The Merchant's Mark (27 page)

‘I’d be grateful.’ Gil indicated his gratitude with a coin on account, which vanished inside the tapster’s doublet. Since then he had been aware of quiet questions going
about the room, of the odd curious glance in his direction. Someone came in, spoke to the tapster, went out again. What have I set in motion? he wondered.

‘But who else do we look for?’ asked Maistre Pierre now.

‘The dog should go out,’ said Gil. ‘Let us walk him.’

‘I kom viz you,’ pronounced Johan.

‘Johan,’ said Gil, ‘I sink ve could lose ze accent.’

‘Accent?’

‘I heard you shriving Rob,’ said Gil, and bit back another tide of mixed emotion. After a moment he went on, ‘Your Scots is near as good as Pierre’s, here.’ The
sergeant met his challenging look, and then shrugged and smiled wryly. ‘Have we said anything useful?’

‘No,’ the other man admitted. ‘But it vos – was worth the try.’

‘Can you tell me why the Preceptory is interested?’

‘No.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Gil, ‘but if you won’t, then why should I help you? You don’t kom viz us.’

‘Fair enough,’ echoed the Hospitaller, shrugging again.

Accompanied by a well-fed dog, Gil and Maistre Pierre strolled outside and gravitated naturally into the building site next door. In the evening light, piles of timber and slates lay under
tarred canvas, but the stone-cutter’s lodge stood empty. Work had stopped for the day, and the masons had all gone home to the houses which the chapel’s founder had built for them, more
than doubling the size of the castle’s little town.

‘Ah, mon Dieu!’
said Maistre Pierre, soft-voiced. ‘Look at those lines. The proportions.’

‘I can’t see past the scaffolding,’ said Gil with regret.

‘So who do we look for?’ asked Maistre Pierre.

‘The musician,’ said Gil quietly. The mason nodded agreement. ‘The cooper’s boy. The dead man’s kin, very possibly.’

‘Why should those be here?’

‘Because Riddoch’s yard lies at the back of the Engrailed Cross tavern. Those were Sinclair’s men I saw in the street before the tavern, and Sinclair’s men were
collecting the barrels of salt herring when we arrived. I saw one going into the barn where we found the empty barrel. I’ll wager Sinclair owns the whole of that toft and has let the
backlands to Riddoch for his house and his yard. Riddoch is Sinclair’s man.’

‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘As well as –’ He stopped short, staring into the distance. Gil made no comment, and the mason went on, ‘So is Sinclair behind all
this?’

‘I’d say he is involved,’ said Gil. ‘He asked me, when I saw him in Stirling, whether our friend in the barrel was a thief or a fighting man. And I think he has our
books.’ He kicked at the scraps of wood and slate underfoot. ‘But I don’t think he is behind these repeated attacks, any more than the Preceptory.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ said Maistre Pierre involuntarily.

‘I think St Johns is involved.’ He looked at his friend in the evening light. ‘If they send this fellow with us, an experienced fighting man who is also a priest, though
priests aren’t supposed to bear arms –’

‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre, distracted. ‘He is probably not priested. I have not asked him,’ he admitted, ‘but I have seen this before, where they will confess and
absolve a companion
in extremis
, where no priest is present.’

Socrates, ranging round them, paused in his inspection of a stack of timber and stared at the gate of the site. Gil looked round, to see a familiar, elegant figure picking its way across the
trampled ground. Clad in a worn leather doublet and patched hose, the man still had all the presence of a performer. He halted in front of them and bowed, waving his feathered hat in the elaborate
French style.

‘Balthasar of Liège at your service, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’m told you were asking for me.’

He straightened up and looked from one to the other. Even in the dwindling light, the colour of his eyes was obvious: one blue, one brown.

‘I’m very glad to see you alive, man,’ said Gil. ‘Do you mind me? Gil Cunningham, from Glasgow.’

‘I do, sir,’ said the musician. ‘You were a good friend to the McIans a few months back, were you no?’

‘And still am, I hope,’ said Gil.

‘So what can I do for you, maisters?’

‘We may have sad news for you,’ said Maistre Pierre. Balthasar raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you any kin with your eye colour?’

‘What, odd eyes? It runs in the family. I’ve a sister has one ee green and one grey.’

‘No, but have you male kin,’ said Gil, ‘with one blue and one brown?’

The musician looked at him. ‘This is serious, isn’t it?’ he said, and scratched his jaw. ‘I wonder, maisters, have you found my cousin Nelkin? We’d looked for him
back afore this.’

‘Ah,’ said Gil. ‘Where had he been?’

Balthasar shrugged. ‘We heard word he’d gone on a pilgrimage,’ he said, ‘to Tain or some such. It didny seem like our Nelkin,’ he added.

‘And who had you heard this from?’

‘From himself.’ Balthasar jerked his head in the general direction of the castle. ‘From Sinclair. He’s been one of Sir Oliver’s men-at-arms these ten
years.’

‘Ah!’ said Maistre Pierre.

Gil glanced at him, and said, ‘Noll Sinclair told you he’d gone on a pilgrimage?’

‘Well, no,’ admitted the musician. ‘That fool Preston told his sister, but he said it as if the word came from himself – from Sinclair.’

‘Is that all the word you’ve had?’

‘I think so. What’s this about, maister? Have you found him? You’re saying he’s deid, and canny answer for himself, are you no?’

‘It seems very like it,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I am sorry. Was he close to you?’

‘He was kin,’ said the musician tensely. ‘What came to him? What have you found?’

‘We found,’ said Gil carefully, ‘a man’s head. Short dark hair, one ear pierced, odd coloured een. Oh, and the remains of a blued ee.’ He touched his cheekbone.
‘He’d been headed, and the head put in a barrel of brine along wi a bag of coin and jewels from the old King’s hoard.’

Balthasar bent his head and crossed himself.

‘It sounds like,’ he said. ‘The blued ee sounds like our Nelkin. Ah, weel, I feart as much. When the laddie –’

‘What laddie?’ asked Gil.

‘Oh, just – just one o his kin.’

‘Nicol Riddoch, would that be, the cooper’s boy?’ guessed Gil. Balthasar’s head came up sharply. ‘What kin is he to you?’

‘None o mine. His stepmother’s some kind o kin by marriage to Nelkin’s brother.’ The musician crossed himself again. ‘Would you excuse me, maisters? I’ll need
to break it –’

‘I could do with a word with Nicol Riddoch,’ said Gil. ‘What did he say? I take it he didn’t see your kinsman killed, but did he bring the other bag of coin
here?’

Balthasar stared at Gil in the failing light.

‘You ken the maist o it already, sir,’ he said. ‘Why are you asking me?’

‘I never heard what it was,’ said Nicol. ‘Just it was worth a good bit.’

He stood uneasily before them, a spare youngster at the hands and feet stage, with a strong resemblance to his father the cooper. He had emerged reluctantly from the inner chamber of the house
to which Balthasar had delivered them, and was taking some persuasion to fill in the gaps in Gil’s account of what had happened. Socrates, lying at Gil’s feet, watched him
carefully.

‘It was part of the rent, you see,’ he added. ‘We owe his lordship duty of carriage, and he turned up two week since, said to my faither he was calling in the duty for the
year.’

‘So you and Nelkin were set to fetch this great load of coin,’ Gil prompted, ‘and not told what you were carrying.’

‘Just the two of them!’ expostulated the householder, whose name seemed to be Robison. He had big scarred hands and a round, weatherbeaten face; Gil had lost his place in the
reckoning but thought the man was a cousin of the late Nelkin’s sister-in-law. ‘Two men, to bring home a load like that.’

‘It does not seem enough,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, shifting on the bench beside Gil. The cushion slid with him, jolting Gil sideways.

‘Aye, but nobody else kent what it was neither,’ said Nicol. ‘Except maybe Nelkin.’

‘And you fetched it from one of Sinclair’s other properties by Stirling,’ Gil said.

The boy nodded. ‘Garden-Sinclair,’ he agreed. ‘It was well hid. The man that holds the place never kenned it was there neither, so Nelkin tellt me.’

‘But how did you carry it?’ demanded Robison.

‘In two bags on the old horse’s packsaddle, under that load o withies,’ said the boy. Robison sat back in his great chair, frowning.

‘And when you got to your father’s yard,’ said Gil, ‘thinking you were home and safe, you were attacked. Did you expect the gate to be open?’

‘No,’ admitted Nicol. ‘I was to sclim ower and unbar it,’ he grinned wryly. ‘I’ve done it a few times. But here it was open, standing just on the jar. So we
pushed it open, and there was naught stirring, so in we went, thinking nothing of it, and we’d no more than got the first o the saddlebags off and put it in a barrel as Nelkin said he’d
arranged wi his lordship, when these three men came at us, all quiet in a rush.’ He shivered. ‘I seen the axe, and the swords, and then Nelkin shouted to me to run, and I grabbed the
reins and louped on the old horse wiout thinking, all on top o the withies, and ran for it, and I – and I –’ He swallowed. ‘Did you say he was heidit, maister?’

Gil nodded, and the boy crossed himself.

‘I feared it,’ he whispered. ‘When he never followed me here, I feared it. I should never ha left him.’

‘Just as well you did, laddie,’ said Robison. ‘You’d ha gone the same way, unarmed against a chiel wi a great axe.’

‘Aye, but . . .’ said the boy, and shook his head. ‘He was our good friend, and Jess’s kin. I should never ha left him.’

‘If he ordered you to run,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘and you obeyed, you did right.’

‘And then you came here?’ said Gil.

‘Turned up at first light,’ supplied Robison, ‘chapping the shutters there and gied us the fright o our lives. The auld horse just about foundered, half the withies snapped and
hanging off the pack, and him half-dead wi fright. And nae wonder. What Nelkin was about, taking a laddie wi him on a duty like that –’

‘It was for the horse,’ said Nicol. ‘He wanted me to lead the horse. Old Pyot’ll do anything for me, so he will.’

‘Well,’ said Gil. ‘And you say you never kent what you were carrying?’

‘Well,’ said the boy, and looked at Robison.

‘No, he never,’ said the householder. ‘And no more do I.’

‘No till you looked once he got it here,’ suggested Gil.

‘I wouldny do such a thing!’

Socrates raised his head to look at the man, and Gil said deliberately, ‘Then you’re more of a fool than I took you for.’

Maistre Pierre’s eyebrows went up, and Robison bridled.

‘Well, maybe I took a wee look,’ he conceded.

‘And?’

‘More coin. All coin, it was, by the feel of it, in three great purses, all sealed,’ said Robison regretfully. ‘Two wi the Spitallers’ seal and one wi the old
King’s.’

‘Ah!’ said Gil. He heard an echo at his side, and the bench-cushion shifted again. Not looking at his friend, he went on, ‘So where is it now?’

‘Now that I canny tell you, sir.’

‘Do you mean you don’t know?’ Gil asked. ‘Who took it? Why was it not put safe?’

‘I mean I canny tell you,’ repeated Robison.

‘You may tell me,’ said Maistre Pierre, and his big hands stirred on his knee. ‘As a fellow craftsman.’ That’s the second time today he has used that expression,
Gil thought. What does he mean? ‘Are you working on the church, Maister Robison? I’ve heard there are two great pillars at its heart. A pity the builder is dead, for the complete
building would have astonished the world.’

Robison stared at him, his scarred fingers also moving. The dog had sat up, and was looking intently at the shuttered window. Gil stroked his head.

‘Aye,’ said Robison. ‘I’m working on the roof, wi square and level and plumb, but I still canny tell you, sir, for I’m no the master in charge.’

‘Uncle,’ said the boy quietly. Robison turned to look at him. ‘Would his lordship –?’

‘He’s from home,’ said Gil.

‘He cam back an hour since,’ said Robison. ‘I saw him ride in off the Edinburgh road.’

‘He’s here,’ said Balthasar of Liège, stepping in at the door, Oliver Sinclair behind him.

‘Oh, indeed there’s more of it,’ said Sinclair. Seated in Robison’s great chair, large, fair and handsome in a big-sleeved gown of blue wool, he
dominated the room. ‘I have the half-load the laddie here brought on Monday night, which I take to be the other half of the shipment that turned up in Glasgow in your barrel. It’s safe
enough here. If you want it, you’ll have to convince me you’ve a right to it, Gil Cunningham.’

‘I’ve no right to any of it, sir,’ said Gil politely. ‘But we’ve a sergeant of the Hospitallers with us, looking for their portion, and I feel the treasury would
like to see the late King’s hoard again.’

‘I’ve no doubt they would,’ said Sinclair, with irony. ‘And so would this fellow you brought in as prisoner. Who the deil is he? D’you think he’s a treasury
man?’

‘Not a treasury man, no,’ said Gil. Sinclair’s eyebrows went up at the emphasis. ‘Have you asked him yourself?’

‘I have not. He’s got away. That fool Preston never chained him, and he struck down the guard and ran.’ Gil and Maistre Pierre looked at one another in dismay. ‘But Will
Knollys can whistle for the treasury portion. It’s safer in my care.’ He grinned at Gil. ‘And I’ll deny saying that, on oath.’

‘And there are our books,’ added Gil.

Sinclair’s expression changed, and the sapphires on his hat caught the light as he pushed it forward. ‘Oh, aye, those books. Quite a surprise, that was, when we unstitched the canvas
just now and found
Knowe well to Dye
in black velvet, rather than a wee box of coin. D’ye ken what else is in the batch?’

‘I’ve got Halyburton’s docket,’ said Gil. ‘Have you unpacked any more?’

‘Not yet. If there’s anything good, I might make you an offer.’

‘Fair enough, but I want the
Morte Darthur.’