Queen & Country (33 page)

Sir Andrew Wood said, shakily, ‘Pray God the devil does not come again for him.'

Both men stared at him. ‘Tell me,' Hew enquired, ‘what you think has happened here?'

‘It is plain enough,' the coroner explained, ‘that this Pieter stole the gold from him, to pay the devil back. The devil spared him then, but came for him at last, in the college hall. The dummel witnessed it.'

‘Dear me,' muttered Giles, ‘if that is what you think, what hope can there be for the common man?'

‘What do you think, then?' Sir Andrew put to them.

‘We think,' said Hew, ‘the devil was a man dressed up.'

The crownar shook his head, ‘No. It cannot be. For where, then, did they go, with that poor man's gold? You heard him say there was no place to hide.'

‘This is true, and pertinent,' said Hew. ‘Perhaps there
was
a mine, or a fissure in the rock, and Pieter Kemp had found it. Or perhaps our friend was so afeart he did not stay to see, in spite of what he says. You might take your men, and climb up there to look.'

The crownar swore at him. ‘Never, on my life,' he said. ‘No man, fearing God, would pull a trick like that. To dress up as the devil there, in order to deceive, would call upon himself a fury straight from Hell itself. That is a haunted place.'

Superstition had the better of him then; and that was not so rare, for all men kenned the devil watches over gold, and that evil spirits linger in the air of country vales and hills. And who but the devil could drive a man, to such a bleak and godless end, the taking of his life?

‘What God-fearing soul could dare do such a thing?'

‘Perhaps it was a man,' said Hew, ‘who was not troubled by a God, that he had never heard.'

The tenant's account made it seem more imperative still, that they should discover the dead painter's workshop. They were in two minds whether it was safe to take the boy with them. Hew believed they should. ‘We may never ken, unless he comes to show us. And in coming to that place, he may understand that his friend is lost to him, and will not come again.' Roger, when he heard, insisted to come too. And, conceded Giles, there was a certain sense to it. He knew as much of alchemy as any one of them, and far more than Hew. ‘If the truth of it is what we do expect, the air will be noisome,' he warned. ‘We must all take care.'

It was Roger who suggested they should take the plague masks, and they were at last a grim little party that came through the town, past the South Street colleges and down towards the Kinnessburn, where the painter's boy broke free from Roger's careful hands, and ran towards the barn, which, had they allowed, he could have shown them all the while. And there they found the relicts of the master painter's life, and the stolen colours, which had brought about his death.

And Hew, from his experiment at Geordie Heriot's shop, could understand it well, without the explanations of the subtle alchemists. Bronckhorst's red was cinnabar, a compound in the rock of mercury and sulphur, in its natural state. The painter had extracted from it its component parts, to bubble in a pot and amalgamate again, to distil into vermillion clear and pure and deep. He had used the
argent vive
, extracted from the cinnabar, to purify the gold he shivered into leaf,
and, using like for like, to paint into his picture, mercury for Mercury, or Hermes in the Greek, god of thieves, and fugitives, shifting, sly and fleet. The painter stilled his colours, secretly, and jealously, closed inside his shop. And the mercury he stilled had crept its noxious fumes, silently, insistently, where he worked and slept. Its poison had made loose the teeth of the apprentice boy, sheltered at some distance from it; and closer, more insidious, it had worked its poison in the painter's mind.

The painter's boy showed them the kist, where they found the costume that his master made for him, and coaxed him to put on, to perpetrate his fraud: the hairskin hose and tail, the make-up of red lake. The boy could not have kent, thought Hew, what it was it meant. But had the horror of it come to haunt the man? Had he tried to wipe that horror from his face? Had he felt remorse, that he had made a boy who had no kenning of the devil or the word of God, dress up in his garb? Or had the devil, in his madness, come again, for him?

They could never know. The painter's boy, shown to the place, understood at last, that he was quite alone. And by the kist that held his uncouth devil's costume, he knelt down and howled.

‘The pity is,' said Giles, later at St Salvator's, ‘I think we must destroy this painting. Else the mercury in it may leach out into the air, and poison us all, gradually. Art has not assisted nature here, at all.'

‘That is sad,' said Hew. ‘And I am sorry too, that the picture that the prentice made of you was ruined. Perhaps, when he is well enough, he will make another.'

The doctor shook his head. ‘I do not think so. I never felt at ease with it. And what is a likeness, after all, but a poorer imitation of the life?'

‘That is true enough.' Hew smiled. ‘And, we still have you. Who, in your uniqueness, bear no imitations.'

He was teasing now, but Giles continued seriously, ‘What would be the purpose of it? None, while I am here. And after I am gone, in a hundred years, in fifty years, or less, it would be no more than a
pattern of a man, of some old physician, long ago forgotten. Better now, by far, to have a picture of the skull.
Memento mori
, Hew, for that is all we are.'

When the painter's boy was well enough, Hew relieved Roger of his care, and took him down to Edinburgh. Roger was aggrieved at this. ‘I have not finished with him, yet. He has more to learn.'

Hew said, ‘He is not your pet. And you have your own work, now, to attend to.' He felt that Roger's influence on the painter's boy had come quite far enough. He took with him the book of signs, and the book of sketches that the boy had done, and set the painter's boy before him on his horse. The boy did not resist. He had given up his searching for the painter, and had lapsed into a placid, solitary quietness, allowing himself to be led, with little hope or care. The medicines that Giles had given him had washed away, perhaps, the last trace of poison that had hurt his body, but the damage to his mind was harder to expel, and difficult to mend.

Hew took him, and the books, to Adrian Vanson's house. ‘What is this, you bring me?' Vanson said. ‘Have I not enough of hopeless boys?'

The painter's boy did seem a hopeless case. He had a hollow dint in one side of his head, and the stubble that grew back there was an odd shade to the rest. He was large and shambling, and with his poking tongue and useless muckle lugs he might have looked quite comical, but for the sad intelligence that showed behind his eyes. ‘So,' Vanson said. ‘Another futless hulk. Break it to me, now, what this one cannot do.'

‘He cannot hear,' said Hew, ‘so he will not heed you when you rail at him. And he cannot speak, so he will not cheek you, like your own boys do. He cannot trim a brush, or wash a board with size. He does not ken at all, how to grind the colours to make into paint. But, he can draw.'

He gave Vanson the books with the drawings and signs, and Vanson turned the pages, looking through the drafts. He was quiet for a moment. Then he answered. ‘So. Drawing is a start.' He looked at Susanna, and smiled. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think,' Susanna said, ‘that he must be hungry. Boys are always hungry. And, since our dinner is done, he has come at an opportune time.'

Hew went to Heriot's shop, to collect his wedding ring. And Heriot told to him the story he had heard, about a seeker after gold who was taken by the devil from a mine at Largo Law. It seemed Sir Andrew's tenant had not been the only man that Pieter Kemp had fleeced, for there were several more. ‘The devil claims his ain, then, after all,' Geordie said.

‘I should have heard you, then,' said Hew, ‘and spared myself a trail.'

He put the ring in its pouch in his pocket to keep safe. They had come no closer to the calling of the banns, for he had made no progress at all in finding out the source of the king's pleated picture. He made extensive enquiries, at Holyrood and Canongate, but to no avail. And he was forced to acknowledge that Maitland had been right, the council had already made a searching inquisition, there was no stone in that city that had not been overturned. It irked him when he found a dead end to each path, not willing to admit his failure to the king. He felt he had to prove himself, his faith and trust, to James, and that he owed a debt of some sort to that queen, that he could not explain. He was certain, in his heart, that the answer lay with Bronckhorst. But Bronckhorst had left Scotland years before, and all trail of him had long grown cold. At least, the picture had not caused the death of Pieter Kemp, in any crucial sense.

For Frances' sake, he was less alarmed. The king had moved towards a concord with Elizabeth, and Andrew Wood believed it likely they would come to terms. Whatever Hew felt privately about the crownar now, he was a useful source of information, from both the Scottish and the English courts. It seemed likely that the law would be relaxed in time, as the people's heat and temper simmered down, and that he and Frances would be let to live in peace. And Frances, if not welcomed, had at least been tolerated, when she went
to town. St Andrews had relaxed, he thought, the fierceness of its ministry, had mellowed in the plague. Perhaps the town would let, and leave the lovers be? So he had hoped and thought, as he returned back home. So did he misjudge the temper of that Kirk.

Chapter 22

Letters Home

At the chapel of St Leonard's in St Andrews, the principal arose, uneasily, from prayer that brought his troubled mind as little resolution as if he had said bah to it, and spent the hour in bed. As the students filed before him, to begin upon their day in a muddled morning haar, he pushed past them to waylay the regent Robert Black, before he opened up his Aristotle. ‘I wanted to ask you,' he said, ‘whether you were free to take the prayers tonight. There is, you see, an extraordinary meeting this evening of the kirk session, that I am compelled to attend.'

Robert said, of course. The implication that he might not have been free, to attend to an event that circumscribed his waking life, was so preposterous he felt there must be something more his principal had meant by it, and that it was a cloak, for what he had to say to him. And so he waited, meekly there, in certain fear and hope the principal would wrestle out the substance of a closer confidence. His patience was rewarded when the master said, ‘The truth is, if I could, I would rather stay, for the matter is a case that is vexing to me. It concerns the household of a friend of yours, Hew Cullan, up at Kenly Green. You may have heard, or not, that he is home again. That young man courts trouble as a papist courts controversy.'

‘I heard that he was home. I have not seen him yet. What has he done now?' asked Robert Black.

‘I do not have the details, yet, to hand. But it concerns, it seems a case of fornication, that is far from straight, and marriage of a sort, not entirely regular, and an errant stranger, harboured in his house.
I have to say, I do not like it much. He is a contentious soul, and his wrangling in the past has brought a trouble here, I would not well contend with in the college. And yet, I do confess, there is some goodness in him. Do you recall that boy, the wry unruly student we expelled from here?'

‘Roger,' Robert said.

‘Aye, twas Roger Cunningham. We all were quite convicted that he was a hopeless case, but Hew kept faith with him, and took him to St Salvator's, and now, I understand, his honour is restored. Giles Locke thinks the world of him. It was the elder brother had us all deceived. You heard how he turned out? And butter would not melt, in that sly limmar's mouth, sleek fish as he was. Hew is quite a searching kind of man, to flush a matter out, and I am inclined to trust his better judgement. My worry is, you see, that his involvement in this case will bring us in dispute, and worse, to disrepute, in kirk and university. Then will Andro Melville wag his lofty brow at us, and say that we are wanting in our own morality.'

‘But surely,' Robert said, ‘it is matter for the parish, not the college. Hew Cullan is no longer an assistant here.'

The principal was gratified. ‘You are right, of course. And I maun thank you, Robert, that you bring it to my mind. He shall be treated as a member of this kirk, and not of our community, which will free my judgement from preferential prejudice. Thank you for your help.'

It occurred to Robert Black that he might send a word to Hew, in order to prepare him for unpleasantness to come. On balance, he decided, he would rather not. When Hew required his help, he sought it soon enough, and not without a cost of inconvenience to him. Robert was a man who liked a quiet life. He had stayed a regent there for many happy terms, without aspiring ever to progress to a professor, and he believed that stagnant waters should be left unstirred.

At six o'clock, the principal left St Leonard's college for the Holy Trinity. In the absence of its own incumbent, he was called to moderate the session of the elders of the parish kirk. It was not a role that he had entered warmly, or with relish. The kirk session had not
met through the months of plague. When the threat died down, the court had met sporadically, and without conviction. Perhaps the people who survived were too afflicted to offend, or perhaps the session felt they had been scourged enough, by the effects of the plague. Their own chastisements were eclipsed and all but made superfluous, trumped in scale by God's. They were hindered, too, by the lack of a minister. The bishop had stepped in, but found himself at odds, and often excommunicated by the vengeful presbyters. The principal lost track of whether Patrick Adamson was lately out or in. Whatever stage the bishop reached, in favour or disgrace, did not deflect him from his preaching in the kirk. But it did deter some of his flock, who drifted away to hear Andrew Melville, even though he had not been ordained. The fabric showed signs of a fracture. To keep the kirk whole, and to restore morale and spirit in the gloomy town, the elders of the kirk had endeavoured to restore those lively entertainments which had been the highlight of the Sunday service, the cuckstool and the jougs and the parading there of penitents, and the fleshly celebration of the people's sins. The St Leonard's principal did not care for that. He had no will to see a lassie shiver in her shift, all for the sake of a man she had kissed. The people would have said, he looked down his nose; but he was better suited to his dead philosophy than to the rough and rumpus of a living kirk.