The King's Corrodian

Chapter Eleven

‘This is right kind in you, mistress,’ said Alys. The dog Roileag, sniffing at her shoes, made her whining growl, and she tucked her feet under her skirts.

‘But what is it you’re wanting to do?’ asked Mistress Buttergask, blue eyes very wide. ‘Your man just said you craved the use o our oven for a time, but no to fire it, if we wereny using it ourselves. Which we’re no, because we made bread yesterday, and two pies and all, for that we’re expecting Sir Silvester back the night by what he sent.’

Alys opened her mouth to explain, and then closed it, suddenly realising just what an exercise in tact this would be. Jennet, with no such qualms, said proudly, ‘My mistress is trying out what really happened to the man Pollock. Making trial how he could have all burned up like that.’

‘But I saw him carried off,’ objected Mistress Buttergask. ‘He never burned up, he vanished away.’

‘I think,’ said Alys, picking her words carefully, ‘what you saw was maybe his soul being carried off by the Devil, because we found his ashes in the house. He was all consumed by the fire, every bit, and yet the rest o the house was unharmed.’

‘Excepting his foot,’ said Jennet. ‘The dog found it under a stool.’

‘His foot?’ repeated Mistress Buttergask in amazement. ‘Why would he — how would he leave his foot behind?’

They were in the little chamber at the back of the house, with its view of the January garden and the Blackfriars’ wall. The two young servants had been given leave to visit their mother for the afternoon, so Jennet had been invited to prepare buttered ale, which she was swirling in its jug just now over the brazier. Alys sat back on the cushioned settle and recounted first what they had found in Pollock’s house, to many exclam ations of astonishment from her hostess, and then how she and Brother Michael had made trial of the ways in which fire might consume flesh.

‘I think we need a bigger space,’ she concluded, ‘like a bread-oven, and I hoped you might let us use yours.’

‘Oh.’ Mistress Buttergask considered this, looking doubtful. Alys wondered if the woman was consulting her voices, but she finally said, ‘I’m no certain what Rattray will say. One o the Greyfriars, did you tell me?’

‘He directed the trials,’ Alys said, exaggerating slightly. ‘A very holy man he is, Brother Michael Scott. Do you ken him?’

‘I do,’ said her hostess, still dubious. ‘Though I’d no ha said he was holy, exactly, more kinna, well, wrapped up in his own head. But if he’s in it, I suppose it’s no harm. Maybe he’ll can sain the oven after you’re done, just to be certain?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Alys, cheerfully committing Brother Michael. ‘I’m sure he’d do that for you.’

‘And how long will it take? I’d no like the oven to be out o use just when Rattray’s coming back.’

‘It took us all yesterday morning,’ said Jennet, swirling the buttered ale again. ‘But now we ken what we’re at, it should go quicker, shouldn’t it no, mem?’ She laid her hand to the side of the jug. ‘This is about ready, mistress, will you have me serve it out?’

‘Indeed aye, lassie, and some for yoursel and all,’ said Mistress Buttergask, clearly still turning the whole idea over in her head. ‘And what would you do, exactly? Set fire to the joint, did you say? But meat doesny burn up, it just blackens, it’s a thing a’body kens.’

Before Alys could arrange her thoughts to counter this argument Roileag shot out from under Mistress Buttergask’s chair growling, and a rattling at the house door proclaimed Tam, with Brother Michael and a basket of raw meat wrapped in rushes to keep the flies off. Several stray dogs were following them hopefully, but remained out of range of Brother Michael’s staff.

Their hostess set to, much flustered and accompanied by a shrill descant of yapping, to welcome the Franciscan, offer him refreshment, and discuss the weather, the state of the market, and possibly matters spiritual, all of which he ignored.

‘Let me see this oven,’ he said abruptly, ‘till I resolve whether it’s big enough.’ After a moment’s thought he added, ‘And the trivet. You’ve a trivet? Aye?’

‘Aye, there’s a trivet,’ said Tam tolerantly over the Franciscan’s shoulder, following Mistress Buttergask and her expostulations out to the kitchen. ‘I seen it mysel when we was here the other day. I tellt you afore we reached the flesher.’

Alys, about to follow on, found Jennet’s hand on her shoulder and the beaker of hot spiced ale thrust into her hand.

‘Drink it up, mem,’ said the girl, ‘and take one o her wee cakes and all. Saints alone ken when we’ll get a bite to eat if he’s to get started now. I ken it’s no very good manners, but it’s common sense.’

Alys had to admit the truth of this. She accepted both, and bit into the sweet cake as she pursued Mistress Buttergask’s exclamations across the other front room of the house and into a commodious kitchen, whitewashed clean and with ample storage and racks for hanging herbs, cheeses, and what looked like most of a salted pig in neat joints. There was a wide fireplace, the fire carefully banked while the maids were out; there was a big iron cooking-pot beside it which must be the source of a very savoury smell, and next to that a small charcoal range, presently unlit. This last caused her a pang of envy and the resolve to instal one this spring in their own kitchen at home.

‘Never noticed any smell o burning the day,’ Brother Michael was saying, ‘and the crocks washed clean, they tellt me.’

‘Them that survived,’ muttered Tam, and flinched as Jennet kicked his ankle.

The oven was built in by the fireplace, where it would lose the heat more slowly, and was as handsome as Tam and Jennet had reported to her, with a solid well-fitting wooden door which Mistress Buttergask was now demonstrating.

‘You just need to fasten it tight wi the paste,’ she said, ‘and there’s never a draught gets in to spoil the bread. I had the best builder in Perth to make it, there’s no an oven in the road like it.’

Brother Michael grunted, and turned to survey the rest of the chamber, nodded briefly to Alys and propped his staff against a convenient press.

‘It’s your trial, lassie,’ he said. ‘Y’have a protocol?’

‘But brother,’ said Mistress Buttergask more urgently. He turned to look at her. ‘Is it safe, brother? No the oven, it’s — at least aye, it’s the oven, but it’s the-’ As he frowned, and turned away again, making nothing of this, she burst out, ‘You’re no like to conjure the Deil in my kitchen, are you? Or Mahoun or Termagant or any spirits like that?’

‘Mistress, I’d never do a thing like that in another woman’s kitchen,’ said Alys, ‘or my own either.’ She took the older woman’s hand. ‘We made a trial o this in the Greyfriars’ kitchen yesterday, and there was no conjuring anything, no words or cantrips or signs made, these two will tell you.’ She indicated Tam and Jennet, who made haste to agree with her. ‘I’m sure Brother Michael will ask a blessing on the work afore we begin, won’t you, brother?’

‘Mm?’ He looked up from peering into a bowl of dried lavender on a shelf. ‘Oh — aye. Better get on.’

‘A blessing, brother,’ she prompted him.

‘Oh.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling, adopted a pose of prayer, and pronounced resonantly, ‘Benedictionem velit, habet benedictionem, per Dominum nostrum, Amen.’ As Mistress Buttergask crossed herself with a devout Amen, and Alys bit her lip to prevent herself from giggling, he took off his heavy scrip and began to unload the contents onto the table in the middle of the kitchen. As yesterday morning, a bundle of rags, several candle-ends, two small trivets emerged, along with a poke of flour and a small flat dish. Mercifully he had left the mixing-bowl behind. Mistress Buttergask was inclined to take umbrage at the presence of the flour.

‘As if I wouldny have flour in the house, that you’re as welcome to. There was no need to carry that all the way from the Greyfriars!’ she protested as Alys, retrieving her sacking apron from the basket Jennet had carried, began to pin it to her person.

‘Mistress?’ The kitchen door had opened, and the two young maids stood there, the one in front staring open-mouthed, the other on tiptoe to peer over her shoulder. Roileag bustled across the floor to greet them, dancing on her hind legs and yipping in excitement. ‘Mistress? What’s ado? Who’s all these folk in our kitchen?’

‘Jennet,’ said Alys hastily, but Tam was already at the door, edging the girls out. They went reluctantly, hardly listening to his promises of explanations, trying to see more of what was happening. The dog scurried out along with them, and as the door closed Jennet asked Mistress Buttergask for a bowl, and Alys unfolded the bundle of rags, seeking a suitable piece of cloth to use for a wrapping.

Brother Michael stood back, making an occasional note on a worn set of tablets, scrutinising her work in silence. Mistress Buttergask, on the other hand, kept up a spate of questions and wondering remarks, which Jennet answered as best she might while Alys swaddled the lump of meat. It was a piece of fat mutton on the bone, with a good layer of lard under the skin, just as she had instructed Tam to ask for. She said as much to Brother Michael and he wrote that down as well, without comment.

‘Here’s your paste, mem,’ said Jennet as she finished.

‘And you’ll put that in the cold oven?’ said Mistress Buttergask in amazement. ‘What’ll that do? Will you say a prayer over it? You tellt me there would be no cantrips,’ she said suspiciously.

‘I’ll put a candle to it, only,’ said Alys, looking around her. ‘May we use your trivet, mistress? The great one there?’

‘A candle? To set fire to a piece o mutton that size? Surely no, lassie!’

Brother Michael stirred.

‘Use mine,’ he said. ‘The two o them. One each end.’

‘Not the great one?’

‘More support,’ he said. He laid aside his tablets, lifted the small flat dish and one of the candle-ends, and bending to the banked fire lit the candle and set about securing it to the dish with drips of wax. Alys arranged the bundle of meat across the two trivets, inside the cavern of the oven, and slid the candle into position under the meat so that the flame just licked at the layers of cloth. Brother Michael lifted the door and set it into its aperture, and watched while she sealed its edges with the paste Jennet had kneaded up.

‘Now we wait,’ he said. Elsewhere in the house, the dog began barking furiously.

‘How long?’ asked Mistress Buttergask. ‘How long will it take? When will we ken if it’s worked?’

‘An hour?’ he said. ‘You saw, mistress. Nothing else in the oven, only the flesh and the candle.’

‘Oh, yes, I saw,’ she agreed. ‘I still canny understand what you’re about, mind.’

The kitchen door opened to admit Tam, with one of the maidservants pushing past him.

‘There’s a-’ he began, but the girl went to Mistress Buttergask, saying, ‘If you please, mem, it’s the maister back! He’s just dismounting afore the door this moment! The wee dog kent he was there, the clever thing.’

‘Rattray!’ her mistress exclaimed, her face lighting up, and then, transparently, ‘Oh! Oh, I’ll need to tell him — explain all this.’ She bustled out, leaving the maidservant to look sidelong at the sealed oven, the items still lying on the table.

‘Is that all you need to do magic wi?’ she asked boldly. ‘A bowl and a poke o flour and some candle-ends? Maybe I could set mysel up for a necromancer and get rich wi making gold.’

‘No magic, lassie,’ said Brother Michael repressively. ‘Making a trial o something, is all.’

‘He said,’ she jerked her head at Tam, ‘you were seeing how the man got carried off wi the Deil, just ower the wall there.’

‘He never got carried off,’ said Jennet.

‘Aye, he did! My mistress saw him.’

Out in the other room Roileag was barking hysterically, men’s voices could be heard, booted feet stamped, Mistress Buttergask embarked on an explanation over which someone said, ‘Sorry I’ve been as long, Bessie. I’ve been at Montrose trying to sort this will. What’s that you’re saying? Necromancy? In our kitchen? Bessie, you fool! What are you about?’

Three swift, heavy footsteps brought a big man to the kitchen doorway, dark-haired and unshaven, still booted and bundled in furs, Roileag leaping about his knees. He stared fiercely round the chamber. His gaze lighting on Brother Michael, he said forcefully, ‘What are you at, persuading Mistress Buttergask to take part in your filthy practices? We’ll ha none o that in this house! Be off, or I’ll fetch the Bishop to ye!’

Brother Michael, taken aback, gulped like a carp in a pond and produced no coherent words. Alys summoned all she had learned from her mother-in-law and stepped forward, and Jennet and Tam both straightened up, their attitude watchful.

‘Good day to you, sir,’ she said, and curtsied. ‘You must be Sir Silvester Rattray.’

‘Aye, I am,’ he said, staring at her. He was older than she had thought at first, perhaps as much as sixty, but confident and vigorous. ‘And who the Devil are you?’

‘Oh, Rattray, I’m just telling you,’ protested Mistress Buttergask. ‘That’s Mistress Mason, that’s wedded on Blacader’s quaestor, and looking into the man we saw carried away in the night, only he wasny, for he left his foot behind.’

‘Bessie,’ he said, and she fell silent. ‘Mistress?’ he added to Alys.

‘Alys Mason,’ she confirmed. He nodded acknowledgement of this. ‘We’re trying to establish how the man could have burned to ashes-’

‘All save his foot,’ supplied Mistress Buttergask.

‘And Mistress Buttergask has kindly let us have the use o the oven here. There’s been no necromancy, no conjuring of spirits, nothing like that at all.’

‘Aye, so you say, but what’s this-’ he bit off the word, ‘doing here?’

‘Brother Michael has been overseeing the trials. I do assure you, sir, there’s been no ill-doing here.’

He stared at her, and then round the kitchen, noting the same things the maidservant had seen. Roileag, who had been pawing impatiently at his boots, chose the moment to start yapping again, and he snatched the little beast up and muzzled it with one big hand.

‘Aye, well,’ he said, still suspicious. ‘We’ll hear more o this. Just let me shift my gear and get a wash. Is there water hot, Bess?’

There was a flurry of activity, involving Mistress Buttergask and her maidservants and one of Rattray’s men; Alys took refuge in the corner by the oven, and found Brother Michael beside her, clutching his staff in a casual manner which did not deceive. She became aware that the oven was giving off a significant heat, and a faint hissing crackle like a hot frying pan, and turned to look at the sealed door.

‘Nihil dice,’ said the friar quietly.

Washed, shaved and combed, clad in a clean shirt and hose and the doublet which had been hanging in the bedchamber, Sir Silvester Rattray presented a much more polished aspect to the world. Seated by the brazier in the solar, with a platter of bread and meat and a jug of ale on a small table before him, he considered Alys and finally said, ‘Mason. It’s no a name I’ve heard.’

‘My father is French,’ said Alys. Mistress Buttergask, across the room, looked up from her needlework at this, her blue eyes widening.

Rattray pushed Roileag away from his chair with a slippered foot and went on, ‘Aye, well. But I have heard o your man. The Bishop had a bit to say o him a year or so back. So he’s back in Perth, is he?’ Alys nodded. ‘What’s he found, concerning the man Pollock? I ken the Bishop and Prior Boyd were well exercised about the fellow, and the Treasury and all, as one o theirs.’

‘No a great deal,’ said Alys cautiously. ‘He’s been held back by the other deaths, a novice called Rattray and the friar Thomas Wilson.’

‘Rattray?’ he repeated sharply. ‘Jockie was saying when he shaved me, they’ve had more trouble ower the wall, but he never named names. What was the laddie baptised? Andrew!’ He looked at Mistress Buttergask. ‘Here I’ve been scouring Montrose for the boy, and he’s lying dead ower the wall from you.’

‘You’re seeking him?’ Alys said. ‘What for, sir?’

‘Money. Never mind that the now, what about Pollock? What’s Maister Cunningham found, then?’

‘No a great deal, as I said. The man was in the habit o extortion, he sent money to the Yorkist party abroad, he was little liked.’

‘No a great deal? I’d no want to be the one he discovered a lot concerning! So what’s all this to do wi our kitchen? Aye, I ken, Bess,’ he added as she began to speak, ‘but I’ll ha Mistress Mason’s tale to it and all.’

Alys explained, yet again, what they had found in Pollock’s house, what had led her to think of experimenting, what the trial presently in the oven was intended to demonstrate. He heard her out, frowning, chewing on the food, asking a couple of sensible questions. When she had finished he paused to take a long pull at the jug of ale, ignoring Mistress Buttergask’s further assurances, and finally said, ‘And when should it come out the oven? When will you ken what’s come o’t?’

‘We should let the oven cool,’ Alys said unwarily. He shot her a look, but did not comment. ‘Perhaps another half an hour?’

‘Then tell me what’s this about Andrew Rattray. Did you say there was two deaths?’

‘Two deaths,’ she agreed, ‘and one man stabbed.’

Beginning with their arrival, she summarised the wider events of the last few days, while he fed the scraps of his meal to the dog, which begged importunately for every mouthful and produced its squeaky growl if he did not hand it over fast enough. Sir Silvester was paying more attention to the tale than appeared, for when it was ended he said, ‘There must be some link. If one o them had run stark wood he’d never trouble to call a secret meeting, he’d simply run about stabbing folk openly. Or so you’d think,’ he added, ‘though I’m aware you canny tell what a madman will do.’

‘There must be a link,’ Alys assented, ‘only we cannot find it.’

‘And your man thinks they’ve the wrong fellow locked away.’

‘He does,’ she agreed. ‘We both reckon he’s no one to use a knife, least of all to plan ahead enough to steal one out the kitchen and keep it hid.’

‘But the poor laddie,’ said Mistress Buttergask, tears in her eyes. ‘To be killed in his sleep like that, never knowing his end.’

‘Better than some, Bessie,’ said Rattray. ‘He’d been at his prayers, he’d confessed lately, he’d never ken it happened. No like thon fellow in Montrose.’

‘You keep talking about Montrose,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the linen she was working on. ‘What took you there, any road? I began to think you’d never come back.’

‘Never think that, you daft woman,’ he said with rough affection. ‘I’d a letter afore Yule there from a man o law at Montrose, concerning the will o one Skene o that place, asking did I ken the whereabouts o Andrew Rattray or his sister Margaret.’ Alys sat very still. ‘And since I reckon they’d be some kinna cousins to me, I writ back asking more detail. Found his answer waiting for me, and little advance it was, so I rade off to Montrose to see for mysel.’

‘But what was it about?’ Mistress Buttergask asked, round-eyed. ‘Why did you need to go there? Is it no a long ride?’

‘Fifty mile,’ he said, shrugging, and pushed the dog away with his foot again. ‘Away wi ye, it’s all done. All done! Turns out this Skene deceasit last autumn, was pulled out the harbour, took a peripneumony o the lungs, survived long enough to confess and make his will, and got his man o law to that rather than the priest.’

‘Och, yes, indeed!’ said Mistress Buttergask. Alys nodded her understanding. One’s man of law would write down one’s own wishes; a priest would set about persuading one to remember Holy Kirk, to the disadvantage of one’s own kin.

‘I’ve seen the document. Seems the lassie, Margaret, was his wife, and ran off, taking the bairn wi her. The will gied directions for the return o the conjoint fee and her dowry, and a bit for the bairn’s inheritance, and the rest to Andrew Rattray on condition he sees his sister right.’ He eyed Alys. ‘So what d’you ken o her, mistress?’

‘Me?’ she said, alarmed.

‘Aye, mistress, you. I saw your face change when I said how Skene dee’d. What way did you think he went?’

‘I ken nothing o the man,’ she parried, wondering how much to say. Mistress Buttergask leaned forward, giving her a significant look, so that she wondered if the other woman’s voices had spoken.

‘You can tell him, lassie,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is, you can tell him.’

‘But what will you do now,’ Alys asked, avoiding the issue, ‘seeing Andrew Rattray’s dead?’

‘I’m none so certain,’ he said slowly, his attention still on her face. ‘Skene having predeceasit him, Andrew dee’d in possession o all that was left to him, but I’m assuming he made no will, and he’d already gied all his worldly goods to the Blackfriars, I’d suppose. It’s a nice question who it devolves upon, which I’d hope your man would turn his thoughts to, seeing he’s a man o law and all, I believe.’

‘Are you no a man of law yoursel, sir?’ she asked. ‘You’re knowledgeable in the subject.’

‘I studied it,’ he said. ‘So how far is she from here?’

‘You think she’s in Perth?’

‘I think she’s in Perth.’

‘You can tell him, lassie,’ said Mistress Buttergask again.

‘I’ve nothing to tell,’ she said. For it’s not my secret, she was thinking.

Rattray was still looking intently at her, and she hoped she was not blushing. He drew breath to speak, but Roileag scurried out from her mistress’s skirts growling, as quick footsteps in the other chamber heralded Jennet at the door.

The girl bobbed a general curtsy to all three, but said to Alys, ‘If you please, mem, Brother Michael is wishful to open the oven. He needs to get back for Compline, he says, and he thinks it’s about time.’

She jumped up, hoping her relief did not show too clearly.

‘Certainly!’ she said. ‘And Mistress Buttergask needs her kitchen cleared and all.’

‘There’s been wee noises coming out it,’ Jennet confided. ‘We’d as much trouble keeping the men from keeking in there to see what was at work.’

‘What kind of wee noises?’ Alys led the way out towards the kitchen, trying not to trip over the dog, who was clearly convinced there would be food involved.

‘Like something tapping? Or maybe like a branch tapping on the window, that kind o noise. No very loud. And sic a stink o burned meat!’

As Jennet had said, the kitchen was full of the smell of burned meat. Brother Michael was still on guard before the oven, staff in hand. When he saw Alys he visibly relaxed, and the group of people round him fell back a bit, one of the men laughing self-consciously as if he had been the most importunate about opening the door.

‘Cooled now,’ said Brother Michael.

‘Was there any smoke?’ she asked him, suddenly apprehensive. ‘Did anything-?’

‘Nothing to see,’ he said. ‘Heat, you felt that, the smell, no other outward sign.’ He gave her an approving look. ‘Open it up.’

‘Och, aye, open it up,’ said the man who had laughed. ‘Let’s see what sort o magic you worked, or whatever it was.’

‘There was no magic,’ said Brother Michael wearily.

‘Are we to see what’s happened, or no?’ demanded Rattray.

The Franciscan turned his shoulder on him and leaned on his staff, keeping the multitude at bay. Alys, taking a deep breath, got a grasp on the oven door and dislodged it. Flakes of paste fell away at her feet, and a waft of dark smoke emerged from the gap. One of the maidservants shrieked, and the other began muttering an Ave.

‘Oh, Rattray!’ said Mistress Buttergask. ‘What is it? What’s in there?’

Alys lifted the wooden door from its socket and set it aside. The burned-meat smell was even stronger now. Flapping her hands to clear the smoke, she peered into the cavity of the oven.

‘It hasn’t worked!’ she said in disappointment.

‘Look closer,’ said Brother Michael.

‘But there’s still-’ she began, then as the smoke cleared, ‘Oh! We need to get it out of there. Is there a shovel or the like?’

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Need witnesses.’

‘Oh! Aye, you’re right.’ She stood aside. ‘Mistress? See what has happened?’

Mistress Buttergask came forward with reluctance, clutching her beads for protection, glanced warily into the oven, then leaned forward to look closer.

‘Oh, my!’ she said in amazement. ‘Saints preserve us, who’d ha thought it? It’s all burned up save the two bits at the ends.’

‘What?’ Rattray stepped up behind her, looking over her plump shoulder. ‘Well, I’ll be … and you really put nothing in there but the meat and a candle?’

‘And two trivets,’ Alys said. ‘Which are half melted.’ She found herself looking as proudly at the heap of ashes, the shrivelled fragments of meat and bone, the two twisted metal structures, as she had done at her very first meat pie.

‘Christ on a handcart,’ he said. ‘I’d never ha believed it if I’d no seen it mysel.’ He looked about him. ‘Here, you two, see what your mistress has wrought. Jockie, Ned, you get a look and all.’

‘Is there a shovel?’ Alys asked again, as Tam and Jennet elbowed one another to inspect the interior of the oven. ‘I’ll not use the bread-peel. The ash would cling to it. You’d never get it clean.’

After some searching the shovel was located by the back door, and a rake fetched from the hearth in the other chamber. Carefully, with much advice from Mistress Buttergask, Alys manoeuvred the fragments of her experiment onto the metal-edged blade of the shovel, raking round the floor of the dark cavity to be certain she had found everything. The smell of burned meat was almost overpowering, but she thought there was also a trace of the strange, sweetish smell she had noticed in Pollock’s house. Reminded, she looked closer at the oven floor, and realised that as well as the ash from the meat the bricks were coated in grease.

‘Aye,’ said Brother Michael when she commented. ‘Like your experiment yesterday.’

‘Is that all it is?’ said one of the maidservants as Alys drew the shovel out of the oven. ‘Just some burned meat? I thought it was some great work, maybe wi gold at the end o’t.’

‘Well, if it was to be gold, it’s no worked,’ said the man who had laughed.

‘It’s worked well,’ said Alys. ‘It’s done exactly what I hoped it might.’

‘Well!’ said Mistress Buttergask. ‘I still don’t see what you’ve proved wi’t, lassie, but if it’s what you hoped for I’m right glad of it.’

‘Let me set this down.’ Alys looked about her, and someone pushed a stool nearer for her to set the shovel on. She bent over it, poking among the ashes and lumps of material she had extracted. Brother Michael joined her, picked out the little dish the candle had stood on, now completely blackened, and isolated two twisted pieces of metal.

‘Is that your trivets, man?’ said Tam over Alys’s head. ‘St Peter’s balls, it’s as well you didny use the mistress’s great trivet here. They’s all melted.’

‘Like Pollock’s key,’ Alys commented.

‘Like the key. It’s successful,’ said Brother Michael. ‘No proof o what happened, a course, but proof o what might ha happened. Good work.’

She had the feeling this was not an encomium he bestowed lightly. She gave him a complicit smile, and said quietly, ‘It was all in the supervision, brother.’ Then, louder, ‘See, the meat has all burned up, save for the end parts, as you said, and the bone has burned and all.’ She turned one of the cindery lumps, and prodded the bone where it projected on one side. ‘That looks exactly like — like something we lifted in Pollock’s house,’ she observed, just preventing herself from identifying the fragment concerned. ‘The cloth has all burned away, even on the ends, though I wrapped it around carefully, but it’s only in the midst of the joint that the meat has caught.’

‘Aye,’ said Brother Michael.

‘So what do you have here?’ demanded Rattray. ‘Tell me again what went into the oven.’

‘Och, that’s a disappointment,’ said one of his men, and turned away as Tam began to rehearse the preparations they had made. Alys straightened up, and looked at Mistress Buttergask.

‘Might I beg the loan o a box, or a basin, or a wee poke? I’d like to take all this back to show to my husband.’ She put a hand on Brother Michael’s brown woollen sleeve. ‘And, brother, thank you for all your help. It’s been an education.’

He smiled at her, in an unaccustomed sort of way.

‘Been a pleasure. And an education, for me and all,’ he expanded hastily. Then, glancing at the darkening window of the kitchen, ‘I should go. The Red Bridge port.’

‘Aye, they’ll shut the port any time now,’ agreed Mistress Buttergask, returning with a green-glazed pottery basin. ‘Better get on your way, brother, and safe home.’

He nodded, delivered a perfunctory blessing, this time in Scots, and strode out. She thrust the basin at Alys and hurried to see him out, the dog scurrying at her heels. Alys carefully tipped the ashes and debris into the basin, making sure she had all the fragments.

‘So this proves,’ said Rattray, watching her, ‘that the man burned up, wi no harm to his house or the rest o his goods.’

‘No,’ she said, dusting the last flakes off the shovel, ‘but it proves it could have happened like that.’

‘Why?’ he said bluntly. ‘Why are you wishful to prove that?’

‘It’s a simpler explanation,’ she said. ‘Simpler is aye better, d’you not think?’

As always, it took far longer than she would have liked to get herself, her servants and the bowl of incinerated meat out of the house. Part of this delay was caused by her own offer to clean out the oven, which was refused firmly by Mistress Buttergask.

‘As if you could start a task like that at this hour!’ she exclaimed. ‘No, no, never concern yoursel, lassie, we’ll sort it the morn when it’s plenty time to dry after.’

Despite argument, she would not be persuaded, so Alys withdrew from the kitchen, to the clear relief of the rest of the household. Further delay was brought about by Sir Silvester, who led her back into the solar and demanded a complete rehearsal of what he had just seen.

‘You’re trying to show it could ha had a natural cause,’ he said when she had gone over the reasoning behind the trials, the procedure and the result.

‘That’s right,’ she agreed, wondering how he had failed to grasp this before.

‘Why?’

‘My husband doesn’t believe in witchcraft.’

‘Do you?’

She opened her mouth to say, Of course not! then closed it again and considered.

‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Not witchcraft as spells and cantrips and magic ointments. I have encountered … things I couldny explain. So has Gil,’ she added. ‘But neither one o us thinks it possible to kill someone at a distance by witchcraft. There needs to be a corporal agent.’

‘Does there, now?’ he said. She had the feeling he was laughing at her, and raised her chin defiantly. ‘Do you believe in the Deil?’

‘Of course I do!’ she said indignantly. ‘Any Christian must!’

‘So why could it no ha been the Deil carried the man away, same as Bessie saw?’

‘Did you ever hear of anyone else carried away like that?’ she countered. ‘I never have in this day. A hundred years or more ago, maybe, in stories, but no in our times. It could be what you saw was the man’s soul being carried off: we all ken that happens.’

‘I’m certain that’s the answer, Rattray,’ said Mistress Buttergask earnestly. ‘And it’s away less fearsome a thought, surely.’

‘Aye,’ he said. And then, abruptly, ‘Where does Margaret Rattray stay?’

She had been warned by the slight change in his expression.

‘I can tell you nothing o Margaret Rattray,’ she said.

‘Hah!’ he said. ‘Gil Cunningham’s well cled in his wife. Tell him I’ll gie mysel the pleasure and honour of calling on him the morn, if it’s convenient.’

‘I will, sir,’ she said, and rose to leave. Roileag jumped off Mistress Buttergask’s lap and began barking.

‘Bessie, can you no keep that wee beast quiet?’ Rattray asked, scooping the dog up and muzzling it again.

‘Och, she’s no so bad,’ said Mistress Buttergask, in defiance of the evidence. ‘Lassie, can I get a word wi ye?’

‘Yes,’ said Alys, startled. Her hostess fixed the man of the house with a pointed stare, and after a moment’s indecision he wandered out into the other room, pulling the door to behind him. ‘What is it?’ Alys asked, half expecting to be asked for some assurance about what the woman had seen.

‘Did you say your mammy was a French lady?’ said Mistress Buttergask. ‘I’ve had a French lady in my head these three days, bidding me tell her daughter all sorts.’ Alys stared at her in the candlelight, too astonished to speak. ‘She says, do you mind the flowered kirtle?’

Alys groped behind her to find the stool and sat down again, still staring.

‘I-’ she began, and her voice croaked. ‘I do.’

The kirtle was made of a piece of embroidered silk she and her mother had found in the market when she was seven. She had worn it until it could be let down and added to no longer. How could this woman know about the flowered kirtle?

‘She says,’ Mistress Buttergask tilted her head, eyes closed, as if she was listening, ‘do your duty by your faither. It’s no that easy to make her out. I’ve no French. She’s aye watching ower you, I’ve got that bit. You’re to — no, you’ve got a good man — she says you must honour him.’

‘I do,’ Alys said again, and felt for a moment almost as if she repeated her marriage vows for her mother. But could it be her mother? How could her mother be speaking to Mistress Buttergask?

‘And you’re to bide your time. The bairns will come in their own season. She’s showing me a picture, lassie. There’s you and a wee boy wi dark hair and two bairns smaller.’ Mistress Buttergask opened her eyes. ‘She’s away. They do that, you ken, once I’ve tellt their messages. Was it your mammy, do you think, my dear?’

‘I …’ Alys began yet again, staring at her, and suddenly found she was weeping. There was a clatter and rattle of furniture and the other woman was seated beside her, drawing her head onto a capacious bosom, murmuring endearments which her own mother had not used because they were the wrong language, though the tone was unmistakable.

It seemed a long time later that she straightened up, wiping her nose and eyes on the sacking apron.

‘A wee bit better?’ said Mistress Buttergask.

‘Better,’ she agreed shakily. ‘I–I beg your pardon, I can’t think what-’

‘Well, it was needing to come out,’ said the other woman sagely. ‘Folk do that often, when I pass them a message. Even when it’s good news. You miss your mammy, then, lassie?’

She nodded, biting her lip.

‘They watch over us, whatever the priests say. You’ll maybe find something’s settled, by the time you’ve slept on it. Just mind what she told you.’ Mistress Buttergask glanced at the window. ‘Will you stay here for a bite supper? I doubt you’ve missed the Blackfriars’ mealtime. They’ll all be at Compline by now. I heard the wee bell.’