Friend & Foe (5 page)

‘In some sense,’ Andrew answered, unexpectedly, ‘it is more a question that concerns the conscience. Since, in any case, it weighs upon me heavily, I should be glad to share it with you. For you are a good man, I think.’

There was an odd inflection to the words. Hew’s response was awkward. ‘Ah, I try to be.’

Andrew Melville frowned. ‘You cannot try to be good,’ he corrected tersely. ‘Since we all are sinners, we are not empowered to
try
to be good. We may come to goodness, by virtue of God’s grace.’

Hew saw in an instant why they were not closer friends. Still, he was intrigued. For Melville was a strong and staunch defender of the faith, and if he had uncertainties, confided in his nephew. He showed no sign of weakness, even to his friends. And though such things to Giles and Hew admitted careful argument, to Andrew they were doctrines written, read and closed.

‘By God’s grace,’ he accepted. ‘What is it you would ask?’

‘Stay awhile, and dine with us,’ the principal suggested. ‘I will tell you then.’

They walked together to the stairwell, where Andrew was enclosed within a gulf of caps and hands, anxious to acknowledge and converse with the great man. In his absence, it appeared, he had been sorely missed. He freed himself, with kind and gracious words. ‘I thank you, gentlemen, but ye maun go and eat, I will not keep you more.’ The crowd dispersed at last, all but one young man, who stayed to hold the door, a thin-lipped, red-eyed youth.

Andrew Melville paused. ‘This is Dod Auchinleck,’ he remarked to Hew, ‘a student in our college, who is training for the ministry, for whom we maun applaud. God knows, we have but few good men to follow in that cause, and a sad lack of ministers to fill our present vacancies. Our hopes are placed in Dod here, and others of his ilk.’

The young man answered wretchedly, ‘I cannot apprehend it, sir, that I deserve that trust.’

‘Come, Dod, there is modesty,’ the principal encouraged, ‘and there is lack of heart. If you do not confound the twa, you shall prove a credit to us.’

The young man shook his head. ‘I dare not hope so much, for I am filled with doubts.’

Andrew Melville sighed. ‘My door is always open, son.’

Though it was plain to Hew that ‘always’ meant ‘not now’, the young man seized his chance. ‘There is one burning question, sir, pertaining to the lecture we have lately heard; I hoped that you might speak of it, I prayed that ye might speak of it, and put my fears to rest, and I was sair dismayed to find that ye did not; it is a matter consummate and preying on my mind,’ Dod came thudding to a halt, concluding in a rush, of confusion, shame and awkwardness, staring at the floor. He seemed, in all his misery, not to notice Hew.

‘Aye, son? What was that?’ Andrew was a patient teacher, as devoted to his pupils as he was to his cause; and that, for all his fierceness, showed that there was good in him.

‘Ye spake about the covenant that man makes with God, but not about the covenant a man makes with his wife. I mean their fleshly congress, sir,’ the young man blurted out.

Andrew looked a little vexed. ‘Fie, now, sir, have courage. That were understood.’

‘But I dinna understand it,’ Dod confided then. ‘And how am I to marry folk, and gie them proper counsel, when I have had nae understanding of the carnal conversation?’

‘Suppose,’ suggested Hew, ‘I wait for you below?’

Andrew answered grimly, ‘Aye, I think that may be best.’

Smiling to himself, Hew clattered down the stair. He stepped out to the sun, into a pool of blood.

The hawthorn tree that marked the entrance cast its blossoms to the wind, each petal etched and threaded with a splattering of pink. Its heavy boughs bowed wet, its life-sap spilling red, riven at its heart. Blood had puddled, dark and sticky, in between the roots, running down the branches and the smooth bark of the trunk, to seep into the ground. Some, like Hew, had stepped in it, their frantic bloody footprints scraping on the grass.

‘Praise God, it is a miracle,’ a voice came from the crowd. The company stood huddled, gaping and aghast.

Chapter 5

The Seeing Stone

The hawthorn tree ran red with blood, and Hew could make no sense of it. A shadow fell across the square, a resonating stillness, though the sky was cloudless still. He put his hand, instinctively, into the cleft between the branches, where the wound was warm and wet, and felt into its heart.

‘What accident has happened here?’ Andrew Melville had come down the stairs, with the hapless Dod Auchinleck. It was Bartie who answered. Bartie’s bright eyes were fixed like a bird’s. ‘All grass, it seems, is flesh. This tree has suffered some great hurt, its life force spills and spurts great gobbets of raw blood, the juglar cut full deep in its organic vein.’

Dod Auchinleck whimpered and fell to his knees, a jummil of rapture and fear. ‘God save us, sir, is it a kind of miracle?’

Andrew Melville roared. His patience, when it left him, did not give out quietly. He vented his frustrations on the luckless Dod, whose want of understanding might have been excused, but not his want of faith. ‘Are you such a faulter, that ye cannot call to mind the plain truth of your creed, but ye start skeich and stummering? Have I never taught to ye, that miracles have ceased?’

‘The devil’s ain excepted,’ Bartie pointed out. ‘This is his work, surely, conjured up by warlocks cunning and uncouth.’ He alluded to a doctrine most of them believed, that even Andrew Melville dared not contradict, as he assured the crowd, ‘Faith, if this is witchcraft, we shall sound it out and send those divils fleeing, sairly sick and sorry that they came to try us here. Yet let us be more circumspect,
before we grant the devil more than is his due. It is, perhaps, some sickness of the tree, which gives a little colour to the sap.’

‘It is like no sickness I have ever seen,’ contended Bartie Groat, who took a layman’s interest in the life of trees. ‘Tis plain to any laic that the stuff is blood.’

It was plain to Hew that Bartie was enjoying this. He interrupted quietly, ‘Whatever hand has left this mark I think it was a human one.’

The whole crowd turned to stare at him. A little of the tainted blossom settled on his coat.

Hew said, ‘
If I may
. . .’ He loosened his knife from its belt, and made his way through to the heart of the tree. At his back, he heard Bartie, ‘He cannot resist. He maun have an answer. None is more inquisitive. Did I ever tell you, did you never hear, about the Flemish windmill? Ask him about that!’

Though Hew did not respond, he recognised the truth in it. He felt his heartbeat quicken, knew it was not fear.

He worked on in silence, with that sharp exactness he had witnessed in Giles Locke, excising to the poison at the centre of a wound. The tree did not shrink back. It was young and slender still, and barely could support itself, its heavy blossoms drooping, dropping to the ground. Hew cut three or four of them, the crimson and the white, and wrapped them in a handkerchief, where the dark stain spread, each pink flower unfolding, colouring the cloth. He found a dark red pooling where the branches met, and here he dipped his blade, dispensing it by drops. With it came a membrane, like a piece of skin. He tied the bundle up and tucked it in a pocket hanging at his belt. ‘I will take these samples to Giles Locke, who, by his analysis, will tell us what they are. It looks to me,’ he concluded, ‘as though some stranger came to visit while we were within. We must ask the porter what he saw and heard.’

The porter took some while to recover from his fright, after which he swore that he had had no part in this, nor had be been aware that aught had gone awry. He had let in Master Hew. He had
made secure the gate. Aye, he was quite certain that the gates were made secure. They were locked the whole while, and they were locked now.

And they could gang see, if they didna trust him. (Several of them did, and were sorely stomachat to find they were locked in. Without their master’s say-so, he would not give up the key.)

He had called on Andrew Melville, who was at his prayers, to tell him it was time for the lecture to begin; his house was at the north west corner, not more than a stone’s throw from the founder’s tower; that was but a saying, for he had not thrown a stone.

There were pebbles in the courtyard and around the tree. Were there stones there, generally?

The porter thought there were.

Hew selected one of them and dropped it in his pocket. Had the porter seen his master climbing up the steps?

He had seen him to the door, and had stayed to hold it open, standing at the tree. He had seen the hawthorn then, and not found aught amiss. There had been twa pigeons, sitting on a branch, and some others in the tower-loft, skiting fae the roof. The pigeons were a pest. Their scummering made work for him; they stoured the place with shite.

There were no pigeons now. And that was odd, thought Hew. The college dows were tame as lambkins, pecking at the feet of strangers. Rarely would they fly away. What horror then had scattered them?

Hew took a mental note, and went on with his questioning. The porter left the tower and went back to his lodging, built above the door. He had kept the watch, spied no one in the square. No one had passed through the entrance, either in or out.

The hawthorn tree had been there nigh on twenty years. The sapling had been planted by the queen of Scotland, when she still was queen; they ca’ed it Mary’s thorn. It mebbe was an unco place, to plant it at a house of prayer, but had not Christ the saviour worn a crown of thorns? (At this point in the evidence, to Melville’s plain
disgust, the porter crossed himself.) This year was the first year it had flowered. And that was neither rare nor wondrous, as he understood it, for a proper view on it, they maun ask the gardener. The gardener was not here, for it was not his day to come. That was Thursday next and after on a Tuesday; he came by more often in the summer months. There were gardens on the south side, stretching to the burn, but you couldna cut across, all had high stane walls. Whichever way you came at it, the college was closed in.

He had heard of a disease, that the gardeners called red leaf. But he did not think the hawthorn ever suffered that disease, nor that the red leaf made a green tree bleed. The hawthorn was bewitched. He would fetch an axe, and strike the menace down.

Melville told him no. He baulked at such destruction, wanton and unwarranted, or else feared some dark magic, settled at the heart of it, that he dared not disturb. ‘Are ye convicted, still,’ he said aside to Hew, ‘that this were not brought on by an infernal agency?’

‘I am certain of it.’ Though Hew was far from certain how the trick was done, he saw no sense in stirring up a fearful restless crowd, to spill their superstitions out onto the street. ‘Give me leave to prove it to you, in a few days’ time.’ He hoped he could back up the bluff with science from Giles Locke. For now, he worked on instinct.

Andrew Melville sighed. ‘As I hope you may. For it is likely this was meant by my detractors to astound my followers and undermine their faith in me. In which case, we may be advised to look to our defences, and explore the grounds. Will you walk with me, sir? The others must go too, and make a thorough search.’

The scholars were dispersed in groups of three and four. ‘If you come across a stranger, bring him back to me. And, understand me, bring him back unharmed. There will be no rough justice, do you understand? The porter and Dod Auchinleck shall stay to guard the tree and so mak guid their faults.’ He made it more than clear to them that they dared not refuse.

Dod Auchinleck was punished for his lapse in faith, the porter for allowing this to happen on his watch, and both of them were forced to stare the terror in the face, as penance for their sins. Melville did not think of it as cruelty, Hew supposed, but as giving them the chance to make amends to God. He felt sorrier for Dod, whose floundering for grace was scuttled by the flesh.

St Mary’s was a stronghold, built to stand the storm. The townsfolk had attempted more than once to battle with it, when Andrew Melville’s sermons had inflamed them at the kirk, and when a reckless student shooting at the butts had sent an awkward arrow through the baxter’s hat, as he came whistling down the vennel with a tray full of fresh loaves. Melville had closed in the last remaining gap, where his own house opened on St Mary’s Wynd, with a piked iron fence. Melville’s house was accessed from a forestair in the courtyard, though the grandest of its windows looked out on the street at the far west corner of the northern front. All callers now must enter by discretion of the porter, through the college gate. On the east side, long abandoned, were the bare bones of the college and the chapel of St John. ‘One day,’ Andrew Melville said, ‘we will have a kirk here, or perhaps a library.’ Hew poked into the ruin, but saw no signs of life among the moss and pigeon droppings shoring up the walls. The tracery of windows shaped an arching shadow, open to the sky, and on the grassy sill which once had been God’s earth he found a piece of glass, coloured like a rose. Nothing more was left.

A pigeon fluttered past. Whatever thing had startled it did not disturb it now; it settled on a parapet, flapping its white wings. ‘The dows are a menace,’ Andrew Melville said, ‘they fly out to the fields, and beyond, to St Leonard’s, ravaging the crops. The principal complains. They are a constant source of quarrel betwixt our twa colleges that we could do without. Yet they are meek as lambs.’

They walked on to the kitchens, past the college wash house, where the stench from the latrines brought water to their eyes. ‘We
are waiting on the draucht-raker,’ Melville apologised, ‘to clean out the muck. The privies can be pungent, in the summer sun.’ A nether sink was clogged, and several kinds of filth had seeped up through the floor, effluvium and sediment met sour milk curds and cooking fat swilled down the kitchen drains. The sharp scent of a swooning water cut clean through it all, and made Hew catch his breath. He took a gulp of air, and satisfied himself that no one lurked inside, for no one but the raker could have lingered long.

The kitchen had its own aroma, none the less dispiriting, of college kale and sausages. A dozen blood black puddings bubbled on the hearth. Hew poked in a pot. ‘Are they made up on the premises?’ He was not sure what he imagined. The scudlar and the cook, with a bucketful of blood? But at this early stage, he could rule nothing out.

‘The puddings are bought in, from the flesher by the cross.’ The kitchen boy and cook both told the same tale: they had been together for the whole of the last hour. Where else should they have been, with the dennar to prepare?

On the south side of the college, past the common hall, were gardens filled with beanstalks, cabbage kale and leeks, which added bulk and substance to the college broths. These slender crops, though under constant siege, were nourished by the birdlime from the college doves, whose doocot lay beyond. The land to the south west, beyond the common lade, belonged to Robert Wood, the brother of the coroner, and no great friend to Hew. His wife was Clare Buchanan. Here Hew could find no access, for the garden door was locked, and no one but the pigeons saw the other side.

‘This search is fruitless, Hew,’ Melville said at last. ‘The college is secure, and I cannot fault the servants. The bursars and economus were with us in the lecture hall. And there is no one else has access to these grounds.’

Hew paused to consider this. Of the three men in the college who had not been at the lecture, the kitchen boy and cook had shared an alibi; both had told the truth, or both of them had lied. The porter
had no witness but the horror on his face, and that was plain enough, as eloquent an advocate as he had ever heard. Andrew agreed with him. ‘The porter is as honest as the day is long, and he has ay been loyal, though he is not wise. I cannot for a moment think that he colludes in this, nor has he the wit to think up such a draucht. As for the cook and kitchen boy, in some form of conspiracy, God knows that I see phantoms daily in my dreams, but else all reason fled, I will not think this.’

‘What phantoms?’ wondered Hew.

Andrew’s answer was evasive. ‘I have not been sleeping well. It does not matter now. But I will not accuse the porter or the cook. This search has thrown up nothing. Let us go back to the gate.’

The others had returned, with nothing to report. Whatever bird had lighted its dark feathers on the hawthorn tree had already flown. Hew looked back into the quiet sunlight, sensing there was something, somewhere, he had missed. ‘Were it yet too much to hope for,’ grumbled Bartie Groat, ‘that we might go home? For some of us have dinner boards, waiting at our colleges.’

Melville had the porter open up the gate. ‘For certain, you must go. And those of you that lodge here, to the frater hall. I am right sorry, gentlemen, that you were discomfited by this piece of mischief. Once I have the perpetrator, I will make him known to you. He shall feel our wrath. Until then, I must ask you that none of you shall speak of it, else ye may spread confusion, terror and alarm. So we rise above, and shall defeat our enemies, whatsoever men, or devils, they may be.’

There were murmurs of assent, as the crowd began to drift. Hew heard Bartie mutter, ‘Aye, tis very like!’ He took his friend aside. ‘You never telt me, Bartie, why you came today. For certain it was not to listen to a wedding speech.’

‘You are like a hunting hound,’ Professor Groat complained, ‘that scents game on the wind. I have not seen such vigour in you since you went to Ghent. Tis plain enough to see that you are in your element. Aye, very well, the truth. An old man’s life is yet too short
to waste in venting spleen. I have put by my grudge. The truth is, I had hoped that Andrew Melville might support me in the fight against the faculty. I suppose you know that they are minded to discard my post?’

‘Bartie, I had no idea!’ Whatever Hew expected, it had not been this.

‘The fund will stretch to two professors, where it strains at three,’ Professor Groat explained. ‘My role is small and circumscribed, yet I maun confess to you, I know no other life. My best hope is the principals, to make a case for me. Else I maun be a pedagogue to some laird’s futless lad, too feeble or to doltish to endure the grammar school. Rude bairns will hide my handkerchers, put paddocks in my bed. If I am thocht superfluous, so shall I end my days.’