The Harper's Quine (4 page)

For a while Gil paid attention to the singing; then, as if
to a lodestone, he found his glance drawn in that direction
again. One of the men was just slipping away to another
altar, but it was almost with relief that he found Euphemia
Campbell’s slight person was still invisible.

When the Office ended and the choir had filed through
the narrow door in the screen and back into the vestry, the
church slowly emptied. Gil paused by the altar of St Giles
to leave money for candles. Earlier the image had glowed
in red and gold light from the west windows, and the
hind at the saint’s side had been resplendent in a coat of
many colours, but now the sun had moved round St Giles
and his pet stood in their workaday brown and white
paint. The holiday was over. Tomorrow, Gil thought,
I must go back to the Monteath petition. His heart sank at
the notion. Sweet St Giles, he said silently to the remote
image, give me strength to face what is set before me.

After a moment he made for the south door. As he
reached it Euphemia Campbell rose from her knees before
the altar of St Catherine, crossed herself with that distracting grace, and moved towards the door herself. Gil held it
open, bowing, and she favoured him with a luminous,
speculative smile and went out before him.

Following her, he paused on the door-sill to look around.
To the right, the Sempill party was gathering itself together,
Sempill himself emerging from a nearby clump of trees
scowling and fiddling with his codpiece. Lady Euphemia
strolled gracefully towards him and put her hand possessively on his arm. The whole party made for the gate, except
for the small sallow man, who stood for a moment longer
staring after Euphemia Campbell, one hand on his dagger.
Then, as she turned to look over her shoulder, he shied like a
startled horse and scurried after her.

Gil stood where he was, admiring the evening. He had
no wish to accompany John Sempill and his friends the
quarter-mile or so back to the two houses which faced one another across Rottenrow. The kirkyard was in shade, only
the high crowns of the trees still catching the light. Before
Vespers there had been people about, talking or singing.
Someone had been playing a lute, a group of children
danced in a ring, their voices sweet on the warm air, and
Gil had caught a glimpse of the two youngsters he had
seen earlier at the Cross, the boy’s striped hose conspicuous under the trees. The children had been called
home now, the lutenist had gone to find a more financially
rewarding audience, and only a last few parishioners
drifted up the path towards the gate.

To the left, against the pale bulk of the cathedral itself,
the Archbishop’s new work was in shadow. Robert
Blacader, Bishop of Glasgow, now since last January Archbishop of Glasgow, wanted to elaborate his cathedral, and
his eye had fallen on the Fergus Aisle. If one was precise
about it, the little chapel off the south transept was not
new work, but something started more than a hundred
years ago over the burial-place of that holy man Fergus
whose death had brought the young Kentigern to his dear
green place. It had been soon abandoned, probably when
the Chapter of the day ran out of money, the foundations
open to the weather ever since.

Gil considered the building site. The walls had now
reached shoulder-height, and stood surrounded by stacks of
timber for the scaffolding. A neat row of blocks of stone
waited to be cut to shape in the masons’ lodge whose
thatched roof Gil could see beyond the chapel. Hurdles supported on more scaffolding made a ramp for a wheelbarrow.
Tomorrow he must meet the master mason there.

The Sempill party had left the kirkyard. Patting his
purse, which was significantly heavier for the evening’s
card-play, Gil set off for home. Several of the songmen
thought they could play Tarocco, but had not learned the
game, as he had, from the card-players of Paris.

He wondered later how much difference it would have
made if he had gone to look in the building site then,
rather than in the morning.

It was surprising how much of the singing one could hear,
sitting shivering outside the cathedral at five o’clock in the
morning, trying very hard to remember whether a building site was consecrated ground or not.

Here in the kirkyard the birds were shouting. Inside, the
Vicars Choral had dealt with Matins and were cantering
through Lauds, with more attention paid to speed than
sense. A lot of the sound came through the windows, but
a certain amount of it, Gil reasoned, came by the door
which used to be the south transept entrance and now
stood firmly shut and locked above the muddy grass of the
Fergus Aisle, quite near to where someone had recently
been sick, and just above where the dead woman was
lying.

He sat on the scaffolding, fingering his beads and staring
at her. She had given him a most unpleasant turn. Coming
out early to meet the mason, since he was awake anyway
and there was no chance of breaking his fast until Maggie
got the fire going, he had climbed up the wheelbarrow
ramp and into the chapel to have the closer look he had
passed over last night, and there she was, lying half under
the planks by the far wall. He had thought at first she was
asleep, or drunk, until he smelled the blood; and then he
had touched her shoulder and found it rigid under his
hand.

The last paternoster bead reached his fingers. He rattled
through the prayer, added a quick word for the repose of
the lady’s soul, whoever she might be, and rose to have another look, the question of consecrated ground still niggling at his mind.

She was lying on her right side, face hidden in the
trampled grass as if she was asleep, one hand tucked
under her cheek. The other sleeve of her red cloth gown
was hitched nearly to the shoulder, the tapes of the brocade under-sleeve half-torn, and the blood-soaked shift
stiffened in sagging folds round her arm. The free hand
was strong, white, quite clean, with surprisingly long nails
and calloused fingertips. She wore a good linen headdress,
with a neat dark French hood over it. Round her waist was
a belt of red-dyed leather shod with silver, with no purse
attached to it, and she had no jewellery beyond a set of
finely carved wooden beads. She looked like a decent
woman, not one of the inhabitants of Long Mina’s wellknown house in the Fishergait. Gil could not rid himself of
the feeling that he had seen her before.

The sound of chanting was diminishing towards the
vestry on the other side of the nave. He realized Lauds
must be over, and there was still no sign of the mason, and
nobody to help him move the corpse, which could certainly not stay there.

A door clanked open, east along the buttressed honeycoloured flank of St Mungo’s. Children’s voices soared,
then paused as an angry adult voice entered at full
volume.

‘Andrew Hamilton! William! Come here this instant!’

That was the chanter himself, sounding surprisingly
alert after last night’s drinking session. Gil got to his feet,
intending to shout to him, and found himself looking out
over the roof of the masons’ lodge at Patrick Paniter,
broad-shouldered and angry in his robes, confronting two
blue-gowned trebles.

What were you about, that you were three beats late in
the Gloria? What was so interesting?’ The chanter
pounced. One boy ducked away, but the other was slower.
‘Give me that!’

Strong hands used to forcing music from the cathedral’s two organs had no difficulty with a twelve-year-old’s
grip.

‘Ow! Maister Paniter!’

Maister Paniter’s dark tonsured head bent briefly over
the confiscated object. ‘A harp key? What in Our Lady’s
name did you want with a harp key? It’ll never tune your
voice, you timber-eared skellum!’

‘It’s mine - I found it!’ The boy tried to seize it back, but
the chanter held it easily beyond his reach.

‘Then you’ve lost it again.’ His other hand swung. ‘And
that’s for boys who don’t watch the beat. What have I told
you about that? And you, Will Anderson, hiding behind
that tree! What have I told you? It’s-. . Y

‘It’s wickedness, Maister Paniter,’ they repeated in reluctant chorus with him.

‘Because
…?’

‘Because it interrupts the Office,’ they completed.

‘Remember that. Now get along to school before you’re
any later, you little devils, and you may tell Sir Adam why
I kept you.’

The fair boy, rubbing a boxed ear, ran off down the path
to the mill-burn. His friend emerged from behind the tree
and followed him, and they vanished down the slope,
presumably making for school by the longest way
around.

Gil drew breath to call to the chanter. He was forestalled
by a creaking of wood behind him, and a voice which said
in accented Scots, ‘Well, what a morning of accidents!’

He glanced over his shoulder, then back again, just in
time to see Maister Paniter hurl some small object into the
trees, and then withdraw, slamming the crypt door behind
him.

Gil turned to face the master mason, staring. The man
standing on the scaffolding was big, even without the furtrimmed gown he wore. A neat black beard threatened;
under the round hat a sharp gaze scanned the kirkyard
and returned to consider the corpse.

‘What has come to this poor woman in my chantier?’ he demanded, springing down from the planking. ‘And who
are you? Did you find her, or did you put her there?’

‘I am Gil Cunningham, of the Cathedral Consistory,’ said
Gil, with extreme politeness, ‘and I should advise you not
to repeat that question before witnesses.’ The French
mason, he thought. Could this be the father of his
acquaintance of yesterday?

‘Ah - a man of law!’ said the big man, grinning to reveal
a row of strong white teeth. ‘I ask your pardon. I have
other troubles this morning already. I spoke without
thinking.’ He raised the hat, baring dark red hair cut
unfashionably short and thinning at the crown, and
sketched a bow. ‘I am called Peter Mason, master builder
of this burgh. Maistre Pierre - the stone master. Is a joke,
no? I regret that I come late to the tryst. I have been
searching for the laddie who did not sleep in his bed last
night, although his brother was come from Paisley to visit
him. Now tell me of this.’

‘I found her when I came for the meeting,’ said Gil.
‘She’s stiff - been killed sometime last night, I’d say.’

‘Been killed? Here? She has not died of her own accord?’

‘There’s blood on her gown. Yes, I think here. The grass
is too trampled to tell us much, this dry weather, but
I would say she is lying where she fell.’

Maistre Pierre bent over the corpse, touching with surprising gentleness the rigid arm, the cold jaw. He felt the
back of the laced bodice, sniffed his fingers, and made a
face.

‘See - I think this is the wound. A knife.’ He looked
round. ‘Perhaps a man she knew, who embraced her, and
slipped in the knife, khht! when she did not expect it.’

‘How was her sleeve torn, then?’ asked Gil, impressed in
spite of himself.

‘He caught her by it as she fell?’ The big hands moved
carefully over the brocade of the under-sleeve. ‘Indeed,
there is blood here. Also it is smeared as if he wiped his
hand. There is not a lot of blood, only the shift is stained.
I think a fine-bladed dagger.’

‘Italian,’ offered Gil. The bright eyes considered him.

‘You know Italy, sir?’

‘There were Italians in Paris.’

‘Ah. Firenze I know, also Bologna. I agree. What do we
do with the poor soul? Let us look at her face.’

He laid hold of the shoulder and the rigid knee under
the full skirt, and pulled. The body came over like a
wooden carving, sightless blue eyes staring under halfclosed lids. The black velvet fall of the French hood
dropped back, shedding tiny flakes of hawthorn blossom
and exposing a red scar along the right side of her jaw.
Poor woman, thought Gil, she must always have kept her
head bent so that the headdress hid that, and with the
thought he knew her.

The knowledge made him somehow decisive. He
reached out and drew a fold of velvet up across the staring
eyes, and the woman’s face immediately seemed more
peaceful.

‘It’s one of the two who sings with the harper,’ he said.

‘But of course! The one with the baby, I should say.’

‘A child, is there?’ said Gil, and suddenly recalled his
uncle using the same words. ‘Then I know who must be
told, as well as the harper. She is on St Mungo’s land, we
must at least notify the sub-dean as well, and he is probably the nearest member of Chapter in residence just now.
I have no doubt he will want to be rid of her. Do you
suppose the Greyfriars would take her until we can confirm her name and where she is and find her kin?’

‘But certainly. Go you and tell whom you must, Maister
Cunningham. I will bide here, and by the time you return
my men will be come back from searching for Davie-boy
and we can put her on a hurdle.’

A plump maidservant opened the door to Gil when he
reached the stone tower-house by the mill-burn.

‘Good day to you, Maister Cunningham,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is it the maister you’re wanting?’

‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘Can I get a word with him, Kirsty?’

‘Oh, aye. He’s just breaking his fast. Will you wait, or
interrupt him? Mind, he’s going out hawking in a wee
bit.’

‘I’d best see him now. I need a decision.’

Agog, she led him up a wheel stair and into the subdean’s private closet, where James Henderson, red-faced
and richly clad, was consuming cold roast meat with bannocks and new milk in front of a tapestry of hunting
scenes.

‘Here’s Maister Cunningham for you,’ she proclaimed,
‘and it’ll no wait.’

‘St Mungo’s bones!’ exclaimed Canon Henderson. ‘What
ails ye, Gil? Will ye take bannocks and milk?’

‘No, I thank you,’ said Gil with regret. ‘I’ve come to
report a corpse in the Fergus Aisle. I found her just
now.,