The Nicholas Feast

Chapter Nine

The courtyard was occupied by several knots of students, standing about discussing this newest happening. Ninian and Michael were seated at the foot of the stairs to the Fore Hall, and as Lowrie followed Gil and Maister Mason into the courtyard they came forward to join their fellow, but were shut out by one of the bigger groups which surrounded them, full of eager questions.

‘Was it a robber?’

‘He tellt someone to go round by Blackfriars gate and they stabbed him.’

‘No, he dee’d of the stink in his chamber. A’body kens bad air can kill ye.’

‘What, wi a great knife?’

‘Is that right his throat’s cut, maister?’ demanded the irrepressible Walter.

‘Who did it?’

‘Auld Nick,’ muttered someone at the back. ‘He was uncivil to him one time too many.’

There were sniggers, but Ralph Gibson, nearest to Gil, said, ‘Maister, did Jaikie kill William? Was it a judgement on him?’

‘Don’t be a fool, Ralph,’ said Maister Kennedy, emerging from the stair which led to his chamber. ‘Jaikie was killed by some human agency. How could that be a judgement on him when we don’t know yet who killed William?’ Ralph stepped back, blushing scarlet, and the well-loved teacher surveyed the group and continued, ‘Good day to you, Maister Cunningham. I had a word with most of these earlier, and it seems to me Robert Montgomery was the last in the college to speak to Jaikie. Anyone else that was down at the yett after Nones can wait here too. The rest of you go and wash your hands if you want to be allowed to eat dinner today.’

Ralph, with the air of one undergoing martyrdom, took up position beside his room-mate, and two other boys remained while the rest of the group drifted off, elaborately casual. Gil looked over his shoulder and found Lowrie with Ninian and Michael, conferring quickly in low tones.

‘We didn’t see anybody, maister,’ said Michael in his deep voice. ‘Not when we came down to speak to Jaikie, and not earlier. He was fine when I came back into the college.’

‘He was alone then?’

‘Aye — sitting in his great chair scowling at the door. Mind you — ’ Michael grinned. ‘If I’d not seen William’s dog with you, maister, I’d almost have sworn it was in Jaikie’s chamber.’

‘What made you think that?’ asked the mason curiously.

Michael shrugged. ‘I thought I smelled a dog-kennel, in among the rest of the reek. Likely he’d stepped into the street, got dog-sharn on his boots or something. I checked mine.’ He turned them up, one by one, as Lowrie had done when Gil was looking for coal dust. ‘I look where I’m stepping.’

‘When did you get back?’ Gil asked.

‘I was just in time for Maister Coventry’s lecture at noon. I’d sooner have missed that, as it happened, for it was Euclid and I hadny prepared my answer.’

Gil nodded. The mason looked at the sky and frowned.

‘He must have been dead very soon after that,’ he commented. Michael’s eyes widened.

‘How can you tell that?’ Lowrie asked curiously. ‘You said something like that already.’

Maistre Pierre stepped aside and began a concise little discourse on the progress of stiffening in a dead body. Gil met Maister Kennedy’s eye, and moved towards the other students.

‘When did you last see Jaikie, then?’ he asked Ralph Gibson.

Ralph, blushing and stammering, eventually admitted that he had not been near the yett all day. ‘But I thought Robert …’ he said inconclusively.

‘Thought I what?’ asked Robert challengingly.

‘Thought you might …’

Gil, watching the boy writhe, took pity on him.

‘You thought Robert might be glad of your company,’ he suggested. Ralph went scarlet with gratitude, and nodded. Robert said nothing, but his face, turned away from Ralph, was eloquent. Gil looked at the two bystanders, recognizing them now as two more of the cast of the play. Frivolity and one of the daughters of Collegia, he thought.

‘Well, Henry? Andrew?’ prompted Maister Kennedy.

‘We saw him just after Michael came in,’ said Henry importantly. ‘Andrew wanted to know where Maister Shaw the Steward was, and somebody thought he was talking to Jaikie. But he wasny. It was a … a big man,’ he finished, his voice trailing off as he heard his own words.

‘What kind of a man?’

‘A big warlike kind of man,’ offered Andrew. ‘Wi’ a whinger. He was at the yett talking to Jaikie, and Jaikie said to us he didny ken nor care where Maister Shaw was and to go and get Robert Montgomery. And that’s the last we seen him.’

‘I’ll tell you what kind of a man,’ said Robert Montgomery impatiently. ‘It was no more nor less than my uncle Hugh asking for me. Jaikie let him in and sent these two to fetch me, and gave my uncle an earful of incivility the way he always does — did,’ he corrected himself, ‘when he spoke to him about William. And by the time my uncle Hugh had done with me, I was late for Maister Coventry’s lecture in the Bachelors’ Schule, so he never asked me my question, and it took me all morning to con the answer.’

‘What did your uncle want with you?’ Gil asked.

‘Family business.’ The challenging glare was directed at Gil now.

‘There was nobody else about at the yett at the time?’

‘No that I saw.’

‘And that was the last you saw Jaikie?’

‘It was.’

‘He was alive when you left? Did you or your uncle leave him first?’

‘We left together. I went up the pend and my uncle stepped out at the yett. And that was the last I saw Jaikie.’

‘Alive?’

‘What would I kill him for? Or with, if it comes to that? You ken fine we’ve no daggers about the college, maister, or has it changed that much since your day?’

‘Robert,’ said Maister Kennedy in warning tones. The boy looked at him, and reined in his anger. Dropping his gaze to the chipped flagstones under his feet, he muttered something which might have been an apology.

‘Did you see anything like papers burning in the brazier?’ Gil asked.

‘There was just coals in the brazier when I got there,’ said Robert indifferently.

‘Your uncle had no papers? Or Jaikie?’

‘There was just the coals burning when I got there,’ Robert repeated.

‘And Jaikie was alive when you left him,’ Gil persisted.

Maister Kennedy frowned, and Robert said with weary defiance, ‘When I saw Jaikie he was alive. I didny kill him, maister, and you may as well stop asking it.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gil. ‘That will be all just now, Robert.’

Robert ducked his head in a kind of bow and set off rapidly for the pend leading to the inner courtyard. Ralph, who had been standing staring, gulped and hurried after him, exclaiming, ‘Robert, wait! Wait for me!’

‘And you two can go and wash your hands,’ prompted Maister Kennedy.

Andrew and Henry left obediently, with sidelong glances at Gil, and Maistre Pierre said, ‘You were severe.’

‘He was evasive,’ Gil said. Maister Kennedy, about to comment, stopped with his mouth open, clearly listening to the conversation again.

‘So he was,’ he agreed at length. ‘He’s aye so sneisty it takes your mind off what he has to say. He never answered you straight, save to say he didny kill Jaikie.’

‘Which I never thought,’ added Gil. ‘If anyone, I’d suspect his uncle.’

‘I’d put nothing past the Montgomery,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘It’s a quarter-hour to dinner, I’d best go and wash like the scholars. How are you, Gil? Who was it attacked you? They didny kill you, anyway. Oh, I near forgot,’ he added. ‘Maister Doby asked would you go by his lodging and tell him what you found.’

Dean Elphinstone glared at Gil and Maister Doby impartially.

‘If someone can step in off the street and kill our porter, a man carefully selected by our Steward here to ward the gate,’ he added, with a brief bow towards John Shaw who was frowning as he tried to keep up with the incisive Latin, ‘how are we to keep forty scholars safe, not to mention their regents and the college servants? We need to know, Gilbert, whether this was a deliberate act of vengeance on this man, or the result of a quarrel, or an attack on the college itself.’

‘Or an attempt to reach one of the scholars,’ suggested the mason in French.

The Steward looked worried, but the Dean nodded, and continued, ‘The man was impertinent and unsatisfactory, but he was a college servant and we are responsible for him. Have you discerned any likely reason for this violent death? Are you able to pursue justice for him?’

‘It was not theft,’ said Gil, ‘since that bag of coin I gave you was hidden in his bed, and probably not an attack on the college. Beyond that, Dean, I can only speculate at present.’

‘And what do your speculations tell you? Surely one proposition is more likely than another,’ said the Dean.

‘I hope not an attempt to reach one of the scholars,’ said Maister Doby. ‘No, surely not. None of our students would attract such enmity.’

‘William did,’ said Gil. There was a short silence, in which the bell began to ring for the college dinner.

‘Do you hold, then, that the one death is connected to the other?’ asked the Dean, in the exasperated tone of a teacher who cannot see where his student’s error lies. Gil spread his hands, and flinched as his bruised wrist twinged.

‘I think we must assume that they are connected,’ he said, ‘although it is not obvious how, simply because it defies logic that, in a community as small as the college, two violent deaths in two days should be unconnected.’

The Dean snorted, but made no answer. Through the open window they could hear a buzz of voices as the students who lived in the outer courtyard made their way towards the pend.

‘What else must you ask?’ said Maister Doby. ‘Do you need more from us, Gilbert? I must go and say Grace for the scholars.’

‘I need to speak to Father Bernard again,’ said Gil, ‘but I suppose I must apply to Blackfriars to find him, and I would be grateful for a little of Maister Shaw’s time.’ He nodded at the Steward, who smiled doubtfully.

‘Father Bernard had a lecture,’ said the mason.

‘He’ll have finished that,’ said the Dean. ‘You’re right, he’ll be back in Blackfriars by this. Aye, go and say Grace, Principal, and I’ll follow you. The Steward can come back here once he’s convoyed you into the hall, can’t you no, John?’

They all rose and bowed the Principal and Steward from the room, and as the door closed behind them the Dean sat down and said in sharper French, ‘Give me your suspicions, Gilbert, Maister Mason. Where are you at with finding William’s murderer, first?’

Gil looked at Maistre Pierre.

‘We haven’t had an opportunity to talk this through,’ he admitted, ‘for it’s been an eventful day already. We have established that William was given to extortion, which should point us to a suspect, but most of the people whom I know he had approached were in plain sight of one another at the time when I believe he was killed.’

‘Conspiracy?’ said the Dean.

‘Is always possible,’ Gil agreed.

‘It seems clear,’ said the mason, ‘that the boy got into the limehouse as a matter of mischief rather than malice.’

‘But after that we are less certain of the course of events.’

‘So all you’ve done is show who couldn’t have killed him?’

‘So far, yes.’

The Dean grunted. ‘Well, if you go on that way long enough, you’ll end up with one man, I suppose. You will have heard that William’s burial is tomorrow after Sext?’

‘I have,’ Gil said. ‘We are searching diligently, Dean, and we may well know a lot more by then. If you are willing to invite Lord Montgomery into the college after the burial, then even if I can’t name the boy’s killer as he demanded I can at least explain what conclusions I have reached by that time.’

‘I suppose that might placate the man for the time being.’ The Dean glared at them both again. ‘And this newest business? The death of our porter? What did you mean about speculation?’

‘Just that. We spoke to the scholars, and established the time of death. We searched the man’s chamber, and found the bag of coin which is now in Maister Doby’s strong-box, which must be Jaikie’s savings, all in coppers as it is, and we found a great bundle of William’s lecture-notes which someone had put in the brazier. There’s nothing else to point our direction, so we must speculate.’

‘St Nicholas’ bones!’ said the Dean. ‘Jaikie was burning William’s lecture-notes? How did he get hold of them?’ He paused, looking from Gil to the mason and back. ‘Are you saying it was Jaikie killed William? How could he leave his post without being seen?’

‘No, I think not,’ said Gil. ‘William was killed and moved into the coalhouse by someone who knew where he was hidden. Jaikie would have no way of learning that and acting on it, in the time available.’

‘So was it Ninian and his fellows?’

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘They say they left him in the lime-house, and we found evidence which confirms their story. I am reasonably convinced William was alive when they left him.’

Dean Elphinstone snorted, and got to his feet.

‘I must go to the Laigh Hall if I am to get any dinner today. Where do you dine, Gilbert, Maister Mason? Do you have time for dinner?’

‘Our dinner awaits us at my house,’ said the mason. ‘But there was the matter of a word with John Shaw.’

‘Oh, aye.’ The Dean led the way out into the courtyard. ‘I’ll send him back to ye, if he’s in the hall. Let me know as soon as you’ve anything to report, Gilbert. We must write to the Archbishop soon, whether or no we’ve found the answer.’

‘I know that, sir.’

The Dean sketched a benediction for which they both bowed, and strode off across the grey flagstones, his everyday woollen cope billowing at his back.

‘I am glad he is on our side,’ said the mason doubtfully, then, as the Dean stepped aside to allow someone to emerge from the pend, ‘Ah, there is John Shaw. Poor man, he has all to do and too many masters telling him how. Good day, John. It is good of you to spare us a moment.’

‘And what a day, maisters,’ said the Steward in harassed tones. ‘How am I to ward the college now, I ask you? Jaikie was a dirty ill-tempered beffan, but he did his duty, and now I’ve to find a replacement before Vespers, and his chamber like a fox’s den to be cleaned out before the new man’s in place — ’

‘Ask Serjeant Anderson,’ Gil suggested. ‘He might recommend one of the constables to act as porter for a day or two. He’d know if they were trustworthy. Or would the Blackfriars have a lay-brother they could spare?’

‘The Serjeant …’ The Steward tasted this idea. ‘One of the constables? Maybe. Maybe you’re right, maister. Aye, I’ll do that.’ He looked suddenly more cheerful. ‘And how can I help ye, maisters? Was it something you wanted done?’

‘Information, rather, John,’ said the mason. ‘Come and sit down and tell us about yesterday.’

‘Yesterday?’ Maister Shaw followed them into the Bachelors’ Schule. ‘Oh, what a day, what a day. What d’ye need to know, Peter? You were there, and so was Maister Cunningham.’

‘Not I,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘not until after it all happened. Tell me about it. You had the procession and the feast to order, did you not?’

‘I did that. And that William underfoot,’ added Maister Shaw bitterly. ‘Correcting and criticizing, amending my greetings to the guests and the members, till I went off and left him to get on with that. I thought he might as well make himself useful,’ he added. ‘I’d to see the garlands on to Willie Sproat’s donkey-cart, with the donkey trying to eat them and Willie killing himself laughing at the sight, I’d to make sure there were horses to all the maisters, and the moth out of all the Faculty hoods, and the music to the Mass put on the donkey-cart, and John Gray the Beadle misplaced his robes and I found them in here, where that William had put them down — ’ He nodded at a cupboard under the lecturer’s pulpit. ‘Oh, what a day, what a day!’

‘But all went smoothly,’ said Gil. ‘Indeed, I thought the morning went very well, Maister Shaw. It was later, when the thunder started and they were all running about the yards, that things went wrong.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by wrong,’ said Maister Shaw, bridling slightly, ‘I thought it was bad enough when the boy Maxwell served half the high table with a dirty towel over his arm, and as for that William distracting Robert Montgomery while the Dean waited for the made dishes, words fail me, maisters, they do.’

‘None of these things prevented us enjoying the feast,’ said Gil soothingly.

‘But you have high standards, John,’ interposed the mason. ‘And when the thunder started, what happened then?’

‘Ha! All the scholars running about, shutting windows that should never have been left open, neglecting their duties. It took some doing to get them back to their tasks, I can tell you, Peter. I had to send a whole lot I found in the Inner Close about their business.’

‘Who would that be?’ Gil asked. ‘Can you remember?’

‘Now you’re asking,’ said Maister Shaw doubtfully. ‘Henry and Walter, that’s certain. You canny miss Walter,’ he added, with disapproval. ‘Andrew. Robert Montgomery, I sent him back to the kitchen, and that soft-head Ralph, poor laddie, and I met John Gray’s nephew Nicholas in the pend and chased him back to the crocks and all. There might have been more.’

‘Nicholas and Robert were not together?’ Gil asked.

‘I don’t think so. Oh, what a day!’

‘And then we found William in the coalhouse. Tell me this, Maister Shaw,’ said Gil. ‘Who would have had a key to that door?’

‘Oh, near everyone,’ said the Steward, looking startled. ‘All the regents, for certain, as well as me and Agnes, even some of the scholars. Anyone that had a chamber with a key to it. Most of the college doors is the same, maister. I’ve a notion Archie Bell only kens three patterns of lock, and we’ve got all he ever made of one of them.’

‘And the Blackfriars yett?’ Gil asked, with a sinking feeling.

‘That, too. Not that you’d need a key by daylight, the gate stands open from Prime to Compline. I’ve tellt Maister Doby many a time,’ he confided, ‘we ought to get a different lock put on the coalhouse door, for the coals goes down faster than they should. Maybe now he’ll listen.’

‘So anyone could have put William in the coalhouse,’ said the mason, watching the Steward’s retreating back.

‘Anyone with a key,’ agreed Gil. ‘So we are no further forward. Anyone who had or could borrow a key could walk into the college by the Blackfriars yett, if they were not inside its walls already, and unlock the coalhouse door and lock it again after.’

‘And this other matter.’ Maistre Pierre jerked one large thumb over his shoulder at the mouth of the porter’s pend.

‘Yes, indeed. How do you come to be present?’

‘Ah. Well. I had something to attend to at Blackfriars.’ He stared across the courtyard, and finally admitted, ‘I tell you from the beginning. Come into the middle of the yard here.’

Gil, puzzled, strolled forward to the centre of the flagstones, where none could overhear them without being seen.

‘I walked up to Blackfriars with Father Bernard,’ began Maistre Pierre.

‘When he left your house before Nones?’ Gil interrupted. ‘The women thought you had gone up to the site.’

‘I intended to,’ said the mason impatiently. ‘Wattie had sent the boy for me, I intended to go on there afterwards. But I spent longer in Blackfriars kirk than I thought to. First I was alone, and then I spent some time with Father Bernard, if you understand me.’

Confession? Gil wondered. Why now? Of course, Father Bernard speaks French. He nodded, and the mason went on.

‘We had to end the matter, for he had a lecture to deliver, and I walked into the college with him and found it buzzing like a bee-skep, those three in the yard here exclaiming what they had found, the Principal becoming flustered, half the college crowding in to look at the dead. So I had them send for you and made Lowrie stand guard with me. I would have shut the door and locked it, though small good that would have done if all the keys in the college fit the lock, but you saw how he lay. We could not close the door without moving him.’

‘And you saw nothing that might be useful?’ Gil prompted. ‘No bloodstained dagger-man running across the courtyard?’

‘No,’ agreed the mason with regret, ‘although he was probably not bloodstained. Most of the bleeding will be internal, I would say. No, but I heard something that might be to the point.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you know Blackfriars kirk?’

‘I was a student here,’ Gil reminded him.

‘Ah, of course. Then you recall the altar of St Peter? Tucked away in a corner beyond St Paul?’ Gil nodded. ‘I was on my knees there, quite unobtrusive, when I overheard a conversation out in another part of the church. It must be one of those echoes you get sometimes,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘where the vault is of just such a shape as to direct the sound, for they were not within my sight.’

‘Go on. Who spoke?’

‘Father Bernard was very clear, the other voice less so. The father wished the other to take some document or other. You recognize the writing, he said. There is nothing there of value, it must be disposed of.’

‘Ah!’ said Gil. ‘So that’s how the meat got into the nut.’

Maistre Pierre glanced at him. ‘Indeed. The other asked, I think, how he came by it, and was told that he did not need to know. Then he said — the friar said — Our intentions are the same in this. Have no fear, my son. Then two of the other friars entered the church, talking about tomorrow’s funeral, and our man went to join them.’

‘Mm.’ Gil considered this. ‘You got no sight of the other party?’

‘I did not. A young voice, I thought.’

‘And having heard this, you still spent time with Father Bernard?’

The mason shrugged. ‘I had already asked him, I could not readily withdraw. I took care, in the circumstances, to raise nothing of great import.’

‘And you were with him until you both walked across the Paradise Yard? Where the apple-trees are,’ he elucidated. Maistre Pierre nodded again. ‘So we can leave him out of the reckoning for Jaikie’s death.’

‘Indeed, we can. Though not for the other, I think?’

‘No.’ Gil stared unseeing at the door of the Principal’s lodging. ‘But if the relationship is as I think, I do not see why he would have killed William.’

‘This is no place to discuss it. I can hear the scholars in the Inner Close. They are coming from their dinner, and we must go to ours. Alys will be sufficiently displeased with me already.’

‘She was very anxious,’ Gil said.

‘I was thoughtless.’

Gil, whose parents and siblings had come and gone without consultation throughout his youth, made no comment, but said, ‘I wish to find Father Bernard. Some points need clarification.’

‘Then we shall see you later?’ Maistre Pierre turned towards the pend that led to the street, and paused. ‘Ah, no, I am forgetting. The yett is barred. I must go out by Blackfriars.’

‘Then we can both look at Jaikie’s body, if he has been washed by now.’

William still lay in the mortuary chapel, his lanky form shrouded but identifiable, with two Theology students kneeling by his head with their beads. As Gil and Maistre Pierre entered the chapel, two more students stepped forward from the shadows to relieve the watchers. Jaikie, as a college servant, was naturally laid out here too, neatly shrouded on a trestle next to William, with candles about him and a small stout Dominican at his feet working his way stolidly through the prayers for the dead. Gil knelt briefly by the trestle, the mason for rather longer, and the brother finished his petition for mercy and got to his feet, saying,

‘Was it you that found him? Do you need to see him?’ He drew back the shroud without waiting for an answer. The theologians around William recoiled, and two of them averted their eyes. ‘His jaw’s well set, or we’d have closed his mouth. There’s the wound. Simple stab wound, nothing fancy but it did someone’s work for him.’

‘I see,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘There would be little bleeding, I think.’

‘Likely he bled within, poor man,’ said the friar. ‘And at the mouth, of course.’

The students going off duty left hastily, and the two remaining knelt with great reluctance. Maistre Pierre prodded at the gash in Jaikie’s chest and nodded.

‘A dagger or the point of a whinger,’ he said. ‘Perhaps this wide.’ He held up finger and thumb an inch or so apart.

‘There can’t be more than two thousand such in Glasgow,’ Gil observed. ‘Was it you that washed him, brother? Was there anything in his clothes we should know about?’

‘In his clothes,’ said the brother, with a sudden lapse in charity, ‘there was nothing beyond himself, an entire company of Ru’glen redfriars, and a peck of dirt. We’d to burn them, gown and all. They were past giving to the poor.’

The mason looked blank, but Gil was aware of the nearer student bedesman withdrawing the skirts of his gown. He too stepped back from the trestle and moved towards the offering-box by the door, saying, ‘God rest his soul. I think that’s all we need to see, brother.’ He dropped a couple of coins into the box. ‘Can you tell me where Father Bernard might be?’

‘I am preparing tomorrow’s quodlibet disputation,’ said Father Bernard, staring at Gil over a rampart of books. ‘I can spare you a little time, I suppose.’

‘Thank you, father,’ said Gil. He drew a stool up to the librarian’s table and sat down. His head was beginning to ache again, and he felt extremely weary. ‘It is merely to clarify a few points.’

Father Bernard ostentatiously closed a volume of St Augustine, with a slip of paper in his place, and folded his hands together on top of the book. Sunshine poured in at the window of the library. In the shadows beyond the chaplain, the ranks of the college theology collection were dimly visible, the shelf-numbers showing black on the pale out-turned fore-edges. Nearer the door, rows of smaller, much-handled volumes showed where the Arts Faculty’s Aristotle and Euclid were shelved.

‘In fact, now I think of it,’ said Father Bernard, ‘I would welcome a word with you, Gilbert, about your own future.’

‘My — ’ Gil stared at him. ‘What has that to do with it?’

‘I am responsible for your spiritual well-being, as a member of the University,’ Father Bernard reminded him, ‘and it gives me grave cause for concern to see you about to take a step which can only be detrimental to your future career.’

‘What step is that?’ said Gil. ‘Do you mean my marriage?’

‘I do indeed. It seems a rash step for a man who is widely spoken of as an able scholar and a promising man of law. If you were to enter the Church, I am very sure you would have entry to positions of power and responsibility — ’

‘I am training as a notary,’ Gil said. ‘More notaries are married men than churchmen nowadays. Now may I ask you — ’

‘But the most successful are churchmen,’ said Father Bernard triumphantly. Gil, lacking facts to argue this statement, hesitated, and the chaplain ploughed on. ‘You see, if your energies are directed to controlling and disciplining that very headstrong young woman, they cannot be directed to your calling.’

‘Headstrong?’ said Gil, staring. ‘Discipline? I shouldn’t dream of trying. She is the most intelligent girl I ever met, and thinks more clearly than many men.’

‘Then, Gilbert, I fear you will have a sad marriage. Come,’ said Father Bernard, leaning forward over his books, ‘admit it. You are led to this union by the desires of the flesh.’

‘If I did not know better, I would think you had been talking to my mother,’ said Gil. ‘I am led to the marriage by the advice of my uncle, who was approached first.’

‘Ah,’ said Father Bernard, sitting back with a faint air of disappointment. ‘I had not realized that. I feared you had allowed yourself to be diverted by a lovely face and figure.’

Gil found himself smiling at the image this conjured up for him, and straightened his expression.

‘Father Bernard, we are taking up time you can ill spare. As I have said, there are a few points I wished to clarify about William’s death.’

‘About his death?’ Father Bernard looked down at his folded hands for a moment, then up at Gil. ‘I cannot imagine why you should think me able to help you, but I will try. Well?’

Gil gathered his thoughts with an effort. ‘At the end of the play, yesterday, what did you do?’

‘At the end of the play?’ Father Bernard repeated. ‘Why, I returned to the House.’ He nodded at the view from the library window, across the Principal’s garden and into the Blackfriars grounds, cemetery and gatehouse and bell-tower clearly visible.

‘To Blackfriars? So you crossed the Inner Close and the kitchen-yard, and went through the gate.’

‘That is the way to the convent.’

‘Using your key to the gate?’

‘Why, no. I have a key,’ Father Bernard touched the breast of his habit, ‘but I hardly use it. The gate stands open all the hours of daylight. It was certainly open yesterday.’

‘May I see it?’ Gil asked innocently. ‘Is it local work, do you know?’

A wary expression in his deep-set eyes, Father Bernard fished the key out and lifted the cord over his head. Gil took the object from him and turned it curiously. It was as long as his hand, with a substantial shaft and crooked handle, but the rectangular tablet had only two notches in it. Clearly it operated a simple lock. He weighed the warm iron in his hand, and rubbed at the patch of rust near the end of the shaft. ‘It’s local work, so the Steward tells me,’ agreed the chaplain. ‘It serves its purpose.’

‘Indeed it must,’ said Gil ambiguously, handing the key back. ‘And when you crossed the close, did you see anyone? William, for instance?’

The chaplain frowned. ‘A few of the college servants were about, but surely William was still at the play?’

‘He left before it ended.’

‘Oh.’ Father Bernard closed his mouth over the yellow teeth and frowned. ‘Oh.’

‘Does that convey anything?’ Gil asked.

‘No. Why should it?’

‘So when did you return to the college?’ Gil asked after a moment.

‘Almost immediately. I had a lecture to deliver at two o’clock, and I had only gone for some notes which I needed, so I returned to the college to spend some time in prayer in the Theology Schule before my students joined me.’

‘In prayer?’ said Gil. ‘Is that usual?’

‘When lecturing in Theology,’ said Father Bernard, ‘it is my practice. One does not interpret the will or word of God without asking for assistance.’

Gil nodded, and pain stabbed across his temples. ‘Did you see anyone on your return? You came back by the road you went — by the kitchen-yard and the close to the Theology Schule door?’

‘Why should I do otherwise? I may have seen some of the students, but I was about to take a lecture, Gilbert, my mind was not on my surroundings.’

‘I appreciate that,’ said Gil. ‘It’s unfortunate, for it would help me to confirm some of the other stories I have. Someone in your position, who knows all the students in the college, is more likely to be of help than a Master of Arts who left several years ago.’

There was another of those pauses.

‘And you then remained in the lecture-room until after the lecture?’

‘Unfortunately, no,’ said Father Bernard. He looked out of the window, then down at his hands, then at Gil with an assumption of man-to-man heartiness. ‘I was, shall we say, compelled to leave briefly, before I began to speak.’ Gil waited. ‘The Almayne pottage,’ said Father Bernard obliquely. ‘It disagreed with me, rather suddenly.’

‘So you went back out to the kitchen-yard. This could be very helpful,’ Gil said. ‘Who did you see at that point?’

‘I was not paying attention,’ said the chaplain primly. He looked at his hands again. ‘I may have seen Robert Montgomery. On my return across the Inner Close I certainly saw a number of people.’ He thought briefly. ‘There was a group of four men, your age or older. I have been chaplain here less than three years, they were certainly before my time.’

‘That is valuable,’ said Gil, with perfect truth. ‘I know who they were. And in the Outer Close?’

‘Consider, Gilbert,’ said Father Bernard kindly. ‘I was now late for my lecture in the Theology Schule. I had no need to enter the Outer Close. Who knows who was at large there? Not I, for sure.’

‘What a pity It could have been valuable. And after the lecture? What did you do then?’

‘At three o’clock I returned to the House, from where I was summoned at length to conduct a Provisional Absolution for William, along with Maister Forsyth.’

Gil considered for a moment. ‘How well did you know William, father?’

‘You have asked me that before. I knew him as one among the students here, no more.’

‘So he never came in your way when you were chaplain to Lord Montgomery?’

‘I left before he was born.’

‘Why was that? Surely such a position could be yours for life?’

‘My superiors decreed that I should go to study in Cologne.’

‘And you didn’t know William was keeping a dog.’

‘I did not.’

‘Or that he was practising extortion.’

‘Nor that either.’

‘And what about his papers? There was a bundle of papers with William’s writing on them, smouldering in Jaikie’s brazier when the man was found dead just now. How could they have got there? They should have been in William’s chamber.’

‘I’ve no idea about that.’

‘And have you any idea,’ said Gil casually, ‘why he wanted to speak to you yesterday morning? Did he show you his letter?’

‘Our colloquy was brief and uninformative. Now, if you will forgive me, I am a busy man with teaching commitments to fulfil. If all you wish to do is repeat questions I have already answered — truthfully,’ he emphasized, looking Gil in the eye, ‘I must call an end to this.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil, ‘I hope you will forgive me. One more question, which I haven’t asked before. If you didn’t know William, you wouldn’t know Robert Montgomery either, but can you tell me anything about him?’

‘I knew his father Alexander well,’ said Father Bernard heavily. ‘He died at Stirling field, like your father, I believe. God rest their souls.’

‘Amen,’ said Gil, with an unlikely surge of fellow feeling for a Montgomery.

‘Robert is very like him. They’re all alike, these Montgomery men. A strong sense of family, a strong sense of property, a hot temper.’

‘You could call it that,’ said Gil. He rose, and bowed. ‘I will leave you, father. So you were not in the Outer Close after the beginning of the lecture?’

‘Not until I left the Theology Schule again.’ Father Bernard half-rose also, delivered a remote blessing, and had seated himself and opened his volume of Augustine before Gil had left the room.

The way back to the Blackfriars gate led across the Paradise Yard, where a few students were talking in subdued groups under the apple-trees. On an impulse Gil left the path and made his way down towards the Molendinar.

Sitting in the dappled sunshine under one of the trees, he leaned back against its trunk and looked up at the pattern of pink blossom and young leaves. Somewhere a blackbird called, and smaller birds chirped and sang in the bushes. The mills clattered along the burn. The voices of the scattered groups of students, the burgh and its problems, all seemed very far away.

Small and clear, images danced across his vision. A man with a sword, who might or might not be Hugh Montgomery. Three armed men, leaping round him in twilight. The lanky, red-haired William, a busy ghost aye flickering to and fro, darted from victim to victim, gowned scholars who flinched away from him under the arched branches of the apple-trees, until he became a victim himself.

‘William’s victims,’ he said aloud, and opened his eyes. The blackbird was still singing, but most of the students had gone.

Is that the key? he wondered. The list of those the boy confronted? The names in the red book? And how was Jaikie’s death connected?

And meantime his own problems loomed large. At twenty-six he needed nobody’s permission to marry, though since his uncle was his sponsor into the Law it would be foolish to act without the old man’s approval. He knew he had that, and it had been an unpleasant surprise to discover that his mother held other views.

But what are her objections? What did she say this morning? That there was no more money — well, I knew that — that he was educated for the Church and the Law — but I will still embrace the Law. And that he must pray for his father and brothers.

I wonder, is that the crux of the matter? he thought, and recalled the last year-mind service in the church in Hamilton. The small altar beside his father’s box tomb had been dusty and neglected, and the brocade altar-cloth was so old that mice or moths had eaten it into holes. Beside it the newly painted carving had been bright in the candlelight: the family blazon in the centre of one long side of the tomb, with a kneeling knight on one side, a lady on the other, and their three sons and five daughters ranked neatly behind them.

He could see it now as if he was there. Two of the small male figures were in armour, the third gowned as a scholar. One of the daughters was in her shroud, two had flowing, improbably yellow hair, one wore the same kind of elaborate gold-painted headdress as the kneeling figure of their mother, and the eldest was in the white robes of a Cistercian nun. The image was so vivid that he was quite unsurprised when the nun turned her head and looked directly at him, her long-chinned face narrow and intent within the folds of her veil.

‘Gil,’ she said clearly. ‘Slip the collar, and you will win free.’

‘Dorothea?’ he said, but she had turned back to her prayers. ‘Slip the collar and you will win free,’ he repeated, and woke with a start.