The King's Corrodian (26 page)

‘It gives us a bit of time, though. Aye, get a word wi Raitts if you can. I wondered,’ said Gil slowly, ‘whether he did stay in the kirk until Matins. One o the two that were watching over Andrew Rattray agreed he’d seen him, the other didny. Do you mind who they were? Was it Pullar and Simpson, or was that when they changed over?’

‘I can find out, get a word wi them,’ said the lay brother. ‘Though I think it’s no matter. Likely Thomas was already stiffening when we found Faither Henry.’ He jerked his head at the windows. ‘Any word from the infirmary?’

‘I called in there,’ Gil said. ‘No change, in either. One hanging on by a thread, one still asleep. Brother Euan seems confident Father Henry will wake, though he won’t say how clear his head will be when he does.’

‘Aye,’ said Dickon. A small bell began to ring outside, and he gathered himself to rise. ‘I thocht it was about dinnertime. Get away back to your kitchen, cheetie-cat, and catch some more mices. I’ll report, maister, soon’s I learn aught worth the telling.’

Alys came in from the kitchens, Jennet behind her, as he crossed the hall, and he paused to greet her and went out. The women came to join Gil by the fire.

‘I don’t see why they all complain about Brother Augustine,’ Alys observed. ‘I find him most obliging.’

‘I thought you had gone out,’ he said, taking her hands in both of his. ‘You’re cold.’

‘I’ve been making more of the cough mix. Tam isny returned, so I wished to be occupied.’

‘That’s my fault,’ he said guiltily. ‘I kept him back.’

The other men came in as he was explaining, stamping their feet and complaining of the cold, and the kitchen servants appeared to set up the table just as Tam entered.

‘That’ll be fine, mistress,’ he reported to Alys. She nodded, but did not clarify matters to Gil, from which he concluded that he was not to be forgiven yet for causing a delay.

Settled over a hot platter of fresh fish with braised turnips and, inevitably, stewed kale, the men began to report their morning’s work, and Gil recalled that he had had no chance to rescind last night’s instructions. Well, no harm done, he thought. Better than leaving them idle.

Euan got in first. ‘You would be astonished, maister,’ he began, dipping his bread in the sauce, ‘if you was hearing how many different parts the brothers is coming from. Three from Aberdeen, four from Caithness, there is even a man from Galloway that is an Ersche speaker and all, though his accent would strip paint off a door, says Brother Euan. The most o them are coming from the burghs, so he says. Only one or two are off the land, and Faither John that is novice-master is an Edinburgh man himself.’

‘That’s what I’ve heard too,’ Gil admitted.

‘So I was asking what quality of folk they might be,’ Euan swept on, ‘and it seems they are not mostly o baron ial stock like yoursel, maister. Faither Prior is of high degree, indeed, and Faither Henry, and Edward Gilchrist that is the cellarer,’ he counted off the names with the fingers of his free hand, ‘and one other he said. Och, and the one they have locked away for stabbing folk and all, their librarian, he said. I said, was he certain, for it hardly seems a noble thing to be stabbing folk in the dark and in secret, and he said, indeed, you had only to look at the man’s manner to see he was used to servants and a household.’

‘That Brother Augustine, that’s in the kitchen,’ said Jennet, ‘he’s from Dunkeld, like the Bishop, so one o the servants tellt me.’

‘That’s interesting, Euan,’ said Gil. ‘I hadny thought of that. So there’s no that many would ha learned to kill a pig or use a dagger as part o their upbringing.’

‘Och, now, that would be a different matter,’ said Euan airily, helping himself to another portion of the fish. ‘For when they were killing their own pigs last autumn, there was four or five of the brothers stepped forward to the task when Faither Prior required it. And one o the novices is the son o an armourer and is not the only one, so Brother Euan was saying, that kens which end o a dagger is the sharp one.’

‘If they’re out on the road collecting alms,’ offered Dandy, ‘I suppose they’ll ha to drive off robbers now and then.’

‘A staff’s the more usual weapon,’ said Gil. ‘That’s a great help, Euan. Was there much custom for Brother Euan’s ministrations? Were there many visitors to the infirmary?’ he elucidated, at the man’s blank look.

‘Och, indeed there was, and no all o them coming as patients. All the novices happened by one time or another to ask how was their teacher, and half the brothers was there asking for him and for Faither James. He’s at peace, is Faither James, just lying quiet, sinking slow. An easy way to go. Faither Prior sat wi him a good while.’

‘I hope you wereny in Brother Euan’s way,’ said Alys.

‘Och, indeed no, mistress!’ protested Euan. ‘I was a great help to him, so he said, watching over the sick and tending a pannikin he had on the fire and that, and mixing an ointment to him. It was making a nice change, so it was, working wi all that herbs. Maybe I could take to that.’

‘Ah, you’d get them all mixed up, you daft Erscheman,’ said Dandy.

Gil broke up the argument which promised to develop by saying, ‘Did you learn anything, Dandy?’

‘No a great deal the day,’ said the man, reddening. ‘We turned to the horse-harness, seeing we got the ox-graith ready yesterday, and mostly it was tales o the beasts they’d kent, and the days they were under Brother Dickon as men-at-arms to the old King. Jamesie was saying Brother Dickon minded the man Pollock from yon time, and had no good to say o him. Nor did any o them. They said the same as you heard yesterday, Nory, that there was a couple o different folk asking for the man since he dee’d, and one wi a white rose badge on his breast and an orra way o speaking. That’s about it,’ he said deprecatingly.

‘It’s worth something,’ Gil said. ‘You canny catch a fish every time you cast in the river. Thanks, man. Nory? Did you learn aught?’

‘I did,’ said Nory, with quiet pride. ‘I found how their wash is managed, and spoke wi the chiel that deals wi’t. Seems there’s a couple women come in once a fortnight, and it’s all done in the outer yard where the beasts is kept, and this time o year it’s dried in the great barns. So we howkit through the bags o wash, and a savoury task that was, let me tell you, and we found this.’ He leaned down and lifted a bulging scrip which Gil had vaguely noticed when he came into the chamber, and from it produced, like a juggler in the marketplace, a bundle of stained cloth. Shaking it out he revealed a shirt of greyish linen, rusty-brown marks blotting its cuffs and breast.

‘Oh, well done, man!’ said Gil.

‘I’d say,’ Nory commented, ‘he’s stripped to his drawers, as the gowk here said, and put his sark back on after he’s done his work. These marks is more like they came off him, rather than if it caught the fresh spray.’

‘I think you’re right,’ said Gil, considering the stains. ‘Some o those are smears rather than full marks. There wasny a pair o drawers the like?’

‘No, though we looked,’ said Nory, grimacing.

‘May I see it?’ said Alys, and Nory handed it across the table.

‘I wonder that he never thought to burn the sark, with the fire there to hand,’ said Euan.

‘He’d have to account for it if he did,’ Nory pointed out. ‘
Why have you no shirt, my son? I burned it in the infirmary, Faither. And why did you do that, my son?
’

‘To burn away my sins, Faither,’ offered Dandy, with an assumption of piety.

Across the men’s laughter Gil said, ‘And whose is this sark? When did it come down for the wash?’ And that’s the crux of the matter, he thought.

‘It was in a bag wi the indoor lay brothers’ shirts,’ said Nory, ‘but Barty, that’s the chiel at sees to gathering in the wash, reckons it’s more like one o the novices’, though he canny say which o them.’

‘Is it marked in any way?’

Alys turned the garment before handing it to him, with the inside of the neckband visible.

‘Aye, you’ve found it, mem,’ said Nory. ‘No a lot o help, is it? I’d say he’s picked it out, mysel.’

Taking the bundle of coarse linen, avoiding the stains, Gil turned the neckband to the grey light from the windows. Two or three smudges and tufts of red thread stood in the linen, caught in the weave, where one would expect to find initials or a press number. He knew his own shirts and Lowrie’s, like the rest of the household linen, were carefully numbered and initialled by Alys, and could see that it made sorting the clean linen far easier; it seemed reasonable to assume that the friars used some similar system to identify their linen, but it would be easy enough to check.

‘Can I see it, maister?’ said Dandy. Gil handed him the bundled shirt, and he rose and went to the window. Alys followed him and they bent together, peering closely at the neckband.

‘And when was it put in the sack, do you reckon?’ Gil asked Nory.

‘Now that,’ said Nory regretfully, ‘I couldny well make out, maister. It seems they get the wash done once a fortnight. They change their linen weekly, on a Saturday, to be clean for Sunday, and their beds once a month, but they put the soiled linen in a bag in the dorter, which isny collected till the Monday, and lies in the washhouse waiting till the women comes in, seeing they’ve other washes to do in the week. Likely they do for some o the other friars and all. There’s enough work about here for a whole guild o laundrywomen.’

‘When were they here last?’ Gil asked.

‘They’re due the morn.’

‘So the bag you found this in could ha been lying in the washhouse since last Monday? Ten days?’

‘It could,’ agreed Nory, ‘and Barty reckoned it for one o the ones that cam down last week no this week, though he did say he thought there’d been someone at the heap. So if our man brought this down himsel privily, rather than put it in the bag in his own dorter, he’d ha plenty sacks to choose from to put it into, and it did kinna look like that. It was right at the top, as if he’d just pushed it in the neck o the bag and pulled the cord tight.’

‘And the infirmary burned on Monday night,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘No, he’d not want to put this out in the dorter, have it lying for a week afore the bag was collected, risk someone seeing the stains and commenting. Very good work, Nory.’

Nory accepted this with a prim smile, and Alys said, ‘Gil? We think we can see what this mark is.’

‘It’s no very clear,’ agreed Dandy, ‘but you can see where the needle went in, maister, where the stitches has been. You get the same kinna thing on a bit leather when it’s come unstitched, though this is away finer work, a course. It’s letters right enough.’

‘We think an A and an R,’ said Alys.

‘Oh,
Dhia!
’ said Euan. ‘So they have locked away the right man indeed, have they? What could that be but Alexander Raitts?’

Alys glanced at him, but did not comment.

‘Andrew Rattray,’ said Gil. ‘Robert Aikman.’

‘What, he was not content with cutting the other fellow’s throat, he had to be stealing his sark and all?’ said Euan in shocked tones.

‘This is right kind in you, mistress,’ said Alys. The dog Roileag, sniffing at her shoes, made her whining growl, and she tucked her feet under her skirts.

‘But what is it you’re wanting to do?’ asked Mistress Buttergask, blue eyes very wide. ‘Your man just said you craved the use o our oven for a time, but no to fire it, if we wereny using it ourselves. Which we’re no, because we made bread yesterday, and two pies and all, for that we’re expecting Sir Silvester back the night by what he sent.’

Alys opened her mouth to explain, and then closed it, suddenly realising just what an exercise in tact this would be. Jennet, with no such qualms, said proudly, ‘My mistress is trying out what really happened to the man Pollock. Making trial how he could have all burned up like that.’

‘But I saw him carried off,’ objected Mistress Buttergask. ‘He never burned up, he vanished away.’

‘I think,’ said Alys, picking her words carefully, ‘what you saw was maybe his soul being carried off by the Devil, because we found his ashes in the house. He was all consumed by the fire, every bit, and yet the rest o the house was unharmed.’

‘Excepting his foot,’ said Jennet. ‘The dog found it under a stool.’

‘His
foot
?’ repeated Mistress Buttergask in amazement. ‘Why would he – how would he leave his foot behind?’

They were in the little chamber at the back of the house, with its view of the January garden and the Blackfriars’ wall. The two young servants had been given leave to visit their mother for the afternoon, so Jennet had been invited to prepare buttered ale, which she was swirling in its jug just now over the brazier. Alys sat back on the cushioned settle and recounted first what they had found in Pollock’s house, to many exclam ations of astonishment from her hostess, and then how she and Brother Michael had made trial of the ways in which fire might consume flesh.

‘I think we need a bigger space,’ she concluded, ‘like a bread-oven, and I hoped you might let us use yours.’

‘Oh.’ Mistress Buttergask considered this, looking doubtful. Alys wondered if the woman was consulting her voices, but she finally said, ‘I’m no certain what Rattray will say. One o the Greyfriars, did you tell me?’

‘He directed the trials,’ Alys said, exaggerating slightly. ‘A very holy man he is, Brother Michael Scott. Do you ken him?’

‘I do,’ said her hostess, still dubious. ‘Though I’d no ha said he was holy, exactly, more kinna, well, wrapped up in his own head. But if he’s in it, I suppose it’s no harm. Maybe he’ll can sain the oven after you’re done, just to be certain?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Alys, cheerfully committing Brother Michael. ‘I’m sure he’d do that for you.’

‘And how long will it take? I’d no like the oven to be out o use just when Rattray’s coming back.’

‘It took us all yesterday morning,’ said Jennet, swirling the buttered ale again. ‘But now we ken what we’re at, it should go quicker, shouldn’t it no, mem?’ She laid her hand to the side of the jug. ‘This is about ready, mistress, will you have me serve it out?’

‘Indeed aye, lassie, and some for yoursel and all,’ said Mistress Buttergask, clearly still turning the whole idea over in her head. ‘And what would you do, exactly? Set fire to the joint, did you say? But meat doesny burn up, it just blackens, it’s a thing a’body kens.’