The Stolen Voice

Chapter Six

When Gil stepped through the tanyard gate, Maister Cornton was supervising two sturdy journeymen at the task of topping up a pit full of thick brown liquid and seething skins with bucketfuls of something equally brown which stank richly. He had cast off his gown, which hung over a trestle near him, but was readily identified by his decisive gestures and competent directions.

‘Yon’s the maister,’ said Peter unnecessarily. Gil nodded, and stood waiting, on the other side of the gate from a row of reeking buckets, looking about him and trying not to breathe deeply. The yard was busy; two more journeymen were unloading a cart full of goat-hides, unwinding the stiffened, hairy bundles and tossing them into a pit of water, an older man was scraping with a two-handled blade at a skin draped over another trestle, and three apprentices were discussing a game of football and stirring a steaming vat which smelled nearly as strong as the stuff the journeymen were using. One of them noticed Gil, abandoned his long paddle with obvious relief and came forward.

‘And how can I help you, maister?’ He grinned hopefully. ‘If it’s hides you’re after, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve some good red-dyed the now, make a bonnie doublet for yoursel, and some white-tawed kidskin to make gloves for a lady, fine as silk it is, fit for the Queen herself.’

‘I need a word with Maister Cornton,’ said Gil. ‘I might look at skins after it.’

‘Right, then, Martin,’ said his master, leaving the journeymen to their task. ‘A word, was it, maister?’ He assessed Gil with quick sharp eyes, taking in Peter’s livery and Gil’s own dress and bearing. ‘Is it about Maister Stirling, then? Come away in the counting-house and get a seat, if you will.’

‘You’re anxious about him, are you?’ Gil prompted, following the tanner into the counting-house, which proved to be merely a weather-tight chamber at one end of the drying-loft. It was evidently the heart of Cornton’s domain; there was a green reckoning-cloth spread on a desk in one corner, a rack of shelves in another, and papers and scraps of leather everywhere.

‘I am. He’s been a good landlord to me, the three years I’ve dwelt here by the port, and if there’s something come amiss to him I’d as soon hear o’t and make my preparations to deal wi whoever inherits his property. No to mention amassing the heriot fee.’ Cornton cleared a bundle of dockets off a stool and gestured to it, then sat down on his own polished seat by the desk. He was a short fair man with a quick manner, rather younger than his wife, Gil thought. Presumably she had brought good money to the match. And when had she come by it, he wondered, recalling that her daughter had lacked a dowry.

‘I’d a word with Mistress Cornton at the house just now,’ he said. ‘I think you saw Maister Stirling ten or twelve days since.’

‘July twenty-fifth,’ said Cornton promptly, and turned to the board which hung by his head, its tapes securing more bills and accounts, along with a brightly coloured woodcut of St Andrew and a child’s drawing of a woman in a striped gown. He picked out a slip with a brief note scrawled on it. ‘I’ve a note o’t here. And we reckoned up when would suit us both for him to uplift my rent, and between him being at the Bishop’s call and me having accounts to collect on we cam down on August third. But he’s never been back, though in general he’s prompt to the very hour of what we’ve agreed, and the word in Perth is that the Bishop’s seeking him, and no knowing where he’s got to.’

‘What time of day was it when he left you?’

‘Three-four hours after noon?’ said Cornton. ‘No later, I’d say.’

‘As early as that? Do you know where he went?’

Cornton shook his head. ‘I saw him to the gate, maister, but other than that he walked off along the Blackfriars path I couldny say.’

‘What, you mean he was here?’ Gil asked, startled. ‘I’d thought he called at the house.’

‘Oh, aye, but Effie sent him out here, since here’s where I was. We’d a load of goat fells to take out of the first soak that day, and the men hates the task, you have to keep them at it.’

‘The men the Bishop’s steward sent out,’ Gil said carefully, ‘asked at all the ports, but nobody had seen Maister Stirling pass.’

Cornton grunted. ‘That’s no surprise. If a party of wild Ersche cam in across the brig here Attie might notice them, but I wouldny warrant it.’

Now why did the Bishop’s men not know that? Gil wondered.

‘And did you speak of aught else?’ he asked. ‘Anything that might tell me what the man was thinking that day?’ The tanner looked hard at him ‘I’m charged wi finding him, as you obviously worked out for yourself, so anything you can tell me that would be a help, I’d be grateful for.’

‘Aye, I see that.’ Cornton paused a moment, arranging his thoughts. ‘Did Mistress Cornton say he’d met her in the street?’

‘Aye, and spoke to the children,’ Gil agreed.

Cornton’s face twisted. ‘Right. So what I got was one of his clever remarks about cuckoo chicks. Mind you, then he said it must be a comfort to herself to have the bairns wi her, and to tell her he’d pray for her lass. The man’s like that, maister,’ he said earnestly, ‘full of jokes at someone else’s expense, and then turns round and offers a kindness you’d not look for.’

‘How did he know the bairns?’ Gil asked.

‘Seems he kent their father, and you’ve only to look at the brats to see whose get they are. Asked me was Drummond still wi us. I was glad to tell him,’ said Cornton with restraint, ‘that the man was never under my roof save to leave his bastards. He lay at the Blackfriars the whole time he was at Perth.’

‘You don’t like Canon Drummond?’

‘I do not. Nor does he like me.’ The tanner grinned wryly. ‘And that’s exactly what Maister Stirling asked me, and I said to him. Whereupon he said, You’re one of a mighty company, Maister Cornton, and then asked me if I’d heard the tale of the laddie returned from Elfhame. Which I had, a course, as who in Perthshire hasny, but I’d no notion it was Drummond’s brother. Mind you, since I took care no to exchange a needless word wi the man, he could hardly ha tellt me hissel. So it seems Maister Stirling was a friend o this laddie at the sang-schule, and hoped to hear more of him.’ He eyed Gil warily. ‘I wonder if he went along to the Blackfriars when he left me? The path he took would lead him that way, for certain.’

‘I’ll ask there,’ said Gil. ‘You’ve been a lot of help, Maister Cornton.’ He rose to take his leave, and as the other man rose likewise said, ‘Tell me, was Drummond in his normal state when you saw him?’

Cornton shrugged.

‘Near enough. He’s never been more than civil to Nan — to Mistress Cornton, for all he made a hoor of her one daughter.’ He paused. ‘See, my wife’s first man, Jimmy Chalmers, had a few reverses to his business in his time. Dealt in fells and skins, he did, and lost a couple shiploads, oh, twelve year syne it would be, had to sell up. His two sons — Nan’s laddies — went to sea, and done well, but the lass took service with a kinswoman in Dunblane, and met Drummond.’ He scowled. ‘And then when Chalmers’ business recovered and he could dower his lass, Drummond wouldny release her from the agreement they’d made.’

Gil pulled a face.

‘He was within his rights, I suppose,’ he said. ‘And the lass herself? How did she feel about it?’

‘She’d the laddie, a bairn at the breast by then,’ said Cornton, ‘and I’d wager he threatened to keep the boy. Whatever the way o’t, she stayed.’ He grunted. ‘Any road, he was much as usual when we saw him, full of orders about how the boy was to be reared and schooled, never a word about the wee lass. I bade him be civil to my wife under her own roof, and he’d to swallow the rebuke, seeing he wanted a favour of us, but he was ill pleased.’ He looked about him. ‘I’d best put all secure in here and then get the men to start locking down. Nobody’s like to thieve a pit-full of half-cured skins,’ he said, grinning again, ‘but the finished hides needs to be stowed safe for the night.’

Leaving the man shuffling papers, Gil paused in the yard, where Peter was gossiping with the journeymen by the cart, and took the time to bargain for some of the white kidskins, which were indeed unusually soft and fine and would make excellent gloves for Alys. The apprentice Martin folded the leathers and tied them with a length of cord, and said with interest:

‘Is that right, what your man says, maister, that that priest has vanished away?’

‘I’m trying to find him,’ said Gil.

‘What priest is it?’ asked the youngest apprentice, a small lad in an out-at-elbows doublet and wrinkled hose, still prodding glumly at the stinking vat. They had put the fire out beneath it, but the smell seemed even more powerful.

‘How d’you mean, what priest?’ said the third one.

‘Well, there was two,’ said the smaller boy.

‘There was just the one, Malky,’ said Martin kindly. ‘Him wi the badges on his hat. He cam in here and spoke wi the maister, as he’s done before.’

‘There was two,’ said Malky. ‘I saw them on the bank when I went home to my supper.’

‘Did you?’ said Gil. ‘Who was the other one?’

‘Och, the other one,’ said Malky vaguely. ‘Him that brought the bairns to the maister’s house. Wi the hair, you ken.’ He gestured, describing fluffy hair below a hat.

‘When was that?’ Gil asked.

‘When I went home to my supper,’ the boy repeated. ‘After the badge one was here. So which one is it that’s vanished away, maister?’

‘The badge one,’ said Gil.

‘I thought so,’ said Malky. ‘See, he left his hat. My, he’s passed on a many pilgrimages to collect those badges. I wonder what he’s doing penance for, and him a priest too?’

Across the yard, Maister Cornton checked in the doorway of the counting-house, met Gil’s eye for a moment, and deliberately stepped out of sight. And just in time, thought Gil as Malky looked over his shoulder for his master.

‘Left his hat?’

‘I found it,’ said Malky, nodding.

‘Tell me about it,’ Gil invited.

Reading between the awkward statements, he ascertained that Malky, going home for his supper on the twenty-fifth of July, had spied the man in the hat with many badges and the man with the fluffy hair, walking together near the Blackfriars wall. Curious to know what priests discussed at their leisure, he had slipped up behind them.

‘But they were talking sermons,’ he said in disappointment.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘What else would priests talk of, you gowk?’

‘Many things,’ said Gil. ‘What made you think it was sermons, Malky?’

‘Well, it was all about forgiving,’ explained the boy. ‘And maybe confession, and all long words like that.’

Gil nodded. ‘And then what did you do?’

‘Gaed hame to my supper, for it was late. Later than today, maybe.’

‘And what about the hat?’

Malky had found it lying on the bank the next morning, damp with dew but undamaged, when he came by on his way to the yard.

‘I brought it in here,’ he said. ‘I thought when the man cam back to see my maister I could gie it back to him.’

Looking at the innocent expression, Gil reserved judgement. It might well be true.

‘Where is it?’ he asked.

It was in the boy’s kist in the long shed. He ran off to fetch it, and Martin said anxiously, ‘He’ll get himsel took up for theft, maister, if he goes on like that. Will you warn him, maybe?’

‘He’s daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘Keeping it that way. Now I’d ha sellt it, and got money for ale.’

‘And that is theft, Ally Johnston,’ said Martin roundly. The boy Malky came back, bearing the hat. It was a fairly ordinary round bonnet with a flat top and a brim which turned up all the way round, of wine-coloured felt as Wat the steward had said, rendered unusual by the many badges pinned or stitched to the brim, silver and pewter, each one different.

‘See, it’s no hurt, maister,’ he said in triumph. ‘I took good care of it.’ He thrust it at Gil. ‘Would you maybe take it, maister, if the man’s no coming back to our yard? You could give it back to him?’

‘I’ll take it, Malky,’ agreed Gil, ‘and thank you for looking after it so carefully.’ He glanced over the boy’s head to where the tanner had emerged from the counting-house again. ‘Now if your maister will give you leave, I want you to show me where you found it.’

Out on the track that ran by the Ditch he looked about him again. There were two tanyards cheek by jowl, with a skinner to one side of them and a dyer to the other. A path led off between the two in the general direction of the barking dogs. Cornton’s was the smaller in extent, but seemed to specialize in the luxury end of the trade, with the stacks of small hides dyed in bright colours which he had already admired arranged on pallets and carts where the passer-by could see them over the shoulder-high fence of stout planks.

Malky led him past the other tanyard and the skinner, to pick up a well-trodden path which worked its way westward along the outer bank of the Ditch. The Black-friars’ wall stood high and forbidding, perhaps a hundred paces to the right, and on the open ground between path and wall the evening sunshine was bright on yellow broom and wildflowers.

‘They were walking about and talking there,’ said Malky, gesturing, ‘the two men. I like to go home this way,’ he confided, ‘acos there’s all wee birds in the broom. I like wee birds, see, maister, my granda that’s a forester taught me all their names. Last week there was two gowdspinks eating the thistles there, all red and yellow, right bonnie they were.’

‘Can you remember anything the men said?’ Gil asked, looking at the thistles rather than the boy. There were no goldfinches today, though many small birds chirped and whirred in the bushes. Malky paused a moment in thought.

‘No really,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Just what I said, about forgiving. One of them said, Even Judas was forgiven,’ he recalled, brightening. ‘How would he know that, maister? I thought Judas was burning in Hell. And the other one said, Aye, but he hangit himsel.’ The intonation said, Rather than hanging someone else.

‘Which one said that?’ Gil asked, trying hard to sound casual.

‘The one that brought the bairns to my maister’s house. He’s got a voice like a corncrake in the long grass, so he has.’

That was clear enough, though whether Drummond had referred to himself, to Stirling, or to some other he would have to work out later. He coaxed the boy a little, but could extract no more information; finally he said, ‘And where did you find the man’s hat? Can you mind that?’

‘Oh, aye,’ Malky assured him, ‘for there was a throstle’s nest just near it. Come and I’ll show you.’

The place he picked out was further along the bank, where a clump of hazel and ash provided shade. The grass was well trampled, and a young couple in intent conversation within the grove turned to stare at them when Malky stopped.

‘It was yonder,’ he said firmly, ‘just lying on the grass there, like if it had been dropped. I wondered at it,’ he confided, ‘for a priest doesny like to go bareheaded for the sun burning his shaved bit, does he?’

Gil, with a sudden recollection of Andrew Drummond’s servant putting his master’s hat back on his head, nodded at this and cast about, looking at the ground. There was no likelihood of picking up any tracks here after two weeks, the path was too well used and the pair of lovers under the trees were hardly the first to choose this spot. The bank of the Ditch, a few yards away, showed no useful sign at all. He stood looking at the dark water sliding past, the weeds waving in the current and the ducks paddling about under the other bank where the gardens of the biggest properties on the Northgate came down to the water. The occupiers of those must be questioned, anyone else using the path must be asked if they saw the two priests -

‘It’s getting near my supper,’ said Malky diffidently.

‘It is,’ he agreed, glancing at the sky. The sun was round beyond the west. It must be close to Vespers now, little point in disturbing the Blackfriars who would also be about to sit down to their frugal supper and then go to sing the Office. Moreover it had been a long day. Giving the boy a coin, he dismissed him, and after establishing that the couple lurking in the shadows had not been there at any time when two priests were walking on the path, something which they seemed to think deserved congratulation, he turned towards the Red Brig and the Bishop’s house.

‘Found on the path?’ repeated Bishop Brown, staring.

At his elbow his elderly chaplain bleated in distress. He had a long gentle face and straggling white hair, and wore a felt cap with a rolled brim which somehow suggested the curving horns of the small sheep Gil had seen on the ride down from Balquhidder. His voice reinforced the impression.

‘Is it truly Jaikie’s hat?’ he asked, peering short-sightedly at it and crossing himself. ‘Our Lady save us! Why would he leave his hat on the path?’

‘Aye, it’s Jaikie’s own hat.’ The Bishop pushed Jerome’s enquiring muzzle down and turned the hat round, fingering the sequence of silver images. ‘Indeed, I mind when he bought the half of these badges. I’ve joked wi him about the things many a time.’

‘And so have we all, my lord,’ agreed the chaplain. ‘But why would he leave his hat? He’d miss it, surely.’

Ignoring this, Bishop Brown set the hat on his desk and wiped at his eyes. The dog scrambled up to lick his chin, and he patted the creature. ‘Maister Cunningham, what’s come to the poor fellow? It looks bad, I’m fearing me.’

‘It looks bad,’ Gil agreed. ‘I suppose he could have gone into the Town Ditch, though I don’t see why that should have happened. The path where the boy found the hat is yards from the waterside. He could have met with some other misadventure, I suppose, but why he — ’ He stopped, reluctant to express his thoughts at this stage.

‘Into the Ditch?’ repeated Rob Gregor the chaplain. ‘Fallen in? Oh, our blessed Lady preserve him! You think he’s — And I packed up his gear and never thought,’ he said in distress.

‘The houses opposite,’ said the Bishop with decision. Gil nodded, recognizing how a good-humoured man like this could become a bishop. ‘We’ll have Wat send in the morning to ask did they see or hear aught that day, and put a couple fellows wi boats on the Ditch, to drag that stretch. Maybe get the Blackfriars to send their lay brothers out and cover the meadow-land, in case he’s lying under a gorse bush. Do you think the laddie was telling you the truth?’

‘I think so,’ Gil said. ‘He’s guileless, I’d say, and the tanner called him a good laddie.’

‘I’ll get a word wi him myself, just the same. I should have taken this into my own hands days ago,’ said Brown fretfully, stroking his dog’s ears. ‘Here’s you turned up all this in just an hour or two, and my men got nowhere in two weeks. If we’d just known of his interests by the port!’

‘I think it might not have saved him,’ said Gil deliberately. ‘I think he may have been dead by the time he was missed.’

‘Aye, but where is he?’ demanded the Bishop, over another distressed bleat from his chaplain. ‘What came to him? What did Andrew Drummond want wi him?’ He lifted the hat again, and turned it in his hands. Jerome sniffed at it with interest. ‘If this could tell us, eh, Maister Cunningham?’

Gil answered something conventional, but Brown was not listening. He had tilted the hat to the evening light from the window and was studying it intently, counting and telling off the images.

‘Had Jaikie rearranged his badges lately, Rob?’ he asked.

‘No, no, my lord,’ the chaplain shook his head. ‘He was quite particular in that. They’d each their own place, he’d spend an hour putting them back if ever the bonnet had to be brushed. And the time the seagull blessed him, d’you recall, sir — ’

‘What have you seen, sir?’ Gil asked.

‘They’ve been moved lately,’ said the Bishop. ‘Look at this.’ He held the item where both Gil and the chaplain could see it, and pointed. ‘There’s been one there. You can see the mark where the felt held its colour, and the holes for the pin, and there’s another there, and another — ’

‘There is,’ agreed Gil, annoyed with himself. ‘You’ve a sharp eye, sir.’ He bent closer, looking at the traces Brown had identified, and picked at the turned-up brim to look behind it. ‘I’d say that’s been done very recently. The colour hasn’t faded any further. It looks as if one has gone, maybe two, and the rest that are pinned not sewn have been moved about to hide the gap.’ He pulled a face. ‘I could be wrong about the boy Malky, I suppose, but I’d not have said he’d interfered with the hat. Did Stirling ever mention losing one?’

‘No, no, never!’ protested the chaplain.

‘No that I heard him,’ said the Bishop, looking hard at Gil. ‘Do you think it has some bearing on his disappearance?’

‘It might,’ said Gil, ‘but it’s a thing untoward in any case. Can you tell which are missing, my lord?’

‘Let me see.’ The Bishop turned the object again. ‘Ninian, Kentigern, Andrew, Giles. There’s Tain, there’s Haddington, Dunblane, Elgin … All the Scots ones are here. It must be one of the foreign ones, and those I’m less sure of. Rob, see if you can tell us what’s gone.’ He suddenly thrust the hat at Rob Gregor and covered his eyes with one stubby-fingered hand. ‘Ah, my poor Jaikie! What came to you, then?’

‘I can’t right say,’ said Maister Gregor, peering closely at the badges. ‘There’s St William of Perth from Rochester, that he visited that time we were at London, and there’s St Cuthbert a course, and,’ he turned the hat round, ‘there’s St Paul from the great kirk at London, and the sepulchre of the Kings from Cologne, yes, yes,’ he murmured, ‘they’re all there, but there’s one, no two missing. What ones is it, now? Our Lady of — no, no, there she is.’ He looked up at Gil, with an anxious expression. ‘I canny call them to mind, maister. Let me think on it, and tell them over again, whiles I pray for my poor friend. Ah, Our Lady save him, to think he’s maybe been dead all this time!’

Having had a word with his own men and made certain that they were securely lodged alongside the Bishop’s men-at-arms, and that Peter had returned with the packet of white kidskins, Gil found a bench in a quiet corner in the garden and sat down with a platter of bread and cold meats which Wat the steward had found for him. It had been a very long day, starting in the early August dawn with a forty-mile ride, and he was tired, but the facts and speculations he had collected were dancing round in his head and he needed to put them in order.

The songmen from St John’s Kirk he felt he could dismiss. It looked as if they had departed willingly, and quite possible that they had left Scotland, taking ship from the harbour which he could almost see from where he sat. There were plenty of places in the Low Countries or even further afield where good singers would be welcomed; certainly in Paris the accuracy and purity of tone of Scots and particularly of Ersche voices had been much admired. It might even be that the Precentor at St John’s Kirk was right and someone was building himself a choir of Scots singers, but there was probably no way to find out from here.

Which left the question of what had happened to James Stirling. He stretched his legs out, regretting the absence of Socrates who would have had his chin on his knee by now, and missing Alys and her quick understanding and penetrating insight. Was it this evening she was invited to the harvest celebration in Glenbuckie, or was it tomorrow?

Stirling, he told himself firmly, James Stirling had gone to speak to Andrew Drummond, had been seen speaking to him. He had not returned to his post after the conversation, and his hat had been found the next morning, its badges apparently interfered with. That much was solid fact. What were the possibilities?

He might have gone into the Ditch, but it seemed unlikely. There were no traces. We can try dragging the channel, he thought, but I suspect we’ll raise nothing that way.

The man might have made a sudden decision to follow the two songmen, wherever they had gone, but what would make someone with such a congenial post do such a thing? Could it have been something in the conversation with Drummond? I need to speak to Drummond again, though I doubt if I’ll get any more out of him. That tantalizing snatch of conversation the boy heard was no real help; did it refer to Drummond’s long-distant accident, or to his guilt about his mistress’s death, or to something else? Even Judas was forgiven. -Aye, but he hangit himself. Who had hanged, or killed, or betrayed another, in the present case?

And the question of the missing badge. Someone had removed it from the hat, or found it missing, and taken some pains to hide its absence. A thief, surely, would have taken all the badges and the hat as well. Why remove one badge only? Perhaps someone shared Stirling’s devotion to whichever saint or shrine it represented. He wondered if the chaplain would identify the badge. Let’s not pin our hopes on that either, he thought, and grimaced at the inadvertent pun.

What else? There was the matter of where Stirling was in the two hours between leaving the tanyard and being seen talking to Andrew Drummond. He might have been waiting at the Blackfriars for Drummond, of course, I can ask them that when I call there, he thought. And we could send a few of the Bishop’s men to ask at the various yards and dwellings between the bridge and the Blackfriars, perhaps pick up the trail.

And there is the dog-breeder, he recalled, and recognized the unease which was nagging at him. When he had encountered Mistress Doig more than a year since, it had been her husband who claimed to be the dog-breeder, but his chief occupation seemed to be gathering and selling information. The pair had left Glasgow hurriedly on the same day as Gil had last seen Robert Montgomery, for reasons which were part of the same set of difficult circumstances. He could visualize William Doig now, a squat figure like a chess-piece, no taller than an ell-stick, with powerful arms and shoulders and an ability to conceal his thoughts which a man of law might envy. Could Doig be mixed up in this? Could he have spirited Stirling away on behalf of some other who needed the information he possessed? I’ll speak to Mistress Doig myself, first thing tomorrow, he decided.

He was recalled to his whereabouts by a hesitant bleating. Looking round, he discovered that the evening was beginning to darken, and Maister Gregor was stooped beside him, trying to draw his attention.

‘Er — ’ he said again, more than ever like an old sheep. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Maister Cunningham. Maybe you’re deep in your thoughts?’

‘No, no,’ said Gil, rising politely. ‘Come and sit down, sir.’

‘I’ll not sit down, thank you,’ said Maister Gregor, waving the idea away as if it would sting him. ‘It’s a bit damp for my bones. But I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said again.

‘Was it something you wanted? Can I do something for you?’

‘Well, no,’ the chaplain peered at him in the fading light, ‘it’s just that I thought on what badges it was that’s gone from poor Jaikie’s hat.’

‘Badges? More than one?’ said Gil, and realized that the old man was murmuring one of the prayers for the dead. He waited, and Maister Gregor crossed himself and continued:

‘Aye, indeed, maister, it’s two badges.’

‘And what ones is it?’ said Gil encouragingly,

‘Well, one of them’s St Eloi’s horse from Noyon, unusual it is, and the other’s the only one that was from a female saint’s shrine. Save for Our Lady, and she’s aye a different matter,’ he added as an aside. ‘I mind joking him about it more than once. But the thing is I canny right mind her name.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Gil in disappointment.

‘Aye, for it’s an unusual kind of name. I never heard of anybody given it.’ The old man leaned forward to peer into Gil’s face, and a bony hand came out to clasp his arm. ‘See, her shrine’s somewhere in the Low Countries, but she’s not a Flemish saint, she’s Irish.’

‘Irish?’ repeated Gil.

Maister Gregor nodded. ‘Irish, maister. An Irish princess, so Jaikie told me one time. She fled from Ireland with her confessor, and fetched up at this shrine in the Low Countries, where she heals madmen and women. I don’t recall the rest of the tale, though I think her father came into it somewhere, and I can’t call her name to mind, but I know she’s a healer of the mad.’

‘Right,’ said Gil. ‘Maister Gregor, thank you for telling me this.’

‘Is it any help?’ The sheep-like expression had returned. ‘I think it began with a D. Her name, I mean.’

‘It’s a help,’ said Gil. ‘It’s a lot of help, Maister Gregor.’ It means I can probably dismiss the problem, he was thinking. I don’t see how there can be any connection.

‘I’m glad,’ said the old man. ‘We want to know what’s come to him.’ He peered round in the dusk. ‘I’d best go indoors, maister. The night air’s no a good thing. Are you coming too?’

‘I am.’ Gil lifted the empty platter and turned towards the house. ‘I’m surprised I’m not being bitten here. You can’t sit out like this in Balquhidder.’

‘It’s the smoke,’ explained Maister Gregor. ‘They stay away from all the smoke.’

‘I think you packed away all Maister Stirling’s property,’ Gil said, gesturing for the old priest to go in front of him.

‘I did that,’ agreed Maister Gregor in a distressed bleat. ‘Never thinking but that he’d come back for it. Poor Jaikie!’

‘Was it all in good order? Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about it?’ Gil saw that for a foolish question as he spoke. This gentle old soul would hardly recognise trouble if it bit him on the hand.

‘No, no, nothing by-ordinar. Save for the crossbow.’ Maister Gregor stopped still and nodded, the movement dimly visible in the twilight. ‘Save for the crossbow.’

‘What was wrong with that?’

‘Oh, nothing wrong wi’t, it works well, I ascertained that, if you could but draw it. Only I never kent Jaikie had a bow, you see. He’d aye to borrow mine when we went out to the butts.’

Stifling his response to the image of Maister Gregor with a crossbow in his hands, Gil said, ‘You and Maister Stirling have been good friends, then, if you’d lend him your bow.’

‘Oh, yes, indeed. He’s a — he’s a good friend,’ said the old man earnestly. ‘There’s some finds his humour a bit sharp, but he’s aye a good laugh, and he’ll do you a good turn sooner than an ill.’ He chuckled. ‘Only the day afore he went off, he’d a good crack at Wat our steward, fair made me laugh. See, Wat had misplaced his tablets, and Jaikie found them at the back o a bench, fallen down behind the cushion. Oh, he said, if I kent where to take it, that would be worth a penny or two, wi all the tally o my lord’s household in it. Wat was no best pleased, but the rest o us laughed.’ He peered at Gil in the shadows. ‘Maybe you had to be there. But the other was better, wait till I tell you. The very day we last saw him, Wat was on about a new way o cooking mutton he’d got off Robert Elphinstone’s steward when we was last in Edinburgh, that he’d tried to teach my lord’s cook and the man couldny get the rights o’t, and Jaikie said, You should write it down, Wat, and sell it in the Low Countries. Wat was right put out.’

‘I think you and Maister Stirling had a disagreement, too,’ Gil said, with faint malice.

‘We did,’ said Maister Gregor sadly. ‘We’d a word in the morning. Sic a small matter, it was, to fall out over a misplaced shoe, and thanks be to Our Lady we were friends again by noon.’

‘A shoe?’

‘Aye, is it no daft? Jaikie was hunting it all through the chamber, and found it down my side o the bed, and would have it I’d kicked it there in the night. But as I said,’ offered the old man earnestly, ‘he’d as likely thrown it there hissel while he searched for it. So we got a bit sharp wi one another, and disturbed my lord, who wasny well pleased. But we shared a jug of ale wi the noon bite, and he’d that crack about Wat and the Low Countries, and all was just as usual again.’ He sighed, and crossed himself. ‘And now he’s dead, my poor friend, and him as much younger than me. What are we doing standing out here in the night air, Maister Cunningham? Come away in, afore you take a chill.’

Gil followed the old man along the path and helped him up a set of steps by the house door, running these things through his mind. Just before he set his hand on the latch, he said, ‘Where was the bow when you found it, then?’

‘In his kist,’ said Maister Gregor. ‘In his kist.’

Mistress Doig’s house and yard were in the midst of the northern suburb, their gateway further from the port than Gil had thought from the sound of the barking. Following the man Peter again past the low turf-walled houses and middens in the morning light, he avoided chickens, goats and a marauding pig and wondered what the Blackfriars thought of the addition to their neighbourhood. The continuous noise from the dogs must affect the singing of the Office. Then again, he reflected, the Blackfriars’ convent in Glasgow was right in the centre of the burgh, with full benefit of the sounds of market and traffic.

Mistress Doig herself was at work in the yard, sweeping out an empty pen. When they stepped in all the dogs began barking again, and she straightened up from her task with a swift glance at Peter’s livery, then turned from him to survey Gil with displeasure but no surprise. She was a gaunt raw-boned woman wrapped in a sacking apron, sleeves of gown and shift rolled well up above her elbows, the grubby ends of her white linen headdress knotted at the back of her neck. Some of the dogs began scrabbling at the fencing of their pens, eager to get at the visitor.

‘Quiet!’ yelled Mistress Doig. A silence fell, in which she said, ‘It’s you, is it? If it’s Doig you’re after, he’s no here.’

‘You remember me?’ said Gil, raising his hat politely.

She unbent slightly at this, but her tone was still resentful as she said, ‘Aye, I mind you. We’d never ha had to move if you’d kept away from Doig. That was a good place we had at Glasgow. Better by far than this.’

He looked about him, and had to agree. The yard here was smaller and the house far less well-constructed than the one he recalled, although the wooden fencing of the pens was new and solid. Peter had wandered off to admire some of the dogs.

‘What brought you here?’ Gil asked curiously. ‘Why not Stirling or Edinburgh?’

She shrugged one bony shoulder, and scraped at something with her brush. ‘I’ve kin here, it was as good as anywhere else. You kept that wolfhound pup,’ she remembered. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s well, and growing,’ Gil said, aware of smiling as he thought of his dog. ‘The handsomest wolfhound in Scotland. A rare beast.’

She unbent further at this.

‘I thought that myself. Is it Doig you’re wanting?’ she demanded, her tone almost friendly.

‘Yes, but maybe you could help me if he’s not here.’

‘I’ve no idea where he is,’ she said hastily. ‘He never tellt me where he was off to.’

‘No, I’m not looking for him,’ Gil reassured her. ‘I’m trying to find this man that’s gone missing, the Bishop’s secretary, a fellow called James Stirling.’

‘Him.’ She came out of the pen, leaned the besom against the fence, and skilfully extracted one small dog from the next pen without letting the other escape. Pushing it into the newly swept space she shut the gate and twirled the two turnbuttons, then turned to Gil. ‘He was here, aye.’

‘You know him, then?’

‘He was here about the Bishop’s wee spaniel. My cousin Mitchel brought him here first, and he cam back a time or two wi word from my lord.’ Her grim expression cracked as she smiled. ‘A rare litter, that was. Off this bitch here,’ she pointed to the next gate along. ‘Right good wee pups she throws.’ The inmate of the pen stood up, scrabbling at the fence and squeaking exactly like her son, and Mistress Doig leaned in and caressed her soft ears. ‘Aye, Blossom, that’s my bonnie girl.’

‘And what about the time when he vanished,’ said Gil. ‘Had he been here then?’

‘That’s what I meant. He was here.’ She glanced at the sky. ‘Doig was home that week, and the man — Stirling, you cried him? — came around looking for him.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘He did not. Nor did I ask. Doig was in the town, so Maister Secretary said he’d wait, and hung about my yard getting under my feet,’ she said pointedly, lifting the besom again, ‘and getting my dogs excited wi too much attention.’

‘What time was this?’ Gil asked.

She shrugged. ‘About the time I make their evening — ’ She broke off significantly, and Gil recalled all the dogs in the yard in Glasgow barking at the word dinner. He grinned, and nodded.

‘So an hour or two afore Vespers, maybe?’

‘About that or sooner. He hung about for a while, and then another fellow cam in seeking Doig, and the two of them knew one another.’ She made a sour face. ‘If they’d been dogs, there would ha been blood shed. Walking round one another stiff-legged wi their fangs showing, they were, though since they were both priests it was all done very civil.’

‘Both priests?’ said Gil quickly. ‘Do you know the name of the other man?’

‘A Canon Andrew Drummond, so he said. From Dunblane.’

‘Well, well,’ said Gil. ‘And he knows Maister Doig as well?’

‘So it seemed,’ she said, ‘but no need to ask me how or why, for I’ve no notion.’

‘So then what happened? Did they speak to your husband? Did they stay here?’

She propped the besom resignedly against the fence, extracted another dog, dropped it neatly in beside its neighbour, and began to sweep the empty pen.

‘They stayed here,’ she said, ‘the half of an hour or so, talking about nothing, very civil as I said. Then they saw Doig would no be back any time soon, and went off thegither the pair of them. Which I was glad to see,’ she admitted, pausing to look round for the shovel, ‘since if there was to be blood shed I’d as soon it wasny on my yard.’

‘What were they talking about?’

‘Nothing.’ She lifted the shovel. ‘A lot of havers. They looked at Blossom, and spoke of the Bishop’s wee pup, and Maister Secretary said he’d ha had another of her litter, but that two brothers in the one place are often jealous, which is daft. Maybe it’s true of folk, but not of dogs if they’re handled right. Then the other said, a dog’ll not forget an ill turn done to him as a pup. Now that’s true I’ll admit, but what was it to the point?’

Well, well, thought Gil.

‘And then they left here,’ he said.

‘They did.’ She emptied her shovel into a reeking bucket by the gate of the pen. ‘Drummond was back later on his own, no even his man wi him, looking for Doig, and I tellt him where he’d likely get him, but I haveny seen him since, for whenever it was he caught up wi Doig it wasny here. Maybe it was in the town.’

‘Did you see Stirling again?’

‘Aye, later on.’

‘Where?’ he asked eagerly. She straightened up and stared at him.

‘When I was walking the dogs,’ she said. ‘I take them out yonder,’ she gestured northwards, ‘along by the river, and when I cam back I saw him away down this track ahead of me, making for the Red Brig, just his lone, his head and shoulders showing over the rise in the track. You couldny mistake him, wi the last o the sun shining on the badges on his hat. Never saw so many badges on a hat,’ she added.

‘You’re sure of that?’ Gil asked.

‘Sure of what? I saw the sun catch on the badges, I ken what the time was. They were just ringing St John’s bell to shut the gates.’ She cast a glance round the pen, stepped out, and retrieved its occupant from behind the neighbouring gate. ‘Now, maister, if there’s naught else I can help you with, I’d as soon get on wi this task. It’s never-ending, you’ll believe.’

‘I’ll believe it,’ Gil said. ‘Many thanks, mistress.’ He reached for his purse. ‘Maybe you’d buy the dogs a treat for me.’