Authors: Pat Mcintosh
‘Is it maybe letters?’ asked Currie. He shook out the hose, releasing a waft of stale sweat into the room, and peered round Gil’s arm.
‘There are letters,’ agreed Gil, ‘but the first ones go back a few years. They don’t tell me much.’ He turned the sheets, scanning the different scripts. There were several letters from the man’s family, with brief accounts of the harvest and the well-being of his kin, and requests for prayers. Under those were two different contracts, which he studied closely, detailing sums which Stirling had borrowed from merchants of Perth. Each was duly signed off by both parties, so the money had all been repaid.
‘He’s never lacked for coin?’ he said casually.
‘Never since I’ve known him,’ agreed Currie. ‘Which is what you’d expect, seeing how he’s placed wi my lord. Weel ben, weel beneficed, as they say.’
‘So I wonder what he did with this that he borrowed?’ Gil flattened one of the contracts for the steward to see. ‘This one a year since, and another two years before that, good sums both times. Have you any knowledge of this?’
‘Oh, he wouldny let on about sic a thing,’ said Currie, shaking his head. ‘Nor any of the household wouldny need to know, seeing he’s often about Perth on my lord’s business.’ His finger fell unerringly on the note of the sum of money. ‘Fifty merks! Saints preserve us, what would he want that for?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know.’ Gil leafed further through the bundle. ‘He’s borrowed and repaid it within the contract, each time, which suggests something gey profitable to me. What have we here? More letters, a docket from my lord – he seems to keep them in order by the date, so you’d think whatever he did with the money the evidence would be with the contracts.’
‘Maybe his man of law would tell you,’ suggested Currie, indicating the elaborate penwork with which the notary had blazoned his mark on the finished contract. The loops and curls depicted a conventional mercat cross surmounted by some kind of bird of prey. ‘That’s Andro Gledstane’s mark, you ken.’
‘No need to disturb him,’ Gil said. He had reached the outermost sheet of the roll of papers. ‘Here it is. Our man’s bought a pair of properties on the Skinnergate, and paid back the loans out of the rents.’ He whistled, running a finger down the page. ‘As well he might. Look at this, Maister Currie. He’s collecting seven – no, eight merks a quarter on this one alone.’
The steward peered at the writing, and nodded.
‘Those are both the far end of the Skinnergate, next the Red Brig Port,’ he said. ‘That accounts for it, I’d say. The lads wouldny ha thought to ask for him so far along, seeing my lord’s properties are this end, and the fellow I sent round the ports would never ha spoke to the houses.’
‘What question did your man ask at the ports?’ Gil asked.
Currie straightened up, frowning, and after a moment said, ‘I bade him ask if Maister Stirling had been by the port. And if they didny know Maister Stirling, I bade him describe him as a clerk, tall and well-made, in a good gown of tawny wool, wi dark hair and a wine-coloured hat stuck all round wi pilgrim badges, and going about his lone.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I suppose you’d call it his one weakness. He collects the things wherever he goes wi my lord, the good silver ones not the pewter sort, and pins them on that hat. He’s got another hat for his best,’ he jerked his head at the box, ‘I’ve just saw it in there, but he aye wears – wore – wears the one wi the badges.’
Gil swallowed hard. Somehow this detail brought the man before him as if he was present in the chamber. Currie looked at his expression, and nodded rather grimly.
‘I’ll send for Peter,’ he said, ‘and he’ll can show you where these properties lie, and the other houses he enquired at forbye. Have you lodging for the night, maister? If you come back here afore Vespers you’ll get a bite, and a word wi Rob Chaplain if you’re wanting it, and I’ll can fit you and your men in somewhere.’
The man Peter, a stocky, long-headed fellow in the Bishop’s outdoor livery, led Gil by one vennel and another, talking cheerfully as he went.
‘Next the port, Maister Currie tells me, his last place. No wonder we lost him, then,’ he pronounced as they emerged into St John’s Square, ‘though I’m right annoyed at mysel not casting further along the street for him. We’ll pick him up this time, maybe. Mind you, the trail’s cold by now,’ he added.
Gil nodded absently, looking about him. They were next to the high east end of St John’s Kirk, a huge, handsome building set in its kirkyard, its tower casting a long shadow over the small houses round about. Folk came and went, the morning’s marketing over, the work of the day still to be done. Two women argued shrilly over a basket of washing.
‘Which is the baxter’s shop?’ he asked.
‘Where the two men went missing from?’ asked Peter intelligently, and pointed. ‘That’s it there. They had the upper chambers, to the side there, but they’re let again long since,’ he added. ‘They left all seemly, took their boots and their scrips wi them, or so the baxter’s man tellt me when I spoke wi him in the Green Man tavern.’
‘So I heard,’ Gil agreed, studying the building. The chambers Peter had indicated were off a good stone fore-stair; the tenants could have left at any hour without disturbing the rest of the household. He had spoken earlier to the Precentor of St John’s Kirk, a long-faced gloomy man, and learned a lot, some of it relevant.
‘Brothers,’ John Kinnoull the Precentor had said. ‘James and Sanders Moncrieff. One tenor, one bass. Probably my best bass, was Sanders, and you ken what it’s like finding a tenor of any sort nowadays.’
‘The fellow who left Dunblane in February sings high tenor,’ said Gil.
‘Someone’s building himself a choir, then,’ said Kinnoull. ‘You mark my words, maister, he’ll fetch away another mean-tone next to take the second line.’ It was not easy to tell whether he was serious.
‘Did they take anything with them?’ Gil had asked.
Kinnoull, his pink, lugubrious face thoughtful, said, ‘Well, now, it’s hard to say. By the time the baxter thought to let us ken at the kirk here, their door had likely been standing open all day and neither man to be seen.’
‘So everything portable had gone,’ Gil suggested.
‘Well, I wouldny say that,’ admitted Kinnoull. ‘But there’s no knowing what they took wi them and what was taken after they left.’
‘Linen, cooking gear, blankets?’ Gil asked, recalling what Rattray had removed from Dunblane. ‘Their boots? Music?’
‘Oh, aye, music indeed,’ said Kinnoull in indignation. ‘That was two great bundles of music gone, never to be seen again, and all to be copied fresh afore St John’s Day if we were to do justice to the feast.’
It had been difficult to keep the man to the point, but Gil had finally gathered the impression that the brothers Moncrieff had left in good order, much as James Rattray had done, probably by night and taking their portable property with them. After considering the various feasts of May, Kinnoull had given him a date, but seemed to have no more information.
Now, Peter said helpfully, ‘Allan Baxter would be in the bakehouse from a couple hours afore dawn, that time of year, and he never heard them go out, so they say. Likely they left just at slack tide.’
‘What, you think they went by water?’
Peter shrugged. ‘It’s the likeliest way to travel out of Perth, maister. No saying where they went beyond Taymouth, a course, but unless they went by Glasgow a ship’s the most likely.’
Gil considered this. Landsman that he was, he had not thought of this route.
‘Aye, but when would slack tide be?’ he wondered. ‘Would there be a mariner down at the haven who might recall?’
‘Midnight,’ said Peter confidently, ‘or no so long after.’
‘You mind that, do you?’ asked Gil in surprise.
The man grinned sidelong at him. ‘Aye, I mind it fine. It so happens I’d a night on the Tay wi my cousin that dwells down the river a wee bittie, and we’d some trouble wi the water-bailies, and I was late back.’
Fishing, Gil thought, probably without a permit. ‘You’re certain it was the same day?’
‘Aye, well, Maister Currie had a word to say about my absence,’ Peter explained, ‘and I had to see to the horses afore I could eat, and by the time I got to the buttery two of the songmen doing a flit was all they could speak of. So I mind it well as being the same day.’
Did the time add up? Gil wondered. He looked at the fore-stair again. It would certainly be easy enough to make one’s way down, perhaps by lantern-light, and across the square to one or the other of the vennels which led out between the houses.
‘Is it far to the haven?’
‘Our Lady love you, maister, it’s no but a step. Down this vennel here, see,’ Peter beckoned, and dived down the narrow entry like a rabbit, ‘and out on to the Northgate, and yon’s the haven at the street’s end.’ He emerged at the vennel’s end and pointed. Gil, following him, looked over the heads of the passers-by at the rocking masts, and nodded. ‘And yon’s the Skinnergate, just across the way,’ the man ended.
‘And when you had your night on the Tay,’ said Gil. Peter gave him a wary look. ‘Do you mind if there were any vessels went down the river?’
‘Aye, there were.’ Peter stepped aside out of the path of two men with a barrel slung on a pole between them. ‘Two or three, there was.’
‘Who would know who they were?’ Gil asked. ‘Would your cousin be able to name them?’
‘Oh, aye, likely, if he can mind who they were,’ said Peter with confidence. ‘He kens all the traffic on the Tay, does our Danny. I’ve no doubt if he can mind them he can name them and who’s the skipper. Excepting one,’ he added doubtfully, ‘I mind he said was a Hollander and he’d no notion who skippered it.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Gil. ‘Now about Maister Stirling.’
With a lot of circumstantial detail, Peter explained how he had tracked James Stirling, from these properties to that one, to this house next to where they stood, and finally into the Skinnergate. He was still annoyed by his failure to follow the man far enough, ‘but if even Wat Currie never knew of his having rents of his own to collect, there’s none of us would know of it,’ he said, more than once. ‘I still wonder that he never took any of us wi him, even if he wasny expecting to gather in the money that day.’
‘Did he often go about alone?’ Gil asked.
‘Sometimes aye, sometimes no. This time it was no, I suppose.’
Gil nodded, then clapped the man on the shoulder and said, ‘There’s more experienced huntsmen than you been caught out the same way. Never mind it now, man, and show me where you were cast at fault.’
The Bishop’s Skinnergate properties were the first two houses on the street, a narrow prosperous way lined with leatherworkers’ shops, shoemakers, glovers, a bookbinder, several saddlers, all making use of the proceeds of the skinner’s trade and the tanyards which made their presence known beyond the town Ditch. In Glasgow the stinking trades were banished east of the burgh, so that the prevailing westerly winds carried the worst of the smell away, but on this side of the country the wind blew as often from the east as from the west. It made sense of a sort, Gil supposed, to put the tanners out to the north. He ducked a set of harness dangling from the overhang of a saddler’s house, avoided an apprentice who was trying to sell him a pair of hawking-gloves, and said over his shoulder:
‘I’m not surprised nobody saw what way he went along here. Is it always as busy as this?’
‘Times it’s busier,’ said Peter. ‘Now that’s where I tracked our man last,’ he pointed to a sagging wooden building, ‘and the wife there said he’d passed the time of day, civil enough, agreed when he’d be back to uplift what was due to my lord, and she shut the door as he got to the foot o the step, so she never saw what way he turned after.’ He nodded at the bustling street. ‘And if he went on to the Red Brig Port, it’s this way.’
The two properties at the end of the street, next to the port, were quite different in aspect. The first they came to was a narrow toft, barely wider than the gable of the low stone house at the street end. A goat’s skull complete with horns hung at the corner of the building and a well-trampled path led past the door. There was a number of workshops visible down its length, with smoke and hammering and the various signs of metalworking. From the house itself, a persistent rasping and the pungent smell of burnt horn told Gil what trade the occupant followed, long before Peter said:
‘Aye, that’s Francis Dewar the horner. Right good combs he makes, and wee boxes and all sorts, maister, you’d get a fairing to take home to your wife if you wanted one.’
‘A good thought,’ said Gil, looking about him. No wonder Stirling had paid back the loan so prompt; the many small rents from this subdivided property would add up very nicely.
The next toft was much wider and was obviously occupied by a tanner; there was a stretched hide in a frame slung from the eaves of the well-built house and the long yard behind it was full of stacks of half-cured skins. Next to the house was the Red Brig Port, a more businesslike affair than those Glasgow found adequate. The massive leaves of the gate stood open at this time of day, and its custodian was sitting in the sunshine, his back against one of the two great posts. He opened his eyes as they passed him, but did not move. A laden cart rumbled ponderously towards them, on to the wooden bridge, and Gil stopped at the near end of the creaking structure to wait for it, looking down into the Town Ditch. It was both wide and deep, full of greenish murky water and streaming weeds. There seemed to be a strong current.
‘The town’s well defended,’ he commented.
‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Peter. ‘That’s why my lord spends the most o his time here. The wild Ersche come down raiding at Dunkeld, three weeks out o four, but they’ll no bother coming this far just for a wetting.’
‘How wide is the Ditch?’
‘Four fathom? It began as the leat for the town mills,’ Peter offered, ‘and then Edward Longshanks had it dug to this size when he fortified Perth, or so they say. Had all the able men o Perth working at it for weeks, and oversaw them hissel in case they ran away or laid a trap.’
Gil looked at the Ditch again. That would account for its size, he thought. Beyond it was a typical suburb, the usual mix of hovels and larger houses along with the working yards of tanner and skinner, a dyer over yonder, all the stinking trades, as he had surmised. The sound of barking floated over the noises of industry.