Authors: Pat McIntosh
‘Yes, I’d let that slip my mind,’ confessed Gil. ‘There were the two blades that stabbed him. I suppose we do come back to that, yes.’
‘I don’t know the chapel,’ said Alys. ‘May we go there now?’
They made their way back out on to Rottenrow, with Maistre Pierre still muttering at intervals, ‘I would have sworn the man was dead. No heartbeat, no breath.’
‘He had not begun to stiffen,’ Gil observed.
‘Hmph,’ said Maistre Pierre again. He halted as they reached the Wyndhead, and with a visible effort pointed out the wooden walls of the Caichpele above the rooftops of the
Drygate.
‘There is where the man’s mistress lives,’ he said. Alys nodded, surveying the layout of the streets. They turned towards the cathedral, and made their way round the western
towers, where the first of the senior men of law were just leaving. Here a rumbling of wheels on the cobbled way proclaimed Luke, with the handcart. Socrates pressed against Gil’s knee, head
down and hackles up, until Gil reassured him.
‘Ah, good laddie,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘He has persuaded the priest. But what has he got on the cart?’ He peered into the dim light. ‘Not another corpse, I
hope.’
It was certainly a large, bulky bundle, loosely tied on to the cart. Luke saw them and halted, lifting his knitted bonnet and ducking in a general bow.
‘Maister, mem, Maister Gil. I got the cart,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘The priest was wanting to go and say Vespers, so he just let me in the end.’
‘But what is this?’ His master prodded the bundle, which Socrates was now inspecting cautiously, his long nose raised to sniff at one overhanging portion. ‘Matting? Rush
matting?’
‘I hope it’s no hairm, maister,’ said the young man anxiously. The dog growled quietly, and Gil snapped his fingers to call him away. ‘The fellow that dwells by the
chapel came out his house as I came away, and asked me to lift this for him out his hall. It’s all wasted wi blood, I suppose it’s where the man was killed the day morn, and he wanted
me to take it and burn it on our fire at the yard. It’ll no wash out, that’s for certain.’
‘Oh, for certain,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. He turned to look at Gil. ‘Well, what think you? Do we burn it?’
‘No,’ said Alys.
‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Can Luke take it round to Rottenrow? Maggie can find an outhouse to stow it dry till daylight.’
Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘Wise, I suppose. We will see more by daylight. Aye, take it to Canon Cunningham’s house in Rottenrow, Luke. And perhaps the cart may lie there too.’
Luke laid hold of the handles of the cart again.
‘It’s no that bad on the level,’ he said, ‘like on the dirt roadway, but it’s the deil to manage on these cobbles. So I’ve to say to Maggie in your kitchen,
maister, that it’s all to lie dry in an outhouse till you get a look at it?’
Gil concurred with this, and he trundled away. Alys pulled her plaid up further round her head.
‘Where is the chapel?’ she said.
They continued round on to the north flank of St Mungo’s, into the little street, where lights were springing in many of the houses. Cooking smells floated in the damp chill twilight as
servants made the supper ready before Vespers and Compline were sung at the cathedral. The chapel at the mouth of the street was lit, its door open, and a small gathering was listening to the same
Office within, early and convenient for folk who had a hearth and a meal to see to.
‘This time yesterday,’ said Gil, ‘I spoke with Hob, poor devil. They were singing the Office like this when I came away.’
‘Shall we go in?’ said Alys, and slipped in at the open door without waiting for an answer. Gil and her father followed, to stand among the congregation and their lanterns at the
back of the box-like nave, while beyond a cast-iron grille in the narrow chancel arch, a priest and two acolytes dealt efficiently with the Vespers psalms.
Gil looked round, studying the little building. It seemed to be well supported, for all it stood in the shadow of St Mungo’s. The floor was paved with slabs of stone, the narrow windows
were glazed with what looked like coloured glass, and the walls were painted with scenes from the life of St Andrew. There was a particularly lively depiction of a fishing scene, lit by the lantern
in the hand of the elderly woman nearest it. Marks on the west wall suggested the place where the handcart stood when it was at home. Overhead the painted beams were hung with votive gifts and
funeral wreaths, and the thatch rustled faintly above them.
The clerks in the chancel had completed Vespers and moved on to Compline. Beside him Pierre and Alys both murmured the responses with the acolytes. Gil stepped away, peering in the gloom at the
flagstones where the handcart would rest, and the black shadows overhead. Socrates came to help, but seemed to find nothing to interest him.
‘
Liberavit me de laqueo venantium
,’ recited the clerks.
He has delivered me from the net of the hunter . . . He shall cover you with his wings, you shall find refuge under
his pinions
. Was that where Humphrey got his fixed idea about the birds? Gil wondered. And if the Deacon was a robin, who was the sparrow? And yet he said there was no sparrow. What else would
kill a robin? Both Maister Veitch and his nephew he saw as kites, his own brother was the white eaglet. A white chick, an unfledged youngster, would hardly hunt for itself, but the parents might
bring it a robin. The Agnew parents are dead, surely. I am not on the right trail here, he thought. I have lost the scent somewhere. I wonder if Humphrey has forgotten that as well as everything
else? Sweet St Giles, deliver me from the net of the hunter.
At the end of the Office, the congregation drifted out into the street, sharing lights, passing flame from lantern to lantern, but showing no inclination to make their way home in the deepening
twilight. The day’s news was much more interesting; the bedehouse miracle was much discussed, but Gil caught several versions of the fight in Agnew’s garden, and two people were as
convinced as Tam had been that Hob had sat up and denounced his killer.
‘What now?’ said Maistre Pierre at his shoulder. ‘It must be near supper-time. Should we attempt anything else, or call it the end of the day?’
‘I should like to do more today,’ Gil said. ‘I’ve done little enough for John Veitch’s case since Marion asked me to help. I need to find if he asked anyone for
Agnew’s house.’
‘One of these neighbours might know,’ said Alys softly.
‘My thought,’ he agreed, and moved forward to the nearest knot of people. One of the women in the group, raising her lantern to light his face, exclaimed,
‘You were here the morn, maister! Are you no the man that gart the corp speak?’
‘The corp never spoke, Isa,’ said the man next her. ‘I was at the door and seen it all. He cried out when the man touched him, but he never spoke a clear word.’
‘A terrible thing,’ said Gil, recognizing the impossibility of correcting the facts. ‘To be slain at his work like that.’
‘Aye, terrible,’ agreed the woman who had spoken first. ‘And likely it could ha been any of us! The man you took for it must be stark wood, to go into a house and slay a
stranger!’
‘I had a word wi Hob just after Prime,’ observed someone. ‘He was out wi a lantern cutting old kale leaves to clean the matting like I tellt him. And next I heard he was
deid.’
‘I spoke wi the madman,’ said a younger voice behind her. Several people turned their lanterns to reveal a young man in St Mungo’s livery who ducked his head shyly in the
sudden glow of light. ‘He was a great big fierce fellow, but he didny seem wood to me,’ he added.
‘When did you speak wi him?’ asked the man next to Isa.
‘They can be awfy cunning about hiding madness,’ said someone else sagely. ‘They can seem like you or me, till out comes the knife to slit your throat.’
‘Hob’s throat wasny slit,’ objected another voice. ‘He couldny ha spoke wi a slit throat.’
‘When did you speak wi him, Eck Paton?’ repeated the man beside Isa. ‘Was it the day?’
‘Oh, aye, Maister Pettigrew, it was,’ said Eck earnestly. ‘He asked me whereabout Maister Agnew dwelt, and I pointed him to the house there.’ He nodded at the darkened
dwelling. ‘And he went in, and not the space of an
Ave
after it Maister Agnew came home and cried Murder.’
‘And where were you the while?’ asked Isa in suspicious tones.
‘Cutting kale in my maister’s front yard,’ said Eck righteously, ‘and I stopped to lift a hantle o weeds while I was about it.’
‘In case you found out anything more about Maister Agnew’s caller,’ suggested Pettigrew. Eck ducked his head again, but grinned.
‘I did, an all,’ he pointed out.
‘What time was this?’ Gil asked.
The boy shrugged. ‘Well into the day. After Sext, maybe.’
‘And you’re certain the man wasny in the house long when Maister Agnew came home? Did you hear anything?’
‘No a thing.’ Eck looked round, and expanded visibly as he realized the entire group was hanging on his words. ‘See, I went on lifting weeds, and the madman went to Maister
Agnew’s door, and tirled at the pin, but Hob never answered it. And then the man pushed at the door and it opened –’
‘You mean it wasny latched?’ Gil asked him.
Eck shrugged his shoulders. ‘I never heard him unlatch it. Just he pushed and it opened, and it squeaked the way it aye does, and he called out and stepped within. And I never heard
another sound till Maister Agnew came round the corner o the chapel here to his own gate.’
‘And then what?’ asked someone else.
‘Why he went in at his door and began to cry Murder.’
‘As soon as he stepped in the house?’ Gil asked.
‘Oh, aye.’
‘Tell the Serjeant,’ suggested another voice. ‘You’re a witness, laddie.’
‘No me!’ said Eck in alarm. ‘I never saw anything! I helped capture the madman, but I never even seen the mats that Maister Agnew took out his house,’ he added
regretfully, ‘all wet wi Hob’s blood. A fellow hurled them away on the St Andrew’s handcart the now afore Vespers, and I never got a right look.’
Gil edged his way backward out of the group, and found Alys waiting at its margin, the dog at her side.
‘Useful,’ he said, and reached into his purse for his tablets to make a note of the young man’s name. He checked in dismay as his fingers encountered, yet again, the brocade
cover of Thomas Agnew’s set instead of his own.
‘What is it?’ said Alys as his expression changed. He shook his head.
‘Not here,’ he said guiltily, and drew her away from the chapel. ‘Where is Pierre?’
‘He went to make sure the men had shut everything down. He said he would go home after.’ She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Does that fit, do you think? Is the boy a good
witness?’
‘He seemed very clear,’ Gil agreed. ‘I wish we had a light – I never meant to be out so long. Come back to the house and get a lantern, and I’ll walk you down the
hill.’
Maistre Pierre had not gone home, but was waiting for them in the house in Rottenrow, alone in the hall with a jug of spiced ale.
‘I knew you would come this way,’ he proclaimed, acknowledging Socrates’ greeting. ‘You would need to fetch a light. Your uncle is home,’ he added more soberly.
‘He is above just now, speaking with your sister.’
‘And Dorothea?’ Gil asked.
‘Has returned to the castle meantime, though she said she would be here for supper.’
Gil nodded. ‘I’m just as glad to see you here,’ he admitted. ‘Pierre, I’m still carrying Agnew’s tablets about with me. What on earth can I do with
them?’
‘Agnew’s tablets?’ said Alys. ‘What do you mean?’
Her father grinned. ‘An object lesson in the perils of excess,
ma mie
. He purloined them last night from the man’s chamber, on our way home.’
‘
Mon Dieu!
’ said Alys. ‘No wonder your head ached today.’
‘I haven’t drunk so much since I left Paris,’ Gil said, a little defensively, annoyed to feel his cheeks burning.
She smiled, but held her hand out. ‘Give them to me, Gil. I can return them.’
‘You?’ he said involuntarily, but his hand went to the purse. ‘How can you –?’
‘I’ll find a way. You have enough to worry you. Is there anything useful in them?’
‘The notes for the new will Naismith was to make. The family copy of the disposition for Humphrey’s support is in there too. I saw nothing more.’
She nodded, and tucked the brocade bag into her own purse.
‘I’ll contrive something. Now I must go down the road, or there will be no supper tonight. Are you coming now, Father, or later?’
‘Now, I suppose.’ Her father got to his feet and lifted a lantern from the hearth. ‘Lucky I left this in the lodge the other day. We need not borrow one. What will you do next,
Gilbert?’
Gil shrugged. ‘Speak to the Sheriff after supper, likely. He should know what that laddie was saying.’ He recounted the kale-cutter’s tale, and Maistre Pierre nodded.
‘Certainly Sir Thomas should hear of that. It puts another view of the matter entirely. I wish there had not been so many witnesses to the trial by blood. And what of the
matting?’
‘That,’ said Gil firmly, ‘can wait till daylight.’
Chapter Thirteen
Sir Thomas Stewart, extricated without visible reluctance from an evening’s music in his own lodging, heard Gil’s report of Eck Paton’s evidence with a
frown.
‘I see what you mean,’ he agreed at the end. ‘If the laddie’s that certain, our man had by far too little time to do his business afore Agnew came home. The corp was last
seen alive just after Prime, you say? Did his maister say when he saw him last? Had he left by that hour?’
‘You’ll need to get that from him, sir,’ suggested Gil. ‘I ken I saw Maister Agnew at the bedehouse no long after Terce the day. I can ask Andro Millar what hour he got
there.’
‘Aye, do that. And the bedehouse. The bedehouse!’ said Sir Thomas impatiently. Small, neat and balding, he tipped back his head and peered at Gil across his cluttered desk.
‘What’s this I hear about the second man that died? That was the bedesman, wasn’t it no? The one that’s mad? Only now he’s rose up and cured of his madness?’