The Harper's Quine

Chapter Two

It was surprising how much of the singing one could hear, sitting shivering outside the cathedral at five o’clock in the morning, trying very hard to remember whether a building site was consecrated ground or not.

Here in the kirkyard the birds were shouting. Inside, the Vicars Choral had dealt with Matins and were cantering through Lauds, with more attention paid to speed than sense. A lot of the sound came through the windows, but a certain amount of it, Gil reasoned, came by the door which used to be the south transept entrance and now stood firmly shut and locked above the muddy grass of the Fergus Aisle, quite near to where someone had recently been sick, and just above where the dead woman was lying.

He sat on the scaffolding, fingering his beads and staring at her. She had given him a most unpleasant turn. Coming out early to meet the mason, since he was awake anyway and there was no chance of breaking his fast until Maggie got the fire going, he had climbed up the wheelbarrow ramp and into the chapel to have the closer look he had passed over last night, and there she was, lying half under the planks by the far wall. He had thought at first she was asleep, or drunk, until he smelled the blood; and then he had touched her shoulder and found it rigid under his hand.

The last paternoster bead reached his fingers. He rattled through the prayer, added a quick word for the repose of the lady’s soul, whoever she might be, and rose to have another look, the question of consecrated ground still niggling at his mind.

She was lying on her right side, face hidden in the trampled grass as if she was asleep, one hand tucked under her cheek. The other sleeve of her red cloth gown was hitched nearly to the shoulder, the tapes of the brocade under-sleeve half-torn, and the blood-soaked shift stiffened in sagging folds round her arm. The free hand was strong, white, quite clean, with surprisingly long nails and calloused fingertips. She wore a good linen headdress, with a neat dark French hood over it. Round her waist was a belt of red-dyed leather shod with silver, with no purse attached to it, and she had no jewellery beyond a set of finely carved wooden beads. She looked like a decent woman, not one of the inhabitants of Long Mina’s wellknown house in the Fishergait. Gil could not rid himself of the feeling that he had seen her before.

The sound of chanting was diminishing towards the vestry on the other side of the nave. He realized Lauds must be over, and there was still no sign of the mason, and nobody to help him move the corpse, which could certainly not stay there.

A door clanked open, east along the buttressed honeycoloured flank of St Mungo’s. Children’s voices soared, then paused as an angry adult voice entered at full volume.

‘Andrew Hamilton! William! Come here this instant!’

That was the chanter himself, sounding surprisingly alert after last night’s drinking session. Gil got to his feet, intending to shout to him, and found himself looking out over the roof of the masons’ lodge at Patrick Paniter, broad-shouldered and angry in his robes, confronting two blue-gowned trebles.

What were you about, that you were three beats late in the Gloria? What was so interesting?’ The chanter pounced. One boy ducked away, but the other was slower. ‘Give me that!’

Strong hands used to forcing music from the cathedral’s two organs had no difficulty with a twelve-year-old’s grip.

‘Ow! Maister Paniter!’

Maister Paniter’s dark tonsured head bent briefly over the confiscated object. ‘A harp key? What in Our Lady’s name did you want with a harp key? It’ll never tune your voice, you timber-eared skellum!’

‘It’s mine — I found it!’ The boy tried to seize it back, but the chanter held it easily beyond his reach.

‘Then you’ve lost it again.’ His other hand swung. ‘And that’s for boys who don’t watch the beat. What have I told you about that? And you, Will Anderson, hiding behind that tree! What have I told you? It’s-. Y

‘It’s wickedness, Maister Paniter,’ they repeated in reluctant chorus with him.

‘Because …?’

‘Because it interrupts the Office,’ they completed.

‘Remember that. Now get along to school before you’re any later, you little devils, and you may tell Sir Adam why I kept you.’

The fair boy, rubbing a boxed ear, ran off down the path to the mill-burn. His friend emerged from behind the tree and followed him, and they vanished down the slope, presumably making for school by the longest way around.

Gil drew breath to call to the chanter. He was forestalled by a creaking of wood behind him, and a voice which said in accented Scots, ‘Well, what a morning of accidents!’

He glanced over his shoulder, then back again, just in time to see Maister Paniter hurl some small object into the trees, and then withdraw, slamming the crypt door behind him.

Gil turned to face the master mason, staring. The man standing on the scaffolding was big, even without the furtrimmed gown he wore. A neat black beard threatened; under the round hat a sharp gaze scanned the kirkyard and returned to consider the corpse.

‘What has come to this poor woman in my chantier?’ he demanded, springing down from the planking. ‘And who are you? Did you find her, or did you put her there?’

‘I am Gil Cunningham, of the Cathedral Consistory,’ said Gil, with extreme politeness, ‘and I should advise you not to repeat that question before witnesses.’ The French mason, he thought. Could this be the father of his acquaintance of yesterday?

‘Ah — a man of law!’ said the big man, grinning to reveal a row of strong white teeth. ‘I ask your pardon. I have other troubles this morning already. I spoke without thinking.’ He raised the hat, baring dark red hair cut unfashionably short and thinning at the crown, and sketched a bow. ‘I am called Peter Mason, master builder of this burgh. Maistre Pierre — the stone master. Is a joke, no? I regret that I come late to the tryst. I have been searching for the laddie who did not sleep in his bed last night, although his brother was come from Paisley to visit him. Now tell me of this.’

‘I found her when I came for the meeting,’ said Gil. ‘She’s stiff — been killed sometime last night, I’d say.’

‘Been killed? Here? She has not died of her own accord?’

‘There’s blood on her gown. Yes, I think here. The grass is too trampled to tell us much, this dry weather, but I would say she is lying where she fell.’

Maistre Pierre bent over the corpse, touching with surprising gentleness the rigid arm, the cold jaw. He felt the back of the laced bodice, sniffed his fingers, and made a face.

‘See — I think this is the wound. A knife.’ He looked round. ‘Perhaps a man she knew, who embraced her, and slipped in the knife, khht! when she did not expect it.’

‘How was her sleeve torn, then?’ asked Gil, impressed in spite of himself.

‘He caught her by it as she fell?’ The big hands moved carefully over the brocade of the under-sleeve. ‘Indeed, there is blood here. Also it is smeared as if he wiped his hand. There is not a lot of blood, only the shift is stained. I think a fine-bladed dagger.’

‘Italian,’ offered Gil. The bright eyes considered him.

‘You know Italy, sir?’

‘There were Italians in Paris.’

‘Ah. Firenze I know, also Bologna. I agree. What do we do with the poor soul? Let us look at her face.’

He laid hold of the shoulder and the rigid knee under the full skirt, and pulled. The body came over like a wooden carving, sightless blue eyes staring under halfclosed lids. The black velvet fall of the French hood dropped back, shedding tiny flakes of hawthorn blossom and exposing a red scar along the right side of her jaw. Poor woman, thought Gil, she must always have kept her head bent so that the headdress hid that, and with the thought he knew her.

The knowledge made him somehow decisive. He reached out and drew a fold of velvet up across the staring eyes, and the woman’s face immediately seemed more peaceful.

‘It’s one of the two who sings with the harper,’ he said.

‘But of course! The one with the baby, I should say.’

‘A child, is there?’ said Gil, and suddenly recalled his uncle using the same words. ‘Then I know who must be told, as well as the harper. She is on St Mungo’s land, we must at least notify the sub-dean as well, and he is probably the nearest member of Chapter in residence just now. I have no doubt he will want to be rid of her. Do you suppose the Greyfriars would take her until we can confirm her name and where she is and find her kin?’

‘But certainly. Go you and tell whom you must, Maister Cunningham. I will bide here, and by the time you return my men will be come back from searching for Davie-boy and we can put her on a hurdle.’

A plump maidservant opened the door to Gil when he reached the stone tower-house by the mill-burn.

‘Good day to you, Maister Cunningham,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is it the maister you’re wanting?’

‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘Can I get a word with him, Kirsty?’

‘Oh, aye. He’s just breaking his fast. Will you wait, or interrupt him? Mind, he’s going out hawking in a wee bit.’

‘I’d best see him now. I need a decision.’

Agog, she led him up a wheel stair and into the subdean’s private closet, where James Henderson, red-faced and richly clad, was consuming cold roast meat with bannocks and new milk in front of a tapestry of hunting scenes.

‘Here’s Maister Cunningham for you,’ she proclaimed, ‘and it’ll no wait.’

‘St Mungo’s bones!’ exclaimed Canon Henderson. ‘What ails ye, Gil? Will ye take bannocks and milk?’

‘No, I thank you,’ said Gil with regret. ‘I’ve come to report a corpse in the Fergus Aisle. I found her just now.,

‘A corp!’ said Kirsty. ‘Who is it? What’s come to her? And at May-tide, too!’

‘A corpse,’ repeated Canon Henderson. ‘In the Archbishop’s new work? You mean a fresh corpse?’

‘Stabbed, last night, I would say, sir.’

‘Save us! I never heard anything last night,’ said Kirsty.

‘Is she from the Chanonry? A dependant, a servant? Her household must be notified.’

‘I think she’s one of the harper’s singers.’

‘Oh, a musician,’ said the sub-dean distastefully. ‘If she belongs down the town then it’s hardly proper for her to stay here. Maybe the Greyfriars — ‘

‘I thought so too.’

‘And Gil …’ The sub-dean hesitated, staring at the woven heron, caught in the moment of its death. He tapped his teeth with a chewed fingernail. ‘How did she die? Stabbed, you say? And on St Mungo’s land. I suppose we have a duty to look for the man responsible, even if she is a minstrel.’

‘We do,’ agreed Gil.

‘Aye, we do!’ said Kirsty. ‘Or we’ll none of us can sleep easy, thinking we’ll get murdered in our beds.’

‘Be silent, woman!’ ordered Canon Henderson.

‘Well enough for you,’ retorted Kirsty. ‘It’s me that’s at the side nearest the door!’

‘Is there anyone else I should report this to?’ Gil asked.

‘No,’ said the sub-dean hastily. ‘Just get her moved. Maybe the mason’s men can bear her to the Greyfriars. See to it, Gil, will you? And as for finding the malefactor, you’d be well placed to make a start. After all, you found her. I’ll speak to your uncle — perhaps at Chapter.’

Gil, seeing himself out to the sound of a blossoming domestic quarrel, did not take the direct path to the building site, but cut across the slope of the kirkyard to the stand of tall trees opposite the door of the lower church.

He made his way through the trees, scuffing the bluebells aside with his feet, many thoughts jostling in his head. It seemed he would be spending more time away from his books. Surely it should not feel as if he had been let off his leash. And when he finally became a priest, scenes such as this morning’s would become part of his existence, both the encounter with a recent corpse and the slice of home life he had just witnessed. The corpse he could cope with, he felt. One would usually have some warning, and there were procedures to be gone through, shriving, conditional absolution, prayers for the dead. One would know what to do. But what could one do about the other matter — the behaviour of what his uncle referred to, with dry legal humour, as The concordance of debauched canons. Nothing to do with Gratian’s classic text, of course.

He sniffed the green smell of the new leaves he was trampling, and tried to imagine himself, a senior figure in the Church, taking a servant to his bed like Canon Henderson, or setting up a woman of his own class as an acknowledged mistress with her own home, like Canon Dalgliesh. The image would not stay before him. Instead he saw his uncle, whom he knew he would resemble closely in thirty years’ time, and the scholar who had taught him logic at the University.

He looked about him, a little blankly. What was it Aristotle said about incongruity? The dead woman was a thing out of place; the harp key the trebles had found was another. There was, of course, a significant and bawdy double meaning attached to the object, but the chanter appeared to have discarded it as an irrelevance, rather than as a source of corruption.

He began to search more carefully under the bluebells, and was rewarded by a lost scrip, empty, a broken wooden beaker and one shoe. He was casting about nearer the church, trying to judge where the implement might have landed after the chanter threw it this way, when a blackbird flew up, scolding, and something snored behind him.

Wild boar! he thought as he whirled, drawing his sword. Then it dawned on him that there could be no wild boar in St Mungo’s kirkyard. Feeling slightly foolish, he stared round under the trees, sword in hand, waiting for the sound to be repeated. There it was again — over there among those bushes. He made his way cautiously through the long grass, and carefully parted the leaves with the point of his blade.

The mason’s men, three sturdy fellows in aprons, were gathered inside the walls of the chapel, standing on the muddy grass staring down at the corpse. Their master was issuing instructions about a hurdle when Gil climbed the scaffolding.

‘Ah — maister lawyer,’ he said, breaking off. ‘What have you learned? Where does she go home?’

‘Greyfriars,’ said Gil. ‘But we’ll need another hurdle.’

The three men turned to stare at him. One was squat and grizzled, one was fair and lanky, and the middle one was the journeyman called Thomas, who had argued with a merchant’s son in the High Street. So her father is the master mason? he thought.

‘Is your missing laddie about fifteen, wearing striped hose?’

Thomas swallowed.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Rare proud of them he is, too. What d’ye mean, a hurdle, maister? Is he — have you — ?’

‘I’ve found him,’ said Gil.

The boy was not dead. He lay on his face in a little huddle under the bushes, blood caked on a vicious wound on the top of his head, breathing with the stertorous snores that had attracted Gil’s attention. There was no other mark on him, but he was very cold.

‘It needs that we nurse him,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I have heard men breathe so before.’ He looked round, to where two of the men were approaching with a hurdle, and held up one large hand. ‘A moment, Wattie. Maister Cunningham, do you see something strange?’

‘Very strange,’ agreed Gil. ‘I wondered if you would see it. There is no sign of the man who struck him that blow. I followed the boy’s own tracks into the bushes. Someone else has run by him, a couple of paces that way, but hardly close enough to hit him like that.’

‘You must stand still to strike so hard a blow,’ said the mason thoughtfully. He scratched the back of his head, pushing the hat forward. ‘I have seen a man walk away after he was struck and fall down later. Perhaps he was not struck here.’

‘Can we move him, maister?’ demanded the grizzled Wattie. ‘If he’s no deid yet, he soon will be, laid out here in the dew like that.’

‘Aye, take him up, Wattie,’ said his master, straightening the hat. ‘You and Thomas, bear him to our house. Send Luke ahead to warn the household, and bid him fetch a priest,’ he added. ‘He must be shriven. Ah, poor laddie.’

The limp form was lifted on to the hurdle. Gil, on sudden impulse of pity, pulled off his short gown and tucked it round the boy.

‘His bonnet’s here,’ said Wattie, lifting it. ‘It was under him.’

‘Give me,’ said the mason. ‘Has he been robbed?’

‘Two pennies and a black plack in his purse,’ reported Wattie, ‘and he’s still wearing this.’ He pulled aside the folds of the gown to display a cheap brooch, the kind exchanged by sweethearts, pinned to the lad’s doublet. ‘His lass gave him that at St Mungo’s Fair.’

The mason turned the bonnet over. It was a working man’s headgear, a felted flat cap of woad-dyed wool with a deep striped band.

‘There is blood on the inside,’ said Gil, pointing. ‘He was wearing it when he was struck.’

Maistre Pierre turned the bonnet again. On the outside, corresponding to the patch of blood, was a rubbed place with scraps of bark and green stains. ‘With a great piece of wood,’ he agreed. He set the bonnet on the boy’s chest as the hurdle was borne past him. ‘Take him home, Wattie, and come back for the lady. Or if you pass any sensible men send them up to carry her away.’

As the two men plodded up the slope with their burden, Gil said thoughtfully, ‘The woman was stabbed, but the boy was struck over the head. Have there been two malefactors at large in the kirkyard last night?’

‘And the woman was robbed but the boy was not.’ The mason gathered his furred gown round him and strode up the slope in the wake of his men. ‘Come, maister lawyer, you and I can at least put her on a hurdle.’

As they rounded the angle of the Fergus Aisle they saw a small crowd hurrying eagerly towards them. Wattie’s idea of sensible men turned out to be anyone who had been passing when he reached the Great Cross, and it was with some difficulty that the hurdle with its sad burden was handed up the ramp on the inside of the scaffoldshrouded walls and down the outside, and set on its way. Several prentice-boys who should have been at work tried to climb in to see where the blood was, and a couple of the town’s licensed beggars appeared, offering to pray for the lady’s soul for ever in return for suitable alms. Once they realized that her kin had not been discovered they lost interest, but a knot of women followed at the rear of the procession, exclaiming and speculating.

Brother Porter at Greyfriars was compassionate.

‘Poor lass,’ he said, raising the fall of the hood to look at her face. ‘Aye, it’s the harper’s quine right enough. Father Francis is waiting for her in the mortuary chapel. She can he quiet there till they come for her. They’ve nowhere they can lay her out, they live in two rooms in a pend off the Fishergait.’

‘You know where they live?’ said Gil as the small cortege plodded past him, through the gateway and towards the chapel. ‘Someone needs to send to let them know.’

‘Bless you, son,’ said the porter, grinning wryly. ‘Half the town’s let them know by now. The man’s sister’ll be here any moment, I’ve no doubt, if not the harper himself.’

‘The other woman’s his sister, then?’ Gil said. ‘True enough, they’re alike. I’ll wait, if I may, brother. I must speak with her.’

‘Then I wait also,’ said Maistre Pierre. He drew a wellworn rosary from his sleeve and approached the chapel. Gil turned away to lean against the wall, thinking. The woman had clearly been dead for some hours, perhaps since yesterday evening. If she had reached St Mungo’s yard in daylight, she must have been about the place at the same time as he was himself. Alive or dead, he qualified. When he left the cathedral after Compline, was she already lying hidden under the scaffolding?

Over in the church, the rest of the little community of Franciscans were beginning to sing Prime. It felt much later.

As the Office was ending, the harper’s sister arrived in a rush, followed by a further straggle of onlookers. It was, as Gil had expected, the other singer, the tall woman in the checked kirtle, now wrapped in a huge black-and-green plaid. He straightened up and followed her to the little chapel, where she halted in the entrance, staring round; when her eye fell on the still figure on the hurdle a howl escaped her and she flung herself forward to kneel by the body, the plaid dropping to the tiled floor.

‘ohon, ohon! Ah, Bess!’ she wailed, unheeding of Father Francis still reciting prayers before the altar. Gil stepped forward to hush her, but two of the women in the crowd were before him, bending over her with sympathetic murmurs. She would not be stilled, continuing to lament in her own language. The porter hurried in and with some difficulty she was persuaded to leave the body and sit on a stool where she began to rock back and forth, hands over her face, with a high-pitched keening which made the hair on Gil’s neck stand up. The two women showed signs of joining in the noise.

The mason said to Gil under his breath, ‘Are these all her friends, that they mourn so loudly?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gil returned. ‘Er — ladies. Ladies,’ he repeated more loudly, without effect. ‘Madam!’ he shouted. ‘Be at peace, will you!’

She drew her hands from her face, still rocking, and showed him dry, angry eyes.

‘I am mourning my sister,’ she spat at him. ‘How can I be at peace?’

‘Listen to me,’ he said urgently, grasping her wrists. ‘Someone killed her, on St Mungo’s land.’

‘The more ill to St Mungo,’ she said, ignoring the shocked response of her companions. ‘Oh, Bess, as soon as I saw the gallowglass, ohon — ‘

‘Gallowglass?’ repeated Gil. ‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday, after Vespers. Him and his brother, they rode through the dance at noon, and him after Vespers casting up at our door, meek as a seal-pup, with a word for Bess Stewart and no other.’

‘You knew him?’ said the mason.

‘And why would I not know him, Campbell that he is?’ She spat as if the name were poison. ‘So what must she do, just about Compline, once the bairn is asleep, but put her plaid round her and go out with him, though we would gainsay her, Aenghus and I.’

‘She took her plaid?’ said Gil. ‘You are sure of it?’

She stared at him.

‘But of course. She was a decent woman, and not singing, of course she wore her plaid.’

‘It was not with her when we found her,’ said Gil.

‘He has kept it, the thieving — Oh, and when she never came home to her bairn, I knew there was trouble, ohon, alas!’

‘I want to find out who did it,’ said Gil hastily. She stared at him, and then grinned, showing gapped teeth.

‘It will have been the husband,’ she said. ‘But if it is proof the gentleman wants, I will help. Then we can avenge her.’ One hand went to the black-hilted gully-knife at her belt.

‘Then tell me what you can about her,’ said Gil, sitting back on his heels. ‘Who was she? No, first, who are you?’

‘I?’ She drew herself up, and the two weepers beside her sat back as if to hear a good story at some fireside. ‘I am Ealasaidh nic lain of Ardnamurchan, daughter of one harper and sister of another, singer.’

The dead woman was, as Gil had assumed, Bess Stewart of Ettrick, wife of John Sempill of Muirend. The harper and his sister had met her in Rothesay in late autumn a year and a half since.

‘She was singing with me first,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘I was playing the lute and singing, and she was joining in the second part. That was in the Provost’s house one evening. Then a day or so later we played at another house, Aenghus and me both, and she was there, and she was singing with us.’

She paused, remembering.

‘French music it was,’ she said at length. ‘Binchois, and some other. And it seemed Aenghus must have had a word with her by his lone, for when we came away from Bute before St Martin’s tide she came with us. I was not happy about this, the gentleman will be seeing, for it is one thing a willing servant lass and another entirely a baron’s wife. So we went to Edinburgh for Yule, and spent a while in Fife, and when we were coming back into the west there was the bother the Sempills had about Paisley Cross, and she was already showing, so we thought the husband would not be pursuing her.’

‘Showing?’ queried Gil. She gestured expressively.

The child had been born at Michaelmas, and by then Bess had learned to sing a good few of the songs the harper played, and also to play a little on a smaller harp. As soon as she could leave the baby she had begun to help to earn her keep.

‘I never had a singing partner I was liking so well,’ said Ealasaidh, ‘nor never a sister like Bess. Sorrow is on me now and for ever, ohon, ohon …’

‘Tell me something,’ said Maistre Pierre suddenly. She had resumed her rocking, but paused to look at him. ‘Why did the lady leave her husband so willingly? She had land, I presume there was money, and your brother is — well …’

‘No doubt,’ she said, ‘but I would not stay with a man that used his knife on me, neither.’

‘His knife?’ repeated Gil.

‘Why d’you think they called her One-lug Bess?’ said one of the other women suddenly.

Ealasaidh turned on her. ‘Never in my hearing was anyone calling her that, Margaret Walker,’ she hissed, ‘and you will not do it again.’

‘Who’s to stop me?’ said the woman. Ealasaidh nic lain rose to her full height, gathering her checked skirts round her away from the contamination of Mistress Walker’s presence.

‘It is myself will stop you,’ she said wrathfully, ‘for you will not be over my doorsill again. And if the gentleman,’ she said, rounding on Gil, who had scrambled to his feet, ‘wishes to speak with me more, he may find me. We are staying at the sign of the Pelican, in the Fishergait. Anyone will be telling where the harper and his women — his sister are staying.’

She snatched her plaid from the woman beside her, jerked the door open and strode out into the courtyard. The two women got to their feet.

‘He cut her ear off,’ said one of them. ‘That’s where she got the scar.’

‘That’s why she was aye in that French hood,’ said the other. ‘Take a look under it.’

‘She told me once she’d more scars than that.’

‘I suppose that would be one advantage of the harper.’

Their eyes slid sideways at one another, and they nodded, and slipped out of the chapel after Ealasaidh. Gil, uncomfortably reminded of Euripides, turned back to the body, which someone had covered with a linen sheet. Father Francis had left, but two of the brothers were pattering prayers at the altar.

‘The chorus has gone,’ said Maistre Pierre at his side. ‘Maister Cunningham, I am wishing to ask at my home how is the boy Davie, and it is a long time since I broke my fast.’

‘I’m still fasting,’ said Gil frankly.

‘Then you will come with me and eat something and we talk. Yes?’

‘That would be very welcome,’ said Gil. He drew back the sheet and looked at Bess Stewart’s still face. She was lying as he had found her, and the scarred jaw was hidden. ‘She’ll soften by tonight or tomorrow, in this weather, and they can lay her out properly. We should look at her then.’

The mason marched him firmly from the chapel and down the High Street, nodding to acquaintances as he went, and in at the pend below the sign of the White Castle.

They came through the arched entry into a courtyard, bright with flowers in tubs. The house, like most of this part of the High Street, must be some fifty years old, but it was showing signs of modernization. The range to their right had a row of large new windows set into the roof, and a wooden penthouse ran round two sides of the yard. Gil had no time to look further; Maistre Pierre dragged him across the cobbles and up the fore-stair, in under the carved lintel, shouting loudly in French, ‘Catherine! Alys! I am here and I am hungry! Where are you?’

He drew Gil into a large hall, dim after the sunny courtyard, where plate gleamed in the shadows and the furniture smelled of beeswax.

‘Welcome to my house,’ he said, gesturing expansively, and threw the furred gown on to a windowseat. ‘Where are those women?’

‘I am here, father,’ said a remembered voice behind them. ‘No need to make so much noise, we were only in the store-rooms.’

Gil, turning, had just time to recognize the figure outlined in the doorway against the light, before the mason seized the girl, kissing her as soundly as if he had been away for days.

‘My daughter, maister! Alys, it is Maister Gilbert Cunningham,’ he said, pronouncing the name quite creditably, ‘of the Consistory Court. He and I have found a dead lady and a live boy this morning, and we need food.’

‘Yes, Luke has told me. I will bring food in a moment, father.’ She moved forward, held out both hands to Gil and leaned up to kiss him in greeting. A whisper reached his ear: ‘Please don’t tell!’

‘Enchanted to serve you, demoiselle,’ said Gil in ambiguous French, and returned the kiss with careful courtesy. ‘How is the boy?’

‘We are still washing him. When he is comfortable you may see him.’

‘Has he spoken? Where is his brother? Where is that food?’

‘The food is in the kitchen, father, and Catherine is supervising the girls who are all helping with Davie. No, he has not roused. His brother is with him. If you take our guest up to your closet I will bring you something to eat.’

Maistre Pierre’s closet, on the floor above, was panelled and painted, with a pot of flowers on the windowsill and cushions on the benches. A desk stood in one corner, with a jumble of papers on it; a lute lay on a bench, and there were four books on a shelf near the window.

‘Be seated,’ said the mason, indicating the big chair. Gil shook his head, and sat politely on a bench. ‘Well!’ said the mason explosively, dropping into the chair himself. ‘What a day, and it not yet past Terce!’

He looked consideringly at Gil, and seemed to come to some conclusion.

‘I am concerned in this,’ he said. ‘That is my boy who is injured, and the lady has come to grief in my chantier. Do you know who will pursue the matter?’

‘Not the burgh officers,’ Gil said. ‘I’ll speak to the serjeant out of courtesy, but he has no authority on St Mungo’s land. It will be someone from the Consistory Court, likely.’

‘One of the apparitors? I have the term right? The men who serve notice that one must be present on a certain day or be excommunicated.’

‘You have the term right. It might be.’ Gil rose as Alys entered with a tray of food. ‘I will report to the Official, as soon as I may, and he will make a decision,’ he added, setting a stool to act as table, irritated to find himself clumsy.

Unruffled, Alys poured ale for both men and handed a platter of oatmeal bannocks and another of barley bannocks with slices of meat in them. Her father took one of these, jumped to his feet and began to stride this way and that in the small room like a hunting-leopard Gil had once seen in its cage.

Alys sat down, gathering her skirts neatly about her, and watched him with an intent gaze. She was as taking as Gil remembered. She was clad today in a gown of faded blue which set off her young figure to advantage, and her hair was tied back with a ribbon, emphasizing the oval shape of her face with its pointed chin and high-bridged nose. Finer-boned and finer-featured than her father, she still resembled him strongly, although she must have inherited that remarkable nose from someone else.

As if aware of his scrutiny, she glanced up at him and smiled briefly, then turned back to her still-pacing father.

‘What do we know?’ the mason said. ‘This woman who sang with the harper was knifed, there in that confined space, in the Fergus Aisle, Alys, with a narrow blade.’

‘Luke told me that too,’ said Alys. ‘I find it extraordinary. Why was she there? A young man — someone Davie’s age — might go in out of curiosity, but a woman in her good clothes would need a sound reason to climb the scaffolding, even by the wheelbarrow ramp.’

‘A good point, ma mie,’ agreed her father. ‘It must have been someone she knew, someone she trusted, to enter the chantier with him.’

‘We know a little more,’ Gil said. There was not much blood, so he will not necessarily be marked.’

‘A negative.’

‘But useful. And we know that one of Sempill’s men-atarms fetched her sometime after Vespers. Indeed, I think I saw him come to Compline.’ He paused, thinking carefully. ‘I saw the whole party at Compline. One of the menat-arms was late, as I say, and one of Sempill’s friends arrived after him, but the rest were under my eye for the most part from the start of the service.’

‘Perhaps the man-at-arms — the gallowglass,’ said Alys, bringing the word out triumphantly, ‘was the one who killed her. Or could the husband have stabbed her after he left the church?’ She rose to replenish their beakers.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Gil with regret. ‘He left just before me, and when I reached the door he was already returning from the clump of trees opposite.’

Alys set the jug down and stood considering him, absently twirling a lock of hair round one finger.

‘He came from the trees,’ she repeated. ‘Not from the Fergus-Aisle?’-

‘No,’ agreed Gil. ‘Besides, I think even Sempill of Muirend is not so rash as to summon a woman openly in order to kill her. No, and I do not know who had time to get into the Fergus Aisle and out of it again before I saw them all together. It’s an easy enough climb over the scaffolding, or up the ramp for the barrow and down again, but it takes a moment, and the scaffolding would creak. On a quiet evening like yesterday you would hear it in Rottenrow.’

‘Perhaps the person had not left,’ said Alys. ‘And what about Davie? Did the same person strike him down?’

‘I saw Davie,’ Gil said, reaching for another bannock. ‘He was in the kirkyard before Vespers, with a lass. I took her to be the same one I saw him with earlier at the dancing.’

‘I do not know who she is,’ said Alys, ‘but the men might. It is urgent that you find her, you realize, whoever is to track down the killer.’

‘It is,’ agreed Gil.

‘I must see the boy,’ said the mason impatiently, setting down his beaker. ‘Where have you put him?’

Across the courtyard, sacks and barrels had been hastily stacked in the shelter of the new penthouse. In the vaulted store-room thus cleared, worn tapestries hung round the walls for warmth, and a charcoal brazier gave off a choking scent of burning spices. Next to it the boy Davie lay on a cot, curled on his side with bandages across the crown of his head and supporting his slack jaw. A small woman veiled in black knelt at the bed’s foot, her rosary slipping through her intent fingers, her lips moving steadily. A stout maidservant sat at the head with her spindle, and a gangling youth with a strong resemblance to the injured boy rose to his feet as Alys put aside the hanging at the door.

‘He’s no stirred, mem,’ he said anxiously. ‘But his breathing’s maybe a mite easier.’

‘I think you are right,’ Alys agreed, feeling Davie’s rough red hand. ‘He seems warmer, too.’ She turned to her father. ‘We washed the wound, and bandaged it, after we clipped his hair. Brother Andrew came, and said he thought the skull was broken, but to keep him warm and still and nurse him carefully and pray. So Annis is watching and Catherine is praying, and so is Will while he can stay.’

‘A broken skull,’ the mason said in some dismay. ‘It needs a compress of vinegar with lavender and rose petals, hot to his feet, Alys, to restore the spirits and draw excess humours from the brain.’

‘So I thought,’ she agreed, ‘but we are short of rose petals. Jennet is gone out to the apothecary for more.’

‘What came to you, boy?’ said Maistre Pierre, staring down at the waxy yellow face. ‘I wish you could tell me.’

The sandy lashes stirred and flickered. Annis leaned forward with an exclamation, and Catherine paused in her muttering. Alys dropped to her knees, her head near the boy’s as the bloodless lips twitched, formed soundless words. Then the eyes flew open and suddenly, clearly, Davie spoke.

It wisny me. It wisny me, maister.’

His eyes closed again. Alys felt his hand, then his cheek, with gentle fingers, but he did not respond. She rose, and turned to her father and Gil.

‘You must find his sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Before the killer does.’