Friend & Foe (7 page)

The little feather bed where Nicholas had slept was rolled up out of sight, and in its place a box stood, four foot tall by five, filled with little shotills made of polished oak, with plates of hammered brass. Giles lit the lamp, for it was dark inside the closet, peering at the letters. ‘Somewhere here is
vesica
.’

Hew looked in a drawer, which sticking for a moment, shot out in his fingers, showering him with dust. ‘This stuff is old and dry.’

‘So I dare to hope,’ Giles grumbled. ‘I would thank you not to waste it. You are like a bairn, that cannot keep its fingers out.’ He held up the light, so that Hew could glimpse the label.

‘
Mumia
,’ read Hew, and wiped his fingers hurriedly, to leave an ashen streak across the grey silk of his breeks. ‘Egyptian mummy? Surely not.’

‘Doubtless not,’ Giles sighed. ‘I bought it from a pothecar, who was had for fraud.’

‘Then the
grassus hominis
. . .?’

‘Is common cooking fat. The
vesica
is real enough, and must be somewhere here . . . now do not force the shotills so, or ye will spoil the box. It is a gift for Meg.’

Hew sniffed at his fingertips. ‘She may not like it much.’

‘Piffle, she will love it, once the rubble is cleaned out, and the simples are replaced by her own dried herbs and flowers. I will have new lattons made’ – Giles gestured to the metal plates – ‘but you
must not tell her. It is a surprise. For it is all a part of my much grander ordinance.’

‘What ordinance is that?’ Hew asked with a smile

The doctor said simply, ‘To make your sister happy, Hew. She thinks I do not notice it. And she will not admit to it. But she has been forlorn and quiet since her bairn was born. The infant, and her falling sickness, keep her close confined. Her heart belongs out on the land, and I have closed it in, and forced it to the town; I watch her pale face drain of life, as she brings light to mine.’

‘You and Matthew are her world, she would not change that,’ Hew objected. But in the corner of his mind, he saw his sister standing in the physick garden, barefoot in the leaves, and wondered, for a moment, whether it was true.

‘So she will contend,’ Giles reflected, sadly, ‘while she struggles like a reed that searches for the sunlight and is planted in the shade. When she went out on May morning I was half afraid that she would not come back. Then, when she returned, she came back with a bloom I have not seen for months, her colour and her spirit equally restored, and yet a deeper restlessness, a deeper sadness too. She misses Kenly Green. And while I cannot replicate the physick garden there, here is something lacking that I may amend. Meg shall have a still house and dispensary, built into the cellars of our home. I have hired a master of the works. The masons start next week. But not a word to Meg. She thinks I am installing conduits in the laich house.’

‘Conduits?’ echoed Hew.

‘It was an idea I had, to carry our foul water out into the sea, which under other circumstances, I should like to implement,’ his friend explained. ‘Meg’s happiness comes first. She has approved the project, for she counts it dear to me, and she will never guess that it is but a subterfuge. I have drawn a draft, with the approval of an architectour.’ From a shelf above he took down a roll of paper, bound with leather straps, and set it on the floor. Slowly he unbuckled it, spreading out the plans.

‘Here is our kitchen,’ he pointed to the place, ‘and this the nether hall, both on the lower floor. Between them is the trance, which is this little passage down to the front door. The trap down to the laich house is in the kitchen,
here
. The laich house runs below the kitchen underneath the trance, but stops short of the nether hall, where it meets a wall. We mean to take this out, and extend the cellar here, the full length of the house, giving twice the space. On the west side, where the wall is built upon the Fisher Gait, we will drop the floor, and build in a window, to allow the light; and here to the south, where it backs upon the rig, there will be a vent, and a lum for the distillery. Back up in the nether hall, Meg shall have her kist, and a closet for consulting, partitioned off. So that when folk come to see her, she may treat them undisturbed.’

‘You seem,’ reflected Hew, ‘to have it well drawn out.’

‘Will it please her, think you?’

Hew said, ‘She will love it.’ But his thoughts had strayed elsewhere. ‘Do many people come to her?’ he ventured.

Giles rolled up the paper and returned it to its shelf. ‘More than she can help. And it vexes her when she must send them to the pothecar, for lack of some sweet herb, or pocketful of powder, they can ill afford.’

‘Does Clare Buchanan come?’ Hew asked out aloud, without guile or subtlety. For so he had once seen her, coming from Meg’s counsel, on the brink of tears.

Giles said sympathetically, ‘You know I cannot tell you that.’

‘Which tells me that she does.’

The doctor sighed. ‘I know you will not like what I am going to say to you . . .’

‘But you will say it anyway.’

‘As I feel I must. As your friend and brother, if not as your principal. I know you have feelings for Clare. And I know she comes to visit, when my back is turned.’

‘She comes,’ defended Hew, ‘to see her brother George.’

No woman under fifty was permitted in the college, whether as a wife, a servant or a friend; and even Meg herself had not crossed its bounds, or been admitted further past the turret tower. For Clare Buchanan, Giles had fought for an exception, since her brother George was injured in an accident, for which, to some extent, the doctor blamed himself. George, a fledgling student there, had struggled from the start. Since Clare began to visit, once or twice a month, Hew had taken up a private room in college, the significance of which had not escaped his friend.

‘Which you are aware,’ said Giles, ‘is quite against the rule. And though I did allow it, after George’s accident, her brother is recovered now. She has no cause to come. You know that she is married, Hew.’

‘We both know she is married,’ Hew met his friend’s gaze. ‘And to what kind of a man. But you need not trouble, Giles. Since George has recovered, and he thinks her visits shameful, Clare has not called in weeks.’

‘Indeed.’ Giles considered. ‘When did you last see her?’

‘Sometime back in March. Has Meg seen her since?’

Giles did not reply to this, but changed the subject briskly. ‘But we had quite forgotten what we came for. A v
esica
, or bladder, burnt into a powder, is used to treat the diabete, or water pouring out, curing like with like. Sadly ineffective. Here, as I supposed, we have one still intact. Let us take it back with us, and see it in the light.’ The doctor closed the door upon his box of tricks, and, to Hew’s regret, all further talk of Clare.

Close scrutiny confirmed that the membranes were alike; the substance was the same.

‘Now I know what was done, or at least the part of it.’ Since Bartie Groat had kept his word, and Giles was in the dark, Hew told him the whole story, ending with the samples taken from the tree.

‘Ingenious,’ said Giles at last. ‘So that was how twas done.’

‘Not how, but what,’ corrected Hew. ‘We now know
what
was done, but not the how, or who.’

‘Nor yet the why,’ said Giles.

‘The why is to dismay, and make Andrew Melville doubt. To some extent, it worked. I fear it is a part with the other moves against him. Someone pinned a psalm upon his door at night that worked to prick his conscience, and to strengthen his resolve, to make an honest case in his dealings with the bishops. He took it as a sign. I read it as a threat.’

‘Why should it be a threat?’

‘Because it was the 109th psalm, the most vengeful and disturbing, filled with bitter curses, and the curses underlined. He thinks a student left it, and he does not take it seriously. It is a curious gift, and I can scarcely think that it was kindly meant.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Giles agreed. ‘I suppose you have not heard him preach upon that text, since you do not pay observance at the Holy Trinity. But I remember once – it stayed long in my mind – Lermont of Balcomie left a placard at his gate, condemning his reforms. Melville cursed him from the pulpit, that he “never should enjoy the fruits of marriage, or have the joy of a succession of an honest birth”. And if he were an old wife, rather than a preacher, then his kirk would have her wrung out for a witch. Perhaps it is this Lermont casts the preacher’s curses back into his face.’

‘Yet Lermont kens no Hebrew,’ Hew objected, ‘and his placards were attached to the outside of the gates. Whoever left this message, must be lodged within. Or else it were a miracle.’

‘The miracle,’ said Giles, ‘is that whoever left it there has opened up the conscience of a man so fiercely resolute he will not give a pause to simple, honest doubt. Which gives hope to us all. Well then, we shall wait and see what the morrow brings. I will send word back to Melville, to arrange when we shall meet. As for this bleeding hawthorn, Hew, I wish you would be careful with it.’

Hew protested. ‘Ha, you sound like Bartie Groat! When I have taken pains to be so analytical. I thought ye would approve of it.’

‘It is not your methods that I fear. But someone took great pains to perpetrate this mischief. They have drawn you in. I have not seen
you so engaged since you returned from Ghent. It almost seems as though this trick were somehow
meant
for you.’

‘It was meant for Andrew Melville,’ Hew assured him, cheerfully, ‘and is a part of an attempt to unsettle and disgrace him. It is all to do with him, and naught to do with me.’

He could not deny that the riddle pleased him. He looked forward to discovering the author of this crime, which for its ingenuity, was worthy of applause.

Chapter 7

A Rare Roast Egg

Andrew Melville could not tell what it was had woken him, or when it was he woke. He had read until the light gave out, and then a little afterwards, though not so very long, for he was sparing with his candle, mindful of the cost. After blowing out the candle, he had knelt to speak with God. That conversation had occupied him for some while, so that when it was concluded he found the fire gone out, the room had grown quite dark, one knee bore the print of the rush mat on the floor and both knees locked and buckled, stiff and white with cold. He crept into his blankets then, where sleep came slow and fitfully, for though the conversation had been free and frank, it had not cleared his mind. God listened, but had not said much. Then Andrew knew that he must find the answer in his heart, and spent some sore hours searching for it. At last he drifted off. He woke up with a start from a slough of shifting dreams and opened up the shutters that looked out upon the square. A fine grey drizzle smudged the stars, blurring the distinction between light and dark. The rain did not fall hard enough to rattle at the windowpanes, and brought with it no wind, but a creeping, breathless hush that stilled the shrill night predators and blotted out the moon. The lantern at the gatehouse shone out to the street; there were no lamps lit in college or the porter’s lodge, and at first he could see nothing but the muffled shadows of the dull night sky.

But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and began to fathom different shades and shapes, Andrew Melville saw, or thought he saw, a narrow strip of light that crept across the courtyard about four
feet from the ground. The light was greenish grey. It did not gutter like a candle, but moved softly through the shadows like a green-eyed cat. It left behind a faintly luminescent haze. Andrew closed his eyes and opened them again. The light had come to rest, settling on the hawthorn tree. Andrew put on gown and slippers over his bare shirt, and made his way outside. He swung a yellow horn lamp clear around the square, into nooks and crevices, shining high and low, but found no trace of green. The soft rain had begun to seep into the stonework, running to the grass. From the pale face of the moon, emerging from its cloud, Andrew put the hour at close to three o’clock.

He brought the yellow lantern closer to the hawthorn tree, and placed his hand against the trunk. It came off wet, and clean.

Hew was woken by a bursar, shortly after five. He had spent the night in college, in a vaulted chamber accessed through the cloisters, next door to the chapel, on the eastern side. The room was simply furnished, with a shelf for books, a writing desk and chair, a settle made of oak that opened to a bed, a towel pin and a peg, for hanging up his clothes. A window in the corner glanced out on the North Street, with a cushion on the sill, and in front of it a sitting chair, upholstered in green silk, caught the morning light, and was kept for guests.

The bursar brought warm water and an urgent message. ‘Master Andro Melville waits to see you, sir.’

‘Andrew? At this hour?’ Hew splashed his face with the water from the bowl, scrubbing at it blearily with the linen towel.

‘He is outside in the cloisters. Shall I send him in?’ The bursar was a pauper student, in his second year. His role it was to wake the college, in return for board and lodging, fetching water, fire and light. With an expert hand, he closed the settle bedstead, and stowed Hew’s sheets and blankets in the locker underneath.

Hew answered with a groan. ‘Tell him, I will come to him, as soon as I am dressed.’

He combed his hair quickly and put on his coat, his doctor’s cap, tippet and gown.

The day had dawned cooler and fresh, the sun advancing warily through heavy flanks of cloud. Melville prowled the cloister, scowling at the wind. He greeted Hew tersely, ‘Where is Giles Locke?’

‘We shall meet him at his house, which is on our way. Though I cannot promise he will be awake.’

‘Then he must be woken. There is no time to lose.’

St Salvator’s college backed on to the Swallow Gait, which led directly to the castle on the cliff, and to Giles’ house. But Andrew insisted that they go out to the North Street, turning at the Fisher Gait, avoiding Patrick’s soldiers at the Swallow Port, for Patrick, he insisted, must not be forewarned. Hew judged it wise to humour him. His impatience had attracted notice in the quad, and it would not be long before Professor Groat was up, winding his old bones into his fur-lined cloak, snuffling and inquisitive. Bartie’s probing questions would delay them half an hour. He hurried Andrew Melville back out to the street. ‘I have something to tell you. We have solved the riddle of the hawthorn tree. Or at least, in part, worked out how it was done.’

‘Aye, and how was that?’ Andrew seemed distracted still, and less enthusiastic than Hew would have liked. In the waking morning light, he looked paler than before, sickly green and frail. Hew judged, accurately, that he had not slept.

‘A waggish pranking trick, that a boy might boast of,’ he explained. ‘The scrap of skin we found turned out to be
vesica
– the bladder of a calf, or perhaps a sheep.’

Andrew prompted, ‘And?’

‘Did you never, as a bairn, play with bladders on a stick, or filled one at the burn, to chase and soak a friend?’ From Andrew’s look of bafflement, it seemed that he had not. ‘Then this is how tis done; the blether of a lamb is washed out, soaked and dried, blown out full with air, and made into a ball. Someone filled a bladder up with
blood, and tied it to the tree. When the time was ripe, they came along and burst it – at some remove, I doubt, else they would run the risk of being drenched with blood – but to ken how it was done, we must ask Bartie Groat.’

‘Then you suspect Professor Groat?’ Andrew Melville frowned; his quick mind lagged a little, due to his distraction, or to lack of sleep.

‘Not for one moment,’ Hew assured him. ‘I believe the bladder was pierced by a sharp stone, thrown at it by force, for
vesica
is tough, and would be hard to burst. Perhaps it was a sling or some other kind of weapon. Several shots were fired, and frightened off the birds. There were stones of different shapes in the courtyard by the tree, and we should not have noticed them, except that one had a hole in it, and that was out of place. It put us in a heightened state of fear. Perhaps the perpetrator tried with different sorts of stone, brought there for the purpose, not knowing which might work. Or perhaps he left the seeing stone, to trouble and perplex us, put us off our scent. We may suppose he had no time to gather in his pellets, wherefore they were chosen, cunningly and carefully; to that end, he dared not shoot an arrow, which would penetrate more cleanly, but which might be found.’

‘But what,’ Andrew frowned, ‘can this have to do with Professor Groat?’

‘Little at all, but that I hope by his geometry he may chance to tell us where the shot was fired. Whether, in particular, from up on the wall, or even from some vantage place on the other side.’

‘Then you think it may be possible it came in from outside?’

‘I hope it may be possible. Bartie may ken more.’

Melville said, ‘I thank you, then, for that assurance.’ But he looked grave and doubtful, scarcely reassured. Hew felt his grand discovery had fallen somewhat flat. The menace was at large still, he was forced to tell himself. ‘What you need,’ he proposed, ‘is a wholesome breakfast, to fire you in your cause. Giles Locke is the man for it.’

Andrew Melville stared, as though Hew’s straggling wits had finally deserted him. ‘Do you not apprehend, there is no time for breakfast, Hew? To find the tulchan out, we maun surprise him suddenly. And now the sun is up, we have no time to waste.’

They had turned into the Fisher Gait, leading to the cliff, where the rigs and gardens struggled in the wind, bare blown and exposed before the cold north sea. Since it was low tide, the fisher wives were still indoors, skillets on the flame, waiting for their men folk to return home with their nets, when they would hurry to the shore with bucketfuls of salt, to ply wet writhing haddocks at the Fisher Cross. They would sit out in the sun, to gossip and tie hooks, and feed their men afresh, before the evening tides. The cottages were quiet now. A solitary child sat huddled on a step, where rarely for this quarter, the shutters were still drawn. The child hugged close her mantle, and did not look up.

They found Giles at his breakfast, in the nether hall. Matthew Locke was tethered in his father’s lap, battling in the folds of an enormous napkin, which engulfed them both. Meg was baking bannocks on a girdle at the fire. On the board were butter, and a loaf of day-old bread, which Doctor Locke was crumbling in a wooden bowl. The doctor had strong views on early infant nourishment: white things as a supplement, while the teeth were cut, for milk was white and teeth were white; white meats, minced and pulped, white fish, boiled or baked; white bread, sops and soddins, soaked into a pap, almond milks and bisket, albumen of egg. Once all the teeth were cut, the infant could progress. Green foods were the devil’s own; apples, salats, spinach, pears, brought on worm and colic, soured the wam for life.

Giles fed Matthew pap. Matthew opened up and closed his mouth again, like a baby bird. On the third attempt, he spat the mouthful out, and grappled for the spoon.

Andrew Melville stared, openly alarmed.

‘No one bakes a bannock better than my sister.’ Hew pulled up a chair.

‘You are welcome, Master Andro,’ Meg said with a smile. ‘Canny Bett is cooking eggs. How do you take yours?’

Melville found his voice. ‘Later in the day,’ he replied ungraciously. ‘At our college, we begin the day with prayer, and half a morning’s work, before we break our fast, wherefore we come upon it with a glad and grateful appetite, not slow and soft and slovenly, fleshly plump from sleep.’

Meg’s mouth opened, closed again, for the moment lost for words, like her little son.

Giles Locke said, ‘Indeed?’ He removed a table knife from Matthew’s grasping fist and passed it back to Hew. ‘The best eggs,’ he remarked, ‘are but lightly poached in broth, those are most digestible. Buttered, on a hot thick toast, with pepper and a dust of salt, were almost as acceptable. Or seething in a pan.’

‘When we were boys at college,’ collaborated Hew, ‘we would roast them in their shells in the embers of the fire, where by degrees they darkened to a deep rich honeyed gold, that was creamy like a cheese. We picked the shells with pins, or else they would burst.’

Giles tutted, ‘That is a method that I do not recommend. Tis almost impossible to rare roast a hen’s egg. Without which you will find them hard and indigestible, binding to the stomachs of bairns and young boys. It perhaps explains a certain flaw of stubbornness, which I have sometimes marked in you.’

It was Meg who put an end to their subtle game of flyting, moved by the confusion she could see in Andrew’s face. ‘You must excuse them, sir, for when they are at rest, they fool and mow like bairns. Perhaps you are the same, when you share a play day with your nephew James? Hew tells me you are close.’

Melville answered stiffly, ‘I assure you, not. Sir,’ he turned to Giles, ‘this talk is vain and frivolous, and not what I expect from you. Our business is most pressing. We must leave at once.’

‘Stuff,’ retorted Giles. ‘There is no business can be settled before we have breakfasted, and no task that was not bettered by beginning
in an egg. Sit down awhile, and eat with us. The day will still be waiting, after we are done.’

‘My husband will not tell you,’ mediated Meg, ‘why he wants his breakfast, for he is not vain or frivolous, as you have supposed. He has been up all night at the bedside of a woman who departed from this world a little while ago. It is for that poor wife’s bairns that Canny cooks the eggs.’

Hew asked, ‘Was it one of the fisherwives?’ He remembered the small daughter, crouching in the vennel, five or six years old.

‘Nan Reekie,’ Meg confirmed. ‘Do you mind her, Master Melville? She came often to your kirk.’

Melville, for his sins, had the grace to blush. ‘I did not ken that she was sick. Nor, indeed, that she had means to call for a physician.’

‘Doubtless, she did not.’ Hew felt almost sorry for him. ‘Andrew,’ he encouraged, ‘come and sit you down, Giles has been up all night, and he must have his breakfast. Your cause will not be lost, if you have an egg. The archbishop will be abed still, after we are done.’

Melville bowed his head. ‘Your pardon, mistress,’ he apologised to Meg, ‘for I apprehend that I have judged too hastily, and that is a fault. A little small ale, if ye have it, would be welcome, and suffice.’

He sat down on the bench, as remote as possible and furthest from the child, whose presence at the table worried and perplexed him. Canny brought the eggs, and was sent back for the ale. Meg helped Hew to cheese. ‘Did Giles tell you,’ she remarked, ‘we are laying conduits in the laich house, to carry off our waste? It is a clever scheme of his.’

‘I do believe he mentioned it,’ Hew said with a smile.

‘A sink is an anathema,’ Andrew Melville warned. Though he had little practice in domestic small talk, it did not deter him from putting forth his views. ‘At the college, we are plagued with the offence of our latrines. We are waiting for the draucht-raker to come and dig them out; yet we have no idea when he will come. I would
advise you strongly not to put one in your house, for it cannot be healthsome or wholesome.’

‘The purpose of the conduit pipes,’ Giles corrected quickly, ‘is to flush the waste away, so there need not be a sink.’

‘Indeed? Then I confess, I had not heard of that.’

‘The conduits take the waste out to the sea, by means of a small pump. It is my own invention.’

‘Did you say,’ Hew interrupted, ‘you were waiting for the draucht-raker?’

‘We have been waiting for some while.’

‘Tis likely,’ muttered Giles, ‘he is somewhere deep in shit. Which is what the conduits were intended to prevent.’

He was giving up his pipe dream, out of love for Meg, while Meg let him pursue it, out of love for him. But Hew’s thoughts were elsewhere. ‘The raker comes at night. How then, when he comes, is he let in to the college?’