The King's Corrodian (14 page)

‘Like nothing much.’ Gil leaned against a rack of oxhides and continued to watch the man; after a moment Wilson looked uneasily aside and said, ‘Maybe like carry papers to one or another in Perth, and one time a word to some man o law in the High Street.’

‘And what else?’

Another shrug.

‘I’d to take the answers, hadn’t I?’

‘What was in the papers?’

‘I wouldny look at them,’ said Wilson indignantly. ‘They was all sealed, forbye.’

‘And the word to the man of law? Who was it? What had you to tell him?’

‘Oh, I canny mind. I carry that many messages for my maister.’ The man looked across the workshop to where his master and another journeyman were conferring over a cutting-board strewn with scraps of leather, and trying to pretend they were not listening to the conversation. ‘It was Maister Andro Pullar at the sign o the Pestle, just up from the Speygate.’

‘And you said to him?’

‘I tellt you I canny mind.’ He was still not looking at Gil. ‘Here, I better get on wi my work.’

‘So if that’s all you did,’ said Gil, ‘why did you visit Pollock so often?’

‘Likely he would be carrying all the gossip o Perth to the man,’ said Euan. Wilson threw him a dirty look and said nothing. ‘Or so I was hearing,’ added Euan airily.

‘Hah!’ said Wilson, and gathered up the bundle of leathers he had been working on when his master had summoned him to speak to Gil. ‘Believe an Erscheman, you’ll believe anything.’

‘And how about Billy Pullar?’ Gil asked. ‘D’you ken him?’

‘Is that his accomplice, maister?’ said Euan with enthusiasm. ‘Likely they both set fire to the man thegether, and—’

‘I never!’ said Wilson in alarm. ‘I never had aught to do wi that, I tellt you, Sir Tammas at the kirk sained me and I never heard o this Billy Pullar any road! I’ve tellt you all I ken, maister.’

‘He must have visited Pollock when you were there,’ Gil commented. ‘The burgh’s no that big, I’d ha thought you’d ken the other journeymen well enough.’

‘Well, I don’t, then.’ Wilson clutched the stack of leathers closer and turned away. ‘I need to get on, maister.’

‘And I think you’re kin to the factor at the Blackfriars,’ Gil said. ‘He’s another Wilson. Is that right?’

‘Oh, him,’ said Wilson in disparaging tones. ‘Aye. My da’s second cousin, he is. Good day, maister.’

‘You don’t sound as if you welcome the kinship,’ Gil said, straightening up.

‘Him?’ said Wilson again. ‘No likely. Aye round the door after money, for all he’s—’ He bit off the words.

‘For all he’s what?’ Gil prompted.

‘I need to get on. Good day to ye, maister,’ said Wilson firmly.

‘For all he’s what?’ Gil said again, refusing to be dismissed. ‘For all he’s stealing the convent’s money? For all he’s raising the rents beyond reason? What’s he doing, man?’

‘I never said that!’ said Wilson. His master looked hard at them across the workshop, then moved towards them in a casual way. ‘I ken naught about the fellow. I’ve never spoke to him, saving he’s been in the house after money.’

‘So what were you going to say about him?’ Gil pressed. He nodded at the saddler, who had been named to him as Maister Richie Henderson, but returned his attention to Wilson, who was now staring down at the armful of leather he held. ‘Tell me about Brother Thomas Wilson,’ he invited.

‘I can tell you about Brother Thomas,’ said the saddler, a grim set to his jaw. ‘More than Jaikie, I’ll warrant, for all he’s kin.’ He jerked his head towards the far window where a litter of papers and a rack of drawers suggested accounts and records. ‘Come yonder, maister, and hae a seat, and I’ll tell you all you wish to hear. Jaikie, you can get on wi that harness for Sir Silvester, as I bade you earlier.’

It was a sorry tale Maister Henderson unfolded, but one Gil had encountered before; as the Blackfriars’ factor Wilson handled coin on a daily basis, and some of the thin, slithering slips of metal were prone to slither into his sleeve rather than into the convent’s strongbox.

‘He’ll say the rent’s gone up,’ said Maister Henderson, ‘so you find the extra coin, and next quarter the same again, but somehow at the year end it’s still the old rent on the parchment. Or he’ll demand an extra in kind, say a mart beast or a dozen fowl, and it’s never recorded.’

‘Have you complained to Faither Prior?’

‘I complained to Wilson, said I’d take it to the Prior, and he says,
Take it if you like, he kens all. He signs the accounts
, he says.’

‘Does he now?’ Gil wondered. ‘Myself, I’d not adhibit my handwrit to accounts I hadny verified, but there’s some are more trusting than that.’

‘Aye, well,’ said Henderson resentfully. ‘I tried to argue the matter, and got,
If you don’t like the rent, you can find another workshop
. Which is no so easy, let me tell you, maister, what wi the light you need for the work and the storage for the skins and that. It’s no just every place you can walk into and set up shop.’

‘I’ll look into it,’ said Gil. ‘You keep a record, I take it?’

‘Oh, I do.’ Henderson glanced at the rack of drawers. ‘Mind, it’s my word against his, but you’ll get the same tale from the most o the Blackfriars’ tenants in the town.’

Extracting Euan, who had got into a discussion about the best cattle to supply the hides the business used, Gil stepped out into the Skinnergate and looked about him.

‘Will we be going back out to—’ Euan said hopefully, and shut his mouth on the convent’s name. ‘It will be time for dinner, maybe.’

‘No,’ said Gil, turning towards the centre of the burgh. ‘We’ll find this man of law.’

‘Are ye making broth, or what, brother?’ asked Jennet, surveying the items on the broad table in the centre of the chamber.

‘Broth? No, no, it needs heat, not moisture,’ said Brother Michael. He moved one of the crocks aside, and drew the gory package towards him. The second Franciscan, a small man with lank fair hair who had been identified as Brother Dandy, bridled at the sight.

‘Brother!’ he said in shocked tones. ‘And this a fast day and all!’

‘
All things must be verified by the path of experience
,’ Alys quoted in the Latin, and translated for the servants.

Brother Michael nodded, but Tam said warily, ‘What path would that be, mem?’

‘Trying things to see if they work, as Friar Roger Bacon recommended. You know he was a Greyfriar too, don’t you? I think Brother Michael plans to try whether a piece of meat can burn to ashes.’

Brother Dandy crossed himself, and took another step backwards. Rain rattled on the horn windows, and Alys drew her plaid closer about her.

They were in the kitchen of the Franciscans’ guest hall, a wide, cold, vaulted space somewhat diminished by the presence of the table, on which Brother Michael had assembled a curious mixture of items. Six – no, eight – covered crocks, a dripping parcel of meat, a mixing bowl and a poke of flour, a tangle of small trivets, a bundle of rags, a handful of candle-ends.

‘Recreate the conditions in the man’s own chamber,’ Brother Michael said, indicating this hoard, and taking Alys’s understanding of his experiment wholly for granted. ‘Seal one, part seal another, maybe set the candle closer—’

‘What, and summon the Devil into the crock?’ said Jennet in alarm. ‘Won’t he burst free from it and carry us all off?’

‘The man wasny carried off,’ Tam reminded her. ‘His ashes was all there – he was burned to a cinder, just. Like the mistress said.’

‘Aye, but that woman yesterday,’ Jennet argued, ‘she seen the Devil clear as daylight, in the very act o taking him away.’

‘She’s right, you ken that, brother,’ said Brother Dandy nervously.

Brother Michael, ignoring this, opened out the package of meat.

‘Fat pork,’ he said. ‘Since the subject was well covered, by what they say.’

‘Jennet,’ said Alys, nodding at this, ‘we’ll want paste to seal the crocks. Can you see to that?’ She reached for the bundle of rags, and shook it out. ‘We should use one of these cloths to dry the collops, perhaps, brother, and the rest to wrap them.’

Jennet, hauling at the pump in the corner of the chamber, said, ‘What for d’you want to wrap them? That’s a new way to bake meat, surely, mem.’

Tam was already wiping one of the collops dry.

‘If ye’d a bit chalk,’ he observed, watching Brother Michael setting the crocks out in a row, ‘or maybe charcoal, ye could mark on the table by each what you’d done wi it. Do ye want this wrapped close, or a bit slack, brother?’

‘Some of each, surely,’ said Alys. ‘And would it be good to turn one of the crocks upside down?’

‘Upside down?’ Brother Michael paused, frowning at her.

‘Set the candle on the lid,’ she said, ‘and the trivet over it, and the meat in that, and then put the crock over. Then the flame can draw air if it needs. We’d have to use that one,’ she pointed to the one crock with a flat lid, ‘so it would stand up.’

‘No, no, surely,’ said Brother Michael, ‘the candle draws all the air it needs, supposing we don’t seal the lid. No need for that.’

‘I’d like to try it,’ she said. He frowned at her again, then nodded.

‘Aye, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Making trials is aye good. You can set that one up, then. Here!’ he said to Tam in alarm. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Wondering what’s on this rag,’ said Tam, lowering the cloth from his face. ‘Kind o an odd smell about it. Where’d they come from, any road?’

‘No dichting your neb,’ said Brother Michael in some relief. ‘No idea. Had them from our kitchen. They likely had them from the rag market.’

‘Here’s your paste done,’ said Jennet, shaking flour from her fingers. ‘See us one o they rags, Tam, till I wipe my hands. Is that thick enough, mem?’

Brother Dandy, backed into a corner, was muttering anxiously and crossing himself.

Alys smiled at him and said, ‘It’s an experiment with fire, brother, no a spiritual matter. Our souls are in no danger.’

‘Danger?’ said Brother Michael. ‘A course it’s dangerous! All trials is dangerous, you never ken what will happen.’ He turned to look at his fellow, and shook his head. ‘Never mind that, Dandy, make yoursel useful. Get your tablets out and write this down that I tell you.’

Alys wondered later whether it would have been more expeditious if she had sent her two servants to wait beside Brother Dandy. Despite their very competent help, it was more than an hour before all the experiments were set up. This was largely because Brother Michael persisted in checking everything himself, the wrapped collop of pig-meat, the trivet, the candle-end stuck to the bottom of each crock and carefully lit before the trivet with its burden was lowered in and the lid placed on top and sealed, part sealed, left unsealed, as he decided and dictated to his record-keeper.

‘No so fast, brother!’ complained Dandy as the list of attributes of the first jar was rattled off. ‘I canny scribe that quickly!’

‘My mistress can,’ said Jennet, looking sideways at him. Alys was already opening her own tablets and drawing the little stylus out of its holder. Brother Michael, ignoring this exchange, began a description of the second crock. The pause while he worked a strip of flour-and-water paste into the rim of the lid enabled her to catch up; she had already set up her own inverted crock, at the other end of the table, and made notes of what had gone into it.

‘Did you decide what was on that cloth?’ she asked Tam quietly. He shrugged.

‘Kinna like lamp-oil or the like, but no so strong.’

‘It’s left your neb all black,’ Jennet observed pertly. ‘Here, see us another rag and I’ll take it off for you.’ She dabbed at the dark smudge on Tam’s nose, and he reared back. Brother Michael began his description of the next assemblage, and Alys hastily turned her attention to his words, but was aware of a brisk argument behind her.

‘There’s sand, or glass, or the like on that rag! It’s scratched me!’

‘Nothing o the sort. See? This one’s clean.’

Outside the kitchen a bell began to ring. Brother Dandy said anxiously, ‘Michael, that’s the bell for Nones. We need to go. Michael, that’s the bell!’

‘Sealed halfway around,’ said Brother Michael, ignoring him.

‘Aye, it has. Look – it’s drawn blood!’

‘It’s naught but a wee scratch. There must ha been sand on your neb a’ready, it was never on this cloth. Here, can you smell burning?’

‘Crock number four,’ continued Brother Michael. Alys dragged her awareness back to the tablets in her hand and made another note.

‘A course I can smell burning, we’ve just been setting light to all sorts. It’s wee specks o dark stuff. It must ha been on that other cloth,’ said Tam. He stepped over to the light of the horn window, inspecting his forefinger. ‘See, it’s wee grains—’ He tasted carefully. Then: ‘St Mungo’s garters! Get away fro that crock, man, afore it explodes! Get down, mem!’

‘What—’ Brother Michael broke off his enumerations and turned to stare at him. Brother Dandy, taking Tam’s word for it, cannoned past Jennet to the door, knocking her flying as he went, Tam seized Alys and threw her to the floor, Brother Michael exclaimed in irritation, and the fourth crock exploded with a bang.

It was not a large explosion, but it was quite spectacular. Alys was aware of a bright, brief light, a sizzling, a rattling sound as fragments of pottery landed around them, though she could not have said in what order these things happened. She squirmed out from under Tam, and got to her knees, feeling a little shaky.

‘Are ye hurt, mem?’ he asked anxiously, scrambling up to give her his hand. ‘I’m right sorry about knocking ye down.’

‘I’m not hurt,’ she assured him, brushing dust from her woollen gown. ‘That was quick thinking. What – was it gunpowder on the cloth? Brother Michael, your face!’

Jennet was getting to her feet too, rubbing her elbow, glaring at the open door. Brother Michael stood in the midst of his experiment, staring about him, blood dripping down his jaw from several small cuts. Jennet seized another rag, checked it briefly, and tried to apply it to the wounds, but he jerked away from her, still staring at the table. The base of the fourth crock was present, cracked in three pieces, and in their midst the trivet shattered in several more; there was no sign of the wrapped collop. The two crocks nearest the demolished one had fallen over, and the lit one had lost its lid, disgorging a lightly singed bundle and a strong smell of scorched meat. The candle was out.