The Nicholas Feast (13 page)

‘William obviously thought otherwise.’ Gil slipped the leather cover off to look at the carved outer faces again. ‘This is fiddly work. It would have taken time.’

‘As for these notes.’ Alys looked down at the second sheet of paper. ‘
M will be in G
. I suppose G might be for Glasgow?’

‘Then M might mean Montgomery,’ said her father. ‘Who else!’

‘It’s possible,’ agreed Gil. ‘Very possible.’

Alys refolded the papers and tucked them behind her busk. ‘If I have time, I will work on that this evening.’

‘Is nane so witty and so wyce.
I think you can do everything,’ said Gil in admiration.

She threw him a glinting look, and got to her feet. ‘I must go and see to the kitchen. Will you be in to supper?’

‘Who knows?’ said her father. ‘There is an entire college to question, I think. You see her out, Gilbert. I go to find John Shaw.’

Gil roused the pup and they walked down the shadowy tunnel to the yett, Alys’s pattens clopping on the paving-stones. There was movement in the porter’s small chamber, but the man did not appear. At the yett Gil paused, and pushed the animal towards her.

‘I have not forgotten my promise,’ he assured her. ‘If you wish to take part in the hunt, you shall do so, outside the college. I wish you could help inside as well.’

She put up her face for his kiss.

‘Some day there will be a college for women in Glasgow,’ she said composedly, and bending to take the dog’s collar led it out into the street. The effect of her parting speech was completely spoiled by the wolfhound, which, realizing it was being separated from its new hero, dug its paws into the mud, squirmed from her grasp and flung itself yammering back at Gil, with Alys in pursuit. Gil, laughing in exasperation, bent to gather the animal into his arms.

‘Leave the beast with me,’ he said, avoiding its passionate and muddy demonstrations of relief.

‘I think I must,’ she agreed, laughing with him. Her laughter faded as a mounted party went up the High Street, spurs jingling, and Gil paused in the gateway to watch them go, looking past her in dismay at the pack-mules laden with mud-splattered bales and boxes. ‘What is it? What have you seen? Is it the Montgomerys?’

‘No, not the Montgomerys,’ he said, in slightly hollow tones. ‘We have less time than I thought to get this sorted out. I know those riders, and I’d know the bay with the two socks if I met him in Jerusalem. Those are my mother’s outriders. She’ll be in Glasgow by tomorrow night.’

The college kitchen, having long since served up dinner in the Laigh Hall for the remaining scholars and regents, was resting from its labours. The charcoal fires out of the long brick cooking-range had been tipped into the hearth and lay in smouldering heaps, the blue smoke curling up past the long iron spits. Two sturdy lasses and a pair of grooms were scouring crocks in a corner, and another groom and a boy in a student’s belted gown were carrying them away. Some older women were seated round the table and Mistress Dickson, in a great chair in the corner, her feet in their large cracked shoes propped on a stool, was just sending another groom for some of the college’s wine.

‘Well, Maister Cunningham!’ she greeted him. ‘Sit you down and tell me about your marriage, then. What like’s your bride? Can she bake and brew?’

‘With the best,’ Gil assured her. He drew up the stool she indicated and the pup settled beside him on the flagged floor. ‘Agnes, is there any chance of some scraps for this beast? He must be yawpin with hunger, poor creature, for he can’t have been fed since before Terce.’

‘There’s some of the rabbit pottage left that it could have,’ said one of the women at the table, ‘and a wee take of the spiced pork. The plain roastit meat’s all ate up.’

‘There were just the two made dishes, is that right?’

‘Aye, and that was enough,’ said Mistress Dickson briskly. ‘For the money they allowed me, I did them proud, anyone’ll tell you that. Two made dishes, one of them kept for the high table, three sorts of plain roastit meat, an onion tart with flampoints to each table, all the breid they could eat.’ She checked the items off on long bony fingers. ‘And for the second course, a pike, kale pottage with roots in, a big dish of fruminty to each table. Raisin-cakes and cheese to clear it with.’

‘And the pheasant,’ said someone.

‘Aye, I forgot the pheasant. Sic a trouble it was to get it back in its skin.’

Gil, uncertain of how such a young animal’s belly would react to spiced pork, negotiated tactfully for a portion of the Almayne pottage, and began to remove the meat from the splintery bones with his knife. The dog accepted each morsel delicately, making no attempt to snatch or snap at his fingers, its hunger apparent only in the speed with which it swallowed. Mistress Dickson watched approvingly, over a cup of wine.

‘So that William turned up,’ she said at length.

‘He did,’ agreed Gil, picking another fragment of bone out of the bowl. ‘In the coalhouse.’

‘Tam, there, was in the coalhouse not an hour before he was found,’ said Mistress Dickson. Gil looked round, and found one of the grooms grinning importantly. ‘Weren’t you no, Tam?’

‘I was, and all,’ agreed Tam. ‘He wisny there, but,’ he added in tones of disappointment.

‘Saints preserve us, what a thocht!’ said one of the sturdy girls in the corner. The other one giggled.

‘Well, he wouldny be,’ said the student helping Tam. ‘Seeing it was the limehouse he was in anyway.’

‘What time was that?’ Gil asked. ‘Was it raining?’

‘What time? It was when I sent him for coals,’ Mistress Dickson interpolated.

‘And when would that be?’

After some discussion, with help from the three women at the table, it was agreed that Tam had gone for coals after one shower but before another.

‘What were the coals for? Whose dinner were you cooking by then, Agnes?’ Gil asked.

‘Aye, now you’re asking.’ Mistress Dickson scowled at the pup for a moment, chewing her lip. ‘I think it was the college dinner. I think I got the feast cooked on one carry of coals, and Isa there put the water on for the kale for the college dinner, and then we needed more. And lucky we did, for if Tam’d been later he’d have found the coalhouse door locked, by what I hear, and the dinner still to cook.’

‘And was that about the time the thunder started?’ Gil asked.

‘By here, you’re right, maister!’ said Tam. ‘For I mind now, I heard thunder when I was in the coalhouse. I thought it was the coals falling down on me!’ He laughed hugely at his own joke.

‘It was after that he went in the limehouse,’ observed the student.

‘It was the coalhouse, Nicholas,’ said Mistress Dickson crossly, ‘as Adam there’ll tell you.’

‘They said they’d put him in the limehouse.’

‘Who said that?’ asked Gil, feeding the dog another morsel.

The young man Nicholas, finding everyone looking at him, went red, but persisted. ‘When Maister Shaw sent me back to help with the crocks. I saw Lowrie Livingstone and the other two carry him into the passage that goes by the limehouse. They didny see me,’ he added.

‘They put him in the coalhouse, Nicholas,’ repeated Mistress Dickson. ‘I don’t know why you’re aye on about the limehouse.’

‘They said the limehouse,’ repeated Nicholas sulkily.

‘When did they say that?’ Gil asked.

‘When they came out of the passage. I was at the top of the kitchen stair,’ said Nicholas, pointing at the door, ‘and they came out just under my feet laughing about it. One of them said he’d be heard when he shouted, and Lowrie said
In the limehouse? The walls are three feet thick.
Then they went away across to the Outer Close.’

‘So was it them that killed him?’ asked one of the women at the table.

‘Why did they lie about him being in the limehouse?’ wondered Tam.

‘Well, it’s certain he was found in the coalhouse,’ said one of the men scouring crocks, ‘for I helped to bear him out of there.’

‘Aye, you did, Adam,’ agreed Mistress Dickson. ‘Just when I was needing you to fetch me another sack of meal.’

‘Did you see Father Bernard?’ Gil asked.

Nicholas looked blank. ‘Him? No. Was he about?’

‘One or two people were about,’ said Gil vaguely ‘Who else was here in the kitchen?’

‘I was,’ admitted Adam, pausing again in his work, ‘and I mind now, Nicholas, you came in and said something about William in the limehouse. I wonder how he got into the coalhouse,’ he speculated, ‘for he couldny open the door, with his hands tied like that. Strange we never heard him shouting or anything.’

‘Was his hands tied?’ said another of the women at the table avidly.

‘You heard nothing?’ asked Gil. ‘Where were you all?’

‘We were all here,’ said Mistress Dickson, ‘for Adam and Aikie yonder had shifted the most of the crocks already, while they were all at their play, and there was no more for us to do in the Fore Hall.’

‘Everyone who’s here now?’ Gil persisted. They looked round at one another, and several people nodded.

‘And Robert,’ said Tam.

‘I’d sent Robert to make sure all the crocks was shifted,’ said Mistress Dickson. In the corner, the two scullery-lasses looked quickly at one another and away again. ‘Rightly that’s John Shaw’s business, but he’d enough to see to, he asked me to oversee the crocks.’

‘I saw that William before that,’ said the third woman at the table.

‘Did you so? Where was he?’ Gil asked.

‘He crossed the Inner Close, here, and went up the next stair. He seemed as if he was in a hurry.’

‘Maybe you were the last to see him alive, Eppie,’ said the woman beside her with a pleasurable shudder.

‘Except for who killed him,’ Eppie pointed out. ‘I wondered at the time,’ she added, ‘for they were all still at their daft play, and I ken fine his chamber’s in the Outer Close where the siller dwells, but we’ve been ower thrang here, maister, to worry about one ill-natured laddie getting somewhere he shouldny.’

‘You found him ill-natured?’ said Gil innocently. A courteous paw was placed on his arm, and he handed over the last piece of meat. ‘The Dean and the Principal spoke very highly of him.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Mistress Dickson. ‘They’d find him sweet-natured enough. He’d keep on their right sides, would William.’ She tilted her cup of wine to get the last mouthful, so that the steam-whitened underside of her tight red sleeve showed, and looked into its empty depths. There was a brooding silence. ‘He was aye on at me about the cost of food,’ she added. ‘If Maister Shaw was satisfied, what business was it of his, I said to him, but back he’d come with a note of who got a spare bite at the buttery door and who got wheaten breid when he should have had masloch. As if I’d turn away hungry laddies,’ she added.

‘If he could get a man into trouble, he would,’ said Tam. ‘I’m no sorry he’s away. Well, I’m no,’ he added on a defiant note.

‘He got your lass turned out,’ observed one of the other men. ‘What was it for?’

‘He said she took food home to her minnie,’ said Tam resentfully. ‘And what if she did?’

‘Aye, well,’ said Mistress Dickson, swinging her feet down off the stool. The pup, taken by surprise, backed against Gil’s knee and produced a rather squeaky growl. He hushed it, and it flattened its ears in apology. ‘This isny getting tomorrow’s breid kneddit. There’s water there, Maister Cunningham, if you wish to clean your hands before you leave my kitchen.’

‘Who do you think killed him, maister?’ asked the woman opposite Eppie, as the kitchen work began again. ‘Was it Lowrie Livingstone and them?’

Gil, drying his hands on his doublet, shook his head.

‘I don’t know yet. Who do you think?’ he countered.

‘They had no useful suggestion,’ he said to Maistre Pierre. They were standing at the gate between the college orchard and the Blackfriars grounds, watching the dog, which was casting about in the grass.

‘I think nobody has one,’ said the mason. ‘What was the useless suggestion?’

‘That one of his friends had throttled him. I asked who his friends were, but they were not willing to answer. He seems to have had few enough friends.’

‘Perhaps we should speak to those few next.’

‘After we have looked at the body again. Did John Shaw tell you anything?’

‘I have a list,’ said Maistre Pierre, drawing his own tablets from his purse, ‘of those who were waiting at the feast, and of what dishes were served. He became quite eloquent about serving the pike.’

‘It’s not everyone can splat a pike,’ Gil agreed. ‘Did you ask him if William had tried his extortion on him?’

‘I did not. I have to work with this man, remember, and whether he answered me honestly or not, I do not think he would forget that I asked. Besides, I think you are better than I at such questions.’

‘I hope that is a compliment.’ Gil nodded at the tablets in his friend’s large hand. ‘Who was serving?’

‘These three are college servants – Aikie Soutar, Tam Millar, Adam Anderson. Then these four are students, hired for the occasion – Nicholas Gray, Robert Montgomery, William Muirhead, George Maxwell. I asked,’ said Maistre Pierre slowly, ‘who went to the play and who would be clearing the crocks from the hall where the feast was. It seems the students were permitted to watch the play, since their fellows were acting in it.’