St Mungo's Robin

Chapter Seven

There were still lighted windows in the mason’s sprawling house, and lute music floated faintly on the wind. Gil picked his way across the courtyard, avoiding the bare plant-tubs; as he set foot on the fore-stair the door opened and more light fell across the damp flagstones.

‘Gilbert,’ said Maistre Pierre with pleasure. ‘Alys thought she heard your footstep. Come in, come in, and take some wine. We have been sitting above stairs. Did you learn anything from the Deacon’s mistress? Is that where you have been? Perhaps,’ he said, and grinned, white teeth catching the candlelight as he lit the two of them up the stair, ‘I should object, if you come to your betrothed from calling on another man’s mistress.’

‘I was well protected,’ Gil assured him, following him into the little painted closet. ‘I took Dorothea with me.’ Alys had set her lute in its case, and turned to greet him, her honey-coloured locks gleaming in the candlelight. He gathered her close and kissed her, then released his clasp as he felt her draw back slightly.

‘How is she, poor creature?’ she asked. ‘The man’s mistress, I mean. And your sister? Is she tired from the journey?’ Her hand slid into his like a little bird into its nest. To see her fingers that be so small! In my conceit she passeth all That ever I saw. But she won’t let me kiss her, he thought.

‘My sister is well,’ he answered her, and sat down with her on the cushioned bench. ‘She’s looking forward to meeting you tomorrow. She and I went to see Marion Veitch after you left us, Pierre, before supper.’

‘And?’ Maistre Pierre was pouring wine, not Malvoisie but the red Bordeaux wine he favoured. Gil took the glass in his free hand and described the visit to the house by the Caichpele.

‘That poor woman,’ said Alys again as he finished. ‘She has been very badly treated. I hope Sister Dorothea was able to comfort her.’

‘It’s a sorry tale,’ Gil agreed. ‘But as matters stand, she won’t lose by the man’s death. His existing will was much more generous to her and to the little girl as well, Agnew tells me.’

‘Oh, you have seen the lawyer?’

‘After supper. And also Maister Veitch at the bedehouse.’

‘Who else benefits from the old will?’ asked Alys.

Gil looked down at her where she leaned against his shoulder, and smiled. ‘There are one or two bequests of named property to his kin, by what Agnew says, and something for the bedehouse, something for the child by name, and the residue goes to Marion Veitch. I would say he’s purchased several plots of land since it was drawn up. She’ll be a wealthier woman than he intended.’

‘Oh,’ said Alys thoughtfully. ‘So the man’s death comes very convenient for her.’

‘It does.’

‘And for who else?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Did he have enemies, have you discovered?’

Gil grimaced. ‘According to Maister Veitch anyone in the bedehouse, not only the six brothers but Millar and Mistress Mudie as well, had cause to dislike him. Marion’s brother John was very angry with him last night. I don’t yet know who his friends were, other than Agnew and one of the Walkinshaws, and I must find out. I should have asked Agnew just now.’

Maistre Pierre grunted, and sipped his wine, pausing to savour it respectfully.

‘What else do we know about the Deacon?’ he said. ‘Consider how did he die. That is the first thing’

‘Did you say he was killed somewhere else?’ said Alys.

Gil nodded. ‘He was stabbed, by two opponents, one of them left-handed. After he was dead his eyes were closed, and he lay for a while in one position, perhaps as long as three hours, and then he was moved to the bedehouse garden, where he fell into another position.’

‘Do not forget the marks on his face,’ prompted Maistre Pierre, ‘and the straw in his garments.’

‘Straw?’

‘Flakes of straw,’ agreed Gil. ‘Those may have come from Agnew’s chamber in the Consistory tower. Someone has been sweeping the chambers, I think, and his stair is covered in fragments.’

‘So that confirms Agnew’s story.’ Maistre Pierre took one of the little cakes from the half-empty plate on the tray, and bit it thoughtfully.

‘So far,’ agreed Alys. ‘What else, Gil?’

‘His keys were on his belt,’ continued Gil, ‘and gate and door were locked as usual. It seems most likely that he was moved somehow to the Stablegreen and put over the wall into the garden, rather than being taken in by the door.’

‘And then he was heard walking about,’ said Alys.

‘Someone was heard. There was a light and movement in his lodging about ten o’clock, witnessed by Mistress Mudie and by Millar separately.’

‘You make it very clear,’ said Maistre Pierre. Alys reached for the plate of cakes and offered it to Gil.

‘You think it was not the man himself who was heard in his lodging,’ she said. ‘So who was it? And why?’

‘One of those who killed him, one assumes,’ said her father.

‘But who?’ she persisted. ‘Who is most likely?’

‘A good question,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘Gilbert, of those we know, who had the means to kill him?’

‘Virtually all.’

‘We need only one. Take the woman first, the mistress. Could she have killed her lover? She has reason, God knows it.’

‘Naismith broke his news, and there was an argument, but he left the house after it,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘we have witnesses to that.’

The mason waved his empty glass in one large hand. ‘Perhaps she went out later and waited for him to leave the Consistory tower.’

‘You saw her, Gil. Could she have done that?’ asked Alys. ‘Waiting alone in the dark for the right person to come along, so that she could stab him?’ She shivered.

‘She’s a timid soul,’ Gil said, and thought of Michael’s leman, waiting in the dark for a different reason. He put his arm round Alys’s waist. She clasped his hand, fingers moving in a quick, private caress, and shifted it to her shoulder. What did that mean, he wondered, tightening his grasp obediently.

‘Her brother!’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘He could have knifed the man, whether in St Mungo’s Yard or in the street.’

‘Or they both did, together — you said there were two opponents.’

‘That’s possible,’ agreed Gil. ‘And then they hid the body as we thought happened, and put him over the wall later. And a man like John Veitch could have carried the Deacon without trouble, alone or with — ’

‘Ah! And while he did that, she went into the bedehouse in her lover’s cloak — ’

‘Why?’ said Alys. ‘What is the benefit?’

‘To cover up the time or the place where he was killed. To make it seem he was killed inside the bedehouse instead of outside.’

‘I would certainly prefer it,’ said Maistre Pierre plaintively, leaning forward with the jug of wine to refill Gil’s glass, ‘if it were not Naismith who came home to the bedehouse last night. Experience tells me he was dead long before the footsteps were heard.’

Alys nodded.

‘It can’t have been Naismith,’ Gil agreed. He pulled a face. ‘There are tales — McIan the harper could tell you some — of people who were seen and heard after they were dead, but I think Our Lord was the only one who appeared after he was dead and consumed a meal.’

‘And we are not told that He slept in His bed,’ said Alys.

‘If that is what happened — the body over the wall, someone else in the Deacon’s lodging — it didn’t only disguise the time and place of death. It also got the impostor time with the accounts,’ Gil said thoughtfully, ‘which had certainly been searched, by what Millar says. I wonder what he — or she — was looking for? And of course once Millar had come in, the outer gate was locked as well as the door between the courtyards, so the impostor was trapped, even if he had originally intended to leave.’

‘Whoever it was took a risk,’ observed Alys. ‘The body might have been found before he could get away.’

‘He would have heard the outcry and had time to hide somewhere about the place. The chapel, for instance. I suspect he did not remove his boots, whoever he was. Anyway, John Veitch claims he slept in his own bed last night. I’ve still to go down and find this Widow Napier he’s lodging with,’ Gil admitted. ‘And his boots are bigger than the prints we found in the clump of trees.’

Alys turned her head to look at Gil from within the circle of his arm.

‘And the man of law,’ she said. ‘He thinks it was his brother who killed the man.’

‘He’s worrying about very little, I should say. The brother is certainly mad, and it seems he can be violent, so vexis him the thoghtful maladie, but if Millar is to be believed, the door was locked between the Deacon’s lodging and the bedesmen’s houses. And Mistress Mudie corroborates that,’ Gil added. ‘Mind you, she would certainly lie to protect Humphrey.’

‘It is possible,’ said Alys, ‘surely even if she was not lying? If it was indeed Deacon Naismith in his lodging when the light was seen, he might have come down into the garden later, locking the door behind him. You said his keys were with him.’

‘His keys,’ agreed Gil, ‘but no lantern. It was cloudy last night, the moon would give no light — ’

‘Perhaps he had one, but whoever killed him took it,’ suggested Alys.

‘That would mean,’ he said glumly, ‘that anyone in the bedehouse could have killed him. Even Mistress Mudie had good reason. Those receipts in Naismith’s purse were hers, Pierre, family remedies that the Deacon forced her to reveal, and it’s clear enough from what Maister Veitch tells me that any of the brothers might have had a reason, as well.’

‘But Naismith did not die where he was found,’ Maistre Pierre reminded him. ‘We thought it was not in the garden.’

‘We don’t know where he died. We don’t know for certain that he was put over the wall,’ Gil admitted. ‘The marks we found are circumstantial, no more. The dog found nothing to interest him in the little houses, but he’s no lymer, he doesn’t hunt by scent. It would help if we could find the Deacon’s cloak and hat.’

‘Hmm,’ said the mason. ‘We keep coming back to it — both Mistress Mudie and Millar maintain there was someone in Naismith’s lodging by ten o’clock last night. She heard footsteps, he saw a light.’

‘If she was lying,’ said Gil, ‘he might simply agree with her, for whatever reason — being sure she was right, or some such thing. Or perhaps she had gone up herself and lit the candle and eaten the dole, so that Millar did see a light.’

‘And rearranged the accounts?’ said Alys. ‘Can she read? Oh, yes,’ she recollected, ‘you said the receipts were hers.’

‘Or did Millar himself go up there?’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘Is it the woman who is agreeing because she is sure he is right? I am not convinced she is capable of lying, her tongue runs too freely.’

‘If Millar had rearranged the accounts,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘he had no need to tell us they were in disorder. We would never have known it. I’m inclined to think he was telling the truth — that he went straight to his own chamber when he came into the bedehouse.’

‘What about the kitchen hands?’ said Alys. ‘Do they live in? Have you spoken to them?’

‘Ah!’ said Gil. ‘Another thing to do tomorrow.’

‘Meantime,’ said Maistre Pierre, nodding agreement, ‘if we accept this evidence, we have someone in the Deacon’s lodging last night. We also have an extra figure at the morning Mass.’ He cocked an eyebrow at Gil. ‘Was it real, or was it spectral?’

‘Oh, aye, if it was real, easiest by far to assume those are the same person. But if we do, we must assume neither was the Deacon, because he was certainly dead long before Prime, and possibly dead before Mistress Mudie first heard footsteps overhead.’

‘I should have said ten to fourteen hours before I saw him, though I cannot be certain.’

‘That would be, I suppose between seven and eleven last night,’ Gil reckoned. ‘We know he was alive about half an hour after seven, when he left the house by the Caichpele, and if it was not Naismith that Sissie heard we can probably assume he was dead by ten. That fits.’

‘How accurate do you think her sense of time is?’ asked Alys.

‘I don’t know about that, but she did say she heard someone moving about over her head after Millar had come in,’ Gil supplied. ‘Millar’s story is clear enough — and Patey Coventry confirmed it for me just now.’

‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre in disappointment. ‘That certainly discounts my next idea.’

‘What, that one of the brothers leapt up that stair and stabbed him before the door was locked, then carried him down into the garden without Sissie noticing? I thought of that too, but there was no sign of a fight, let alone a death, in Naismith’s lodging. In any case it wouldny account for the extra figure at Mass, and nor would the idea that he was killed in the garden or in one of the wee houses. We would have to accept that what Lowrie saw was — not real. No, the only way it works is for the man last night to be the same as the man this morning.’

‘Man or woman,’ Alys put in.

‘As we said,’ Gil agreed. ‘Marion Veitch is as tall as Dorothea. Hidden in a great cloak and a hat, she could be taken for a man.’

‘While her brother dealt with the body, as we surmised,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Aye, that would work, but who minded the bairn if she was out of the house overnight? I’m not convinced Eppie could lie for her mistress, she talks too much, like Sissie Mudie, and the man Danny certainly wouldn’t.’

‘I could get a word with the painter’s man,’ suggested Alys. ‘He will have spoken to his cousin this evening. Along with the whole town,’ she added, her quick smile flickering.

‘I’ve spoken to her already,’ said Gil. ‘I encountered her on her way home, and convoyed her down the road.’

‘Oho!’ said Maistre Pierre, grinning again. ‘Yet another lady! And only — how many days is it to the wedding?’

‘What did she say?’ asked Alys. Gil bent his head to rub his cheek on her hair, and she nestled in against him.

‘She confirmed some of Marion’s story,’ he admitted, ‘if only by hearsay, for she says she was earlier leaving the house last night than tonight. But she said something odd.’

‘What was that?’ Alys prompted him after a moment.

‘She seemed quite certain the house was being watched this evening.’

‘Watched? You mean someone standing out in the cold,’ Alys began, and faltered as she saw the parallel.

‘Waiting alone in the dark for the right person to come along,’ agreed Gil.

‘Did she see the watcher?’ demanded Maistre Pierre.

‘A big man with a black beard. But you’re here, so she must have been imagining it,’ said Gil, at which his friend grinned absently and stroked the beard, considering.

‘There are not so many black beards in Glasgow,’ he commented. ‘Most Scotsmen go shaven like you.’

‘Save the Earl of Douglas, and he is fair,’ amended Alys absently. ‘I wonder if she really saw anyone. You know what servant lassies are like, if anything goes wrong in the household.’

‘They see bogles behind every bush,’ agreed Gil. ‘This one seems less silly than most.’ He paused, as something else came back to him. ‘Now, I wonder what that was?’ Alys looked up at him questioningly. ‘She repeated Eppie’s account of the quarrel last night, with a little more. It seems John Veitch claimed Naismith owed his sister for her maidenhead, and Naismith made some sort of reply which Bel refused to tell me. Claimed she had forgotten.’

‘Something to her mistress’s discredit? Does she like her place there?’ asked Alys shrewdly.

‘I’d say so. I wonder if it concerned Frankie’s parentage.’

‘I’ll talk to the painter’s man,’ she said decisively.

‘The jug is empty,’ said Maistre Pierre, peering into it. ‘I think we must send you home, Gilbert. There is much to do in the morning.’

Eating her porridge in the candlelight before dawn, Tib seemed much more inclined to be friendly. She had greeted Gil civilly with an account of how Maggie’s share of the kitchen work for the feasting had progressed. Unused to lively conversation at this hour, he responded with encouraging monosyllables while he ate.

‘Are you still chasing after the man at the bedehouse?’ she asked at length.

‘I’ll chase after him till I find who killed him,’ said Gil, and put his empty bowl down for the dog.

‘So you’ll be there again all day? What must you do there?’

‘This morning, for certain,’ he agreed with caution. What had changed her tune, he wondered.

As if she had heard his thought, she said lightly, ‘I’d like to know about it. It’s what you do for your office, after all, and there’s no other office like it that I ever heard of.’

‘I’ll ask questions,’ he supplied, ‘as I did most of yesterday. I’ll get another look at the dead man, since he’s likely softened and been stripped by now, and set someone to hunt for ladders in the Chanonry, fruitless though that’s like to be. As Tam said, near every house must have one at least. And I’ll go over the accounts.’

‘Oh, accounts.’ She pulled a face. ‘Why?’

‘I think the reason he was killed may be hid in there.’

‘Oh,’ she said again, and then, ‘How? Accounts are just accounts, surely?’

‘They tell where the money is,’ said Gil, ‘and where it came from.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, scraping her own bowl. ‘Who have you to ask questions of?’

‘The kitchen hands, for a start.’

‘Can I come too? I could do that for you.’

He looked at her, startled. ‘Can Maggie not do with your help here?’

She opened her mouth on a sharp answer and visibly thought better of it.

‘I’d like to help you,’ she offered winningly. ‘You’ll want to get this out the way before your wedding.’

His objection crystallized, and he realized it was unworthy. It should be Alys who helped him, as she had done before, not this vixen of a sister.

‘What do you want to ask the kitchen folk? Who is there? Any good-looking laddies?’ she asked, with irony.

‘Just the one, and he reminds me of wee William here.’ She pulled a face. ‘Tib, if you’re serious, it would be a help. Just be sure Maggie doesn’t need you.’

‘I can make shift without her,’ said Maggie, stumping into the hall as he spoke. ‘Are ye done with they bowls yet? Aye, I see you,’ she added to Socrates, who had come to wag his tail at her.

‘Maggie, have you a moment?’ said Gil quickly, as something leapt into his mind. ‘You ken all there is about the doings of the Chanonry, you’re the likeliest to tell me. Does Maister Thomas Agnew have a mistress anywhere?’

‘Agnew?’ She paused, a wooden porringer in each hand, to consider this. ‘No that I’ve heard. His man would be more like to tell you, that’s Hob Watson that dwells on the Drygate.’ She frowned, and set one dish inside the other to carry them out. ‘I’ll ask the men. Tam might ken something.’

‘Thanks, Maggie,’ said Gil.

‘Now get out my sight, the pair of you. And be sure and come back for your noon bite the day. Your sister’s to be here, for one thing, and she’s a busy woman.’

I am surrounded by busy women, Gil thought. Even Alys, who usually has time to talk, is too busy to help me. He found himself thinking of the brief embrace they had shared last night at the door. She had leaned against him, a warm armful, smelling faintly of rosemary hairwash and lavender linen, but when he had tried to kiss her mouth she had tensed within his grasp. Is she too busy to kiss me? he wondered, and laughed at himself. But the doubt remained.

When they reached the bedehouse Maister Kennedy was just leaving, and met them in the yard with his vestments in a bundle under his arm.

‘Aye, Gil,’ he said. ‘Where are you at wi this business?’

‘No a lot further,’ Gil admitted, and paused to introduce his sister. ‘Tib’s to help me question the household. How are they the day?’

‘Much as usual,’ said Maister Kennedy offhandedly, changing his bundle to the other arm in order to raise his round felt hat to Tib. ‘I wouldny say they’re grieved for the Deacon. You’ll find them in the hall.’

Humphrey appeared in the doorway behind him, staring anxiously at the three figures in the yard. Beyond him, Mistress Mudie’s head popped watchfully out of the kitchen. Socrates retreated, equally watchful, to the door of the chapel.

‘It’s a bonnie lassie,’ said Humphrey after a moment, and came out to join them. Tib bobbed another curtsy and gave Gil a doubtful look. ‘She’s here wi the hoodie, but she’s no his make.’

‘Not my make,’ Gil agreed, ‘but my sister.’

‘I see that,’ said Humphrey. ‘But she’s no a hoodie like you. She’s a wood-pigeon, aren’t you no, lassie?’

‘If you say so, sir,’ said Tib politely.

Humphrey considered her carefully for a moment, and nodded. ‘Aye, a wood-pigeon, crying always for its sweetheart.’ Tib gave Gil another doubtful look, bright colour washing down over her face. ‘Pray for me, lassie,’ Humphrey went on, ‘as I will for you, for we need one another’s prayers.’

‘I will, sir,’ said Tib, more at home with this reasonably conventional request.

‘Aye, and your sins shall be white as snow, though they were red as blood,’ said Humphrey earnestly.

Tib bent her head and crossed herself, still blushing, and Maister Kennedy said, ‘Humphrey get away in and stop worrying the lassie. She’s no worse than the rest of us, she’s no need of your lectures.’

‘I was just going to my prayers,’ said Humphrey, ignoring this, ‘in my own lodging. So you’ll ken I’m asking forgiveness for you.’

He nodded to all three of them and turned to go back into the building. Maister Kennedy watched him going, clicking his tongue impatiently.

‘Poor soul,’ he said. ‘He should be locked away.’

‘Cloudy hath bene the favour That shoon on him ful bright in times past. He does no harm,’ said Gil. ‘Get away down the road, Nick. You’ve a lecture to deliver, if I mind right.’

Mistress Mudie, having seen her favourite out of sight, hurried across the yard with an armful of linen and a basin, pausing to curtsy but not speaking directly, and vanished into the washhouse. A fragment of her chatter floated past them.

‘- all to do in this place, the dinner to see to and the Deacon to be made decent — ’

Leaving Tib to insinuate herself into the bedehouse kitchen in her own way, Gil stepped into the hall and paused, looking at the brothers where they sat, as he had seen them before, round the brazier at the far end. Neither Millar nor Humphrey was present; of the others, Maister Veitch, Cubby and Barty had their heads together in loud and animated discussion, Duncan was listening and nodding, and Anselm was sitting with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his breast. Gil went forward to bend over him and touch the hands.

‘Father Anselm? Might I have a word?’

‘I wasny asleep,’ said Anselm, blinking up at him past his crooked spectacles.

‘I never thought it, sir,’ said Gil, and pulled up a stool.

‘You had a dog wi you yesterday,’ said Anselm, peering around for Socrates.

‘I left him out in the yard the day,’ Gil said clearly.

‘Pity It’s a good hound,’ said the old man. ‘Was that no a terrible thing yesterday? And those laddies trying to search our lodgings and all. Terrible, terrible. The world goes from bad to worse.’

‘It’s a sorry business,’ Gil agreed diplomatically. ‘Father Anselm, might I ask you a thing?’

‘You can ask me,’ said Anselm, blinking. ‘I might no ken. I forget, you understand.’

‘Yesterday morn,’ Gil prompted. ‘Can you tell me what you all did? You went to say Matins just as usual?’

Anselm nodded, and clutched at his spectacles as they slid on his nose.

‘Just as usual,’ he confirmed.

‘So how did that go? Did you meet here?’

‘Aye, here in the hall,’ Anselm concurred, ‘and Andro had the keys and unlocked the door to the Deacon’s yard. I don’t like it being locked,’ he confided, ‘what if there was a fire or a great flood or the like? I could never get ower that wall if there was a great flood.’

‘That’s a good thought,’ agreed Gil. ‘Maybe it should be considered. So Maister Millar unlocked the door. Then what?’

‘We went in a procession, just as we aye do. It was raining,’ he added. ‘So we went across the yard in a procession and Andro unlocked the chapel as he aye does, and we gaed in and said Matins and Prime.’

‘Were you all six there?’

‘Seven,’ agreed Anselm.

‘Six,’ said Maister Veitch, turning his head.

‘What did ye say?’ demanded Barty

‘The lad that was thurifer at the Mass thought he saw seven,’ said Gil.

‘Seven,’ said Anselm flatly. ‘He wasny there yesterday morn. He spoke to me in the night, but he’d to be elsewhere in the morning.’

‘Where?’ asked Gil, wondering if he would regret the answer.

Anselm pointed a wavering hand at the murky windows on the garden side of the hall, and smiled toothlessly. ‘Out yonder, a course. He’d to say the Intercession for the Deacon.’

‘Anselm, there was only the six of us,’ said Maister Veitch.

‘What are ye saying?’ demanded Barty.

‘There was seven, Frankie,’ said Anselm again. ‘Humphrey and you and me on the one side, Cubby, Barty and Duncan on the tither, and Andro as well. Makes seven.’ He counted the names off. Gil nodded.

‘So who was sitting beside you?’ he asked.

‘Frankie here.’

‘I sit beside him,’said Maister Veitch at the same moment.

‘And on your other side?’

The old man thought, nodding slowly, and then gave him a look through the lopsided spectacles which Gil could only describe as crafty.

‘He came in late. It wasny him, you ken that, don’t you no?’

‘It wasny who, Anselm?’ asked Maister Veitch. ‘Your friend? Was it your friend? Or was it the Deacon?’

‘There was naebody on the end,’ asserted Barty

‘No on your side. He wasny your side,’ said Anselm. ‘He was my side.’

‘But who was it?’ asked Gil. ‘Father Anselm?’

‘It wasny him,’ said Anselm, and champed his jaws at them. ‘That’s all I’m telling you. It wasny him.’

No persuasion could extract any more lucid statement from the old priest. Gil gave up when he judged that Anselm was becoming distressed, and left quietly to find Millar. He met the sub-Deacon in the narrow passageway, on his way to summon the brothers to Terce.

‘His keys?’ Millar said distractedly. ‘I can give you those after the Office, Maister Cunningham, if you wouldny mind waiting. Aye, Sissie’s laying him out the now, she was wi him when I came across the close.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Gil, aware of animated discussion from the kitchen beside them. His sister’s voice was raised among the rest, apparently trying to correct someone. ‘I’ll not hold up the Office,’ he went on, ‘I’ll get a word wi you after, if you don’t mind.’

‘Aye, gladly,’ agreed Millar. ‘The sooner this is cleared up the better I’ll like it.’ The young man Gil had seen before popped out of the kitchen doorway like a rabbit pursued by a ferret, looked at them in alarm and set off for the outer yard, head down, cooking-knife still in his hand. ‘The brethren are all overexcited, maister, and Humphrey was neither to hold nor to bind yestreen at supper, what wi the rain and his brother and everything else, though Sissie got him calmed down after it — ’

As if on cue, Mistress Mudie hurried back into the building from the yard, the young man behind her, and dived into the kitchen. Socrates followed them, but came to push his nose under his master’s hand. As Mistress Mudie passed, Gil caught a wave of marjoram and a shred of her perpetual chatter: ‘- turn my back an instant, interfering wi my kitchen, I’ll sort this — ’ He felt the old, familiar sinking sensation in his stomach. Millar, with great presence of mind, nodded to him and moved in dignified haste into the hall to summon the community to prayer. Gil, gathering his courage, stayed where he was.

His misgivings were justified. Mistress Mudie’s voice rose sharply over the argument, which had almost ceased at her entrance.

‘- and what has it to do wi you, lassie, whoever you are, coming into my kitchen and working the three of them up about witchcraft or the Deil Hisself in the close, no need of saying you was sent here, putting the blame on that man of law indeed, I never heard of such impudence and you gently-bred and all, you’ll get out of my kitchen afore I — ’

‘I never mentioned witchcraft,’ said Tib indignantly. ‘It was them. I was trying to say it couldny be witchcraft, it was cold iron stabbed the man — ’

Gil moved to the doorway. His sister was giving ground before Mistress Mudie, who was puffed up like an angry partridge and chattering on, red-faced,

‘- no excuses, encouraging them to talk when they should ha been getting the dinner on, asking questions about matters better left alone — ’

‘Mistress Mudie,’ said Gil, and she stopped briefly, staring open-mouthed at him. In the background a girl and an older woman he had not seen before had become ostentatiously busy over a basket of vegetables. ‘I’m sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you,’ he offered, ‘coming by at a bad moment. Maybe we can find another time when you’re less busy in here.’

‘- don’t know why you’re asking more questions, Maister Cunningham, indeed I don’t, you must have heard all there is to know about what happened, and as for this malapert lassie telling me sic nonsense, it’s no your own lassie, is it? I’ve heard better things o your bride — ’

‘It was the truth!’ exploded Tib. Gil put a hand on her shoulder and she ducked away and fell silent, looking warily sideways at him. Socrates growled in warning. The younger of the two maidservants shrieked dramatically, but Gil gestured with his other hand, and the dog retreated to the hallway.

‘My sister was here at my bidding,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m truly sorry, mistress, if we’ve inconvenienced you. I can see now this is no a good time to be in your way.’

‘- you should ken better by your age, though I suppose men never ken when a house is at its most taigled, but a well-reared lassie ought to ha more sense and all, and as for you, Nannie, I’ll no hear another word from you the day — ’

The older maidservant scowled at her. Tib seemed about to speak, but Gil tightened his grip on her shoulder, drawing her towards the doorway.

‘We’ll get away out your road now,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later, Mistress Mudie, for I still have questions for you.’

‘Questions!’ She flung her hands above her head. ‘Aye questions! You’ll be lucky if I’ve an answer left. Aye, you can take that malapert lassie out o my sight, and if I never set een on her again it’s too soon. And good riddance to the pair of ye!’

They retreated in some disorder. Socrates nudged at his master in relief, but Gil pushed him away and drew Tib out into the yard.

‘Are you going to let her talk to you like that?’ she demanded in a whisper, trying to free her wrist as he towed her up the stair to Naismith’s lodging. ‘I never said any of those things, except that you’d sent me, and that was true — ’

‘I know that,’ he said, closing the door behind the dog. ‘Keep your voice down, we’re above the kitchen here.’

‘I know that!’ she said pettishly. ‘It’s not my fault if she keeps a pair of stupid women like that to work under her. As soon as I mentioned last night they started on about intruders, and worked each other up talking about it. The older one says it was witchcraft, the young one says it was the Deil in the garden made away wi the man. They’re fixed in their minds about it. And the laddie was just feart for what that woman would say when she heard them.’ She giggled. ‘He kept saying to them, What if the mistress hears you? I’ll tell her on you! And finally he did.’

‘It was a good try,’ said Gil. And how do I question them now? he wondered. Sissie will never let me near them after that. ‘My thanks, Tib,’ he added, exerting all his charity.

‘Oh, well.’ She shrugged one shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I never got what you wanted to know. But what an old harridan, scolding at me like that and never believing a word I said. And the way she spoke to you, and all!’

‘She’s anxious for her position here, since the Deacon’s death,’ Gil pointed out. ‘A new man will likely make changes.’

Tib snorted, but said only, ‘What will you do now?’

‘These accounts.’ He turned to the rack of little drawers and pulled out the topmost bundle of papers. ‘And when I get the keys from Millar I must go through the papers in the man’s kist through there. Get another look at the body, look for the ladder — ’

‘Ladder? Oh, at the back gate,’ she said, and shivered, but went on sharply, ‘What, hunting all round the outhouses in the rain? I fancied you’d ha been seated somewhere in comfort, asking questions, and a clerk to write down the answers.’

‘No,’ Gil said, as the recollection of previous investigations rose in his mind, of pursuing and being pursued through moonlit scaffolding by a whispering killer, of playing cards with his enemy in a cushionless hall. ‘You’re thinking of the old man,’ he added. ‘Time enough for that when I’m his age. But if you still want to help, and you want to be seated in comfort, I can give you some of these documents to sort.’

She looked doubtful, but once he had explained what he wanted and lent her his own tablets in which to make notes, she settled by a window and began extracting the names of the various parcels of land for him. Gil took another bundle of papers from the rack and tried to concentrate on the same task, but his sister kept up an irregular flow of comments on the names of places and persons in the documents, with remarks about the weather and about Maggie’s activities the day before, and he found himself thinking more of how he could get her off his hands again, and where. Could I induce her to go back to the house in Rottenrow, he wondered, or would she go down to see Kate?

‘What a name!’ she said, for the fifth or sixth time. ‘Some folk have no thought for their bairns, the names they saddle them with. Imagine being called Wenifreda. And this is another Douglas donation,’ she added. ‘Four — seven — eight of them witnessing this paper.’

‘The bedehouse is a Douglas foundation.’

‘Oh, is that why — ’ she began, and broke off. After a moment she went on diffidently, ‘Gil, do you think it was the Devil in the garden that night?’

‘Seems unlikely,’ said Gil. ‘What reason would he have to come for Naismith rather than anyone else in Glasgow?’

‘Maybe he was — well, carrying on wi black Masses, or witchcraft as those silly women said, or the like.’

‘We’ve found nothing to suggest it.’

Tib seemed about to answer him, but was forestalled by a sudden mixed shouting from the garden. As she turned to stare out of the window, the separate voices became identifiable, and running feet sounded in the passage below the chamber where they sat.

‘Humphrey calm yoursel! Help! Help me!’

And Humphrey’s resounding Latin: ‘Trust them not, for all their fine words! Day and night they accuse him before our God — ’

‘Humphrey be still. Let go, man!’

Tib looked in horror at Gil, who was already making for the door.

‘What’s happening?’ she demanded. ‘Gil, stop them!’

‘Stay here, Tib,’ he ordered. ‘Socrates, stay! Guard!’

In the narrow passage through the building there was a complicated struggle going on, with many exclamations and choking noises, and two dangerously waving sticks. As Gil arrived, Mistress Mudie burst out of the kitchen and dived under an elderly elbow, babbling in two very distinct tones of voice.

‘- whatever’s happening, who’s upset you my poppet? It’s no that brother of yours is it, now, now, Humphrey, that’s no way to treat your brother whatever he’s been saying, if that’s Maister Agnew he deserves what’s come to him, such things as he’s been trying to — ’

‘The accuser shall be overthrown — ’

‘Sissie, get him off!’ That was Millar’s voice. ‘He’s about throttled Maister Agnew!’

Gil pushed past a bony shoulder, deflected Anselm’s stick from Cubby’s head, and assisted Mistress Mudie in attempting to prise Humphrey’s fingers from about his brother’s throat. The Latin flowed over the whole scene.

‘Trust them not, for all the fine words they give you!’ That isn’t the Apocalypse, thought Gil, trying to dislodge a thumb. ‘How long must it be before we are vindicated, before our blood is avenged? It calls out to the mountains and the crags — ’

‘- saying such things about his own brother, trying to make out he would take a knife to anyone, let alone the Deacon that’s been so good to him, no wonder the poor soul’s owerset wi it, hearing the like from his own kin — ’

‘I hold the keys of Death and of Death’s domain — I have the power to make men slaughter one another, for God’s word and for the testimony they shall bear!’

‘Brothers, please, I b-beg of you, calm yoursels!’

‘Humphrey my poppet, let go, come and sit nice and have a wee drink — ’

Agnew was going black in the face and the choking sounds were diminishing; the grip about his throat was amazingly strong. Gil, with hindrance from Mistress Mudie, managed to get hold of one of Humphrey’s little fingers and tugged backwards. The old trick worked. Agnew himself managed to break the grip of his brother’s other hand and fell back into Millar’s arms, drawing a crowing breath. Cubby and Maister Veitch got between Humphrey and his quarry, and Gil and Mistress Mudie drew the struggling bedesman towards the kitchen door, the Apocalypse rising above the general uproar.

‘The beast shall be taken prisoner, and cast into the lake of fire, and all the birds shall gorge themselves on its flesh!’

I hope they like roast meat, thought Gil.

‘- lovely milk for you, wi soothing herbs in it, and a wee bit honey, all for you, my poppet, and I hope the man of law didny hurt you tugging at your fingers, if you’ll just come and have a nice sit-down and drink your milk — ’

‘We will conquer him by the testimony which we will utter — ’

‘St Mungo send he doesny turn into a cheese,’ said Maister Veitch’s dry tones.

Humphrey was steered struggling through the kitchen, where the three servants stood quickly out of the way as if they were used to this happening, and into Mistress Mudie’s chamber. She thrust him down in the chair by her hearth.

‘- there now, my poppet, your milk won’t be a moment, and how can I thank you, maister, it’s a charitable act you’ve just done, best you get away the now, he’ll be right enough once I get his draught down him — ’

‘Are you sure?’ Gil asked, trying to get his breath.

‘The accuser of our brothers shall be overthrown,’ declaimed Humphrey, ‘for Michael and his angels shall wage war upon him, though he be allowed to mouth bombast and blasphemy!’ Then, in Scots, ‘The white eaglet, the goggie, will fling his brother from the nest, and snatch his share of the carrion!’

‘- all’s well, Humphrey, sit nice now, oh, aye, maister, he’s better already and Simmie’s there if I was needing any help, there now, and some honey to go wi the milk — ’

Gil retreated to the hall, where the rest of the embroilment had taken refuge. Agnew was seated in one of the chairs by the hearth, sipping water in small painful swallows, his breath whistling in his throat. The brethren were ranged about him arguing, and Millar stood by making anxious noises and asking questions.

‘But how did it happen?’

‘The nane o us saw it.’

‘Andro, the man must be keepit out o here! Humphrey’s never so bad as when he’s been round him.’

‘He’s never gaed for any o us afore this.’

This was probably no time to question Agnew himself. Extracted from the hall with a request for Naismith’s keys, Millar added little to what Gil had already guessed.

‘Humphrey wasny at Terce, but neither Sissie nor I knew his brother was in the place,’ he said, wringing his hands in distress. ‘He must have come in quietly afore the Office when Humphrey was resting in his own lodging, and stayed talking wi him far longer than I’d ha thought advisable. The first we heard was the shouting, and then Maister Agnew came running in from the garden, and Humphrey after him trying to get him by the throat.’

‘What had he said to provoke him?’

‘He’s aye been able to anger him,’ said Millar, ‘but I think from what Humphrey said, afore he went off into the Apocalypse, as ye heard, and then tried to strike Duncan wi his own staff, that Maister Agnew was wanting him to confess to having slain the Deacon.’

‘That’s what his texts suggested,’ Gil agreed.

Millar nodded, still wringing his hands. ‘Agnew’s took it into his head it was his brother, though I’ve tried to tell him it wasny possible because of the way the locks are, and that, and he must have tried — ’ He turned his head as the argument in the hall grew louder again. ‘Maister Cunningham, I’ll have to leave you till I deal wi this.’