The King's Corrodian (19 page)

‘I was,’ he agreed.

‘Did you meet anybody else moving about the place, or see any others?’

‘I did.’

Gil waited, but no more was forthcoming, so he persisted, ‘Can you name them? How many were there?’

‘There was more than one, but I canny name them.’

‘Had you no conversation wi any?’

There was a brief hesitation.

‘No.’

Gil eyed the lector principalis with some misgiving, a faint suspicion creeping into his mind.

‘Did you learn anything that night,’ he said carefully, ‘that bears on the question of who killed Andrew Rattray?’

‘How can I tell,’ White parried, ‘whether a matter bears on the question or no? All things are linked under God’s eye,’ he crossed himself, ‘that sees a sparrow fall.’

‘Aye, very pretty,’ said Gil. ‘Now tell me what you learned, sir.’

‘I canny say that I learned anything,’ White said.

‘Why were you abroad in the night, Henry?’ demanded the Prior.

White turned that sharp gaze on his old friend and said mildly, ‘I heard something outside, so I rose to see what it was.’

‘And what was it?’ Gil asked.

‘Why, I found the two who accused me, both about the place, quite separate. I’ll no compound the symmetry by claiming they were whispering one wi another. And once I’d found what was about, I went back to my bed. Does that answer you?’

‘Insufficiently,’ said Gil. ‘Who did you speak to, sir?’

‘I spoke to neither Thomas nor Sandy Raitts.’

‘So who did you speak to?’

‘I canny say that I spoke to any.’

‘Then how did you recognise Wilson and Raitts?’

‘I see better than most by night,’ said White. ‘Both men are conspicuous in build and manner. I formed certain conclusions, which were confirmed when I returned to the dorter and recognised who had been out his bed lately.’

‘And when the infirmary burned,’ said Gil, ‘it never occurred to you that anyone,’ he stressed the word slightly, ‘that you’d seen outside might know something about it?’

‘Oh, it did,’ said White. ‘But, like David here, I was willing to wait for the miscreant to confess on his own.’

Despite being pressed to answer, White would give no more information. Nor would he offer any about the death of Leonard Pollock, merely reminding Gil that they had discussed this matter before. When he had left, Prior Boyd sat silent for a little while, the candlelight flickering on his face and folded hands; then he turned to Gil and remarked, ‘You never asked Thomas nor Sandy about the man Pollock.’

‘Pollock was in the habit of extortion,’ said Gil. ‘I should prefer to question folk in private on that subject.’

‘The man o law,’ said Boyd obscurely. ‘Yet you questioned Henry.’

‘As he said, we’d discussed it before.’ Gil rose, as Boyd had done earlier, and went to the window. With the light behind him, he could see little through the small panes; work had ceased, and the ruins of the infirmary formed dark shapes, vaguely threatening in the twilight. His back still to Boyd, he said, ‘Who does Father Henry confess, can you tell me?’

‘Ah. You saw that.’

‘I did. I’ve met those forms o words afore this. I’m all in favour o the seal o confession, but there are times it makes my task the harder.’

‘Aye.’ Prior David appeared to consider, and after a moment said, ‘I can tell you who he confesses, I suppose. You could learn it from any in this house, after all. It’s the first-year novices, Munt, Mureson and Calder, Simpson and,’ the level voice checked and continued, ‘Rattray, poor laddie. Our Lady receive him under her cloak.’

‘Amen,’ said Gil, crossing himself. ‘And where do the novices sleep? No in the dorter, I take it.’

‘There’s no enough room in the dorter. They sleep above the sacristy, next the night stair. It’s no ideal, I admit. John Blythe the novice-master sleeps there along wi them.’

‘He sleeps sound, does he?’

‘Aye.’ The Prior grimaced. ‘He has a sleeping draught the now, since he’d complained o waking the entire night. He didny waste the time, he spent it in prayer, he said. Prayer has great value, but so does keeping awake to teach your classes in the morning. So aye, he sleeps sound, times the novices has to wake him for Matins.’

‘Who sees to the second-year men, George and his fellows?’

‘John confesses them. He and Henry have aye taen alternate years in charge, ever since I can mind.’

Gil turned away fro the window and sat down. His kinsman was still at the desk, looking as if he could not move under the burden now on his shoulders.

‘Tell me about the novices,’ he said. ‘Munt, Mureson, Simpson, Calder. I’ve met them. A mixed load, I’d ha said.’

‘You’d ha said right.’ Boyd sighed. ‘We don’t get the same laddies we did when I was young, keen fellows eager to take God’s Word into the country places. I mind the men in my class …’ His voice tailed off, and after a moment he shook himself. ‘Aye, well. These five. Four. Good laddies, well intentioned, but it was only Rattray and Mureson had a true vocation I’d say, and two more simply felt the life would suit them.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘Simpson at least will make a good preacher, a good Dominican, when he settles down. He’s a sharp mind, a clear thinker, well able to open matters to those less able than himself. Munt will be happy enough once he learns obedience, never a jewel o the Order but no disgrace to it I expect.’

Gil, thinking of Munt’s remarks in the guest hall, preserved silence on this point, and said only, ‘And Calder?’

‘A difficult laddie,’ said Boyd after a moment. ‘He thinks he has a vocation, and it may indeed be God’s will for him, but the Order isny what he thinks it is. Teaching him is,’ he hesitated, and then said, ‘no easy. He will argue even against Brother Thomas at times. There is freedom o thought, Gil, and there is wilful foolishness.’

Gil nodded in sympathy. A Dominican who argued with the statements of Aquinas, the great theologian of the Order, would need to be a very deep thinker.

‘
Sall never of sa sour ane brand ane bricht fire be brocht
,’ he quoted.

Boyd looked blank for a moment, then said, ‘Ah, the tale of Rauf Coilyear. Aye, times I feel like that about the laddie. Mind you, he may make a preacher yet. He has a hold of St Paul’s thought, that we are all a part of the one body, and sees everything in those terms, and it makes a good foundation for a sermon. We can hope. But Rattray and Mureson. I think I’ve spent as much time in prayer ower them, Gil, as the rest o the community thegither.’

‘Why’s that?’ Gil asked cautiously. ‘You told me Rattray was devout, and Mureson seems a serious young man, very conscious of what’s due to his calling.’

‘He’s settled a lot, the last month or two. He found the Feast o the Incarnation a great comfort. He’s— he lacks patience wi those less observant than himself, has little charity for those who find the road stony or the Rule hard. I hope in time he’ll come to see that Our Lord loved sinners equally wi the good.’

‘One of those who
lives by sense rather than reason
?’ Gil prompted, in Aquinas’ own Latin. Boyd shot him a startled look.

‘I did not know you were acquainted with our Brother Thomas,’ he said in the same language. ‘No, that describes Sandy Raitts well, he’s no one for reason as you discerned the now. I think Mureson tries to apply the Rule to every aspect of life within this house, and expects others to do the same.’ Once again, Gil preserved silence, reflecting that this was, after all, the purpose of a Rule. That was why he had not sought a monastic career. ‘He is nearly as devout as was poor Andrew, and has a good understanding of the works of our Brother Thomas. I hope to make something of him in due time. As, indeed, I did of Andrew.’

‘I’m glad you never disabused Prior Boyd,’ said Alys, shaking the rain off her plaid. ‘About the lady in the drawing,’ she elaborated, as Gil looked blankly at her. ‘Her name is Margaret Rattray, not Keithick. She’s his sister.’

‘You found her!’

‘Led us straight there, so she did,’ said Jennet with pride. ‘And we’ve learned why the poor laddie thought he disappeared the other fellow, and all.’

‘Christ aid her,’ said Tam, his face darkening.

‘Come and tell me.’ Gil patted the bench beside him, and Alys hung her plaid on the finial at its end and came to join him before the fire.

Leaving Prior Boyd, Gil had returned to the guest hall to find it deserted apart from the cat and a resentful Socrates who had demanded out with some urgency. Exercising the dog in the dark courtyard, watching the members of the community come and go from the makeshift infirmary across the way, he had been joined by Alys and her escort, with a borrowed lantern, but there was still no sign of the other ser vants. Since it would soon be suppertime, he was not much concerned.

‘I spoke to the man of law as well,’ Alys was saying now in her accented Scots. ‘Mistress Rattray gave me a token for him, and a signed permission on a set of tablets. He’s acted for the two o them these six or eight months, sending to the Low Countries and dealing wi the property and so on.’

‘That’s well done,’ he said admiringly. ‘Tell me about it.’

She recounted her visit to Mistress Rattray, with comments from Jennet interpolated. Gil heard her out, frowning.

‘There’s still a lot of this goes against the Rule,’ he said at length, ‘even if he was keeping no mistress. Leaving the house by night, keeping property back, transacting business abroad – these are all misdeeds for which Pollock could have threatened to expose him.’

‘Very likely,’ Alys said. ‘And I think by what one of the novices told you – was it the one called Simpson? – that Pollock knew of Mistress Rattray and assumed she was Andrew’s mistress, and believed that Andrew would be afraid of the truth getting about. She’s still hiding from her husband.’

‘And no wonder,’ muttered Tam.

‘Yes. I can see the boy would have wished Pollock dead,’ Gil said, ‘but I don’t like this tale of the priest who died before, and by fire at that.’

‘It could look very like witchcraft, to the wrong hearer,’ Alys said, looking sideways at him. He nodded. ‘Mistress Rattray told me the Sheriff found it to be arson, and the man guilty was found, and confessed at the Assize at Montrose, and hanged.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Gil said, ‘I think we don’t mention that afore the Prior or the Bishop. Tam, Jennet, you hear me? No mention of the boy’s past. Nor of his sister, I think, unless we must.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ Alys asked. Gil looked directly at her.

‘Unless we must,’ he repeated. She bit her lip, then looked away.

‘I wonder how much his fellows kent of this,’ she said. ‘I wish we could talk to them, but I suppose it would hardly be proper to try to question them just now, when the community is in silence.’

‘There are more reasons for talking to them,’ Gil said. He recounted what he had learned in the day, to exclamations from Jennet and cynical nods from Tam.

Alys listened closely, and sat back as he finished, saying, ‘Very strange. I agree, it sounds as if Father Henry protects someone who has confessed to him, but surely if someone confessed murder, his confessor should set a very great penance?’

‘Aye, and in a community like this the penance at least would be known, even if the cause was kept secret. He did say he was waiting for the miscreant to confess of his own accord. But to what? Arson, or murder, or both?’

‘And what about the factor farming on the rents?’ burst out Jennet. ‘That’s a crime and all, even if it’s no murder, cheating honest men o their coin. And I’ll warrant it goes into his own purse, no the Blackfriars’ kist.’

‘If that’s what Pollock knew,’ said Alys, ‘the man Wilson also had reason to wish Pollock dead.’

‘Several people wished the man dead,’ Gil said. ‘Wilson, Rattray, Raitts I know of, and I’ve little doubt there are others. The Prior kens about Wilson now,’ he added to Jennet. ‘We’ll hope he’ll deal wi the matter appropriately.’

The other men, Nory and Dandy and Euan, straggled back just as the supper was carried in from the kitchen by the lay servants. The conversation was general over stewed kale and stockfish with a green sauce, but once the dishes were cleared and the broth from the dish of kale poured onto a broken loaf for Socrates, as the deep-voiced processional singing of Compline floated from the cloister, Gil drew his stool to the table again. ‘Time to set what we’ve learned all thegither. There’s still much to discover, but if we know what we’ve got we can direct the search better. Nory, have you got anything new the day?’

His body-servant grimaced.

‘Little enough, maister,’ he said primly. ‘I was working in the great barn, mending nets for the stables along wi Brother Archie, who can talk without drawing breath let me tell you for all he’s still coughing, and heard all about how easy this or that friar is to work wi and how the kitchen men gets a loaf to take home wi them every week, and the like. He’d no a lot to say about the laddie that died, the novices and the lay brothers don’t come across one another that often, but he’d a fair bit to say about yesterday’s stushie, mostly lamenting that Brother Dickon had got the lay brothers out afore it got going. He did say Faither Henry was no for joining in, just stood there in silence wi the battle brewing about him.’

‘So young Mureson said,’ Gil agreed. ‘Did he mention any others by name?’

‘The two that begun it, that accused one another, he named them. Wilson and Raitts. And he said, one o the novices was right distressed by it, he’d thought he was like to swoon away wi horror, which is the reason Brother Dickon rounded them up and got them out wi his own men. So Archie said,’ Nory finished, scepticism in his tone.

‘If it was the boy Mureson,’ said Alys, ‘he was still very shaken when he came to tell us.’

‘And he’d a deal to say about the man Pollock, Archie had. Seems there’s been one or two enquiring for him the week after he vanished away.’

‘I wasny told that,’ said Gil.

‘Aye, well, maybe it never reached the Prior’s ears. If it was someone came to the gate, or spoke to one o the lay brothers working in the yard, they’d maybe turn back when they heard he wasny here. One o them was a fremit kind o fellow, so Archie said.’