The Nicholas Feast

Chapter One

Gil Cunningham said later that if he had known he would find a corpse in the coalhouse of Glasgow University, he would never have gone to the Arts Faculty feast.

‘But then,’ said Alys his betrothed, considering this seriously, ‘you would never have met Socrates.’

The day began well enough. In the bright sunshine after early rain Gil, his academic robes in a bundle under his arm, had strolled down the High Street past the University, where several people in gowns and furred hoods were already exchanging formal bows with a lanky red-haired student before the great wooden door. Further down the street, in the rambling stone-built house called the White Castle, he found Alys and her father the French master mason, just breaking their fast with the rest of their household after hearing the first Mass at Greyfriars.

‘Gil!’ said Alys in delight, and sprang up to kiss him in greeting.

‘Bonjour, Gilbert,’ said Maistre Pierre cheerfully, his teeth white in his neat black beard. He rose broadshouldered and imposing from his great chair and waved at an empty stool. ‘Have you eaten? What do you this early on a Sunday morning?’

‘The Nicholas Feast,’ Gil reminded him. He smiled at Alys, still standing slender and elegant beside him in the brown linen dress that matched her eyes. Like most unmarried girls in Scotland she went bare-headed, and her honey-coloured hair fell over her shoulders. He savoured the sight for a moment, thinking again how fortunate he was, that this clever, competent, beautiful girl was to be his wife, then tipped her face up with a gentle finger and kissed the high narrow bridge of her nose. ‘I hoped Alys would help me robe,’ he continued. ‘The procession will start from the college, and if I must walk there alone in these ridiculous garments I had rather do it from here, four doors away, than from Rottenrow. At least when we ride up to St Thomas’s I’ll be in company with the whole of the Arts Faculty.’

‘They are not ridiculous garments!’ Alys said indignantly. ‘They are the insignia of your learning! Come and sit down, Gil.’

‘Why is it called the Nicholas Feast?’ asked Maistre Pierre, ladling more porridge into his wooden porringer. ‘St Nicholas’ day is in December. This is May.’

‘The Feast of the Translation of St Nicholas was last Tuesday,’ Gil said. He bowed to Alys’s aged, aristocratic nurse, and nodded to the rest of the household, who were ignoring the French talk at the head of the table. Setting the bundle of his robes on the floor he sat down and accepted a bannock from the platter Alys passed him. ‘When he was translated to Bari, I suppose, though where from I don’t recall. And this is the first Sunday after. The man who founded our feast left exact directions. We’re to ride in procession to hear Mass at eight of the clock in St Thomas Martyr’s, out beyond the Stablegreen Port, and come back down through the town with green branches, and then we have a meeting, and then we have the feast.’

‘He left money for the feast, too, I hope?’ said Maistre Pierre.

Gil nodded, spreading honey on his bannock.

‘There is some, but we are all expected to pay up as well. Eighteen pence it has cost me.’ The mason pulled a face. ‘It would be double that if I had a benefice.’

‘I had hoped,’ said Alys with diffidence, ‘we could write to your mother today. Her letter needs an answer, you must agree.’

‘Oh, aye, I agree,’ Gil said ruefully. ‘But not today. I am committed to the feast. Perhaps tomorrow.’

When grace had been said, the dishes had been carried out and the great board lifted from its trestles, Alys’s nurse Catherine rose stiffly and said to the mason, ‘I leave your daughter in your charge, maistre.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘And the baby is with Nancy. Go and see to the boy, if you will, madame.’

She curtsied with arthritic elegance, said, ‘Bonjour, maistre le notaire,’ to Gil as she passed him, and stumped out of the hall among the hurrying maidservants. Alys unfolded Gil’s robes.

‘Your mother’s letter,’ she said again, shaking out the cassock. ‘Is it — is that really what she thinks?’

‘She’ll come round to it,’ Gil said. ‘Remember, my uncle is in favour.’

‘But if your nearest kin can’t agree about your marriage — ’

‘Perhaps when my uncle can spare me, I should go out to Carluke,’ he suggested.

‘Yes!’ She smiled up at him. ‘If you can discuss it with her, I’m sure you will coax her round.’

‘Tell her how Alys will be dowered,’ said Alys’s father robustly. ‘That will persuade her.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Gil, concealing his doubts. He pulled off his short gown and began to unlace his doublet. ‘Meantime I need help with these ridiculous garments.’

‘They are not ridiculous!’ she said again. ‘Which way round does this go?’

Maistre Pierre watched in mounting astonishment as Gil was arrayed in the black cassock and cope (‘At least this one has two slits for my hands. Some only have one.’), the furred shoulder-cape, the blue fur-lined hood, proper to a Master of Arts of the University of Glasgow.

‘All of these garments are wool,’ he observed. ‘You will be warm. And what is that scarf thing? At least that is silk, though it is furred as well.’

‘Oh, father,’ said Alys. ‘You remember the men of law wearing those in Paris, surely? It goes on his shoulder. It’s a pity it’s red when your hood is blue,’ she added. ‘Does it need a pin, perhaps?’

‘This is the first time I have worn it all complete,’ said Gil, craning over his shoulder at the hood. ‘I must look like a Yule papingo,’ he added in Scots.

‘A parrot?’ said Maistre Pierre, grinning.

‘No, no, it looks magnificent,’ Alys declared.

‘At least I won’t be alone. The entire procession will be in formal dress.’

‘And you are to ride in those long skirts?’ continued the mason, as Alys shook the moth-herbs out of the white rabbit-skin lining and stood on tiptoe to pin the red chaperon on to the layer of fur already on Gil’s shoulder. ‘Where is your horse?’

‘My uncle sent down to the college earlier with half a dozen beasts loaned from the Chanonry I’ll have the use of one of those.’ Gil settled his felt hat on his head, then took Alys’s hands in his and kissed them. ‘I must go. Tomorrow we’ll write to my mother, sweetheart,’ he promised her.

‘Which reminds me indirectly,’ said Maistre Pierre. He got to his feet. ‘I see you to the street. Our neighbour is expected in town.’

‘What, Hugh Montgomery?’ Gil turned to stare. ‘What brings him to Glasgow? The King’s at Stirling, by what my uncle says, and the rest of the Court with him.’

‘Catherine thought it might be to do with the college,’ said Alys.

‘How does Catherine learn these things?’ Gil wondered. ‘She speaks no Scots.’

‘Your pardon, maisters, mistress,’ said an anxious voice from the kitchen stairway.

They all three turned. In the door at the head of the stairs stood a stout, comely woman dressed in respectable homespun. As they looked she bobbed a nervous curtsy and came forward.

‘Your pardon for interrupting,’ she said again, ‘but they’re saying in the kitchen you’re for the college the day, maister? Is that right?’

‘This is Mistress Irvine, Gil,’ said Alys. ‘A kinswoman of Kittock’s — ’

‘Aye,’ agreed Mistress Irvine, nodding and beaming. ‘My good-sister’s good-sister, that’s who Kittock is, and a good friend to me and all.’

‘- and Davie’s aunt,’ continued Alys. ‘She has come from Paisley to see him.’

‘How is the boy today?’ Gil asked, with sympathy.

‘He’s still sleeping the maist o’ the time,’ said Mistress Irvine, looking troubled. ‘And he minds nothing even when he’s awake. I think it was you that found him, maister? Blessings on ye for that, sir, and his mother’s and all.’

‘He improves slowly,’ said the mason.

‘It’s only two weeks, father,’ said Alys. ‘It takes longer than that for a broken skull to mend. Mistress Irvine was very distressed to see her nephew in such a state, Gil, the more so as her foster-son at the college is strong and healthy.’

‘The contrast must be painful,’ Gil commented wryly. The mason’s injured mortar-laddie was a reminder of an episode which he would have wished to forget, had it not resulted in his betrothal to Alys. ‘Has the other boy visited Davie? The company would be good for him.’

‘Och, no. William’s ower busy at his studies,’ explained Mistress Irvine, and bobbed another curtsy. ‘I wonder if I might trouble ye, sir? It’s just to leave this paper for him with the man at the yett. It’s for William Irvine.’ She produced a folded and sealed package.

‘That’s no trouble.’ Gil put his hand out. A line of verse popped into his head: Little Sir William, are you within? Which of the ballads was that?

‘Only he said he’d be busy today, he can’t come to see me, and I don’t like to go back, the porter was as awkward yesterday about sending to fetch him to the yett, and if they’re all taigled with this feast I’d only be in the way. It’s a shame I never took it with me when I went out to Vespers.’

So the guardian of the college’s great wooden door must be the same fellow Gil remembered from his own time. ‘It’s no trouble,’ he said again.

She put the little package into his hand and curtsied again. ‘Blessings on ye, sir. Oh, here, you’ve lost your wee scarf.’ She stooped to lift the swatch of silk and fur. ‘You’ll not need that round your neck the day, maister, it’ll be warm enough when it’s no raining. And I’ll away back down to the kitchen, mistress, and see to that remedy I promised Nancy for the bairn. We’ll see if we can’t get him taking more than milk with honey and usquebae, won’t we no?’

‘We will be aye grateful if you do, mistress,’ said Alys. ‘I believe he has eaten only by accident since his mother died.’ She watched Mistress Irvine puffing her way down the kitchen stair, then turned to fasten the scarf back on Gil’s shoulder. ‘There, I have used two pins this time. Take care,’ she said earnestly. ‘Of the Montgomerys, I mean.’

‘Yes indeed.’ The mason made for the door. ‘Maybe you do not go about alone for a while. Bah! It is raining again.’

‘The Montgomerys have killed no Cunninghams for at least six months,’ Gil said. ‘That I know of,’ he added.

He hugged Alys, and bent to kiss her. For a long moment she returned his embrace, with the eager innocence which he found so enchanting; then she drew away, suddenly shy, and he dropped another quick kiss on the bridge of her nose, and followed Maistre Pierre down the fore-stair and across the courtyard in the rain.

Pacing up the High Street with the dignity imposed by the heavy garments, Gil glanced at the tall stone house belonging to Hugh, Lord Montgomery and wondered again what that turbulent baron wanted in Glasgow. Montgomery had no Lanarkshire holdings and no need to keep on the good side of the Archbishop, unlike Gil’s own kindred, and the holdings and privileges in Ayrshire which were the cause of Montgomery’s bloody dispute with the Cunninghams were all administered from Irvine. Perhaps, Gil speculated, Alys’s governess was right and the family wished to make its mark on the college in some way.

The High Street was now completely blocked outside the college gateway by the mounts waiting for the procession. John Shaw the Steward was welcoming another arrival. Gil avoided the heels of a restless mule and picked his way to the door. Here he was met by the same student he had seen earlier, a gangling youth with a faded gown and a fashionable haircut, who bowed deeply, flourishing his hat so that raindrops flew from it.

‘Salve, Magister. The college greets you. May I know your name?’

‘Maister Gilbert Cunningham,’ said Gil, ‘determined in ’84.’

The student straightened abruptly, clapping the hat back on his head.

‘Gang within, maister, if ye will,’ he said, cutting across Gil’s greeting to the college. ‘The Faculty’s in the Fore Hall.’ He waved a long arm towards the great wooden yett and the vaulted passage beyond it, and turned away.

A little startled by this incivility, Gil made his way into the passage, pausing at the porter’s door. As he had surmised, the occupant of the rancid, cluttered little room was the same man he remembered from his own days at the college, a surly individual with a bald head and a flabby paunch.

‘Good morning, Jaikie,’ he said politely. ‘I see you’re still in charge here.’

‘Oh, it’s you, Gil Cunningham,’ said Jaikie, looking him up and down. ‘I thought ye’d be here earlier, but maybe since ye’re to be married, ye’re done with early rising.’ He produced an unpleasantly suggestive leer. ‘And I hear there’s a bairn already?’

‘There is,’ agreed Gil, ever more politely. ‘A motherless bairn being fostered by the household.’

‘Aye, right. And what do you want?’ demanded Jaikie. ‘I’ve enough to see to, dealing with this feast, without idle conversation round my door.’

‘I have a package here for William Irvine.’

The man’s expression flickered.

‘Ye have, have ye? Let’s see. From Billy Dog, is it?’

Gil handed over the folded paper. Jaikie turned it in his hands, flicked at the seal with a dirty thumbnail, and grunted.

‘It’s no from Billy Dog. Well, ye can deliver it yirsel. That’s William Irvine out there at the yett, capering like a May hobby, welcoming the maisters.’

‘The boy with the red hair?’

‘Aye, the same.’ Jaikie cast a glance out of his window at the crowd in the street. ‘Ye’ll need to be quick. They’ll mount up soon.’

Gil went back out to the doorway and waited while the rain stopped, the sun came out, and the red-haired boy greeted another pair of graduates with flowery compliments about the college’s sons. One of them produced a stock phrase in reply, about the fountain of wisdom; the other grunted, ‘Aye, thanks,’ and pushed past Gil into the tunnel.

‘William,’ said Gil. The boy turned, and recognizing Gil raised his hat briefly and attempted to look down his nose at him. Tall though he was, Gil topped him by several inches, so he was unsuccessful in this, but he assumed an expression of vague contempt.

‘I have a package for you from Mistress Irvine, William,’ said Gil politely, holding it out. Little Sir William, are you within? he thought again.

‘From — ? Oh,’ said William, taking it. He turned the little bundle over, reading the clumsy writing on the cover. ‘Thank you,’ he added, as if the words tasted unpleasant, and then, almost warily, ‘Did she say anything about it?’

‘Not a thing,’ said Gil. ‘You’ll need to open it to find out.’

‘Well, it’s what one usually does with a letter,’ said William, with casual impertinence. Gil raised one eyebrow, and the boy looked down and turned away. ‘Thank you, maister,’ he said again, ostentatiously studying the writing on the package.

Gil made his way through the tunnel into the Outer Close where he paused, savouring the scene. The place had scarcely changed in the eight years since he had left; the thatch was sagging, the shutters were crooked, even the weeds between the flagstones seemed the same. Now, where had that ill-schooled boy said? Yes, in the Fore Hall.

One or two Faculty members were about in the court, but judging by the noise most were above in the hall. As Gil turned towards the foot of the stair, William hurried across the court, in too much haste even to lift his hat to a passing Doctor of Laws. He appeared to be making for a tower doorway in the south range, but before he reached it a man in the robes of a Dominican friar emerged from the tunnel which led to the Inner Close. William, catching sight of him, checked and turned to intercept him.

‘Father Bernard,’ he said clearly. ‘I have something here that will interest you.’

As Gil reached the top of the stair he settled on a word for William’s expression: gleeful.

In the outermost hall of the college building a roar of polite Latin conversation rose from the assembled Faculty of Arts of the University of Glasgow, thirty or forty men in woollen copes like Gil’s or the silk gowns of the Masters of foreign universities circulating in an aroma of cedar-wood and moth-herbs. Gil paused in the doorway to look over the crowded heads and decided against making his way to his proper station, among the other non-regent Masters, the graduates of the University who did not hold teaching positions. If he waited here, he could slip into his place as the procession left.

He could recognize many of the company. Yonder was John Doby, small, gentle and balding. He was the Principal Regent in Arts, in charge of teaching and all matters of the curriculum, and had taught Gil Aristotle thoroughly and exactly. Beside him, tall and silvertonsured, Patrick Elphinstone the Dean, whom Gil remembered as a conscientious and alarming teacher. There was David Gray the Scribe, a poor teacher and an ineffectual man, with the red furred hood of a man of law rolled down on his shoulders and straggling grey hair showing round his felt cap.

The procession was forming up. Gil stood aside from the door, and the Dean and the Principal passed him in their high-collared black silk gowns and long-tailed black hoods, each with the red chaperon of a Cologne doctor trailing from his left shoulder. As they reached the doorway the light changed, and the May sunshine gave way to another vicious May shower.

‘Confound it!’ said Dean Elphinstone, stopping abruptly. ‘The hoods will be ruined! Principal, why did you insist on the silk hoods? Fur at least would dry out.’

‘It’s summer, Dean.’ Maister Doby peered past his taller colleague. ‘A wee bittie rain’ll not hurt you.’

Gil looked over their heads at the large drops bouncing off the paving stones of the Outer Close and remarked, ‘Now if only we were allowed to wear plaids with our gowns …’

Both men turned to look at him. Behind him the cry of ‘It’s raining!’ had run round the hall, in Scots and Latin, and some jostling began as people dragged silk-lined hoods and rich gowns over their heads in the crowd.

‘Ah, Gilbert,’ said the Principal, switching to the scholarly tongue. ‘It is good to see you. Do you remember David Cunningham’s nephew, Dean, who was one of our better determinants in — let me see — ’84, wasn’t it? And then — ’

‘Paris, sir,’ Gil supplied. ‘Law. Licentiate in Canon Law.’

‘Oh, aye. And now trained as a notary with your uncle, I believe?’ Gil nodded, and bent a knee briefly in response to the Dean’s inclined biretta. Someone complained as his elbow met a ribcage, and he threw a word of apology over his shoulder. The Dean was speaking to him.

‘Are you the man about to be married?’

‘I am,’ agreed Gil, bracing himself for the usual congratulatory remarks. At least this is an educated man, he thought. Not like Jaikie.

‘Hmf. It seems a pity to waste your education,’ the Dean pronounced. ‘Why marry her? Why not take a mistress, if you must, and pursue the church career?’

Gil swallowed his astonishment.

‘My uncle thought otherwise,’ he said, taking refuge in politeness again.

‘Hmf,’ repeated the Dean, and surveyed him with an ice-blue stare. ‘You have never undertaken the required course of lectures, Gilbert?’

‘What, since I left here? No, sir. The opportunity has not presented itself.’

‘Would you come to see me about that? We cannot get regents from outwith the college, and if you were to carry out your duty in delivering such a course it would benefit both the bachelors and yourself, since the bachelors could add another book to their list, and by it your degree would be completed and you would be properly entitled to the master’s bonnet you are wearing.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Gil, torn between annoyance, embarrassment and admiration. Patrick Elphinstone nodded, and turned to look out at the weather.

‘Aha! I think it’s easing a bit. Amid, scholastici,’ he said, pitching his voice without difficulty to reach all ears above the buzz of conversation. ‘We can set out now. Full academic dress, I remind you. The rain is no excuse. Shall we go, Principal?’

Bowing politely to one another, the two men stepped into the drizzle to descend the stair to the courtyard.

‘All right for him,’ muttered a voice behind Gil as the Masters of Arts followed on. ‘The number of benefices he’s got, he can afford a new gown every week if he wants.’

‘He’ll hear you,’ said Gil, turning to look into the black-browed, long-jawed face at his shoulder. ‘Is that you, Nick? I thought I knew the voice.’

‘Aye, Gil.’ Nicholas Kennedy, Master of Arts, grinned briefly at him. They slipped into place behind the last of the graduates, and Maister Kennedy continued, ‘You’re not too grand to speak to me, then, having been to Paris and all that?’

‘I would be,’ Gil responded, ‘but you heard the Dean. I’m not entitled to this bonnet, and I take it you are.’

‘Christ aid, yes.’ His friend grimaced, his shaggy brows twitching. ‘Course of twenty lectures to the junior bachelors on Peter of Spain. This makes the fourth year I’ve delivered it. What an experience. I tell you, Gil,’ he said, making for the horses ahead of his place in the order of precedence, ‘the man who invented the regenting system was probably a torturer in his spare time.’ He hitched gown and cassock round his waist and swung himself into the wet saddle. ‘Did one of the songmen tell me you’re betrothed? Is that what the Dean was on about? I thought you were for the priesthood and the Law, like the Dean said.’

‘That’s right,’ said Gil, standing in his stirrups so that he could bundle the skirt of his own cassock to protect his hose. ‘It’s all changed. Married life awaits me. My uncle and Peter Mason are working out the terms, and we hope to sign the contract this week or next.’

‘And that’s you set up for life. Congratulations, man. You always did have all the luck,’ said his friend enviously. ‘God, what I’d give to get out of this place, chaplain to some quiet old lady somewhere, never see another student in my life.’ He stared round, and nodded at a knot of students in their belted gowns of red or blue or grey. ‘That lot, for instance. They’ll sing Mass for us like angels, Bernard Stewart’ll make sure of that, but they’re a bunch of fiends, I tell you. If we get through the entertainment without someone deliberately fouling things I’ll buy the candles for St Thomas’s for the year. Oh, God, there’s William.’

‘The entertainment,’ repeated Gil. ‘I’d forgotten the entertainment. Don’t tell me you’re in charge, Nick?’

‘Very well, I won’t,’ said Nick, ‘but I am. For my sins.’

‘What are you giving us?’

‘Oh, it’s a play, as prescribed. I won’t tell you any more,’ said Nick rather sourly. ‘I don’t want to raise your expectations. What does your minnie say about your marriage? I mind she had other plans for you.’

‘She’ll come round to it,’ said Gil, uncomfortably reminded of Alys’s remark about his mother’s letter.

With much shuffling and jostling, and delays caused by people struggling back into gown and hood and retrieving felt caps dislodged in the process, the Faculty got itself on horseback and arranged in order. The University Beadle, peering back along the line, nodded, raised his hat to the Dean, and gave the signal to move off as the sun came out again.

Clattering up the High Street, Gil hitched at the layers of worsted he had wadded to sit on, and looked around at the other Faculty members present. At the head of the procession the Beadle was attended by a handful of senior students, presumably all those who could muster a horse and gown for the occasion. Demure behind them, decked in the Faculty’s collection of blue academic hoods, rode a favoured five of the non-regent Masters, followed closely by those other Masters of Arts who, like Gil, were living in the burgh and had been unable to avoid the requirement to attend, and Maister Kennedy, quite out of his proper position. The Faculty’s Man of Law and Scribe, side by side in their red legal robes, were succeeded by someone Gil did not know, who must be the Second Regent, and beside him baby-faced old Thomas Forsyth, his tonsure hidden by a round felt hat with a stalk like an apple’s. Behind them rode the Dean and the Principal, with four college servants in blue velvet, and bringing up the rear, wearing the expression of a man who knows disasters are happening in his absence, was John Shaw the Faculty Steward on a fat pony. Some way behind him rattled a donkey-cart laden with the green branches which would be handed out at St Thomas Martyr’s.

‘Why do we have the Beadle with us?’ Gil asked Nick Kennedy. ‘He’s a University servant and this is an Arts Faculty affair.’

‘Ah, but John Doby is Rector this year,’ Nick pointed out, ‘and John Gray as Beadle is the Rector’s servant. So we invited him along to make the procession look good, and quite incidentally to lend us the tapestries and cushions he keeps for graduations. Half our costumes for the play are out of his store,’ he added.

The procession clopped and jingled up through the town. Dogs barked, and several small boys ran alongside shouting rude remarks, until Dean Elphinstone himself identified one by name and promised to call on his father.

‘That man is an asset to the college,’ Gil observed to Nick Kennedy.

‘Oh, he is. You should see him in Faculty meeting. He has all those old men following him like an ox-team, and Tommy Forsyth and John Goldsmith agreeing with one another. He’s some kind of cousin of William Elphinstone in Aberdeen, and you can see the resemblance.’

‘And who is that riding beside Maister Forsyth?’

Nick twisted round in time to see the man in question put out a hand to Maister Forsyth’s bridle as the horses lurched up the steep portion of the High Street called the Bell o’ the Brae.

‘That’s Patey Coventry the Second Regent. He’s from Perthshire somewhere. A madman. He’s all right.’

‘Mad? How so?’

‘He’s Master of Arts from some obscure foreign place, he’s already collected a Bachelor of Decreets from St Andrews, and now he’s working on a Bachelor of Sacred Theology here as well as delivering a full set of lectures and disputations. Says he just likes learning.’ Nick hauled on his reins as his horse attempted to go down the vennel that led to its stable. ‘Get on, you stupid brute, we’ve a way to go yet!’

Past the Girth Cross, past the almshouses of St Nicholas’ Hospital, past the Archbishop’s castle, the procession continued. Residents of the upper town, cathedral staff, clergy and their dependants, paused about their business to watch. Outside the crumbling chapel of St Thomas Martyr beyond the Stablegreen Port, the leaders halted. More servants appeared to hold the horses while elderly academics dismounted. The students behind the Beadle leapt down and hastened into the chapel.

Gil, watching, saw the red-haired William pause by David Gray the Faculty Scribe as he straightened the creases from his gown. Whatever the boy said, it carried only to the lawyer’s ears, where it was unwelcome; Gil thought Gray’s narrow disappointed face paled, and he shook his head without speaking. The student vanished after his fellows, his red hair still visible in the shadows within.

Curious, thought Gil, and finding himself beside Maister Forsyth, lent a hand as he tried to straighten his fur-lined cope.

‘Thank you, Gilbert,’ said the old man. ‘That was a very elegant answer you gave on your last disputation. What was the question again …?’

‘I don’t recall, sir,’ said Gil, holding the slit at the front of the cope open.

‘Ah, I have it. It was in the Metaphysics, I believe.’ Maister Forsyth’s gloved hands popped out of the single opening. He sketched a benediction, and hurried into the chapel after the other senior members. Gil cast his mind back over the years, discovered that his last disputation had indeed been the one on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and marvelled. That would have been in ’84. Since then, he had spent better than five years abroad; Scotland had been convulsed by a rising which had killed King James, third of the name, and replaced him by another James, fourth of the name and the same age as some of these students; Gil’s own father and elder brothers had died in support of James Third, and he himself had spent another couple of years almost imprisoned in the Cathedral Court learning to be a notary. Maister Forsyth appeared to have noticed none of this.

‘It’s the Mirror of Wisdom effect. Should we go in?’

Gil looked round, and found the Second Regent at his elbow. He was a small man in his thirties, in a blue cloth cope and hood which appeared to have been made for somebody taller; his tonsure was surrounded by a mop of black curls, and he peered up at Gil from one bright blue eye, the other being directed firmly at the bridge of his nose in the worst squint Gil had ever seen.

‘I’m sorry?’ he said blankly, following him into the little chapel. In the chancel, beyond the heavy semicircular arch, a choir of students was arranging itself round the huge music-book on its stand, and behind them in the dimness movement suggested the presence of the priest.

‘Senior University men,’ said the small man in graceful Latin, ‘see the world entirely through the mirror of wisdom, like poor James Ireland. This mirror does not reflect matters of politics, public life, private life, or money. Maister Forsyth is probably quite unaware of how long it is since he heard your elegant answer. How long is it, in fact?’

‘Eight years.’ Gil grinned. ‘I see your point.’

‘Forgive me — I know your name, Nick Kennedy pointed you out, but I should introduce myself — ’

‘I could say the same.’

The unseen priest’s voice issued the invitation to prayer, and as the six students round the music-stand tossed the words of the Kyrie higher and higher Gil suddenly realized that this was the first full Mass he had heard since his life turned upside-down. A week ago these words had formed part of his own destiny; this morning, although he did not know where he would find a living, he knew it would be on this side of the chancel arch, with Alys as his wife. The idea seemed to reshape the Mass; he found himself stumbling over the responses, which he should not have been making, like a half-taught clerk. The velvet-gowned Faculty servants beside him looked askance, and moved away a little. Pulling himself together, he tried to concentrate on the singing, over the murmured prayers and other conversations of the members of the procession.

Whatever setting they were using, it was being dominated by the first alto line, sung in a confident, rich head-voice slightly ahead of the other singers, and Gil was not surprised to find as his eyes adjusted to the dimness that the singer was the same red-haired William.

‘Listen to the little toad,’ muttered Maister Kennedy at his shoulder. ‘What did I say? He sings like an angel. That cousin of his would be quite good if William wasny there.’

‘Hush,’ said the Second Regent. ‘Later.’

Maister Kennedy snorted, but held his peace. The Mass wore on, and the light at the chapel’s tiny round-headed windows faded, brightened, faded again. When the door was finally dragged open and the Faculty stood back for the senior members to leave, the same group of students was revealed waiting to hand out dripping branches of hawthorn improbably decked with bunches of daisies.

‘Christ aid!’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘We’ll be soaked. The University will be wiped out, for we’ll all be dead of lung-rot.’

Gil, looking over the heads of the congregation, was watching William. The boy seemed exalted, his bony face flushed, his eyes glittering as if he had stepped into a new life. He handed a branch of wet leaves to the Principal, with a murmured comment which brought Maister Doby’s head round sharply. William smiled broadly, and moved on to present another bough to John Shaw the Steward. Maister Shaw, attempting to oversee the green boughs as well as the horse-holders, waved him aside impatiently, and got another murmured remark. He shook his head angrily, and William moved away, looking down his nose. The Steward paused almost fearfully to look at his retreating back.

‘The more people are present,’ said Patrick Coventry behind him, ‘the longer it takes, in a kind of geometric progression.’

‘You mean two people take more than twice as long?’ Gil prompted absently. William had moved out of sight now.

‘Two people take four times as long, and three people take nine times.’

‘This means there must be a limit to the numbers for an event like this,’ said Gil, thinking about it, ‘or we would reach a point where it took so long to get everyone mounted that the older members would have succumbed to their years before the procession moved off.’

‘We may have reached that already,’ Maister Coventry observed.

‘What are you two talking about?’ asked Maister Kennedy. ‘Are we to be here all day?’

Achieving the door, Gil stepped out into the sunshine, received a dripping branch from the very young treble, and got back on his horse, remarking to the Second Regent, ‘I feel we will get wet if we are here much longer.’

Patrick Coventry, eyeing the black clouds piling up above the houses of the Chanonry, nodded agreement.

‘It looks like thunder, indeed. I think we will move off soon. And when we get back we make one more procession on foot, right round the outer court and into the Lang Schule — ’

One of the students attending the Beadle worked his way through the throng under the hawthorn branches, looking harassed and saying, in alternate Latin and Scots, ‘Places, please, maisters! Order of precedence, maisters! Places, please!’

‘- for the Faculty meeting, to ensure that we are at peace with one another and with the other faculties,’ quoted Patrick Coventry resolutely. ‘And then we have the feast and then, Heaven help us, we have the entertainment. I still think it should have been before the meeting.’

‘What, now?’ said Gil, startled. ‘I thought it was in the statutes — it’s supposed to be after the feast.’

‘Well,’ said Maister Coventry, ‘there was the year two of the Muses were sick, whether from excitement or over-eating, and ruined their costumes. There was the year the bejants got hold of a skin of wine by mistake, and the audience was full of drunken fourteen-year-olds. But I think what settled the matter in my mind was the year everyone who ate the aigre-douce of pork was out the back lined up for the privy and the play had to be abandoned. I’ve been arguing in favour of the Lang Schule before the feast for a year or two now. Perhaps we should take our places.’

The other graduates did likewise, the elderly members were helped back into the saddle, and straggling somewhat, the Faculty made its way down the length of the High Street to the Mercat Cross, rounded it, accompanied by occasional comments, ironic cheers and whistles from the burgesses of Glasgow whose Sunday business was being interrupted, and returned, past the Tolbooth, past the mason’s house, past Black-friars, to the college gateway.

Here they dismounted, and after some more milling about the procession formed up again on foot. Led by the Beadle, the Faculty made its stately way through the arched tunnel into the outer court of the college, once round the courtyard to the accompaniment of singing, and into the largest of the three lecture-rooms, where academic order of precedence broke into some rather unseemly jostling for seats on the long benches. Gil, finding himself an unobtrusive corner, was surprised to be joined by both Maister Kennedy and Maister Coventry.

‘Should you not be near the front?’ he asked. ‘Do you not intend to speak?’

‘I intend to sleep,’ said Maister Kennedy, ‘and anyway once the Dean gets going nobody else can get a word in.’

‘I remember,’ said Gil. ‘Full of fruyte and rethorikly pykit.’

‘You and your quotations,’ grumbled his friend. ‘Move up, will you, and let me in against the wall.’

When the Dean began to speak, Gil perceived the wisdom of this. It was a long speech, expounding the duties of a scholar, ornamented with illustrations, parables and epigrams. The masters listened with polite attention, except for Maister Kennedy. The students developed the glazed look of young men listening to speeches. Finally the Dean sat down, to polite applause, and Maister Forsyth spoke at rather less length, dwelling on only two of the scholarly duties which the Dean had enumerated. He should, he declared in elegant concise periods, treat all fellow scholars as his brothers, and love them accordingly; and he should regard the college where he was educated as his mother, and treat it with the respect due from a loving son.

‘He’s never met my minnie,’ said someone quietly near Gil, and someone else sniggered.

Maister Forsyth achieved his peroration and seated himself, to more enthusiastic applause. The Principal, in the lecturer’s pulpit, invited the rest of the Faculty to join in the discussion.

‘Not that you can call it a discussion,’ commented Maister Coventry, ‘since all the speakers are on the same side.’

In descending order of rank, Masters of Arts rose and delivered laboriously constructed speeches agreeing with the propositions already put forward. The youngest students, the bejants, became restless. Gil was aware of his stomach rumbling. Two rows in front of him, the red-haired alto appeared to be writing in his wax tablets, to judge by the cupped left hand just visible round his faded blue shoulder. Taking notes? Gil wondered.

‘I want my dinner,’ said Nick Kennedy, waking. ‘Where have we got to? Oh, it’s the magistrand. Not long now.’ He paused to listen to the raw-boned fourth-year student who was drawing a somewhat repetitious parallel between the care of a mother for her sons and that of the Faculty for its students, and turned to Gil. ‘Is that what it’s been about?’ he asked in sudden dismay. ‘The college as mother?’ Gil nodded. ‘Oh, fient hae it!’

‘What ails you, Nick?’ asked Maister Coventry across Gil.

‘The Dean has probably stolen all our best lines,’ said Maister Kennedy gloomily. ‘You’ll see. It’s too close by far to the theme of our play.’

‘Sh!’ said Maister Coventry. ‘I want to hear Lowrie Livingstone. He will speak next.’

The fourth-year student sat down, to applause from his peers and teachers. The younger students were fidgeting audibly now. A fair boy two rows from the front began to gather himself together to rise to his feet, but before he could do so the red-haired alto stood up and said in clear and fluent Latin, ‘Teachers, masters, brothers, I have a question to ask.’

Heads turned. The fair boy dropped back on to his bench, mouth open. Gil, looking at the senior members of Faculty seated in the stall-seats on either side of the pulpit, saw David Gray freeze like a hare that hears a dog.

‘Then ask, William,’ said the Dean. William bowed gracefully.

‘This is my question,’ he said. ‘We are taught to regard the college as our mother.’ The Dean inclined his head. ‘But what if one discovers that another of her sons is ill-using her?’

‘Make yourself clearer,’ directed the Dean after a moment.

‘What if another of the college’s sons has misused her money,’ said William in that clearly enunciated Latin, ‘or has inculcated heretical beliefs in her students?’

There was a sudden murmur of scandalized exclamation. The Dean, lifting his voice over it, said, ‘If one were to suspect such terrible and painful things of another member of the college, he should go quietly and reveal his suspicions to the Principal of the college, who would set due enquiry in motion.’ He fixed William with his eye. ‘Does that answer your question?’

‘But what if,’ persisted William, ‘the Principal is not impartial in the matter? To whom should one go then?’

‘What is the little toad up to now?’ asked Nick Kennedy.

‘He should go to the Rector,’ said the Dean, his manner cooling with every word, ‘when those are separate persons. If they are the same person, as for instance just now, then he should go to the Chancellor of the University, that is to Robert our Archbishop. However I must point out that one who brought such serious allegations against a fellow scholar without a firm foundation of truth would be guilty of perjury, being in clear breach of his oath of allegiance to the Rector and to the college.’ There was a crackle of ice in his voice. ‘Does that answer your question?’

‘It answers it,’ said William, allowing a shred of doubt to creep in.

‘Then let us continue,’ said the Dean.