St Mungo's Robin

Chapter Three

The inner chamber was half the size of the outer, most of the floor space taken up by a free-standing box bed positioned to avoid the worst of the draughts from the windows. It had a counterpane of the same verdure tapestry, and a matching curtain was drawn back on its one open side.

‘Is that the kind of piece madame your mother has sent?’ asked Maistre Pierre, following Gil into the room, ‘or is it a tester-bed with pillars? The canvas was still over the cart when I left this morning.’

‘It’s this kind,’ said Gil rather shortly. He was aware of his friend eyeing him sideways again, but concentrated on studying the rest of the chamber. There was a painted chest with a businesslike lock by the bedside, a rug made of two goatskins lay crumpled beside it, and a tall desk stood next to one of the windows, the inkhorn and pen-case Maistre Pierre had missed resting on a shelf beside the writing-slope.

‘The bed has been slept in,’ the mason said, ‘this one I mean, I have no doubt of that.’

‘Nor I,’ said Gil.

Indeed, he thought, it could hardly be clearer. The sheets were creased, the counterpane rumpled, and the blankets had been flung back when its occupants — occupant rose before the dawn. He pulled back the bedding, and drew each layer up over the mattress until all was straight, then looked about him. A pair of slip-slop shoes sat neatly by the foot of the bed; a furred brocade bedgown hung on a nail in the bedpost above them.

Beyond the closed end of the bed another chest could be seen against the wall, with a pile of discarded clothing thrown on top of it. Gil went over to this and disentangled the garments. Black hose, rather stale, a mended doublet and jerkin, a short gown with a lining of black budge: the kind of garments a man wore about his own house, when not out to impress.

‘He changed his garments before he left to go to supper,’ he said. Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘And then came in later and prepared himself for bed. He hasn’t worn the bedgown.’

‘One does not always.’

‘True.’

The pen-case on the desk was of tooled leather; Gil eased off the cover and looked inside. Several quills bound together in a scrap of paper, a penknife for trimming pens and scraping out blots, a bone rubber for smoothing paper or parchment after one had used the knife. Nothing unusual there.

He looked round. There was a candlestick with a burnt-down candle on the painted chest. He thought suddenly of Tib’s intent face over the candles in the house on Rottenrow before dawn, and then of Alys sitting beside him in the firelight in her father’s house.

‘There is his purse,’ said Maistre Pierre, breaking into that thought. ‘I have it here.’

‘True.’ Gil took the item from him. Like most of Naismith’s goods, it was large and well made, of red leather stamped with a pattern of small flowers. Undoing the strings, Gil tipped out the contents beside the candlestick, the debris of the man’s life rattling on the painted wood. Distantly aware of Mistress Mudie’s raised voice, he sorted through the items. A smaller purse of coin, a set of tablets, two or three creased scraps of paper with writing on them, two pilgrim medals and a set of beads, a tiny pot of ointment with a powerful smell, a small box of sweetmeats.

‘What is the writing?’

‘A receipt of some sort.’ Gil unfolded one scrap. ‘Herbs, quicksilver, fat from a cob swan, burnt feathers. Ointment, I suppose, but it doesn’t say for what. This is another one, and this is a list of herbs. Hot milk or ale, honey — a soothing drink, I suppose.’ He handed the slips to his companion. ‘And in his tablets, notes of this and that, Buy coal, Speak to Mungo Howie.’

Maistre Pierre looked up from the little sheaf of papers in surprise. ‘To Howie? I should have thought he could afford a better craftsman than that.’

Gil, aware of his friend’s opinion of the several carpenters and joiners in the burgh, merely nodded and turned to the next leaf. The slats of wood were as long as his hand, the outer covers wrapped in red leather, stamped with the same pattern of flowers as the purse, and the wax filling the hollowed-out centres of the leaves had been stained red to match, rather than the more usual green. Here was a long list, incised in the careful script of a man who had come to writing late in life.

‘This is a note of some property,’ he said after a moment. ‘Most of it in Glasgow. I wonder is it his own or the bedehouse’s? And several names. A gold chain, the furnishings of this lodging.’

‘Notes for a will, perhaps. Did that woman mention an announcement? Is that why he saw Agnew last night, to draw up some new document?’

‘It’s possible,’ agreed Gil. He turned as footsteps crossed the outer room. ‘Maister Millar. What did Deacon Naismith have to tell the bedehouse yesterday? Was he making great changes?’

‘Not — not for the bedehouse,’ said Millar earnestly from the doorway ‘no really.’

‘Not really,’ echoed Maistre Pierre. ‘So what were his plans? Small changes?’

Millar fell back before them as they returned to the outer room. ‘Well, there were to be changes for the wardens, I agree. I was to have one of the wee houses, and Sissie another, and the Deacon was to occupy the whole of this main range.’

‘What, as a house?’ said Gil, startled. ‘For himself alone?’

‘Oh, no. He was to be married at Yule, he told us, so he wanted the extra space.’

‘Married?’ Maistre Pierre sat down and looked in amazement at Millar. ‘He was not in Orders then?’

‘Oh, no. At least, maybe in minor Orders. He was — I think he’d been a clerk somewhere, he kent the responses well and could sing the Office wi the old men, but he was no priest. To tell truth I never liked to ask him,’ Millar confided.

‘And he wanted to take over the main range. Even the hall?’ said Maistre Pierre, lifting the bundle of papers he had left on the table. ‘But where would the old men meet?’

‘He never said.’ Millar paused, looking thoughtful. ‘Aye, you’re right. I was so — I’m right comfortable in my lodging through the wall yonder,’ he waved a hand, ‘I was so took up wi wondering how the wee houses could be brought into order before Yule, I never thought about the hall.’

‘Did he say who he was to wed?’

‘He did not. I assumed it was his mistress,’ Millar admitted. ‘He’s had her in keeping longer than I’ve been in post here, high time he did right by her. Frankie went away to break the morn’s news to her, poor soul, and he’s not back yet.’

‘And how would that have left you?’ Gil asked.

‘No great change, I suppose,’ said Millar blankly. ‘I’d still be the sub-Deacon, I thought. There might ha been less for my income,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘for a married man would want more for himself, likely. And the same for Sissie, though a course he did say his wife would take over keeping the household.’

‘Are things so tight, then?’ said Maistre Pierre from the table. Gil and Millar both turned to look at him. He had the papers spread out before him on the polished surface and his tablets in his hand. ‘The bedehouse is in poverty?’ he asked.

‘I think it isny well to do, for he’s been making cuts lately. No more wine to their dinners, for instance. They wereny best pleased at that,’ Millar confided.

‘I can imagine.’ Maistre Pierre was still surveying the papers before him. ‘Are these all the papers, would you know?’

Millar shook his head. ‘Maister Naismith saw to the accounts, though I kept them filed for him,’ he said. ‘He and Sissie dealt wi the day’s expenditure every afternoon, which she’ll want me to do now,’ he added in dismay. ‘And he saw to all the incomings and outgoings.’

‘Oh, did he?’

‘It should be all the papers, but there might be some elsewhere.’ Millar drew out one tape-bound sheaf. ‘This bundle is the — no, it isny. It’s the dealings wi the burgh mills. This one,’ he peered at the heading, ‘is the tithes from Lenzie and those are from Elsrickle. And this — that’s strange, these are all in disorder,’ he said anxiously, pulling out one drawer after another. ‘Deacon Naismith has — had his own way of working, like all of us, and these are no in the right shelves.’

‘None of them?’ Gil asked.

‘Some of them are right,’ said Millar, inspecting the contents of a package. Maistre Pierre twisted his neck to see the pages. ‘They seem to be all complete, I think maybe it’s just the packets have got rearranged, I canny think how.’

‘Where did he work?’ Gil asked. ‘At his desk, or at the table here?’

‘Mostly at the table,’ Millar was still engrossed in the papers, ‘but often in his chamber yonder. His writing-gear must be in there the now, for I don’t see it. Oh, this is a strange thing, it’s going to take all morning to sort it.’

Gil watched him pulling the bundles out and replacing them, and said casually, ‘When the Deacon left here yesterday. Before six, I think you said.’ Millar nodded. ‘Did you see which way he went?’

‘He went down the Drygate,’ said Millar. ‘Likely he’d be heading for the house by the Caichpele, as Sissie said. He’s — he’d a quite kenspeckle way of walking, wi his shoulders back and his elbows out under the cloak, there was no mistaking him even by lantern-light.’

‘And he was in the bedehouse when you got home.’

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Millar. ‘There was a light up here and he was moving about.’ He stopped. ‘I never got a sight of him,’ he admitted, ‘but I heard him clear enough, and who else would it be? I’d no need for a word wi him, I just gaed to my lodging and to my bed.’

‘And you were talking with Patey Coventry and the rest of the class till the time you left the college?’ Easily enough confirmed, if he was, Gil thought.

‘Aye,’ began Millar, and was interrupted by an outbreak of furious shouting below them in the inner yard. Socrates barked once, his deep warning tone. Gil, nearest the windows, stepped over to look through the glass, then hastily unfastened the shuttered lower portion.

‘Look at this!’ he said as Maistre Pierre reached him.

His friend stared down into the garden in some amusement. ‘It seems the young men have angered the old ones. Should we defend them, Gil?’

The rain had eased slightly, and outside one of the little houses, Michael and Lowrie stood at bay, the dog in front of them. They were surrounded by an indignant gathering of elderly men, two of them waving sticks in a threatening manner, with Mistress Mudie clutching her plaid round her head and adding her voice to the chorus. The dog barked again. At the far end of the garden one or two passers-by were staring with interest over the wall from the Stablegreen.

‘Merciful Christ,’ said Millar at the next window, ‘what have they done to set them off?’

‘What’s he say?’ echoed someone from below. ‘Tell me what’s he say?’

‘Sneaking around like thieves! And claiming you were ordered to search!’

‘Fit war ye deein, loons?’

‘- no way to behave in a decent bedehouse, as if any of my old men would do a thing like that — ’

‘Magpies! Pyots! And they were sent from that hoodie!’ exclaimed a resonant voice, and continued in Latin; Gil had just time to recognize a phrase from the Apocalypse before Millar said again,

‘Oh, merciful Christ. Sissie!’ he shouted, leaning out at the open shutters. ‘Sissie, get Humphrey out of there before he — ’

‘Maister Cunningham, is that you?’ exclaimed Lowrie in relief, catching sight of Gil at the other window. ‘They’re no for letting us search their lodgings!’

Socrates gave out another deep bark.

‘I never thought,’ said Gil in dismay. ‘I should have warned them no to try.’ He leaned out like Millar and shouted ‘Quiet!’ at his dog. Socrates threw him a resentful look, but reduced his utterance to a threatening rumble, all his white teeth on display. There was something on the ground between his forepaws.

Mistress Mudie at the back of the group was tugging at the arm of one of the brothers, a man twenty years younger than his confreres by his bearing, the source of the sonorous Latin. She succeeded in dragging him away, still waving the other arm and declaiming, and they made for the door below the watchers’ feet, Latin and Scots rising in a kind of motet.

‘- those who claim to be apostles but are not — we will throw you into prison, to put you to the test, for ten days you will suffer cruelly — ’

‘- there now, Humphrey my poppet, calm yourself, they’re no harm to you — come and sit down quiet and I’ll make you a lovely cup of hot milk wi honey in it — ’

‘I’d best deal wi this,’ said Millar, making for the door. ‘They’ll never digest their dinner if we don’t get them calmed down.’

‘He is garbling that text,’ said Maistre Pierre critically. As Millar left he turned away from the window to the tall rack of papers, and extracted another bundle at random.

‘I must go down too,’ Gil said after a moment. ‘Are you staying here?’

‘Oh, for certain,’ said Maistre Pierre, not looking up from a close scrutiny of the papers he held. ‘Leave Naismith’s keys with me if you are going. As I thought, Gil, none of this adds up. I would like Alys to see it,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘but not now.’

‘Not now,’ agreed Gil, flinching from the idea. He set the keys on the table by the dead man’s purse and belt and crossed the room, listening carefully. Mistress Mudie’s voice came up through the floorboards, babbling on like the mill-burn; Maister Humphrey replied, still in flowing Latin but less loudly. She seemed to be meeting with some success. Gil went out and down the fore-stair.

In the dripping garden, Millar had already drawn the bedesmen away from their siege, and the audience on the Stablegreen had drifted away. When the two students saw Gil they slipped round to meet him; Michael bent first, attempting to pick up whatever it was the dog had found, but Socrates put one hairy paw on top of it and bared his teeth a little further, then snatched the object up himself and came to be praised for defending the young men, waving his tail. Gil patted him, accepted his gift, and said in apology, ‘I should have warned you no to try their lodgings, or at least to be careful how you went. Did they strike you?’

‘Oh, it was no worse than my grandsire shouting at the servants,’ said Lowrie easily. ‘We’ve no found the cloak so far, maister.’

‘Did the dog find anything? No signs of blood? What’s this he’s brought me?’

‘No,’ said Michael in his gruff voice before his friend could speak. He had grown in the six months since Gil had first encountered him at the University, but was still shorter than Lowrie, lightly built and mousy-haired, with a pointed chin and sharp cheekbones. ‘No a thing. He checked the place where the corp was lying again, but he never went anywhere else after it.’

‘This is a stocking,’ Gil said in surprise, looking at the object his dog had given him. ‘Where did he find it? I’d best return it.’ He broke off, looking more closely. Still crumpled in the folds in which it had been slid off its wearer’s leg, the item was wet from the grass and from Socrates’ mouth, but otherwise relatively clean. He shook it out; it was finely knitted of linen thread, with clocks of fancy work on either side of the ankle, and it was barely longer than Gil’s hand and forearm. The mark of the garter was clearly visible near the top.

‘This was never an old man’s garment. It’s a lassie’s stocking,’ said Gil. ‘What’s that doing in the alms-house?’

The two young men glanced at one another.

‘Er,’ said Michael, the scarlet flooding up over his face. ‘Er …’

‘Michael has access to the Douglas lodging,’ said Lowrie candidly, ‘which is the last house yonder by the gate, and a key to the gate itself. Need we say more, maister?’

Michael threw him a grateful look. Gil glanced at the stocking again and knew a surge of envy. Al nicht by the rose ich lay. To be alone with one’s sweetheart — abed with one’s sweetheart, indeed — without all the tumult of feasts and invitations, wedding-clothes and linen lists -

‘Well, well,’ he said, mustering a grin from somewhere, and handed the stocking over. ‘Don’t make any promises your father won’t approve, Michael. I hope you got her out well before it was light.’

Michael nodded, mumbling something indistinct, and hastily stowed the delicate object in the breast of his gown.

‘We’d best be away, maister,’ said Lowrie. ‘We’ve a lecture at eleven o’clock.’

‘So Nick said,’ agreed Gil. ‘Come in out the rain first, and tell me what you’ve found.’

‘That’s easy done,’ said Lowrie, following him into the passageway through the main range. ‘We’ve found neither cloak nor hat, and the dog showed no more interest in any of the places we’ve been.’

‘And where was that?’

‘No the chapel,’ said Michael.

‘No the chapel,’ agreed Lowrie, ‘since they were saying Terce, but we’ve looked in all the outhouses that were unlocked, save where the Deacon’s laid out, and we looked in the kitchen. Mistress Mudie took the huff,’ he confessed, ‘and insisted we look in her own chamber off the kitchen and all, and in her kist. That was a bit — she’d that Maister Humphrey in the kitchen, the mad one, and the dog wasny very taken wi him. Anyway, we’ve been everywhere we could, except the Deacon’s lodging and Maister Millar’s. Oh, and we looked in here,’ he added, waving a hand to encompass the shadowy hall.

‘And the old men’s lodgings?’ Gil asked.

Lowrie made a face. ‘We’d already looked in Michael’s lodging — the Douglas house, the one at the far end on the right — and we’d got into all of them except the mad one’s, which is when they cam tottering out wi their sticks displayed. So we never risked that one, maister, being wholly taken up wi defending ourselves,’ he admitted. ‘The dog wasny interested in any of their doors, except Michael’s, and all he found in Michael’s place was la — the lassie’s stocking. So we’ve no been much help.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil. ‘That’s very useful. I wonder where the cloak is?’

‘Why does it matter?’ asked Michael.

‘He went out in it,’ said Lowrie, ‘and now he’s no wearing it.’

‘He might have left it somewhere.’

‘Miggle, you’ve seen him often enough.’ In the thin light from the two doors Lowrie’s lanky frame was briefly transformed to mimic a smaller, stouter, more self-important man. ‘He’d never have left his bedehouse cloak, wi all that braid and the badge and all. Never mind it was a cold evening.’

‘So now we ken it’s no in the bedehouse,’ said Gil, ‘or at least if I can check Millar’s lodging we’ll ken. And thank you for searching.’

‘There’s another thing,’ said Lowrie. ‘I know about things setting after they’re deid, maister, but how sure is the timing? It’s a man we’re talking about, after all, no a side of mutton.’

‘Well, it can take longer,’ said Gil, ‘it can be slower, but it’s no often quicker. Why?’

‘Well, I wondered if the Deacon might ha been alive this morning.’

‘This morning?’ repeated Gil, startled. ‘No, he’d never have set that quickly. Why?’

‘Well, that’s it,’ said Lowrie. ‘I thought I saw him in the chapel, when we came to say Mass, though he wasny in his usual place. So how could he have been dead last night, if he was at Mass this morning?’

‘A good question,’ agreed Gil. ‘How certain are you that you saw him? Could it have been someone else?’

‘No very,’ admitted Lowrie. ‘But I’d swear I saw an extra person within the quire, just the dark figure wi the badge on the breast like the others, and who else was it like to have been?’

Gil looked from one young man to the other. ‘Did you see this, Michael?’

Michael shook his head. ‘I’d the candle. You don’t see much past that.’

‘Come and show me where you saw him, Lowrie.’

They went out and across the outer courtyard to the chapel door, which was now closed. Within, the candles still burned on the altar of St Serf, on either side of a clumsy wooden crucifix.

Even with these, even with daylight seeping reluctantly through the narrow windows, the little box-shaped building was full of shadows. As a place intended for clerks to worship in, it had no separate nave, but the stall seats faced inward, six on either hand, and their high backs and partial sides of Norway pine formed a sort of internal quire, with a painted screen and curtained doorway at its westward end to shut out the worst of the draughts. Socrates set off, claws clicking on the worn tiles, to explore the dim space between the pine uprights and the plastered outer walls where there was room for any lay folk who wished to hear the Office or the Mass.

‘There’s no vestry,’ said Lowrie, ‘so we robe in one corner or another. That corner, the day,’ he waved a hand. ‘We light the candle and the censer and go in, and Maister Kennedy begins the Mass.’

‘And the bedesmen are there waiting for you?’

‘I think they’ve said Prime by the time we get here.’ Lowrie held the curtain aside, and he and Michael followed Gil into the quire. ‘Maister Millar leads them in procession from the hall, so he was sitting up in his own place, I mind that. I’d the censer the day, no the candle, but it’s still no that easy to see out into the dark, you understand, and the black cloaks don’t show well, and the lugs of the stall sides hide all the faces. It can be quite strange,’ he admitted, ‘up here in the dark, wi all the voices round you and nobody to see. Just the same, their badges catch the light, and I thought I could see four each side, as if the Deacon was there and all. No in his own place opposite Maister Millar,’ he gestured at the two more elaborate stalls nearest the altar, ‘but down the west end next to Father Anselm. Maybe Mistress Mudie saw him,’ he added, ‘she was near the outer door when we came in, though she aye slips out after the Elevation to see to their porridge.’

Gil stopped at the altar step and turned, looking into the shadows.

‘Go and sit where you thought you saw him,’ he suggested. Lowrie obliged, spreading one hand across his chest to simulate the badge, and Gil nodded agreement. ‘Aye, I see what you mean. Your face is hid by the side where it curves out, but I can see your hand fine. Michael, what can you see?’

‘The now?’ said Michael nervously. ‘I can see his hand, aye, if he’d a bedehouse cloak on you’d see the badge fine. And I’ll swear the Deacon wasny in his own seat the morn,’ he added.

‘So was he here, then?’ Lowrie asked. Socrates reared up, one paw on the book-rest, peering into his face, and he reached out and patted the dog.

‘Aye, but he can’t have been.’ Gil paced down between the stalls, frowning. ‘There’s no doubt the man we lifted from the garden was dead by Compline last night.’

‘Maister Forsyth’s lecture,’ said Michael.

‘Aye, but before you go, Michael, I want a word wi you.’

The two students exchanged glances.

‘I’ll wait outside,’ said Lowrie.

As the door closed behind him Michael seemed to brace himself as for execution. Gil eyed him with some sympathy, and said reassuringly, ‘It’s none of my duty to oversee your behaviour, Michael. I’m no asking who she is.’

‘You’re no?’

‘No. Just watch you don’t get entangled in something your father won’t support.’ Michael stared at him open-mouthed, and he went on, ‘I want to know about your movements, yesternight and the morn — what time were you stirring about the bedehouse, and where. Even if you saw nothing, it helps.’

‘Oh.’ Michael swallowed. ‘I never thought of that. We must have — Oh,’ he said again, and put a hand on the nearest desk to steady himself.

‘Did your lass come in by this gate?’

Michael swallowed again, and shook his head.

‘Past Sissie Mudie?’ he said. ‘Not likely! I’ve got the keys,’ he disclosed. ‘I’d got permission to lie out of the college for the night, seeing as I was to ready the lodging for the old man — for my father. He’s due in Glasgow the morn for your marriage, maister.’ Gil nodded. ‘So I opened the back gate for her. That would be about …’ He paused, reckoning. ‘After Sissie was done trotting about getting two of the old brothers to their beds. One of them has the house opposite ours, and the other one’s next the hall. It would be near an hour after they finished their dinner, I suppose, afore even she started. And then the mad one began a great scene, and it took her long enough to settle him. It felt like past midnight afore all was quiet, though I suppose it wasny.’

‘And you opened the back yett and let the lassie in,’ said Gil, ‘and then what?’

‘Well, she was a bit — with the waiting, you understand,’ Michael confessed hesitantly. ‘Sissie took so much longer than I’d expected, and it was gey dark out on the Stablegreen, even with a lantern, and my — she was a wee thing upset, she said she kept hearing things. So I locked the gate quick and we got within doors, and then …’ He paused, with the glimmerings of an embarrassed smile.

‘That’s all I need to know,’ said Gil, suppressing his envy again. ‘So you locked the yett. You’re quite certain?’

‘Oh, aye. She wasny well pleased,’ said Michael cautiously, ‘that I took the time.’

‘And you saw nothing untoward? Nobody moving about or hiding behind trees?’

‘I wasny looking,’ said Michael.

‘A light in the Deacon’s lodging?’

‘I wasny — ’ Michael stopped, and considered. ‘No. I’d ha noticed that. I saw no light up there.’ He swallowed again. ‘Maister, we’ll be late for Tommy Forsyth’s lecture. Could I go, d’ye think?’

‘And this morning?’ said Gil, ignoring this. ‘When did you open the yett?’

‘As soon as they all went away through to the chapel for Prime. It was still full dark, and we never took the lantern out wi us, we never noticed a thing, if that’s what you’re asking. For all he must have been lying there by that time,’ he added tightly.

‘And you locked the yett again after she left?’

‘Aye.’

‘Was either of you out at the yett at all between those two times?’

‘No.’ Michael licked his lips. ‘We wereny across the threshold again till the morn. Nor looked out, even,’ he added.

Gil considered the younger man, who looked back at him uncomfortably and then dropped his eyes.

‘You’d best go to your lecture,’ he said. ‘No, wait! Gie me the key to the back yett. I’ll leave it here for you, and I ken where to find you if I need you.’

‘Aye,’ said Michael unhappily. He opened his purse and drew out a pair of keys on a ring. ‘I’ll not separate them. Leave them on a nail in the lodging, if you will, sir.’ He handed them over with reluctance, ducked one knee in a bow and left to join his friend.

Gil crossed the courtyard as the students’ footsteps receded along the narrow passage to the outside world, and on an impulse tapped at the open kitchen door opposite the hall.

‘Mistress Mudie?’ he asked.

‘Mistress,’ called a muffled voice within. ‘You’re asked for, mistress.’

A door at the far side of the kitchen opened, and Mistress Mudie looked out.

‘- never a moment in this place, who is it that wants me, oh it’s yersel, maister, I canny think what you’d want to ask me that I haveny tellt you already, come away in but, just so long’s ye don’t disturb Humphrey here, he’s feeling a bit better the now, aren’t you my poppet?’

Gil crossed the kitchen, nodding to the young man laboriously hacking vegetables at the bench behind the door. Mistress Mudie drew him into a small snug apartment, furnished with a cushioned settle and a folding table, one or two stools, and a little prayer desk with a worn hassock by the door to an inner chamber. There was an overpowering herbal smell, whose source was not clear, and a definite note of almonds. Betere is hire medycyn, he thought, Then eny mede or eny wyn; Hir erbes smulleth suete. His eye took in a brazier burning on the hearth with a metal trivet over it where several small pots were heating.

The youngest brother was sitting in a chair beside this, clasping a cup in both hands and staring anxiously at the wall. His heavy black cloak was folded over the back of his chair, and he wore a long belted gown of grey wool. Hearing Gil’s step he turned, and shrank back slightly.

‘A hoodie,’ he said, ‘it’s that hoodie again.’

‘I’m no a hoodie,’ said Gil reassuringly. Mistress Mudie nodded approval. ‘I’m no here to attack anyone.’ Feeling Socrates pressing against his knee he looked down, and saw with surprise that the the dog’s head was lowered to glare at Maister Humphrey, the coarse grey hair standing up on his back and shoulders. Gil snapped his fingers and gestured, and the animal departed in something like relief.

‘- aye, that’s better, we’re a bit feart for the big doggie even if we areny saying so, a course the mannie’s no a hoodie, Humphrey my poppet, he’s a good friend to the bedehouse, he’s here to find out what’s come to the Deacon — ’

‘The Deacon was a shrike,’ said Maister Humphrey earnestly, staring at Gil. He was very like his brother, with a thin squarish face, round light-coloured eyes and light brown hair clipped very close, presumably by Mistress Mudie. The hands clasping the beaker were fine-boned and muscular, but the nails were bitten so short they had bled quite recently. ‘He was a shrike, but now he’s a robin. Because he died, you ken?’

‘Why a robin?’ Gil asked.

‘He was making changes,’ said Humphrey, ‘a new nest for the bonnie yeldrin, another for the chaffinch,’ he cast a quick, bright smile at Mistress Mudie, ‘and the shrike himself to take a make and hae the meat frae our mouths.’

‘That sounds bad,’ said Gil, preserving his countenance.

‘Oh, very bad,’ agreed Humphrey, shaking his head. ‘But he changed to a robin instead, and now he’s dead. So it willny happen, will it?’

‘No, it willny,’ Gil reassured him.

Mistress Mudie gave him an approving look but said persuasively, ‘- no need to be upsetting ourselves wi talk like that, nor it wasny very nice to be calling the Deacon names, was it now, and what were you wanting to ask us anyway, till I get on wi my tasks here — ’

‘Last night, Mistress Mudie,’ said Gil, dragging his mind back to the point at issue, ‘you heard Maister Naismith come in late.’

‘It was the birds woke me,’ declared Humphrey, ‘when they sang for joy at the shrike’s passing. But I looked out after that, late, late, in the middle of the night, and there was a light in his lodging, so I wept sair, for they had leed to me.’

‘- what I said already, I knew I’d tellt you all I could — ’

‘Was all quiet here by then?’

‘- oh, aye, all asleep in their own wee houses they were, no a cheep out o them, even Humphrey was away wi the angels, weren’t you no, my poppet?’

‘How long had it been quiet?’

The continuous babble checked for a moment, as she stared at him.

‘Half an hour,’ she said. ‘No as much as an hour, no I couldny say it was as much as an hour, we’d to warm the milk for you, didn’t we no, Humphrey, and it was longer than I thought it would be, what wi the fire being low, and I heard the Deacon over our heads here no that long afore Maister Millar came in and all. And I heard him from here,’ she added, ‘our Andro, for he locked the door out there and went through to the garden, and I heard his boots on the stone and then on the gravel, and he went up to his own lodging which it’s above the other end of the hall and the stair’s in the garden by Anselm’s door. And the Deacon was over my head all that time walking about in his boots too, never thought to put his house shoon on, and then sitting eating his piece for I heard the chair scrape at the table — ’

As if on cue, footsteps could be heard on the boards above them. Pierre must still be studying the accounts, thought Gil.

Maister Humphrey looked up nervously. ‘Is that him back?’

‘- a course not, my poppet, the Deacon’s dead, rest his soul, he’s no walking about — ’

Humphrey nodded, smiling. ‘Now I mind. That’s the other one,’ he said. ‘The other hoodie.’

‘- now, now, fancy saying that about him — ’

‘He’s searching for the deep secrets of Satan.’

‘- we’ll have none of that, my poppet — ’

‘Aye, and he gives glory and honour and thanks to the one who lives for ever,’ said Gil quickly, switching to the scholarly tongue. The bedesman eyed him warily, then smiled again.

‘Praise and honour to the Lamb for ever and ever,’ he agreed, the Latin echoing off the creaking floorboards.

‘Amen,’ said Gil. Maister Humphrey relaxed, and drained off his cup and handed it to Sissie like a small child. The cuff of his grey gown was pulled and torn. Gil suddenly recalled his sister Margaret, whose clothes had always looked like that, because she chewed them. But she grew out of the habit before she was ten, he thought.

‘Have you some milk for the hoodie, Sissie?’ Humphrey asked, still smiling.

She set the cup aside and lifted a pipkin from the brazier, hand wrapped in a corner of her apron. ‘- saints be praised he’s taken to you for it’s no easy if he doesny take to a person, would you care for a drink of milk, maister, seeing it would make him happy? It’s almond milk,’ she qualified, ‘seeing there’s no milk to be had this time of year, but he likes it just as well and the herbs helps him.’

‘A wee drop, then,’ said Gil. ‘Mistress Mudie, I’ve another thing to ask you.’

‘- goodness me, as if I would have anything more to tell, I’m certain you’ve everything out of my head that’s in it the questions you’ve asked us all this day already — ’

‘At the Mass this morning,’ he continued. She was stirring a beaker, but stopped and paused again in her chatter to gaze at him, her plump face anxious in the light from the window. ‘One of the lads thought he saw a seventh bedesman, like as if the Deacon was sitting down at the end of the stalls. Did you see anything?’

‘Oh, I wouldny see him.’ She shook her head so that the ends of her linen headdress swung. ‘I never see him even when Anselm says he’s been there. And to say truth at this time of the year it’s that dark in the chapel there could be the choir of St Mungo’s at the Mass and I wouldny notice them, let alone someone who — ’ She caught herself up, glanced quickly at Humphrey who was watching her and went on, ‘someone who’s Anselm’s friend and no always in his own seat. No, I canny help you there, maister. Now here’s this milk, a wee bit warmed ower just to take the chill off it and a spoonful honey in it — ’