St Mungo's Robin (21 page)

‘He must need a deal of care, poor man,’ said Alys. ‘Gil, what is all this about birds?’

‘He seems to see the folk around him as birds,’ Gil agreed. ‘Maister Cubby as a woodpecker, Millar as an owl. And the Deacon was a shrike and then a robin.’

‘Why a robin?’

‘
Because he’s dead
,’ Gil quoted. ‘Whether he means the one in the bairns’ rhyme –
I said the sparrow with my bow and arrow –
or the one St Mungo
brought back to life, I’ve no notion.’

‘St Mungo’s robin? But the saint will not bring the Deacon back to life.’

‘It seems unlikely.’

‘Naismith was making a good profit from the situation,’ said Maistre Pierre. He had gone on to another sheaf of paper. ‘Now this is a Douglas gift. If the family uses the place
as a townhouse, I imagine the Deacon would have less freedom to divert these funds.’

‘And you said the man’s own papers are in his kist,’ Alys prompted.

‘It is locked,’ said her father without looking up. ‘The keys are yonder.’

Following her after a short time, Gil found her on her knees before the painted kist, its lid open. She was going methodically through the packets of paper and parchment from one of the inner
compartments, but as he knelt beside her she inspected the last one and gathered them up to put them back in the kist, their dangling seals clicking together.

‘I wondered if the bedehouse papers were here,’ she said, ‘but these are the documents for the man’s own possessions. What about this? Ah!’ She scooped another
handful from a different compartment and gave half to Gil. He contrived to touch her fingers as he took them, and she looked round, smiled as their eyes met, looked quickly away. What is the
matter, he wondered, trying not to look at the bed beyond her. Mistress Mudie had obviously been up to clean the lodging, for the mattress was stripped, the bare pillows piled at its head and the
tapestry counterpane folded neatly at the foot.

‘Here is the Kilsyth gift,’ said Alys. She handed him the crackling document. ‘Is this the complete disposition?’

‘It is,’ he agreed, running his eye down the lines of careful script. ‘Drawn up by Thomas Agnew the younger, it says –’

‘Is that the same man?’

‘It must be. It doesn’t add much to what we know already,’ he admitted. ‘The property seems to be dedicated to Humphrey’s keep, and to revert to the bedehouse
absolutely after his death.’

‘Unwise,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘What if he became worse and had to be sent somewhere he could be shut away? How would he be supported then?’

‘I suppose the parents felt the bedehouse would pay for that out of this gift.’

‘Perhaps the previous Deacon was less acquisitive.’

He nodded, and folded the parchment carefully back into its creases. ‘I’ll ask Millar if I may take all these documents for safe keeping just now. Then we can go through them at more
leisure.’

‘A good plan. And what is this?’ Alys lifted a piece of paper from the floor. She turned it over, looking at the writing, and unfolded it. ‘It’s a map, with notes. Did it
fall out when I unfolded that disposition? There are names on it – is that Auchenreoch? Queenzie?’

‘It must have,’ said Gil, answering her second question. ‘Those are names from the Kilsyth property.’

‘Someone has planned great things.’ She turned the sheet of paper to read more of the notes. ‘A vast house, by the look of it.
How
many cartloads of stone? Do you know
the writing?’

‘It’s Naismith’s.’ Gil grinned. ‘The bedehouse properties are at the Deacon’s disposition, and he has certainly made the most of the situation, as your father
said. Ambitious!’

‘Did you say,’ she recalled thoughtfully, ‘that the man of law suggested he might have been altering the terms of the dispositions?’

‘I did.’ Gil unfolded the parchment again and spread it out on the swept boards between them. ‘I wonder. What do you think? I see nothing irregular here.’

‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s all in the one hand, isn’t it.’

He looked down at the neat paragraphs, and then at her face beside his, leaned forward and kissed her. She moved at the last moment, so that it landed on her cheek rather than her mouth, but she
turned her head slightly and returned the salute, a single, clinging kiss. Then, with a little shiver, she drew away and scrambled to her feet.

‘I must go down the hill,’ she said. ‘There are things I must see to.’

‘We’ll show this to Pierre,’ said Gil, ‘and get these papers packed up, and then I’ll come with you. I have to find John Veitch’s lodging and speak to the
widow.’

Leaving Maistre Pierre planning to go out and find his men, they set out to walk down the High Street, arm in arm, the dog at their heels. The wind was still chilly, with
spatters of rain in it.

‘I hope it will be dry next week,’ said Alys doubtfully, pulling her plaid up with her free hand. ‘The brocades will be spoiled if it’s wet.’

‘We should have made it a double wedding with Kate and Augie Morison, in September, as they suggested. They had a fine day.’

‘I wish we had, now.’ She looked up at him, and quickly away. ‘It would all be . . .’

‘All be what?’ Gil drew her aside to avoid a ranging pig outside one of the small cottages on the steep slope called the Bell o’ the Brae. ‘All be over by now? Is that
how it seems to you, Alys?’ He stopped, turning to look down at her. ‘Something to be got over?’

‘No!’ she protested, going scarlet. ‘Gil, no!’ She glanced about them, moved closer and put her hand on his chest. ‘I want to be married, more than anything, I
swear it. We’ll be together, we’ll be partners, man and wife. It’s just . . .’

‘Just what?’

She looked away, biting her lips.

‘I can’t explain. I don’t know.’

‘Alys.’ He gathered both her hands in his. ‘Something’s troubling you. Tell me.’

‘I can’t explain,’ she repeated, shaking her head. Resolutely she pulled away, took his arm and set off down the street again. ‘Gil, can you tell me anything about this
– this bed your mother has sent?’

‘Bed,’ he repeated. ‘Oh, Pierre mentioned it.’

‘Sh-she says it was her marriage bed.’

‘If it’s the one I think,’ he said cautiously, ‘it’s a box bed like the one in Naismith’s lodging, much the same size but with a lot of carving about it.
Saints and Green Men and so forth. The hangings were red cloth, if I mind right.’

‘Red,’ she said doubtfully. ‘They are still in the canvas. Lucky we decided on blue for the walls, then. It ought to fit in the chamber if it’s a box bed. I was afraid it
might be a tester-bed,’ she admitted, ‘built for a higher room.’

‘Do you mind?’

‘It’s generous of her.’

‘That doesn’t answer me.’ She was silent. ‘Did we have a bed other than this one?’

She shook her head. ‘I hadn’t – I was going to – there are several beds in the house that would be suitable.’

‘Your mother’s bed?’

She crossed herself at the mention of her dead mother. ‘My father sleeps in that.’ She sighed. ‘Red hangings will be very smart, and I expect the men can set it up easily once
the painters are done. Perhaps we should get the hangings out of their canvas now and air them.’

Gil whistled to the dog as they reached the pend which gave entry to the mason’s sprawling house.

‘I’ll leave you here, sweetheart,’ he said, handing her the packet of the bedehouse documents. ‘We need to talk, but I must get this matter out of the way as soon as I
can.’

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘Do you want to leave Socrates with me? He can play with John in the kitchen till you come back.’

The children running in St Catherine’s Wynd broke off their chase and nodded when he asked for Veitch’s landlady, grinning and pointing at the building beside them,
and one boy who seemed to be their leader shouted up at the windows, ‘Haw, Widow Napier! Mistress Napier! Ye’re socht!’

‘Who seeks me?’ returned a shrill voice. A shutter two floors up was flung wide, and a white-coifed head peered out. ‘And you bairns should be away hame for your noon bite by
this, the lot of ye!’

‘We’re to get one last game, Mistress Napier,’ called the ringleader. ‘You’re het, Davie Wilson.’

Gil identified himself as the children scattered again, and the widow peered suspiciously down into the wynd.

‘You’d best come up, sir,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s yon stair there, two up and at your left.’

The building was a timber-framed structure with a skin of boards, and a peeling figure of some saint painted near the stair door might have been St Nicholas, patron of children, students and
sailors. As he picked his way cautiously round the turns of the stair Gil reflected that not only the presence of the patron saint of sailors might make John Veitch feel at home here; the building
creaked like a carvel in a gale.

‘And what’s your business wi me, maister?’ demanded the widow in her doorway.

‘I think you’ve a man John Veitch lodging wi you,’ said Gil, halting a couple of steps below her landing so that his head was level with hers. She was a skinny little woman,
clad in decent homespun with a clean white linen headdress. One hand clutched her beads for protection.

‘Is John a friend of yours?’

‘I knew him when we were boys,’ said Gil. ‘I blacked his eye a couple times.’

She relaxed a little at that.

‘Aye, well, he’s no here the now,’ she said in her shrill voice. ‘He’s at his sister’s, where they’ve no their troubles to seek for, you’ll maybe
have heard.’

‘Is that right?’ said Gil, hastily revising his approach to this witness. ‘No, I’ve not heard. I’m sorry if he’s got troubles in the family. I only came by to
ask his pardon for no meeting him last night – no, the night before that it would be now.’

‘Night afore last, maister?’ she said, staring at him. ‘I wouldny ken about that.’

‘Oh,’ said Gil. ‘I’d trysted wi him for the Compline hour at a tavern up the High Street, and I never got there till near an hour after it. Likely he went on somewhere
else,’ he suggested.

‘Oh, very likely,’ she agreed, nodding hard. ‘He’s no here the now. Are you a writing man, maister?’ she speculated, eyeing the pen-case hung at his belt.
‘You could leave him a scrape o your pen if you wanted.’

‘That would be kind, if you’d pass it on.’

‘Oh, no trouble. And while you’ve your pen and ink out, maybe you’d scrieve a wee thing for me and all?’ she said hopefully. ‘Come away in, then, maister, and get a
seat.’

The widow’s message was for her sister in Dumbarton, a list of disjointed statements about members of their kindred. Perched on the stock at the edge of yet another bed, its curtain draped
over his back, bent nearly double to lean on the stool she had offered him as a writing-surface, Gil made notes in his tablets, then selected a piece of paper from the small store he carried in his
pen-case, flattened it out, weighed it down with the beaker of ale she had insisted on pouring for him, and began compressing the string of facts into the smallest space he could manage while she
assured him that her sister’s neighbour’s son would be able to read it for her, or if not, then the priest would likely oblige. ‘Though I don’t know,’ she said
doubtfully, ‘she said Sir Alan read her the last one, a year ago, and when I saw her at Yule she hadny heard the half of what I sent by it.’

‘I’ll write as clear as I can,’ he said. Behind his heels, under the creaking frame, lay a low truckle-bed, covered in a worn checked plaid, along with a bundle of unidentified
timbers fully as long as the bed. Presumably the widow let out one bed and slept in the other, he speculated, copying his note about her sister Christian’s son Will’s new apprentice.
‘Did John say where he went the other night when I missed him?’ he asked.

‘No, no, maister, he never said, but I’m thinking it was some kind of mischief,’ she said tolerantly, ‘for the pair of them came in here after daylight, having hid in a
pend from the Watch, so they tellt me, and John had his boots wet as wet, it was a mercy he had his seaboots wi him and could put those on when he went out again and his friend got a bit sleep.
There’s his good ones still hung up filled wi moss and rags, but he wasny that worried. Sailors gets used to wet feet, he tellt me.’

She pointed at the window, where a pair of sturdy leather boots hung in the opening.

‘Good boots,’ said Gil, eyeing them. ‘They’re never local make, though.’

‘No, he said he got them in some foreign place. Spain, or Portingal, or the like. They’ve both got all kinds of foreign stuff about them.’

‘They?’ said Gil. ‘Has he a friend lodging wi him? He never said.’

‘Oh, aye.’ Relaxing further, she confided, ‘I’m right glad he brought him here. It brings me in a bit more coin, for I never like to ask strangers to be
bedfellows.’

‘I’m sure that’s wise,’ said Gil solemnly. ‘I wonder, is it anyone I know? His brother William, maybe?’

‘Oh, no, it’s no his brother, he’s no like him at all. Dark-headed, and a great black beard. It’s a fellow called Rankin Elder. Off the same ship, they tell
me.’

‘Is that right? Well, likely I’ll meet him if I catch up with John. And does John have my cloak, would you know?’

‘Your cloak, maister? What like is it?’ she said, peering at him.

‘A black one, with a collar, and braid on it.’ He finished the letter. ‘What name shall I put at the foot, mistress?’

‘Sybilla Thomson,’ she said promptly, ‘relic of John Napier. A black cloak wi braid and a collar, sir? No, John’s got nothing like that. He’s got his boat-cloak,
but that’s brown, just the brown fleece.’ She reached past him to draw aside the curtain, revealing the interior of the bed. Striped blankets were neatly folded back and a greyish sheet
was stretched over the bolster at the head. Two scrips lay at the foot, neither one big enough to hold the bulky folds of material which made up a bedehouse cloak. ‘He must be wearing his
cloak, a cold day like this, and the other fellow the same. There’s all they brought with them from Dumbarton, maister.’

Down in the street, he put the widow’s small coin in his purse, making a mental note to give it to St Nicholas at the first opportunity, and walked on to the end of the wynd. It petered
out into a narrow track between a diminutive chapel and two leaning sheds, and suddenly debouched on to the riverside. He looked up and down the banks, and at the gold-brown water of the Clyde, the
same colour as Alys’s eyes, chattering over the sandy shallows in midstream. The biting wind whipped at its surface, raising silvery ruffles. Under the bank, where the water was deeper, one
or two small boats were tied up, their oars presumably gone home with their owners, and several larger craft had been dragged out on to the opposite shore. There was a cormorant drying its wings on
the sternpost of one. On this shore, a well-trampled path led downriver along the bank.