The Fourth Crow

Chapter Six

Lockhart, despatched from the men’s hall, appeared less formally clad than he had been this morning, his shirt cuffs rolled up over the short sleeves of a leather doublet.

‘I’ve had the men out, searching the green out there,’ he said, waving a muscular arm. ‘What d’ye call it, the Stablegreen? And asking questions all up the street here as far’s the port ayont the Castle. I ken it’s no much, but it’s about all we can do, seeing we’re no familiar wi the burgh.’

And muddying the waters for anyone seeking Peg Simpson, Gil thought resignedly.

‘What have you been asking? Have you learned anything?’

‘Nothing useful,’ admitted Lockhart. ‘One or two folks saw a lassie on her own coming down Castle Street, but that was well afore midnight. There’s no woman been seen coming away from St Mungo’s kirkyard in the night, and those that were seen this morning were all kent faces, folk could put a name to them.’

‘Who saw the lassie on Castle Street?’

‘Oh, I couldny tell you. Just folk we asked, I never made a note. Why?’

‘Because that might ha been the lassie that’s lying dead in the chapel here,’ Gil said patiently. ‘I need to trace her, find where she went.’

‘That’s little enough o my concern,’ said Lockhart.

‘Oh, I think you’re wrong,’ said Gil very politely. ‘I’d say it’s likely that whoever loosed Annie Gibb from the Cross tied Peg Simpson to it afterwards, so if we learn more about the one, we’ll ken more about the other.’

‘Oh!’ Lockhart digested this. ‘I see what you mean. I’ll ask at the men, see if they recall who it was.’

‘Did you find anything else? What were you asking, anyway?’

‘No that I mind.’ The other man screwed up his face in an effort of recollection. ‘We were saying to folk, had they been abroad late yestreen, or early the day morn, or even looked out at door or window, and had they seen aught unfamiliar. And none had.’

It could be worse, Gil thought, and drew out his tablets.

‘Give me a note o where you asked, who you spoke to if you can recall it. No sense in me going over the same ground.’

Listing these took some time, but eventually Lockhart ran to a halt, blew out his cheeks and said,

‘I canny think where or who we spoke to more than that. Oh, maybe a couple houses round into, is it the Drygate? And we did tell folk, if they minded aught after we’d gone on, they should bring it here. So likely if there’s anything useful, it’ll turn up at the yett.’

‘Very likely,’ said Gil, concealing scepticism. He closed his tablets and put them back in his purse. ‘Let me know if you mind anything else that might help. And another thing you might tell me — was anyone out of the hostel in the night?’

‘Out of the hostel?’ Lockhart stared. ‘Why would- What, you think it was one of us? What would we do that for, after all the trouble it’s taken to get the lassie to St Mungo’s?’

‘Nevertheless, the hostel door went three times, I’m tellt. More than one person was out, and if they were nothing to do wi Annie or the dead woman they might still ha seen something to the purpose.’

‘Well, it wasny me, or any from the men’s hall,’ asserted Lockhart, ‘for I was right by the door, and I’d ha heard any leaving, and I’ll never believe that any o the lassies got past Dame Ellen, she takes right good care o my good-sisters and the rest o the household.’

‘Did all the servants sleep in the guest-halls?’ Gil asked. ‘None in the stables?’

‘Aye, we’re all in the two halls.’ Lockhart stared at him a little longer, then said, ‘No, I canny think that any o the men would ha got by me either. I heard the doctor moving about, and the like, he was to be my bedfellow but I think he never lay down all night, though he did at least change his clothes, he’s in his second-best gown the day, that red-and-yellow, no the gold. Looks like a papingo, does he no! I think he let the man Doddie get his rest after seeing to my good-faither on the journey. I’d ha noticed the hall door opening.’

Gil nodded.

‘Would you ken,’ he asked carefully, ‘whether Mistress Gibb had any friends or kindred about Glasgow? Anyone she could turn to? Someone must ha taken her in, if she’s not lying under a dyke somewhere.’

‘No that I ever heard mentioned,’ said the other man firmly. ‘But I’d little conversation wi the lassie hersel, y’ken, and never a lot wi her good-sisters. I’d not say my wife has spoken of it either.’

‘Or any who’ve asked Sir Edward for her, that might have gone this length to make certain of her and her lands?’

Lockhart stared at him, blew out his cheeks again, and said,

‘Well! That’s a thought, maister. I’d need to chew on it a bit, there’s been one or two folk hoping for her hand in the past year, by what my wife has heard.’

‘Sir Edward hinted as much,’ Gil agreed, ‘though he’s not fit to recall names.’

Lockhart grimaced, and nodded.

‘I’ll think on it, try if I can mind who it was. It was all Ayrshire names my wife mentioned, you understand, smaller lairds, no folk I’d ken well. As for who she might turn to, you’d do better to ask at Dame Ellen, or at Nicholas or Ursula. They’d likely mind if she mentioned sic a thing when she was first living in that house, for I think she was more inclined to speak o hersel then. Or her woman might have some knowledge. Aye, you should talk to them.’

Dame Ellen was not inclined to be helpful.

‘Oh, no, maister. None of the lassies left the hall in the night,’ she stated, in a tone that invited no discussion. ‘Neither Meggot nor my nieces. By Our Lady’s mantle, I’d ha known the reason why if any had tried it. Ask at Sir Simon, why don’t you,’ she added, with another dreadful simper, ‘maybe it was him on some errand. Priests ha calls on their time the rest o us areny troubled wi. No, I’ve never a notion o friends Annie might turn to round here. Her mother? Why are you asking me about her mother? She’s long deid, poor lass.’

‘I’d like to know where she was from.’

Dame Ellen gave a little thought to this, eyes cast piously upward.

‘I believe she was a Renfrew woman. Long deid, as I say. Was she a Wallace, maybe?’ She shook her head. ‘If she wasny a Wallace, I’ve no idea who she was. Sir, you’d surely be better out hunting for the lassie, instead o harassing me wi questions I’ve no answer to?’

‘I need a word wi Meggot,’ said Gil, ‘and maybe wi your own woman.’

‘Oh, no, maister, you’ll ha to go into Ayrshire for that, then,’ she divulged, ‘for I never brought her wi me, daft piece that she is, I reckoned to do better without her. I’ll fetch Meggot out to you.’

But interviewed across the courtyard from Dame Ellen’s watchful eye and tapping foot, Meggot could add little to this.

‘I think her mammy was a Wallace,’ she agreed, ‘though no from Elderslie. Somewhere else in Renfrewshire, I’m sure she said once. I’m sorry, maister, I canny mind clearer than that. As to friends around Glasgow, no, she never mentioned any. Her daddy was an Ayrshire man, had no kindred in these parts, nor her mammy neither that I recall.’

‘Meggot.’ Gil looked directly at her. She held his gaze for a moment, then blushed and looked away. ‘You’re fond of her, you said that.’ She nodded, tightening her lips. ‘She’s adrift in a strange place, wi no clothes to her back. I want to find her. Can you tell me nothing that would help her?’

She shook her head, whispering,

‘No, maister, I canny.’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘If I knew aught I’d tell you it, so I would. I-’ Her glance slid sideways, to where Dame Ellen still glared attentively. ‘It seems to me, sir,’ she went on, still whispering, ‘she must ha had help, maybe she had plans made, but who it was helped her or where she’s gone I canny think, it was none o the household that Sawney or me can discover.’ She looked up earnestly at Gil. ‘Wherever she is, I hope she’s safe, the poor lass.’

Gil dismissed the woman, thanked Dame Ellen without real gratitude, and looked at the sky. The sunny morning had changed into a cloudy afternoon with a brisk, chilly wind; it would probably rain before dark, but meantime he could tell that it was getting towards dinnertime. If he could track down the cordmaker on the Drygate, he might just catch the man before his day’s work ended.

George Paterson’s ropewalk was easier to find than he expected; the second passer-by he asked directed him onto the back-lands behind a sagging wooden house not far down the hill from the House of the Mermaiden. Rounding the crooked gable he found himself looking down a long toft, with the trees lining the Girth Burn at its foot and — could that be the back of the Sub-Dean’s house opposite?

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Paterson himself when he located him. ‘Tell truth, that’s how I got the St Mungo’s trade. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, see, and I just took a couple hanks a good cord ower the burn and showed it to Dean Henderson, and he tellt me to take it to the Almoner, and Almoner Jamieson was pleased wi’t as a donation, and said he’d take more as a purchase. Three year syne, that was, three year at Michaelmas next. No, lad, leave that bale sep’rate, I haveny proved it yet.’ He scowled at his son, and said aside to Gil, ‘Him and his friends were up to some mischief last night, he’s no use to me the day. Laddies, eh?’

They were in the ropewalk itself, a long shed like the one out towards Partick, though narrower and less cluttered. The machinery was less ponderous as well; presumably this reflected the fact that Paterson made cord rather than rope. His son obediently put down the bale of raw hemp, and pulled the canvas wrapping over the fibre. He was a gangling, slow-moving boy of fifteen or so, all hands and feet and elbows, but would be very like his father when he stopped growing; both were tall for Glasgow men, though shorter than Gil, with ragged mouse-coloured hair and well-worn working clothes.

‘You deal wi St Mungo’s?’ Gil said.

‘Oh, aye. They take all the twelve-ply and most o the six-ply we can make. I ask a fair price, maister, and the Almoner gets fair value, we’re all satisfied wi the outcome.’ Gil nodded at this, and produced the length of cord from his purse. Paterson looked sharply at it. ‘That looks like some o my six-ply.’

Gil handed the coils over, and the man studied it much as Matt Dickson had done, untwisting the tight spirals, picking at the fibres, inspecting the lashed ends.

‘Aye, I’d say it’s mine,’ he pronounced at last. ‘The colour’s gey like the last batch o hemp we had, that I’d to put some flax to a cause it was that coarse. Here, is this what they used to throttle that lassie at the Cross? Some o my cord?’ His son looked round, then hastily back to his work when his father glared at him.

‘It was,’ Gil admitted. ‘So I’d like to ken where it came from. Did you send all that batch to St Mungo’s, or did some of it go elsewhere?’

‘Well, this has been to St Mungo’s, for certain,’ observed Paterson, ‘for that’s how they finish it when they’ve to cut a length, bound off wi some o my single twine so it willny ravel. See, most folks just ties a knot, but if you’re wanting your length to last a while and do you duty you need to finish it off right. Jamieson understands that, and so does his vergers, those that help him in his office.’

‘So I should have shown it to Alan Jamieson when I saw him,’ Gil said. ‘How d’you deliver it?’ Paterson looked puzzled. ‘In hanks, of course, but do you take it to Maister Jamieson himself, or to the Vicars’ hall, or just leave it at the tower door?’

‘Oh, I see! No, the lad takes it round to the hall, time when we ken the Almoner’s going to be there, so he can mark the tally for him. Given into Alan Jamieson’s hands, it is, maister. George!’ The boy looked up from the cord he was winding. ‘Mind this lot? You gave it to the Almoner hissel, did you no?’

The youngster came closer and touched his blue bonnet to Gil, peering at the loops of cord in his father’s hand.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Likely.’

‘Did you or no?’ Paterson demanded. His heir shrugged.

‘Likely,’ he said. ‘I canny mind, Da!’ he protested as his father drew breath to remonstrate.

‘Do you ken Maister Mason’s boy Luke?’ Gil asked. Young George considered the question, and shrugged again.

‘Likely,’ he admitted. This time he was not fast enough to avoid his father’s hand.

‘You be civil to Maister Cunningham, that’s our neighbour and a freen o the Almoner!’ commanded the elder George.

‘Aye,’ said the boy, sulkily rubbing his ear. ‘I ken him,’ he expanded. ‘He’s wi the High Street band, in’t he no?’

‘Ah.’ Gil considered this aspect of burgh life, recollections of his student days rising in his memory. The apprentices of the burgh banded together by street, High Street against Gallowgate or Thenewgate, Drygate against the small Upper Town group; the younger students of the College formed another, larger band. In general the rivalry confined itself to chanting, thrown stones and the occasional scuffle or game of football, but from time to time it exploded into violence. Several apprentices seemed to have been abroad yesterday evening. ‘Was it a battle?’ he asked. ‘Last night, I mean. The moon was, what, well past the quarter, there would be plenty light.’

Another shrug and a, ‘Likely.’

‘Who was it? The Drygate and who else?’

‘Answer Maister Cunningham,’ ordered Paterson. After a moment his son mumbled something which might have been,

‘High Street. Stablegreen.’

‘I hope the Drygate won.’ This earned a reluctant grin, delivered sideways under the mouse-coloured thatch. Encouraged, Gil went on, ‘If you mind anything more about this cord, you can let me hear it, or bring it to my man Lowrie. Or aught else you think of that might help me. I want to find who killed the lassie at the Cross.’

‘Aye, wi some o our cord!’ said the elder Paterson energetically. ‘Aught we can do to help, maister, we’ll do right willingly, me and the boy both!’

‘And what did the Almoner say?’ asked Alys.

‘He agreed it was likely some of his,’ Gil said, carving a slice off the roast before him. ‘When it comes into the store, one of the vergers, a fellow called Matthew, cuts it down into lengths of an ell or an ell and a half, and whips the ends. It’s kept on a shelf in the dry store, a box for each length, very methodical. The piece we have is gey like the longer lengths that Jamieson uses to bind up the great sacks of donated goods, though I’d not say he knew which one it came off.’

‘That would be too much to expect,’ said Alys gravely. She accepted a second slice of meat, and held her platter while Gil spooned gravy from around the roast. ‘And what have you learned, Lowrie?’

‘Some new oaths,’ said Lowrie ruefully. ‘Nobody had seen a lady in her shift in any of the houses near the kirk-yard, much though some of them might have wanted to.’

‘So we can discount that idea, and give thought to something else,’ said Gil. ‘Good work.’

‘Maistre le notaire, votr’ valet n’est pas rentré,’ observed Catherine as Gil helped her to a share of the gravy to savour her platter of pounded roots.

‘Euan knows when the dinner goes on the table,’ said Alys. ‘Gil, surely the woman at the Cross is not connected with the theft from the Almoner’s stores? It did not sound as if she had any means at all, much less what she should not have had.’

‘No, I agree.’ Gil served Lowrie and then himself with slices of the roast. ‘She may be connected, but not because she was involved in the thieving.’

‘So what do we know, maister?’ asked Lowrie.

‘I’ve told you often enough,’ said Gil, ‘use my name. We’re both sons of the College of Glasgow, whatever else is between us.’ He used his eating-knife to cut the meat on his platter into smaller pieces, while Lowrie muttered something in embarrassment. ‘We’re still at the stage where we have a great handful of facts which might or might not be related, and no idea how they join up. One lassie was freed from the Cross in the middle of the night, by one or more people, and then vanished in her shift. Nobody seems to have heard of any friends she might have hereabouts, and nobody admits to having seen her.’

‘Why?’ prompted Alys.

‘We don’t know that either.’

‘The reason,’ said Catherine in her elegant toothless French, ‘that the girl was freed and has vanished may indicate the person who freed her.’

‘Very true, madame,’ agreed Gil, and translated quickly for Lowrie, ‘but I’d be grateful for hearing anything at all about her.’

‘And the other lassie,’ said Alys. ‘Peg, is that her name?’

‘Last seen about ten o’clock leaving the Trindle, turned up dead and bound to the Cross wearing Annie Gibb’s sacking gown and her own plaid-’

‘Then Annie had more to wear than her shift,’ said Alys. ‘Or she would have kept the plaid, rather than leave it with a dead woman.’ She chewed thoughtfully for a moment, swallowed, and said, ‘What time did you think Peg had been left there?’

‘Not long after she died, your father reckoned.’

‘I thought that was the cord,’ said Lowrie.

‘Aye, you’re right,’ agreed Gil, running the conversation through his mind again. ‘He said the cord was in place before she began to stiffen.’

‘Could it have been,’ Alys checked, grimaced, and went on, ‘could she have been throttled before she was tied to the Cross?’

‘Mai- Gil thought not,’ said Lowrie, ‘because of the way her hair was caught under the cord.’

‘So she was killed, and then stripped and tied to the Cross, and then throttled,’ said Alys, ‘all before she began to stiffen, although not necessarily all in one set of actions.’

‘If the woman who is dead,’ pronounced Catherine, ‘was killed merely in order to distract the demoiselle Gibb’s friends, that is a great crime. If she was killed by another person, for some other reason, then the demoiselle was fortunate not to encounter the killer herself.’

‘The town must have been going like a fair last night,’ Gil said wryly. ‘The prentices had a battle appointed and all, High Street, Drygate and Stablegreen.’

‘Could some of them have killed Peg?’ Alys asked. ‘Or spirited Annie Gibb away?’

‘I’d not ha thought it,’ Gil said. ‘The night battles aye used to be a matter of stalking, of pursuit and capture. We never involved the townsfolk if we could help it. Lowrie, was it the same when you were a bejant?’

‘It was,’ agreed Lowrie, his first year at the College much more recently behind him. ‘Is it worth speaking to Maister Mason’s fellow Luke? Or to young Berthold?’ He checked, his eyebrows going up. ‘Did Maister Mason not say Berthold was useless the day? That sounds as if he was abroad last night, for certain.’

‘Then you may both go down there after the dinner,’ said Alys, ‘and speak to them.’

Opposite her, Catherine looked disapproving, but said nothing. It was useless, Gil knew, to suggest Alys came too. They had both visited formally since the marriage, but Ealasaidh did not encourage dropping in.

The household at the White Castle had apparently dined later than that at the Mermaiden, and was still at table when Gil knocked on the broad planks of the door. Luke opened it, and greeted them with a wide grin.

‘Come away in, Maister Gil! That is-’ He looked over his shoulder, but his master endorsed the invitation from his great chair at the head of the board.

‘Yes, yes, come away in, Gilbert, take a seat! We have eaten most of the food, but you will take an oatcake and a mouthful of ale? Usquebae? Lowrie, you will take something too?’

Gil bowed to Ealasaidh where she sat tall and forbidding at Maistre Pierre’s right hand, and flourished his hat in a general greeting to the rest of the household ranged along the great board. Apart from Luke, now waiting to take their plaids, young Berthold and the mason’s older man Thomas were the only familiar faces; four women in various forms of the dress of the Highlands stared at him with what seemed like faint hostility. Berthold, on the other hand, was looking terrified. What has the boy been up to, thought Gil, accepting a beaker of ale and a buttered oatcake.

‘What progress have you made?’ his father-in-law was asking him. ‘Is there no trace of the missing lady?’

‘And is that right,’ said Ealasaidh disapprovingly, ‘that she does not wash herself nor comb her hair since her man died?’

‘Little progress.’ Yet again, Gil summarised what he had learned that afternoon, while the four Erschewomen whispered in their own language and Luke and Thomas craned to hear him. Both Maistre Pierre and his wife exclaimed over the thefts from the Almoner’s stores.

‘But does he not guard the place?’ the mason wondered. ‘How do the goods vanish?’

‘Is the one who died the thief, perhaps,’ suggested Ealasaidh, ‘or was she maybe meeting them at the wrong moment, the way they were killing her?’

‘That was what Alys thought, too,’ Gil said, and saw her face darken. What was it between the two of them, he wondered. ‘I don’t think there’s any connection, myself, but I’ll keep an open mind. What I would like, Pierre, is a word wi Luke.’ Further down the table, the boy’s expression changed. ‘I think he was abroad last night, and Berthold too. I’d like to hear if they saw anything — or nothing, for that matter.’

‘Willingly,’ said their master, ‘though I must still translate for Berthold, unless you think you may understand him, Lowrie?’

‘I’d be grateful, maister,’ said Lowrie. ‘He’s grasped a few instructions by now, but I’d not ken where to start asking him something like this.’

Luke, summoned from his place at the board to talk more privately by the hearth, looked apprehensive but admitted readily enough that he had been part of the night’s battle.

‘Who else was out?’ Gil asked. The boy considered, tugging at his untidy thatch of hair, his blue knitted bonnet clamped under the other arm.

‘There was all the High Street,’ he reckoned up, ‘and the Drygate, and the Stablegreen. There’s no so many of the Stablegreen,’ he expanded, ‘they mostly allies themselves wi the Drygate when we’ve a battle. It wasny serious, see, it was just a chase. There was rules.’

‘What were they?’ Gil recalled the distinction from his youth. A chase with rules usually meant there was no fighting, or at least no serious fighting; there might be a target to defend or capture, or some territory to be crossed without being caught, but always there was the Watch to be avoided.

‘We was to start at the Bell o’ the Brae and take the Girth Cross up at the Wyndhead,’ said Luke, ‘seeing there was a moon, but honest, Maister Gil, none o us saw aught o a lady in her shift, and she’d ha showed up in the moonlight, sure she would.’

‘Did you see anybody at all moving about the Wyndhead?’ Luke shook his head. ‘Not on the Drygate, Rottenrow, the Stablegreen?’

‘It was late, Maister Gil. Folk was a’ gone hame by then. I got a glimp’ o two fellows,’ the boy admitted, ‘came out o Rottenrow, turned up by the Stablegreen. Quite old, I’d say, maybe past twenty.’

Gil, who had turned twenty-eight last January, did not comment, but asked, ‘How were they clad?’

‘Och, they both had short gowns and boots on, and hats wi feathers. Gentry, for sure. We let them by, they were none o our mind.’

‘Anyone else abroad in the night?’ And that was likely the Muir brothers, he thought.

‘I’ve no notion,’ said Luke, ‘for we took the Cross just after that, and the Drygate was trying to get us off it.’

‘And Berthold was wi you the whole time?’

The boy looked uneasy, and glanced at his fellow where he still sat at the long board.

‘I couldny say that,’ he confessed with reluctance, ‘for it’s hard to keep track o one face in a scuffle. He was at my back afore we took the Cross, I ken that, but after they knocked us off I lost sight o him. He cam home a wee while after me,’ he added more confidently, ‘and gaed straight to his bed, but he’s maybe had a fright, or no liked the fighting, or something, for he’s no been great company the day, hardly had a word to say for hissel. Look at him now, like a coney in the heather.’

Berthold, summoned in his turn, did indeed resemble a cornered rabbit, all huge eyes and trembling limbs. He was about fourteen, a slight blond boy with fine features and short-sighted blue eyes. Gil surveyed him with sympathy; it was only a few months since the boy’s father and uncle had been killed, leaving him stranded here in a strange country, without protection, unable to speak Scots. Currently he was supposed to be learning the language under Maistre Pierre’s auspices, though Gil thought most of the teaching came in fact from Luke. Now, questioned in High Dutch, he answered hesitantly, shaking his head.

‘He says he was at the battle,’ Maistre Pierre reported, ‘beside Luke, but saw no person who was not involved in the game.’ He posed another question, and Berthold shook his head again. ‘He says he was with Luke the whole time, and saw what he saw.’

‘These answers are not compatible,’ Gil said thoughtfully. ‘Why did he come in after Luke? Where was he just before that?’

A quick glance towards Luke, now helping the Ersche maidservants take down the table, and a muttered answer. ‘Nowhere,’ translated Maistre Pierre sceptically.

‘Ask him, what did he see?’

Berthold understood that. Gil understood his answer, mostly from the tone of panic fear: ‘Nein, nein, ich habe nichts gesehen, nichts!’

‘Does he ken what happens to boys who tell lies?’ asked Lowrie. Berthold bent his head, crossing himself with a trembling hand, muttering that he did know.

Gil paused, considering what to ask next, and was forestalled by a knocking at the door. Startled, he looked at Maistre Pierre, who shrugged his broad shoulders. Thomas was already lifting the latch.

‘Is Maister Cunningham within?’ A strange voice, a glimpse of a blue gown of office. ‘They tellt me at his own house he was here. He’s sent for, to St Mungo’s. Another death. One of the vergers.’

‘Sheer chance that I found him,’ said Maister Sim.

‘Gil, you have to find what’s doing this,’ expostulated the Sub-Dean. ‘It’s no good for the kirk!’

‘Tell me again.’ Gil looked down at Maistre Pierre’s head, bent over the recumbent body of the irritating Barnabas at the foot of the steps which led down to this cross-aisle. Candlelight leapt round them, chasing the shadows between the arches, glittering on the water pooled round the verger’s booted feet and the skirts of his gown. ‘He was in the well? Here inside the Cathedral? How far in?’

‘No that far down,’ admitted Maister Sim. ‘He’d wedged on the bucket, see. We’d the Deil’s,’ he bit off the phrase and crossed himself, with an apologetic glance at the Virgin and Child on their pillar near the door of the lower church, ‘we’d a deal o trouble to haul him out, and at first we took it there’d been an accident o some sort, and then we saw-’

‘This,’ agreed Maistre Pierre grimly, his big blunt fingers going to the corpse’s neck. He lifted the end of the cord which hung over the high blue collar, and began to ease it away from the swollen flesh. ‘I think it the same kind as was used on that poor girl last night, and this time it is certainly what killed the man.’

‘So the same person?’ said the Sub-Dean. He was striding about the arcaded space at the top of the steps, his dark red gown swirling round him, slapping at the honey-coloured pillars with the pair of embroidered gloves in his right hand; Gil estimated they had cost as much as he could earn in a week, but Henderson was oblivious to the damage he might be doing to the stitchwork. The head verger, a spare foxy sensible man, stood grimly by. Two more vergers were keeping out of the way by the Chapter House door and the Dean’s secretary, scrawny and nervous in black, lurked anxiously in the shadow of a pillar. ‘Sim’s right, we have to put a stop to this, Blacader willny be pleased at all. Fast as you like, Gil, fast as you like.’ He paused in mid-swing, mouth open. ‘Was he throttled here in the Lower Kirk or was he brought in from elsewhere? Do we ha sacrilege? Do we ha desecration? Tell me that, Gil, answer me now! Where should he ha been, Galston?’

‘He was assigned to the Sub-Almoner this afternoon, Dean,’ said the head verger impassively.

‘He was dead before he went in the well, that much I can say,’ pronounced Maistre Pierre firmly. ‘His head was wedged in the bucket, which held water, Sim tells me, but he has not drowned.’

‘How can you tell?’ Lowrie asked from the shadows. Maistre Pierre glanced up at him, then pressed firmly on the corpse’s chest. Small bubbles gathered at the nostrils and the corners of the empurpled mouth.

‘There is yet air in his lungs,’ the mason said, ‘not water. His last breath-’

‘Euch!’ said Henderson; the gloves flapped as he crossed himself. ‘So he might ha been slain outside the kirk?’

‘He might,’ conceded the mason. He reached up and dislodged one of the fat creamy candles from the pricket-stand by his head and held it closer to the corpse, tilting it so that the wax dripped onto the tiled floor rather than his hand and ignoring the sharp intake of breath from all three vergers. ‘Where should he have been this past few hours?’

‘Right, so he was slain outside St Mungo’s,’ said the Sub-Dean with determination, ‘but we still owe it him to find out who slew him. No to mention who put him down our well. Let me hear as soon as you’ve sorted this, Gil,’ he said, and left, his secretary scurrying after him. Fading daylight flooded in as he hauled the heavy door open, diminished as it swung behind him. The latch clinked down as the secretary reached it with a faint bleat of dismay, and all the candle flames ducked and leapt up again, those in the pricket-stand as well as the banks of lights round the Lady Chapel and the tomb of St Mungo away among the treelike columns. Galston the head verger signalled to his minions, and one of them moved to check the lights, pinching out those which had begun to gutter.

‘Helping Alan Jamieson, by what Galston says,’ offered Maister Sim, going back to Maistre Pierre’s question, ‘if he was still on duty.’ Galston nodded, without comment.

‘Tell me how you came to find him,’ Gil said again. His friend waved a hand at the well in the southeast corner of the wide vaulted space.

‘By chance, Gil. I cam in here from the Chapter House, seeing as,’ his voice trailed off, and he swallowed. ‘Aye. We’d sung Vespers and Compline, and we were tidying up in the Sacristy above there, and one of the other vergers-’

‘Which one?’ Gil prompted, aware of Galston’s disapproving scrutiny.

‘The useless one. What’s his name, Robert? Oh, I dinna ken, Canon,’ he mimicked, waving his hands jerkily. ‘Never gets a thing right. That one. Had left the small candle-box down here in the Chapter House, so he said, so I cam down the wheel stair to seek it seeing it was easier than sending him, and a course it wasny there. So I cam out here to take a look in the several chapels,’ he waved a hand again, more cogently, at the row of small chapels off this cross-aisle at the eastward end of the lower church. ‘Found it laid on Bishop Wishart’s breast and was just coming away when I saw the well-cover standing open, came in to shut it down and, well, found I couldny.’ He grimaced, and kicked the candle-box at his feet. ‘Just as well it was me seeking this rather than Robert.’

‘It is unusual to find a well within a kirk,’ Maistre Pierre observed. ‘I know one such at Chartres, in the crypt, where one must sleep to obtain a cure, and also at St Pierre in Lisieux, but otherwise they are rare. This is not a healing well, I think?’

‘Never heard that of it,’ said Maister Sim doubtfully. ‘It’s John Baptist’s chapel, he doesny usually do healing, does he?’

‘He must ha been seeing to the lights,’ said Gil, looking at the effigy of Bishop Wishart on his tomb-chest between the two middle chapels, ‘Robert I mean, and laid the box down. When was he here, d’you suppose? Galston?’

‘Robert’s duties should ha brought him down here three hours afore Vespers,’ returned Galston promptly. His tone was wooden, but conveyed very clearly all that he would not say. Sim said it for him.

‘Aye, very like. But he’d never ha noticed whether Barnabas was head down in the well or no, Gil, it would tell you nothing even if you got the right time off him.’

‘He must surely have noticed if the killer was here at the same time,’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘I think it was not long since, a matter of an hour or two, three at most. Gilbert, I should say this has been a matter of opportunity. Many people come down here to the Lady Chapel-’ he paused, and Galston turned his head, frowning, as an argument floated down the stair from the Upper Kirk where another verger had been placed like Cerberus to prevent access. ‘Also many come past the chantier to come in by that door, we see them go by.’

‘I suppose you saw nobody from there,’ said Gil.

‘This has happened since I and my men all went home, I think. No, this fellow and his killer must have simply chanced to be in here at the one time, and nobody with them, rather than his being enticed here to be killed. Too much danger of someone entering at the wrong moment.’

‘You think it was here in the kirk?’ said Galston, frowning.

‘If he was killed outside,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘there are many places to hide the corpse more easily, without bringing him in here and heaving him into the well. I think he was killed here and hidden in the nearest spot out of immediate sight.’

‘I agree,’ said Gil. He looked down at the corpse, sprawled in the candlelight, the fading daylight from the traceried windows making no impression on the scene now. ‘So you came in here, Habbie, found him in the well. How was he placed? He’d wedged on the bucket, you said.’

‘Aye, head in the bucket, which I think must ha had water in it, and his bum in the air. Feet jammed further down either side the bucket. He was pretty well wedged in the width of the well, he’d ha gone no further down I’d think, whoever put him there must ha kenned he’d be found soon or late.’ Maister Sim, like Gil, considered the corpse, and grimaced. ‘I’m glad it was sooner.’

‘There is no other injury on him.’ Maistre Pierre got to his feet, straightening his back with care. ‘Only the mark of the cord. I would say he was taken by surprise. It will have been quick.’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ muttered Maister Sim, crossing himself. ‘And then,’ he went on, ‘I called for help, and these two lads,’ he jerked his head at the two men still standing by the Chapter House doorway, ‘Matthew and Davie here cam down and lent a hand to get him out o the well. Wasny easy, I can tell you. And then Matthew went for Galston, and found Dean Henderson on his way, and he cam down and offered Conditional Absolution while we waited for you, though I think he was almost that angry he couldny speak. It isny good for St Mungo’s, Gil, another death.’

‘No,’ agreed Gil. He found Lowrie in the shadows. ‘Go and find Alan Jamieson, if you will,’ he requested, ‘let him know what’s happened, ask him when he last saw Barnabas.’ The younger man ducked his head in a bow and left by the same door the Sub-Dean had used, and Gil lifted the pricket-stand with its remaining candle and turned to the chapel of John the Baptist. It was a small rectangular space, bounded on two sides by the south and east walls of the building, on its north side by an arcaded partition wall which separated it from the next chapel. The well, its cover standing open, was a dark shadow on the wall-foot bench in the south-east corner, surrounded by wet patches where the corpse had been dragged out. The bucket, still tethered to its rope, stood forlornly by. Gil took the candle over and peered into the well; past the glow of the light he could see a faint glitter of its reflection, a pale glimpse of his own face cross-lit. The water was not far down.

‘Sheer luck he wedged on the bucket rather than going right in,’ said Maistre Pierre grimly at his elbow. ‘I know this is not a well for drinking, but nevertheless-!’

‘What happened?’ Gil said aloud. ‘Some kind of encounter here in the Lower Kirk, whatever Dean Henderson thinks, and the man strangled with a cord and then thrust into the well for concealment.’

‘He was not a big man,’ said his father-in-law, ‘but nevertheless I should think it needs another grown man to lift him and put him in there. Or perhaps two people.’

‘Two?’ said Gil in dismay. ‘I suppose it might be. Some kind of conspiracy, maybe.’