The Nicholas Feast (23 page)

‘Very well,’ said Gil. ‘Give Maister Kennedy my message. And will you also tell Nicholas Gray I need a word with him? I hope to be at the college later today and I can speak to him then.’

‘Yes, Bernard was the Montgomery’s chaplain,’ said Egidia Muirhead. She sat back as Alys began to clear the small table at which they had eaten. ‘That was quite delicious, Mistress Mason. For, I suppose, ten years. Certainly from the time Hugh and his brother were still in tutelage. Bernard’s mother used to boast about how well Montgomery trusted him, until the scandal.’

‘Scandal?’ said Gil.

She looked affectionately at him. ‘You sound like your uncle David. Yes, a scandal. I forget the details, which I suppose is an object lesson. One thinks at the time one will never live it down, but the world forgets. Let me see – was it land or a leman?’

‘This was in Ayrshire?’ Gil prompted. She nodded, accepting a glass of Alys’s cowslip wine. ‘How did you hear of it?’

‘Gil, it was fifteen years ago, the year your sisters had the measles. I heard about it when I went back to Stirling after Elsbeth died. Or am I thinking of that business of Meg Douglas’s? Your good health, Mistress Mason.’

‘It must have been difficult for Father Bernard, being chaplain to Lord Montgomery,’ said Alys, when they had drunk a toast each. Gil and his mother both looked at her. ‘These great houses are usually full of dogs,’ she pointed out.

‘That would be no trouble for Bernard,’ said Lady Egidia blankly. ‘He used to hunt with the household, his mother told me. I recall her boasting about some occasion when he saved Montgomery himself from being slashed by a boar. They’d be hip deep in dogs.’

‘Curious,’ said Gil, looking down at the wolfhound, which was lying at his feet watching him with an alert eye. ‘This fellow tried to attack him as soon as he saw him, and his explanation was that dogs often dislike him because of his robes.’

‘What a strange thing to say,’ said his mother. ‘Of course, he wouldny hunt in his habit. Does the beast attack other friars?’

‘He’s a very well-mannered dog,’ said Alys, before Gil could speak. ‘Whoever schooled him has done well by him.’

‘He had no objection to the Dominicans at prayer beside William’s bier.’ Gil looked down at the animal again, and it raised its head hopefully. ‘Later,’ he said, and it sighed and put its nose on its paws.

‘Bernard always was inclined to say what seemed right at the moment,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘I should make little of it, Gil. Now, are you coming up the hill with me?’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I must go back to the college and speak to the young man’s friends.’

‘You should be staying quiet,’ said Alys, ‘with that compress on your wrist again.’

‘My fingers are less painful.’ Gil tried to move them, and stopped. ‘I have until noon tomorrow to find out who killed William Irvine, or Hugh Montgomery will take the law into his own hands. I should have been out questioning half the college this morning.’

‘Then I shall see you at supper tonight,’ said his mother.

‘It depends,’ he said cautiously. ‘If Maister Mason returns from seeing to his men he will help me, and things may go faster, but I may be late home.’

‘Very well, dear. I’ll wait up for you.’ Lady Cunningham rose, and turned to Alys. Gil thrust his feet into the pair of the mason’s slip-slop shoes Alys had procured for him and rose likewise as his mother continued, ‘Mistress Mason, I must thank you again for your hospitality, and for your charity in taking in my son. And now I must trespass on your time no longer. Is my groom still in your kitchen?’

‘He is,’ said Alys, ‘and your horse is easily fetched, but will you not stay longer? I am sure my father would like to talk to you. He only went out because his journeyman sent to ask his advice.’

‘I am expected in Rottenrow.’ Lady Cunningham smiled sweetly at Alys and shook out her muddy skirts. ‘I am quite sure we’ll meet again, my dear. Your father and my son appear to be good friends.’

‘Mother,’ began Gil in exasperation, but Alys returned the smile with equal sweetness and bent her knee in a formal curtsy.

‘I’m sure we will,’ she agreed. ‘I look forward to it.’

Gil stared rather grimly at Lady Cunningham and her groom vanishing round the curve of the High Street.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said. Alys put a hand on his arm.

‘Don’t say anything you’ll regret,’ she counselled. He looked down at her with a reluctant smile, and she drew him back through the pend into the courtyard of her father’s house.

‘She’s being very difficult,’ he said. ‘And I haven’t time to coax her round now.’

‘Does coaxing her round work?’ Alys asked, watching the wolfhound which was stalking a bee.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘She makes up her own mind. My sister Dorothea’s the same.’

‘That’s your oldest sister? The one who is a nun?’ He nodded, and flinched. ‘Gil, does your head still ache?’

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘I need to look at that list of names your father got out of the flower-pot. I need to speak to people at the college. I hope you can get to the kitchen-girls, and there’s William’s notebook and William’s coded writing to decipher. I can’t think what to do first. And more important than all of these, more important to me than the future of the college, I want my mother to like our marriage.’

‘Come into the house,’ said Alys. ‘We can do nothing about courting your mother’s good opinion at this moment, but the other matters can be dealt with. I haven’t had time to tell you yet – Annis brought the two college servants by our kitchen this morning, and I got a word with them.’

‘Alys!’ He stared down at her. ‘What did they have to say?’

She pulled a face. ‘Not girls I would have in my household. Good enough workers, I’ve no doubt, but silly. I wouldn’t leave them in charge of a bowl of milk. So it took me a while to get them to the point. Is it always like that, questioning witnesses?’

‘It can be,’ he agreed. ‘Did they recall what you were asking them about?’

‘Eventually It was difficult, for I had to speak to them out here where Mistress Irvine wouldn’t hear, and they were alarmed by being taken aside by Annis’s dame. Eventually I had to resort to flattery.’

‘I’ve always found it a useful weapon.’

She smiled quickly, and nodded. ‘It worked in this case. In the end, all it came down to was – I hope I have the names right – that they heard Nick Gray say that William was in the limehouse, poor boy, and that Robert Montgomery also heard it and – so they said – laughed a vengeful laugh.’

‘A vengeful laugh,’ he repeated.

She nodded again. ‘They seem addicted to ballads. I took it to be the perception of hindsight.’

‘And a vengeful laugh laughed he.’
Gil scuffed thoughtfully at the cobbles with the toe of his borrowed slipper. ‘So they felt Robert disliked William.’

‘I asked them that, and they said nobody liked William. What a dreadful thing, to be disliked by everybody.’

‘He had one admirer among his fellows,’ said Gil, ‘and Robert his kinsman tolerated him, but I should say he was one who liked himself well enough for nobody else’s opinion to matter.’ He sighed. ‘Well, we can set that aside now. I had hoped it would be of more value.’

‘I have also –’ She tugged at his arm. ‘Come into the house and I’ll see the dog and the baby fed. I have also begun work on the coded notes.’

‘When did you find the time?’ he marvelled. ‘And . . .?’

‘I have discovered the correct setting of the cipher disc, and deciphered the superscription.’

‘The superscription? You mean it is a letter?’ Gil followed her up the stair to the door, the dog at his heels.

‘To his kinsman, Lord Montgomery.’ Alys paused to look back at him. ‘Why would he write to his kinsman in code?’

‘Ah,’ said Gil. ‘That fits with something Michael said. William sold some information to the Montgomery last year – obviously he was still collecting for him. What else does it say?’

‘That I have yet to find out.’

‘It could,’ said Gil slowly, ‘this letter, be what they were searching for when I was attacked. I’m reasonably sure those were Montgomery’s men, possibly even the man himself, in which case I’m lucky to be alive. And they didn’t find what they wanted, since they returned what they took. Alys, we need to know what it says.’

‘Well, I got no further – Annis arrived with the two girls – but now I have the disc set it should take little time. Shall I go on with that, or do you want to look at the list out of the flower-pot, or the notebook?’

When Alys returned to the mason’s panelled, comfortable closet, carrying a little beaker and a jug of something which gave off a herbal-scented steam, Gil had the pages of Maister Coventry’s neat writing spread out on the desk.

‘I think we must deal with this first,’ he said. ‘From this I can decide who to question next, and then you can decipher the coded letter. If you have the time,’ he added, raising his head to look at her.

‘The dinner is in hand. What does this tell us?’

Gil bent to the orderly sheets again.

‘He said they asked where each was after the play,’ he recalled, ‘and who was with them. If we can put them all into groups who confirm one another’s lists, we should be able to eliminate most of them.’

‘We may need a slate,’ said Alys. ‘Or several. Drink this.’

‘What is it?’ he said suspiciously.

‘Mostly willow-bark tea. It should help your head.’

‘My head is –’ he began, but she held the beaker out insistently. ‘Oh, very well.’ He tossed back the dose and made a face. ‘I’ve tasted worse. You’ll never make an apothecary if your potions are palatable.’

‘I won’t bother putting honey in it next time. Now what must we do with this list?’ She bent over one of the pages.
‘Maister William Anderson
,
crossed Outer Close and Inner Close, stood in kitchen-yard, with Maister John Scoular
,
Maister Robert Kerr, Maister James Murray
,
saw many students in the close.’
She looked thoughtfully from one sheet to another. ‘Your friends have done half the work in the way it is set out. I will fetch a slate, or perhaps two, and we can divide up the groups as you said.’

‘You will have to write,’ he said ruefully, looking at his damaged hand.

‘Yes, and you may soak that in this hot water. I put mallow in it, and violet leaves.’

‘I don’t need anything for it,’ he said.

That once settled, they started rearranging the list. Gil was surprised by how rapidly it went. He sat by the window, his bruised arm immersed to the elbow, and read each entry aloud to Alys. She stood at the tall desk, and copied the names down in a grid which she had drawn up on one of the large slates from the heap in the courtyard, nodding and muttering to herself as each of the blocks filled up.

‘This is strange,’ she said as they reached the final page.

‘What is?’ Gil asked, finger on the next name on the list.

‘There seem to be two different sets of people who can say they saw Father Bernard.’

‘Perhaps there were.’

‘No, but –’ She looked from one box to another. ‘They didn’t see one another. These four were crossing the Inner Close when they saw him, and this pair stayed in the Outer Close.’

‘Perhaps he crossed one and then the other,’ said Gil, ‘on the way to or from Blackfriars.’

‘Mm,’ she said, still scowling at her grid. ‘What does he say himself?’

‘He doesn’t seem to have been asked,’ Gil reported, turning pages one-handed.

‘Well, you must ask him. Give me the other names.’

Gil read the names for her, and she wrote them carefully in the appropriate boxes, and finally sat back and shook her head.

‘No, it still doesn’t fit. People contradict themselves, and nobody remembers everybody they saw, but everyone else was seen by someone from more than one group. See, you and your friends are here, where this group saw you going to the Arthurlie building, wherever that is, and here, where this group bears them out, and here again where two of this larger group noticed you returning. But only these people here noticed Father Bernard in the Inner Close, very soon after the play, and only these two saw him crossing the Outer Close.’

Gil peered over her shoulder, holding his wet arm out to one side, and finally shook his head.

‘I can’t see it. I accept what you say,’ he said hastily as she drew breath to explain again, ‘but I can’t make it out. Maybe when my head’s clearer. What interests me is what he was doing in the Outer Close. The door to the Theology Schule is in the Inner Close.’

‘Was he giving a lecture?’

‘So Nick Kennedy said.’

‘Gil, you’re dripping everywhere. Let me dry that.’ She lifted the towel she had laid ready and mopped carefully at his wrist. ‘Is it any easier now?’

‘Maybe.’ He tried his fingers again. ‘Maybe a little.’ He put his arm over her shoulders, drawing her close, and turned back to the spidery lines on the slate. ‘What you are saying is that everyone else is vouched for, but Father Bernard, who was not interviewed, seems to be in two places at once.’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying about Father Bernard. Something is strange, and I need to look at it more closely. But, yes, everyone else is spoken for.’