St Mungo's Robin (31 page)

‘Oh, maister! Oh, it was the most . . .’ She paused, lost for words. ‘My mistress knelt wi him all last night,’ she explained. ‘She was praying and mourning him the
whole night. Then she came into the kitchen for a bit the morn, and sat as if her tongue was locked.’

‘I saw her then,’ Gil agreed.

The girl nodded. ‘We got her to eat and drink a little, Nannie and me, while his brother was wi him, and she sat a bit longer after that. Then she suddenly rose up about an hour ago and
said,
He needs me
, and went out to the garden. And Nannie and me followed her,’ she continued, her narrative gaining pace, ‘and saw her go into Maister Humphrey’s lodging,
and then she screamed out, and came to the door, and called us ower, and said,
He’s breathing.
And we couldny credit it, but we went in, and there he was. He’d got colour in his
face, and his breath going regular, and his hands warm, just as natural as could be. My mistress is wi him now, feeding him a wee bit bread and milk.’

‘
Dieu soît bénit!
’ said Alys, and crossed herself. Gil stared at the maidservant, as unable as she had been to credit the tale.

‘Has he woken?’ he asked.

‘Oh, aye. He’s no said much, but he kens us all, he’s named us, even Simmie and me. But maister,’ she continued, ‘the rarest thing of all, he’s cured of his
madness. He’s as clear in his head as you or me, maister.’

‘I recall nothing,’ said Humphrey.

Denial of injury, Gil thought, is the price of forgiveness.

The first, immediate service of thanksgiving was over, and Humphrey himself was washed and fed and seated in invalid state by the hearth in the bedehouse hall, the brothers round him, Gil and
Alys standing by the window. Mistress Mudie, unable to let go of her chick, stood by his side fussing with his rug or his garments.

‘Nothing?’ said Millar. ‘Have you no notion what happened?’

‘I have no notion,’ said Humphrey earnestly, ‘save that my dear Sissie here tells me I was found hanging in my own lodging. The last I recall was going to my rest after dinner.
I suppose that was yesterday.’

‘His speech is greatly altered,’ said Alys to Gil, who nodded. The whole man was so altered he was hardly recognizable, his bearing and expression confident and pleasant. There was
something more, Gil thought, which he could not place.

‘And the day?’ said Cubby. ‘What happened the now, laddie?’

‘I woke,’ he said simply. ‘I woke from the most beautiful dream I have ever had.’

‘So is Mistress Mudie’s,’ added Alys in the same undertone. Gil realized that this was true; the little stout woman had not uttered a word for at least a quarter-hour.

‘Well, and what hast thou dreamt?’ asked Maister Veitch, with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow. Gil recognized a line from the Skinners’ Play, but Humphrey’s face lit
up.

‘Oh, my brothers, such a dream,’ he said. ‘I dreamed I was lying in my own bed, in the darkest night that ever was, so dark that I was afraid. Then a single beam of light
shone, and I rose and followed it, and looked out of my lodging into the garden, as we’ve all done many times.’ Elderly heads nodded. Mistress Mudie bent and pulled the rug higher
across his knees, a glow in her eyes. ‘I saw the garden full of flowers, and filled with a great light, and three beautiful young men dancing in the midst of it.’

‘Young men?’ said Anselm doubtfully. ‘He never said there was young men here.’

‘Wheesht,’ said Duncan.

‘They were dancing in a reel-of-three,’ Humphrey continued, ‘naked and shining as newborn babes, and each of them had the face of my friend Andrew Stevenson, who was drowned
when he and I went fishing. Then I wept for my guilt in Andrew’s death, but one of the three came forward and drew me out into the light, and kissed me on the brow and the cheek and the
mouth. And I woke, and kent that I was forgiven.’

That was it, thought Gil. That same inner calm that he had seen in Dorothea radiated from Humphrey’s thin square face.

‘Now I understand,’ said Anselm, and pushed his spectacles straight.

‘But who were the young men?’ said Barty who seemed to have heard this without difficulty.

Anselm retorted, with unaccustomed vigour, ‘Don’t be a fool, Barty. Who else would it be but the Blessed Trinity? He tellt me that,’ he added.

‘You have received a most particular grace, Humphrey,’ pronounced Duncan in Latin.

‘Have I not!’ agreed Humphrey.

‘No just forgiven,’ said Maister Veitch, ‘but cured. You ken you’ve been mad these ten year and more, laddie?’

‘Is it a miracle?’ asked Alys.

They had escaped from the bedehouse, where the brothers were settling down to discuss the event in full theological detail, while Millar composed a letter to the Archbishop. Sir James had
returned just as they left, but Gil had managed to avoid him; he had no wish to analyse the situation for his godfather’s benefit. They had returned to Rottenrow, collected the dog, and were
now out on the Stablegreen as Dorothea had first suggested.

‘I’ve heard of it happening,’ said Gil, ‘that a hanged felon survives, though it’s rare. But the dream, or vision, or whatever it was, is outside my knowledge. That
does seem like something beyond the ordinary frame of things.’

‘It seems like a singular grace,’ Alys said. ‘The man is so altered. And not only Humphrey himself, Gil, did you notice how much Mistress Mudie is changed too? I suppose if it
was her prayers brought it about, she must feel . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

They wandered along the path from Rottenrow, hand in hand in silence for a little. The short November day was nearly over. It had stopped raining for now, but the grasses were dripping and the
wet bare branches of the hazel-scrub gleamed in the low light. Socrates galloped ahead, hunting for interesting scents. Gil was simply enjoying being in Alys’s company with no other
intrusions, and when she finally spoke again she echoed this:

‘How long since we had time like this, Gil? Just the two of us?’

‘Days,’ he said.

‘A mistake,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why should it be your fault?’

‘I’ve been too busy,’ she said. ‘I see it now. I left the house today when Dorothea brought me the news, and . . .’ She paused, considering her words. ‘Your
sister’s concerns – Tib’s, I mean – are a more important matter than the feast. I am sure my household can manage without me. And if they can manage without me for this,
they can manage for other reasons, and I should have left them before.’

‘Is that what Dorothea meant, just before Simmie came for me?’

‘No,’ she said quietly after a moment, then halted, looking round. ‘Is that the back of the bedehouse? Where was the cart that Tib saw?’

‘Here,’ he said, accepting the change of subject, and stepped off the path into the long wet grass to look for the marks of the handcart’s legs. She picked up her skirts and
followed him, peering at the two little indentations, and then looked up and down along the wall.

‘And the linen scarf?’ she asked.

‘That was yonder.’ He nodded at the clump of hazels. ‘I suppose he heard Tib following him, saw her lantern perhaps, and drew away from the gate, and saw the trees as a place
to hide. He must have been nearly as alarmed as she was, when she simply stood here waiting for Michael to open the gate. I could wring her neck,’ he added. ‘She was always the spoilt
one, but this is outside of enough.’

‘She is very much in love,’ said Alys. ‘That affects one’s judgement.’

‘Not mine.’

She smiled quickly, hitched her skirts higher and set off towards the hazel stand, picking her way carefully through the rough grasses. He paused a moment to admire her ankles, then followed
her, catching up in time to point out the footprints still visible among the tree-roots, and the place where the piece of linen had lain.

‘These are good boots,’ she agreed, studying the prints, ‘but there’s nothing distinctive about them, is there? Did you say John Veitch’s boots were the right
size?’

‘Short of measuring them,’ said Gil cautiously ‘I’d say so. But so would Millar’s be, or Humphrey’s indeed.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and looked about. ‘And while he stood here, whoever he was, he dropped the scarf. Do you still have it with you?’ He produced it from his sleeve and she
took it, turning it over carefully. ‘Marion Veitch knew it, you thought.’

‘She studied it as if every stitch was familiar,’ he confirmed. ‘And the man Elder recognized it as John’s neckie, though he tried to deny it afterwards.’

She turned the end with the initials over.

‘I wonder how else it might have got here,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose if it isn’t John Veitch’s then it has no connection with the death.’

‘It could be quite unconnected,’ Gil agreed. ‘But the initials are his.’

‘Yes, if it is
I V
,’ she admitted. She folded the strip of linen and handed it back to him. ‘And the cart. I wonder how the cart got here – what path it took to
the bedehouse gate. There are these prints here, so could the tracks of the wheels still be there?’

‘They could,’ agreed Gil. He looked about. ‘There are three ways it could get on to the Stablegreen, assuming it didn’t come out of the bedehouse. The way we came in just
now,’ he pointed, ‘or the vennel off Castle Street, or the path that comes in from the Port.’

‘Which is most likely?’

‘The Castle Street vennel is nearest.’

Socrates came loping back with a satisfied grin just as they found a single wheeltrack, in a patch of damp earth near the Rottenrow end of the path. He inspected the place they were studying,
and turned towards the open ground again, nose down, apparently following a trail.

‘For a sight-hound,’ said Alys, ‘he seems to have a good nose. What has he found?’

‘I can’t believe the scent is still there,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder if he remembers finding the trail before, when I first brought him out here after the death?’

They followed the dog back out on to the green, hand in hand again.

‘So what did my sister mean?’ asked Gil as they approached the bedehouse wall. ‘What is it we’ve to dispute between us?’

‘Oh.’ Her fingers tightened nervously on his. ‘Well, it’s – I think it’s –’

‘Symmetry,’ he said, into the pause. ‘We’d been saying, just before she came down, that we both lacked something. Was that it?’

‘Yes, but – I think she saw something more than that,’ said Alys doubtfully. ‘I think she wished to say that there is a symmetry in what we lack. That you and I have been
praying for the same thing, or for something which matches. But it hardly seems –’ She stopped again, face downturned, the bright colour washing over her cheek. Gil studied her for a
moment.

‘Do you feel she’s meddling?’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed Alys, turning to face him. ‘No, she spoke out of concern for us, that was clear. I just can’t –’

‘Can’t what?’ he coaxed.

She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘What do you lack, Alys?’

She shook her head again, and muttered something he did not catch. Before he could ask her to repeat it, there was a shout from the vennel behind them. They both turned, to see Maistre Pierre
making his way towards them in the fading light, waving.

‘We have found a handcart!’ he announced as he came closer. ‘Well, we have found more than one,’ he added, ‘but this one is dark and has a pattern on the spar
between the handles. I am certain it is the right one.’

‘Already?’ said Gil. ‘That’s good news. Where is it? Where did you find it?’

‘Ah. That is the strange thing,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It was in the chapel in Vicars’ Alley. What is it, St Andrew’s?’

‘In the chapel? Does it belong there?’

‘So it seems. Luke tells me that the man who informed him that it was there also told him they use it to collect for the leper-house.’

‘Of course they do,’ said Gil. ‘I’ve seen someone at the kitchen door from time to time, begging bread or meal or the like. I never thought of that – though of
course we were looking for a ladder earlier.’

‘Exactly I have left Luke negotiating with the priest to borrow the cart, since I suppose we shall have need of it.’

‘If Tib sees it,’ suggested Alys, ‘she can tell us if she remembers the pattern.’

‘Very likely,’ agreed her father, with a note of disapproval. ‘What are you two finding out here? I thought we had gone over this ground to extinction. And what is this about
the bedehouse? They seem to be talking of little else at the Wyndhead.’

‘Father, a miracle,’ said Alys, her eyes shining. ‘The brother who was dead, Humphrey, is risen and cured of his madness. The boy came for Gil, and we’ve been in and seen
it all and spoken to him.’

‘Risen?’ her father repeated, staring at her. ‘But he was certainly dead. I found no heartbeat.’

‘There have been one or two half-hangit men in legal history,’ said Gil, using the Scots phrase. ‘And I suppose the shock might cure him of his madness,’ he added
thoughtfully, ‘though it seems to me more than a simple cure.’

‘The man was dead,’ reiterated Maistre Pierre with emphasis.

‘The more of a miracle, Father,’ said Alys, her hand on his arm.

‘Hmph,’ said her father. ‘Does he recall anything that might help us?’

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Nothing, he said.’

‘He was hanging for half an hour at least,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘There was no heartbeat, no pulse.’

Alys eyed him, and gave Gil a significant look. ‘We have found where the cart came on to the green,’ she said, pointing. ‘We found the mark of one wheel, yonder in the
vennel.’

‘From Rottenrow,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning to look. ‘Does that tell us anything?’

‘It suggests,’ said Gil slowly, ‘it suggests the Deacon was not killed anywhere close to the bedehouse, because then the approach from Castle Street would have been
nearer.’

‘More likely he was killed nearer to St Andrew’s,’ said Alys, ‘and someone knew of the cart, whether the murderer or his accomplice.’

‘So do we come back to the idea that the man was waylaid in the street?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘And by more than one individual, as we thought at first?’