St Mungo's Robin (8 page)

‘And you opened the back yett and let the lassie in,’ said Gil, ‘and then what?’

‘Well, she was a bit – with the waiting, you understand,’ Michael confessed hesitantly. ‘Sissie took so much longer than I’d expected, and it was gey dark out on
the Stablegreen, even with a lantern, and my – she was a wee thing upset, she said she kept hearing things. So I locked the gate quick and we got within doors, and then . . .’ He
paused, with the glimmerings of an embarrassed smile.

‘That’s all I need to know,’ said Gil, suppressing his envy again. ‘So you locked the yett. You’re quite certain?’

‘Oh, aye. She wasny well pleased,’ said Michael cautiously, ‘that I took the time.’

‘And you saw nothing untoward? Nobody moving about or hiding behind trees?’

‘I wasny looking,’ said Michael.

‘A light in the Deacon’s lodging?’

‘I wasny –’ Michael stopped, and considered. ‘No. I’d ha noticed that. I saw no light up there.’ He swallowed again. ‘Maister, we’ll be late for
Tommy Forsyth’s lecture. Could I go, d’ye think?’

‘And this morning?’ said Gil, ignoring this. ‘When did you open the yett?’

‘As soon as they all went away through to the chapel for Prime. It was still full dark, and we never took the lantern out wi us, we never noticed a thing, if that’s what you’re
asking. For all he must have been lying there by that time,’ he added tightly.

‘And you locked the yett again after she left?’

‘Aye.’

‘Was either of you out at the yett at all between those two times?’

‘No.’ Michael licked his lips. ‘We wereny across the threshold again till the morn. Nor looked out, even,’ he added.

Gil considered the younger man, who looked back at him uncomfortably and then dropped his eyes.

‘You’d best go to your lecture,’ he said. ‘No, wait! Gie me the key to the back yett. I’ll leave it here for you, and I ken where to find you if I need
you.’

‘Aye,’ said Michael unhappily. He opened his purse and drew out a pair of keys on a ring. ‘I’ll not separate them. Leave them on a nail in the lodging, if you will,
sir.’ He handed them over with reluctance, ducked one knee in a bow and left to join his friend.

Gil crossed the courtyard as the students’ footsteps receded along the narrow passage to the outside world, and on an impulse tapped at the open kitchen door opposite the
hall.

‘Mistress Mudie?’ he asked.

‘Mistress,’ called a muffled voice within. ‘You’re asked for, mistress.’

A door at the far side of the kitchen opened, and Mistress Mudie looked out.

‘– never a moment in this place, who is it that wants me, oh it’s yersel, maister, I canny think what you’d want to ask me that I haveny tellt you already, come away in
but, just so long’s ye don’t disturb Humphrey here, he’s feeling a bit better the now, aren’t you my poppet?’

Gil crossed the kitchen, nodding to the young man laboriously hacking vegetables at the bench behind the door. Mistress Mudie drew him into a small snug apartment, furnished with a cushioned
settle and a folding table, one or two stools, and a little prayer desk with a worn hassock by the door to an inner chamber. There was an overpowering herbal smell, whose source was not clear, and
a definite note of almonds.
Betere is hire medycyn
, he thought,
Then eny mede or eny wyn
;
Hir erbes smulleth suete.
His eye took in a brazier burning on the hearth with a metal
trivet over it where several small pots were heating.

The youngest brother was sitting in a chair beside this, clasping a cup in both hands and staring anxiously at the wall. His heavy black cloak was folded over the back of his chair, and he wore
a long belted gown of grey wool. Hearing Gil’s step he turned, and shrank back slightly.

‘A hoodie,’ he said, ‘it’s that hoodie again.’

‘I’m no a hoodie,’ said Gil reassuringly. Mistress Mudie nodded approval. ‘I’m no here to attack anyone.’ Feeling Socrates pressing against his knee he looked
down, and saw with surprise that the the dog’s head was lowered to glare at Maister Humphrey, the coarse grey hair standing up on his back and shoulders. Gil snapped his fingers and gestured,
and the animal departed in something like relief.

‘– aye, that’s better, we’re a bit feart for the big doggie even if we areny saying so, a course the mannie’s no a hoodie, Humphrey my poppet, he’s a good
friend to the bedehouse, he’s here to find out what’s come to the Deacon –’

‘The Deacon was a shrike,’ said Maister Humphrey earnestly, staring at Gil. He was very like his brother, with a thin squarish face, round light-coloured eyes and light brown hair
clipped very close, presumably by Mistress Mudie. The hands clasping the beaker were fine-boned and muscular, but the nails were bitten so short they had bled quite recently. ‘He was a
shrike, but now he’s a robin. Because he died, you ken?’

‘Why a robin?’ Gil asked.

‘He was making changes,’ said Humphrey, ‘a new nest for the bonnie yeldrin, another for the chaffinch,’ he cast a quick, bright smile at Mistress Mudie, ‘and the
shrike himself to take a make and hae the meat frae our mouths.’

‘That sounds bad,’ said Gil, preserving his countenance.

‘Oh, very bad,’ agreed Humphrey, shaking his head. ‘But he changed to a robin instead, and now he’s dead. So it willny happen, will it?’

‘No, it willny,’ Gil reassured him.

Mistress Mudie gave him an approving look but said persuasively, ‘– no need to be upsetting ourselves wi talk like that, nor it wasny very nice to be calling the Deacon names, was it
now, and what were you wanting to ask us anyway, till I get on wi my tasks here –’

‘Last night, Mistress Mudie,’ said Gil, dragging his mind back to the point at issue, ‘you heard Maister Naismith come in late.’

‘It was the birds woke me,’ declared Humphrey, ‘when they sang for joy at the shrike’s passing. But I looked out after that, late, late, in the middle of the night, and
there was a light in his lodging, so I wept sair, for they had leed to me.’

‘– what I said already, I knew I’d tellt you all I could –’

‘Was all quiet here by then?’

‘– oh, aye, all asleep in their own wee houses they were, no a cheep out o them, even Humphrey was away wi the angels, weren’t you no, my poppet?’

‘How long had it been quiet?’

The continuous babble checked for a moment, as she stared at him.

‘Half an hour,’ she said. ‘No as much as an hour, no I couldny say it was as much as an hour, we’d to warm the milk for you, didn’t we no, Humphrey, and it was
longer than I thought it would be, what wi the fire being low, and I heard the Deacon over our heads here no that long afore Maister Millar came in and all. And I heard him from here,’ she
added, ‘our Andro, for he locked the door out there and went through to the garden, and I heard his boots on the stone and then on the gravel, and he went up to his own lodging which
it’s above the other end of the hall and the stair’s in the garden by Anselm’s door. And the Deacon was over my head all that time walking about in his boots too, never thought to
put his house shoon on, and then sitting eating his piece for I heard the chair scrape at the table –’

As if on cue, footsteps could be heard on the boards above them. Pierre must still be studying the accounts, thought Gil.

Maister Humphrey looked up nervously. ‘Is that him back?’

‘– a course not, my poppet, the Deacon’s dead, rest his soul, he’s no walking about –’

Humphrey nodded, smiling. ‘Now I mind. That’s the other one,’ he said. ‘The other hoodie.’

‘– now, now, fancy saying that about him –’

‘He’s searching for the deep secrets of Satan.’

‘– we’ll have none of that, my poppet –’

‘Aye, and he gives
glory and honour and thanks to the one who lives for ever
,’ said Gil quickly, switching to the scholarly tongue. The bedesman eyed him warily, then smiled
again.

‘
Praise and honour to the Lamb for ever and ever
,’ he agreed, the Latin echoing off the creaking floorboards.

‘Amen,’ said Gil. Maister Humphrey relaxed, and drained off his cup and handed it to Sissie like a small child. The cuff of his grey gown was pulled and torn. Gil suddenly recalled
his sister Margaret, whose clothes had always looked like that, because she chewed them. But she grew out of the habit before she was ten, he thought.

‘Have you some milk for the hoodie, Sissie?’ Humphrey asked, still smiling.

She set the cup aside and lifted a pipkin from the brazier, hand wrapped in a corner of her apron. ‘– saints be praised he’s taken to you for it’s no easy if he doesny
take to a person, would you care for a drink of milk, maister, seeing it would make him happy? It’s almond milk,’ she qualified, ‘seeing there’s no milk to be had this time
of year, but he likes it just as well and the herbs helps him.’

‘A wee drop, then,’ said Gil. ‘Mistress Mudie, I’ve another thing to ask you.’

‘– goodness me, as if I would have anything more to tell, I’m certain you’ve everything out of my head that’s in it the questions you’ve asked us all this day
already –’

‘At the Mass this morning,’ he continued. She was stirring a beaker, but stopped and paused again in her chatter to gaze at him, her plump face anxious in the light from the window.
‘One of the lads thought he saw a seventh bedesman, like as if the Deacon was sitting down at the end of the stalls. Did you see anything?’

‘Oh, I wouldny see him.’ She shook her head so that the ends of her linen headdress swung. ‘I never see him even when Anselm says he’s been there. And to say truth at
this time of the year it’s that dark in the chapel there could be the choir of St Mungo’s at the Mass and I wouldny notice them, let alone someone who –’ She caught herself
up, glanced quickly at Humphrey who was watching her and went on, ‘someone who’s Anselm’s friend and no always in his own seat. No, I canny help you there, maister. Now
here’s this milk, a wee bit warmed ower just to take the chill off it and a spoonful honey in it –’

Chapter Four

Round the small blaze on the hearth at the far end of the hall, three of the bedehouse brothers were listening to a fourth who spoke in the loud, barking voice of someone who
has been deaf for years. Three heads turned as Gil made his way down the room, Socrates behind him, but the speaker paid no attention.

‘He’ll have made his escape by the back way,’ he was saying, ‘I canny tell why the man’s no looking at the back yett. That dog he brought would pick up the scent,
quick as ye please, and take him to the ill-doer –’

‘Barty,’ said another brother tremulously, leaning over to face the other man. ‘It’s a sight-hound.’

‘What did ye say? What did ye say, Cubby?’

‘It’s a sight-hound. Look at it. And here’s the man to speak to us. Tell him what ye were just saying.’

‘What’s that? Playing? I wasny playing, Cubby.’

‘He wasny slain here. It wasny on the bedehouse land,’ said the frailest of the brothers, a scrawny man with a shock of white hair, his spectacles slipping sideways off his nose.
‘He tellt me that.’

‘Aye, Anselm,’ said the one addressed as Cubby. ‘I’ve no doubt, but the fellow has to report to Robert Blacader, he’ll need more to give him than that.’

‘He taught Robert Blacader,’ said Anselm resentfully. ‘He ought to listen to what he tells me.’

‘Fit deein, mon?’ demanded the brother opposite Anselm. He had removed his floppy velvet hat and hung it on the arm of his chair to dry; his head was completely bald and gleamed in
the firelight. As if to compensate, in addition to the luxuriant grey moustache he had large bushy eyebrows, and flourishing tufts of hair emerged from his nostrils and ears. They gave him rather
the look of a Green Man in a church, Gil thought, perhaps one who had been pruned slightly.

‘Forgive me, maisters,’ said Gil, bowing politely to the gathering. ‘I’m the Archbishop’s Quaestor, Gil Cunningham. Might I get a word with you all?’

‘It’s you that’s hunting for whoever slew the Deacon?’ said the one with the trembling-ill. Gil nodded. ‘Aye, well, we may no be much help, lad, but you can
ask.’ He indicated the intent faces one by one. ‘Father Anselm, Maister Barty Lennox, Sir Duncan Fraser, and I’m Cubby Pringle.’

‘What’s he say?’ said the deaf brother. Barty Lennox, thought Gil. ‘Questions? Sit down and ask away, boy. What do you want of us?’

‘I’ve two questions, maisters,’ Gil said, drawing up a stool and collecting his wits. The dog sat down politely beside him, then lay down on his feet. ‘I want to hear
about how you found Maister Naismith’s body, and I’d like to know when you all saw him last.’

The man with the trembling-ill, Cubby Pringle, spoke up first.

‘It was Duncan found him. He dwells down that end of the close, opposite the Douglas lodging, and the two houses next him are empty, so he’d be the only one to go that far down the
path.’

‘Aye, aat’s the richt o’t,’ agreed Sir Duncan incomprehensibly from under his moustache. ‘The wee munsie wes juist liggin thaar pyntin intil the fir.’ He
demonstrated, flinging out his arm in imitation of the corpse’s rigid gesture.

‘Then he shouted, and we all cam running.’

‘No running,’ said Anselm, shaking his head. ‘There’s none of us can run.’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘Hirpling, then. Andro came and all, and we agreed he was dead, and Frankie went for the laddie. What’s his name?’

‘Kennedy,’ supplied Sir Duncan.

‘Aye, young Kennedy. I wish Frankie was here, he’d tell you better. And Kennedy said he was stabbed, and we must send for you.’

‘What?’

‘He tellt me he was dead afore that,’ said Anselm in argumentative tones. ‘I kent it a’ready when we found him.’

‘There was no sign of a weapon?’ asked Gil.

‘I tell you, he says it wasny on the bedehouse land,’ reiterated Anselm. ‘The weapon’s no here either.’

‘We’ll need to find the weapon,’ explained Gil, ‘as well as his cloak.’

‘What’s he say?’ demanded Maister Lennox. They explained to him, loud and slow, and he shook his head. ‘No, there wasny a weapon. Was there, Duncan?’

‘Na, na. A saa nae dirk, sauf the capernicious buckie’s ain gully at’s bellyban.’