The King's Corrodian

Chapter Three

‘A library, mem?’ said Jennet warily. ‘All full o books and that?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Alys, and thought longingly of the library she had known in Paris, with Mère Isabelle peering at her latest acquisition for the convent and demonstrating its delights to her pupil. A complete copy, she would say with satisfaction. The entire work.

‘But is it safe?’ Jennet persisted. ‘They study a’ kind o things, don’t they no? Witchcraft and heresy and the like. And ackelmy, and the stars.’

‘Alchemy,’ Alys corrected. ‘They study such things, true, but in order to prove they are wrong. The books can do no harm — they can hardly leap off the shelves and attack you.’

‘Aye, for they’re chained,’ said Jennet.

‘You may stay by the door,’ Alys said, but was not surprised when her maidservant followed her into the library, sidling after her with an apprehensive gaze for the shelves.

It was not a large chamber, but it contained three big cases of books. There must be — she reckoned quickly — near 200 volumes, far more than Bishop Brown had said. A great collection. A row of reading-desks stood by the windows, with a big, broad-shouldered Dominican just raising his head to stare at her in surprise; beyond him was another man, getting to his feet from a writing-desk like Gil’s, shock and indignation written all across his narrow face.

‘You canny come in here!’ he hissed. ‘Shoo! This is no place for women! Go away, go away, shoo!’ He flapped his hands at them ineffectually. The man at the reading-desk bent his head to his book, clearly not wishing to be involved.

Alys curtsied, aware of Jennet bobbing behind her.

‘I should like to consult some of the books, Father,’ she said respectfully.

‘Consult? Women canny consult books — they canny read! It’s naught for you! And if it’s your fortune you want,’ he added suspiciously, ‘you can go elsewhere. I’m no having sic practices in my library.’

Alys met his eye, smiling reassuringly. He was a thin awkward man, with heavy dark eyebrows which twitched in agitation; his hands were trembling. He is afraid of us, she thought with incredulity.

‘Mère Isabelle deplored such practices too,’ she agreed. ‘How can paper and print know what God has in store for us? I’ll do your books no harm, sir, I’ll treat them wi care. See, my hands are clean.’

‘Go away!’ he said, ignoring her words. ‘Women canny consult books! They’re all in Latin, they’re no use to you.’

‘Mère Isabelle?’ said the other Dominican. He closed his book, marking his place with a tattered crow’s feather, and looked more closely at Alys. ‘In Paris? Do you speak of Isabelle de Marivaux? Is she still alive?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ said Alys, and curtsied again. ‘I had a letter from her quite lately, written before Yule. I was her pupil for two years.’

‘When you reply, gie her Henry White’s greetings,’ he said, and she bowed her head in assent. ‘Alexander, we could let the lady consult as she wishes. If Mother Isabelle de Marivaux taught her, she’s fit to enter the library.’

‘No — no, I’ll no have it-’ The librarian wrung his hands, almost dancing in despair. ‘It’s no right, it’s irregular. The rules canny permit it, I canny allow it!’

‘Away and ask Father Prior,’ suggested his colleague. ‘I’ll mind your books while you’re gone.’

‘And leave you — and leave you — ’ Brother Alexander looked from White to Alys and back.

‘She has her woman wi her,’ White pointed out. ‘Away and speak wi Father Prior.’

The librarian crossed himself, then darted past Jennet and out of the door, which thudded heavily behind him. Jennet sighed in relief, and let go of her beads.

‘Now,’ said White as the echoes died. He was older than Alys had at first thought, though his hair was still thick and dark round the tonsure; he had a penetrating stare, now bent on her. ‘What did you wish to consult, daughter?’

‘Albert the Great,’ she said promptly. White’s eyebrows rose.

‘Indeed? His works are here. Which volume would you want, d’you suppose?’

‘His writings on alchemy.’

White considered her carefully. ‘Now, why would you want those?’ he said after a moment. ‘He never found how to make gold, you ken that.’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘But I wish to learn more o the subject, and I knew you’d have his writings here, seeing he’s-’

‘One o ours,’ he agreed. ‘He’s here. But I’ll ask again: why would you want to read his alchemy?’

‘I hope to learn more of his method,’ Alys said, with what she hoped was an earnest smile. ‘He was very clear on method.’

‘Hmm,’ said White. ‘Method you’ll find, but no summoning o spirits or the like.’

‘A daemonibus doctuture,’ she quoted, and continued in the Latin, ‘It is taught by demons, it teaches about demons and it leads to demons. He was very clear about that too.’

White frowned slightly, and after a moment turned to the furthest shelf. Scanning it briefly, he located a row of six disparate volumes carefully marked A MAGN on their fore-edges, drew out one and leafed through it.

‘His Compositum de Compositis,’ he said, handing her the volume. ‘It’s a beginning. You read Latin as well as quoting it, a course?’

‘A course.’ She carried the book to the nearest reading-desk, handling it lovingly. He watched with approval as she checked the spine and front of the binding, then opened the heavy boards and inspected the first leaf and the last where the list of the contents had been inscribed, keeping the place he had found for her with one hand.

‘Does any here make a special study of alchemy?’ she asked casually. He paused, on his way back to his own desk.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s no an interest o this house. A comparison of Brother Albert,’ he nodded at the volume before her, ‘and Brother Thomas on the Epistles of Paul, a new commentary on the Sentences, a wider study o witchcraft, but no alchemy.’

‘Using one shining light of the Church to illumine another. Which is your own interest, sir?’ she asked. Always a good way to engage a scholar, Mère Isabelle had said.

‘The witchcraft is mine.’

‘What do you find?’ she pursued, trying to ignore Jennet crossing herself at the words.

‘I find,’ he said, watching her face, ‘I find that there’s no sic thing. It’s no a popular stance, I’ll admit, but I’ve concluded that the curses, the spells, the summoning o their Black Master, are all illusions.’

‘But-?’ she prompted, answering his intonation rather than any word.

‘But those who practise such things are generally far gone in heresy and wickedness.’

‘That makes sense,’ she said. ‘My husband would say the same.’

‘You could try the Greyfriars,’ he added, as if she had passed some test. ‘I’ve heard they dabble wi sic things alchemical there.’

‘Whereas here you dabble wi witchcraft,’ she said.

‘Exactement,’ he said. There was approval in his tone, but he returned to his book without further comment. She drew her tablets from her purse and applied herself to Albert the Great, aware that Jennet had withdrawn to a position out of the draught from the door and had started on her spinning.

The book was a good manuscript copy of Albert’s work, in a clear hand, with few of the abbreviations which could make reading difficult if they were idiosyncratic. The first section of the work she sought dealt with the forming of metals from sulphur and mercury, something she had always had doubts about, though she had never been able to procure enough of either to try them in the fire. She worked her way steadily through the three humid principles of sulphur without striking anything of use, but as she turned the page the door opened with a crash.

It was not the librarian who entered, but a much younger friar, breathing hard. He paused on the threshold, staring in surprise at Alys, then bowed briefly to White, as outside, the convent’s small bell began to ring slowly.

‘They’ve found,’ he began, and crossed himself. ‘They’ve found Andrew. In the, in the, in the ruins, Faither. They’re lifting him now.’

‘Ah.’ White crossed himself too, bent his head and muttered a prayer. Everyone said Amen, and he closed his book on the crow’s feather again, and said to Alys, ‘I should be present, if you’ll forgive me. He was one o my pupils.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ she assured him. ‘We’ll meddle wi nothing.’

Jennet, who would have clearly preferred to go and watch the excitement, cracked open the shutter of the window next the door, and peered out as the two friars left.

‘They’re a’ running across the yard,’ she reported, ‘going out-by. Is that where the bit was that burned down?’

‘Likely.’ Alys crossed herself, murmuring a prayer for the young man whose life had ended in flames and terror, drew a deep breath and addressed herself to Albertus again. She had just caught sight of something useful — ah, there it was. Indeed, yes. De putrefactione, was the heading: Of Putrefaction. Mors amp; vita ab igne fiunt … Death and life come from fire. Extrinsic fire, approaching a body — the similar element which exists in the body … As she had found with other alchemical writings, the passage did not really explain what she wanted to understand, but it provided a new way to think about it. She groped for her tablets, drew the little stylus from the case and began to copy what she read, speculation whirling in her mind.

‘They’re a’ coming back the way,’ Jennet reported, an unknown length of time later. ‘Oh, Our Lady save us, they’re bringing the corp. You can see it, mem, it’s covered ower wi a cloth but you can see where it’s a’ curled up. Where will they take him, I wonder? They’ll no can wash him, his skin would all peel off wi the water like peeling an orange.’

‘You ken a great deal about it,’ Alys said, distracted. Processional singing floated through the open shutter, deep-voiced and sincere, one of the penitential psalms. The singing was not as good as at Glasgow, where they had the resource of the College to draw on for voices, but the grief was unmistakable.

‘My sister Bess helped the layers-out, after that row o houses got burned down in Ru’glen last year. She tellt me all about it. Gied her quite a turn, it did, when the skin cam off the first one she took a cloth to.’ Jennet craned to follow the procession. ‘Aye, they’re taking him direct to the kirk. He can lie there till they coffin him, I’ve no doubt. Be an orra-shaped coffin, so it will,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘They never soften, see, if they’re burned.’

The community vanished into the church. It was probably Sext by now, Alys considered; Gil would be at a loose end if they had taken the body with them and he had nobody to question. She half hoped he might come and find her, but he did not appear, and she applied herself to copying Albert’s solid Latin prose.

She had just finished when the librarian returned, taking up his post at the writing-desk with a silent, resentful glare. Brother Henry followed him, and then several young men, very subdued, who all drew copies of the same text from the shelf by the door and looked about them for places, except one who drew out his eating-knife and began to clean the ash from under his nails. Brother Alexander, seeing this, drew a sharp breath and hurried across to him.

‘Put that away! We’ll ha no knives in here! There’s no need o sharp knives in a library, it’s no the place for it,’ he ordered, his voice trembling with outrage. The young man looked at him, then down at his knife.

‘Forgive me, brother,’ he said in Latin, and put the blade away. ‘I forgot.’

‘And you’ll need to go now,’ said the librarian, turning triumphantly to Alys. ‘There’s no room. The desks are all wanted.’

‘Very well, sir,’ she said, and curtsied again. ‘I hope I may come back tomorrow?’

‘We’ll see about that,’ he retorted, came round the desk and almost snatched the volume she had been working from. ‘What? Where did you get this? How did you find it? You’ll no get-’

‘No summoning of demons,’ she said. ‘I ken that, sir. It was on yon shelf, third one down, at the end of the row of Albert’s works.’

Henry White looked up and nodded briefly as she turned to leave. Jennet came forward from the window with relief, and exclaimed before the door had closed behind them, ‘What’s at greetin-face? He’s like a man that’s swallowed a lemon.’

‘Maybe he has troubles we don’t know of,’ said Alys. She drew her plaid up against the rain, and turned towards the slype.

‘Where are we going now, mem?’ Jennet asked. ‘Somewhere there’s more folk to talk to, maybe?’

It took longer to get away from Blackfriars than she had expected. The friars’ dinner was served, and that for the guest hall was carried in at the same time; after it she felt it necessary to dose everyone in the household with her cough elixir, and to send a flask of the stuff into the convent with her compliments and a placatory message to the Infirmarian. Dinner had been a silent affair; the men were all morose after their morning’s work, the reek of smoke and — yes, burned flesh — which hung over them discouraged conversation, and Gil was disinclined to discuss matters, though he pointed out that it was Father Prior’s decision as to whether he should investigate the death of the young man in the ashes; this would have to wait for a Chapter meeting.

‘What’s in that stuff, mem?’ Tam asked as they made their way out of the gate. ‘Right tasty, it is, I’d never ha taen it for medicine.’

‘That would be the honey,’ Alys said, choosing her path with care over the muddy ruts in the roadway. ‘Then there’s pepper, and sage tea, and thyme. They were out of celery seed, so I had to make the sage tea extra strong.’

‘Pepper,’ Jennet said thoughtfully. ‘Ye’d think it would bite, then, but it doesny. It’s warmer than a comforter at your neck, so it is.’

‘Where are we going, anyway?’ Tam stared about him in the drizzle, and craned to see over the fence into the dyer’s yard they were passing. ‘No the best part o the town, this, is it? A’ the stinking trades by the brig-end, a’ these wee houses; it’s no like Rottenrow.’

‘This way,’ said Alys with confidence, turning onto the path by the Ditch. She had made certain to get directions from the servant who carried out the empty crocks after dinner.

‘Is it that woman that saw the Deil rise up from the man’s house?’ said Jennet, brightening. ‘We’ll can sit in her kitchen and hear it all from her servants, eh, Tam?’

‘If she’ll see me,’ said Alys.

Mistress Buttergask was very happy to see Alys. She was a well-padded woman in a gown of good dark-green wool, hastily assumed over a striped kirtle to welcome her guest, with a very up-to-date black woollen headdress framing a round, sweet face. Her eyes were pale blue and rather vague, though Alys suspected they saw more than appeared.

Having rattled at the pin by the door of the neat stone-built house she had been directed to, Alys found the three of them warmly greeted and drawn in out of the rain, to the accompaniment of a stream of unceasing, welcoming chatter. Tam and Jennet were despatched to the kitchen along with two young maids and orders to bring in spiced wine and cakes, and herself led into a cosy, untidy solar where a small woolly dog had been yapping endlessly since she stepped into the house.

‘Be quiet, Roileag!’ said her hostess without effect. ‘That’s right kind in you, my dearie, to call on me in this weather, I was near deid wi boredom mysel and those two lassies driving me daft wi their prattle. Come in, come in, hae a seat. Gie me that plaidie, we’ll just shake the rain off it,’ she cracked it like a whip and droplets spat and fizzled on the brazier in the centre of the chamber. ‘Hang it here, it’ll be dry by the time you leave, you’ll get the good o’t when you go out again. Be quiet, Roileag! My!’ She sat down opposite Alys and studied her with interest while her dog jumped onto her knee and growled faintly. ‘And who did you say you were?’

‘I’m Alys Mason, from Glasgow, at your service, mistress. We’re lodging at the Blackfriars the now, while my man looks into this matter o the fellow,’ she paused, choosing her words, ‘carried off by the Deil.’

‘Oh!’ Mistress Buttergask breathed, the blue eyes going round with excitement. ‘Oh, I can tell you-’

‘I hoped you might,’ Alys said, with a complicit smile. ‘Prior Boyd has tellt us what you saw, a course, but I thought I’d as soon hear it from you.’

‘And your man’s looking into it, you say?’ Mistress Buttergask tilted her head, frowning. ‘Why would he need to do that? It’s a’ seen to, is it no? Though a course they couldny ha a quest on him, seeing there was no corp to examine. My — my friend said they’d no notion what to do in the matter on the Council.’

‘Holy Kirk wants an inquiry,’ Alys said. Their eyes met, and both nodded. What Holy Kirk wanted, Holy Kirk got. ‘So I hoped you’d tell me at first hand what you saw, for I’m sure it was more than Prior Boyd ever said.’

‘D’you ken?’ Mistress Buttergask clasped her plump hands together. The dog Roileag lurched on her knee and complained, with a sound between a growl and a whine. ‘I was certain that would happen. He never wanted to hear what I saw, you could tell that, only acause I hear things, he thinks I canny tell what I see wi my own een. It was only when my — my friend bore out everything I tellt them that they listened at all.’

‘He saw it too?’ Alys said. The other woman relaxed slightly at her tone, and nodded. Alys wondered if her neighbours were inclined to be sanctimonious about her ‘friend’.

A tapping at the door heralded one of the young maids with a tray. It held two horn cups, which gave off a welcome spicy smell, and a platter of little cakes. Once she had departed, they had toasted one another, and Roileag had been fed one of the cakes, which she took under the chair to consume, Alys said, ‘Are you close to the Blackfriars here? I’m all turned about,’ she admitted, ‘wi the way the path winds to come here. I’m not sure what way the house looks.’

‘Aye, it’s like a morris-maze,’ agreed Mistress Buttergask. ‘But that’s the Blackfriars at the foot o my garden.’ She nodded at the window of the little chamber, shuttered against the January weather. ‘It’s the outside wall o the very house, mistress.’

Alys rose and went to the window. It was deeply recessed; a new-looking crucifix had been hung on the panelling at one side of the recess, a print of the Annunciation on the other. She peered through the small greenish panes of the upper portion. The garden was long and narrow, the typical shape of an urban toft, and dismal in the rain, the kale shining dark green; at the far end was a fence, and beyond that, presumably on the other side of a path of some sort, was a well-built stone wall. Slabs of dark-red dressed stone, in many shapes and sizes, well fitted together in the same style as the front of Pollock’s house, rose to a roof of what must be local slate. The wall extended right and left into the drizzle; further to her left the bulky shape of the Blackfriars’ church loomed darkly, to the right the roof ended, showing where the row of small houses stopped, but the wall itself continued. She looked intently at the nearest section again, and made out the blocked window, on a level with three other little windows carefully shuttered against the weather. It was indeed Pollock’s house which faced her, and those must be the windows of the other small lodgings.

‘Tell me about it,’ she said, returning to her stool.

Mistress Buttergask set down her beaker and clasped her hands again before her round bosom. ‘Oh, mistress!’ This was clearly a well-rehearsed tale.

‘Oh, it still makes me that wambly to think on it!’ She paused, considering her audience. ‘I rose in the middle of the night, see, and when I’d done wi the jordan and eaten a bite out the dole-cupboard, I went to the window to see how the night was progressing.’

‘The window looks the same way as this one?’

‘It’s the chamber above this.’ On the word, they heard footsteps overhead, and chattering voices. Roileag yapped, and Mistress Buttergask smiled tolerantly. ‘Och, those lassies, they’ll be showing your servants where I looked out and what it was I saw.’

‘Did you open the shutter?’ Alys asked, one ear cocked for the responses above her.

‘I did.’ Mistress Buttergask nodded. ‘I did that, for it was a mite stuffy in the chamber, for all it was so cold. Bitter cold it was, and a clear night, wi a hard frost. So I looked out,’ she went on, regaining her narrative, ‘and the moon was shining on the rooftops, and sparkling on the frost, right bonnie it was, and not a thing moving. And I was just thinking what a sight it was, wi the moon and the stars like jewels, when I seen this great black shape rise up fro the roof there.’

She waited expectantly. Alys obliged by saying, ‘A shape? What sort of a shape?’

‘Oh, my!’ The other woman set one hand at the base of her throat and looked away, down at the floor beside her. ‘What a sight it was! All hunched ower, ye ken, what wi carrying the man, but there was flames flitterin about it, and a pair o great red een. I crossed mysel, you can be sure,’ she suited the action to the words, ‘and woke Rattray, and got him out his bed to look. And he seen it and all, and bore me out when I tellt Father Prior,’ she added, ‘so he’s no need to doubt me or shorten the tale. I was feart for my mortal soul, I can tell you, mistress, and Rattray’s and all.’

‘He hadny shortened it by much,’ said Alys, studying her. There could be no doubt it had been a genuine account of something the woman had seen or thought she saw; she showed signs of distress now at the recollection. Roileag had jumped possessively onto her lap again, and now curled up firmly; her mistress stroked her fur, as if for comfort. ‘Will I call your servants for more of the wine?’ Alys asked. ‘Or should you eat one o the wee cakes, to settle your humours?’

Mistress Buttergask drew a hand down her face and straightened up.

‘No, no, mistress, I’m well. Aye, maybe a cake.’ She accepted one when Alys handed her the platter, and nibbled it cautiously. ‘It just cam ower me all o a turn, there, how we’d escaped sic a fate as that poor man. No matter what an ill-doer he was, it’s no a thing I’d wish on anyone, to be carried off to the Bad Place and tormented by fiends the rest o yir life.’

Alys, appreciating the charity which underlay the statement, made no comment on its theology.

After a few moments her hostess said reflectively, ‘And it’s just come to me: none o my voices had a word to say that night.’

‘Would they usually?’ Alys asked, as being the most non-committal comment she could think of.

‘Oh, aye.’ Mistress Buttergask gave her a wary look. ‘It’s no — it’s no like I hear sounds, you ken. It’s like a voice right inside my head, telling me things, and sometimes I can picture them and all. There’s my grandam now telling me you’re a kind lassie, and well intentioned, but you’ve your own reasons for talking to me.’

Taken aback, aware she was blushing, Alys could only say honestly, ‘Aye. That’s true, mistress.’

‘Och,’ said the other woman, ‘you’re asking it for your man. Your man’s work must aye come first, lassie, I see that.’

No wonder Prior Boyd had not wished to hear this woman, Alys thought briefly. Trying to recover her poise, she said, ‘How long did — what you saw stay there? How long were you watching it?’

‘Oh!’ Clearly nobody had asked this before. Mistress Buttergask stared at Alys for a long moment, then raised her eyes to the window, her fingers moving as if she was telling her beads.

‘The length of three Aves, maybe,’ she said eventually. ‘Or four. Proper ones, no the ones you say when you’ve left the dinner too near the fire.’

Not long then, thought Alys. Well under the quarter of an hour, but longer than I had assumed.

‘And then what did it do?’

‘Why, he rose up, and flew away northward. No fast, mind, I never saw his wings flapping or nothing, he just kind a floated off the way a buzzard does.’

‘Could you still see the flames and the red eyes?’

‘No, well, I never saw the eyes, would I, if he was flying away. And the wee flames had stopped and all, now you ask me.’ She nodded. ‘Likely they blew out when he flew off.’

‘You’ve been blessed,’ said Alys, hoping to offer some comfort. ‘There’s not many of us allowed such a vision. It’s a dreadful warning.’

‘That’s what Rattray said,’ the woman admitted. ‘Likewise that he wouldny ha believed me telling it if he hadny seen it himsel, but men are like that, are they no?’

Alys smiled in agreement, though she had never yet tested Gil in that way.

‘Is he in Perth the now?’ she asked.

‘No.’ Mistress Buttergask deflated slightly, then recovered and said with faint defiance, ‘He’s out o the town the now, a week or more. At his other house. Wi his wife.’ She crossed herself. ‘She’s doted, poor soul. She’s older than he is, a good few year. She canny be left alone now, the servants has to wash her and that. No a happy thing.’

Their eyes met. Alys put a hand out and touched the other woman’s wrist.

‘That’s hard,’ she said. ‘For everyone. Is he good to you?’

Mistress Buttergask turned her own hand to grasp Alys’s a moment, then gestured around her.

‘He feued this house to me,’ she said simply. ‘It’s my own — I could sell it the morn.’

‘That’s generous.’ With a need to change the subject, Alys suggested, ‘Might I see the window where you looked out?’

The chamber above was low, with a slanting roof where panels had been fixed to the rafters of the house, and furnished with a box bed, a settle and two carved kists, the bed-curtains and window-hangings in red dornick with bright flowers embroidered on it. There was a man’s doublet hanging on a nail near the bed, a pair of well-trodden pantofles half under the bed, a good furred gown thrown on one of the kists. Roileag scurried about the place, her claws rattling on the polished boards, snuffling in corners and under the bed. Alys crossed to the window and peered out, past the crucifix and the woodcut of the Visitation which protected this view.

The window was set into the eaves, with a low sill, and offered a clear view of the roof opposite, of the red tiles with the blackened portion near the ridge, of the absence of any way into the convent or the house from this side. Alys could see nothing which offered more information, though she pressed her brow against the little panes to look up and down the line of the priory wall.

Mistress Buttergask was chattering on in her ear, pointing out the direction in which the Devil had flown, the way he had risen up from the house roof, where the moon had been.

‘And your friend saw it all as well,’ Alys said, drawing back into the chamber.

‘Aye, indeed he did. Well, he was here at my side,’ the woman qualified, ‘just in time to see — to see him towering ower the wee house like a great hawk, and then to watch him flee away. I’d to tell him about the flames and the red een and that. But he saw it all, so he did.’ She paused a moment, and sighed. ‘It’s been right strange, these past two weeks, what wi Faither Prior and then my lord Bishop wanting to hear the tale, and a man of law to write down all I said, and then the neighbours wanting to hear it and all.’

‘None o your neighbours saw anything?’ Alys asked. Mistress Buttergask shook her head.

‘No, none o them. It was just a chance that I was up at that time and keeked out. I suppose they didny happen to do likewise. Come away down to the warm, lassie, it’s chilly up here.’

The mood in the town was no better than it had been when they rode through yesterday — could it only be yesterday? Surly groups of men stood on street corners in the drizzle, gaggles of women had their heads together in doorways. The word witchcraft floated on the wind. Alys picked her way along the darkening Skinnergate and past St John’s Kirk, hoping the two servants could obey her instructions and keep silent at her side long enough to get through the burgh. She was aware of curious glances, as a stranger in town, and also of Jennet peering at the stalls and booths they passed, nudging Tam to point out a leatherworker’s display on the Skinnergate, but they reached the South Port without drawing undue attention to themselves, emerged through it and took the short path to the Franciscan monastery.

Its buildings were less ostentatious than the Blackfriars’ foundation, with a low plain church surrounded by timber-framed structures, a hall and dorter and Chapter House, and a paling fence round about the policies. Alys had noticed it as they rode into Perth and had thought then how characteristic it was of the Franciscans with their vow of poverty.

‘What, more friars?’ said Jennet in discontent. ‘Could we no get questioning someone wi a friendly kitchen, mem, same as the last one? Those lassies were right good company, weren’t they no, Tam?’ Tam grunted agreement, and she went on, ‘Tellt us all what their mistress seen fro the window, and how the Bishop was there telling her no to pass the word on, and that wee dog o his stole a good leather glove and chewed it all to ribbons, and then picked a fight wi her doggie and all. Our dog would never do a thing like that.’

‘No, indeed.’ Alys led the way to the west door of the church. ‘I may need you, if I can get a private word wi one o the friars, so don’t stray.’

‘As if I would!’ said Jennet, offended.

To Alys’s relief, she had gauged the afternoon correctly; at this time of year it began to grow dark well before the clergy began to think of their evening devotions. The church was busy, with lay people kneeling before one saint or another, several Franciscans moving among them in their grey gowns with the knotted rope girdle. I hope they wear enough under those, Alys thought irrelevantly. They could die of the cold. The Rule was written for Italy, not Scotland. She looked about her, and caught the eye of one of the friars, who made his way towards them.

‘Can I help you, daughter?’ he asked.

‘Faither,’ she said, and curtsied, aware of Jennet crossing herself, Tam muttering something like Amen. ‘I hope so. I read something in a book lately, and I hoped someone here might explain it to me.’

‘A book,’ he said in disapproving tones. ‘You can read?’

‘My mistress is aye reading,’ said Jennet proudly. ‘Our maister says she’s a great scholar.’

The friar shook his head. ‘Better to leave sic things to the men, daughter, and mind your household,’ said the friar, his disapproval deepening.

‘Nevertheless,’ Alys persisted, ‘now I have this matter in my head, I’d as soon have it expounded.’

‘What’s this matter, then? What book were you reading in?’

‘Albert the Great. He mentions the secret fire.’ She watched the changes in his expression, keeping her smile as innocent as she could manage.

After a moment he said, ‘Hah! I’ve no time to deal wi sic things the now. Bide here, lassie, and I’ll see who I can send out to you.’

Seating herself on the stone bench at the wall-foot, she drew her beads from her purse and prepared to wait, the two servants beside her. In fact, it was no more than a quarter of an hour before another Franciscan came into the church by the friars’ door, looked about, and made his way hastily towards them through the gathering shadows. He was a plain, bony man with a shaggy mop of greying brown hair and light, piercing eyes. She rose at his approach, and curtsied.

‘The secret fire?’ he said, without preamble. ‘What do you know of it?’

‘Only what Albert the Great writes,’ she said. ‘And a little I learned when I was still in Paris. I hoped you could tell me more.’

‘Paris.’ He peered at her, but shook his head. ‘Never been there. What do you need to know? Why are you asking about sic a thing?’

She sat down, and patted the stone bench. He settled himself at a slight distance, still gazing intently at her through the gloom, his hands tucked into his sleeves.

‘Albertus wrote,’ she said, calling up the Latin phrases, ‘Fire, coming into contact with a body, sets into motion-’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said dismissively, ‘that’s elementary. In all senses, that’s elementary. But the secret fire-’

‘Is it different?’ she asked. ‘Does it operate by different laws, or the same ones?’

He grunted. ‘Why are you asking this? What do you want it to do? What do you need it to do?’ He looked beyond her at Jennet and Tam, and back again. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

‘That’s Mistress Alys Mason,’ said Jennet stoutly, ‘fro Glasgow. She’s marriet on the Archbishop’s quaestor, that’s looking into the man that’s disappeared at the Blackfriars.’

‘Only he hasny,’ said Tam. ‘Disappeared, I mean.’

The friar stiffened, and looked hard at Alys.

‘How much did you find?’ he demanded after a moment.

‘One foot, still in its shoe,’ said Alys. ‘Bones of hands or the other foot. Ashes.’ She considered him. ‘You have heard o this afore, then.’

‘Aye. I wondered, when word first reached us.’ He turned his head, gazing into the chancel, or somewhere more distant than that. ‘I read o’t years ago — what was it in? Where was I?’ He almost bounced round to face her again. ‘Tell me about it. When was this found? There’s been no word. We only hear the town’s gossip the now, a course, wi them almost besieged in their house, but I’d ha thought-’

‘Only last night,’ said Alys soothingly, ‘and then there was the fire, and the young man dead.’

‘Aye, they’ve no to seek for their troubles. Tell me,’ he ordered, crossing himself briefly at the mention of the death.

She described what they had found in Pollock’s house, as clearly as she might. He listened intently, almost sucking in her words, nodding from time to time, and sat back when she had finished, staring into the distance again.

‘Aye,’ he said at length. ‘I see what — and you wondered if the secret fire might … No. No, I think it wouldny work. See, it has to be sealed tight.’ His hands emerged from the sleeves of his habit, for the first time, and described fragile glassware. ‘The marriage chamber, you ken?’ She nodded. ‘Sealed wi wax, or clay, so the red man and the white woman may be-’ He bit off his words, suddenly realising his surroundings. ‘Any road, this wasny the same situation.’

‘The chamber was sealed,’ she said, in disappointment.

‘Aye, but you canny seal a chamber the way you can an alembic. The windows, the door, the chimney, the air aye gets in.’

‘All were blocked,’ she said.

‘Were they now? So the air was reduced, maybe,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Like burning charcoal? But where did the flame come from? It behaved,’ she paused, to choose her words. ‘It never behaved like ordinary flame. To consume the man, and the chair beneath him, but never damage the rest of the chamber, surely that was no ordinary fire. That was why I wondered …’

‘Aye.’ He nodded in understanding. ‘A good thought, but no our answer.’ Somewhere above them a bell began to ting. ‘I need to go. Where are you — no, you’re lodged at the Blackfriars, I suppose. I canny come there the now. Can you come back here the morn’s morn? After Sext, maybe?’

‘Who should I ask for, sir?’ She began gathering her skirts together to rise.

‘Why, me, a course. Oh!’ He shook his head, half irritated. ‘Michael Scott. Ask for Michael Scott. No that I’m any relation, you ken.’

‘D’you think he is?’ Jennet speculated as they picked their way out of the church, past the people drifting in to hear Vespers. ‘Any relation, I mean?’

‘Of the wizard?’ Alys said. ‘Surely no. That Michael Scott was hundreds of years ago.’

‘No, surely,’ said Tam. ‘I seen his grave one time, at Melrose, and they showed me where he split a great hill in three, just by the town.’

‘It takes more than wizardry to split a hill open,’ Alys said.

‘That’s what Canon Cunningham said,’ Tam admitted, ‘but the hill’s there, just the same, all in three bits.’