St Mungo's Robin (2 page)

The incident she referred to had dismayed him badly. The clever, competent girl he admired and worshipped seemed to have vanished in the past weeks, to be replaced by a distracted snappish
individual who drove the servants and herself unmercifully. The household, taking its tone from Alys’s aged French duenna, kept its collective head down and smiled tolerantly behind her back.
Gil himself had escaped the worst of her wrath, had in fact been able to soothe her, until the previous afternoon when a chance remark in support of one of the maidservants had brought the skies
down on his head. He had backed off in dismay, and his sister Kate, also visiting the mason’s house in the High Street, had drawn Alys to her side, asking about music for the feast, but the
disagreement had not been resolved.

‘A perfect shrew,’ Tib repeated now, ‘so Kate and me and everyone else is to be boxed up and tidied away out of sight –’

‘My marriage has nothing to do with it!’ he began.

‘Then why did we never hear a word of this till after it was arranged?’

‘Why did I never hear a word of you not being content till now?’

‘Nobody asked me!’ she flashed. ‘And you needny bother yourself, I’ll see to my own future and no need for meddling from a lot of old women!’

She slammed her empty bowl down on the tray with such force that the wood split, and flounced off to the kitchen stairs. Gil finished his own porridge, rather grimly, set his bowl on the floor
for the dog to lick and went up to put his boots on. Like their uncle the Official, Canon David Cunningham, senior judge of the diocese, he had documents of his own to see to over in the Consistory
tower, but first he would go down to speak to Alys.

In his attic chamber, he kicked off the heel-less shoes he wore about the house and sat down on his narrow bed, aware of the strapping creaking under him. He lifted one boot from the kist at the
bed-foot, but paused, staring at the small image before which he had said his prayers earlier. St Giles looked enigmatically back at him, his pet doe leaping at his side. Sweet St Giles, he
thought, help me to mend this quarrel with Alys.

It had flared up very quickly. Alys had asked Kittock for a piece of paper with the menu for some part of the marriage feast on it, and scolded furiously when Kittock admitted it was mislaid.
Gil had lost track of Alys’s plans long since, but was dimly conscious that there were to be several instalments of the feast, over three or even four days, with different groups of friends
and family invited. He had said, half joking, ‘Does it matter, sweetheart? Will anyone notice, if there’s one meal the less?’

Kittock’s expression had frozen, and Alys had turned on him, scarlet-faced, brown eyes sparking dangerously, and upbraided him in a torrent of wrathful French.

‘Of course it matters! Your status and ours matter. I’m working all the hours there are so our marriage can be celebrated appropriately, at least you could be grateful, instead of
trying to undermine me with my own household!’

‘Alys!’ he had said, astonished. ‘Sweetheart, I am grateful, and I’m amazed at what you’re doing, but I don’t – I’m not trying to
–’

‘Then keep out of my business!’ she said sharply. ‘Let me manage things my own way.’

‘It seems to me,’ he began unwisely, and attempted to put his arms round her, ‘as if you’re doing too much. You’ll be exhausted –’

‘Just leave me alone,’ she ordered, and stuck her elbows out so that one dug into his stomach. ‘I’ve enough to do here without you getting in my way.’

Appalled, he had backed away, and found both Alys’s duenna Catherine and his sister Kate trying to catch his eye with identical warning expressions. Kate had managed to change the subject
to the music for the feast, and he had made his escape. Stout Kittock found him before he reached the house door.

‘Never mind her, Maister Gil,’ she had said comfortably. ‘She’s set herself far too much to oversee, but there’s nothing even the maister can do to stop her when
she gets like this, so never worry. She’ll be fine once it’s all over. Or once you’re all over,’ she added, nudging him and winking broadly. He had managed a smile, and got
himself out of the house somehow.

Sweet St Giles, he thought again. Grant me wisdom to manage this girl. I love her, I admire her, I want only her happiness. Help us both to make a good marriage. Help us both to make it to the
wedding.

The image seemed to stir, the painted face to flicker in a smile. At his side the candle flame leapt again in the draught from the window, where the grey light was growing. He bent to pull on
the first boot, wondering why it was that when Tib shouted at him he shouted back, but when Alys snapped he was horrified.

Down the wet High Street, past lit windows and dripping eaves, he turned in at the tunnel-like pend which led to the courtyard of the mason’s large stone house. Overhead,
heavy feet tramped on the floorboards of the room above the entry, and a burst of raucous song and a smell of linseed oil told him that the painters were still at work. The courtyard itself was
empty, though two paint-splashed ladders and a plank lay at the foot of the stair-tower in the near corner. Socrates bounded ahead across the shining flagstones to the main door, which opened as
Gil climbed the fore-stair. The dog sprang in, tail waving.

‘Gil,’ said Alys. She acknowledged the dog’s greeting, then drew his master in, helped him unwrap his wet plaid, and stepped into his embrace, slipping her arms round him under
his furred gown. ‘Gil, I am sorry,’ she said into his collarbone. ‘You are
a passynge good knyght and the best that euer I found
and I did wrong to shout at you.’

‘I’m marrying a shrew,’ he said teasingly, in the French they used when they were together. Then as she tensed in his grasp, ‘I’m sorry too, that I angered you,
sweetheart. What is it?’ he asked, feeling her draw back slightly. She shook her head, not looking up at him. ‘Alys, what is wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head again, and freed one hand to rub at her eyes. ‘But the painters say they need another week, and we still have to furnish our lodging,
and the apothecary has no more rose petals or ginger, and we’ve run out of braid to trim my gown with, and everything’s going wrong. Where has the dog gone?’

He held her away from him and looked at her, a slender girl in a mended gown of blue woollen, her honey-coloured hair dragged back out of the way, her face pinched with distress so that the high
thin bridge of her nose stood up like a razor.

‘Likely down to the kitchen, to find Nancy and the bairn. Is he well?’

‘John?’ She blinked distractedly, and gave him a brief smile. ‘Yes, he is well. He said my name this morning.’

‘Good. Alys, rose petals and ginger you can manage without, a housekeeper like you,’ he said firmly, ‘and I can’t advise you about the braid. Ask Kate, or use ribbons, or
something. Whatever you wear, you’ll be the loveliest woman in Glasgow. Come and sit down, sweetheart, and tell me about the painters.’

‘You make it sound so trivial,’ she said, following him into the hall. The household’s breakfast was long over, and the great trestle table had been taken down and the board
propped in its daytime place against the wall.

‘It is trivial,’ he said, pulling her down to sit beside him on the settle by the fire, ‘compared with being married. My darling, how can feasts and dresses matter when we are
to share the rest of our lives together?’

‘But I want everything to be perfect!’ she almost wailed, and rubbed at her eyes again.

‘Alys, it will be perfect, because we’ll exchange promises. And then,’ he said ruefully, ‘my sister Margaret’s husband will drink too much at the feast, my
godfather will tell jokes we’d rather not hear, the other burgesses will try to find out what was in the contract –’ Her mouth twitched, and she slid a sideways, teary look at
him. ‘I’ve been to other weddings,’ he said. ‘All those things will happen, and you can’t control them, so why worry about the rest?’

‘And what will you wear? Are your new clothes ready? You told me you ordered them, but you’ve never said they’ve come home. And Maister Kennedy’s?’

‘The gowns will come home in good time,’ he assured her. ‘Blue brocade for me, red velvet for Nick, and I’ve a new suit of clothes to go with it.’ He took her hands
in his free one. ‘Tell me about the painters.’

Her face crumpled with anxiety. ‘Maister Sproat says they need another week to finish the inner chamber, let alone the closet. The paint dries so slowly in this weather, even with the
brazier up there. What if we have to set the bed up in the outer room, in case people get paint on their clothes when they – when we –’

‘When they take us to bed?’ he said, aware of the ache in his loins at the very words. ‘I’d hoped we could avoid that,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve never liked
the custom. All the jokes and the shouting and banging pots and throwing of sweetmeats and favours. It would shrivel anyone’s pride.’

‘You joined in when Kate was wed,’ she said uncertainly.

‘I did not,’ he contradicted her, thinking of his sister, who went on two crutches because of a withered leg, and the shy merchant friend who was her new husband. ‘I contrived
to be in the way, so Augie could slip in the door alone and bar it from the inside. Those two of all people wouldn’t want to be publicly put to bed. And nor do we.’

‘I thought you would wish it,’ she said. ‘It’s the custom, after all. You mean we might not have to?’

‘If we’re clever about it.’ He bent his head to kiss her. She tilted her face so that their lips met, but drew back, shivering slightly, when he would have deepened the
embrace. She seemed to react like this every time he kissed her now. Concealing his anxiety, he dropped a peck on the high thin bridge of her nose, and said, ‘Sweetheart, shall we both go and
talk to the painters?’

Up in the inner chamber of their apartment, under one of the eastward windows which looked on to the courtyard, they peered at the board of yellowish samples the laddie had prepared, while the
laddie himself ground pigment on a slab of stone by the next window.

‘Ye see,’ said Maister Sproat, ‘it doesny come out gold-coloured whatever I do. I think it’s the ground we’ve used for the first coat, which is no a good white,
owing to it no being Paris white, on account of Daidie could find none in Glasgow the now. And the linseed ile in the top coat wad take it more to a yellowy cast and all,’ he added.

‘It looks like earwax,’ said Gil frankly. The laddie looked up grinning from his grinding-stone and Daidie, a spare fellow in a much-spattered canvas smock, snorted, but Maister
Sproat nodded solemn assent.

‘A good thought, maister,’ he agreed, ‘but no one that would appeal to my custom. No, no, “earwax-coloured” wouldny sell. What’s more,’ he added,
‘the longer we spend trying to match yir gold colour, the later it is drying and the less time we’ll have for the figures ye wanted by the hearth there. Saints, was it, or was it to be
the Muses or the Virtues? I’ve a note o’t somewhere.’

‘The Virtues,’ said Gil, ‘since I’m getting a virtuous wife.
The best and fairest may That ever I saw.
’ He looked down at Alys, and her elusive smile
flickered in response. ‘And maybe a saint on the other wall.’

‘Aah,’ said Daidie, ‘’at’s bonnie, in’t it no, maister?’

‘It is an all,’ agreed his master, ‘and I mind now, we’d agreed the Cardinal Virtues. That’s Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance,’ he recited, and
looked sternly at the laddie. ‘Mind that, young Jos. But you’ll no get your Virtues afore the wedding unless we can decide on a tint for these walls. If yir carpenters had shifted
theirsels a bit putting in the panelling, we’d ha been in here sooner, and all would ha been done by now.’

‘Does it have to be laid on in linseed?’ Gil asked, ignoring this. ‘Would some other sort of paint dry faster? And what would lay well on top of this ground colour?
You’re the colourman, Maister Sproat. Advise us.’

‘Uncle Eck,’ said the laddie softly. ‘Maister,’ he corrected himself as the older man looked round. ‘There was that chamber we done for the Provost. You mind, we
put milk-paint, two grounds and cover in that broken white, and then we glazed it red-coloured. It dried in no time, and it came out right well, you said it yersel.’

‘It sounds well,’ said Gil, turning to Alys again. ‘Red? Or another colour?’

‘Blue,’ she said decidedly. ‘Like the blue in the other chamber, but in milk-paint.’

‘Aye, we can do that,’ said Maister Sproat, with an approving nod at his nephew. ‘Be done in two days, even working by lamplight, if we can get enough sour milk. And if I put a
bit ox-gall to the last coat it’ll wash down a treat every spring for years. And the same blue within in your closet, maister?’

‘We’ve all the sour-milk curds you’d want, laid in brine at the yard, you ken that, maister,’ said Daidie, and peered past Gil. ‘Is that someone at your
door?’

They all looked out across the courtyard to where a lanky figure bundled in a plaid was conferring on the doorstep with one of the maidservants. As they watched, she pointed, and the visitor
nodded, came down the fore-stair and headed for the tower in the corner.

‘It’s Lowrie Livingstone from the college,’ said Gil in some surprise, recognizing the young man. ‘What’s he doing here? In here, Lowrie,’ he called, drawing
Alys into the outer room as the messenger’s feet sounded on the stair.

‘Maister Cunningham,’ said Lowrie. He stepped across the threshold on to the dustsheets, dragging his wet felt cap from his fair hair. ‘And Mistress Mason. Good day to you
both, and I’m sorry to break in on you this early. I’ve a word for you, maister, from Maister Kennedy.’

‘From Nick Kennedy? Is there some trouble?’

‘Aye, but it’s no at the college,’ said Lowrie. ‘It’s at the almshouse. St Serf’s, up by the castle. Maister Kennedy sent me to fetch you,’ he said,
grimacing. ‘They’ve found a dead man in the almshouse garden.’

The painters crowded into the doorway to listen, with exclamations.

‘A dead man?’ repeated Gil. ‘Who is it? One of the bedesmen?’

‘No the bedesmen, they’re all present. We think it’s the Deacon,’ Lowrie said cautiously. ‘It wasny full day when I left to find you, and so far as we could tell in
the dark he’s been stabbed. So Auld – so Maister Kennedy said, since we’re within the Chanonry and you’re the Archbishop’s questioner, we’d do better to fetch
you first than last, so here I am.’