St Mungo's Robin

Chapter One

Gil Cunningham worked out later that at the moment when the dead man was found in the almshouse garden, he himself was eating porridge, salted by a furious altercation with his youngest sister.

He had come down in the dark after Prime annoyed with himself for sleeping late, to find her in the hall of their uncle’s house, bright in a fine scarlet gown, the neck and sleeves of her shift embroidered to match it. She had found a taper and was lighting all the stumps of last night’s candles.

‘Tib!’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought you were staying down the town with Kate.’

‘Not another hour,’ said Lady Isobel, setting the taper to the last wick on a pricket-stand, her vivid little face pettish in the blaze of light.

‘How ever not?’

She shrugged. ‘Kate spews if you so much as mention food, and you’d think nobody else ever went with child, the way Augie Morison behaves around her. And those brats of his, a body couldny stand to live with,’ she added.

‘The wee one was rude to you, was she?’ said Gil shrewdly. She threw him a dark look and lit another candle. Gil lifted the snuffer and began to extinguish the guttering lights along the wall, saying, ‘So you’ve come here instead. Does Maggie ken you’re in the house?’

‘I let her in at the kitchen door the now, Maister Gil.’ Maggie Hamilton stepped into the hall from the turnpike stair, a laden tray in her big red hands. ‘And her kist is still in the yard in the rain where that Andy set it down. I wish he’d stayed till I saw him, I’d ha gied him a word for Lady Kate. Here’s your porridge, the pair of ye, and just a wee bit butter to it, for it’s to last. It’s maybe only the two weeks to Advent, but the house’ll be full of wedding guests by Monday night, and where you’re to sleep, Lady Tib, I’ve no idea. And when did you last comb your hair, I’d like to ken?’

‘Yestreen, most like,’ said Tib in a vague tone which Gil decided was intended to be irritating.

‘She could lie at the castle, with Dorothea,’ he suggested.

‘Dorothea? Is she coming? You’ve never invited her to your wedding!’ said Tib scornfully. ‘She’ll cast a gloom over everything, with her long face and her veil.’ She cast up her eyes and clasped her hands in brief mimicry, and the taper went dangerously near the tangled curls.

‘You’ll no speak that way about your eldest sister, Lady Tib,’ ordered Maggie. ‘Lady Dawtie was truly called before ever you were born, and none of this running wild like a wee Saracen the way you’ve been let. Comb your hair and eat your porridge, and then you can come down to my kitchen and gie me a hand, for I’ve baking and brewing to see to, and a new receipt for cannel-cakes that Jennet Clark gave me last night. I hope you’ve another gown in your kist,’ she added, ‘for you’re not setting bread in that one. Is it no the one you’re wearing to your brother’s marriage? The idea, wearing it to go about Glasgow at this hour of the day!’

She set the tray down on a convenient stool, and turned and stumped out of the hall. Tib shrugged, blew out the taper, and slid a sideways glance at her brother.

‘Eat your porridge,’ he suggested. ‘You’ll be in a better mood.’

‘So’ll you,’ she said pertly, but took the wooden dish and horn spoon from the tray. ‘Where’s the old man? And that dog of yours?’

‘Socrates came down earlier,’ said Gil, stirring the small portion of butter into his porridge, ‘likely Maggie let him out, and our uncle has a case to hear after Sext and — ’

‘Oh, he’ll be over in St Mungo’s tower by now,’ agreed Tib, ‘among all his dusty old papers. Does the dog sleep with you? Alys is going to love that. He’ll want to make a threesome with you between the sheets. I hope she’ll ken who’s embracing her.’

Gil restrained himself with difficulty, and studied his sister. She was eight years his junior; he remembered her best from before he went away to school and university, when she had been a stout screaming toddler, furious with a world in which she was simply not old enough to do everything her siblings did. Fourth in line himself, he had sympathized with that, though not with the screaming. Now, at eighteen, she was a pretty young woman, but he thought again, looking at her, that she could almost be a changeling. In a family of tall, long-chinned, grey-eyed people, only Tib and the second brother Edward had inherited their paternal grandmother’s small neat frame, heart-shaped face and hazel eyes. And Edward was dead at the battle of Stirling Field along with their father, their eldest brother, and James, third King of Scots of that name. In Tib’s case her temper had also been part of the legacy, Gil reflected, eating porridge.

‘When will Mother get here?’ she asked now. ‘And is Margaret coming? Kate never said, but I suppose if you’ve asked Dorothea you must want all your sisters at your marriage. We’ve not been all together,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘since Margaret was wed. Near six year.’

‘They’ll both be here the morn, by what Dorothea wrote to me.’ Tib pulled a face, and Gil said mildly, ‘What have you against Dorothea? What’s she done to you?’

Before she could answer him, the door at the top of the kitchen stair was flung wide, to reveal only Socrates the young wolfhound. Spying his master, the dog sprang forward, singing with delight, so that the rebounding door missed his tail by some inches. Gil transferred his spoon to his bowl and held both high with one hand, the better to repel his pet’s passionate greeting with the other. ‘Good dog. Sit!’ he said firmly. ‘Sit!’ The dog sat down obligingly, still singing, his stringy tail thumping on the floorboards. ‘I must teach you to shut doors,’ he added.

Tib, watching, said as if she had not been interrupted, ‘Just, you heard Maggie. Dorothea’s a pattern of perfection, and I’ve to take her as my style-book. I was six when she left home, all I mind is her trying to teach me to say a rosary. Then she came back before she was clothed, and prayed over me, which was worse.’

‘Tib, that was twelve years since,’ said Gil. ‘She was younger than you are now. So I suppose you’ll not be a nun, then.’

‘No, I will not!’ she said explosively. ‘Don’t you start at that! Besides, what kind of a house would take me without a tocher of some sort?’

‘What can you do, then?’ he asked. ‘Live with Mother until we can amass a tocher for you? It could take a while, Tib. Or will you go to Margaret or Kate? We need to settle you somewhere.’

‘Spare me from either! Margaret can talk of nothing but the contents of her newest brat’s tail-clouts, and Kate will be the same in another six months, no to mention Augie Morison’s two wee jewels,’ said Tib, with a brief simper in which he recognized, with some amusement, the older of his third sister’s stepdaughters. ‘Give your Alys her due, she doesny go on about that bairn her father’s fostered.’

‘Our Boyd cousins move with the court,’ he suggested as Socrates, dignity recovered, paced over to push his nose under her hand. ‘Maybe if Mother wrote to her kin, they might find a place for you.’

‘Oh, aye,’ she said, looking up from the dog, the acid in her voice again. ‘I’ll be waiting-woman to Marion Boyd, will I, and hope to catch the King’s eye when he tires of her?’

‘We need to do something with you,’ Gil began again.

‘I’m not in your tutelage, Gil!’ she exclaimed. ‘Nor I’ll not be sent about the countryside like a package because nobody will take a mind to me!’

‘But you are,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m head of the family, Tib, like it or no, and I’ll not have you wander about the countryside like a hen laying away, either. We’ll need to find you a life you can tolerate — ’

‘Aye, like a package!’ she said again. ‘I’ll no be subject to that, Gil Cunningham, and you canny make me! You’ve never found me a husband yet, and here I’m eighteen past and no tocher and no — ’ She blinked hard and turned away, rubbing at her eyes.

‘Then what will you do?’ She shrugged one shoulder, and addressed herself to her cooling porridge. Gil eyed her in exasperation. ‘If you won’t stay in Carluke with Mother, and I’d not blame you,’ he admitted, ‘we’ll have to — ’

‘We!’ she said furiously. ‘Why we? Why must you always be meddling in my life? Just because you’re settled down with a perfect French shrew of a housewife — ’

‘She’s nothing of the sort!’

‘I heard her yesterday biting your head off for nothing,’ said Tib triumphantly ‘and scolding at the servants when your back was turned. I wish you joy of her, Gil — ’

‘Alys is on edge about the marriage,’ said Gil defensively quelling the surge of anxiety her words set off, ‘and she’s organizing the feast herself. You try that and see what it does to your temper, madam!’

The incident she referred to had dismayed him badly. The clever, competent girl he admired and worshipped seemed to have vanished in the past weeks, to be replaced by a distracted snappish individual who drove the servants and herself unmercifully. The household, taking its tone from Alys’s aged French duenna, kept its collective head down and smiled tolerantly behind her back. Gil himself had escaped the worst of her wrath, had in fact been able to soothe her, until the previous afternoon when a chance remark in support of one of the maidservants had brought the skies down on his head. He had backed off in dismay, and his sister Kate, also visiting the mason’s house in the High Street, had drawn Alys to her side, asking about music for the feast, but the disagreement had not been resolved.

‘A perfect shrew,’ Tib repeated now, ‘so Kate and me and everyone else is to be boxed up and tidied away out of sight — ’

‘My marriage has nothing to do with it!’ he began.

‘Then why did we never hear a word of this till after it was arranged?’

‘Why did I never hear a word of you not being content till now?’

‘Nobody asked me!’ she flashed. ‘And you needny bother yourself, I’ll see to my own future and no need for meddling from a lot of old women!’

She slammed her empty bowl down on the tray with such force that the wood split, and flounced off to the kitchen stairs. Gil finished his own porridge, rather grimly, set his bowl on the floor for the dog to lick and went up to put his boots on. Like their uncle the Official, Canon David Cunningham, senior judge of the diocese, he had documents of his own to see to over in the Consistory tower, but first he would go down to speak to Alys.

In his attic chamber, he kicked off the heel-less shoes he wore about the house and sat down on his narrow bed, aware of the strapping creaking under him. He lifted one boot from the kist at the bed-foot, but paused, staring at the small image before which he had said his prayers earlier. St Giles looked enigmatically back at him, his pet doe leaping at his side. Sweet St Giles, he thought, help me to mend this quarrel with Alys.

It had flared up very quickly. Alys had asked Kittock for a piece of paper with the menu for some part of the marriage feast on it, and scolded furiously when Kittock admitted it was mislaid. Gil had lost track of Alys’s plans long since, but was dimly conscious that there were to be several instalments of the feast, over three or even four days, with different groups of friends and family invited. He had said, half joking, ‘Does it matter, sweetheart? Will anyone notice, if there’s one meal the less?’

Kittock’s expression had frozen, and Alys had turned on him, scarlet-faced, brown eyes sparking dangerously, and upbraided him in a torrent of wrathful French.

‘Of course it matters! Your status and ours matter. I’m working all the hours there are so our marriage can be celebrated appropriately, at least you could be grateful, instead of trying to undermine me with my own household!’

‘Alys!’ he had said, astonished. ‘Sweetheart, I am grateful, and I’m amazed at what you’re doing, but I don’t — I’m not trying to — ’

‘Then keep out of my business!’ she said sharply. ‘Let me manage things my own way.’

‘It seems to me,’ he began unwisely, and attempted to put his arms round her, ‘as if you’re doing too much. You’ll be exhausted — ’

‘Just leave me alone,’ she ordered, and stuck her elbows out so that one dug into his stomach. ‘I’ve enough to do here without you getting in my way.’

Appalled, he had backed away, and found both Alys’s duenna Catherine and his sister Kate trying to catch his eye with identical warning expressions. Kate had managed to change the subject to the music for the feast, and he had made his escape. Stout Kittock found him before he reached the house door.

‘Never mind her, Maister Gil,’ she had said comfortably. ‘She’s set herself far too much to oversee, but there’s nothing even the maister can do to stop her when she gets like this, so never worry. She’ll be fine once it’s all over. Or once you’re all over,’ she added, nudging him and winking broadly. He had managed a smile, and got himself out of the house somehow.

Sweet St Giles, he thought again. Grant me wisdom to manage this girl. I love her, I admire her, I want only her happiness. Help us both to make a good marriage. Help us both to make it to the wedding.

The image seemed to stir, the painted face to flicker in a smile. At his side the candle flame leapt again in the draught from the window, where the grey light was growing. He bent to pull on the first boot, wondering why it was that when Tib shouted at him he shouted back, but when Alys snapped he was horrified.

Down the wet High Street, past lit windows and dripping eaves, he turned in at the tunnel-like pend which led to the courtyard of the mason’s large stone house. Overhead, heavy feet tramped on the floorboards of the room above the entry, and a burst of raucous song and a smell of linseed oil told him that the painters were still at work. The courtyard itself was empty, though two paint-splashed ladders and a plank lay at the foot of the stair-tower in the near corner. Socrates bounded ahead across the shining flagstones to the main door, which opened as Gil climbed the fore-stair. The dog sprang in, tail waving.

‘Gil,’ said Alys. She acknowledged the dog’s greeting, then drew his master in, helped him unwrap his wet plaid, and stepped into his embrace, slipping her arms round him under his furred gown. ‘Gil, I am sorry,’ she said into his collarbone. ‘You are a passynge good knyght and the best that euer I found and I did wrong to shout at you.’

‘I’m marrying a shrew,’ he said teasingly, in the French they used when they were together. Then as she tensed in his grasp, ‘I’m sorry too, that I angered you, sweetheart. What is it?’ he asked, feeling her draw back slightly. She shook her head, not looking up at him. ‘Alys, what is wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head again, and freed one hand to rub at her eyes. ‘But the painters say they need another week, and we still have to furnish our lodging, and the apothecary has no more rose petals or ginger, and we’ve run out of braid to trim my gown with, and everything’s going wrong. Where has the dog gone?’

He held her away from him and looked at her, a slender girl in a mended gown of blue woollen, her honey-coloured hair dragged back out of the way, her face pinched with distress so that the high thin bridge of her nose stood up like a razor.

‘Likely down to the kitchen, to find Nancy and the bairn. Is he well?’

‘John?’ She blinked distractedly, and gave him a brief smile. ‘Yes, he is well. He said my name this morning.’

‘Good. Alys, rose petals and ginger you can manage without, a housekeeper like you,’ he said firmly, ‘and I can’t advise you about the braid. Ask Kate, or use ribbons, or something. Whatever you wear, you’ll be the loveliest woman in Glasgow. Come and sit down, sweetheart, and tell me about the painters.’

‘You make it sound so trivial,’ she said, following him into the hall. The household’s breakfast was long over, and the great trestle table had been taken down and the board propped in its daytime place against the wall.

‘It is trivial,’ he said, pulling her down to sit beside him on the settle by the fire, ‘compared with being married. My darling, how can feasts and dresses matter when we are to share the rest of our lives together?’

‘But I want everything to be perfect!’ she almost wailed, and rubbed at her eyes again.

‘Alys, it will be perfect, because we’ll exchange promises. And then,’ he said ruefully, ‘my sister Margaret’s husband will drink too much at the feast, my godfather will tell jokes we’d rather not hear, the other burgesses will try to find out what was in the contract — ’ Her mouth twitched, and she slid a sideways, teary look at him. ‘I’ve been to other weddings,’ he said. ‘All those things will happen, and you can’t control them, so why worry about the rest?’

‘And what will you wear? Are your new clothes ready? You told me you ordered them, but you’ve never said they’ve come home. And Maister Kennedy’s?’

‘The gowns will come home in good time,’ he assured her. ‘Blue brocade for me, red velvet for Nick, and I’ve a new suit of clothes to go with it.’ He took her hands in his free one. ‘Tell me about the painters.’

Her face crumpled with anxiety. ‘Maister Sproat says they need another week to finish the inner chamber, let alone the closet. The paint dries so slowly in this weather, even with the brazier up there. What if we have to set the bed up in the outer room, in case people get paint on their clothes when they — when we — ’

‘When they take us to bed?’ he said, aware of the ache in his loins at the very words. ‘I’d hoped we could avoid that,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve never liked the custom. All the jokes and the shouting and banging pots and throwing of sweetmeats and favours. It would shrivel anyone’s pride.’

‘You joined in when Kate was wed,’ she said uncertainly.

‘I did not,’ he contradicted her, thinking of his sister, who went on two crutches because of a withered leg, and the shy merchant friend who was her new husband. ‘I contrived to be in the way, so Augie could slip in the door alone and bar it from the inside. Those two of all people wouldn’t want to be publicly put to bed. And nor do we.’

‘I thought you would wish it,’ she said. ‘It’s the custom, after all. You mean we might not have to?’

‘If we’re clever about it.’ He bent his head to kiss her. She tilted her face so that their lips met, but drew back, shivering slightly, when he would have deepened the embrace. She seemed to react like this every time he kissed her now. Concealing his anxiety, he dropped a peck on the high thin bridge of her nose, and said, ‘Sweetheart, shall we both go and talk to the painters?’

Up in the inner chamber of their apartment, under one of the eastward windows which looked on to the courtyard, they peered at the board of yellowish samples the laddie had prepared, while the laddie himself ground pigment on a slab of stone by the next window.

‘Ye see,’ said Maister Sproat, ‘it doesny come out gold-coloured whatever I do. I think it’s the ground we’ve used for the first coat, which is no a good white, owing to it no being Paris white, on account of Daidie could find none in Glasgow the now. And the linseed ile in the top coat wad take it more to a yellowy cast and all,’ he added.

‘It looks like earwax,’ said Gil frankly. The laddie looked up grinning from his grinding-stone and Daidie, a spare fellow in a much-spattered canvas smock, snorted, but Maister Sproat nodded solemn assent.

‘A good thought, maister,’ he agreed, ‘but no one that would appeal to my custom. No, no, “earwax-coloured” wouldny sell. What’s more,’ he added, ‘the longer we spend trying to match yir gold colour, the later it is drying and the less time we’ll have for the figures ye wanted by the hearth there. Saints, was it, or was it to be the Muses or the Virtues? I’ve a note o’t somewhere.’

‘The Virtues,’ said Gil, ‘since I’m getting a virtuous wife. The best and fairest may That ever I saw.’ He looked down at Alys, and her elusive smile flickered in response. ‘And maybe a saint on the other wall.’

‘Aah,’ said Daidie, ‘’at’s bonnie, in’t it no, maister?’

‘It is an all,’ agreed his master, ‘and I mind now, we’d agreed the Cardinal Virtues. That’s Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance,’ he recited, and looked sternly at the laddie. ‘Mind that, young Jos. But you’ll no get your Virtues afore the wedding unless we can decide on a tint for these walls. If yir carpenters had shifted theirsels a bit putting in the panelling, we’d ha been in here sooner, and all would ha been done by now.’

‘Does it have to be laid on in linseed?’ Gil asked, ignoring this. ‘Would some other sort of paint dry faster? And what would lay well on top of this ground colour? You’re the colourman, Maister Sproat. Advise us.’

‘Uncle Eck,’ said the laddie softly. ‘Maister,’ he corrected himself as the older man looked round. ‘There was that chamber we done for the Provost. You mind, we put milk-paint, two grounds and cover in that broken white, and then we glazed it red-coloured. It dried in no time, and it came out right well, you said it yersel.’

‘It sounds well,’ said Gil, turning to Alys again. ‘Red? Or another colour?’

‘Blue,’ she said decidedly. ‘Like the blue in the other chamber, but in milk-paint.’

‘Aye, we can do that,’ said Maister Sproat, with an approving nod at his nephew. ‘Be done in two days, even working by lamplight, if we can get enough sour milk. And if I put a bit ox-gall to the last coat it’ll wash down a treat every spring for years. And the same blue within in your closet, maister?’

‘We’ve all the sour-milk curds you’d want, laid in brine at the yard, you ken that, maister,’ said Daidie, and peered past Gil. ‘Is that someone at your door?’

They all looked out across the courtyard to where a lanky figure bundled in a plaid was conferring on the doorstep with one of the maidservants. As they watched, she pointed, and the visitor nodded, came down the fore-stair and headed for the tower in the corner.

‘It’s Lowrie Livingstone from the college,’ said Gil in some surprise, recognizing the young man. ‘What’s he doing here? In here, Lowrie,’ he called, drawing Alys into the outer room as the messenger’s feet sounded on the stair.

‘Maister Cunningham,’ said Lowrie. He stepped across the threshold on to the dustsheets, dragging his wet felt cap from his fair hair. ‘And Mistress Mason. Good day to you both, and I’m sorry to break in on you this early. I’ve a word for you, maister, from Maister Kennedy.’

‘From Nick Kennedy? Is there some trouble?’

‘Aye, but it’s no at the college,’ said Lowrie. ‘It’s at the almshouse. St Serf’s, up by the castle. Maister Kennedy sent me to fetch you,’ he said, grimacing. ‘They’ve found a dead man in the almshouse garden.’

The painters crowded into the doorway to listen, with exclamations.

‘A dead man?’ repeated Gil. ‘Who is it? One of the bedesmen?’

‘No the bedesmen, they’re all present. We think it’s the Deacon,’ Lowrie said cautiously. ‘It wasny full day when I left to find you, and so far as we could tell in the dark he’s been stabbed. So Auld — so Maister Kennedy said, since we’re within the Chanonry and you’re the Archbishop’s questioner, we’d do better to fetch you first than last, so here I am.’

‘What, the Deacon of St Serf’s? Robert Naismith?’ said Gil. ‘And he’s been stabbed?’

‘Naismith? Is that him,’ said Daidie with relish, ‘that keeps Marion Veitch as his mistress? The bairn’s three year old, and another on the way, poor soul. My cousin Bel works in her kitchen,’ he explained, finding everyone looking at him.

‘Can you come, maister?’ said Lowrie. He indicated his muddy feet. ‘It’s raining hard. The old men were all for moving him at once, and I don’t know how long Maister Kennedy can hold them off, though Mistress Mudie was offering them spiced ale for the shock to get them indoors.’

‘You must go, Gil,’ said Alys. ‘But — will you come back later? There’s still something.’ She hesitated, seemed about to go on, then said only, ‘You had better go.’

He nodded with reluctance. ‘I suppose I must. As Lowrie says, it’s within the Chanonry and I’m Blacader’s man.’ He gathered up the plaid which hung over his arm. ‘I’ll take the dog with me, and come down again as soon as I can.’

‘Who was there?’ said Lowrie, hunching his shoulders against the rain. ‘Well. You ken Maister Kennedy’s got the St Serf’s chaplaincy? Seems it usually goes to someone from the college, and in the changes after Father Bernard was transferred, he was next in line. Worth quite a bit, I hear, so he takes the duties seriously. And as often as not he brings Miggle — er, Michael, and me to serve for him — ’

‘Michael Douglas? Your chamber-fellow?’

‘The same. We’d come up as usual after Prime to say Mass for the old men, at least Miggle was here already, so they were all there too, and Mistress Mudie, and Maister Millar — ’

‘That’s the sub-Deacon, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve met him.’

‘Aye. He’s studying Theology.’ Lowrie, nearly as tall as Gil, kept up with his long strides without effort, the skirts of his narrow blue gown flapping round his calves. ‘Sometimes there’s other folk to hear the Mass, but that’s just in the chapel, they don’t come within the almshouse itself.’

Gil whistled to Socrates and bore left-handed at the crossing called the Wyndhead, heading up the hill towards the Stablegreen Port.

‘And what happened? When was he found?’

‘After the Mass.’ Lowrie looked away to their right through the drizzle, beyond the castle walls to where the towers of St Mungo’s cathedral loomed grey against the sky. ‘Is that Miggle coming there? We were still laving the vessels and putting them past, see, when one of the old men came tottering back into the chapel to say they’d found a dead man, could we come and see to it. We were just in time to stop them lifting everything into the hall where the light was. Then Maister Kennedy found the blood on him and sent Miggle over to St Mungo’s, and I went to Rottenrow and they said you were likely down the town.’ He paused at a narrow arched gateway, pushing open the heavy wooden yett. ‘Here we are.’

Gil looked about him. He had never paid much attention to St Serf’s almshouse, nor had it obtruded on his professional life, unlike the larger house of St Nicholas or the two pilgrim hostels. Its aged inmates were law-abiding and eschewed litigation, so it had not come to his uncle’s attention as senior judge of the diocese, and its property and financial matters were handled by one of the other men of law about the Consistory Court.

The almshouse occupied one of the long narrow tofts which ran between Castle Street and the open land of the Stablegreen. Beside the gate the east end of the chapel faced the street; there was no other break in the frontage, apart from the chapel’s east windows which were now catching the grey light. By the same light, he made out lettering on the archway: YHE HOVS OF LEIRIT PVIRTITH. Yes, of course, he thought, appreciating the conceit. The House of Learned Poverty would be dedicated to St Mungo’s teacher.

Beyond the archway, Socrates was already exploring a constringent passageway which ran between the boundary wall and the south face of the chapel, and seemed to open out into a wider space.

‘Do they lock the yett?’ he asked. ‘Can anyone walk in?’

‘Only in the daytime, and only so far as the chapel and the Deacon’s house,’ said Lowrie, answering the second question. ‘There’s a door each end of the passageway between the two yards, you’ll see it in a moment, and there’s the iron gate in the back wall of the garden. I think they lock them all at night.’

Gil followed his dog along the flagstones past the eaves-drips, Lowrie behind him, their boots ringing loud in the narrow way. At the far end, they came out at one corner of the outer courtyard and Gil stopped again to look round.

The small space was bounded on their left by the wall. Immediately on their right the door of the chapel stood open, shedding light on to the wet paving-stones. In front of them, opposite the chapel, was a substantial two-storey range, in whose stone-built lower portion were more lights, and argumentative voices. On the fourth side of the yard, next to a row of storehouses, a wooden fore-stair led to the timber-framed upper floor whose row of unlit dormer windows in the thatch gave it a top-heavy, important appearance.

‘The Deacon’s lodging?’ Gil hazarded, nodding towards the stair.

‘The same,’ agreed Lowrie. ‘This way. They’re all in the hall.’

He strode confidently into the passage which led through the main range and in at the doorway of a long, low-ceilinged, sparsely furnished hall. At the far end a number of elderly men in black cloaks sat arguing round a table by a branch of candles.

‘It’s not right,’ one of them was saying tremulously as Gil entered. ‘He should be laid out like a Christian soul, no left lying under a tree wi his breast all bloody. Sissie could be doing that while we’re waiting. And has he had any sort of absolution? We should be seeing to that and all.’

‘What did he say?’ demanded another voice.

‘Far’s Frankie gaed?’ said a third, inexplicably.

‘The man is here,’ said another, in Latin. ‘It’s a great hoodie-crow,’ it continued, in Scots, ‘come to peck out our living een, for the robin willny rise up.’

‘What did he say?’

One of the black-cloaked figures rose and advanced towards them, but was forestalled. A familiar voice said, ‘Aye, Gil,’ and Maister Nicholas Kennedy of the University of Glasgow emerged from the shadows behind the door, another man with him. ‘We need a lymer here, no a sight-hound,’ he added, catching sight of Socrates at Gil’s heel.

‘Aye, Nick,’ Gil answered. ‘What have you found, then?’

‘Oh, it wasny me that found him,’ said Maister Kennedy.

‘It was Maister Duncan,’ said the other man. He was taller than Maister Kennedy, with a lean face, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a shock of light wiry hair which stuck out from under his floppy hat. He waved a bony hand to indicate the arguing, black-cloaked group, all seated again. ‘One of our — one of our brothers. I’m Andro Millar,’ he added, ‘I’m the sub-Deacon here, I suppose I’m in charge if — if — if Maister Naismith’s not able,’ he finished with a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘It’s good of you to come so prompt, Maister Cunningham.’

‘It’s what Robert Blacader pays him for,’ said Maister Kennedy, ‘so he’d as well get on with it. He’s out yonder by the gate, Gil. You took your time getting here, but at least it means there’s near enough light to see by now.’

‘So what’s happened?’ Gil asked.

‘We — we — we found him, just after the Mass,’ explained Millar. ‘Out in the garden, by the back yett, I can’t think how.’

Gil met Maister Kennedy’s eye in the grey light from the near window.

‘As near as I can make out,’ supplied his friend gloomily, ‘they all went out to their wee houses for ten minutes’ contemplation afore their porridge was ready, and Maister Duncan saw something under the tree by the back gate and went to see what. And when he saw what, he raised the cry, and fetched Andro here, and then they came to fetch us.’

‘And you were still laving the vessels by then?’ Gil asked, raising one eyebrow. ‘How long does it take you?’

‘Aye, well, we’ve to wait till they’re well out of sight afore we start,’ said Nick, apparently feeling that this was adequate explanation. ‘So when I found the blood, I sent the boys for you and Maister Mason — ’

‘That will save time, if Pierre is on his way already.’

‘- and made them put a piece of sacking over the body.’

‘Good.’ Gil glanced at the gesticulating group round the table. ‘I’ll need to speak to Maister Duncan at the least, but we’ll look at the body first, as soon as Pierre gets here. Are you sure of who it is?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ said Millar, wringing his hands. ‘It’s Deacon Naismith, right enough. I ca — canny think what’s come to him. He was well when I saw him last, and fine when he spoke to us all in the afternoon.’

Socrates rose, ears pricked, as feet sounded in the passageway. Gil looked over his shoulder.

‘Ah, Pierre. Good day to you. And to you, Michael.’

‘I have a chantier to run,’ complained the master mason. He ducked under the lintel, a bulky shape wrapped in boiled wool, another shadowy figure at his back in a student’s gown like Lowrie’s. ‘You forgive the delay, I hope, I had to give the men their instructions. I can expect no work from them next week after we celebrate your marriage, we should get on with cutting those pillars while we may, but — Yes, good dog, Socrates. So why are we summoned, Gilbert?’ he demanded, switching to French. ‘Who is dead in this House of Learned Poverty?’

The further courtyard was laid out as a little garden, with gravel walks through grass, tiny flowerbeds standing empty at this season, and several evergreens, overlooked by a row of small houses to either hand. Following Millar’s stream of incoherent exclamations down the central path, Gil counted five chimneys each side in the grey daylight. Ten houses, he thought. There weren’t as many as ten old men in the hall.

‘I’ve seen Alys this morning,’ he said quietly. Alys’s father grimaced.

‘She was wound up like a crossbow when we broke our fast,’ he said. ‘Did she say that a cart came in from Carluke with a bed on it.’

‘A bed?’

‘In pieces, with the hangings. And a word from your mother, saying she spent her wedding night in the same bed. It arrived yesterday, after you left the house,’ Maistre Pierre said, with a sideways glance at Gil.

‘Ah,’ he said. That might explain things, he thought, if my mother is getting involved.

The garden ended in a high wall of rough-cut rubble, capped by a row of angular stones, a gate in its midst which must lead out on to the Stablegreen, with another green tree to either side of it. Millar stopped beside one of these and removed his hat, and beside him Maister Kennedy bent to draw back a length of sacking.

‘There you are,’ he said unnecessarily.