St Mungo's Robin (34 page)

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Gil, drawing up another stool. ‘Maybe recognizing you shouldny ha done it would be the first step.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, and sighed. ‘I never thought it would be such a –’

‘Such a what?’ he said after a moment.

‘I thought it was just atween Michael and me,’ she said, her face softening as she spoke her lover’s name. ‘It never came into my mind that the rest of the family would
make such a tirravee about it.’

‘That was foolish.’

‘I suppose.’ She shrugged. ‘It still doesny seem right to me. Here’s you and Kate both wed for love – why can I no follow my liking too? It’s no fair,
Gil.’

‘Life isny fair.’ He studied her face in the candlelight. Despite her brave tone, it was clear she had been crying. ‘Tib, I’ll do what I can for you, but I’ll make
no promises. Sir James is very angry, and he’ll have to be talked round first afore anything else. As to what Mother will say when she gets here – and you’ll have to make your
peace wi Kate as well.’

She nodded, shivering.

‘But no wi Alys,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you, Gil, I never took much to Alys till now. She’s been as kind to me the day – sitting up here letting me talk, when
she’d all to do at her own house.’ She smiled briefly at Gil in a way that reminded him of Alys’s elusive expression, and went on diffidently, ‘And there was something she
said that made me think a bit, Gil.’

‘What was that?’ he prompted when she paused.

‘Well. She’s got no mother, and no sisters, only that Catherine who’s more like a nun than our Dorothea is. She’s got no one to –’

‘To what?’

‘Well, I asked Margaret years ago what it was like to lie with your husband,’ she said in a rush, ‘and she and Kate both had Mother’s wee lecture, which maybe I’ll
be spared now, and I’d wager Dawtie kens at least as much as I did afore I went to Michael’s bed, but – but Alys – she doesny ken what to expect –’

‘Are you saying she’s afraid?’ Gil demanded, enlightenment reaching him. Tib nodded. ‘Of me?’

‘No, not of you, of your – of bedding wi you.’

He was silent, staring at her. It would explain it, he thought, it would explain so much. The way she shied away from kissing, her reluctance to say what Dorothea had meant . . .

‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘Tib, my thanks for this. I should ha seen it for myself.’

‘You’re too close to see it,’ she said.

‘You’ll be as fearsome as Mother when you’re older,’ he said.

‘Spare me! I’d sooner be like our grandam.’

He sat staring at the brazier for a little longer, fitting the things which had worried him into this idea. It made sense. It might take longer to work out what he lacked himself, but that could
be dealt with at another time. Just now he had a case to make out for John Veitch. He remembered the questions he had for his sister.

‘We found a handcart,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s here in our washhouse the now. If you get a look at it in the daylight, could you tell me if you mind it?’

‘I might mind it better by lamplight,’ she said reasonably. ‘Where was it?’

‘St Andrew’s chapel in Vicars’ Alley. It’s the one they use for gathering alms for the lepers. It was already at the gate to the bedehouse when you got there?’

‘It was. And someone moving about on the green, too.’

He thought a moment further, fishing for a distant memory.

‘Tib, did you say you’d seen John Veitch? When was that?’

‘Aye, I did. He was coming down from the Wyndhead when Andy Paterson and I came up the High Street. He’d a lantern, but I got a good look at him as well by someone’s torch on
the end of the house-wall. I kent him well enough.’

‘What time would that be?’

She shrugged. ‘About nine o’ the clock or a bit after, maybe?’

‘And he was going down the hill,’ said Gil slowly, ‘and then when you got on to the Stablegreen, after you’d got rid of Andy,’ Tib gave him a contrite smile,
‘the handcart was there and there was someone in the trees. So John Veitch didny put the Deacon’s body over the wall.’

‘I never thought he did.’

‘But this makes it certain.’

‘I suppose it does,’ agreed Tib, sounding surprised. ‘Is that important?’

‘It is.’ Gil got to his feet. ‘Thanks for that, Tib. And for the other.’ He bent to kiss her, and she returned the salute.

‘Have I been a help?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He paused. ‘How did you get rid of Andy, anyway? Did Maggie not hear you in the yard?’

‘She was out,’ said Tib, ‘at some of her friends’, which was a bit of luck, and Matt was no to be seen either. There was only daft William in the kitchen. I never had to
explain myself to anyone. Then I walked in in the morning as if Andy had just left me there.’

‘Maggie was out,’ repeated Gil. ‘Tib, you are a great help. And if you’ll look at that handcart the morn’s morn that’ll be a help too.’

He raised his hand to make the sign of the Cross, and recited their mother’s evening blessing. She spoke the familiar words with him, and he went out and back down to the hall, where his
uncle was still immersed in the Murray perjury papers.

He sat down on the stone bench in his uncle’s oratory, staring at the gleam of candles on the Virgin’s gold-leaf halo and piecing the sequence of events together. He was nearly
there, he knew it. Two of the stories were beginning to make sense, though the third one was harder to fit into the picture. What must I still do? he asked himself. Put my hand on Naismith’s
cloak and hat, find the place where he was stabbed, identify the two weapons which stabbed him and hence name the guilty persons. Prove that John Veitch didn’t kill the man Hob, though I
probably can’t prove who did kill him. And Humphrey – what about Humphrey? Does he truly not recall what happened, or is he simply not willing to tell it? And if he’s unwilling,
then for which of two possible reasons?

‘Gilbert,’ said his uncle’s voice, rather sharply, and he realized the Official had spoken several times already. ‘Either be quiet or speak loud enough for me to hear
you. I canny be doing wi you muttering away over there.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ He rose from his seat, blinking as he turned his eyes away from the gleaming halo. ‘I was miles away.’

‘I can tell that,’ agreed his uncle. ‘It’s late, Gil. Bid Maggie set the ale on to warm if she’s not done it already.’

Gil moved towards the kitchen stair, but before he reached it there was a loud knocking at the street door. Socrates leapt up and barked once. Gil paused in surprise, and Maggie’s voice
floated up from the kitchen.

‘Our Lady save us, who’s that at this hour, and Matt out winching and me wi my stays unlaced?’

‘I’ll get it,’ Gil called. He lifted a branch of candles and crossed to the other stair, wondering how many more times he would answer the door today. The dog followed him,
paused in the doorway, then hurried down the stair, claws rattling on the stone steps, tail swinging in the candlelight.

‘It’s ower late,’ said Canon Cunningham disapprovingly. ‘Who would come calling at this time o night?’

‘I think I know,’ said Gil, his spirits lifting, as he heard voices, indistinct through the heavy oak door, one deep, one lighter, male and female.

‘I had to show you this,’ said Alys, under her father’s apologies to Canon Cunningham. ‘I’m certain it’s significant.’

‘She would come up the hill now, nothing would do but I bring her – I must apologize for disturbing you at this hour,’ Maistre Pierre was saying.

‘What is it?’ Gil asked, taking her hand. She’s afraid, he was thinking, afraid of – she’s a gently reared girl with no sisters and no mother. How do I reassure
her?

‘No matter, no matter,’ said the Official. ‘Is it something important?’

‘I think it is, sir,’ said Alys. Her clasp on Gil’s hand tightened briefly, then she let go and went forward to greet Canon Cunningham. He kissed her with obvious pleasure and
seated her on the bench by the brazier. Socrates sat down beside her with his chin on her knee.

‘It’s aye a pleasure to see you, lassie. Fetch some refreshment, Gil.’

‘No need for that,’ said Maggie from the stair door. She came forward, wrapped in her plaid for decency, and set down the tray of spiced ale and little cakes. ‘Good e’en
to ye, maister, lassie. I hope nothing’s amiss down the road?’

‘No, all’s well,’ Alys assured her. ‘All goes ahead as we have planned. Only, I wished to show Gil what I have found in this document.’

‘Document?’ said Canon Cunningham, pricking up his ears. ‘What document, lassie? No your contract, I hope.’ He laughed drily at his own joke, and Alys’s elusive
smile flickered.

‘No, sir. It relates to the death at the bedehouse.’ She opened her purse and drew out Agnew’s tablets in their brocade bag. Gil froze in dismay, but without glancing at him
she went on, ‘I’m not at liberty to say how I came by this, sir. It is a set of tablets belonging to Maister Agnew, and with them this.’

She extracted the parchment with its dangling seals. The Official took it from her and unfolded it.

‘A disposition, ten year since,’ he said. Gil paused in handing beakers of spiced ale to look over his uncle’s shoulder. ‘For the support of their son Humphrey, Thomas
Agnew and Anna Paterson gifting a significant plot of land . . .’ Canon Cunningham ran his eye down the crackling sheet. ‘And after his death – yes, yes, very
provident.’

‘Provident?’ Gil leaned closer. ‘That wasny my opinion. What does it –?’

‘No, no, it reverts to the donors or their heirs,’ said his uncle, tilting the document to the light. ‘It’s perfectly clear. Quite well worded, indeed.
Thomas Agnew,
younger, wrote this.
Aye, very neat work.’

‘Exactly,’ said Alys, meeting Gil’s eye across the hearth. ‘Do you have the bedehouse copy, Gil? You were going to bring it here for safe keeping.’

‘If it’s that poke of dusty papers you brought in the other day, Maister Gil, it’s under your bed,’ said Maggie from where she stood in the shadows.

‘Why?’ demanded her father. ‘What is this? She has not explained it yet.’

‘The bedehouse copy wording isny the same,’ said Gil cautiously. ‘I’m sure I mind a quite different final disposition.’ He handed over the beakers he carried, and
made for the stair. ‘I’ll fetch it down the now.’

‘Are you saying the two copies do not agree?’ said his uncle as he left the hall. ‘I would ha thought better of Thomas Agnew.’

Returning with the sack full of documents, Gil sat down beside Alys. She reached in to extract the nearest bundle and inspected it, oblivious to her father and Canon Cunningham who were still
exploring the different ways in which the two copies might have come to differ. The bundle they wanted was, inevitably, the last; Gil shuffled the rest back into the sack, while Alys untied the
tape and picked through the folded dockets.

‘This is it,’ she said, opening it out. ‘And the map that was with it, as well. Yes, I was sure this was what I remembered, Gil.’

‘Well?’ demanded her father. ‘What does it say? Was it worth dragging me up the hill at this hour in the rain?’

‘Oh, it was,’ said Gil. ‘This version has the property revert to the bedehouse absolutely after Humphrey’s death.’

‘Ah!’ said his uncle.

‘And what happens now, maister?’ asked Maggie from the shadows. ‘The man’s deid, right enough, but he’s risen again. Does it stay wi the bedehouse, or go back to
his family, or what? What’s the law when someone rises up?’

‘What’s more to the point,’ pronounced the Official, ‘is, why are these documents no the same and which is the true one?’ He straightened his spectacles and looked
about him. ‘We need a good table. Over yonder.’

With the two documents spread out side by side on the altar in the oratory, lit by all the candles they could squeeze into the space, all four of them peered at the lines of neat writing while
Maggie waited hopefully by the hearth.

‘Neither looks to have been altered,’ said Gil after a moment. ‘The dates are the same, and it’s all scribed in the one hand. Agnew tried to suggest to me,’ he
explained to his uncle, ‘that Deacon Naismith might have altered some of the papers.’

‘No,’ said Canon Cunningham thoughtfully. ‘The one man has writ all of both these, and the hand and the pen are the same in the text as in his signature and monogram. I’d
no swear to it being the same batch of ink, but that happens to all of us. I wonder . . .’ He ran careful ink-stained fingers over the surface of the parchment nearer him. ‘Gilbert,
what do you think to this?’

Gil did the same, then bent to view the document against the light of the candles. It took a little time as he found separate angles to view the several folds of the parchment, but eventually he
shook his head.

‘This one’s a single draft,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s been no erasure. No even a word scraped out, that I can detect.’

‘Nor this one,’ said Alys in puzzled tones. ‘There’s a correction here to the name of the bedehouse, but that is the only one.’

‘The signatures,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Do they accord?’

‘Whose marks are they?’ Alys asked. ‘The Deacon’s is there – whatever is his name? Aller – Allerinshaw?
Diaconus sancti Servi.
And the sub-Deacon. Both
these are the same on the two documents.’

‘Here is Thomas Agnew of Kilsyth,’ supplied Maistre Pierre, ‘and his wife’s mark below it, properly attested in both places. And also their son Thomas Agnew younger, who
I suppose is the man we know. Is this what you mean by his monogram?’ he asked, one large forefinger on the elaborate penwork below Agnew’s signature. ‘What does it depict? A
mercat cross?’

‘Aye, that’s his monogram,’ agreed Gil. ‘And the witnesses – James Paton, William Scott. I wonder if either of them would recall the terms of the gift? No, I doubt
it, they’re both clerks in the tower, aren’t they, sir? They’ll witness a dozen such things in a week, and this was ten years ago.’

‘They are.’ David Cunningham was still running his fingers over the lines of script on the two documents. ‘This is very odd, Gilbert. I canny think what he’s been about
here. The seals are undisturbed, all the signatures compare, the writing is original in both, and yet –’