Authors: Pat McIntosh
‘And the bedchamber’s yonder,’ said Millar, nodding at the far end of the room. ‘Now I’d best get down to see to the Office.’
‘Mistress Mudie keeps house for the Deacon as well as for the brothers?’ Gil asked. ‘Alone?’
‘Aye, and for me.’ Millar grimaced. ‘She’s a good woman, and she loves caring for the old men, it’s no just a duty, and she’s a good housewife, wi two-three
kitchen hands under her, though you’d never think it the way she goes on about the cooking. Her talk doesny bother the brothers,’ he added, with a wry grin, ‘the most of them
canny hear her.’
‘I have no doubt she is a good woman, as you say, but her tongue would drive me raving wild in a day,’ said Maistre Pierre.
‘
Your semly voys that ye so smal out-twyne Maketh my
thoght in joye and blis habounde
,’ remarked Gil. Millar grinned again, then hastily rearranged his features in
solemnity. ‘So the Deacon left just before you did,’ Gil continued, ‘and came back late. How did he get up the stair last night? The moon’s at the quarter, but it was full
cloud. I’d need of a lantern myself, out in the street, even with the lights on the house corners, and in the yard here it would be like the inside of a barrel.’
‘Oh, he’d a la – lantern,’ said Millar, pausing on the doorsill. ‘It’s here. He’s brought it home with him.’
‘His own lantern? You can identify it?’
‘Oh, aye.’ Millar waved a hand at the object where it sat on the court-cupboard. ‘Well, it belongs to the bedehouse. You can see, it’s got the badge on the handle, and
all.’
Gil went over and lifted the lantern. It was a well-made and well-worn specimen, of tooled brass set with pieces of mica. The shutter was fastened by a neat clasp whose pin was attached by a
fine chain, and the handle was smoothly shaped and ornamented by a small shield with a heart on it.
‘Douglas?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘The Douglas arms? The same which you wear, maister?’
Gil looked attentively, for the first time, at the embroidered badge on Millar’s cloak.
‘The Douglas arms, with a difference. A heart on a shield,’ he said, ‘and an open book below it. Was it a Douglas founded the place?’
‘The shield should be chained to the book,’ said Millar, distracted, ‘and LP on the pages of the book, to signify the House of Leirit Puirtith, but the stitches aye wear away.
It was James Douglas of Cauldhope was our founder, near sixty year since, as a house to support ten poor learned men. We pray daily for his soul and his wife’s.’
‘I never realized that,’ said Gil. ‘That must have been my godfather’s sire – or his grandsire, indeed. Ten, is it? You don’t have ten staying here now, do
you?’
‘No, no,’ said Millar anxiously. ‘There are si – six bedesmen. And I’d best leave you now, maisters, and go and lead them to Terce. I’ll come back as soon as
they’ve right started.’
‘We must not delay the Office,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, and Millar hurried off down the creaking fore-stair. Gil set the lantern back on the court-cupboard and prowled round the
chamber, opening the shutters so that the damp air stirred and more light fell on the well-swept boards under their feet. Maistre Pierre laid the dead man’s purse and belt on the table and
looked about him.
‘He did himself proudly,’ he commented. He moved to the rack of papers and drew out a bundle. ‘What are all these, I wonder? The accounts of the bedehouse, I suppose. I wonder
where he wrote? I see no pen or ink. Perhaps in the inner room.’
‘This does not add up,’ Gil said. His companion nodded, peering at the papers he held. ‘He was moving about up here two hours before midnight, with a locked door between him
and the place where he was found dead this morning. He must have been killed almost immediately after he was heard here, but where did it happen?’
‘His keys were on him. They could have been used to open the door.’
‘But how did his killer get out again, through the locked door?’
‘Perhaps it was one of the old men. Or Millar, or that talking woman. Who else has a key?’
‘I hope the boys may find something to the purpose.’ Gil turned his head as a sound of shuffling feet rose from the yard. ‘And there is Naismith’s bedchamber to
search.’
Chapter Three
The inner chamber was half the size of the outer, most of the floor space taken up by a free-standing box bed positioned to avoid the worst of the draughts from the windows. It
had a counterpane of the same verdure tapestry, and a matching curtain was drawn back on its one open side.
‘Is that the kind of piece madame your mother has sent?’ asked Maistre Pierre, following Gil into the room, ‘or is it a tester-bed with pillars? The canvas was still over the
cart when I left this morning.’
‘It’s this kind,’ said Gil rather shortly. He was aware of his friend eyeing him sideways again, but concentrated on studying the rest of the chamber. There was a painted chest
with a businesslike lock by the bedside, a rug made of two goatskins lay crumpled beside it, and a tall desk stood next to one of the windows, the inkhorn and pen-case Maistre Pierre had missed
resting on a shelf beside the writing-slope.
‘The bed has been slept in,’ the mason said, ‘this one I mean, I have no doubt of that.’
‘Nor I,’ said Gil.
Indeed, he thought, it could hardly be clearer. The sheets were creased, the counterpane rumpled, and the blankets had been flung back when its occupants – occupant rose before the dawn.
He pulled back the bedding, and drew each layer up over the mattress until all was straight, then looked about him. A pair of slip-slop shoes sat neatly by the foot of the bed; a furred brocade
bedgown hung on a nail in the bedpost above them.
Beyond the closed end of the bed another chest could be seen against the wall, with a pile of discarded clothing thrown on top of it. Gil went over to this and disentangled the garments. Black
hose, rather stale, a mended doublet and jerkin, a short gown with a lining of black budge: the kind of garments a man wore about his own house, when not out to impress.
‘He changed his garments before he left to go to supper,’ he said. Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘And then came in later and prepared himself for bed. He hasn’t worn the
bedgown.’
‘One does not always.’
‘True.’
The pen-case on the desk was of tooled leather; Gil eased off the cover and looked inside. Several quills bound together in a scrap of paper, a penknife for trimming pens and scraping out blots,
a bone rubber for smoothing paper or parchment after one had used the knife. Nothing unusual there.
He looked round. There was a candlestick with a burnt-down candle on the painted chest. He thought suddenly of Tib’s intent face over the candles in the house on Rottenrow before dawn, and
then of Alys sitting beside him in the firelight in her father’s house.
‘There is his purse,’ said Maistre Pierre, breaking into that thought. ‘I have it here.’
‘True.’ Gil took the item from him. Like most of Naismith’s goods, it was large and well made, of red leather stamped with a pattern of small flowers. Undoing the strings, Gil
tipped out the contents beside the candlestick, the debris of the man’s life rattling on the painted wood. Distantly aware of Mistress Mudie’s raised voice, he sorted through the items.
A smaller purse of coin, a set of tablets, two or three creased scraps of paper with writing on them, two pilgrim medals and a set of beads, a tiny pot of ointment with a powerful smell, a small
box of sweetmeats.
‘What is the writing?’
‘A receipt of some sort.’ Gil unfolded one scrap. ‘Herbs, quicksilver, fat from a cob swan, burnt feathers. Ointment, I suppose, but it doesn’t say for what. This is
another one, and this is a list of herbs. Hot milk or ale, honey – a soothing drink, I suppose.’ He handed the slips to his companion. ‘And in his tablets, notes of this and that,
Buy coal, Speak to Mungo Howie.’
Maistre Pierre looked up from the little sheaf of papers in surprise. ‘To Howie? I should have thought he could afford a better craftsman than that.’
Gil, aware of his friend’s opinion of the several carpenters and joiners in the burgh, merely nodded and turned to the next leaf. The slats of wood were as long as his hand, the outer
covers wrapped in red leather, stamped with the same pattern of flowers as the purse, and the wax filling the hollowed-out centres of the leaves had been stained red to match, rather than the more
usual green. Here was a long list, incised in the careful script of a man who had come to writing late in life.
‘This is a note of some property,’ he said after a moment. ‘Most of it in Glasgow. I wonder is it his own or the bedehouse’s? And several names. A gold chain, the
furnishings of this lodging.’
‘Notes for a will, perhaps. Did that woman mention an announcement? Is that why he saw Agnew last night, to draw up some new document?’
‘It’s possible,’ agreed Gil. He turned as footsteps crossed the outer room. ‘Maister Millar. What did Deacon Naismith have to tell the bedehouse yesterday? Was he making
great changes?’
‘Not – not for the bedehouse,’ said Millar earnestly from the doorway ‘no really.’
‘Not really,’ echoed Maistre Pierre. ‘So what were his plans? Small changes?’
Millar fell back before them as they returned to the outer room. ‘Well, there were to be changes for the wardens, I agree. I was to have one of the wee houses, and Sissie another, and the
Deacon was to occupy the whole of this main range.’
‘What, as a house?’ said Gil, startled. ‘For himself alone?’
‘Oh, no. He was to be married at Yule, he told us, so he wanted the extra space.’
‘Married?’ Maistre Pierre sat down and looked in amazement at Millar. ‘He was not in Orders then?’
‘Oh, no. At least, maybe in minor Orders. He was – I think he’d been a clerk somewhere, he kent the responses well and could sing the Office wi the old men, but he was no
priest. To tell truth I never liked to ask him,’ Millar confided.
‘And he wanted to take over the main range. Even the hall?’ said Maistre Pierre, lifting the bundle of papers he had left on the table. ‘But where would the old men
meet?’
‘He never said.’ Millar paused, looking thoughtful. ‘Aye, you’re right. I was so – I’m right comfortable in my lodging through the wall yonder,’ he
waved a hand, ‘I was so took up wi wondering how the wee houses could be brought into order before Yule, I never thought about the hall.’
‘Did he say who he was to wed?’
‘He did not. I assumed it was his mistress,’ Millar admitted. ‘He’s had her in keeping longer than I’ve been in post here, high time he did right by her. Frankie
went away to break the morn’s news to her, poor soul, and he’s not back yet.’
‘And how would that have left you?’ Gil asked.
‘No great change, I suppose,’ said Millar blankly. ‘I’d still be the sub-Deacon, I thought. There might ha been less for my income,’ he added thoughtfully,
‘for a married man would want more for himself, likely. And the same for Sissie, though a course he did say his wife would take over keeping the household.’
‘Are things so tight, then?’ said Maistre Pierre from the table. Gil and Millar both turned to look at him. He had the papers spread out before him on the polished surface and his
tablets in his hand. ‘The bedehouse is in poverty?’ he asked.
‘I think it isny well to do, for he’s been making cuts lately. No more wine to their dinners, for instance. They wereny best pleased at that,’ Millar confided.
‘I can imagine.’ Maistre Pierre was still surveying the papers before him. ‘Are these all the papers, would you know?’
Millar shook his head. ‘Maister Naismith saw to the accounts, though I kept them filed for him,’ he said. ‘He and Sissie dealt wi the day’s expenditure every afternoon,
which she’ll want me to do now,’ he added in dismay. ‘And he saw to all the incomings and outgoings.’
‘Oh, did he?’
‘It should be all the papers, but there might be some elsewhere.’ Millar drew out one tape-bound sheaf. ‘This bundle is the – no, it isny. It’s the dealings wi the
burgh mills. This one,’ he peered at the heading, ‘is the tithes from Lenzie and those are from Elsrickle. And this – that’s strange, these are all in disorder,’ he
said anxiously, pulling out one drawer after another. ‘Deacon Naismith has – had his own way of working, like all of us, and these are no in the right shelves.’
‘None of them?’ Gil asked.
‘Some of them are right,’ said Millar, inspecting the contents of a package. Maistre Pierre twisted his neck to see the pages. ‘They seem to be all complete, I think maybe
it’s just the packets have got rearranged, I canny think how.’
‘Where did he work?’ Gil asked. ‘At his desk, or at the table here?’
‘Mostly at the table,’ Millar was still engrossed in the papers, ‘but often in his chamber yonder. His writing-gear must be in there the now, for I don’t see it. Oh, this
is a strange thing, it’s going to take all morning to sort it.’
Gil watched him pulling the bundles out and replacing them, and said casually, ‘When the Deacon left here yesterday. Before six, I think you said.’ Millar nodded. ‘Did you see
which way he went?’
‘He went down the Drygate,’ said Millar. ‘Likely he’d be heading for the house by the Caichpele, as Sissie said. He’s – he’d a quite kenspeckle way of
walking, wi his shoulders back and his elbows out under the cloak, there was no mistaking him even by lantern-light.’
‘And he was in the bedehouse when you got home.’
‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Millar. ‘There was a light up here and he was moving about.’ He stopped. ‘I never got a sight of him,’ he admitted, ‘but I heard him
clear enough, and who else would it be? I’d no need for a word wi him, I just gaed to my lodging and to my bed.’
‘And you were talking with Patey Coventry and the rest of the class till the time you left the college?’ Easily enough confirmed, if he was, Gil thought.
‘Aye,’ began Millar, and was interrupted by an outbreak of furious shouting below them in the inner yard. Socrates barked once, his deep warning tone. Gil, nearest the windows,
stepped over to look through the glass, then hastily unfastened the shuttered lower portion.