St Mungo's Robin

Chapter Five

Marion Veitch was certainly packing.

They could hear her tramping back and forward across the boards as they crossed the hall and followed the maidservant up the stair. Emerging into the warmth of the upper floor, Gil saw first a partly dismantled tester-bed, its red woollen hangings in disarray. Then a woman appeared from the shadows behind the bedhead, carrying an armful of folded linen and heading for an open kist by the window.

Gil had last seen Marion, he reckoned, at the dangerous age of twelve or thirteen when the parents of girls began to argue about how soon they should be married off. This girl’s parents had waited too long, and she was now that awkward commodity, a pretty woman with no money of her own. Like Tib, he reflected, though a lot older. She had been a sweet, well-behaved child, and had grown into a beauty of the conventional type, with a pale, fair skin, golden hair visible under her linen coif, large blank blue eyes and a pink mouth made for kissing which just now was stretched in a doubtful smile as she stared at them. She had been weeping, he thought.

‘Marion,’ said Dorothea, and bent the knee in a curtsy, then went forward with her hands out. ‘How are you?’

‘Dorothea,’ said Marion. ‘Sister Dorothea Cunningham. A course, that’s what Eppie said.’ She put the linen down on the mattress, and took Dorothea’s hands, then embraced her. ‘I’m well, I thank you. How are you? Dorothea, my dearie, how long is it? I’d never ha known you. And you, Gil, it must be years. Will you stay to supper?’

‘No, no,’ said Dorothea reassuringly, ‘we’re expected back at my uncle’s, but I had to see you when I heard of your trouble.’

Relief crossed Marion’s face, but all she said was, ‘Come to the fire, come and be seated, the both of you. Eppie, get Danny to bring us a refreshment, will you, lass.’

Eppie, who had set the child down, picked it up again and made for the stairs.

‘He’ll likely no bring it himself,’ she warned, ‘the strunt he’s in the day, mistress.’

‘It must be twelve years,’ said Dorothea, sitting down on one of the pair of cushioned settles. ‘We’ve all changed. I’m right sorry to see you again at a moment like this, Marion. I had to come by when I heard of it. But has none of your neighbours come in to sit with you?’

Marion shrugged. She was warmly but unbecomingly dressed in a dark brown high-necked gown, with a grey furred loose robe over it which hung open and lay in pools of marten-skin round her feet when she sat opposite her guests across the small brazier. A gold chain of strange work lay about her neck under the robe. Without the armful of linen to mask it her pregnancy was visible but not, Gil thought, very far advanced.

‘They’ve been at the door, the most of them, but I sent them away, I’m too taigled. But it’s no a bother to see you, after all this time,’ she said, ‘I was just packing. Gil, you’re a man of law these days, are you no? Can you tell me how much of this I can lay claim to? I’d no like to go off wi something I’ve no right to take.’

Gil closed his mouth, swallowed, and said carefully, ‘Your own clothes, your jewellery, items like your combs and spinning wheel and such like, are all paraphernal. That is,’ he translated, seeing her anxious look, ‘they’re your own property and you can take them where you like. Also anything of the bairn’s,’ he added, ‘clothes and toys and so forth.’

‘But do you have to leave immediately?’ asked Dorothea. ‘Surely whoever inherits the house, they’ll give you time to find somewhere else.’

‘Aye, likely,’ said Marion. There was a short silence.

‘I’m sorry about Maister Naismith’s death,’ said Dorothea, trying again. ‘He’ll be a sore miss to you, surely.’

‘No, I wouldny say that,’ pronounced Marion, gazing out of the open shutters at the lit windows of the house opposite. There was another silence. Gil slid a look at his sister, and found her eyeing him round her veil. He cleared his throat, and their hostess turned the wide blue gaze on him.

‘Marion, how much did Andro Millar tell you?’ he asked.

She considered briefly ‘My uncle Frankie came by wi the word first, and then my brother John, and Andro came later, but they never told me a lot. Just that the Deacon was dead. They found him in the bedehouse garden the morn. Is that right?’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Gil. ‘They never said how he had died?’ She shook her head. ‘He was stabbed, Marion.’

‘Stabbed?’ she repeated sharply.

Gil nodded. ‘It was murder. I’m Blacader’s Quaestor, and I’m pursuing the death to bring whoever did it to justice.’

‘No need for that,’ she said, the brief moment of animation over.

‘Everyone deserves justice,’ said Dorothea. Marion smiled kindly at her, but said nothing.

‘When did you see him last?’ Gil asked.

‘Who, the Deacon? Yestreen, it would be. He was here at supper-time. He ate his supper wi the household.’

‘What did you serve?’ Gil asked.

‘Stewed kale wi lentils, and a dish of roastit mutton,’ she said promptly, ‘and a plate of apple fritters to follow.’

‘And Malvoisie to drink?’

‘No,’ she said blankly. ‘Just ale. And my brother John was here. You’ll mind John, a course. He’s home from the sea, from Dumbarton, where his ship’s in the now. Is that no good news?’ she said, a smile crossing the empty façade. ‘He fetched up at the door at noon yesterday, and I was that pleased to see him. Four year he’s been away this time, him and — He brought me this chain,’ she touched it vaguely, ‘he says it’s Moorish make.’

‘It’s a bonnie thing,’ said Dorothea. ‘You must have been thankful to see him. Was he here at supper too?’

‘Aye.’

‘How long did Maister Naismith stay?’ asked Gil. ‘Did you sit talking after supper?’

‘No,’ she said, the blank look returning. ‘Naismith was to go out, so he said, about some business of his own, so he gaed off, and my brother was here a while longer talking over — talking over old times.’ Was that a break in her voice? ‘Then John went off and all, to his lodging down the High Street, and I went to my bed.’

‘So you saw Naismith about six or seven o’clock?’ Gil said.

‘Aye, that would be it,’ she agreed.

‘What time would it be when he left?’

‘Maybe half an hour after seven.’ She sounded vague. ‘Would that be right, Eppie?’

‘Aye, I’d say so, mistress,’ said Eppie, returning with the child on her hip. ‘Can I leave the wean wi you a minute till I carry up this tray? Danny’s still in a mood.’

The little one was passed over, smiling at its mother and, more shyly, at the visitors. It was an attractive child, dressed in a tunic of fine red wool protected by two layers of linen bib and apron. A mop of dark curls overhung a little pale-skinned face with huge blue eyes like its mother’s. They could pose for an altarpiece, thought Gil.

‘And who’s this?’ asked Dorothea, smiling back at the child.

‘This is Frankie,’ said Marion unhelpfully. ‘We named her for my uncle,’ she added, finally providing the detail Gil wanted. ‘He’s been right good to me. She’s being a bit clingy the day, aren’t you, my wee poppet? So Eppie’s been minding her till I get this packing done. Make your obedience to the lady and gentleman, Frankie.’

After a little more coaxing Frankie slid off the settle, performed a wobbly curtsy, and hid her face in her mother’s lap when it was praised. Marion and Dorothea exchanged indulgent glances.

‘Where was Maister Naismith going when he left here?’ Gil asked.

‘He never said,’ Marion declared. ‘He was — he wasny given to discussing his business wi me,’ she added firmly.

‘But did it seem like something he was looking forward to, maybe an evening with friends,’ persisted Gil, ‘or was it a matter of business? How was he when he left?’

‘Just ordinary,’ said Marion. Eppie, reappearing on the stair with the tray in her hands, cast a sharp glance at her mistress but said nothing. ‘Neither up nor down,’ Marion elaborated. ‘Will you have a cup of buttered ale?’

The refreshment was served out by Eppie, the ale steaming in the wooden beakers. It must, Gil reflected, have been already hot for the servants’ mid-afternoon break, to have appeared so promptly. There was a plate of little cakes to hand round after it, at which Frankie emerged from her mother’s skirts looking hopeful.

‘You can have one cake,’ said Marion, ‘and then go down wi Eppie and have another one. You can come back to Mammy later.’

Gil watched as the two left, then began again.

‘Marion, did Maister Millar tell you anything else?’ She shook her head. ‘There was someone in the Deacon’s lodging by the time Millar got home last night, but we don’t know where he was before that.’

‘But I thought he was slain in the night,’ said Marion, looking troubled, ‘or maybe right early this morn. Was it no someone inside the bedehouse? Why does it matter where he was afore that?’

‘It’s quite possible it was someone inside,’ agreed Gil non-committally ‘but if we know what his movements were last night, who he met or spoke to, we might learn why he was killed.’

‘Oh.’ She stared at him with those wide blue eyes.

‘You said he got here at supper-time. When would that be?’

‘After they said Compline at the bedehouse? They’re earlier than St Mungo’s or St Nicholas, so Sissie can get the old men to bed and get her evening to herself. It was about his usual time,’ she asserted.

‘And he left about half an hour after seven. So he was here maybe an hour and a half, and had supper.’ She nodded. ‘What did you talk about? Was he glad to see your brother here at supper?’

‘Aye, he was.’ Was that a trace of reluctance? ‘We spoke of this and that. My brother’s prospects, the voyages he’s made. The Deacon’s rents. Your marriage,’ she added, with a slight smile.

‘His rents?’ said Gil. ‘Was there any sort of problem with his finances?’

‘No that he mentioned. I think all was well there,’ she said vaguely

‘And then he went out. He didny come back?’

‘No. Why would he do that?’

‘Could he have been going on to friends? Who were his friends?’

‘He never said where he was going. Oh, he’d friends,’ she added, a faint bitter note in her voice. ‘All well-doing gentlemen of his own sort. Maister Agnew, Maister Walkinshaw, Maister — I canny mind. They’ve supped in this house, but I haveny met them.’

Gil frowned, aware of his sister looking at him in puzzlement, but decided to let that one pass meantime.

‘So he left this house about half an hour after seven,’ he said. She nodded.

‘And that was the last you saw him,’ said Dorothea. Marion nodded again, like a fairground toy. ‘Marion, will I come wi you when you witness his shrouding? You’ll want to say a farewell to him, will you no?’

‘Oh, I’ll no be there,’ said Marion. ‘I’ve nothing I want to say to Robert Naismith.’

Gil lost patience.

‘Why not?’ he demanded bluntly.

There was a pause, in which Eppie’s voice could be heard downstairs; then Marion closed her eyes and put up her hand. It covered her face, but did not conceal the way her mouth twisted, or the tears which spilled from under her dark eyelashes. Dorothea set down her own beaker and crossed to sit beside her, taking her free hand in a comforting clasp. Marion put her head down on the creamy wool shoulder, golden hair tumbling loose to shine in the candlelight as her cap slipped sideways, and a great wail escaped her.

Dorothea caught Gil’s eye and deliberately indicated the stair.

Following the voices, Gil found Eppie in the inner room downstairs, leaning against the frame of the kitchen doorway, her spindle in her hand. The child sat at her feet, crooning quietly to a wooden mommet. They both looked round as he crossed the room, but the voice grumbling in the kitchen continued.

‘Who she thinks she is I’d like to ken, it’s all ower the town she hasny a penny to call her own but what the man Naismith gave her, but there she goes, setting herself above honest working folk — ’

‘Danny,’ said Eppie warningly. The voice was silenced, and its owner stepped into view, a small man with a belligerent expression and receding ginger hair. He was wrapped in an apron even more enveloping than the one which protected the child, but the sleeves of his jerkin were mottled with stains and white blotches and he clutched a wooden spoon in a menacing way in one broad hand. This was clearly the cook. Beyond him another young woman was rolling pastry at the big table.

Gil glanced quickly at the man’s soft deerskin house shoes. The spreading folds of hide made it difficult to judge the size of the feet within, but they seemed to be large.

‘You’re Maister Cunningham that dwells in Rottenrow, aren’t you?’ said Eppie, and cast her spindle. ‘It’s you that’s getting wedded next week, isn’t it no?’ she went on, drawing out the thread from the roll of carded wool in her other hand. ‘No that many gets wed in the Upper Town.’

‘That’s so,’ Gil admitted.

She nodded, watching the spindle twirl and swing. ‘I thought that. We’ve the plans all laid for the rough music,’ she assured him, and caught the spindle at the moment before it stopped turning.

Gil managed a smile, but Danny said, ‘No wi my cooking pots you’re no, Eppie Dunlop.’

The girl with the rolling pin giggled, and Eppie threw him a look.

‘Oh, you,’ she said. ‘We’ll use others, then, and you’ll no get any of the sweetmeats when we’re done.’

Another thing to remember, thought Gil in dismay. The night before the wedding at the groom’s house, the wedding night at the bride’s house: a serenade of bawdy songs accompanied by the beating of pots and pan-lids and any musical instruments whose players could be persuaded to join in, a piper, maybe, or one of the shawms from the burgh band, something good and loud like that. They would expect to be rewarded with sweetmeats and strong drink. Maybe Maggie would have that in hand.

‘Were you all three here in the house yestreen?’ he asked.

‘Aye, we were,’ said Eppie, winding-on her new thread, ‘though Bel went home after her supper. Danny and I both live in,’ she added, and cast the spindle again. ‘I sleep up-by, wi the bairn, and my brother has his bed in the kitchen where it’s warm.’

‘Brother?’ said Gil, startled, looking from one to the other.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Eppie, laughing. ‘We’re no like, are we? He takes after our faither, the wee baldy man he was, and I’m the spit image of our mother when she was young. Or so my auntie tells us. Maister Naismith hired us thegither.’

‘So will that be you all wi no place now?’ Gil asked in sympathetic tones.

Bel shrugged, and Danny snarled something, and turned back to a pot on the charcoal stove. Eppie said more philosophically, ‘Maybe, maybe no. She’s no notion what was in the maister’s will.’

‘He won’t have had the time to make one, surely,’ said Gil.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Eppie. ‘Did she no say? That’s what they were talking about over their supper, her and the maister and her brother John Veitch.’

‘Eppie,’ said Danny in the same warning tone she had used.

‘Well, we were all in here at the table thegither,’ said Eppie. ‘That’s a bonnie man, her brother,’ she added. ‘I never saw him afore, but the moment I clapped my een on him, there on the doorsill, I kent who he must be.’ She sighed, and the girl with the rolling-pin sighed in sympathy. ‘And the bonnie things he’s brought the mistress, too.’

‘What did he have to say about the will?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, aye. Well, the maister said,’ she recounted, ‘that he was wanting to make a new will, and he’d be going on to see his man of law after his supper to get it drawn up.’

‘Draw?’ said Frankie in a little piping voice at her feet. ‘Frankie draw?’

‘No the now, my poppet. Go and put Annabella to bed in Danny’s shoe, see, over there. And John Veitch asked him,’ she continued, the spindle idle in her hand, ‘since the mistress said nothing, what he was looking to alter in it. Then he said he’d made other plans for the future, and he’d be wanting to leave his property elsewhere because of them. Then I think maybe the mistress kicked her brother under the board, for he fell silent, but after we drew the cloth and turned the board up, they went above stairs and there was a roaring tulzie, you could ha heard it in St Mungo’s.’

‘I certainly heard it down here,’ said Danny sourly.

‘What was it about?’ Gil asked.

‘All about the will, a course. He never said what the other plans were,’ said Eppie in some regret, ‘or no that I heard, but he was saying he’d leave this house and some other property to someone else, and if the bairn she’s carrying should be a son he said he’d leave my mistress a house he owns down off the Gallowgait and if no then she was to be out of here when her forty days was up, and — ’

‘Making notes, were ye?’ said Danny, peering into a saucepan. Bel, listening avidly, jumped and applied herself to the pastry again.

‘Did he name the legatee?’ Gil asked. ‘The person he was leaving this house to,’ he corrected himself.

‘And what’s that to you if he did?’ demanded another voice behind Gil. He turned, and found himself looking at a large man in a furred gown, standing with booted feet planted well apart and glaring at him from the other doorway. Like Eppie, Gil was in no doubt about who this was. He had changed in ten years, but his fair hair and blue eyes creased at the corners would have identified him, even before Frankie abandoned her mommet, scrambled to her feet and scurried forward exclaiming,

‘Unca John! Unca John!’

The scowl changed to a smile.

‘Where’s my best lassie?’ said John Veitch. He bent and scooped the child up, tossing her high so that she squealed with laughter. ‘Where’s your mammy, wee lass?’

‘Up,’ said Frankie, pointing to the stairs. ‘Up wi lady. I go up later.’

‘And you’re down here questioning Eppie,’ said the seaman, glowering at Gil again.

‘D’you no mind me, John? Gil Cunningham? I’m Robert Blacader’s Quaestor now,’ said Gil, wondering if he would ever get used to explaining this. ‘I’m charged wi looking into any murders in Glasgow, or wherever he sends me.’

‘What’s it to do wi Robert Blacader?’ demanded Veitch. ‘Aye, I mind you. You’re the youngest brother, aren’t you no? And there were all those sisters you had and all.’

‘That’ll be one of them up above wi the mistress the now,’ said Eppie. ‘A white nun, she is. Maister Cunningham was asking about the supper, and I was telling him when the maister left.’

‘Aye,’ said Veitch rather grimly. ‘Too busy to talk to me about my sister. Then I come up the hill the day to get a word wi him at the hour he appointed, face to face and man to man, and I hear at the gate that he’s deid. But what’s this about the supper? Surely he wasny poisoned? That canny be it, the rest o us have taken no hurt,’ he added with a sardonic look as Danny’s indignant snarl rose from the kitchen. ‘And what’s it to do wi Blacader?’

‘This is Blacader’s burgh, John,’ Gil reminded him. ‘No like where we grew up out in the Hamiltons’ lands. If Naismith’s killer can be taken, Blacader or his court will deal wi him first before he’s sent to Edinburgh. And meantime, can you tell me when you left here last night?’

‘Me?’ The sailor contemplated the ceiling briefly, then smiled at the child whom he was still holding on his arm. ‘I sang this wee one a song when she was in her cradle, didn’t I, my flower?’

‘Passy awa,’ said Frankie triumphantly.

‘That’s right, a clever lassie. Pasay I’agua, Julietta datna. And then my sister and I had a long word. She was a wee thing distressed, as you’ll understand if Eppie’s tongue’s been wagging already,’ said Veitch disapprovingly. In the kitchen Danny clattered the saucepan on the stove and swore quietly. ‘It would be, maybe, about nine o’ the clock when I came away. Is that right, Eppie?’ Eppie shrugged, and cast her spindle again. ‘I went away down the High Street to where I’m lodged wi the Widow Napier, and sat a while talking wi her and all, her man’s brother was a sailor and she likes to hear the tales, and then I gaed tae my beddie,’ he concluded.

Frankie wriggled in his arms, and he bent to set her on the ground. She ran to her mommet, still fast asleep in a shoe much the size of Gil’s, and began to sing to it. Veitch looked at her, then at Gil, and jerked his head towards the outer room. The clattering of Danny’s pans followed as the two men moved out of earshot of the child.

‘Where are you lodged?’ Gil asked, sitting down on the tapestry-covered stool Veitch indicated.

‘I tellt you. The Widow Napier.’

‘Aye, but where’s that? Where does she dwell?’

‘Oh, I see. Away down the Fishergate. St Catherine’s Wynd. It’s right handy for the shore.’

‘Why not here, with your sister?’

‘I wasny certain how she was placed.’ That sardonic look again. ‘As it turned out, I was right to be wary. The deceased was away less happy to clap his een on me than Marion herself was, poor lass.’

‘Was he, now?’ said Gil. ‘So he’d not have wished you to stay here?’

Veitch laughed shortly.

‘No,’ he said.

‘And you never saw Naismith again after he left here,’ said Gil.

‘No,’ said Veitch again. ‘He was long away and talking wi his man of law by the time I went out. Or so I suppose.’

‘Do you know who that is?’

The seaman reflected briefly staring unfocused at the well-swept floorboards. Gil took the opportunity to inspect his feet, which were encased in a pair of heavy boots, well-worn and tarry but well-cared-for and rather larger than Gil’s own.

‘Arnot? Andrews? Something like that.’ The man glanced at Gil, his mouth twisting. ‘I was more concerned wi my sister, you can believe it.’

‘I do. Did he name the alternative legatee?’

‘No,’ said Veitch, ‘but it shouldny be hard to find out who she is, if you can find the man of law.’

‘She?’

‘Aye. Did Marion no tell you? That’s what really couped her ower. Three and a half year she’s kept this house and warmed his bed for him, she’s carrying his bairn, and he picked that moment, over the suppertable wi the household listening, to tell her he was to be wed. And no to her. So can you wonder that I spent the morn hunting for a man of law that would take on her case?’

‘She told me little more than that,’ said Dorothea. ‘But what she did tell me agrees in substance.’

It had stopped raining, but neither of them wished to loiter in the raw cold, and they had taken refuge in the chapel of the bigger almshouse of St Nicholas, right by the Wyndhead. Seated on the stone bench which ran round the box-like nave, Gil had summarized what he had learned from the servants and from John Veitch.

‘What more did you get from her?’ he asked. She folded her hands in her lap and considered them for a moment in the attenuated light from the south windows. Suddenly, irrelevantly, he recognized the biggest change in her. The hunger he recalled had been fed, but there was also, under the poise and the air of command, that stillness at the centre that he had seen in one or two other great religious he had known.

‘The oldest brother, who held Kittymuir, died at Stirling Field,’ she said now, ‘the same as Father and our brothers. As Uncle David said. It’s a strange thing,’ she digressed, ‘that so few were slain on the King’s side, the late King’s side, and yet we seem to know the most of them.’

‘No,’ objected Gil, ‘none so strange surely, it tells where the fighting was thickest. So they were left without money, were they?’

‘From what she says,’ said Dorothea, recalled to her account, ‘John was at sea, which must be right, and the sleekit William was a priest by then, somewhere over in Ayrshire, and their mother died of grief that same summer. So when they couldny pay the fine in the autumn, Marion was put out of the land, and took refuge with William in the first place. Then William found she was carrying Frankie, which can’t,’ she said thoughtfully, counting on her fingers, ‘have been before Yule of that year, of ’88, or even the next spring, and he put her out of his house and all. And John still being at sea, she accepted Naismith’s offer of shelter and she’s kept that house for him ever since. I suspect it may have been William who got Naismith the post here in Glasgow as part of the bargain.’

They looked at each other in the failing light.

‘There are gaps,’ said Gil. She nodded. ‘But I suppose she has held the house rent-free more than three years. Well, hardly rent-free,’ he admitted, ‘but the law doesny allow for that form of service. She has had only custom on her side to prevent him putting her out of it when he pleased. Had he any other requirements of her?’

‘He had her dine him and his friends every few weeks,’ said Dorothea, ‘provide the dinner from the money he gave her, but hide herself and the bairn out of sight. She did some fine sewing for St Mungo’s, hoping to turn a penny or two of her own that way, and he took the money she got by it.’

‘Ah!’ said Gil. ‘That would have counted for her if it had come to law. It could be considered as rent, even without a contract.’

‘Aye, but it hasny come to law.’ Dorothea looked down at her hands again. ‘And finally he announced in front of the household that he planned to be married to someone else, who would get her house.’

‘He’s humbled her,’ said Gil. ‘I suppose she wouldny wish to show that to me.’

Dorothea turned to give him an approving look.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘She never loved him, but she’s done her duty according to their original agreement, and he served her like that.’

‘He’s no been a man I’d care to have either as friend or client,’ said Gil roundly.

Dorothea laughed.

‘There’s my brother,’ she said. He raised his eyebrows. ‘It was strange to watch you the now, acting like a man of law, questioning Marion so clearly, acting just the way I would myself with one of our pupils in trouble.’

‘Why not? A man of law’s what I am.’

‘No doubt of that. None the less, Gil, last time I saw you you were fourteen and your voice was just changing. But there the now you sounded like the brother I mind.’

‘You’ve changed and all, but no as much as I have, then, for I’d have known you anywhere,’ said Gil. ‘Are you happy, Dawtie? What’s it like, being the bride of Christ? It’s what you aye wanted, but is it what you expected?’

Her face lit up, visible even in the dimness.

‘Gil, you can have no idea. This is what I was made for, in particular since I’ve been sub-Cellarer. To have charge of so much, to be responsible for my share of the House’s dispositions, and wi all that, to be — no just allowed, but required to take all the time I could wish to my prayers — there was once a sister, one of ours, a German, wrote that she felt like a crumb of bread dipped in a jar of honey. That’s it exact.’

‘And the obedience to your superiors?’

Her long mouth quirked. ‘Oh, well. It’s the price one pays. If I’d stayed in the world I’d be obedient to Mother, or a husband, or someone.’

‘Or to me,’ he said. The quirk became a wry smile.

‘Or to you,’ she agreed. ‘Just as well I’m no, you’ve enough to deal wi, what wi Tib and Alys. What is it between you and Alys, Gil? I thought, from what Mother wrote, the lass chose you herself, but I don’t see all well wi you just now.’

‘No — no, it’s fine,’ he said, aware of his face stiffening.

‘Is she changing her mind, or something?’

‘I …’ he began. ‘A course not, but …’

‘But?’ She watched him for a moment, then said, ‘Is she maybe a wee thing less loving than she seemed a while since?’

‘How did you ken that?’ he asked helplessly.

‘I’ve seen one or two brides in the weeks afore their marriage. And it happens to novices, indeed we worry if it doesny. They start to wonder, to have doubts, to question the decision.’

‘I — that’s what I’m afraid of.’

‘You’re in no doubt yoursel, Gil?’

‘No! No, My love will not refreyd be, nor afound. But …’ he halted, unable to bring out the words. She eyed him with sympathy, and finally supplied:

‘If she had changed her mind, you wouldny hold her to it.’ He nodded dumbly. ‘So of course you darena ask what’s wrong for fear it might be that.’

It was almost a relief to have it spoken. He drew a deep breath, and nodded again. She put a hand over his, and they sat in silence for a while.

‘Dawtie, I’ll need to go out after supper,’ said Gil after a time. ‘I’m sorry for it, when you’ve just got here.’

‘Mm?’ said Dorothea, as if from a great distance. She turned to look at him again. ‘Never apologize. I can go down to see Kate. What do you have to do?’

He sighed. ‘I ought to go back to the bedehouse. And I need to see Agnew.’

‘Who is that? Oh, Naismith’s man of law, is it? And brother of one of the bedesmen, you said.’

‘Aye. He has a chamber in the Consistory tower, I can likely find him there.’

‘What will you ask him?’

‘About the will. About whether Naismith met him yestreen. Whether he kens who Naismith was planning to marry, since nobody else seems to.’ He got to his feet, and stretched his back. ‘He’ll not have the answer to the other question I have just now.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Who was Frankie’s father? Naismith was a well-set-up fellow, going bald, but brown-haired. Marion’s hair is gold, and her brother’s near as fair. The wee one has Marion’s eyes, but she never got a head of curls that colour from Naismith. Her father must be dark, and probably curly-headed.’

‘And light-eyed,’ said Dorothea. ‘Brown eyes carry strong, remember.’

‘Aye,’ said Gil. So Alys’s children will have brown eyes, he thought. That’s if — that’s assuming -

‘All will be well, Gil,’ said his sister, watching him in the shadows. She patted his elbow then cocked her head at the darkening windows and continued, ‘I must go up to the castle and say Vespers. Have you time to get over to the Consistory before Maggie has the supper on the table?’

Asking one of the clerks of the Consistory tower at the west end of St Mungo’s got Gil directions to a chamber on an upper floor, above the courtrooms by a different stair from the one he himself used. Climbing up the spiral he was aware of the smell of success at this end of the tower; traces of sandalwood and cedarwood from furs which had to be guarded from the moth mingled with beeswax (furniture worth polishing and servants to polish it, he thought) and the distinctive scent of the heavy straw matting, all shot through with the familiar musty intimation of paper, parchment and ink. On the landing he had been referred to, the smell of matting was even stronger, and fragments of straw lay underfoot as if someone had recently swept out the chambers. He recalled the flakes of straw in the sleeve of Naismith’s fur gown. This must be where they had come from.

He tapped on Agnew’s door and called the man’s name, but there was no response. After a moment the door to the next chamber opened and a head popped out, level with his elbow.

‘Tammas is away down to St Serf’s,’ it announced. ‘Oh, it’s you. David Cunningham’s nephew, are you no? Blacader’s Quaestor, now, they tell me.’

Gil admitted this, and the other man stepped on to the landing and tipped his head back to look at him, holding his legal bonnet on with one hand. He was more than a foot shorter than Gil, dressed in a belted gown of rusty black whose fur lining showed worn at collar and sleeves. A name swam upwards in Gil’s mind: Maister Robert Kerr, one of the forespeakers of the Consistory court. David Cunningham spoke of him with respect.

‘A bad business, this at the bedehouse,’ Kerr said. ‘Was it one of the brothers killed him right enough? Tammas is beside himself for fear it should be shown his own brother did it, poor soul.’

‘There’s no saying yet,’ Gil answered. ‘We’ve more questions to ask. I was hoping Maister Agnew could help me himself. Is he long gone?’

‘A half-hour or so,’ Kerr offered. ‘Aye, he was telling me he had spoken wi Naismith yestreen. Indeed, I knew that from my own observing, for I was still at my desk when the man came up the stair, and I heard Tammas welcome him by name.’

‘What time would that be, maister?’ Gil asked.

‘Late,’ Kerr said, and grimaced. ‘The clerk that brought Naismith up here lingered to ask how long they would be, since Compline was long over, and they’d be wanting to lock the doors and go. I never realized how late it was myself till then. I rose and left my papers immediate. My steward wasny well pleased wi me,’ he admitted, grinning ruefully and showing chipped teeth, ‘for my supper was spoiled.’

‘So you’ve no idea how long Naismith was here? Or what they talked about?’

‘No to the first,’ said Kerr with legal precision, ‘and as to the second, I could hardly tell you if I did hear what they discussed, seeing it would be private between Tammas and his client.’

‘True,’ agreed Gil. ‘So it was a legal matter, then? No a social visit for a glass of Malvoisie or the like.’

‘I assume so, since Naismith came here and no to Tammas’s own lodging. As to the wine,’ he added, ‘I’ve never heard Tammas offer it to a client. A mistake, that. It brings in good custom, young Cunningham.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind, sir,’ said Gil, nodding. ‘Do you know where that might be? Maister Agnew’s lodging, I mean.’

‘Vicars’ Alley,’ said Kerr after a moment’s thought. ‘This end, right by St Andrew’s chapel. Likely you’d get him there nearer supper-time. Unless he lingers over his papers,’ he added, with another rag-toothed grin, and vanished back into his own chamber.

All three Cistercians were in the hall when Gil got back to the house in Rottenrow. Climbing the stairs from the front door he heard Dorothea’s voice, and as he stepped into the hall he had just time to see that his uncle was showing the elderly priest one of his books by the light of a branch of candles, while the two women helped Tib to set up the table. Then he was struck in the chest by Socrates’ forepaws. Tib paused in her distribution of wooden trenchers to watch the dog leaping round him, simmering with delight at his master’s safe return from the dangers of the burgh, and said caustically,

‘Mother said that beast thought he was a lapdog, and I see he’s not learned any different yet.’

‘He’s not a year old, Tib. He’ll be calm in a moment.’ Gil snapped his fingers at his pet. ‘Down! That’s better. Am I late?’

‘No to say late,’ said his uncle, breaking off his discussion, ‘since Maggie kept the supper for you. Likely we can eat as soon as she hears you’re in the house.’

‘Forgive me, sir,’ said Gil, bending his knee in a bow. ‘I went out again to look for Maister Agnew. Just as well I missed him, or I’d ha been later still.’

‘Have you found out who did it yet?’ asked Tib, setting the salt on the board.

‘No,’ said Gil, ‘though we’ve cast all about and asked a great many questions.’ He turned to the pottery cistern which hung by the door, and ran water to wash his hands.

‘Who have you questioned?’ Tib asked.

‘Marion Veitch and her brother,’ supplied Dorothea.

Tib flicked her a glance but said nothing. The laysister dragged one of the benches to the table, and Gil said, ‘Most of the almshouse, Nick Kennedy’s two servers, but not yet Naismith’s man of law.’ He lifted the linen towel to dry his hands, and Socrates stood up, one paw against the wall, and lapped at the soapy dregs in the brightly glazed basin. ‘I might go over and see if he’s home after we’ve had supper,’ he said, looking at Dorothea, and she nodded.

‘Not bad for one day,’ commented Canon Cunningham, coming forward. ‘Tib, shout down to Maggie that your brother is home, then perhaps we may eat.’

Once the household was seated at the long board, and all were served, Tib returned to the subject, demanding, ‘What happened at the bedehouse, anyway? All you said before was that the man had been found stabbed. When did it happen? Why do they not know who did it?’

‘You put yourself forward too much, Isobel,’ said her uncle severely.

She went scarlet, and stared at him in indignation, but Dorothea said, ‘No, uncle, I think she does right to ask. It was almost within earshot of the house here, any of us wants to know what’s being done to find the guilty.’

‘A true word, Lady Dawtie,’ said Maggie roundly. Gil, with resignation, helped himself to another portion of baked salmon and summarized a select few of the facts he had gathered so far. Well aware that anything he said in front of his uncle’s household would soon be common property in the Chanonry, he restricted himself to the finding of the corpse, Mistress Mudie’s evidence, Agnew’s statement that he had last seen the Deacon about Compline, and the traces at the Stablegreen gate of the almshouse.

‘Over the wall?’ repeated Tib, white-faced. This time her uncle did not rebuke her, but Dorothea put a hand over hers. ‘Do you mean the back wall? The one by the Stablegreen? When? When was this?’

‘I do,’ agreed Gil. ‘I think by means of a ladder, or so the traces tell me, at any road. It isny there any more,’ he said reassuringly, seeing that she was still very pale. ‘The body’s in the washhouse waiting while it softens, and I’ve no idea where the ladder can be. As to when …’ He paused, considering what he knew. ‘That depends on who moved the corpse and how many people were involved,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe between nine and ten, maybe later.’

She shivered, and cast a grateful glance at Dorothea, though she drew her hand out of her sister’s clasp.

‘It just — it just doesny seem right,’ she said lamely. ‘Leaving him lying like that.’

‘If a miscreant is so lost to all sense of sin as to kill another man deliberately,’ said the elderly priest in his soft voice, ‘we canny expect him to treat the dead wi respect.’

‘Well said, Herbert,’ said Dorothea.

‘And yet,’ observed Gil, ‘Naismith’s eyes had been shut.’

‘Likely somebody couldny abide him staring,’ said Maggie cheerfully.

Tib bit her lip and looked down at her supper, then said abruptly, ‘Uncle, will you forgive me? I’m no feeling very well.’ Not waiting for his consent, she rose, and pushed her trencher across the table at Gil. ‘Here, gie that to your lapdog. I’ll see you all later.’

As her feet hurried up the stair toward the solar, Dorothea closed her eyes and crossed herself, her lips moving.

‘You need to find that ladder, Gilbert,’ said David Cunningham, ignoring this episode. ‘And the Deacon’s cloak and hat. That should take you forward.’

‘There’s a many ladders in the Chanonry,’ contributed Tam the stable-hand from further down the table. ‘Near every household must have such a thing.’ He began to count them off on his fingers, mumbling to himself, and Gil said resignedly,

‘That’s for the morn. I can see my day mapped out already.’