The Nicholas Feast

Chapter Eight

The wolfhound, having made certain that its idol was safe, thrust its long muzzle under Gil’s arm and rolled its eyes at him.

‘Was anything taken?’ Gil asked. ‘Or anything damaged?’

‘Not that we can see.’ Michael grinned. ‘You would hardly tell it’s been done, except for Lowrie’s idea.’

‘And what was that?’ asked Lady Egidia.

‘Hairs,’ said Michael. ‘We knotted one of each of our hairs together in threes, Tod — er, Lowrie and Ninian and me, and put them among our papers where they would fall out if someone else meddled, but they wouldny blow away by accident. That was after William’s chamber was searched,’ he explained. ‘And they were still there after Vespers but no after dinner.’

‘What might they have been looking for?’ asked Alys. She was still wearing the pinched look of distress, but she sounded perfectly composed. Michael glanced at her and went red, to his own obvious embarrassment.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’ve no secrets. None like that, any wise.’

‘Surely this is some kind of student joke,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘I can mind a tale or two from your time at the college, Gil.’

‘Well, but this was serious,’ said Michael. ‘I mean, there wasn’t any foolery with it. They’d not left any humorous drawings, or stuffed a shirt to look like a lassie at the window, or — or anything.’ He threw another glance at Alys, and went red again.

‘Hm,’ said Lady Egidia.

‘Has anyone else been searched?’ Gil asked.

Michael shook his head. ‘We asked, but nobody’s saying. Oh, and I was to give you this. It’s from Auld — from Maister Kennedy. He said it was in his cassock in Maister Coventry’s chamber and could that be what they sought when his room was wrecked.’

He held out a small red book. Gil took it and turned the pages clumsily, one-handed.

‘It’s William’s writing,’ added Michael helpfully, ‘but it doesny make sense.’

‘Code again?’ said Alys, moving to look over Gil’s shoulder.

‘Not code,’ said Gil. ‘Initials, parts of words, a kind of private shorthand. It’s the boy’s red book with all his notes in it. Some of this will be harder to decipher. I mind now, it was on top of the pulpit in the Bachelors’ Schule where you were all dressing for the play. I asked Maister Kennedy if he knew about it and he took it for safe keeping. Michael, tell him I don’t know if it’s what they sought, but it will certainly be useful. Anything of William’s is likely to tell us something.’

‘Oh, and Jaikie at the yett bade me say he had a word for you,’ added Michael. ‘He said it was about something you spoke about yesternight.’

Feet sounded again in the outer room, the softer scuffle of one of the maidservants in her worn shoes. Jennet bobbed in the doorway.

‘If you please, mem,’ she said to Alys, ‘there’s water hot and set in your own chamber, and a comb and towels and all.’

‘Thank you, Jennet,’ said Alys, and turned to Gil’s mother, the pinched look submerged in the procedures of a civil welcome. ‘Would it please you to wash, madame?’

‘That sounds good,’ said Egidia Muirhead, rising. ‘You will come and see me while I’m in Glasgow, godson. I have messages from your home for you, and a great cake with plums in it.’

Michael agreed with enthusiasm that he would certainly wait on her, and bowed as she followed Alys to the stair.

‘Tell me what had been searched,’ said Gil. The boy’s expression changed.

‘Everything we’d marked, maister,’ he said warily. ‘Ninian’s carrel, my carrel, Lowrie’s. All our kists. My books had been moved about, for they wereny in the order I keep them, but the other two wereny sure.’

‘Papers?’ Gil asked.

‘I think so. They’d been careful,’ he said, ‘you couldny have tellt, except for Lowrie’s idea, and we got tired of knotting hairs after a bit, so if they went through all our papers one by one we’d no way of knowing.’

‘And what could they have been looking for?’ Gil asked. ‘We think William was involved in more than simply some scaffery round the college.’ Michael eyed him from under the thatch of mousy hair. ‘He may have been selling information to one faction or another. Could one of you have had something he might find valuable? A letter from home, perhaps, or a paper of some sort?’

‘William’s dead, maister,’ Michael pointed out. ‘He canny be searching the college. He’s in the bell-tower next door with two friars praying for him. They’d notice if he got up to go and search our chamber.’

‘I know,’ agreed Gil, ‘but someone is looking for something, possibly for more than one thing,’ he added, recalling a comment the mason had made, ‘which must be connected with William’s murder. A book like this, or some papers. Can you think of nothing one of you might have had that would fit that description?’

‘We’ve seven books between us,’ Michael said, ‘and papers in plenty. But nothing’s been taken, that we can see, maister.’

‘Could William have hidden something in your room,’ asked Gil desperately, ‘for someone else to collect later?’

‘That’s just — ’ began Michael, before civility stopped him. ‘No, for we were all through our papers before Vespers, and we’d have seen his writing then. You couldny mistake it.’

Gil eased the wolfhound’s head on his knee. It hardly stirred.

‘In this notebook,’ he said, ‘which I suspect is a list of secrets which William was using as a basis for his extortion, there is a page headed with a heart, which might be held to stand for the Douglases, and the letter M beside it.’ Michael, descendant of the Douglas who carried the heart of Robert Bruce to the Holy Land, said nothing, staring at him. ‘Here it says A scripsit Eng. Could the Great Douglas — the Earl of Angus — be writing letters to England? And this line has an M and another heart, and the little sign they use in pedigrees to signify marriage, and L Kilmaurs. I assume you aren’t marrying into the Cunninghams,’ he said lightly, but Michael’s expression did not change. ‘So this probably refers to the rumour which is going round my family too, that Angus is hoping to marry his daughter Marion to my kinsman Lord Kilmaurs.’

‘It’s old news now,’ Michael said.

‘William has drawn a line through it,’ Gil agreed, ‘which probably means he has either sold the information, or found it unsaleable.’

‘Is there more?’ asked Michael after a moment.

‘A little,’ said Gil, ‘but I need more time to interpret it. Can you cast any light on what should be here?’

There was another pause. Then, the ready colour rising again, Michael burst out with, ‘Maister, you willny tell my faither?’

‘What is there to tell him?’ Gil asked. ‘That you talked to a fellow student? Where did the word come from? Does it come from home?’

Michael nodded, biting his lip. ‘You ken the way the old man gossips. Forbye, I think he hopes I’ve a future as one of the King’s officers. Chancellor, or treasurer, or some such. So he writes all this news to me, how Angus is writing to England, and negotiating with Kilmaurs for his daughter’s marriage, and trying to get the Douglas earldom revived. I don’t know where he gets the half of it himself.’

‘And William found one of these letters?’

‘Aye.’ Michael scowled. ‘I kept them shut away, but last year when we were mentoring him and his fellows, he poked about in my carrel, and sold what he found to the Montgomery, who likely passed it all to Argyll. Then when the King set siege to Angus at Tantallon, you remember? William told me what he’d done and threatened to tell my father I’d sold it on if I didny tell him more. I tried not to,’ he said desperately, ‘but he’d some way of knowing when I got word from home, and he’d come and make more threats.’

‘Are all the letters still there? Was that why your chamber was searched?’

‘No, no, I looked for those the first thing after my books and my notes. They’ve no been touched.’

‘Why did you not tell your friends about this?’ Gil asked. ‘I’d have thought the three of you together were equal to anything.’

‘That’s what they said last night,’ Michael admitted, shamefaced. ‘But the more he demanded, the harder it got to tell anyone. I feel a right fool now.’

‘You’re not alone in giving in to his demands,’ Gil said, leafing one-handed through the little book. ‘There are a lot of entries here I can make little of. Near every page has a different heading. What a busy young man William must have been.’

‘Aye, he was,’ said Michael grimly, then added with a sudden show of maturity, ‘but I’m free of his threats now, and he’s deid, and never shriven of his misdeeds.’ He grinned mirthlessly. ‘It’s like that poem my father’s aye on about. How does it go, about riches? Winning of them is covatice, and Keeping of them is curious.’

‘Quhat blessitnes has than richess?’ Gil capped the lines, aware of a quite ridiculous level of pleasure in the boy’s implicit compliment. ‘Indeed. So William has found, I suppose.’

‘I’m no one for poetry,’ Michael confided, ‘no like Lowrie, or my kinsman Gavin at St Andrews, but whiles ye can see the point of it.’ He looked at the sky. ‘Maister, I must be gone. I’ve missed two lectures now and it’ll soon be dinner time.’

‘Very well,’ said Gil. ‘Give Maister Kennedy my message. And will you also tell Nicholas Gray I need a word with him? I hope to be at the college later today and I can speak to him then.’

‘Yes, Bernard was the Montgomery’s chaplain,’ said Egidia Muirhead. She sat back as Alys began to clear the small table at which they had eaten. ‘That was quite delicious, Mistress Mason. For, I suppose, ten years. Certainly from the time Hugh and his brother were still in tutelage. Bernard’s mother used to boast about how well Montgomery trusted him, until the scandal.’

‘Scandal?’ said Gil.

She looked affectionately at him. ‘You sound like your uncle David. Yes, a scandal. I forget the details, which I suppose is an object lesson. One thinks at the time one will never live it down, but the world forgets. Let me see — was it land or a leman?’

‘This was in Ayrshire?’ Gil prompted. She nodded, accepting a glass of Alys’s cowslip wine. ‘How did you hear of it?’

‘Gil, it was fifteen years ago, the year your sisters had the measles. I heard about it when I went back to Stirling after Elsbeth died. Or am I thinking of that business of Meg Douglas’s? Your good health, Mistress Mason.’

‘It must have been difficult for Father Bernard, being chaplain to Lord Montgomery,’ said Alys, when they had drunk a toast each. Gil and his mother both looked at her. ‘These great houses are usually full of dogs,’ she pointed out.

‘That would be no trouble for Bernard,’ said Lady Egidia blankly. ‘He used to hunt with the household, his mother told me. I recall her boasting about some occasion when he saved Montgomery himself from being slashed by a boar. They’d be hip deep in dogs.’

‘Curious,’ said Gil, looking down at the wolfhound, which was lying at his feet watching him with an alert eye. ‘This fellow tried to attack him as soon as he saw him, and his explanation was that dogs often dislike him because of his robes.’

‘What a strange thing to say,’ said his mother. ‘Of course, he wouldny hunt in his habit. Does the beast attack other friars?’

‘He’s a very well-mannered dog,’ said Alys, before Gil could speak. ‘Whoever schooled him has done well by him.’

‘He had no objection to the Dominicans at prayer beside William’s bier.’ Gil looked down at the animal again, and it raised its head hopefully. ‘Later,’ he said, and it sighed and put its nose on its paws.

‘Bernard always was inclined to say what seemed right at the moment,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘I should make little of it, Gil. Now, are you coming up the hill with me?’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I must go back to the college and speak to the young man’s friends.’

‘You should be staying quiet,’ said Alys, ‘with that compress on your wrist again.’

‘My fingers are less painful.’ Gil tried to move them, and stopped. ‘I have until noon tomorrow to find out who killed William Irvine, or Hugh Montgomery will take the law into his own hands. I should have been out questioning half the college this morning.’

‘Then I shall see you at supper tonight,’ said his mother.

‘It depends,’ he said cautiously. ‘If Maister Mason returns from seeing to his men he will help me, and things may go faster, but I may be late home.’

‘Very well, dear. I’ll wait up for you.’ Lady Cunningham rose, and turned to Alys. Gil thrust his feet into the pair of the mason’s slip-slop shoes Alys had procured for him and rose likewise as his mother continued, ‘Mistress Mason, I must thank you again for your hospitality, and for your charity in taking in my son. And now I must trespass on your time no longer. Is my groom still in your kitchen?’

‘He is,’ said Alys, ‘and your horse is easily fetched, but will you not stay longer? I am sure my father would like to talk to you. He only went out because his journeyman sent to ask his advice.’

‘I am expected in Rottenrow.’ Lady Cunningham smiled sweetly at Alys and shook out her muddy skirts. ‘I am quite sure we’ll meet again, my dear. Your father and my son appear to be good friends.’

‘Mother,’ began Gil in exasperation, but Alys returned the smile with equal sweetness and bent her knee in a formal curtsy.

‘I’m sure we will,’ she agreed. ‘I look forward to it.’

Gil stared rather grimly at Lady Cunningham and her groom vanishing round the curve of the High Street.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said. Alys put a hand on his arm.

‘Don’t say anything you’ll regret,’ she counselled. He looked down at her with a reluctant smile, and she drew him back through the pend into the courtyard of her father’s house.

‘She’s being very difficult,’ he said. ‘And I haven’t time to coax her round now.’

‘Does coaxing her round work?’ Alys asked, watching the wolfhound which was stalking a bee.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘She makes up her own mind. My sister Dorothea’s the same.’

‘That’s your oldest sister? The one who is a nun?’ He nodded, and flinched. ‘Gil, does your head still ache?’

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘I need to look at that list of names your father got out of the flower-pot. I need to speak to people at the college. I hope you can get to the kitchen-girls, and there’s William’s notebook and William’s coded writing to decipher. I can’t think what to do first. And more important than all of these, more important to me than the future of the college, I want my mother to like our marriage.’

‘Come into the house,’ said Alys. ‘We can do nothing about courting your mother’s good opinion at this moment, but the other matters can be dealt with. I haven’t had time to tell you yet — Annis brought the two college servants by our kitchen this morning, and I got a word with them.’

‘Alys!’ He stared down at her. ‘What did they have to say?’

She pulled a face. ‘Not girls I would have in my household. Good enough workers, I’ve no doubt, but silly. I wouldn’t leave them in charge of a bowl of milk. So it took me a while to get them to the point. Is it always like that, questioning witnesses?’

‘It can be,’ he agreed. ‘Did they recall what you were asking them about?’

‘Eventually It was difficult, for I had to speak to them out here where Mistress Irvine wouldn’t hear, and they were alarmed by being taken aside by Annis’s dame. Eventually I had to resort to flattery.’

‘I’ve always found it a useful weapon.’

She smiled quickly, and nodded. ‘It worked in this case. In the end, all it came down to was — I hope I have the names right — that they heard Nick Gray say that William was in the limehouse, poor boy, and that Robert Montgomery also heard it and — so they said — laughed a vengeful laugh.’

‘A vengeful laugh,’ he repeated.

She nodded again. ‘They seem addicted to ballads. I took it to be the perception of hindsight.’

‘And a vengeful laugh laughed he.’ Gil scuffed thoughtfully at the cobbles with the toe of his borrowed slipper. ‘So they felt Robert disliked William.’

‘I asked them that, and they said nobody liked William. What a dreadful thing, to be disliked by everybody.’

‘He had one admirer among his fellows,’ said Gil, ‘and Robert his kinsman tolerated him, but I should say he was one who liked himself well enough for nobody else’s opinion to matter.’ He sighed. ‘Well, we can set that aside now. I had hoped it would be of more value.’

‘I have also — ’ She tugged at his arm. ‘Come into the house and I’ll see the dog and the baby fed. I have also begun work on the coded notes.’

‘When did you find the time?’ he marvelled. ‘And …?’

‘I have discovered the correct setting of the cipher disc, and deciphered the superscription.’

‘The superscription? You mean it is a letter?’ Gil followed her up the stair to the door, the dog at his heels.

‘To his kinsman, Lord Montgomery.’ Alys paused to look back at him. ‘Why would he write to his kinsman in code?’

‘Ah,’ said Gil. ‘That fits with something Michael said. William sold some information to the Montgomery last year — obviously he was still collecting for him. What else does it say?’

‘That I have yet to find out.’

‘It could,’ said Gil slowly, ‘this letter, be what they were searching for when I was attacked. I’m reasonably sure those were Montgomery’s men, possibly even the man himself, in which case I’m lucky to be alive. And they didn’t find what they wanted, since they returned what they took. Alys, we need to know what it says.’

‘Well, I got no further — Annis arrived with the two girls — but now I have the disc set it should take little time. Shall I go on with that, or do you want to look at the list out of the flower-pot, or the notebook?’

When Alys returned to the mason’s panelled, comfortable closet, carrying a little beaker and a jug of something which gave off a herbal-scented steam, Gil had the pages of Maister Coventry’s neat writing spread out on the desk.

‘I think we must deal with this first,’ he said. ‘From this I can decide who to question next, and then you can decipher the coded letter. If you have the time,’ he added, raising his head to look at her.

‘The dinner is in hand. What does this tell us?’

Gil bent to the orderly sheets again.

‘He said they asked where each was after the play,’ he recalled, ‘and who was with them. If we can put them all into groups who confirm one another’s lists, we should be able to eliminate most of them.’

‘We may need a slate,’ said Alys. ‘Or several. Drink this.’

‘What is it?’ he said suspiciously.

‘Mostly willow-bark tea. It should help your head.’

‘My head is — ’ he began, but she held the beaker out insistently. ‘Oh, very well.’ He tossed back the dose and made a face. ‘I’ve tasted worse. You’ll never make an apothecary if your potions are palatable.’

‘I won’t bother putting honey in it next time. Now what must we do with this list?’ She bent over one of the pages. ‘Maister William Anderson, crossed Outer Close and Inner Close, stood in kitchen-yard, with Maister John Scoular, Maister Robert Kerr, Maister James Murray, saw many students in the close.’ She looked thoughtfully from one sheet to another. ‘Your friends have done half the work in the way it is set out. I will fetch a slate, or perhaps two, and we can divide up the groups as you said.’

‘You will have to write,’ he said ruefully, looking at his damaged hand.

‘Yes, and you may soak that in this hot water. I put mallow in it, and violet leaves.’

‘I don’t need anything for it,’ he said.

That once settled, they started rearranging the list. Gil was surprised by how rapidly it went. He sat by the window, his bruised arm immersed to the elbow, and read each entry aloud to Alys. She stood at the tall desk, and copied the names down in a grid which she had drawn up on one of the large slates from the heap in the courtyard, nodding and muttering to herself as each of the blocks filled up.

‘This is strange,’ she said as they reached the final page.

‘What is?’ Gil asked, finger on the next name on the list.

‘There seem to be two different sets of people who can say they saw Father Bernard.’

‘Perhaps there were.’

‘No, but — ’ She looked from one box to another. ‘They didn’t see one another. These four were crossing the Inner Close when they saw him, and this pair stayed in the Outer Close.’

‘Perhaps he crossed one and then the other,’ said Gil, ‘on the way to or from Blackfriars.’

‘Mm,’ she said, still scowling at her grid. ‘What does he say himself?’

‘He doesn’t seem to have been asked,’ Gil reported, turning pages one-handed.

‘Well, you must ask him. Give me the other names.’

Gil read the names for her, and she wrote them carefully in the appropriate boxes, and finally sat back and shook her head.

‘No, it still doesn’t fit. People contradict themselves, and nobody remembers everybody they saw, but everyone else was seen by someone from more than one group. See, you and your friends are here, where this group saw you going to the Arthurlie building, wherever that is, and here, where this group bears them out, and here again where two of this larger group noticed you returning. But only these people here noticed Father Bernard in the Inner Close, very soon after the play, and only these two saw him crossing the Outer Close.’

Gil peered over her shoulder, holding his wet arm out to one side, and finally shook his head.

‘I can’t see it. I accept what you say,’ he said hastily as she drew breath to explain again, ‘but I can’t make it out. Maybe when my head’s clearer. What interests me is what he was doing in the Outer Close. The door to the Theology Schule is in the Inner Close.’

‘Was he giving a lecture?’

‘So Nick Kennedy said.’

‘Gil, you’re dripping everywhere. Let me dry that.’ She lifted the towel she had laid ready and mopped carefully at his wrist. ‘Is it any easier now?’

‘Maybe.’ He tried his fingers again. ‘Maybe a little.’ He put his arm over her shoulders, drawing her close, and turned back to the spidery lines on the slate. ‘What you are saying is that everyone else is vouched for, but Father Bernard, who was not interviewed, seems to be in two places at once.’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying about Father Bernard. Something is strange, and I need to look at it more closely. But, yes, everyone else is spoken for.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘It is.’ She turned to look up at him, and her flickering smile lit her eyes. ‘You could hardly have kept them till this morning, just the same. Your friends have asked the right questions.’

‘I told them what I needed to know. They have done it well.’ Gil stared down at the slate. ‘I wonder … Alys, I need to go round to the college. It is past Nones, and I must speak to so many people. Including Father Bernard, as you say.’

‘You had much better — ’ she began, and was interrupted.

‘Mistress? Are ye there, mem?’ One of the maidservants was puffing up the stairs.

‘What is it, Annis?’

‘Here’s Wattie, mistress, wondering where the maister might be, and there’s two more laddies at the door for Maister Cunningham. Where’ll I put them all?’

‘Where my father is?’ repeated Alys. ‘But he went up to the site!’

‘I’ll come down,’ said Gil, rolling down his shirt sleeve. ‘Are they in the hall?’

Alys on his heels, he descended the spiral stair, stepping with care in the borrowed shoes, and found the mason’s grizzled journeyman admiring the fit of the stones behind the tapestry hangings. Beyond him, beside the display of plate at the far end of the shadowy, beeswax-scented hall, the two Ross boys stood shoulder to shoulder in their belted gowns. They turned as he stepped off the stair, and bowed hastily, saying across Wattie’s greeting,

‘Can ye come, maister?’

‘Maister Doby sent us — ’

‘It’s important.’

‘What has happened?’ he asked, nodding to Wattie, and crossed the room to them. ‘Has Maister Doby learned something new?’

They moved closer together, and the older boy put out his hand to touch one of the silver cups gleaming on the cupboard in the dim light, the kind of thing to be seen in the hall of any well-to-do home, as if he found it reassuring.

‘It’s Jaikie,’ he said after a moment.

‘He’s deid, maister,’ said the younger one, on a rising note. ‘Like William.’

‘What, throttled?’ said Gil involuntarily.

‘It was a knife,’ said the older boy. ‘Someone’s killed him in his chamber.’

‘There’s blood,’ said his brother, and sniffled. ‘And he’s all sharny.’

‘Let me put my boots on,’ said Gil.

‘Gil,’ said Alys in a small voice. He turned to her, nearly falling over the wolfhound, and found that Catherine had come up from the kitchen and was standing behind her nurseling, staring inscrutably at Wattie from under her black linen veil. ‘Gil, Wattie says my father has not been to the site today.’

‘Perhaps he went somewhere else?’ Gil suggested, taken aback. ‘It must have been a pressing matter, to take him out of the house when he had a guest.’

‘I understand,’ said Catherine in her gruff French, ‘that there is a little difficulty with madame your mother? Perhaps our master absented himself as a matter of diplomacy.’

‘He went out because Wattie sent for him,’ said Alys in Scots.

‘Oh, aye, I sent for him,’ agreed Wattie, ‘but he never came.’

‘Could he have met someone else he wanted a word with?’ said Gil, wondering privately if Catherine was not right.

‘But who else? And for so long?’

‘My uncle?’ Gil suggested. ‘Perhaps he thought of something they needed to discuss. You know what they’re like when they get together.’

‘That’s likely,’ said Wattie.

‘Vraiment,’ agreed Catherine.

‘Perhaps,’ said Alys doubtfully, ‘but he has not been home to eat, either.’

‘Maggie would feed him if he’s talking to my uncle. Perhaps,’ Gil added hopefully, ‘he and my mother are coming to some harmony by now.’

‘Maistre le notaire a raison, ma mie,’ said Catherine.

‘Now, who would do him harm, mistress?’ said Wattie, in the tone of one regretting that he had raised the subject. ‘He’s no enemies, and the size he is nobody’d trouble him.’

‘I’m sure you are right,’ she said in unconvincing tones, and became aware of the maidservant still standing open-mouthed by the stair. ‘Annis, take these laddies down to the kitchen and find them a bite to eat while Maister Cunningham gets his boots on. Bide here, Wattie, while I think what to do.’

She drew Gil back up the spiral stair to where his boots, newly waxed, stood neatly at the corner of the best bed. As he eased the first one on, pulling awkwardly one-handed at the heel, she said in anxious French, ‘I do not like it. He never vanishes like this.’

‘He is a grown man,’ Gil observed. ‘He may not be pleased if you set up a search for him without reason.’

‘I know that.’

‘How long since he left the house?’

‘When Father Bernard did. Gil, that is what worries me.’

Gil straightened up to look at her.

‘I don’t trust Father Bernard,’ she said earnestly. ‘I think he isn’t being truthful, and he knows more about William than he says. What if he has — ’

‘I agree,’ said Gil slowly, ‘that Father Bernard doesn’t appear completely truthful. I have already caught him out in something. But that doesn’t make him capable of harming your father, who must be twice his size. It’s Jaikie who has come to grief, not your father.’

‘No, but — ’

He trod down on the heel of the second boot, wriggled his toes into position, and said, ‘Alys, I must go to the college. I want to see the porter before they move him. I will ask for Father Bernard when I am there — after all, he left here to go and prepare a disputation, he should be about the place. If I learn anything that causes me worry I will send to you immediately.’ He cupped his hand round her jaw. ‘Your father has done something unexpected and it has taken longer than he intended. I’m sure that’s all, sweetheart. Send Wattie back up to St Mungo’s, and stop worrying.’

She bit her lip and nodded.

‘There has been only the two of us and Catherine for so long,’ she said after a moment. ‘And in Paris — ’

‘This is Glasgow, not Paris, and there are three of us and Catherine now.’ Gil shrugged on his short gown and kissed her. ‘Go and find those boys, and try not to be foolish.’

The college yett was shut again.

‘Maister Doby shut it behind us,’ said the younger Ross.

‘They’re all in the pend,’ said his brother. Gil looked at them. They had followed him, slightly sticky and a little more cheerful, from the mason’s house, but were becoming round-eyed and quiet again.

‘I’ll knock at the yett,’ he said. ‘You two go round by the Blackfriars gate, in case Maister Doby’s in his house, and tell him I’m here.’

‘We could go in at his door,’ said the younger boy. ‘We’re allowed.’

‘On you go, then.’ Gil watched them run back to the street door of the Principal’s house, then turned and hammered on the yett with the hilt of his dagger, as he had done the previous evening. The postern swung open immediately, and he found himself face to face with the missing Maistre Pierre.

‘At last!’ said the mason, at the same time as Gil said,

‘So this is where you are!’

‘I sent for you a good half-hour since,’ said Maistre Pierre reproachfully.

‘Wattie sent for you,’ Gil countered, ‘and has just come down to the house looking for you.’

His friend’s face changed.

‘Alys will be worried. I must send — ’ He stood back, so that Gil could enter. The pend was crowded and noisy with conversation and a buzzing of flies, and there was a foul smell in which Gil identified a top-note of burning paper. Yet another group of marvelling students was taking turns to stare in at the door of the porter’s small room, past the barricade provided by a resolute Lowrie Livingstone. The mason laid a big hand on the shoulder of the nearest blue gown, which jumped convulsively as its owner twisted to look at his assailant.

‘You, my friend. Run down to my house, which is the one with the sign of the White Castle,’ he instructed, ‘and tell them there that Maister Mason is at the college. Ah, Maister Doby,’ he continued seamlessly. ‘My son-in-law is arrived.’

‘Oh, Gilbert,’ said Maister Doby, pushing through the dissolving crowd of onlookers as the messenger, recovering his poise, slipped past Gil and away in a cloud of flies. ‘We are finding out who last saw him alive. Is not this a dreadful thing? Who could have done such a deed? Is it connected to William’s death, do you think? I would have moved him long since, but Maister Mason said — ’

‘Tell me what has happened,’ said Gil. The last of the goggling students drifted out of the pend into the courtyard, and Lowrie, with obvious relief, lowered his arm and stepped to one side.

‘He’s in there,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Someone’s knifed him.’

Just inside the doorway, Jaikie lay on his back beside his overturned chair, his head tipped back and away from them, one leg drawn up and his codpiece and the legs of his hose dark and stinking. His mouth was wide open, showing his blackened teeth. He could have been drunk, except for a dribble of blood running from his mouth down towards his ear, and the flies crawling on that, on his wide-open eyes, and on the bloody rent in the breast of his greasy blue livery gown.

On the floor beside the brazier a bundle of blackened papers explained the smell of burning.

‘Well,’ said Gil.

‘Well, indeed,’ said the mason.

Maister Doby, clutching his beads to his nose as if they would ward off the smell, said, ‘Poor man. Poor man. He had his faults, but he hardly deserved this.’

‘Nobody deserves this,’ said Gil absently, gazing round the room. ‘Is this how he was found? Who found him?’

‘We did,’ said Lowrie from the pend.

‘Go on,’ said Gil. ‘Who is we?’

‘Us. Michael and Ninian and me,’ said Lowrie reluctantly. ‘We came down to ask who came into the college yesterday while we were all at Vespers, and there he was. So I stayed here and the others went to tell Maister Kennedy and he tellt Maister Doby and here we all are.’

‘Where are the others now?’

‘Out in the yard,’ said Lowrie. ‘It was a bit much for Ning.’

‘The boy Ninian was a little overcome,’ elaborated the mason, ‘so I sent him away.’

‘Very wise,’ muttered Maister Doby, still staring at the corpse. ‘Gilbert, can we do nothing about these flies? It is not seemly.’

‘Is this how you found him? You touched nothing?’

‘I’ll say we touched nothing,’ agreed Lowrie vehemently. ‘We could see — with the flies and that — and the blood. You could tell he was dead. He looks like a day-old fox kill.’

‘Not as much as a day.’ Gil was still looking about the room. ‘So you moved nothing.’

‘That’s what I’m saying. Except to take the papers out the brazier.’

‘Pierre?’

‘Nothing more has been touched,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘What do you miss?’

‘Last night he had a stone bottle of usquebae, and I’ll swear there were several empty ones in yon corner.’

‘The alehouses will give you money for the empties,’ said Lowrie. ‘So I’ve heard,’ he added hastily, one eye on Maister Doby. ‘There they are, yonder under the bed.’

‘Perhaps he knocked them over when he fell?’ suggested Maistre Pierre.

‘No, for they were right under the bed, I recall now.’ Gil stepped into the room, and bent to touch the corpse, waving the flies away without effect. ‘How long is it since you found him?’

‘An hour?’

‘Longer than that, surely, Lawrence,’ said Maister Doby. ‘It must be more than an hour since you sent to me.’

‘He’s beginning to stiffen.’ Gil was feeling the jaw and neck. He tested the arms, and straightened the bent leg. ‘It’s been a while since. Two-three hours, maybe.’

‘Less,’ said the mason decidedly. ‘He is lying by the brazier. It happens faster in heat.’

‘Who do you think has done this?’ asked Maister Doby again.

‘If he was drunk as he usually was, almost anybody,’ said Gil. ‘Someone about his own height, who can use a dagger, which must include half the grown men in Glasgow.’ He patted at the front of the porter’s unsavoury gown, avoiding the bloody rent, but could feel nothing under the cloth except flabby flesh. There was a purse hanging at the straining belt, which proved to hold only a few coppers and a worn lead pilgrim badge of St Mungo. He attempted to tie the purse’s strings again, then gave up and got to his feet. ‘There is no sign of a fight. Pierre, would you agree?’

‘The chair?’

‘More likely he knocked that over as he went down,’ Gil surmised, looking round the room again. ‘The table is untouched, see, and the brazier and the pricket-stand are undisturbed. I need to speak to Ninian and Michael, and anyone else who was past the yett today. Maister Doby, do you wish to get him moved? Then we can search the room properly, and get a look at these papers.’

‘Search the room?’ repeated Maister Doby.

‘The bottle of usquebae?’ said the mason.

But when the stiffening corpse had been removed by two of the college servants, there was no sign of any stone bottle still containing usquebae. The four jars rolling about under the shut-bed were empty and dry.

‘And a spider in this one,’ reported Maistre Pierre, shaking the creature on to the floor.

‘Strange,’ said Gil.

‘There are marks in the dust down here, see,’ continued the mason. ‘Someone has searched under this bed recently.’

‘Not Jaikie.’

‘Perhaps whoever stabbed him?’ suggested Lowrie Livingstone, watching with interest. ‘And he took the full one away with him? St Mungo’s bones, what a stink. Sonar slais ill air na suord.’

‘But why?’ wondered Gil. ‘Why take it away?’ He crossed to the window and opened its shutters wide, then bent to look in the press beneath it.

‘I never knew that was there,’ said Lowrie.

‘You have been in this room?’ asked the mason.

‘Well,’ said Lowrie diffidently. ‘Aye. It’s a blag, see? A dare,’ he elucidated. ‘The bejants has to get in here when Jaikie’s no here, and borrow something.’

‘Borrow?’ said Gil, his head still inside the press. Maistre Pierre got to his feet and began poking fastidiously at the blankets in the rancid bed.

‘Well. You ken what I mean.’

Gil, who had undertaken the same dare himself, emerged from the press and shut the door carefully.

‘Nothing in there except a dog-collar and leash,’ he reported, tucking the strips of leather into his doublet.

‘A dog-collar?’ repeated the mason. ‘There is no bottle of usquebae, but look at this. It was under the mattress, on this little shelf.’

‘Likely off William’s dog,’ said Lowrie offhandedly.

‘You knew about the dog?’ Gil said, crossing the room to join Maistre Pierre.

‘Most of us did. He got it a new collar a couple weeks ago. Too good for a beast that age, I thought, but it wasny worth saying so to him. It’d be like Jaikie to keep the old one.’

‘Where did William get the new one?’ Gil asked. The mason put a heavy purse into his hand, and he weighed it and whistled.

‘Anderson the saddler made it to him.’ Lowrie eyed the purse. ‘Is that where he kept it?’

‘Kept what?’ Gil took the purse to the window and peered into its mouth. ‘It’s mostly coppers, but there must be a fair sum here. Where did Jaikie get this much money?’

‘In drink-money,’ said Lowrie reasonably. ‘No off us, for certain, but all the folk that comes to the gate would give him something for sending to say they were here.’

Gil stared at him. It would never have occurred to him to tip a college porter. Which perhaps explains Jaikie’s attitude to the members of the college, he thought.

‘You ken that’s William’s writing on the papers?’ added Lowrie.

‘I wondered when we would get to that.’ The mason picked something off his sleeve and crushed it carefully. Gil, setting the purse down on the small table, bent to lift the singed bundle, making a clumsy task of it with his left hand. Lowrie came to help, and rose, shedding flakes of burnt paper as he shuffled the surviving fragments together.

‘Gently,’ said Gil. ‘We may want to read them.’

‘Oh, there’s nothing interesting here,’ reported Lowrie, already peering at the tiny writing. ‘This looks like his copy of Ning’s notes on Peter of Spain, and that’s Aristotle. It’s lecture notes, maisters.’

‘What, all of it?’

‘I think so.’ Lowrie tilted more sheets to the light. ‘Aye, I remember that point. Do you have to learn your lectures off by heart, maister, so you can give them the same every year?’

‘I know where these have come from,’ said the mason. ‘You recall I commented on how little paper there was in William’s chamber?’

‘I think you must be right,’ said Gil. ‘But how the devil did it get into the brazier? Jaikie sent word by Michael he wanted to speak to me — could it have been about this?’

‘Jaikie might have found them somewhere,’ suggested Lowrie, reaching the last legible page. ‘Aye, it’s all lecture notes, maister, barring William’s own notes for a disputation I mind he won. If there was anything else here, it’s burned past reading.’

Behind the student, Maistre Pierre caught Gil’s eye, shut his mouth and shook his head significantly. Gil accepted the smoky bundle from Lowrie and said, ‘These should go with William’s other property. I suppose they belong to his kin, though I hardly think they’ll be valued. Now let us try and find out who last saw Jaikie alive.’