The Harper's Quine

Chapter One

Glasgow, 1492

At the May Day dancing at Glasgow Cross, Gilbert Cunningham saw not only the woman who was going to be murdered, but her murderer as well.

Strictly speaking, he should not have been there. Instead he should have been with his colleagues in the cathedral library, formulating a petition for annulment on grounds which were quite possibly spurious, but shortly after noon he had abandoned that, tidied his books into a neat stack in his carrel, with Hay on Marriage on the top, and walked out. A few heads turned as he went, but nobody spoke.

Descending the wheel stair, past the silent chambers of the diocesan court, he stepped out into the warm day enjoying the feeling of playing truant and closed the heavy door without stopping to read the notices nailed to it. The kirkyard was busy with people playing May-games, running, catching, shrieking with laughter. Gil went out, past the wall of the Archbishop’s castle, and jumped the Girth Burn ignoring the stepping stones. From here, already, he could hear the thud, thud of the big drum, like the muffled beat for a hanging.

There was plenty of movement in the steep curving High Street too. Weary couples, some still smelling of smoke from the bonfires, were returning home in the sunshine with their wilting branches. Others, an honest day’s work at least attempted, were hurrying from the little thatched cottages to join the fun. Hens and dogs ran among the feet of the revellers, and a tethered pig outside one door had a wide empty space round it.

Further down, where the slope eased and the houses were bigger, a group of students were playing football under the windows of the shabby University building, shouting at each other in mixed Latin and Scots. Gil nodded to the solemn Dominican who was guarding the pile of red and blue gowns, and skirted the game carefully with the other passers-by. Beyond the noise of the players and onlookers he could hear the drum again, together with the patter of the tabor and a confused sound of loud instruments which came to a halt as he drew near to the Tolbooth.

At the Mercat Cross there was dapping and laughter. The dancers were still in the centre of the crossing, surrounded by a great crowd. More people lined the timber galleries of the houses, shouting encouragement, and several ale-wives who had brought barrels of ale down on handcarts were-doing a brisk trade.

The burgh minstrels on the Tolbooth steps, resplendent in their blue coats under an arch of hawthorn branches, had added a man with a pipe and tabor and a bagpiper to the usual three shawms and a bombard. As Gil reached the mouth of the High Street they struck up a cheerful noise just recognizable as ‘The Battle of Harlaw’.

‘A strange choice for the May dancing,’ he remarked to the man next to him, a stout burgess in a good cloth gown with his wife on his arm. ‘Oh, it’s yourself, Serjeant,’ he added, recognizing the burgh’s chief lawkeeper. ‘Good day to you, Mistress Anderson.’

Mistress Anderson, more widely known as Mally Bowen the burgh layer-out, bobbed him a neat curtsy, the long ends of her linen kerchief swinging, and smiled.

‘The piper only has the two tunes,’ explained Serjeant Anderson, ‘that and “The Gowans are Gay”, and they’ve just played the other.’

‘I see,’ said Gil, looking over the heads at the top dancers advancing to salute their partners, while more couples pushed and dragged one another into position further down the dance. By the time all were in place the top few were already linking arms and whirling round with wild war-cries. A far cry from Aristotle’s ideal, he thought.

‘It’s a cheery sound, yon,’ said Gil’s neighbour in his stately way. Gil nodded, still watching the dancers. Most were in holiday clothes, some in fantastic costume from the pageant, or with bright bunches of ribbon or scraps of satin attached to their sleeves. Many of the girls, their hair loose down their backs, were garlanded with green leaves and flowers, and their married sisters had added ribbons to their linen headdresses. Students from the College, sons of burgesses in woollen, prentice lads in homespun, swung and stamped to the raucous music.

Watching a pair of students in their narrow belted gowns, crossing hands with two girls who must be sisters, Gil tried to reckon when he had last danced at the Cross himself. It must be eight years, he decided, because when he first returned to Scotland his grief and shock had kept him away, and last year he had been hard at work for his uncle on some case or other. He found his foot tapping.

‘See her,’ said the serjeant, indicating a bouncing, blackbrowed girl just arming with a lad in brown doublet and striped hose. ‘Back of her gown’s all green. Would ye take a wager she’s doing penance for last night’s work next Candlemas, eh, Maister Cunningham?’

‘Oh, John!’ said his wife reproachfully.

‘She’ll not be the only one, if so,’ Gil observed, grinning. ‘There’s a few green gowns here this morning.’

‘And I’ll wager, this time o’ year, Maister Cunningham, you wish you were no a priest,’ added the serjeant, winking slyly up at Gil.

‘Now, John!’

‘I’m not a priest,’ said Gil. Not yet, said something at the back of his mind, as he felt the familiar sinking chill in his stomach. When the man looked sceptically at his black jerkin and hose, he added reluctantly, ‘I’m a man of law.’

‘Oh, so I’ve heard said. You’ll excuse me, maister,’ said Serjeant Anderson. ‘I’ll leave ye, afore ye charge me for the time of day. Come on, hen.’

‘I’m at leisure today,’ Gil said, but the serjeant had drawn his wife away. Gil shrugged, and turned his attention back to the dancing. The couple he had been watching had completed their turn of the dance and were laughing together, the boy reaching a large rough hand to tug at the girl’s garland of flowers. She squealed, and ducked away, and just then the tune reached an identifiable end and the musicians paused for breath. The man banging the big drum kept on going until the tenor shawm kicked him. He stopped, blinking, and the dancers milled to a halt.

Gil took advantage of the general movement to climb a few steps up the nearest fore-stair, where several people were already perched out of reach of the elbows and feet of the mob.

‘More!’ shouted someone. ‘Anther tune!’

The band made its reluctance clear. A short argument developed, until someone else shouted, The harper — fetch the harper!’

‘Aye, the harper!’ agreed several voices at once. The cry was taken up, and the band filed down the steps, carrying its instruments, and headed purposefully for the nearest ale-wife’s trestle.

‘This will be good,’ said someone beside Gil. He looked round, and found the next step occupied by a tall, slender girl with a direct brown gaze above a narrow hatchet of a nose. ‘The harper,’ she added. ‘Have you heard him? He has two women that sing.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ he admitted, gazing appreciatively.

‘They sang Greysteil at the Provost’s house at Yule.’

‘What, the whole of it? All four thousand lines?’

She nodded. ‘It took all afternoon. It was Candlemas before the tune went out of my head.’

‘I have never heard it complete. There can’t be many singers could perform it like that.’

‘They took turns,’ she explained, ‘so neither voice got tired, and I suppose neither needed to learn the whole thing. One of them had her baby with her, so she had to stop to nurse it.’

‘What about the audience?’ said Gil.

The brown eyes danced. ‘We could come and go,’ she pointed out. ‘I noticed the Provost found duties elsewhere in his house.’

‘And his lady?’ said Gil, half at random, fascinated by her manner. She was dressed like a merchant’s daughter, in well-cut brown linen faced with velvet, and she was clearly under twenty, but she spoke to him as directly as she looked, with none of the archness or giggling he had encountered in other girls of her class. Moreover, she was tall enough to look nearly level at him from the next step up. What was that poem some King of Scots wrote in captivity? The fairest or the freschest yong flower That ever I saw, me thocht, before that hour. It seemed to fit.

‘Lady Stewart had to stay,’ she acknowledged. ‘I thought she was wearying by the end of the afternoon.’

She spoke good Scots with a slight accent which Gil was still trying to place when there was a disturbance beyond the Tolbooth, and the crowd parted to make way for three extraordinary figures. First to emerge was a sweet-faced woman in a fashionably cut dull red gown and a newfangled French hood, who carried a harper’s chair. After her came another woman, tall and gaunt, her black hair curling over her shoulders, pacing like a queen across the paved market-place in the loose checked dress of a Highlander. In one arm she clasped a harp, and on the other she led a man nearly as tall as Gil. He wore a rich gown of blue cloth, in which he must have been uncomfortably warm, a gold chain, and a black velvet hat with a sapphire in it. Over chest and shoulders flowed long white hair and a magnificent beard. At the sight a child on its father’s shoulders wailed, ‘Set me down, Da, it’s God the Faither! He’ll see me!’

The harper was guided up the Tolbooth steps, seated himself with great dignity, accepted harp and tuning-key, and as if there was not a great crowd of people watching, launched into a formal tuning prelude.

‘How the sound carries,’ Gil said.

‘Wire strings,’ said the girl. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard him before. Did he not play when the King stayed with the Bishop last winter? Archbishop,’ she corrected herself.

‘My uncle mentioned a harper,’ Gil recalled.

‘I thought you would have attended him,’ she said. ‘The Official of Glasgow is important, no? He is the senior judge of the diocese? His nephew should be present to give him consequence.’

‘You know me?’ said Gil in French, suddenly placing her accent.

‘My nurse — Catherine — knows everyone,’ she answered enigmatically. ‘Hush and listen.’

The Highland woman on the Tolbooth steps was arguing with some of the crowd, apparently about what they were to sing. The other was watching the harper, who, face turned unseeing towards the Waulkergait, continued to raise ripples of sound from the shining strings. Suddenly he silenced the instrument with the flat of his hand, and with a brief word to the women began to play the introduction to a May ballad. They took up the tune without hesitation, the two voices echoing and answering like birds.

Gil, listening raptly, thought how strong was the rapport between the three musicians, in particular the link between the blind man and the woman in the red dress. When the song ended he turned to his companion.

‘My faith, I’ve heard worse in Paris,’ he said over the crowd’s applause.

‘You know Paris? Were you there at the University?’ she said, turning to look at him with interest. ‘What were you studying? When did you leave?’

‘I studied in the Faculty of Laws,’ he answered precisely, ‘but I had to come home a couple of years since — at the end of ‘89.’

‘Of course,’ she said with ready understanding, ‘the Cunninghams backed the old King in ‘88. Were all the lands forfeit since the battle? Are you left quite penniless?’

‘Not quite,’ he said stiffly, rather startled by the breadth of her knowledge. She gave him a quick apologetic smile.

‘Catherine gossips. What are they playing now? Aren’t they good? It is clear they are accustomed to play together.’

The Highlander woman had coaxed the taborer’s drum from him, and was tapping out a rhythm. The other woman had begun to sing, nonsense syllables with a pronounced beat, her eyes sparkling as she clapped in time. Some of the crowd were taking up the clapping, and the space before the Tolbooth was clearing again.

‘Will you dance?’ Gil offered, to show that he had not taken offence. The apologetic smile flashed again.

‘No, I thank you. Catherine will have a fit when she finds me as it is. Oh, there is Davie-boy.’ She nodded at the two youngsters Gil had been watching earlier. ‘I see he has been at the May-games. He is one of my father’s men,’ she explained.

The dancers had barely begun, stepping round and back in a ring to the sound of harp, tabor and voice, when there was shouting beyond the Tolbooth, and two men in helmets and quilted jacks rode round the flank of the Laigh Kirk.

‘Way there! Gang way there!’

The onlookers gave way reluctantly, with a lot of argument. More horsemen followed, well-dressed men on handsome horses, and several grooms. Satin and jewels gleamed. The cavalcade, unable to proceed, trampled about in the mouth of the Thenawgait, with more confused shouting.

‘Who is it?’ wondered Gil’s companion, standing on tiptoe to see better.

‘You mean Catherine did not expect them?’ he asked drily. ‘That one on the roan horse is some kind of kin of mine by marriage, more’s the pity — John Sempill of Muirend. He must have sorted out his little difficulty about Paisley Cross. That must be his cousin Philip behind him. Who the others might be I am uncertain, though they look like Campbells, and so do the gallowglasses. Oh, for shame!’

The men-at-arms had broken through the circle of onlookers into the dancing-space, and were now urging their beasts forward. The dancers scattered, shouting and shaking fists, but the rest of the party surged through the gap and clattered across the paving-stones to turn past the Tolbooth and up the High Street.

Immediately behind the men-at-arms rode Sempill of Muirend on his roan horse, sandy-haired in black velvet and gold satin, a bunch of hawthorn pinned in his hat with an emerald brooch, scowling furiously at the musicians. After him, the pleasant-faced Philip Sempill seemed for a moment as if he would have turned aside to apologize, but the man next him caught his bridle and they rode on, followed by the rest of the party: a little sallow man with a lute-case slung across his back, several grooms, one with a middle-aged woman behind him, and in their midst another groom leading a white pony with a lady perched sideways on its saddle. Small and dainty, she wore green satin trimmed with velvet, and golden hair rippled down her back beneath the fall of her French hood. Jewels glittered on her hands and bosom, and she smiled at the people as she rode past.

‘Da!’ said the same piercing little voice in the crowd. ‘Is that the Queen of Elfland?’

The lady turned to blow a kiss to the child. Her gaze met Gil’s, and her expression sharpened; she smiled blindingly and blew him a kiss as well. Puzzled and embarrassed, he glanced away, and found himself looking at the harper, whose expressionless stare was aimed at the head of the procession where it was engaged in another argument about getting into the High Street. Beside him, the tall woman in the checked gown was glaring malevolently in the same direction, but the other one had turned her head and was facing resolutely towards the Tolbooth. What has Sempill done to them? he wondered, and glancing at the cavalcade was in time to see Philip Sempill looking back at the little group on the steps as if he would have liked to stay and listen to the singing.

‘Who is she?’ asked Gil’s companion. ‘Do you know her?’

‘I never saw her before.’

‘She seemed to know you. Whoever she is,’ said the girl briskly, ‘she’s badly overdressed. This is Glasgow, not Edinburgh or Stirling.’

‘What difference does that make?’ Gil asked, but she gave him a pitying glance and did not reply. The procession clattered and jingled away up the High Street, followed by resentful comments and blessings on a bonny face in roughly equal quantities. The dance re-formed.

‘What is a gallowglass?’ said the girl suddenly. Gil looked round at her. ‘It is a word I have not encountered. Is it Scots?’

‘I think it may be Ersche,’ Gil explained. ‘It means a hired sword.’

‘A mercenary?’

‘Nearly that. Your Scots is very good.’

‘Thank you. And now if you will-let me past,’ she added with a glance at the sun, ‘I will see if I can find Catherine. She was to have come back for me.’

‘May I not convoy you?’ suggested Gil, aware of a powerful wish to continue the conversation. ‘You shouldn’t be out unattended, today of all days.’

‘I can walk a few steps up the High Street without coming to grief. Thank you,’ she said, and the smile flick ered again. She slipped past him and down the steps before he could argue further, and disappeared into the crowd.

The harper was playing again, and the tall Highlander woman was beating the tabor. The other woman was singing, but her head was bent and all the sparkle had gone out of her. The fat wife who was now standing next to Gil nudged him painfully in the ribs.

‘That’s a bonny lass to meet on a May morning,’ she said, winking. ‘What did you let her go for? She’s a good age for you, son, priest or no.’

‘Thank you for the advice,’ he said politely, at which she laughed riotously, nudged him again, and began to tell him about a May morning in her own youth. Since she had lost most of her teeth and paused to explain every name she mentioned Gil did not attempt to follow her, but nodded at intervals and watched the dance, his pleasant mood fading.

That was twice this morning he had been taken for a priest. It must be the sober clothes, he thought, and glanced down. Worn boots, mended black hose, black jerkin, plain linen shirt, short gown of black wool faced with black linen. Maybe he should wear something brighter — some of the Vicars Choral were gaudy enough. It occurred to him for the first time that the girl had not addressed him as a priest, either by word or manner.

He became aware of a disturbance in the crowd. Leaning out over the handrail he could see one man in a tall felt hat, one in a blue bonnet, both the worse for drink and arguing over a girl. There was a certain amount of pulling and pushing, and the girl exclaimed something in the alarmed tones which had caught his attention. This time he knew the voice.

The stair was crowded. He vaulted over the handrail, startled a young couple by landing in front of them, and pushed through the people, using his height and his elbows ruthlessly. The man in the hat was dressed like a merchant’s son, in a red velvet doublet and a short gown with a furred collar caked in something sticky. The other appeared to be a journeyman in a dusty jerkin, out at the elbows. As Gil reached them, both men laid hold of his acquaintance from the stairway, one to each arm, pulling her in opposite directions, the merchant lad reaching suggestively for his short sword with his other hand.

This could be dealt with without violence. Gil slid swiftly round behind the little group, and said clearly, ‘Gentlemen, this is common assault. I suggest you desist.’

Both stared at him. The girl twisted to look at him over her shoulder, brown eyes frightened.

‘Let go,’ he repeated. ‘Or the lady will see you in court. She has several witnesses.’ He looked round, and although most of the onlookers suddenly found the dance much more interesting, one or two stalwarts nodded.

‘Oh, if I’d known she kept a lawyer,’ said the man in the hat, and let go. The other man kept his large red hand on the girl’s arm, but stopped pulling her.

‘It’s all right, Thomas,’ she said breathlessly. ‘This gentleman will see me home.’

‘You certain?’ said Thomas indistinctly. ‘Does he ken where ‘tis?’ She nodded, and he let go of her wrist and stepped back, looking baffled. ‘You take her straight home,’ he said waveringly to Gil. ‘Straight home, d’you hear me?’

‘Straight home,’ Gil assured him. ‘You go and join the dancing.’ If you can stay upright, he thought.

Thomas turned away, frowning, at which the man in the hat also flounced off into the crowd. The girl closed her eyes and drew a rather shaky breath, and Gil caught hold of her elbow.

‘This time I will convoy you,’ he said firmly.

She took another breath, opened her eyes and turned to him. He met her gaze, and found himself looking into peat-brown depths the colour of the rivers he had swum in as a boy. For an infinite moment they stared at one another; then someone jostled Gil and he blinked. Recovering his manners, he let go of her elbow and offered his arm to lead her.

She nodded, achieved a small curtsy, and set a trembling hand on his wrist. He led her out of the crowd and up the High Street, followed by a flurry of predictable remarks. He was acutely aware of the hand, pale and well-shaped below its brown velvet cuff, and of her profile, dominated by that remarkable nose and turned slightly away from him. The top of her head came just above his shoulder. Suppressing a desire to put his arm round her as further support, or perhaps comfort, he began a light commentary on the music which they had heard, requiring no answer.

‘Thomas was trying to help,’ she said suddenly. ‘He saw Robert Walkinshaw accost me and came to see him off.’

‘Is he another of your father’s men?’ Gil asked. ‘He’s obviously concerned for you.’

‘Yes,’ she said after a moment, and came to a halt. Although she still trembled she was not leaning on his wrist at all. He looked down at her. ‘And this is my father’s house. I thank you, Maister Cunningham.’

She dropped another quick curtsy, and slipped in at the pend below a swinging sign. At the far end of the tunnellike entry she turned, a dark figure against the sunlit court, raised one hand in salute, then stepped out of sight. Gil, troubled, watched for a moment, but she did not reappear. He stepped backwards, colliding with a pair of beribboned apprentices heading homeward.

‘Whose house is that?’ he asked them.

‘The White Castle?’ said one of them, glancing at the sign. ‘That’s where the French mason lives, is it no, Ecky?’

Ecky, after some thought, agreed with this.

‘Aye,’ pursued his friend, who seemed to be the more wide awake, ‘for I’ve taken a pie there once it came out the, oven. There’s an auld French wife there that’s the devil to cross,’ he confided to Gil. ‘Aye, it’s the French mason’s house.’

They continued on their way. Gil, glancing at the sun, decided that he should do likewise. Maggie Baxter had mentioned something good for dinner.

Canon David Cunningham, Prebendary of Cadzow, Official of Glasgow, senior judge of the Consistory Court of the archdiocese, was in the first-floor hall of his handsome stone house in Rottenrow. He was seated near the window, tall and lean like Gil in his narrow belted gown of black wool, with a sheaf of papers and two protocol books on a stool beside him. In deference to the warmth of the day, he had removed his hat, untied the strings of his black felt coif, and hung his furred brocade over-gown on the high carved back of his chair. Gil, bowing as he entered from the stair, discovered that his head was bare in the same moment as his uncle said,

‘Where is your hat, Gilbert? And when did you last comb your hair?’

‘I had a hat when I went out,’ he said, wondering at the ease with which the old man made him feel six years old. ‘It must have fallen off. Perhaps when I louped the handrail.’

‘Louped the handrail,’ his uncle repeated without expression.

‘There was a lass being molested.’ Gil decided against asking when dinner was, and instead nodded at his uncle’s papers. ‘Can I help with this, sir?’

‘You are six-and-twenty,’ said his uncle. ‘You are graduate of two universities. You are soon to be priested, and from Michaelmas next, Christ and His Saints preserve us, you will be entitled to call yourself a notary. I think you should strive for a little dignity, Gilbert. Yes, you can help me. I am to hear a matter tomorrow — Sempill of Muirend is selling land to his cousin, and we need the original disposition from his father. It should be in one of these.’ He waved a long thin hand at the two protocol books.

‘That would be why I saw him riding into the town just now. What was the transaction, sir?’ Gil asked, lifting one of the volumes on to the bench. His uncle pinched the bridge of his long nose and stared out of the window.

‘Andrew Sempill of Cathcart to John Sempill of Muirend and Elizabeth Stewart his wife, land in the burgh of Glasgow, being on the north side of Rottenrow near the Great Cross,’ he recited. ‘Just across the way yonder,’ he added, gesturing. ‘I wonder if he’s taken his wife back?’

‘His wife?’ said Gil, turning pages. ‘You know my mother’s sister Margaret was married on Sempill of Cathcart? Till he beat her and she died of it.’

‘Your mother’s sister Margaret never stopped talking in my hearing longer than it took to draw breath,’ said his uncle. ‘Your sister Tibby is her image.’

‘So my mother has often said; agreed Gil.

‘There is no proof that Andrew Sempill gave his wife the blow that killed her. She was his second wife, and there were no bairns. John Sempill of Muirend would be his son by the first wife. She was a Walkinshaw, which would be how they came by the land across the way. I think she died of her second bairn.’

‘And what about John Sempill’s wife?’ Gil persisted.

‘You must not give yourself to gossip, Gilbert; reproved his uncle. ‘Sempill of Muirend married a Bute girl. While you were in France, that would be. She and her sister were co-heirs to Stewart of Ettrick, if I remember. She left Sempill.’

‘There was a lady with him when he rode in just now.’ Gil turned another page, and marked a place with his finger. ‘Dainty creature with long gold hair. Child in the crowd thought she was the Queen of Elfland.’

‘That does not sound like his wife.’

‘It’s not his wife.’ Maggie Baxter, stout and red-faced, appeared in the doorway from the kitchen stair. Will ye dine now, maister? Only the May-bannock’s like to spoil if it stands.’

‘Very well.’ The Official gathered up his papers. ‘Is it not his wife, Maggie?’

‘The whole of Glasgow kens it’s not his wife,’ said Maggie, dragging one of the trestles into the centre of the hall, ‘seeing she’s taken up with the harper that stays in the Fishergait.’

‘What, the harper that played for the King last winter?’ said the Official. ‘When was this? Is that who she left Sempill for?’

Maggie counted thoughtfully on her fingers.

‘Before Yule a year since? I ken the bairn’s more than six month old.’

‘There is a bairn, is there? And has she gone back to Sempill? I had not heard this,’ said Canon Cunningham in disgruntled tones.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Maggie with grim significance. Gil rose and went to fetch in the other two trestles. ‘But what I saw an hour since was Sempill of Muirend ride in across the way there, and his cousin with him, and Lady Euphemia Campbell tricked out in green satin like the Queen of the May.’

‘Ah,’ said the Canon. He lifted his over-gown from the back of his chair and began searching among the intricacies of black brocade and worn fox-fur for the armholes.

‘Is that something else that happened while I was in France?’ Gil asked. ‘Maggie, will you take the other end?’

‘Aye, it would be,’ agreed Maggie as they set the great board up on the trestles. ‘Her first man fell at Stirling field — who was he now? I think he was on the old King’s side, like the Sempills and the Cunninghams. She never grieved ower lang for him, for she was already getting comfort with John Sempill when you came home, Maister Gil. Or so I hear,’ she added piously.

‘I think we conclude that Sempill’s wife has not returned to him; David Cunningham said. He and Maggie began an involved discussion of who Euphemia Campbell’s first husband might have been, while Gil quietly went on setting up the table for dinner with the long cloth of bleached linen from the smaller carved cupboard, and the wooden trenchers from the open base of the great cupboard. May Day or no, he knew better than to touch the silver dishes gleaming on top of the great cupboard; they were only used when the Archbishop or the other canons dined with them. He added horn spoons and wooden beakers from the small cupboard, lining them up carefully, dragged his uncle’s chair to the head of the board, set the two long benches on either side, and said across the genealogy,

‘Maggie, will I bring in anything else?’

‘Aye, well,’ said Maggie, ‘I’ve work to do, maister. Sit you in at the table and I’ll-call the household.’

She stumped off down the stairs to the kitchen. By the time she returned, Gil had finally assisted his uncle into the long furred gown, and both Cunninghams had washed their hands under the spout of the pottery cistern by the other door and were seated waiting for their food.

‘A May blessing on the house,’ she said, setting a pot of savoury-smelling stew at the top of the table. Behind her, Matt, the Official’s middle-aged, silent manservant, and the two stable-hands echoed her words as they bore in bread and ale, a dish of eggs, a bowl of last year’s apples. Last of all came the kitchen-boy, scarlet with concentration, carrying the May-bannock on a great wooden trencher. The custard of eggs and cream with which it was topped quivered as he set it in the centre of the table and stood back.

‘May Day luck to us all!’ he said breathlessly, and licked custard off his thumb.

Once grace was said and all were served, Maggie and the Official continued their discussion. The men were arguing about whether to graze the horses on the Cow- caddens Muir or to take them further afield, perhaps nearer Partick. Gil ate in silence, thinking about the day, and about the girl he had left at the house of the White Castle. He was surprised to find that he could not remember what she wore, except that it had velvet cuffs, or anything about her other than that direct gaze and the incisive, intelligent voice. What colour was her hair? Was she bareheaded? And yet he could not stop thinking about her.

‘Gilbert,’ said his uncle sharply. He looked up, and apologized. ‘I am to say Compline in the choir tonight. Will you invest me, so that Matt can go to his kin in the Fishergait?’

‘I can invest you, sir. I’m promised to Adam Goudie after Vespers. I’ll come down to St Mungo’s and attend you at Compline, and Matt can go as he pleases.’

Matt grunted a wordless acknowledgement, and David Cunningham said, ‘Playing at the cards, I suppose, with half the songmen of St Mungo’s.’

‘I’m in good company,’ Gil pointed out, and seized a wrinkled apple from the bowl as Maggie began to clear the table. ‘The Bishop himself plays at cards with the King. Archbishop,’ he corrected himself.

‘The King and Robert Blacader both can afford to lose money,’ said his uncle. ‘Neither you nor any of the Vicars Choral has money to lose. Remember the gate to Vicars Alley is locked at nine o’clock.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘And that reminds me. I have a task for you. You mind the Archbishop’s new work? Where he’s decided to complete the Fergus Aisle?’ Gil nodded, biting into his apple. ‘It seems St Mungo’s is not big enough now we’re an archdiocese. Christ save us, is it only four months since the Nuncio was here? Anyway, the mason wants a word with one of the Chapter, I suppose to talk about some detail or other. You might as well deal with it. Don’t promise the Chapter to any expenditure — or the Bishop either.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Before the mom’s work starts, he said, after Lauds.’ The Official took his hands from the board as the stable-lads lifted it off the trestles. ‘Have you found the Sempill disposition yet? I want to see it tonight.’

Compline, that folding-together of the hands at the day’s end, was always a satisfactory service. In the vaulted sacristy, where fingers of late gold sunlight poked through the northward windows, David Cunningham accepted his vestments one by one from Gil, and finally bent his head under the yoke of his own stole from the bundle Gil had carried over before Vespers. He paused for a moment, his lips moving, then said, ‘I’ll disrobe myself, Gilbert. You may hear the service or go, as you please.’

‘I’ll hear it, I think, sir,’ said Gil politely. He knelt for his uncle’s blessing, and slipped out into the nave.

This late in the evening those present were principally servants or dependants of the cathedral community, more familiar to Gil than the habitants of the lower town. Maggie Baxter was there, with her friend Agnes Dow who kept house for the sub-chanter. Adam Goudie’s sister Ann, who ran the sub-Thesaurer’s household, the Canon himself and some said his share of the Treasury too, had a new gown of tawny wool in honour of the May. Beyond them a flash of black-and-gold caught Gil’s eye.

Shifting position he saw John Sempill, with some of the party he had seen ride past the Tolbooth: Sempill’s handsome cousin, and also the small dark fellow and one of the men-at-arms, and furthest away, beyond her stout companion, Lady Euphemia Campbell, small and fragile in sapphire-blue with her golden hair rippling from under a velvet hat like a man’s. Another quotation popped into his head, from the bawdy tale of the Friars of Berwick: A fair blyth wyf … sumthing dynk and dengerous. Was such a dainty lady dangerous? he wondered.

At his movement she glanced his way, and smiled at him, then returned to her prayers. Her actions as she stood or knelt, crossed herself, bent her head over her beads, were fluid and graceful, and Gil watched, fascinated, hoping she would look his way again. Beyond the massive stone screen the Vicars Choral launched into the evening psalms. Down here in the nave the other man-at-arms came in with a word for his master, and behind him another expensively dressed man joined the group, hiding Lady Euphemia from his view.

For a while Gil paid attention to the singing; then, as if to a lodestone, he found his glance drawn in that direction again. One of the men was just slipping away to another altar, but it was almost with relief that he found Euphemia Campbell’s slight person was still invisible.

When the Office ended and the choir had filed through the narrow door in the screen and back into the vestry, the church slowly emptied. Gil paused by the altar of St Giles to leave money for candles. Earlier the image had glowed in red and gold light from the west windows, and the hind at the saint’s side had been resplendent in a coat of many colours, but now the sun had moved round St Giles and his pet stood in their workaday brown and white paint. The holiday was over. Tomorrow, Gil thought, I must go back to the Monteath petition. His heart sank at the notion. Sweet St Giles, he said silently to the remote image, give me strength to face what is set before me.

After a moment he made for the south door. As he reached it Euphemia Campbell rose from her knees before the altar of St Catherine, crossed herself with that distracting grace, and moved towards the door herself. Gil held it open, bowing, and she favoured him with a luminous, speculative smile and went out before him.

Following her, he paused on the door-sill to look around. To the right, the Sempill party was gathering itself together, Sempill himself emerging from a nearby clump of trees scowling and fiddling with his codpiece. Lady Euphemia strolled gracefully towards him and put her hand possessively on his arm. The whole party made for the gate, except for the small sallow man, who stood for a moment longer staring after Euphemia Campbell, one hand on his dagger. Then, as she turned to look over her shoulder, he shied like a startled horse and scurried after her.

Gil stood where he was, admiring the evening. He had no wish to accompany John Sempill and his friends the quarter-mile or so back to the two houses which faced one another across Rottenrow. The kirkyard was in shade, only the high crowns of the trees still catching the light. Before Vespers there had been people about, talking or singing. Someone had been playing a lute, a group of children danced in a ring, their voices sweet on the warm air, and Gil had caught a glimpse of the two youngsters he had seen earlier at the Cross, the boy’s striped hose conspicuous under the trees. The children had been called home now, the lutenist had gone to find a more financially rewarding audience, and only a last few parishioners drifted up the path towards the gate.

To the left, against the pale bulk of the cathedral itself, the Archbishop’s new work was in shadow. Robert Blacader, Bishop of Glasgow, now since last January Archbishop of Glasgow, wanted to elaborate his cathedral, and his eye had fallen on the Fergus Aisle. If one was precise about it, the little chapel off the south transept was not new work, but something started more than a hundred years ago over the burial-place of that holy man Fergus whose death had brought the young Kentigern to his dear green place. It had been soon abandoned, probably when the Chapter of the day ran out of money, the foundations open to the weather ever since.

Gil considered the building site. The walls had now reached shoulder-height, and stood surrounded by stacks of timber for the scaffolding. A neat row of blocks of stone waited to be cut to shape in the masons’ lodge whose thatched roof Gil could see beyond the chapel. Hurdles supported on more scaffolding made a ramp for a wheelbarrow. Tomorrow he must meet the master mason there.

The Sempill party had left the kirkyard. Patting his purse, which was significantly heavier for the evening’s card-play, Gil set off for home. Several of the songmen thought they could play Tarocco, but had not learned the game, as he had, from the card-players of Paris.

He wondered later how much difference it would have made if he had gone to look in the building site then, rather than in the morning.