St Mungo's Robin

Chapter Twelve

‘Your sister is very wise,’ said Alys.

‘I hope you mean Dorothea?’

Her quick smile flickered. ‘Too many people forget,’ she persisted, ‘that the saints can say No as well as Yes.’

‘True.’ And is that what St Giles is saying? he wondered. That I won’t get help to deal with my marriage? Then something in her voice alerted him. ‘What have you petitioned for, sweetheart?’

She went scarlet, and turned her head away. He sat down beside her on the cushioned settle and put his arm round her.

‘Is it anything I can give you?’ She shook her head. ‘Would it help to tell me?’ Another shake of the head. ‘Alys, if there’s something you lack, something you need, in mind or body or spirit, you should bring your need to me. I may not be able to supply it,’ he admitted, ‘but if I’m to be your husband I should know of it.’

She shook her head again, with a wry little laugh.

‘Has St Giles helped you in all you’ve asked for?’ she countered. Her face was still turned away from him. ‘Because if you lack anything, your wife should supply it if she is able.’

‘Perhaps we should ask together,’ he said. ‘Alys, look at me.’ She did not turn her head. ‘What is it you lack, sweetheart? Tell me.’

He tightened his clasp of her shoulders, trying to draw her closer, and she stiffened. Socrates sat down at their feet, looking from one to the other, and whined anxiously.

‘Tell me what you lack, Gil,’ Alys whispered.

‘What a pair of fools you are,’ said Dorothea crisply from the door to the stairs. ‘I know love is blind itself, but Heaven preserve me from blind lovers.’

Gil gaped at her, and she came forward to sit in their uncle’s great chair, shaking her head at them. The dog went over, waving his tail.

‘Are folk no daft, Socrates,’ she said, patting him. ‘There’s Tib up there got herself into a right pickle, all for love, and here’s your maister and lady down here, neither able to see what’s worrying the other.’ She looked up at them, and Alys moved imperceptibly closer to Gil, staring back at her. ‘It isn’t for me to expound it,’ Dorothea pronounced, to Gil’s great relief, ‘but the sooner you each confess to the other what’s eating at you, the better it’ll be. Look at the symmetry in what you were both saying the now. Can you not see it?’

‘Symmetry?’ said Gil.

‘Think about it,’ she said.

‘Of course he sees,’ asserted Alys. ‘Dorothea, you need not worry. We’ll dispute it between us.’

Dorothea smiled, then rose and swooped on her, kissing her on both cheeks.

‘You will now,’ she agreed. ‘Welcome to the family, Alys. Gil,’ she went on, ‘Tib said to me the now, Did I think all these deaths were linked. She seems right troubled by it all, I suppose since she realizes she came near seeing whoever that was on the Stablegreen in the dark. Where have you got to with it?’

‘Little further than last night,’ admitted Gil.

‘Then why don’t you,’ she said, as if proposing a treat to a child, ‘take Alys out and show her where it all happened? A fresh eye to the ground might be a good thing.’

Gil looked at Alys, his heart leaping at the suggestion despite his sister’s tone of voice, and saw the same response in her eyes. She turned to Dorothea and said, ‘But what about you, Sister? Would you not wish to see it as well?’

Dorothea shook her head. ‘I’ll stay here. Someone ought to be with Tib, and someone must tell our uncle when he comes home.’

‘Dawtie, that’s heroism,’ said Gil frankly.

She gave him an affectionate smile. ‘You’ve enough before you the now, Gil. Go on, the pair of you. Away and get some fresh air.’

Before Gil could answer, there was an urgent knocking at the street door. They looked at one another, and the knocking continued, along with a muffled shouting.

‘Tell Maggie I’ll get that,’ Gil said, making for the stairs. As he descended the shouting became recognizable as his name:

‘Maister Cunningham, Maister Cunningham! Come quick!’

He opened the door, and a young man almost fell into the house, saving himself by catching hold of the doorpost. As Gil identified the kitchen-laddie from St Serf’s the youth stared at him, gulped and exclaimed, ‘Can you come quick, maister? You’re wanted at the bedehouse. There’s been a miracle.’

‘A miracle?’ repeated Gil in astonishment. A double echo floated down the stairs from the hall; the women must be listening.

‘Aye, maister, a true miracle. It’s Humphrey,’ said the boy. ‘He’s risen again. And he’s cured of his madness and all.’

Striding up Castle Street in the rain, with Alys hurrying beside him and the boy at their heels, Gil realized he could hear shouting and exclamations from the bedehouse yard. He could not make out what was being said, but it sounded more excited than angry.

‘They’ve all come to witness the miracle,’ said the boy. What did Mistress Mudie call him? Simmie, that was it. ‘Nannie ran out in the street shouting about it. I kenned it wasny right,’ he said earnestly, ‘but I couldny stop her. So then all the folk cam in to see what was going on, and Maister Millar tellt me to fetch you.’

The wooden yett was standing open, and the yard beyond the end of the chapel appeared to be full. As Gil picked his way along the narrow passage, someone’s voice lifted from the courtyard, high and confident in the alto line. It sounded like Millar: ‘Te Deum laudamus … We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.’ The Church’s great, ancient hymn of thanksgiving and praise. Well, if Simmie was right, the house had something to give thanks for, he thought, as the other voices joined in, one quavering voice to a part.

They rounded the corner of the chapel in time to see Anselm, at the tail of the tiny procession, totter through the door, and the crowd in the yard close in behind him like the waters of the Red Sea. Using his height and his elbows, Gil achieved a place for himself and Alys by the arched doorway, and peered in under the clumsily carved tympanum. Behind them in the yard, exclamations and questions flew.

‘Was that him? Was that the one that’s rose up?’

‘No, it was the young one, she said. They ones were all full old.’

‘What was it, anyway? What did he dee of?’

‘What about the other one that’s deid? Is he risen and all?’

‘Oh, he’ll no rise up. You’ve only to put your head in at the washhouse door to tell that. Quest on him’s the morn’s morn.’

The five old men, with Millar at their head, moved singing into the little choir, settled themselves and finished the Te Deum, following it with a Gloria. Gil, standing by the door, waited until Millar began to recite, and recognized familiar words from the Gospel.

‘Iesus dixit. . Jesus said, Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I shall go and wake him.’

‘The raising of Lazarus,’ said Alys softly. ‘Is it true, then?’

A very proper choice, if so, thought Gil. He turned as Simmie began to tug at his sleeve.

‘Can you come into the house, maister?’

They made their way through the crowded courtyard, avoiding more questions, and through the door which opened as Simmie reached it. The younger maidservant, bright-eyed with excitement, barred it behind them and said, ‘They’ll not be long, they’re just offering thanks the now. Is that no lucky they’d no ordered his grave dug yet?’

‘When did this happen?’ Gil asked.

‘Why just the now. No an hour since. The Douglas’s men’s gone out to find him, but I’m glad Simmie got you first, sir, for Maister Millar was wanting you. Come in and sit a wee bit till they’re done singing.’

‘Did you see it?’ said Alys as they followed her into the empty kitchen. The fire was burning and the charcoal in the range was lit; behind them Simmie picked up his chopping-knife and resumed his endless task of chopping roots for the stew.

‘Is Humphrey really alive?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, maister! Oh, it was the most …’ She paused, lost for words. ‘My mistress knelt wi him all last night,’ she explained. ‘She was praying and mourning him the whole night. Then she came into the kitchen for a bit the morn, and sat as if her tongue was locked.’

‘I saw her then,’ Gil agreed.

The girl nodded. ‘We got her to eat and drink a little, Nannie and me, while his brother was wi him, and she sat a bit longer after that. Then she suddenly rose up about an hour ago and said, He needs me, and went out to the garden. And Nannie and me followed her,’ she continued, her narrative gaining pace, ‘and saw her go into Maister Humphrey’s lodging, and then she screamed out, and came to the door, and called us ower, and said, He’s breathing. And we couldny credit it, but we went in, and there he was. He’d got colour in his face, and his breath going regular, and his hands warm, just as natural as could be. My mistress is wi him now, feeding him a wee bit bread and milk.’

‘Dieu soît bénit!’ said Alys, and crossed herself. Gil stared at the maidservant, as unable as she had been to credit the tale.

‘Has he woken?’ he asked.

‘Oh, aye. He’s no said much, but he kens us all, he’s named us, even Simmie and me. But maister,’ she continued, ‘the rarest thing of all, he’s cured of his madness. He’s as clear in his head as you or me, maister.’

‘I recall nothing,’ said Humphrey.

Denial of injury, Gil thought, is the price of forgiveness.

The first, immediate service of thanksgiving was over, and Humphrey himself was washed and fed and seated in invalid state by the hearth in the bedehouse hall, the brothers round him, Gil and Alys standing by the window. Mistress Mudie, unable to let go of her chick, stood by his side fussing with his rug or his garments.

‘Nothing?’ said Millar. ‘Have you no notion what happened?’

‘I have no notion,’ said Humphrey earnestly, ‘save that my dear Sissie here tells me I was found hanging in my own lodging. The last I recall was going to my rest after dinner. I suppose that was yesterday.’

‘His speech is greatly altered,’ said Alys to Gil, who nodded. The whole man was so altered he was hardly recognizable, his bearing and expression confident and pleasant. There was something more, Gil thought, which he could not place.

‘And the day?’ said Cubby. ‘What happened the now, laddie?’

‘I woke,’ he said simply. ‘I woke from the most beautiful dream I have ever had.’

‘So is Mistress Mudie’s,’ added Alys in the same undertone. Gil realized that this was true; the little stout woman had not uttered a word for at least a quarter-hour.

‘Well, and what hast thou dreamt?’ asked Maister Veitch, with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow. Gil recognized a line from the Skinners’ Play, but Humphrey’s face lit up.

‘Oh, my brothers, such a dream,’ he said. ‘I dreamed I was lying in my own bed, in the darkest night that ever was, so dark that I was afraid. Then a single beam of light shone, and I rose and followed it, and looked out of my lodging into the garden, as we’ve all done many times.’ Elderly heads nodded. Mistress Mudie bent and pulled the rug higher across his knees, a glow in her eyes. ‘I saw the garden full of flowers, and filled with a great light, and three beautiful young men dancing in the midst of it.’

‘Young men?’ said Anselm doubtfully. ‘He never said there was young men here.’

‘Wheesht,’ said Duncan.

‘They were dancing in a reel-of-three,’ Humphrey continued, ‘naked and shining as newborn babes, and each of them had the face of my friend Andrew Stevenson, who was drowned when he and I went fishing. Then I wept for my guilt in Andrew’s death, but one of the three came forward and drew me out into the light, and kissed me on the brow and the cheek and the mouth. And I woke, and kent that I was forgiven.’

That was it, thought Gil. That same inner calm that he had seen in Dorothea radiated from Humphrey’s thin square face.

‘Now I understand,’ said Anselm, and pushed his spectacles straight.

‘But who were the young men?’ said Barty who seemed to have heard this without difficulty.

Anselm retorted, with unaccustomed vigour, ‘Don’t be a fool, Barty. Who else would it be but the Blessed Trinity? He tellt me that,’ he added.

‘You have received a most particular grace, Humphrey,’ pronounced Duncan in Latin.

‘Have I not!’ agreed Humphrey.

‘No just forgiven,’ said Maister Veitch, ‘but cured. You ken you’ve been mad these ten year and more, laddie?’

‘Is it a miracle?’ asked Alys.

They had escaped from the bedehouse, where the brothers were settling down to discuss the event in full theological detail, while Millar composed a letter to the Archbishop. Sir James had returned just as they left, but Gil had managed to avoid him; he had no wish to analyse the situation for his godfather’s benefit. They had returned to Rottenrow, collected the dog, and were now out on the Stablegreen as Dorothea had first suggested.

‘I’ve heard of it happening,’ said Gil, ‘that a hanged felon survives, though it’s rare. But the dream, or vision, or whatever it was, is outside my knowledge. That does seem like something beyond the ordinary frame of things.’

‘It seems like a singular grace,’ Alys said. ‘The man is so altered. And not only Humphrey himself, Gil, did you notice how much Mistress Mudie is changed too? I suppose if it was her prayers brought it about, she must feel …’ Her voice trailed off.

They wandered along the path from Rottenrow, hand in hand in silence for a little. The short November day was nearly over. It had stopped raining for now, but the grasses were dripping and the wet bare branches of the hazel-scrub gleamed in the low light. Socrates galloped ahead, hunting for interesting scents. Gil was simply enjoying being in Alys’s company with no other intrusions, and when she finally spoke again she echoed this:

‘How long since we had time like this, Gil? Just the two of us?’

‘Days,’ he said.

‘A mistake,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why should it be your fault?’

‘I’ve been too busy,’ she said. ‘I see it now. I left the house today when Dorothea brought me the news, and …’ She paused, considering her words. ‘Your sister’s concerns — Tib’s, I mean — are a more important matter than the feast. I am sure my household can manage without me. And if they can manage without me for this, they can manage for other reasons, and I should have left them before.’

‘Is that what Dorothea meant, just before Simmie came for me?’

‘No,’ she said quietly after a moment, then halted, looking round. ‘Is that the back of the bedehouse? Where was the cart that Tib saw?’

‘Here,’ he said, accepting the change of subject, and stepped off the path into the long wet grass to look for the marks of the handcart’s legs. She picked up her skirts and followed him, peering at the two little indentations, and then looked up and down along the wall.

‘And the linen scarf?’ she asked.

‘That was yonder.’ He nodded at the clump of hazels. ‘I suppose he heard Tib following him, saw her lantern perhaps, and drew away from the gate, and saw the trees as a place to hide. He must have been nearly as alarmed as she was, when she simply stood here waiting for Michael to open the gate. I could wring her neck,’ he added. ‘She was always the spoilt one, but this is outside of enough.’

‘She is very much in love,’ said Alys. ‘That affects one’s judgement.’

‘Not mine.’

She smiled quickly, hitched her skirts higher and set off towards the hazel stand, picking her way carefully through the rough grasses. He paused a moment to admire her ankles, then followed her, catching up in time to point out the footprints still visible among the tree-roots, and the place where the piece of linen had lain.

‘These are good boots,’ she agreed, studying the prints, ‘but there’s nothing distinctive about them, is there? Did you say John Veitch’s boots were the right size?’

‘Short of measuring them,’ said Gil cautiously ‘I’d say so. But so would Millar’s be, or Humphrey’s indeed.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and looked about. ‘And while he stood here, whoever he was, he dropped the scarf. Do you still have it with you?’ He produced it from his sleeve and she took it, turning it over carefully. ‘Marion Veitch knew it, you thought.’

‘She studied it as if every stitch was familiar,’ he confirmed. ‘And the man Elder recognized it as John’s neckie, though he tried to deny it afterwards.’

She turned the end with the initials over.

‘I wonder how else it might have got here,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose if it isn’t John Veitch’s then it has no connection with the death.’

‘It could be quite unconnected,’ Gil agreed. ‘But the initials are his.’

‘Yes, if it is I V,’ she admitted. She folded the strip of linen and handed it back to him. ‘And the cart. I wonder how the cart got here — what path it took to the bedehouse gate. There are these prints here, so could the tracks of the wheels still be there?’

‘They could,’ agreed Gil. He looked about. ‘There are three ways it could get on to the Stablegreen, assuming it didn’t come out of the bedehouse. The way we came in just now,’ he pointed, ‘or the vennel off Castle Street, or the path that comes in from the Port.’

‘Which is most likely?’

‘The Castle Street vennel is nearest.’

Socrates came loping back with a satisfied grin just as they found a single wheeltrack, in a patch of damp earth near the Rottenrow end of the path. He inspected the place they were studying, and turned towards the open ground again, nose down, apparently following a trail.

‘For a sight-hound,’ said Alys, ‘he seems to have a good nose. What has he found?’

‘I can’t believe the scent is still there,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder if he remembers finding the trail before, when I first brought him out here after the death?’

They followed the dog back out on to the green, hand in hand again.

‘So what did my sister mean?’ asked Gil as they approached the bedehouse wall. ‘What is it we’ve to dispute between us?’

‘Oh.’ Her fingers tightened nervously on his. ‘Well, it’s — I think it’s — ’

‘Symmetry,’ he said, into the pause. ‘We’d been saying, just before she came down, that we both lacked something. Was that it?’

‘Yes, but — I think she saw something more than that,’ said Alys doubtfully. ‘I think she wished to say that there is a symmetry in what we lack. That you and I have been praying for the same thing, or for something which matches. But it hardly seems — ’ She stopped again, face downturned, the bright colour washing over her cheek. Gil studied her for a moment.

‘Do you feel she’s meddling?’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed Alys, turning to face him. ‘No, she spoke out of concern for us, that was clear. I just can’t — ’

‘Can’t what?’ he coaxed.

She shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘What do you lack, Alys?’

She shook her head again, and muttered something he did not catch. Before he could ask her to repeat it, there was a shout from the vennel behind them. They both turned, to see Maistre Pierre making his way towards them in the fading light, waving.

‘We have found a handcart!’ he announced as he came closer. ‘Well, we have found more than one,’ he added, ‘but this one is dark and has a pattern on the spar between the handles. I am certain it is the right one.’

‘Already?’ said Gil. ‘That’s good news. Where is it? Where did you find it?’

‘Ah. That is the strange thing,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It was in the chapel in Vicars’ Alley. What is it, St Andrew’s?’

‘In the chapel? Does it belong there?’

‘So it seems. Luke tells me that the man who informed him that it was there also told him they use it to collect for the leper-house.’

‘Of course they do,’ said Gil. ‘I’ve seen someone at the kitchen door from time to time, begging bread or meal or the like. I never thought of that — though of course we were looking for a ladder earlier.’

‘Exactly I have left Luke negotiating with the priest to borrow the cart, since I suppose we shall have need of it.’

‘If Tib sees it,’ suggested Alys, ‘she can tell us if she remembers the pattern.’

‘Very likely,’ agreed her father, with a note of disapproval. ‘What are you two finding out here? I thought we had gone over this ground to extinction. And what is this about the bedehouse? They seem to be talking of little else at the Wyndhead.’

‘Father, a miracle,’ said Alys, her eyes shining. ‘The brother who was dead, Humphrey, is risen and cured of his madness. The boy came for Gil, and we’ve been in and seen it all and spoken to him.’

‘Risen?’ her father repeated, staring at her. ‘But he was certainly dead. I found no heartbeat.’

‘There have been one or two half-hangit men in legal history,’ said Gil, using the Scots phrase. ‘And I suppose the shock might cure him of his madness,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘though it seems to me more than a simple cure.’

‘The man was dead,’ reiterated Maistre Pierre with emphasis.

‘The more of a miracle, Father,’ said Alys, her hand on his arm.

‘Hmph,’ said her father. ‘Does he recall anything that might help us?’

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Nothing, he said.’

‘He was hanging for half an hour at least,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘There was no heartbeat, no pulse.’

Alys eyed him, and gave Gil a significant look. ‘We have found where the cart came on to the green,’ she said, pointing. ‘We found the mark of one wheel, yonder in the vennel.’

‘From Rottenrow,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning to look. ‘Does that tell us anything?’

‘It suggests,’ said Gil slowly, ‘it suggests the Deacon was not killed anywhere close to the bedehouse, because then the approach from Castle Street would have been nearer.’

‘More likely he was killed nearer to St Andrew’s,’ said Alys, ‘and someone knew of the cart, whether the murderer or his accomplice.’

‘So do we come back to the idea that the man was waylaid in the street?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘And by more than one individual, as we thought at first?’

‘Yes, I’d let that slip my mind,’ confessed Gil. ‘There were the two blades that stabbed him. I suppose we do come back to that, yes.’

‘I don’t know the chapel,’ said Alys. ‘May we go there now?’

They made their way back out on to Rottenrow, with Maistre Pierre still muttering at intervals, ‘I would have sworn the man was dead. No heartbeat, no breath.’

‘He had not begun to stiffen,’ Gil observed.

‘Hmph,’ said Maistre Pierre again. He halted as they reached the Wyndhead, and with a visible effort pointed out the wooden walls of the Caichpele above the rooftops of the Drygate.

‘There is where the man’s mistress lives,’ he said. Alys nodded, surveying the layout of the streets. They turned towards the cathedral, and made their way round the western towers, where the first of the senior men of law were just leaving. Here a rumbling of wheels on the cobbled way proclaimed Luke, with the handcart. Socrates pressed against Gil’s knee, head down and hackles up, until Gil reassured him.

‘Ah, good laddie,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘He has persuaded the priest. But what has he got on the cart?’ He peered into the dim light. ‘Not another corpse, I hope.’

It was certainly a large, bulky bundle, loosely tied on to the cart. Luke saw them and halted, lifting his knitted bonnet and ducking in a general bow.

‘Maister, mem, Maister Gil. I got the cart,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘The priest was wanting to go and say Vespers, so he just let me in the end.’

‘But what is this?’ His master prodded the bundle, which Socrates was now inspecting cautiously, his long nose raised to sniff at one overhanging portion. ‘Matting? Rush matting?’

‘I hope it’s no hairm, maister,’ said the young man anxiously. The dog growled quietly, and Gil snapped his fingers to call him away. ‘The fellow that dwells by the chapel came out his house as I came away, and asked me to lift this for him out his hall. It’s all wasted wi blood, I suppose it’s where the man was killed the day morn, and he wanted me to take it and burn it on our fire at the yard. It’ll no wash out, that’s for certain.’

‘Oh, for certain,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. He turned to look at Gil. ‘Well, what think you? Do we burn it?’

‘No,’ said Alys.

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Can Luke take it round to Rottenrow? Maggie can find an outhouse to stow it dry till daylight.’

Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘Wise, I suppose. We will see more by daylight. Aye, take it to Canon Cunningham’s house in Rottenrow, Luke. And perhaps the cart may lie there too.’

Luke laid hold of the handles of the cart again.

‘It’s no that bad on the level,’ he said, ‘like on the dirt roadway, but it’s the deil to manage on these cobbles. So I’ve to say to Maggie in your kitchen, maister, that it’s all to lie dry in an outhouse till you get a look at it?’

Gil concurred with this, and he trundled away. Alys pulled her plaid up further round her head.

‘Where is the chapel?’ she said.

They continued round on to the north flank of St Mungo’s, into the little street, where lights were springing in many of the houses. Cooking smells floated in the damp chill twilight as servants made the supper ready before Vespers and Compline were sung at the cathedral. The chapel at the mouth of the street was lit, its door open, and a small gathering was listening to the same Office within, early and convenient for folk who had a hearth and a meal to see to.

‘This time yesterday,’ said Gil, ‘I spoke with Hob, poor devil. They were singing the Office like this when I came away.’

‘Shall we go in?’ said Alys, and slipped in at the open door without waiting for an answer. Gil and her father followed, to stand among the congregation and their lanterns at the back of the box-like nave, while beyond a cast-iron grille in the narrow chancel arch, a priest and two acolytes dealt efficiently with the Vespers psalms.

Gil looked round, studying the little building. It seemed to be well supported, for all it stood in the shadow of St Mungo’s. The floor was paved with slabs of stone, the narrow windows were glazed with what looked like coloured glass, and the walls were painted with scenes from the life of St Andrew. There was a particularly lively depiction of a fishing scene, lit by the lantern in the hand of the elderly woman nearest it. Marks on the west wall suggested the place where the handcart stood when it was at home. Overhead the painted beams were hung with votive gifts and funeral wreaths, and the thatch rustled faintly above them.

The clerks in the chancel had completed Vespers and moved on to Compline. Beside him Pierre and Alys both murmured the responses with the acolytes. Gil stepped away, peering in the gloom at the flagstones where the handcart would rest, and the black shadows overhead. Socrates came to help, but seemed to find nothing to interest him.

‘Liberavit me de laqueo venantium,’ recited the clerks. He has delivered me from the net of the hunter … He shall cover you with his wings, you shall find refuge under his pinions. Was that where Humphrey got his fixed idea about the birds? Gil wondered. And if the Deacon was a robin, who was the sparrow? And yet he said there was no sparrow. What else would kill a robin? Both Maister Veitch and his nephew he saw as kites, his own brother was the white eaglet. A white chick, an unfledged youngster, would hardly hunt for itself, but the parents might bring it a robin. The Agnew parents are dead, surely. I am not on the right trail here, he thought. I have lost the scent somewhere. I wonder if Humphrey has forgotten that as well as everything else? Sweet St Giles, deliver me from the net of the hunter.

At the end of the Office, the congregation drifted out into the street, sharing lights, passing flame from lantern to lantern, but showing no inclination to make their way home in the deepening twilight. The day’s news was much more interesting; the bedehouse miracle was much discussed, but Gil caught several versions of the fight in Agnew’s garden, and two people were as convinced as Tam had been that Hob had sat up and denounced his killer.

‘What now?’ said Maistre Pierre at his shoulder. ‘It must be near supper-time. Should we attempt anything else, or call it the end of the day?’

‘I should like to do more today,’ Gil said. ‘I’ve done little enough for John Veitch’s case since Marion asked me to help. I need to find if he asked anyone for Agnew’s house.’

‘One of these neighbours might know,’ said Alys softly.

‘My thought,’ he agreed, and moved forward to the nearest knot of people. One of the women in the group, raising her lantern to light his face, exclaimed,

‘You were here the morn, maister! Are you no the man that gart the corp speak?’

‘The corp never spoke, Isa,’ said the man next her. ‘I was at the door and seen it all. He cried out when the man touched him, but he never spoke a clear word.’

‘A terrible thing,’ said Gil, recognizing the impossibility of correcting the facts. ‘To be slain at his work like that.’

‘Aye, terrible,’ agreed the woman who had spoken first. ‘And likely it could ha been any of us! The man you took for it must be stark wood, to go into a house and slay a stranger!’

‘I had a word wi Hob just after Prime,’ observed someone. ‘He was out wi a lantern cutting old kale leaves to clean the matting like I tellt him. And next I heard he was deid.’

‘I spoke wi the madman,’ said a younger voice behind her. Several people turned their lanterns to reveal a young man in St Mungo’s livery who ducked his head shyly in the sudden glow of light. ‘He was a great big fierce fellow, but he didny seem wood to me,’ he added.

‘When did you speak wi him?’ asked the man next to Isa.

‘They can be awfy cunning about hiding madness,’ said someone else sagely. ‘They can seem like you or me, till out comes the knife to slit your throat.’

‘Hob’s throat wasny slit,’ objected another voice. ‘He couldny ha spoke wi a slit throat.’

‘When did you speak wi him, Eck Paton?’ repeated the man beside Isa. ‘Was it the day?’

‘Oh, aye, Maister Pettigrew, it was,’ said Eck earnestly. ‘He asked me whereabout Maister Agnew dwelt, and I pointed him to the house there.’ He nodded at the darkened dwelling. ‘And he went in, and not the space of an Ave after it Maister Agnew came home and cried Murder.’

‘And where were you the while?’ asked Isa in suspicious tones.

‘Cutting kale in my maister’s front yard,’ said Eck righteously, ‘and I stopped to lift a hantle o weeds while I was about it.’

‘In case you found out anything more about Maister Agnew’s caller,’ suggested Pettigrew. Eck ducked his head again, but grinned.

‘I did, an all,’ he pointed out.

‘What time was this?’ Gil asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘Well into the day. After Sext, maybe.’

‘And you’re certain the man wasny in the house long when Maister Agnew came home? Did you hear anything?’

‘No a thing.’ Eck looked round, and expanded visibly as he realized the entire group was hanging on his words. ‘See, I went on lifting weeds, and the madman went to Maister Agnew’s door, and tirled at the pin, but Hob never answered it. And then the man pushed at the door and it opened — ’

‘You mean it wasny latched?’ Gil asked him.

Eck shrugged his shoulders. ‘I never heard him unlatch it. Just he pushed and it opened, and it squeaked the way it aye does, and he called out and stepped within. And I never heard another sound till Maister Agnew came round the corner o the chapel here to his own gate.’

‘And then what?’ asked someone else.

‘Why he went in at his door and began to cry Murder.’

‘As soon as he stepped in the house?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, aye.’

‘Tell the Serjeant,’ suggested another voice. ‘You’re a witness, laddie.’

‘No me!’ said Eck in alarm. ‘I never saw anything! I helped capture the madman, but I never even seen the mats that Maister Agnew took out his house,’ he added regretfully, ‘all wet wi Hob’s blood. A fellow hurled them away on the St Andrew’s handcart the now afore Vespers, and I never got a right look.’

Gil edged his way backward out of the group, and found Alys waiting at its margin, the dog at her side.

‘Useful,’ he said, and reached into his purse for his tablets to make a note of the young man’s name. He checked in dismay as his fingers encountered, yet again, the brocade cover of Thomas Agnew’s set instead of his own.

‘What is it?’ said Alys as his expression changed. He shook his head.

‘Not here,’ he said guiltily, and drew her away from the chapel. ‘Where is Pierre?’

‘He went to make sure the men had shut everything down. He said he would go home after.’ She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Does that fit, do you think? Is the boy a good witness?’

‘He seemed very clear,’ Gil agreed. ‘I wish we had a light — I never meant to be out so long. Come back to the house and get a lantern, and I’ll walk you down the hill.’

Maistre Pierre had not gone home, but was waiting for them in the house in Rottenrow, alone in the hall with a jug of spiced ale.

‘I knew you would come this way,’ he proclaimed, acknowledging Socrates’ greeting. ‘You would need to fetch a light. Your uncle is home,’ he added more soberly. ‘He is above just now, speaking with your sister.’

‘And Dorothea?’ Gil asked.

‘Has returned to the castle meantime, though she said she would be here for supper.’

Gil nodded. ‘I’m just as glad to see you here,’ he admitted. ‘Pierre, I’m still carrying Agnew’s tablets about with me. What on earth can I do with them?’

‘Agnew’s tablets?’ said Alys. ‘What do you mean?’

Her father grinned. ‘An object lesson in the perils of excess, ma mie. He purloined them last night from the man’s chamber, on our way home.’

‘Mon Dieu!’ said Alys. ‘No wonder your head ached today.’

‘I haven’t drunk so much since I left Paris,’ Gil said, a little defensively, annoyed to feel his cheeks burning.

She smiled, but held her hand out. ‘Give them to me, Gil. I can return them.’

‘You?’ he said involuntarily, but his hand went to the purse. ‘How can you — ?’

‘I’ll find a way. You have enough to worry you. Is there anything useful in them?’

‘The notes for the new will Naismith was to make. The family copy of the disposition for Humphrey’s support is in there too. I saw nothing more.’

She nodded, and tucked the brocade bag into her own purse.

‘I’ll contrive something. Now I must go down the road, or there will be no supper tonight. Are you coming now, Father, or later?’

‘Now, I suppose.’ Her father got to his feet and lifted a lantern from the hearth. ‘Lucky I left this in the lodge the other day. We need not borrow one. What will you do next, Gilbert?’

Gil shrugged. ‘Speak to the Sheriff after supper, likely. He should know what that laddie was saying.’ He recounted the kale-cutter’s tale, and Maistre Pierre nodded.

‘Certainly Sir Thomas should hear of that. It puts another view of the matter entirely. I wish there had not been so many witnesses to the trial by blood. And what of the matting?’

‘That,’ said Gil firmly, ‘can wait till daylight.’