look at the body first, as soon as
Pierre gets here. Are you sure of who it is?’
‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ said Millar, wringing his hands. ‘It’s Deacon Naismith, right enough. I ca – canny think what’s come to him. He was well when I saw him
last, and fine when he spoke to us all in the afternoon.’
Socrates rose, ears pricked, as feet sounded in the passageway. Gil looked over his shoulder.
‘Ah, Pierre. Good day to you. And to you, Michael.’
‘I have a
chantier
to run,’ complained the master mason. He ducked under the lintel, a bulky shape wrapped in boiled wool, another shadowy figure at his back in a
student’s gown like Lowrie’s. ‘You forgive the delay, I hope, I had to give the men their instructions. I can expect no work from them next week after we celebrate your marriage,
we should get on with cutting those pillars while we may, but – Yes, good dog, Socrates. So why are we summoned, Gilbert?’ he demanded, switching to French. ‘Who is dead in this
House of Learned Poverty?’
The further courtyard was laid out as a little garden, with gravel walks through grass, tiny flowerbeds standing empty at this season, and several evergreens, overlooked by a row of small houses
to either hand. Following Millar’s stream of incoherent exclamations down the central path, Gil counted five chimneys each side in the grey daylight. Ten houses, he thought. There
weren’t as many as ten old men in the hall.
‘I’ve seen Alys this morning,’ he said quietly. Alys’s father grimaced.
‘She was wound up like a crossbow when we broke our fast,’ he said. ‘Did she say that a cart came in from Carluke with a bed on it.’
‘A
bed
?’
‘In pieces, with the hangings. And a word from your mother, saying she spent her wedding night in the same bed. It arrived yesterday, after you left the house,’ Maistre Pierre said,
with a sideways glance at Gil.
‘Ah,’ he said. That might explain things, he thought, if my mother is getting involved.
The garden ended in a high wall of rough-cut rubble, capped by a row of angular stones, a gate in its midst which must lead out on to the Stablegreen, with another green tree to either side of
it. Millar stopped beside one of these and removed his hat, and beside him Maister Kennedy bent to draw back a length of sacking.
‘There you are,’ he said unnecessarily.
Chapter Two
‘A terrible thing,’ contributed Millar, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny neck. He had flung on a great black cloak like those worn by the bedesmen,
with a badge over the heart which Gil could not make out within the heavy folds. Replacing his hat he drew the mantle closer about him, and added, ‘I canny think how it can have happened.
He’s no enemies, surely, nobody that would do this to him a purpose.’
Gil made no comment, but hunkered down by the sprawling figure beneath the tree. Socrates came to his side to sniff at the wet clothing, and Maistre Pierre crossed himself, his lips moving.
They were looking at the body of a short, rather plump man, lying partly on his left side facing the foot of the wall, right arm flung backwards almost into the lowest branches of the yew. The
eyes were closed, but the mouth was wide open, giving the appearance of someone in the grip of a dream. A dream from which you’ll not wake, Gil thought, looking the length of the corpse. It
was wearing hose and long-sleeved jerkin of good tawny woollen with linen showing at the neck and wrists, darkened and reddened by a wide stain on the breast which Socrates was now inspecting
closely, the coarse hair on his spine standing up. A long open gown of a darker brown was rucked up to waist level under the corpse’s torso, its fur lining spiky with the rain. A belt of
stamped leather, with brass buckle and fittings, supported a well-filled purse, a dagger and matching whinger, and a large bunch of keys. The smell of blood and stale urine mingled with the resiny
scent of the yew-trees.
‘What’s he doing out here?’ Gil wondered, pushing the dog’s muzzle away from the sodden codpiece.
‘Waiting for the Judgement,’ said Maister Kennedy obtusely.
‘Has he been moved at all since you found him?’ asked Maistre Pierre. Gil looked up at him.
‘I wondered that,’ he agreed.
‘No, no, Gil,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘This is where he was lying. I think Duncan tried to lift him, but he’s well set, and that was when they realized he was
dead.’
‘He is indeed,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. He bent over the sprawled figure and tested the rigidity of the out-flung right arm. ‘Set, but not yet begun to soften. Dead sometime
last night, I suppose. Well, it is Robert Naismith, Deacon of this place, on that we are agreed. And how has he died?’
‘Last night?’ said Lowrie. ‘Not this morning?’
‘Oh, certainly.’ The mason was feeling carefully at the chubby face, and round the neck and the back of the head. ‘He is like a stock. Gil, are his feet also
hardened?’
‘They are,’ Gil agreed, attempting to flex one well-shod foot.
‘Late afternoon or evening of yesterday, then.’ Maistre Pierre turned his attention to the darkened breast of the jerkin. ‘And this looks like what gave him his quittance. A
knife wound, likely. There is a slit,’ he poked cautiously, ‘no, more than one, in the jerkin.’
‘It’s certainly blood,’ said Maister Kennedy.
‘We learn more when he is stripped.’ One big hand explored under the corpse’s flexed calves, then turned back a fold of the rumpled gown. ‘No more than damp beneath him.
Oui, certainement
, it was dry last night, though it was raw cold. That fits.’
Gil stood up and looked about him. The grass was wet and trampled for some distance round the body.