The Merchant's Mark

Chapter Eleven

The door of the church opened quietly when Gil lifted the latch. They stepped in, and it swung shut behind them with a boom which reverberated in what seemed like a vast, draughty space smelling of incense and pine resin. The floor was flagged; when Gil held his lantern up the vault of the aisle where they stood glowed in the dim light, but beyond the pillars the nave vanished upward into darkness, with a faint, distant hint of high scaffolding. How do the poles stay up there? wondered Gil.

‘Mon Dieu, the carving!’ exclaimed Maistre Pierre. He held his own lantern high and turned, staring up at the walls. Pillar, vault, arch and architrave, capital and springer were carved into elaborate designs in high relief which seemed to move as the light passed over them.

‘Here is a ladder,’ said Johan. Gil craned to see where he was pointing. At the top of the wall-pillar beside the door was a complex scene: the crucified Christ surrounded by many figures. There was something which might be a ladder at one side.

‘That is a Descent from the Cross,’ said the mason authoritatively from behind Gil. ‘It will not reveal where we must ascend. But I think you are right, my friend, we look at the carvings. One of these moral jewels will tell us what we need to know.’

‘How many weeks do we have?’ asked Gil, looking round. ‘There must be thousands.’

‘We start here,’ said the mason, ‘and keep looking.’

They moved slowly eastward, pausing to identify each of the carvings so far as possible. Some were obvious, versions of the familiar scenes to be found in any church; others were more enigmatic. There were angels enough to fill seven heavens, Gil thought, and Green Men to match them, but what was an elephant doing here?

‘Here is a Dance of Death,’ said Maistre Pierre, gazing upwards at an elaborately worked arch. ‘Very handsome drafting. Look how it fills the spaces.’

‘There Death takes a man with a spade,’ said Johan, pointing again. ‘Is the money perhaps buried beneath here?’

‘Sinclair said it was in the roof,’ said Gil.

Apart from their voices and footsteps, the church was quiet, but he found himself looking uneasily over his shoulder. Perhaps it was the eyes of all the Green Men, leering out of their foliage in the lantern-light, that made him feel threatened.

‘What ever does this signify?’ he asked, pausing before the Lady Altar. ‘A falling angel, bound with a rope?’

The rope, by this light, looked as if one could lift it and knot the ends.

‘I cannot say,’ said Maistre Pierre at his shoulder.

‘The pillars,’ said Johan. They turned round, to see him staring to right and left. ‘Are these the pillars? I have heard much of them.’

‘Ah, mon Dieu,’ said Maistre Pierre again. He moved forward as if drawn by a cord, and bent to the southern pillar, holding his lantern close to the ornament and muttering incoherently. ‘Dragons — and the vines — ah, the detail! This stone, it shapes like butter, it must be a dream to work!’

‘What’s that beyond the pillar?’ Gil asked. ‘Is it stairs?’

‘They go down, not up,’ said Johan.

‘Then so shall we,’ said the mason, dragging himself reluctantly away from the pillar. ‘Oh, and see, there is a sacrifice of Isaac on the capital. Now what is down here?’

The flight went down steeply, into darkness only slightly relieved by Maistre Pierre’s lantern. Gil found himself hesitating at the top of the stairs, his uneasy feeling increasing. He opened the horn window of his own lantern and held it up, looking about him, but its light went no more than a few feet.

‘You feel it too?’ said Johan beside him.

‘Come and look,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It is the drawing-loft.’

‘Loft?’ questioned Gil, setting foot on the stair. ‘Down here?’

‘How else should I call it?’

The chamber at the bottom of the stairs was at least half the size of the nave. It was much plainer, with only one or two carvings visible, and seemed to suffer from a lack of certainty about its purpose, since it boasted an altar with piscina and aumbry and also a fireplace. As Johan followed Gil off the awkward steps and into the chamber, the mason looked round from his intent scrutiny of the north wall.

‘See, it is the working drawings.’ He gestured at the curves and counter-curves scratched into the whitewashed surface. ‘That,’ he stabbed with one big forefinger, ‘is the profile for the east window tracery, I noticed it in particular. And here is the outline for that wall-pillar, the one that has the Descent on its capital.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Gil. ‘What else is there?’

‘It is many drawings, one on top of another,’ observed Johan. Maistre Pierre, his nose inches from the wall, did not reply. Gil set off round the room, finding one or two more drawings which would have been better obliterated before the church was handed over, and paused in front of the two carvings by the altar.

‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre at last. ‘I see. It is a space at the foot of the vault.’

‘What is?’ Gil came over to look.

‘This sketch here.’ The forefinger stabbed again. ‘You see, here the vault, here the wall-head, and this is the string-course — the ornamental band along the wall-head. And here, in this other drawing, we have a space behind the string-course.’

‘Do we?’ said Gil, peering at the scratches. ‘I can’t read it, Pierre.’

‘I can,’ said Johan unexpectedly, ‘but where is it? There is a lot of that string-course. It goes right round the church, does it not?’

‘Now there I might be able to help,’ said Gil. He returned to the altar. ‘See this? The arms of the founder — old Sinclair, this lord’s father — ’

‘The engrailed cross. Yes, it is everywhere up above,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘But what is that heart doing there? That is Douglas, surely?’

‘That’s right. Sir William’s first wife was a Douglas lady, I believe. Aye, it’s a heart. Ubi thesaurus- Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,’ Gil quoted, and suddenly recalled the harper saying the same thing. Could this be what McIan meant, he wondered, rather than some cryptic observation about my marriage? ‘If we can find a heart up above too, maybe the treasure will be close by. I’ve seen none so far, but perhaps in the south aisle?’

‘It is worth the try,’ said Johan after a moment.

Maistre Pierre looked back at the scratches on the wall. ‘There is no other hint,’ he admitted, ‘and this one comes from St Matthew’s evangel. If we find no heart, we must seek all about the string-course. Assuming it is all within reach of the scaffolding.’

At the top of the stairs, the darkness receded unwillingly from their lanterns. Gil stretched his ears, wondering if he had heard something move elsewhere in the building, or imagined it. Maistre Pierre held the light to the window arch, and shook his head.

‘I never saw plants like that,’ he said. ‘And yet the carving is good, as if it is a true portrait. What are they meant for, do you think?’

‘Who knows?’ Gil stared at the carved leaves flopping back around what seemed to be fat heads of grain, then looked around. A bagpiper. An inscribed quotation from — from — the book of Esdras, his memory supplied. What seemed to be the seven virtuous actions, though something was out of key about them. He moved on. On the other side of the virtues, appropriately enough, the seven deadly sins, and in the window -

‘Ah!’

‘You found?’ asked Johan, and joined him. ‘Ach, ja, is a heart.’

‘An angel holding a heart,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘So the treasure must be aloft, on angel wings.’ He shone his lantern on the other corner of the window-embrasure. ‘And here we have Moses, if I do not mistake, with the tablets of the commandments, and on his head the horns of enlightenment. It fits. It fits well.’

‘Is here?’ Johan looked doubtfully at the vault of the aisle above them.

‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘in the roof of the nave, and next to the rib above this one.’

‘And how do we get to it?’ asked Gil. ‘Fly into the rafters, like St Christina the Astonishing?’

‘It is a vault, not rafters. Maister Robison spoke of a ladder.’

They found the ladder at the west end of the building, propped against the lowest levels of a tower of scaffolding which rose up into the dark. Maistre Pierre looked at it with disapproval, and clicked his tongue.

‘I took him for a better craftsman,’ he said. ‘One does not leave the ladder like this to tempt the idle.’

‘This rises up here, at this end,’ said Johan. ‘We wish to be yonder.’ He waved his free hand eastward.

The mason gestured into the roof, just as airily. ‘The church is in use. They do not wish to fill it with Eastland logs. This tower section is only to go up by — you can see from outside that further along, the poles come in at the clerestory and cross above the nave. There are no poles at floor level, so the clerks may make processions when they need to.’ He was testing all the bindings on the structure within his reach as he spoke. ‘Now, we climb up. I go first, you follow, my friend, and then Gilbert. Follow me closely,’ he said, very seriously, ‘and watch where I put my feet and my hands. And leave the lantern,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘if you cannot climb with it.’

He set off up the ladder with surprising nimbleness for such a big man, with one hand on the rungs, carrying the lantern in the other. Johan put one foot on the bottom rung, paused, put the lantern on the ground, and followed him cautiously. Gil gave him time to get to the first of the creaking wattle platforms, eight feet off the ground, then stripped off his short gown and dropped it by the foot of the ladder, thinking its folds would impede his movements, laid his sword on top of it and climbed up in his turn, taking his own lantern. As he found his footing on the platform at the top, Maistre Pierre spoke from the other side of the building.

‘Three more to go. The next ladder is over here.’

Gil could see it, lit by the mason’s lantern, rising into the dark.

‘I — ’ said Johan.

‘What is it?’ asked Gil. The man was rigid beside him, his arms held away from his sides. ‘Is it too high?’

‘N-no,’ said Johan with difficulty. ‘I–I — ’

‘You must go back,’ said Maistre Pierre, striding across the hurdles. The whole structure bounced resonantly. Gil braced his feet and swayed with the movement, but Johan cried out and dropped to his knees. ‘I have seen this before. It is the balance,’ the mason said to Gil, and bent over the kneeling Hospitaller. ‘Some cannot take it. Like seasickness. Come, man. The ladder is here. Not far.’

Johan was persuaded on to the ladder, where he clung for a moment.

‘I am sorry!’ he gasped, and scrambled downwards. At the foot he stepped on to the flagstones and stood with one hand to his head, clinging to the ladder with the other.

‘You must stay here,’ said Maistre Pierre, bending to look at him over the edge of the wicker panels, ‘sword in hand, to defend us from attack. Can you do that, brother?’

‘I can,’ said Johan, releasing his grip of the ladder. He nodded, gasping a little, the lantern-light gleaming on the pale skin of his brow. ‘I can.’

Maistre Pierre watched him for a moment, then nodded and returned to the next ladder, Gil following him.

‘Maybe you go first, Gilbert,’ he said. ‘If I fall on you, we neither of us survive.’

They climbed up, and up again, and then again. It was strange climbing into the dark. The small light from the lanterns illumined the wooden rungs and glimmered faintly on the scaffolding poles and their rope lashings, but beyond them it struggled to touch anything in the void. Maistre Pierre came off the fourth ladder, looked about him, and set off with a confident, careful step along the hurdles. Gil followed him trustfully, walking in the small patch of wickerwork visible around his lantern, aware that if he missed his step there was a long flight in the dark to the same judgement which Rob now faced.

At this level they were above the heads of the tall clerestory window-spaces, with the cool night air around them. The vaulted roof bent over them, patterned with stars, and then beyond the next vault-rib with roses.

‘Be handsome when they paint this,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Blue, I expect, and the stars gold. Two — three — four. It should be here. And it is. Well thought, Gilbert.’ He leaned sideways, clinging to the nearest upright, and Gil realized there was a significant gap between the hurdle they stood on and the head of the wall. ‘Peste! Gil, can you shine your lantern here?’

The string-course was at hip-height, carved with flowers in roundels and crenellated with little upstanding tabs on its upper edge. Gil, studying this briefly, decided it was typical of the whole building that the two patterns, the roundels and the tabs, were differently spaced. He raised his lantern and held it near the curve of the roof and there, next to the vault-rib, behind the tabs of the string-course, was a dark shadow.

‘You have the longer reach, I think,’ said the mason. ‘Set down your lantern, and feel what may be there. I will brace you.’

This is too easy, thought Gil. Not that it was easy, precisely, but — after the hunt, the long pursuit of the dead man’s identity, the attacks on their party, this seemed too simple. His wrist clamped in the mason’s firm grasp, he leaned out to reach over the stringcourse with the other hand, and found a hollow space, almost a small aumbry. There were shapes in it, hard objects.

‘Boxes,’ he said. ‘Two — no, three. Two are of wood. Kists, really.’

‘How big? Can you lift them, or is it too awkward? We need the one with the St Johns money in it.’

‘I can lift them, but it will need two hands. Can you hold me?’

‘I wish we had a rope.’

‘There’s a rope here,’ reported Gil, feeling further round the embrasure. He drew out the coil of hemp, and passed it back to his companion. ‘I suppose whoever placed these here will have used it, and left it against their removal. Pierre, there is something embossed on the metal box. A shield, with — with — ’ He shut his eyes, all sensation in his fingertips. ‘Ah! An animal of some sort, with a bordure flory counterflory.’

‘The arms of Scotland.’

‘I think it must be. So we can leave that one. I’ve no wish to make an enemy of Sinclair.’

‘Can you reach the others? Come back, and I will rope you.’

With several passes of the hank, Maistre Pierre contrived a harness of sorts, and belayed the long tails round the nearest upright.

‘You had better not slip,’ he said, ‘unless your codpiece is well padded. Alys will not thank me for gelding you before you are wedded.’

‘I’ve no intention of slipping.’ Gil checked the loops of rope himself, hitched at the two strands to which his friend referred, and braced himself to lean out over the dark again.

He took the smaller of the two wooden kists first. It was not large, perhaps the length of his forearm, half as wide, a little less deep, but it was not an easy matter to turn it within the dark space so that he could grasp the rope handles at each end, lever it over the stringcourse, tilt it so that it would clear the carved tabs of stone. Maistre Pierre, tensely watchful at his back, heaved on the knotted ropes of his makeshift harness and drew him upright, and he set the kist on the wattle between them.

‘It is very dirty,’ he said. ‘This has been hidden, here or elsewhere, for a long while.’

‘I do not think it is what we seek,’ agreed the mason. ‘Does it open? Should we make sure?’

There was no lock, only a length of tape tied in a dusty loop to keep the lid fastened. Gil slipped it free and raised the lid, and brought his lantern closer.

‘Paper?’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘One parchment.’ Gil lifted it and unrolled the beginning one-handed. ‘Sweet St Giles! It seems to be a map, but of what? I have never seen such a coast.’ The mason took the other end, and they spread the parchment out. ‘Ah — there is the northern sea, and I suppose Norway, and Iceland. But what lies beyond?’

‘Grunland,’ said Maistre Pierre. He peered closer. ‘And Estotilanda.’

‘Where? I’ve heard those names somewhere.’ Gil relinquished his grasp of the curling skin and turned to the open kist. ‘What have we here? A broken sword, very old, and a little box with — ’ He held it to the light, the contents rustling under his gentle touch. ‘Look, Pierre, it is some kind of grain, long dried. I never saw grain with leaves like that. Could this be some of the plants on the window below us?’

‘It could,’ said Maistre Pierre cautiously. He let the map roll up, and stared into the box. ‘It could, but I never saw grain like that either. Wherever is it from?’

‘I think I could guess,’ said Gil, in growing amazement. ‘But that would mean the stories about Earl Henry are true.’ He reached out to the kist again. ‘And if those are true, what else may be? What might be in that bag — ’

Maistre Pierre put his hand over Gil’s.

‘No.’ They looked at each other in the lantern-light. ‘No, Gil. Not for us, I think.’

Gil dropped his gaze to the bag in the bottom of the kist. Worn embroidery gleamed dully in the light, rich silk brocade visible between the stitched saints. A bag for a relic. A very rich bag, for a very important relic, the relic guarded by the Sinclairs with their canting arms, the cross engrailed which appeared here and there all over this rich little building. Whatever the brocade bag held would, he knew, be wrapped in more silk and brocade, to keep it from harm, but its shape, smaller than one would have expected, was just discernible under the padding. There would be a slip of parchment in the wrappings, with an inscription saying what was inside them. In what language, he wondered. What alphabet, even. As for the thing inside — to hold it — to touch it — even to look at it -

‘No,’ he said after a moment, and crossed himself. ‘We are not worthy. But how I wish I was. And to be this close to it …’

‘Et moi, je le veux aussi,’ said the mason fervently.

And how, Gil wondered, packing the little box of exotic grain and the rolled parchment back into the kist, how does Pierre know what might be under that brocade? He knows a surprising amount about what we are doing.

The other wooden box was the right one. Once the first one, with its strange cargo, had been restored to its place in the shadows and the other lay on the wattle at their feet, Maistre Pierre hauled Gil in, and he stood letting the darkness settle round him while the mason bent to study their booty.

‘Three sacks of coin inside it,’ he reported. ‘And there are seals, the eight-point cross. This is what we seek.’

‘Robison mentioned two with the St Johns seal,’ Gil recalled, ‘and one with the old King’s.’

‘I suppose Sinclair restowed them,’ speculated his friend. ‘The King’s purse will be in the other kist, the metal one, by now.’

‘How do we get them down?’ Gil asked. ‘Three sacks will make quite a burden, and we can’t take the box down between us. I wish I hadn’t taken off my gown. It would have made a sling of sorts.’

‘And the rope is not — ’ Maistre Pierre put up a hand. ‘Listen.’ They both listened, and heard the scaffolding creak. Wattle squeaked. ‘Merde, alors,’ said the mason. ‘It must be Johan. He has tried again. He will assuredly turn to stone on the next level. Gilbert, it is best if I go down and stop him, before he gets any further. Can you stay here alone?’

He snatched up his lantern and set off without waiting for an answer, leaving Gil isolated in his own little patch of light. Moving cautiously, he disengaged himself from the coils of rope, and wound it into a hank. Another Green Man grinned at him without humour from one of the knots of vegetation on the vault-rib. Outside the moon had risen, and there were great pale bars across the flagstones far below. The wicker sang and crackled as Maistre Pierre made his way to the flight of ladders, the poles creaked and hummed as he descended first one ladder, then the next. Gil heard his voice, speaking reassuringly, and recognized the change in the movement of the scaffolding as he stepped on to the third ladder, climbed down it, set off across the lowest level of hurdles.

‘Johan?’ floated up through the darkness. ‘Johan, wo sind Sie?’ Johan’s voice answered. And then, sharply, Maistre Pierre: ‘You?’ and louder, in real alarm, ‘Gil, have a care!’

Gil tensed, staring as if he could see through the wattle he stood on. The scaffolding spoke shrilly of hasty movement, in which there were grunting noises, a gasp, an exclamation which rang in the curve of the roof. Something fell, someone shouted. There was what seemed a very long pause, with more gasping movement in it.

‘Pierre?’ he called.

There was another pause, then the pine logs creaked again. Ears stretched, he tried to locate the sound. There was someone on one of the ladders, but was it more than one person? More than one ladder?

‘Pierre?’ he called again. The creaking stopped, and there was a breathless silence. Not Pierre, then. But if not Pierre, who?

‘Guard yourself!’ said a hoarse voice from the dark depths. ‘He goes free.’

That was Johan, whom they had left at the foot of the ladder. Pine sang again. What had Sinclair said? That fool Preston never chained him, and he struck down the guard and ran. Could this be the axeman? Quietly, Gil opened the horn panel of his lantern, licked his fingers, pinched out the flame of the candle. Darkness covered him, in which the scaffolding began to creak again.

‘Cunningham?’

Below, on the floor of the church, there was shuffling movement across the bars of moonlight. Voices rose outside. The door boomed. Up here in the darkness among the echoes, with the night air stirring, there was the crack and rustle of wickerwork, and as the echoes died a whispered question.

‘Where are you, Cunningham?’

Turning his head, he tried to place the sound. His pursuer must be westward, where the ladders were, but the whisper rattled in the vault, and came at him from all sides. The wicker hurdles flexed like a corach he had sailed in. Did the fellow have a weapon? he wondered, and was assailed by the sharp recollection of his sword, on top of his short gown, conveniently placed by the foot of the first ladder. And what had come to Pierre? And Johan?

Johan’s voice rose on the cue from the barred floor of the church.

‘Maister Cunningham! Are you safe? Are you hurt?’

The echoes shot his name round the roof. I dare not answer, he thought, not with an enemy hunting me in the dark. He already knows where I was when I put the light out.

‘Cunningham?’ The whisper again, surrounding him. ‘I ken you’re no hurt. No yet.’

There was a patch of light growing in the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw a silvery glow, as if someone to the east of his perch had another lantern. A hand appeared, and beckoned in silence. He lifted the coil of rope and moved cautiously towards it, leaving the box with its three sacks where they were. There was just enough light to make out the walkway in front of him, not enough to see who held the lantern, but he was sure the whisperer on the ladders was more of a threat.

There was a ladder here. He descended, cautiously, pausing to listen. Down here away from the vault, level with the huge empty windows, it was easier to determine direction, and the creaking was coming closer.

‘Where are you hiding?’ Again the whisper, from the same place as the creaking. ‘Where have you hid the gold?’

The light beside him still did not illuminate its bearer. The hand pointed to the window-space. He moved out, into moonlight, and found himself stepping from one pole to another among a forest of flying buttresses and pinnacles, the thin soles of his riding-boots gripping the bark, more poles at head height offering support. The mesh of scaffolding, mounted on the roof of the south aisle of the chapel, was like the biggest tree he had ever climbed. Below him strange cavities and hollows showed blackly where the vaults of the south aisle roof had not yet been covered. He had swung on tree-branches out over the Linn pool whose depths had never been drawn. These dark cavities did not alarm him.

‘Cunningham!’

It was the axeman, right enough. He appeared further along the tangled structure, stepping like Gil out through an empty window-space, white face and hands floating in the pale light until he clambered out and his black-clad body was outlined against a lit pinnacle. Gil ducked behind a buttress. The man appeared to have a weapon; he thought it was an axe rather than a sword. Neither would be good news, since he only had his dagger.

‘Come here, you scabby clerk. I swear by the Magdalen’s tits I’ll pay you for the trouble you’ve cost me. I’ve an axe here for you, ’ull trim your pen no bother. It’s no Maidie, God rest her soul, but it’s sharp enough for the job. Come and face me. Where have you put the gold?’

Gil looked about, gauging his chances of tackling his opponent. Not good. Then the lantern-lit hand appeared at another window — how had its owner got there so silently? — and beckoned. Gil moved, lightly and rapidly, and pulled himself in on to the scaffolding again. The wickerwork creaked as he stepped on it, and his pursuer shouted.

‘I hear you! I’ll get you!’

The axe glinted as its bearer scrambled for the next window, swung himself in on to the walkway, rushed forward. Gil slipped back out into the moonlight, working his way between the pinnacles, while the axeman blundered along the wicker platform just inside the wall.

Gil had no very clear plan, just a conviction that if he kept the other man moving, sooner or later he would make a mistake. Always supposing I don’t make one first, he thought, sliding between two buttresses. Inadvertently he looked down.

For a long moment he clung, staring down past the stonework to the silvered grass at the wall’s foot, while his grip tightened on the stonework and the depths seemed to reach for him. He could feel himself beginning to topple outwards.

There was movement at the edge of his vision. With difficulty, he dragged his gaze from the dazzling depths of air and turned it towards the dark windows. Round a pinnacle a moonlit hand appeared, stretched towards him, just out of his grasp. He fixed his eyes on it, took one hand from the gritty stone, stretched out for the bleached fingers. The hand drew back, and he leaned inwards, still straining towards it. Then suddenly his weight was all inside the wallhead, inside the web of wooden poles. He was safe.

He gasped his thanks and clung to the pole at shoulder height, his eyes closed in relief. By the time he opened them the other had gone, but the man with the axe was still snarling blasphemously at the far end of the building.

Holding tightly now to the scaffolding, Gil worked his way westward, reasoning that if he climbed in at the furthest window he would be close to the ladder and might get down before the axeman realized where he was. And then what? he wondered. Where is Pierre? He must have been hurt, if he hasn’t joined the hunt.

‘I see ye, traitor! Gallows-cheat!’

The hurdles within the gaping windows crackled and sang as the man trampled along them, his wild movements making the whole wooden structure buck, inside the church and out, like a corach in a high wind. Gil froze by the window, clinging tightly to the pine-logs, fearing he would be thrown off into the half-completed vault of the aisle below him. The man arrived at the aperture hefting the axe, braced himself and swung at Gil’s hand grasping the pole beside his head.

It seemed to happen very slowly. The axe swung, shedding moonlight into the dark air. Gil released his grip, but could not seem to move his hand. The man’s expression changed, little by little, from triumphant fury to amazement and then to horror. Gil’s eye was drawn down, and he saw, very clearly, a pale hand thrusting the axeman’s back foot backwards. Back over the edge of the wicker hurdle. Off into the fathomless dark of the church. The leg followed it, the other foot slid, the body contorted trying to save itself. A hand dragged at the edge of the hurdle, but the other still held the axe, and only succeeded in cutting splinters from the wickerwork. The man fell, vanishing downward like the roped angel.

There was an unpleasant sound from below, and a clatter as the axe hit the flagstones, followed by some shouting, and running feet.

A face appeared in the space the axeman had vacated. The lantern-light, or moonlight, robbed the man’s eyes of colour, but Gil could see that one eye was pale and one was dark.

‘Thanks, friend,’ he said shakily. ‘I owe you for that.’

The other grinned at Gil, shook his head. A pale hand came up in a salute, then the face turned away. Gil leaned against the nearest piece of stonework and closed his eyes. For there is not so much joy in holding high office, he thought, as there is grief in falling from a high place. Who wrote that? Something about the Order of Knighthood, was it?

After a while he pulled himself together. There was no sign of the man with the lantern. Moving carefully, he made his way back to the eastward ladder, which was now moonlit, and groped his way along the topmost level to his own lantern and the sacks of coin. He lit the lantern with the flint and tinder in his purse, and laboriously but with more confidence contrived to shift the sacks one at a time, along the scaffolding, down the ladders. He became aware of movements below him, of urgent voices, but ignored them until, as he reached the foot of the second ladder, helpful hands took the sack he was carrying.

‘Are you hurt?’ asked Balthasar of Liège. ‘Come this way, man. That was well done — I’d not go higher than this for a great fortune.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m no hurt. You ken that.’ He took in what the musician had said. ‘What do you mean? You were up there — ’

‘No me.’ Balthasar set the sack down at the top of the lowest ladder. ‘Can you get down alone?’

He could. The flagstones felt hard under his feet, and he stood for a moment, wondering why he felt so surprised to be there.

‘Pierre,’ he said.

‘Out here. It was touch-and-go for a bit, but he’s safe now.’

‘You must go back to Glasgow,’ said Maistre Pierre, enthroned against the pillows of Maister Robison’s best bed.

‘I don’t like to leave you.’ Gil eyed his friend. There was a bandage on his head, and a thicker one on his arm, which reposed on another pillow.

‘He’ll be looked after,’ said Sir Oliver robustly from Robison’s great chair. ‘No need to worry about him, Cunningham.’

‘Mistress Robison will tend me. I agree, I am not fit to ride until maybe tomorrow, but we must take home what we have learned, and also Alys will be concerned.’

Gil nodded, preserving his own counsel about when Maistre Pierre would be fit to travel. He was very much aware that it was two days since he had seen Alys, the longest period they had spent apart since their betrothal, but he also had to admit to himself that he did not look forward to telling her that her father was injured.

He eased his right foot from under the dog. After being reunited with his master in the midnight, and checking him carefully to make sure no harm had come to him, Socrates had gone off with the St Matthew’s terrier, who had apparently spent the rest of the night teaching him to rat. The innkeeper had taken a groat off the bill in his gratitude for the pile of corpses left neatly in the yard, and Socrates had slept all morning.

‘So Johan got you outside,’ he said. ‘Did you fall off the scaffolding?’

‘No, I praise God and Our Lady.’ Maistre Pierre crossed himself left-handed. ‘I must, I suppose, have fallen near the edge of the hurdle, and Johan climbed up and dragged me to the ladder. It was an act of great courage,’ he said. The Hospitaller, silent in the corner of the room, shrugged. ‘It was, my friend. Then I managed the ladder somehow, and we went outside, and …’ His voice trailed away.

‘They came staggering out the kirk,’ said Sinclair, ‘knee to knee and hand over back, either holding the other up, and him trailing blood. A sight to fright the weans.’

‘I thought him spent,’ said Johan. ‘It was a close thing. If the lutenist had not those spare strings with him, he had bled to death by the cut of the axe.’ He rubbed his own upper arm, and grimaced.

‘And the lutenist was out in the kirkyard that whole time,’ said Gil.

Johan nodded. ‘Indeed. He held the strings, and tightened them while the bleeding stopped. It was only when we heard a fall, and Maister Robison went to look and came out to say the man with the axe was lying there dead, that he left us and went to find you. We have tried to call you before that,’ Johan said earnestly, ‘but I suppose you could not answer.’

‘The axeman must have been on the scaffolding when we went up,’ said Gil, and shivered. ‘Waiting in the dark, till we found the treasure for him.’ And who else was up there? he wondered. Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede. Who helped me escape, who pushed the axeman out into the shadows, if it wasn’t the lutenist?

‘A merry thought,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘And what now?’ said Gil.

‘You go back to Glasgow, as you’re bid,’ said Sinclair. ‘From what you tell me, you’ve business there. You know who killed Nelkin Fletcher, you can report that to Robert Blacader’s man, and we’ll get the rest of your books repacked and loaded on a mule for you.’

‘And the coin?’

‘I take that,’ said Johan. ‘It goes back to the Preceptory, since it is St Johns money.’

‘Does it?’ said Gil. Johan and Maistre Pierre exchanged glances.

‘I think it does,’ said Maistre Pierre. Johan nodded. ‘Now it is known to be in the hands of the Preceptory, it becomes an internal matter.’

‘Not entirely,’ said Gil. They both looked at him, and Sinclair leaned back in the chair as if awaiting entertainment. I must be careful here, he thought. ‘I assume,’ he said delicately, ‘the money was a loan from the Preceptory to the late King.’ He looked at Johan, who gave him back that enigmatic stare. ‘Clearly, since it is still packed and sealed as it left the Preceptory, the King never had the chance to spend it. Indeed, I wonder if he ever got his hands on it, if it didn’t rather stay with — someone, who stood between the King and the Preceptory.’ Still that enigmatic stare. He looked at Sinclair: still waiting to be entertained. ‘That person I think gave it to you, sir, to keep safe. He’s been a good man up to now to have owing you a favour, which I suppose is reason enough to oblige him.’ Sinclair’s eyebrows went up at this, but he gave no other sign. ‘And since he gave you a portion of the late King’s hoard along with it, I suppose it was around the time of the troubles of ’88. Perhaps he had that direct from the King, perhaps he came by it otherwise. That hardly matters.’

Sinclair still gave no sign, but Johan nodded. Assenting to what?

‘The Preceptory wants its loan back,’ Gil said baldly. ‘It’s now over four years since it was lent out, so this is no wonder. I suppose, sir, the person who gave it you for safe keeping must have asked you for the Preceptory money he had lodged with you, and you decided to move the King’s hoard as well, all at once. That makes sense — if the hiding place was compromised, it would be better cleared.’ Sinclair raised his eyebrows again. ‘Maybe in two instalments,’ Gil speculated, ‘since we saw more up there than Nelkin Fletcher brought away with him. Did you shift the other load, sir?’

‘Did I?’

Gil waited a moment, but the handsome face was still studiously blank. He went on.

‘The second instalment, which we’re dealing with, got as far as Riddoch’s yard, and should have gone onward hidden in a barrel as part of Riddoch’s rent, but the two carrying it were attacked. Some of the load was already in the barrel, the attackers threw Nelkin’s head in after it to hide his death, filled it with brine, put it on a cart — though why for Glasgow?’ he wondered. ‘These same people, I take it, have been pursuing us all across this side of Scotland, hoping we had either found the rest of the load of coin or would lead them to it. They evidently had some idea of how much there should be. Do you agree, sir?’

‘How should I agree or no?’ Sinclair had relaxed slightly, and his tone was slightly friendlier than the words. ‘Are you going to spread these ideas about Scotland?’

‘Not widely, sir. And you can be sure,’ said Gil, meeting his eye again, ‘that we took nothing else from the place we found.’

‘Oh, I ken that,’ said Sinclair. ‘You got down safe, after all.’

‘What puzzles me,’ said Gil, ‘is who the axeman and his friends were working for.’

‘Someone who knew the money was being moved,’ said Maistre Pierre after a moment. Both the other men looked sharply at him.

‘Aye,’ said Gil. ‘Of those, I think we can leave out the Preceptory itself, and you, sir.’

Sinclair bowed ironically. ‘Narrows it down very little,’ he observed.

‘Precisely,’ said Gil. ‘I’m still involved in Nelkin Fletcher’s death. It seems more than likely it was the axeman killed him, and I’ve no doubt the Provost of Glasgow would be happy enough to bring it in as murder by a stranger when I take home what I’ve found so far, but Augie Morison’s been suspected and the only way to clear him completely is to get a name for the man behind the axeman. With proof.’

‘Proof might be harder to come by,’ said Sinclair absently. ‘And we never got a name for the fellow himself, either. I wish my fool of a steward hadny let him get away.’

‘So do I,’ said Gil. ‘Was it foolishness, or something else, sir?’

Sinclair’s eyebrows went up at this. ‘That’s for me to deal wi, d’you not think? And I will, you may believe it.’

‘Oh, I do,’ Gil agreed, meeting the other’s eye. ‘Anyway, I think the axeman’s name may be Carson. And he has certainly learned the grief of falling from a high place.’

Sinclair’s mouth quirked as he too recognized the quotation. He considered Gil for a moment, but did not comment.

‘I wonder where the two who ran went to?’ said Johan.