The Merchant's Mark (35 page)

‘A priest,’ he moaned. ‘I need a priest.’

‘You’ll tell us what you were after in this house first,’ said Andy fiercely.

‘I’m deein!’

‘Is he?’ asked Kate.

‘Probably not,’ said Alys judiciously, ‘but there are broken bones. Several ribs at the least.’ The prisoner yelped as she felt carefully at his chest. The hurdle creaked
under him, and Gil caught his breath, transported for a moment to the moonlit pinnacles of Roslin. ‘And maybe some bruising to his insides also,’ Alys finished. She passed her hands
cautiously round the man’s black felt coif, without eliciting a reaction, and rose to her feet.

Gil studied the man. He was wearing a sturdy leather jack, and there was a sheath at his belt for the whinger which Andy had brought in from the yard. His hair showed under the edges of the
coif, dark round the collar of the jack, a white tuft sticking sweatily to his brow.

‘I’m deein, I tell ye,’ croaked the prisoner. ‘Fetch me a priest.’

‘But what was going on?’ asked Morison. ‘Why were these fellows in our yard?’ He looked down at his daughters. ‘My poppets, you must go back to your bed now. Da
will still be here in the morning.’ Ysonde, her hands clamped on the facings of his gown, said something muffled into his shoulder. ‘What’s that, my honey?’

‘She said you’d get your head cut off.’

‘Well, I haveny See, it’s still fastened on.’

‘She said the man wi the axe would cut it off.’

‘The man with the axe is dead,’ said Gil firmly. The man Babb held looked round quickly, dismay in his expression, but the other prisoner closed his eyes again and the crease
deepened between his brows.

‘Who said that to you, Ysonde?’ Morison asked in concern.

‘I’ll wager it was Mall,’ said Kate, breaking a long silence. ‘She said a few things I’d like to skelp her for, before she left. Wynliane, Ysonde, you must go back
to bed now. Da will be here in the morning.’

‘No,’ said Wynliane. Morison looked quickly down at her, then at Kate, his eyes wide. She nodded, smiling slightly, and he swallowed and turned back to the children.

‘I have to talk, down here, poppets,’ he said. ‘I’ll come up to you once you’re in your bed.’

‘No,’ said Wynliane.

Ysonde’s grip tightened on her father’s gown. Gil thought Morison’s clasp on the girls tightened in response. His sister must have seen it too, for she said, ‘Oh, let
them stay, Augie. Nan, their father will bring them up when he can.’ Nan, waiting quietly in the stair doorway, bobbed to the company and withdrew. Kate looked at Morison again. ‘Our
Lady guard you, man, sit down properly, then Gil and Alys can sit down too. Andy, bring the settle forward for him – no, there.’

Andy obeyed, and Morison rose, slightly impeded by his satellites, and sat down opposite Kate. Settling the children on either side of him, he stared round the room and said, ‘Were you
looking for these fellows, Andy? Were you expecting an inbreak?’

‘Aye, we were,’ said Babb happily. ‘We were looking for them to come for this treasure that’s never been here. And we were right.’

‘You set the watch as you intended, then?’ said Gil.

‘Not quite,’ admitted Kate.

‘Watch?’ said Morison. ‘I thought it was all over. What need of a watch?’

‘You can see what need. It’s not over yet,’ Kate pointed out.

Gil, seating Alys on a backstool, said, ‘Are you saying these are the two who were seen in the Hog earlier this week? Let that one go, Babb, so he can answer our questions.’

‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed the man who had helped Alys. ‘And I’d a word wi them the night and all. Tellt them all about how the maister keeps a locked kist at the
foot o the great bed in the chaumer there.’ He grinned. ‘I never tellt them about the watch in the yard, did I, you gangrel thieves.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Gil, looking closely from one to the other. ‘I last saw these two on the Pentlands yesterday sometime after noon, pelting downhill with
Socrates on their heels. And before that there was a matter of a dead pig above Linlithgow. The biter’s been bit,’ he said agreeably. Most of his hearers looked blank, but the man on
the hurdle closed his eyes and groaned.

‘I never!’ said the standing prisoner. ‘It wasny me. I’ve been in Glasgow the whole time. So’s he.’ He jerked his head at the man on the hurdle.

‘A pity Socrates is not here,’ said Alys. ‘Where did you leave him? We could see if he knows them.’

‘Ye’ve no need to set a great hound on us,’ said the standing prisoner apprehensively. Gil raised an eyebrow, and the man swallowed, realizing what he had given away.
‘It wasny us,’ he repeated.

‘He cutted the pig’s head off wi his sword,’ said a small voice from within Morison’s gown. He lifted his arm and looked down; Ysonde blinked back at him.

‘You were dreaming, my poppet,’ he said indulgently. ‘Go back to sleep. The man hasn’t got a sword.’

‘Does too. He had a sword this morning.’ She pointed at the standing prisoner. ‘When he looked in our gate, but Nan and me told him to go away and he went.’

‘You see!’ said Babb’s prisoner. ‘The bairn kens! We’ve been here the whole time.’

‘So you were poking round here earlier, were you?’ demanded Andy, and the man swallowed again.

‘Which of you is John Carson?’ Gil asked. Alys looked round at him. The recumbent man opened his eyes, but the other one made no move. ‘So you must be Davie Wilkie,’ he
went on. The man still did not move, but Gil saw the faint stirring of his cloak as his shoulders tensed. ‘You had a hat with a feather in it yesterday,’ he said conversationally.
‘I suppose it must have fallen off, somewhere between the Pentlands and here.’

‘It could be out in the yard,’ said Morison, still trying to follow the exchange.

Gil nodded. ‘It could. And Carson there gets called Baldy,’ he went on.

‘He’s no bald,’ said the man nearest the hurdle. ‘See, he’s got more hair than Andy there. It’s all sticking out the back o his coif.’

‘You stay out o this, Ecky Soutar,’ growled Andy.

‘It’s sticking out the brow of his coif too,’ said Gil. ‘Take it off for him, Ecky, will you.’

Ecky obliged, despite the injured man’s feeble attempts to push his hands away. The coif came away, revealing damp hair flattened to the man’s skull, dark in the candlelight except
for the sharp-edged streak of white hair which grew forward over his forehead.

‘And that,’ said Gil, ‘is why he’s called Baldy, like a horse. Not because he’s called Archibald, and not because he’s bald, but because he’s got a
white blaze.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Morison.

‘It means we’ve made the two ends of the circle join up,’ said Gil. ‘Would you send someone to call the Watch, Augie? These fellows should be put somewhere safe for the
night, what’s left of it.’

Only a royal summons would have got Gil out of his own bed in the attic in Rottenrow before Nones. As it was, despite a cold wash, a shave and a meal of bannocks still warm
from the girdle, he felt as if he would rather sleep for another week than plod down to the caichpele with the long spoon-shaped racket over his shoulder to play tennis with his monarch.

It had been more than an hour after the Watch were summoned, before he could leave the lower town and head for home. He had had to explain to the Watch why these dangerous miscreants should be held in the
Tolbooth rather than the castle, without letting them suspect that in the castle he feared Wilkie, at least, would find himself free as the Axeman had. Then, once the reluctant procession had left,
supplemented by two of Augie’s fellows to keep the Watch safe as far as the Tolbooth, he had attempted to persuade Alys and his sister to go home.

‘Catherine will long since have had the door barred,’ said Alys. ‘No, no, I can very well share a bed with Kate and Babb.’

‘But Kate will go back to Rottenrow, surely,’ he said.

‘Not me,’ said Kate firmly. ‘I’ll not leave without saying farewell to those bairns.’ Her eyes rose to the ceiling, where Morison’s voice could be heard
quietly from the floor above. Alys gave Gil another of her significant glances, and shook her head.

‘Leave them,’ said Morison, when he had persuaded his daughters to sleep. ‘I’ll be glad of the company, Gil, to tell truth.’

‘Do you want someone else to watch?’ Gil asked quickly, but Morison shook his head.

‘No, no. That’s no the difficulty. I just – I just – it’s good to have friends round me,’ he achieved, ‘and you have to go back up the hill, if
you’re to be at the caichpele betimes. And if Mistress Mason’s to stay and all,’ he added, ‘then all’s decent. The two of them and Babb will be down here in the
chamber yonder,’ he nodded at the inner door from the hall, ‘where they can bar the door for privacy, and the men are out in the bothy, and I’m above-stairs within call.’ He
glanced at the ceiling-boards, as Kate had done.

‘I’ve no doubt of that,’ said Gil, who had not thought about it. ‘I just thought it might be imposing on the household.’

‘Considering what she’s – they’ve done for me,’ said Morison, ‘I’d say the imposing goes all the other way. Leave them here. They’re more than
welcome.’

Now, before Terce, the first beasts of the baggage-train were already making their way down the High Street to cross the river and head south for Kilmarnock. Behind them, arguments, bustle and
French curses floated over the castle walls. Across the Wyndhead and into the Drygate, Gil turned up the pend which led to the high wooden walls of the caichpele. There was obviously a game in
progress already: he could hear the irregular thud of the ball against the planks, and the occasional spatter of applause.

The door was guarded by two men in royal livery, who let him pass when he gave his name. Within, the near gallery was crowded. Another royal servant greeted him, ushered him into the other
gallery, where only two men stood at the far end, their heads together: Angus and his brother-in-law, Boyd of Naristoun. They looked up and nodded to him as he entered, acknowledged his brief bow,
went back to their conversation. Gil leaned on the window, watching the play. The young King was serving, his back to them, and Archie Boyd’s brother Sandy was at the hazard end.

‘Still don’t like it,’ said Sandy’s kinsman emphatically at the far end of the gallery.

‘Archie, it might no happen,’ soothed Angus. ‘They’ll maybe no take to one another. She’s got every chance to turn him down.’

‘What, turn down her –’

‘Wheesht, Archie!’

‘And what does that do to us all,’ Boyd went on, soft but still indignant, ‘if he pursues her and she sends him off?’

‘We find another one,’ said Angus. ‘I’d fly my own Marion at him, but she’s handfasted wi Kilmaurs. Your lassie’s the only other in the close kin that’s
the right age for him, but we can try one of the older lassies if we have to.’

Well, well, thought Gil. The players had changed ends, and Sandy Boyd served, putting a spin on the ball that dropped it off the other wall on to the smooth-packed floor before the King could
get to it. The scorer called numbers.

‘It might no work.’

Angus made an impatient noise. ‘Christ save us, he’s a Stewart. Ye have to feed his appetites. He’d lose the Honours of Scotland at the cards, or any other game ye name, gin he
were left to play unwatched, and as for the other, he’s quite old enough to slip out and pass himself off as second sackbut in the burgh band, only to get closer to some trollop he’s
taken a notion to. We have to set him on to a lassie we can trust, for his first. And we have to distract him, Archie. He’s taking altogether too much interest in the business of running the
country, and he doesny understand it all yet. You saw him last night.’

‘Mind you,’ said Naristoun thoughtfully, ‘that might pay off.’

‘Wheesht, Archie.’

Sandy Boyd served again, and this time the King was ready for him, or perhaps Sandy put the ball where the King would be ready. There was a chase, the ball bandied back and forth across the net,
which ended in a point for the King, and applause from the other gallery under the pent as the two players shook hands. His grace had won the set and, it seemed, the match.

Acknowledging the applause, James stripped off his doublet and threw it to a ready servant, accepted a wet towel from another and a goblet from a third. A clerk approached him with some
documents, another with a quiet message, and he looked about.

‘Maister Cunningham?’ he called. ‘What about that game you promised me? Aye, Sandy, a good match. You’re a strong player, sir. Give me five minutes, maister, to deal with
these papers, and we’ll have a fresh ball and begin.’

Gil, stripping off gown and doublet in his turn, stepped out on to the court and bowed to his opponent.

It was an excellent game. The King, as he had seen while watching from the gallery, was a vigorous player with a sound grasp of the strategies. He was also in good practice. Gil, willing to play
with tact, found he had no need to do so. He was faster, and had a longer reach; the King had a stronger stroke, and the ball they were chasing was from his own box. Set by set, the match went the
full eleven, and by the time the King took the final point both men were stripped to the waist, shining with sweat, hair plastered to their faces.

‘And the match point!’ called the scorekeeper, with what sounded to Gil like relief. ‘The King’s grace takes the match.’

There was another patter of applause. Gil lowered his racket and found himself grinning at his opponent, the involuntary response to a rewarding game.

‘St James’s staff and shells!’ said the King. He met Gil’s grin with one of his own, and threw his racket to yet another servant. ‘What a chase, that last set.
Maister Cunningham, we’ll ha another game the next time I come through Glasgow, or my name’s no James Stewart.’ He offered Gil his hand, and used the clasp to draw him under the
net to his side. ‘I thought you looked like a good player, man. Come and wash.’

He led him towards the service gallery, where Angus and the Boyds still watched. The blue-liveried servants came forward with wet towels, a folding table, goblets, a tray of biscuits, and
retired again. James handed Gil a towel, mopped happily at his neck and chest, then said, with another grin, ‘Dicht my back for me, Maister Cunningham, and then I’ll do
yours.’