The Merchant's Mark (37 page)

‘Come on, lassie, Maister David’s waiting,’ said Babb, with rough tenderness. ‘Do you good to get out. Mistress Mason’s company’s no that bad. Come on,’
she coaxed.

‘I saw Mistress Mason yesterday,’ said Kate. But she allowed Babb to hoist her upright, accepted her crutches, and clumped into the stable-yard where her mule waited for her. He
turned as he heard her approach, and whuffled at her, nuzzling hopefully at her hand when she stroked his face.

‘Aye, Kate,’ said her uncle, stepping out at the house door as Babb led the mule round from the stable-yard. ‘Are we to get the whole tale of what happened now, do you suppose?
Now that you and your brother and Peter Mason can each tell us a chapter?’

‘I never thought of that,’ she admitted. ‘There’s not been the time to fit it together, has there, what with Gil taking Alys to Roslin last week to see how her father
did, and then going back this week to fetch him home. Aye, you could be right, sir.’

‘Good,’ said Canon Cunningham, striding out beside her towards the Wyndhead. ‘For I canny make sense of the half of it I’ve heard.’

Away down the High Street, dismounting before the mason’s house, Kate tried hard not to glance at the gates of Morison’s Yard four doors away. Babb was less inhibited.

‘They’ve painted that yett, I see,’ she said as Wallace was led away. ‘Matt was saying they were working on the yard. So I should hope, the work we put in to redd it up.
Matt tells me they’ve been building and all,’ she added, in the face of her mistress’s indifference. ‘He’s put new glass windows into hall and chambers, so he says,
and sent all the hangings to be cleaned, and hired two new lassies that Matt says’ll no last long what wi Ursel and Nan wanting them to work harder than they like.’

‘It aye surprises me,’ said Kate acidly, ‘how much Matt can tell you of other folk’s business, considering how little he ever says.’

‘Aye but,’ said Babb cheerfully, following her into the pend and missing the point of her remark, ‘he’s Maister David’s man. He’s bound to take an interest in
other folk’s business. And those bairns are doing well wi Nan, he says.’

‘He would say that,’ said Kate, making her way across the courtyard between the bright tubs of flowers.

‘Aye, likely. Mind you the wee one’s as wild as ever, but the dumb one’s chattering away now, it seems, and their faither’s trying to learn them a wee poem. Did you ever
hear the like? Can you do that stair the day, do you think, or will I lift you, my doo?’

Canon Cunningham was already within doors, seated beside Catherine near the hearth with its bowl of flowers and congratulating Maistre Pierre on his return home. He looked round as Kate found
her balance, took her crutches from Babb and thumped into the hall from the fore-stair. Socrates paced over to greet her, his claws clicking on the polished boards.

‘Aye, here’s my niece. Our friend looks well, doesn’t he, Kate, for someone whose life was saved by a lute-string?’

‘We have prayed for him,’ said Catherine in French. Kate caught sight of Alys, beyond her father’s chair, biting her lip and crossing herself.

‘We won’t think about that now, sir,’ she suggested, and came forward when Maistre Pierre waved her to a seat. Socrates sat down with his chin on her knee, and she stroked his
head. ‘Did you ever get a look at the church at Roslin by daylight, Maister Mason? It was still building when I visited there, and they would never let me look close at it.’

‘Indeed aye,’ exclaimed her uncle, accepting a glass of Alys’s cowslip wine. ‘I’ve seen it once, but that was a good while since. Is that right they’ve
stopped the building at the crossing? What kind of a roof have they put on it?’

Alys flinched again. Kate took the proffered glass and drew the other girl down on the settle beside her.

‘Let them talk,’ she advised. ‘No good ever came of making them bite their tongues.’ Alys nodded, pulling a face of resignation. ‘Where has my brother got
to?’

‘He was here earlier, but he went out,’ said Alys vaguely ‘He had an errand of some sort in the town.’

‘How is your father? He looks well enough.’

‘Tired from the journey. He may not dine with us, if I can persuade him –’

‘Small chance, I would say.’

‘Likely But the wound is well mended.’ She shivered. ‘I’ve always feared a fall from scaffolding for him – I never thought of him meeting a man with an axe up
there.’

‘It was the Axeman that fell,’ said Kate firmly, ‘and my brother that pushed him down.’

‘He said it was not,’ said Alys, her expression softening as she thought of Gil.

Save us from young lovers, thought Kate, but hid her exasperation. ‘He confronted Gil, and he fell,’ she said. ‘So put the Axeman out your head, he’s gone now. And
falling to his death in a church like that,’ she added, ‘is a certain judgement.’

‘So Catherine says,’ admitted Alys. ‘I am less convinced.’

‘Oh, there’s no doubt at all, mistress,’ said Babb stoutly from behind Kate. ‘A clear judgement on him, for slaying folk behind barred doors and chopping folk’s
oxter-poles in two.’ The door opened, and Socrates scrambled to his feet and hurried forward, his tail wagging furiously. ‘Aye, Maister Gil,’ added Babb.

Alys jumped up and went to meet Gil. He took her hands and kissed them quickly, and a significant look passed between them before he turned to bow to his uncle, greet Kate, draw a backstool into
the circle and sit down.

‘Well, you’ve cast down more than this fellow with the axe, it seems, Gilbert,’ pronounced Canon Cunningham. ‘Oh, certainly I’ll have more of your wine, lassie.
I’ve a letter this morning from Robert Blacader with the details of your appointment, and he tells me my lord St Johns is in some difficulties.’

‘He was removed with great suddenness, by what Gil tells me,’ said the mason. ‘I suppose he had not time to tidy matters as he might have wished.’

‘He has certainly been up to some joukery-pokery,’ said the Official. ‘I wish I could understand his part in what happened his last few days in office.’

‘Simple enough, sir,’ said Gil. Maistre Pierre rolled his eyes at him. ‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘perhaps not that simple. I think,’ he said with care, ‘we
were pursuing two lots of coin, which were being moved about together. One was part of the old King’s hoard, as we thought, and the other was a loan from the Order of St John of Jerusalem to
James Third, which I suspect that James never saw. It seems as if Knollys gave both to Sinclair for safe keeping, without telling him what it was, about the time of Stirling field. They were both
friends of the old King, after all, it would be natural enough.’

‘Ah,’ said David Cunningham. ‘Instead of using either sum to the King’s benefit.’

‘Aye. But it seems word has come to the Preceptory from abroad to get the loan money back. Knollys asked Sinclair for it, and Sinclair realized what he held and rather than give it back he
decided to move the whole lot, the St Johns money and the King’s hoard both, to . . .’ Gil hesitated. A strange look crossed his face. Where has he been, Kate wondered, and what has he
seen? ‘To a place where it would be well protected,’ he continued. ‘By his account, he wanted to find out more about who was now responsible for the two sums of money. But
Knollys, learning it was on the move, decided to seize it anonymously, so to speak.’

‘I see,’ said the Official. ‘If it was thought to be stolen, he might not have to repay it, and in any case he would be able to use the King’s jewels to pay the
Hospital.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed Gil. ‘Since he could hardly use them as currency anywhere in Scotland. So Wilkie and Carson, and Carson’s brother with the axe, attacked the
cooper’s yard after persuading Billy Walker to leave the gate open for them. But their raid went wrong. The coin was to go in a barrel, to be covered by salt herring, and sent onward to
Sinclair’s land disguised as part of the quarter’s rent. Half the coin had gone into the barrel, the other half was still on the horse, and Knollys’s men attacked too
soon.’

‘How did they know when to attack?’ asked Alys.

‘Knollys’s net was both wide and fine, so I have heard,’ said Canon Cunningham.

‘In this case,’ said Gil, nodding agreement, ‘he likely had intelligence from Sinclair’s own household. They’re looking for a new sub-steward at Roslin, so Pierre
tells me.’

‘It seems the previous man fell down a stair,’ expanded Maistre Pierre.

‘So,’ Gil returned to his narrative, ‘though it was no part of their plan, Carson’s brother, who we’ve seen was very ready to use his axe, killed Nelkin
Fletcher.’ He hesitated, staring at nothing. Kate wondered what he could see. ‘The boy bolted with the horse and the other saddlebag. Wilkie and the two Carsons put the head in the
barrel to conceal Nelkin’s death, in on top of what they thought was the whole of the treasure –’

‘Ah!’ said David Cunningham again.

Gil glanced at him, and nodded. ‘Then they filled it up with the brine from the vat standing ready, and Billy Walker was induced to seal the barrel for them, being a cooper’s son and
understanding the craft.’

‘And that was what woke the cooper’s wife,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘No,
ma mie
, no more wine for now.’

‘It must have been. Then I think the Axeman simply put the barrel on the wrong cart. His brother has now told us he was left-handed.’

‘I knew it!’ said Alys triumphantly, and Gil smiled at her where she stood with the flask of cowslip wine.

‘Mistress Riddoch looked out just in time to see one of them carrying Nelkin’s headless body out of the yard, and I suppose it’s still somewhere on the hillside, since
there’s been no word yet from Linlithgow to say it’s been found.’

‘As simple as that,’ said Canon Cunningham.

‘And that was why they were so sure we had the rest of the money,’ said Kate.

‘They were certainly very persistent,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘both here in Glasgow, I gather, and also in the Lothians.’

‘Knollys must have been desperate to have the money found,’ agreed Gil.

‘Quite so. It seems,’ David Cunningham reported without expression, accepting more wine from Alys, ‘as if there was maybe a wee bit confusion between his own account rolls and
the treasury’s. He’s already posted a string of cases to be heard at Edinburgh about sums owing to him personally, and Robert Blacader thinks there’s like to be at least one
brought against him by the new Treasurer.’

‘For there is not so much joy in holding high office as there is grief in falling from a high place.
I wonder,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘whether the Preceptory will be
involved in those?’

‘Probably not,’ said his uncle. Maistre Pierre leaned back against the cushions in his great chair and closed his eyes. ‘There was a bit of legal bickering a few years since,
and its connection was mostly straightened out then. And the loan, of course, is a separate matter and now concluded.’

‘And you got your own barrel back,’ said Kate.

Gil grinned. ‘We did. And there was some rare print in it. I told you that. Another
Blanchflour and Eglantyne
, a very bonny Virgil, the
Sons of Aymon
, a marvellous book on
hunting. And –’ he exchanged a complicit smile with Alys – ‘a betrothal gift.’

‘It will come home from the bookbinder’s next week,’ Alys said. ‘Two volumes in red leather, each with our initials on the cover and
h
e Morte Darthur
on the spine.’

‘And that will be the pair of you,’ said Kate, keeping the acid from her voice with difficulty, ‘jugged in your books like James the Gentle till you have to emerge for the
wedding.’

‘Aye, you’re well suited,’ said Canon Cunningham. ‘But we are tiring our friend.’

‘No, no,’ said the mason, opening his eyes again. ‘Far from it. What were we saying? Are we about to set a date for the marriage?’

‘Ah!’ said the Official, and Catherine’s attention sharpened. Kate hid her hands in her skirts and clenched them tightly, pinning a smile on her face.

‘Next week?’ said Gil hopefully.

‘I thought late November,’ said Alys, setting down the flask of wine.

‘November?’

‘It’s barely three months hence,’ she pointed out, her smile flickering. ‘It will take me near that long to order up the dry stores we’ll need. We’ll want to
hold the feast before Advent begins, and by then the Martinmas killing will be past, and there will be fresh meat in plenty. And your sisters will be able to attend.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Indeed,’ said Catherine in her elegant French. ‘I understand your next sister is about to become a mother again.’

‘Aye,’ said Babb, catching the drift of this. ‘Margaret, out at Bothwell. She’s due in a few weeks, so the word is, and it’s her third, it’s no likely to be
late.’

‘So she should be able to travel by then,’ Alys said hopefully. ‘And if we give Dorothea plenty of notice, she should be able to find an errand for the convent to bring her
over on this side of Scotland about the right time.’

And Kate and Tibby will be able to attend any time, thought Kate. No ties, no responsibilities, nobody else to consult.

Gil was laughing. ‘You have it all thought out, haven’t you? Well, if it can’t be next week, it might as well be November.’ He reached out and drew Alys close, and she
looked down at him. The expression on her face dug to Kate’s heart. ‘But how I’ll last till then, sweetheart, I don’t know.’

‘There is a deal to be done before then,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘If you are to live in the lodgings we picked out over the courtyard yonder, there will be decisions to make, and
work to be commissioned. We have the rooms panelled for you, I think.’

‘Well, well,’ said the Official. ‘So you’ll be leaving my house in late November, then, Gilbert?’

‘He’s near left it already,’ said Kate, and managed to keep the tart tone out of her voice. ‘He’s barely been home all the time I’ve been staying with you,
sir.’

‘You must tell me as soon as you’ve the dates settled,’ went on David Cunningham, acknowledging this with a quirk of his mouth, ‘and I’ll bid Fleming keep them
clear of cases. I’d not wish to be tied up in the Consistory tower while the dancing went on down here.’