St Mungo's Robin (7 page)

‘Look at this!’ he said as Maistre Pierre reached him.

His friend stared down into the garden in some amusement. ‘It seems the young men have angered the old ones. Should we defend them, Gil?’

The rain had eased slightly, and outside one of the little houses, Michael and Lowrie stood at bay, the dog in front of them. They were surrounded by an indignant gathering of elderly men, two
of them waving sticks in a threatening manner, with Mistress Mudie clutching her plaid round her head and adding her voice to the chorus. The dog barked again. At the far end of the garden one or
two passers-by were staring with interest over the wall from the Stablegreen.

‘Merciful Christ,’ said Millar at the next window, ‘what have they done to set them off?’

‘What’s he say?’ echoed someone from below. ‘Tell me what’s he say?’

‘Sneaking around like thieves! And claiming you were ordered to search!’

‘Fit war ye deein, loons?’

‘– no way to behave in a decent bedehouse, as if any of my old men would do a thing like that –’

‘Magpies! Pyots! And they were sent from that hoodie!’ exclaimed a resonant voice, and continued in Latin; Gil had just time to recognize a phrase from the Apocalypse before Millar
said again,

‘Oh, merciful Christ. Sissie!’ he shouted, leaning out at the open shutters. ‘Sissie, get Humphrey out of there before he –’

‘Maister Cunningham, is that you?’ exclaimed Lowrie in relief, catching sight of Gil at the other window. ‘They’re no for letting us search their lodgings!’

Socrates gave out another deep bark.

‘I never thought,’ said Gil in dismay. ‘I should have warned them no to try.’ He leaned out like Millar and shouted ‘Quiet!’ at his dog. Socrates threw him a
resentful look, but reduced his utterance to a threatening rumble, all his white teeth on display. There was something on the ground between his forepaws.

Mistress Mudie at the back of the group was tugging at the arm of one of the brothers, a man twenty years younger than his confreres by his bearing, the source of the sonorous Latin. She
succeeded in dragging him away, still waving the other arm and declaiming, and they made for the door below the watchers’ feet, Latin and Scots rising in a kind of motet.

‘–
those who claim to be apostles but are not – we will throw you into prison, to put you to the test, for ten days you will suffer cruelly
–’

‘– there now, Humphrey my poppet, calm yourself, they’re no harm to you – come and sit down quiet and I’ll make you a lovely cup of hot milk wi honey in it
–’

‘I’d best deal wi this,’ said Millar, making for the door. ‘They’ll never digest their dinner if we don’t get them calmed down.’

‘He is garbling that text,’ said Maistre Pierre critically. As Millar left he turned away from the window to the tall rack of papers, and extracted another bundle at random.

‘I must go down too,’ Gil said after a moment. ‘Are you staying here?’

‘Oh, for certain,’ said Maistre Pierre, not looking up from a close scrutiny of the papers he held. ‘Leave Naismith’s keys with me if you are going. As I thought, Gil,
none of this adds up. I would like Alys to see it,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘but not now.’

‘Not now,’ agreed Gil, flinching from the idea. He set the keys on the table by the dead man’s purse and belt and crossed the room, listening carefully. Mistress Mudie’s
voice came up through the floorboards, babbling on like the mill-burn; Maister Humphrey replied, still in flowing Latin but less loudly. She seemed to be meeting with some success. Gil went out and
down the fore-stair.

In the dripping garden, Millar had already drawn the bedesmen away from their siege, and the audience on the Stablegreen had drifted away. When the two students saw Gil they slipped round to
meet him; Michael bent first, attempting to pick up whatever it was the dog had found, but Socrates put one hairy paw on top of it and bared his teeth a little further, then snatched the object up
himself and came to be praised for defending the young men, waving his tail. Gil patted him, accepted his gift, and said in apology, ‘I should have warned you no to try their lodgings, or at
least to be careful how you went. Did they strike you?’

‘Oh, it was no worse than my grandsire shouting at the servants,’ said Lowrie easily. ‘We’ve no found the cloak so far, maister.’

‘Did the dog find anything? No signs of blood? What’s this he’s brought me?’

‘No,’ said Michael in his gruff voice before his friend could speak. He had grown in the six months since Gil had first encountered him at the University, but was still shorter than
Lowrie, lightly built and mousy-haired, with a pointed chin and sharp cheekbones. ‘No a thing. He checked the place where the corp was lying again, but he never went anywhere else after
it.’

‘This is a stocking,’ Gil said in surprise, looking at the object his dog had given him. ‘Where did he find it? I’d best return it.’ He broke off, looking more
closely. Still crumpled in the folds in which it had been slid off its wearer’s leg, the item was wet from the grass and from Socrates’ mouth, but otherwise relatively clean. He shook
it out; it was finely knitted of linen thread, with clocks of fancy work on either side of the ankle, and it was barely longer than Gil’s hand and forearm. The mark of the garter was clearly
visible near the top.

‘This was never an old man’s garment. It’s a lassie’s stocking,’ said Gil. ‘What’s that doing in the alms-house?’

The two young men glanced at one another.

‘Er,’ said Michael, the scarlet flooding up over his face. ‘Er . . .’

‘Michael has access to the Douglas lodging,’ said Lowrie candidly, ‘which is the last house yonder by the gate, and a key to the gate itself. Need we say more,
maister?’

Michael threw him a grateful look. Gil glanced at the stocking again and knew a surge of envy.
Al nicht by the rose ich lay.
To be alone with one’s sweetheart – abed with
one’s sweetheart, indeed – without all the tumult of feasts and invitations, wedding-clothes and linen lists –

‘Well, well,’ he said, mustering a grin from somewhere, and handed the stocking over. ‘Don’t make any promises your father won’t approve, Michael. I hope you got
her out well before it was light.’

Michael nodded, mumbling something indistinct, and hastily stowed the delicate object in the breast of his gown.

‘We’d best be away, maister,’ said Lowrie. ‘We’ve a lecture at eleven o’clock.’

‘So Nick said,’ agreed Gil. ‘Come in out the rain first, and tell me what you’ve found.’

‘That’s easy done,’ said Lowrie, following him into the passageway through the main range. ‘We’ve found neither cloak nor hat, and the dog showed no more interest
in any of the places we’ve been.’

‘And where was that?’

‘No the chapel,’ said Michael.

‘No the chapel,’ agreed Lowrie, ‘since they were saying Terce, but we’ve looked in all the outhouses that were unlocked, save where the Deacon’s laid out, and we
looked in the kitchen. Mistress Mudie took the huff,’ he confessed, ‘and insisted we look in her own chamber off the kitchen and all, and in her kist. That was a bit – she’d
that Maister Humphrey in the kitchen, the mad one, and the dog wasny very taken wi him. Anyway, we’ve been everywhere we could, except the Deacon’s lodging and Maister Millar’s.
Oh, and we looked in here,’ he added, waving a hand to encompass the shadowy hall.

‘And the old men’s lodgings?’ Gil asked.

Lowrie made a face. ‘We’d already looked in Michael’s lodging – the Douglas house, the one at the far end on the right – and we’d got into all of them except
the mad one’s, which is when they cam tottering out wi their sticks displayed. So we never risked that one, maister, being wholly taken up wi defending ourselves,’ he admitted.
‘The dog wasny interested in any of their doors, except Michael’s, and all he found in Michael’s place was la – the lassie’s stocking. So we’ve no been much
help.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil. ‘That’s very useful. I wonder where the cloak is?’

‘Why does it matter?’ asked Michael.

‘He went out in it,’ said Lowrie, ‘and now he’s no wearing it.’

‘He might have left it somewhere.’

‘Miggle, you’ve seen him often enough.’ In the thin light from the two doors Lowrie’s lanky frame was briefly transformed to mimic a smaller, stouter, more self-important
man. ‘He’d never have left his bedehouse cloak, wi all that braid and the badge and all. Never mind it was a cold evening.’

‘So now we ken it’s no in the bedehouse,’ said Gil, ‘or at least if I can check Millar’s lodging we’ll ken. And thank you for searching.’

‘There’s another thing,’ said Lowrie. ‘I know about things setting after they’re deid, maister, but how sure is the timing? It’s a man we’re talking
about, after all, no a side of mutton.’

‘Well, it can take longer,’ said Gil, ‘it can be slower, but it’s no often quicker. Why?’

‘Well, I wondered if the Deacon might ha been alive this morning.’

‘This morning?’ repeated Gil, startled. ‘No, he’d never have set that quickly. Why?’

‘Well, that’s it,’ said Lowrie. ‘I thought I saw him in the chapel, when we came to say Mass, though he wasny in his usual place. So how could he have been dead last
night, if he was at Mass this morning?’

‘A good question,’ agreed Gil. ‘How certain are you that you saw him? Could it have been someone else?’

‘No very,’ admitted Lowrie. ‘But I’d swear I saw an extra person within the quire, just the dark figure wi the badge on the breast like the others, and who else was it
like to have been?’

Gil looked from one young man to the other. ‘Did you see this, Michael?’

Michael shook his head. ‘I’d the candle. You don’t see much past that.’

‘Come and show me where you saw him, Lowrie.’

They went out and across the outer courtyard to the chapel door, which was now closed. Within, the candles still burned on the altar of St Serf, on either side of a clumsy wooden crucifix.

Even with these, even with daylight seeping reluctantly through the narrow windows, the little box-shaped building was full of shadows. As a place intended for clerks to worship in, it had no
separate nave, but the stall seats faced inward, six on either hand, and their high backs and partial sides of Norway pine formed a sort of internal quire, with a painted screen and curtained
doorway at its westward end to shut out the worst of the draughts. Socrates set off, claws clicking on the worn tiles, to explore the dim space between the pine uprights and the plastered outer
walls where there was room for any lay folk who wished to hear the Office or the Mass.

‘There’s no vestry,’ said Lowrie, ‘so we robe in one corner or another. That corner, the day,’ he waved a hand. ‘We light the candle and the censer and go in,
and Maister Kennedy begins the Mass.’

‘And the bedesmen are there waiting for you?’

‘I think they’ve said Prime by the time we get here.’ Lowrie held the curtain aside, and he and Michael followed Gil into the quire. ‘Maister Millar leads them in
procession from the hall, so he was sitting up in his own place, I mind that. I’d the censer the day, no the candle, but it’s still no that easy to see out into the dark, you
understand, and the black cloaks don’t show well, and the lugs of the stall sides hide all the faces. It can be quite strange,’ he admitted, ‘up here in the dark, wi all the
voices round you and nobody to see. Just the same, their badges catch the light, and I thought I could see four each side, as if the Deacon was there and all. No in his own place opposite Maister
Millar,’ he gestured at the two more elaborate stalls nearest the altar, ‘but down the west end next to Father Anselm. Maybe Mistress Mudie saw him,’ he added, ‘she was near
the outer door when we came in, though she aye slips out after the Elevation to see to their porridge.’

Gil stopped at the altar step and turned, looking into the shadows.

‘Go and sit where you thought you saw him,’ he suggested. Lowrie obliged, spreading one hand across his chest to simulate the badge, and Gil nodded agreement. ‘Aye, I see what
you mean. Your face is hid by the side where it curves out, but I can see your hand fine. Michael, what can you see?’

‘The now?’ said Michael nervously. ‘I can see his hand, aye, if he’d a bedehouse cloak on you’d see the badge fine. And I’ll swear the Deacon wasny in his own
seat the morn,’ he added.

‘So was he here, then?’ Lowrie asked. Socrates reared up, one paw on the book-rest, peering into his face, and he reached out and patted the dog.

‘Aye, but he can’t have been.’ Gil paced down between the stalls, frowning. ‘There’s no doubt the man we lifted from the garden was dead by Compline last
night.’

‘Maister Forsyth’s lecture,’ said Michael.

‘Aye, but before you go, Michael, I want a word wi you.’

The two students exchanged glances.

‘I’ll wait outside,’ said Lowrie.

As the door closed behind him Michael seemed to brace himself as for execution. Gil eyed him with some sympathy, and said reassuringly, ‘It’s none of my duty to oversee your
behaviour, Michael. I’m no asking who she is.’

‘You’re no?’

‘No. Just watch you don’t get entangled in something your father won’t support.’ Michael stared at him open-mouthed, and he went on, ‘I want to know about your
movements, yesternight and the morn – what time were you stirring about the bedehouse, and where. Even if you saw nothing, it helps.’

‘Oh.’ Michael swallowed. ‘I never thought of that. We must have – Oh,’ he said again, and put a hand on the nearest desk to steady himself.

‘Did your lass come in by this gate?’

Michael swallowed again, and shook his head.

‘Past Sissie Mudie?’ he said. ‘Not likely! I’ve got the keys,’ he disclosed. ‘I’d got permission to lie out of the college for the night, seeing as I
was to ready the lodging for the old man – for my father. He’s due in Glasgow the morn for your marriage, maister.’ Gil nodded. ‘So I opened the back gate for her. That
would be about . . .’ He paused, reckoning. ‘After Sissie was done trotting about getting two of the old brothers to their beds. One of them has the house opposite ours, and the other
one’s next the hall. It would be near an hour after they finished their dinner, I suppose, afore even she started. And then the mad one began a great scene, and it took her long enough to
settle him. It felt like past midnight afore all was quiet, though I suppose it wasny.’