St Mungo's Robin

Chapter Four

Round the small blaze on the hearth at the far end of the hall, three of the bedehouse brothers were listening to a fourth who spoke in the loud, barking voice of someone who has been deaf for years. Three heads turned as Gil made his way down the room, Socrates behind him, but the speaker paid no attention.

‘He’ll have made his escape by the back way,’ he was saying, ‘I canny tell why the man’s no looking at the back yett. That dog he brought would pick up the scent, quick as ye please, and take him to the ill-doer — ’

‘Barty,’ said another brother tremulously, leaning over to face the other man. ‘It’s a sight-hound.’

‘What did ye say? What did ye say, Cubby?’

‘It’s a sight-hound. Look at it. And here’s the man to speak to us. Tell him what ye were just saying.’

‘What’s that? Playing? I wasny playing, Cubby.’

‘He wasny slain here. It wasny on the bedehouse land,’ said the frailest of the brothers, a scrawny man with a shock of white hair, his spectacles slipping sideways off his nose. ‘He tellt me that.’

‘Aye, Anselm,’ said the one addressed as Cubby. ‘I’ve no doubt, but the fellow has to report to Robert Blacader, he’ll need more to give him than that.’

‘He taught Robert Blacader,’ said Anselm resentfully. ‘He ought to listen to what he tells me.’

‘Fit deein, mon?’ demanded the brother opposite Anselm. He had removed his floppy velvet hat and hung it on the arm of his chair to dry; his head was completely bald and gleamed in the firelight. As if to compensate, in addition to the luxuriant grey moustache he had large bushy eyebrows, and flourishing tufts of hair emerged from his nostrils and ears. They gave him rather the look of a Green Man in a church, Gil thought, perhaps one who had been pruned slightly.

‘Forgive me, maisters,’ said Gil, bowing politely to the gathering. ‘I’m the Archbishop’s Quaestor, Gil Cunningham. Might I get a word with you all?’

‘It’s you that’s hunting for whoever slew the Deacon?’ said the one with the trembling-ill. Gil nodded. ‘Aye, well, we may no be much help, lad, but you can ask.’ He indicated the intent faces one by one. ‘Father Anselm, Maister Barty Lennox, Sir Duncan Fraser, and I’m Cubby Pringle.’

‘What’s he say?’ said the deaf brother. Barty Lennox, thought Gil. ‘Questions? Sit down and ask away, boy. What do you want of us?’

‘I’ve two questions, maisters,’ Gil said, drawing up a stool and collecting his wits. The dog sat down politely beside him, then lay down on his feet. ‘I want to hear about how you found Maister Naismith’s body, and I’d like to know when you all saw him last.’

The man with the trembling-ill, Cubby Pringle, spoke up first.

‘It was Duncan found him. He dwells down that end of the close, opposite the Douglas lodging, and the two houses next him are empty, so he’d be the only one to go that far down the path.’

‘Aye, aat’s the richt o’t,’ agreed Sir Duncan incomprehensibly from under his moustache. ‘The wee munsie wes juist liggin thaar pyntin intil the fir.’ He demonstrated, flinging out his arm in imitation of the corpse’s rigid gesture.

‘Then he shouted, and we all cam running.’

‘No running,’ said Anselm, shaking his head. ‘There’s none of us can run.’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘Hirpling, then. Andro came and all, and we agreed he was dead, and Frankie went for the laddie. What’s his name?’

‘Kennedy,’ supplied Sir Duncan.

‘Aye, young Kennedy. I wish Frankie was here, he’d tell you better. And Kennedy said he was stabbed, and we must send for you.’

‘What?’

‘He tellt me he was dead afore that,’ said Anselm in argumentative tones. ‘I kent it a’ready when we found him.’

‘There was no sign of a weapon?’ asked Gil.

‘I tell you, he says it wasny on the bedehouse land,’ reiterated Anselm. ‘The weapon’s no here either.’

‘We’ll need to find the weapon,’ explained Gil, ‘as well as his cloak.’

‘What’s he say?’ demanded Maister Lennox. They explained to him, loud and slow, and he shook his head. ‘No, there wasny a weapon. Was there, Duncan?’

‘Na, na. A saa nae dirk, sauf the capernicious buckie’s ain gully at’s bellyban.’

‘No,’ translated Maister Pringle.

‘Could he have been lying there already when you went to say Prime?’ Gil asked. This time he faced Maister Lennox and spoke slowly.

‘What d’ye say, time? Oh, Prime?’ barked the old man, and shook his head. ‘I wasny that end of the close afore Prime. Duncan, was he there afore Prime? Did ye see him?’

‘It wis pick-mark, Barty. A’d no ha saa a cast-up whaul.’ Sir Duncan mimed groping his way down the path in darkness. Gil nodded his understanding of this, smiling at him, and got a huge smile back, visible even under the sloping pent of the grey moustache.

‘No way to tell, afore bird-peep,’ agreed Maister Pringle.

‘None of you heard anything in the night?’ Gil asked, facing Maister Lennox again. The old man shook his head with a sharp yip of laughter.

‘No me, laddie!’ he said.

‘Nobody else?’ Gil looked round the circle.

‘A haard naither eechie nor ochie,’ said Sir Duncan regretfully. ‘Gin A had, A’d a gien him a han at the fellin, faae’er he wis.’

‘Aye, well,’ said Maister Pringle. ‘I did wonder if I heard voices. Murmuring like a doocot it was. But it wasny Naismith I heard, for all I’m near the gate. Next the Douglas lodging, ye ken,’ he explained to Gil.

‘Likely it was youngsters on the Stablegreen, Cubby,’ said Maister Lennox.

‘In this weather?’ retorted Maister Pringle.

‘If they canny get the privacy at home, a tree’ll do them,’ said Maister Lennox with relish, apparently following this thread quite clearly. ‘It wasny raining yestreen.’

‘I heard,’ said Anselm, clasping his hands on his stick. ‘I heard him in the night, for he woke me to tell me the man was dead.’

‘When was that?’ Gil asked.

‘Late, late. I was sleeping, and he woke me, so I rose and looked out, but it was a’ dark, save for a star low in the west.’

On a cloudy night? thought Gil. Michael or his lassie? Michael did mention a lantern.

‘And when did you last see Deacon Naismith?’ he asked.

They looked at one another, and Cubby Pringle said in his trembling voice, ‘Yestreen at Vespers, son. We’ve talked about that. He had a word for the whole house, and a strange word it was, and then we went to say Vespers and after it he gaed out.’

‘When he went out, was he wearing his bedehouse cloak and hat, or another?’

‘Aye,’s muckle bleck hap an’s wellat bunnet wi the fedder intil’t,’ supplied Sir Duncan. His gestures depicted a cloak with a badge like his own and a plumed bonnet. Gil nodded his understanding.

‘You didny see him return?’ he asked.

‘Na, na, we’d all gone to our rest,’ said Barty

‘And what was the word he had for all of you?’ he asked.

There was a pause, in which the old men looked at one another again.

‘Changes,’ said Cubby Pringle, as Humphrey had done. ‘The meat of the matter,’ he switched to a fluent old-fashioned Latin, ‘was that we were to move out of our hall, our sub-Deacon and our housekeeper were to be put out as well before the Nativity and make use of two of the empty houses, though none of these are in good repair, and Cecilia our housekeeper was to be our nurse only and accept a lesser reward for it.’

‘This was the first time you heard this?’ Gil asked.

‘It was. Cecilia asked who would be housekeeper and the Deacon replied, he was to be married and his wife would take all that into her hands.’

‘Married?’ repeated Gil. ‘Did he say who he was to marry?’

‘The Deacon did not tell us,’ said Anselm in Latin.

‘She’ll be a disappointed woman the day,’ commented Cubby in Scots, and Sir Duncan grinned uncharitably under his huge moustache.

‘She’ll be easit, mair belike,’ he said. Anselm gave him a prim smile.

‘And was that all he said?’

‘Was it no enough?’ demanded Barty Lennox in his barking voice. ‘Aye, Cubby’s gied you the sum o’t.’

‘And now he’s dead,’ said Anselm. He looked beyond Gil as the hall door opened. ‘Is that Andro? Is it time to say Nones?’

It was still raining. Gil made his way down the garden with the dog at his heels, and paused to study the yett. Drops of rusty water hung along the horizontals of the interlaced wrought-iron bands, and shook loose and fell to the threshold stone when he put the key in the lock. It turned readily, and the yett swung open silently on well-greased hinges. Michael again? he wondered. Socrates, recovering his spirits, leapt past him to attend to his own needs.

The gate led directly out on to the Stablegreen, an open expanse of ground dotted with clumps of bushes and hazel trees. Gil knew it reasonably well, since he often exercised the dog here, reaching it by way of the muddy vennel which led from Rottenrow nearly opposite his uncle’s house. He stood still, considering what it would be like for Michael’s sweetheart to stand here in the dark, alone, waiting for her lover to open the gate.

Socrates, having run ventre à terre in large circles for several minutes, returned to find his master inspecting the ground beside the wall. He joined in with enthusiasm, but nothing seemed to catch his attention at first. The earth here was firm, and had not taken clear prints, and the grasses were well trampled where many casual passers-by had come to stare over the wall. Pushing the dog aside, Gil worked his way along the boundary, and was finally rewarded by the discovery of two small square marks, sharp-edged, the length of a fingernail deep, with muddy water gathering in them. One was a handspan from the foot of the wall, the other perhaps three-fourths of an ell further out. He searched to either side along the wall, but found no more such imprints.

Standing up, he looked carefully at the wall which surrounded the bedehouse garden. The angular stones which made up its coping were at shoulder height, convenient to his eye. The rain was getting heavier, and was now running off the brim of his hat if he tipped his head forward, but the signs he was searching for showed up the more clearly.

He turned and scanned the surrounding area. The trampled grass close by offered little information, but further away there were signs which interested him. Socrates, looking where Gil looked, put his nose down and set off on a trail just as Maistre Pierre stepped through the gate, clutching his heavy cloak round him.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what has the dog found?’

‘I suppose the scent of whoever it was brought Naismith here,’ said Gil. His friend raised his eyebrows. ‘Come and look at this.’

The mason came obediently to stretch his neck and study the wet stonework. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘There.’ Gil pointed cautiously. ‘What do you see?’

‘Scratches,’ said Maistre Pierre after a moment. ‘Two or three small scratches and a chip off the stone.’ He cast Gil an interrogative look.

‘I think,’ said Gil, ‘he was put over the wall.’

‘Not through the gate?’

‘Michael tells me the gate was locked. I wondered if that would make a difference, so I looked, and found this.’

‘Go on.’

‘I think these scratches were made by that great bunch of keys he bore, scraping on the stone as he went over.’

‘Ah! And that was when his ear was torn,’ said Maistre Pierre, nodding. ‘It would work, though it does not explain the other marks on his face. But I would not care to lift such a burden so high myself. One person or more? Do we look for a strong man from a fair?’

‘Perhaps,’ Gil hedged. ‘There are no footprints to show someone was carrying something heavy, but there are these.’ Maistre Pierre looked where he indicated, tested the depth of the two small square impressions and frowned.

‘A ladder?’ he said. ‘He climbed a ladder, with the corpse? In the dark?’

‘Maybe,’ said Gil. ‘I can only find one set of marks. If it was a folding ladder, the other feet have left no trace.’ He looked round. ‘But if it was a ladder, we needn’t look for a big man. No more than the middling size. Where is that dog?’

He whistled, and was answered by a peremptory bark from the nearest clump of hazel scrub.

‘He has found something,’ Maistre Pierre suggested.

‘Surely not a squirrel, at this time of year,’ said Gil. ‘He was following a trail. I had better take a look. Do you see, someone has walked from here to those hazels.’

‘Half the Upper Town has walked here since dawn,’ complained Maistre Pierre.

Moving carefully to one side of the line of bruised grasses, they made their way towards the trees.

‘Will you see Alys again today?’ asked Maistre Pierre casually.

‘If I can,’ said Gil. His friend turned to look at him in the drizzle.

‘She will be herself again once the festivities are over,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She has done this once before, though not so bad, a few years since when we had a feast for my fortieth name-day. At the feast itself she was the model of a good daughter, in her pearls and her best gown. All will be well.’

‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘It’s not the feast that troubles me.’

‘That will be well too,’ said Maistre Pierre largely, and gave him a significant grin. ‘She is sufficiently like her mother, God rest her soul, that she will make you a good wife in all ways. Do not worry, son-in-law.’

‘Everyone keeps telling me that.’

‘They are right.’ The mason clapped him on the shoulder, and Gil grunted in response as they approached the thicket where Socrates’ tail was visible waving under the branches. The dog threw them a brief look over his shoulder, but turned back to the object which had interested him among the hazel-roots, pawing at the ground round it. The coarse grey hair stood up in a ridge along his narrow back and his soft ears were pricked intently.

‘Blood,’ said Gil. ‘He has found blood, or else a hedgehog. Good dog, leave!’

‘But no,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘it is something light-coloured. A piece of linen, I think.’

Socrates, recognizing that his master had taken charge of his find, sat back with his tongue hanging out, well pleased with himself. Gil bent over the object.

‘Yes, linen,’ he said. ‘Very wet, but not particularly muddy. It has not been here long.’ He straightened up to look round, and broke off a convenient twig to prod the cloth with. ‘And yes, I think these are bloodstains. Good dog!’

‘Is it a garment, or part of a garment? A napkin?’

‘It’s hemmed all round.’ Gil turned another fold of the cloth. ‘Neat stitches, too. It’s not napery, it’s a different weave, more like a towel, and far longer than it is wide. I think it’s a neck-piece. A scarf.’

‘Someone will miss it, in this weather,’ said Maistre Pierre, tugging gloomily at his own where it was wrapped about inside the collar of his cloak to prevent the rain running down his neck. ‘Whatever is such a thing doing here?’

‘A good question. Don’t move,’ Gil requested. He lifted the wet cloth carefully on his twig and handed it to the other man, then cast about round the spot where the object had lain. ‘The ground is much damper here than it is by the wall, and the dog was following a trail when he came here. Yes, indeed, there are footprints. A heel here, and there’s a toe.’ He bent again, pushing the wet stems of the dead grasses aside. ‘Ah!’

‘A complete print?’ said his companion hopefully. ‘Both of them?’

‘Indeed, several, but I think only one person. Come and look.’

The marks were clearly visible, several footprints superimposed as if a man had stood under the trees and shuffled nervously about while waiting for something. One print was distinct on top of the others, the clear outline of a well-shod foot.

‘Smaller than mine,’ said Gil, comparing his own foot with the print. ‘A good sole, not much worn. Boot or shoe, I wonder? The sole is quite rigid, I suspect a boot.’

‘Not helpful,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘No.’ Gil looked about him, and back at the gate of the bedehouse. ‘This doesn’t read.’

‘Not read? You mean you cannot make out the prints? They seem clear to me.’

‘Oh, those are easy enough. But what was he doing? He came from the gate, and stood here for a bit — ’

‘Dropped this.’

‘- aye, possibly, and then I suppose went back to the gate. Why? These are recent prints, probably made last night. What was so important here that he would tramp about rough ground by lantern-light? Or even,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘in the dark.’

‘Had he left something here?’

‘No sign of that. And he wasn’t carrying anything heavy. I wish the prints by the gate were clearer. Unless …’

‘Unless?’

‘I know someone stood by the gate for a time. And kept hearing things, so I’m told.’

‘Aha! Our man came here to wait for him to leave, you mean?’

‘She didn’t leave, but went in through the gate, in fact,’ Gil replied, sending Maistre Pierre’s eyebrows up into the shadow of his hat. ‘It seems Michael holds the keys to the gate and the Douglas lodging, and has taken advantage of it. I hope he can keep it quiet from his father.’

‘Indeed,’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly. ‘And from her kin, whoever she is.’

‘Or perhaps,’ pursued Gil, ‘our man found Michael’s lass or someone else coming along the vennel behind him, and took refuge here until matters were quiet. But where was the corpse meantime?’

‘Well, you may ask him when you find him. Now, this cloth. We take it somewhere to dry out? And dry out a little ourselves?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ Gil looked about him. ‘Some of this makes sense, but not all. I need to think it through, and I need to know what you found in the accounts. Shall we put the keys back in the Douglas lodging and go round to Rottenrow?’

‘We should speak to Millar first.’

The gate locked behind them, Gil followed the dog along the little gravel path to the door of the Douglas lodging. Looking along the row of neat houses in the rain, he saw that this end one was larger, with carving above the inscribed lintel, an upper floor, and a more elaborate outline to the windows. Socrates pawed at the door, and hurried in ahead of the two men when Gil opened it, sniffing round the floor with the air of one resuming an interrupted task.

‘Not a bad lodging,’ said Maistre Pierre, looking round with a professional eye. ‘A snug building, indeed, if it is fifty years old. A good plan,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘to endow an almshouse and reserve a place for oneself.’

‘The family uses it as a town lodging,’ said Gil, hanging the keys on a nail on the back of the door as he had been asked and surveying the sparsely furnished outer chamber. ‘It saves having to pay the burgh taxes on a townhouse, after all.’

‘Yes,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘That had occurred to me. What is that dog looking for?’

Socrates looked up, waved his tail, and continued on his patrol. Gil followed him, lifted the seat of the box-bench to peer into the storage space within, checked the fireside aumbry, felt carefully at the sack of meal on the over-mantel, looked at the fire-irons where they stood in a box by the hearth. The dog threw him a withering glance and took his more acute senses into the inner chamber.

When, after a quarter-hour or so, Gil came down the precipitous stair with Socrates sliding behind him, Maistre Pierre was seated on the bench, his cloak thrown back and his tablets in his hand.

‘The accounts are revealing,’ he said, looking up. ‘This is what I came out to tell you. Have you found anything?’

‘Nothing of interest to us, though I had to drag the dog away from the bed in the inner chamber there,’ Gil reported, smiling wryly. ‘I hope the boy provided sheets for his leman. There are none there now, though there’s the scraps of a love-feast.’

‘Hah!’ said Maistre Pierre in disapproval. ‘Nothing else?’

‘There’s little above-stairs to see, let alone to search. I suppose Sir James will bring cushions and hangings with him to make the place habitable. Tell me about these accounts.’

‘Here are the figures.’ Maistre Pierre tilted the tablets so that Gil could read the columns inscribed on the green wax. ‘You see, this is what comes in quarterly from one endowment and another, lands in Lanarkshire and some northwards by Kilsyth as well. That was donated ten years since by the grateful kin of one particular bedesman, it seems. The total is quite a significant sum.’

‘And yet he has been making economies,’ said Gil. ‘Where was the money going?’

‘Here,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning a leaf of the tablets with a triumphant flourish. ‘You see? Property by the Caichpele. Properties in Rottenrow. Properties in the Gallowgait. The records are all there, in the locked kist by his bed.’

‘In whose name is this property?’ enquired Gil levelly

‘In the name of Robert Naismith. And the conveyancing,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning another leaf, ‘was done by one Thomas Agnew.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ agreed Maister Millar. The community had said Nones and eaten its dinner, and the bedesmen were seated round the hall fire again, but Gil and Maistre Pierre had cornered the sub-Deacon in his own lodging. It was a single chamber, with a bed built into the panelling of one wall and a neat desk for a scholar opposite the hearth, five books on a shelf above it. There was no sign of a black cloak other than Millar’s own, and no velvet hat visible. ‘He’s done the bedehouse’s legal work ever since I’ve been here at any rate, I’ve no doubt he’s — he was Deacon Naismith’s man of law and all.’

‘So Naismith was diverting the bedehouse’s incomings to his own use,’ said Gil.

Millar gave him a shocked look. ‘Oh, I’m certain that canny be right. He’d no do such a thing. Would he?’ he added dubiously, lowering his eyes to the figures on Maistre Pierre’s tablets. ‘I find this unbelievable, Maister Cunningham.’

‘The figures do not lie,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘You said something about a property out to the north,’ Gil said.

‘This one.’ Maistre Pierre pointed with his thumb. A rich one, as you see.’

‘Where is it? Who gave it?’ Gil asked.

His friend shrugged. ‘I was looking only at the figures. I think the donor’s name was not in the papers I looked at, indeed. Do you know, Maister Millar?’

‘I wouldny ken,’ said Millar helplessly. ‘It would be afore my time. I’ve never paid much mind to the bedehouse money, you understand. I take my part in the duties towards the brothers, and the Deacon’s part as well half the time, and look to my studies between whiles, and he deals — dealt wi the money. Would Maister Agnew ken who was the donor, maybe?’

‘I’ll not ask him just yet.’ Gil stared thoughtfully at the column of figures. ‘Do we have the bedehouse outgoings there?’

‘We do.’ Maistre Pierre turned to another leaf. ‘They seem to have been kept up daily, in great detail, which did not conceal that the outlays were very small for such a community. Perhaps only one-third of mine.’

‘He oversaw the accounts daily,’ agreed Millar. ‘I tellt you that.’

Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘The charitable receipts are noted and included, but even so Mistress Mudie must have worked wonders, to be feeding and physicking six bedesmen and a household of six people from such an amount.’

‘Oh, she does, she does. Which makes it the more vexing — ’ Millar stopped.

Gil eyed him for a moment, and then said, ‘Talking of six bedesmen, Maister Millar, there’s an odd thing. The boy Livingstone thought he saw a seventh this morning. Did you see anything?’

‘When was this?’ asked Maistre Pierre. Gil relayed Lowrie’s account of the extra figure in the chapel, and found Millar shaking his head, an embarrassed grin on his face.

‘No. No. We ken that one,’ he said. ‘We don’t let on about it much, which I suppose is why the boy made the mistake. It’s — well, to say truth, we believe it’s one of the past brothers. I’ve seen him now and then myself, but he doesny attend every day, or even every week,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘whatever Anselm says.’ He stopped, looking from one to the other of them. ‘We get used to it,’ he said.

‘You are saying it is a spirit?’ said Maistre Pierre with incredulity. ‘A ghost?’

‘Call it what you like, maister,’ said Millar a little defiantly. ‘I’m saying it’s one of our past bedesmen, still coming to Mass where he worshipped for years, and no anything harmful.’

‘But have you not called for someone to banish him?’

‘Why? It’s one thing the brethren and I were all agreed on. Whoever he is, he’s another of our brothers, why would we do a thing like that to him? Besides, it would distress Anselm, who can see him, beyond bearing. We’ve prayed for his rest, maister, but it seems he still likes to hear the Mass, and there’s no wrong in it, after all. Even the blessed angels rejoice at the Elevation, we’re told.’

‘Ah, mon Dieu!’ said Maistre Pierre, staring at him.

‘So it’s possible Lowrie saw nobody,’ said Gil.

‘It’s most likely,’ said Millar earnestly. ‘Nobody in this world.’

‘And has anyone spoken to Agnew yet?’ asked David Cunningham. ‘Or indeed tellt the man’s mistress, poor soul? I mind her father well, a decent man, it’s a sore sicht to find the family brought down so far that she’s to keep house for a clerk in this way.’

‘Agnew was there this morning,’ Gil reported. ‘He was quite anxious for his brother. And I think one of the bedesmen had gone to tell Mistress Veitch, so we can likely assume she knows by now.’

‘Maister Millar also said he would call on her,’ said Maistre Pierre. He stretched his steaming legs closer to the hearth and took another swallow of spiced ale. Maggie approved of Alys, and by extension of her family, so the ale and the hearty plate of bannocks and cheese with it had appeared with only a passing reference to the time of the household meals.

‘So it seems,’ said the Official, clipping his spectacles on to his nose, ‘as if the man Naismith has been farming the income of the bedehouse to his own benefit?’

‘And considerable benefit at that,’ agreed Gil. ‘Enough to purchase several properties in the burgh. When would St Serf’s last suffer an Archbishop’s Visit, sir?’

‘Who knows?’ said his uncle, considering briefly. He rested his elbows on the arms of his great chair and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. ‘No in my time, that’s for certain. Robert Blacader has other matters on his mind than Visitations.’

‘So the accounts have never been audited, and nobody but the old men could say him nay,’ said Gil. ‘Of the five I have met, only two are clear in their heads, and one of those is stone-deaf.’

‘Do you think that was why he was killed?’ asked the Official.

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Gil.

‘What have you found, then?’

Gil looked at Maistre Pierre, who raised his eyebrows but said nothing and reached for another bannock.

‘Naismith left the almshouse last night, just before they said Vespers, which would be about half an hour after five by what Millar tells us. He went out wearing the same clothes he was found dead in, and the cloak and hat of his office over them. The almshouse people think he was going to see his mistress.’

‘Who lives by the Caichpele,’ supplied Maistre Pierre through a mouthful of bannock.

‘Thomas Agnew says he was wi him later in his chamber in the tower, but left after an hour or so. He was heard in his lodging, well after nine o’clock,’ Gil continued, nodding at the interruption. ‘His bed had been slept in and the dole Sissie Mudie left had been eaten. This morning he may or may not have been seen at Mass, though if he was there he wasn’t in his own seat. And then, not ten minutes after the Mass, he was found knifed in the bedehouse garden, between a locked gate and a locked door, stiff and cold as if he’d been dead near twelve hours.’

‘Well!’ said David Cunningham, but it was drowned by an urgent exclamation.

‘Who? Who are you talking about?’ Tib stood at the door to the kitchen stairs, white as the flour on the apron which covered her old grey gown. Socrates rose from his place at Gil’s feet and padded forward to greet her. ‘Is it someone dead at the bedehouse?’

‘Aye, indeed,’ said her uncle, turning his head. ‘Seems the Deacon has been stabbed.’

‘Stabbed?’ she repeated blankly. ‘The Deacon? Who’s that? Who by?’

‘That’s what your brother has to find out.’

‘But when did it happen?’ Tib demanded. Socrates thrust his nose against her apron, tail waving, and she pushed him away.

‘Last night sometime,’ said Gil. ‘Who do you know at the bedehouse?’

She gave a little gasp, and shook her head. Socrates sat down and grinned up at her face, then turned to look over his shoulder at Gil.

‘No one,’ Tib said earnestly, ignoring the dog. ‘But it’s so close. Just over the way and down the vennel.’

‘Never fear, Lady Tib,’ said Maistre Pierre in bracing tones. ‘Your brother and uncle will keep you safe.’

‘Yes,’ she said, with a contrived smile. Her eyes slid away from Gil’s, and she wound her fingers in the folds of her apron. He was about to speak when there was a knocking at the main door of the house.

‘Tell Maggie I’ll get that,’ he said, rising.

‘If it’s another death, say you’re from home,’ recommended the mason.

What’s worrying Tib? Gil wondered, making his way down the stair to the door, the dog at his heels. She seemed frightened for someone, rather than by something. It has certainly changed her tune from this morning, if she accepts that I might be of some use, he thought, lifting the latch and swinging the heavy door back.

‘Well, Gil,’ said the foremost of the three Cistercians on the doorstep. ‘Let us in out the rain, and then I’ll wish you happy.’

‘Dorothea!’ he said in delight.

By the time Sister Dorothea and her retinue of plump lay sister and small elderly confessor-cum-secretary had been drawn in, welcomed, and dried off, Maggie had appeared with more spiced ale and a large jug of wine, followed by Tib bearing a platter of new girdlecakes.

‘And I sent Tam to tell them at the court you’d be held up, maister,’ Maggie added to the Official, and set down the tray to seize hold of Dorothea. ‘Oh, my, Lady Dawtie, you’re looking well. You’ve no changed a bit. Cellarer, is it, now, and keeping the accounts? You that used to hide from your lady mother when it was time to learn your numbers?’

‘Sub-Cellarer,’ Dorothea corrected her, emerging from the embrace with aplomb.

‘We’ll pray for your promotion,’ said Maggie, and pushed her down on to a stool. ‘Sit there, Lady Dawtie, my dearie, and hae a glass of wine. It’s the good stuff.’

‘I’d rather a wee cake,’ said Dorothea. ‘Herbert, Agnes, I commend Maggie’s girdle-cakes. That’s what I’ve come to Glasgow for, Maggie, no my brother’s marriage.’

Tib, the apron discarded, helped to serve out the wine and cakes very properly, eyeing Dorothea under her lashes. Gil watched this with some amusement but could not blame her; he hardly recognized their sister himself. Had Dorothea really been this confident, this calm, at sixteen? It seemed unlikely, despite Maggie’s assertion. He remembered a thin, hungry girl, impatient of the distractions of the world, always at her prayers. As he should have been himself at the time, given the plans their parents had nurtured for him, but at fourteen there were more exciting things to be doing.

‘And I hear from Mother,’ said Dorothea, passing her confessor the platter of cakes, ‘that you’ve a benefice and a title now, Gil. Is that your doing, sir?’

‘No, it’s all your brother’s own doing,’ said Canon Cunningham. ‘I reminded Robert Blacader of his existence, and so I believe did your mother, a number of times,’ he added remotely, ‘but it was Gil’s own work made Robert that pleased wi him.’

‘You put him to the blush,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘But what work is that? Not this business of hunting down murderers, surely. Does Blacader think that worth a benefice?’

‘He seems to,’ said Gil.

‘Oh, is that why they wanted you at St Serf’s the day?’ said Tib in tones of innocence. ‘I thought it was just because you were at the college with that man Kennedy.’

‘St Serf’s?’ said Dorothea. ‘Is that the bedehouse? Is something wrong there?’

‘Robert Naismith the Deacon was found stabbed this morning,’ said Gil baldly. She bowed her head and crossed herself, her lips moving.

‘And has anyone tellt the lassie Veitch yet, that’s what I’d like to know,’ said Maggie from her position by the small cupboard. ‘You mind Marion Veitch, don’t you no, Lady Dawtie?’

‘Marion? What’s she — oh!’ said Dorothea. Her face, narrowly visible within the folds of white coif and black veil, took on an expression of dismay. ‘Oh, poor Marion. Where’s she staying? I must visit her.’

‘Veitch?’ said Tib. ‘You mean Marion that used to live at Kittymuir? I suppose that’s why her brother was in Glasgow, if she lives here too. What’s she to do with St Serf’s?’

‘Her brother?’ said Gil. She threw him a look. ‘Which brother? When did you meet him?’

‘It was John, the one that went to sea, but I never met him,’ she said lightly. ‘Just I saw him in the street. Yesterday.’

‘Sissie Mudie mentioned him today,’ Gil recalled. ‘I wonder what he’s doing in Glasgow.’

‘Visiting his sister,’ suggested Canon Cunningham. ‘Visiting their uncle. Did the uncle not teach you at the grammar school in Hamilton, Gilbert?’

‘Frankie Veitch!’ said Gil. ‘I never fitted it together. Aye, he did, sir.’

‘I must,’ said Maistre Pierre with reluctance, ‘go back to the chantier before dark. Madame, j’suis enchanté de vous connaıtre.’ He bowed across the hearth to Dorothea, and she inclined her head in response. ‘Perhaps your brother would bring you to supper with us tomorrow?’

‘Indeed, aye, sir,’ said Dorothea. ‘Herbert and I are to spend the day with men of law, about the rents from our Glasgow properties. I’ll be glad of something to look forward to at the end of it. Will I meet your daughter?’

‘For certain.’

Dorothea smiled, her face lighting up in the way Gil recalled. ‘I’m truly impatient to meet her, maister. A lassie who can wrench my brother from his destined career, and then convince Mother it was right, must be worth knowing. I hope he values her as high as she does him.’

Tib’s face darkened. Gil was aware that his own expression changed, and also that Dorothea, as acute as their mother, had noticed both.

‘How long can you stay?’ he asked hastily. ‘Have they found you somewhere to lie at the castle?’

Tib’s expression soured still further, but she said nothing. Dorothea admitted to lodging at the castle, and began a lively account of a disastrous visit she had made to another Cistercian house which she forbore to name, and the moment passed.

But later, when she was bundled up in her travelling cloak again and striding down Rottenrow beside Gil, she said, ‘What’s eating at Tib?’

Gil shrugged. ‘Who kens? She read me a fine rigma-role this morn when she arrived, about no being passed about like a parcel, and no wishing to stay wi Mother or Margaret or Kate. Likely it’s to do wi first Kate marrying and now me, and she’s left at home wi no tocher.’

‘Kate was wedded wi no tocher,’ said Dorothea thoughtfully.

‘Augie Morison’s doing well enough no to look for either coin or land wi her,’ said Gil, smiling. ‘The man’s besotted on her, besides. Who we’d get to take a wild wee termagant like Tib I wouldny ken.’

They reached the end of Rottenrow and crossed the Wyndhead before Dorothea went on, ‘Gil, did Mother no tell me this is a love match, you and Alys Mason?’

‘It is,’ said Gil.

She looked up at him through the drizzle. ‘On both sides?’

He opened his mouth to say, Yes, of course, and closed it, recalling again the tension in Alys’s slender body within his arms, the way she withdrew from his kiss. Dorothea fixed her gaze on the towers of St Mungo’s, and after a moment remarked, ‘I mind Marion Veitch well. It seems she was left with nothing.’

‘I never heard,’ said Gil. ‘I knew John went to sea.’

It is a love match, he wanted to say. Alys feels as I do, I know she does. I love my lady pure, And she loves me again. But the words would not come to his mouth.

‘I’d a word wi our uncle just now,’ said Dorothea. ‘The oldest brother died in the rebellion and they couldny pay the fines. John was at sea already, and the middle brother — William, was it? — had gone for a priest, and it seems as if Marion didny fancy keeping house for him and took this man Naismith’s offer when it came to her.’

‘William Veitch was a sleekit wee nyaff,’ said Gil intemperately ‘I mind once he got me into a fight wi John with his lies, and got us both a beating. I’d not blame Marion if she didny want to share his rooftree.’

The directions Maggie had provided led them to a wynd off the Drygate. The houses along its muddy length were small, but seemed in good repair. Gossiping maidservants sheltered in the doorways, and the high wooden walls of the Caichpele were visible beyond the rooftops, though it seemed unlikely that tennis was being played in the steady rain.

The furthest house along the wynd was a two-storey structure of wood and lime-washed plaster, with a well-built chimney issuing from the centre of the thatched roof, and a tiny stone kitchen at the side of the house. They stopped before the door, and Gil rattled the wrought-iron ring up and down the twisted bar above the latch. Above them, a shutter opened, and a voice called, ‘Who’s that tirling at the pin?’

‘I’m Dorothea Cunningham. Is the mistress home?’ said Dorothea, stepping back to look up past the eaves-drips. ‘We’d like a word.’

The maidservant looked back over her shoulder, then leaned out, nodding, and beckoned them in.

‘Aye, come up, madam, come up, maister.’ She withdrew and closed the shutter. By the time they had stepped inside and fastened the latch she was coming down the narrow stair at the back of the house, a pretty girl with her hair loose, clad in a grubby kirtle with the sleeves rolled well up and carrying a small child of indeterminate gender on her hip.

‘Come away in, sir and madam,’ she said. ‘The mistress is up the stair. She’s packing.’