The Nicholas Feast (17 page)

‘Have you never seen one of these?’ Alys took it back, and turned the outer ring carefully. ‘It’s a cipher disc. See – if I set the
A
on the outer ring against the
D
on the inner one, then all the other letters are set against the letter four along, and all I have to do to cipher a message is to read off the letters I want to make the word, instead of having to count on my fingers. This will be very useful. Which reminds me, father,’ she added, ‘I deciphered the letter from John of Castile. He writes that the mad Italian has got money for his voyage. He may have sailed by now, who knows?’

‘What, that man who wants to find the western passage to the Indies?’ Gil asked.

‘Sooner him than me,’ said the mason. ‘Can you imagine? How long will it take him, do you suppose? And shut up on a boat with a crew of madmen, for he will certainly not find sane men to sail with him.’

‘The inner ring is rearranged,’ said Alys, still studying the cipher disc. ‘It doesn’t generate a simple substitution. It must be one of a pair, then. I wonder who has the other disc? It means, you realize,’ she went on, looking up at Gil, ‘that I can decipher that paper from the boy’s purse as soon as I get the time.’

‘Ah, yes, the paper,’ said the mason. ‘What of the other, the one which is not in code?’

‘This one?’ Alys turned and reached on to her father’s tall writing-desk. From under a green-glazed pottery frog she drew a sheet of paper. ‘Yes, this is the one. It refers to many people, but only by an initial.’

Gil took the paper, tilting it as the mason craned to see without disturbing his sleeping burden of child and dog.

‘M will be in G
,’ he read again.
‘H passed through for Irvine.
I wonder–’

‘Montgomery is in Glasgow,’ Alys said. ‘I think that must be right. And Catherine tells me Lord Hepburn went to Irvine last week to take ship for France.’

‘Oh, yes, about the King’s French marriage.’ Gil looked down at the paper again. ‘It’s a list of small facts like that.’

‘Did he collect them for his own interest, do you suppose,’ speculated Maistre Pierre, ‘or for someone else’s?’

‘He bought these boots recently,’ said Alys. She turned one up and showed them the sole, still flat and even.

‘Yes,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘And he had that device for writing in cipher in his possession.’ His eye ran down the creased paper, and he grinned. ‘Alys, we are observed. See this line?
C marriage to dau of burgess.
And yet I had to tell him my name. He’s had this by hearsay.’

‘He has collected all the gossip of Glasgow,’ said Alys. ‘I wonder who he was selling it to?’

‘Espionage, in effect,’ said the mason.

‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘And the question, as Alys says, is who he was spying for.’

‘But I know where he was getting the gossip,’ said Alys. Gil looked up and met her eye.

‘The barber’s,’ they said together.

When the household returned from Vespers Gil and Alys were in the courtyard, seated on the stone bench at the foot of the stairs while the wolfhound ranged about inspecting the flower-pots.

‘When will your mother reach Glasgow?’ she asked, drawing away from his arm as the voices echoed in the pend.

‘God knows.’ Gil rose reluctantly to his feet, checking the pup, which was growling at the approaching group. ‘If she lies tonight at Bothwell with my sister Margaret she’ll be here before Nones, but if she makes the entire journey in one day tomorrow, it might be this hour. The men may have brought my uncle word of her plans. No doubt I’ll find out when I go up the hill.’ He took her hand, to draw her into the house. ‘I must speak to Mistress Irvine. Will you find out if she is able to talk to me now? And that reminds me, Alys. I have a task for you.’

She looked up at him, brown eyes smiling, her mouth most deliciously curved with kissing. He dropped a final kiss on her forehead and went on, ‘The two lassies in the kitchen at the college know something, I’m certain of it. Could you get a word with them, maybe, or get one of this household to speak to them?’

‘The college kitchen,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘One of our girls will know who they are. It may take a little time.’

‘Time we do not have,’ said Gil. ‘Hugh Montgomery is waiting for us to fail.’

Mistress Irvine, although supported across the courtyard by two of the maidservants and still very puffy in the face, professed herself willing to speak to Gil.

‘Vespers was bonny,’ she said, ‘the singin an that. And Faither Francis is that kind, he was a great comfort to me the day. I must send an offering. And for prayers for William. Oh, my poor laddie!’ she exclaimed, turning her face away.

‘Come and sit down and tell me about him,’ suggested Gil. ‘How old was he?’

‘Just sixteen. He was born on May Day. Oh, he was the bonniest bairn,’ she exclaimed, following him into the hall. ‘Never sick, never greetin, and he walked and spoke sooner than any I’ve nursed. Exceptin his sainted mother, maybe.’

‘You knew his mother?’ Gil asked.

‘I nursed her and all. So who should she turn to but me to foster her bairn? Though she never tellt me whose it was,’ she added, in some dissatisfaction.

‘Who was she?’ Gil asked innocently.

‘Oh, maister, I canny tell ye that. Lord Montgomery would ha my hide for it.’

‘But if she’s deid,’ Gil suggested, ‘no harm in it, surely?’

‘No, maister. Dinna ask it, for I canny tell ye.’

‘Tell me about William, then.’

She sat down on the stool he indicated, and launched into an extensive eulogy which bore little resemblance to the portrait of William painted by his friends at the college. Gil let her talk, picking the occasional nugget out of the torrent. William was cleverer than any, his manners were more polished than all the Montgomerys, his voice was sweeter than the lady Isobel’s had been. When he was eight he had defeated a juvenile Douglas in scholarly dispute. Hugh Montgomery had intended to make a churchman of him, and legitimation proceedings had begun.

‘Did the lady Isobel marry someone else?’ Gil asked casually.

‘She did indeed, before her bairn was a twelvemonth old, Lord Montgomery found her a husband and he was good to her. Poor soul, she fell sick afore Pace, there, and was shriven and in her shroud afore May Day. Five bairns she’s left greetin for their mammy, and the oldest but thirteen year old. Nae doubt their daddy’ll take another afore the year’s end.’

‘Did William know her?’

‘He kent her name, but he never met her, no since he was, oh, the age of the bairn here. She’d send him gifts now and then, but she was far too far to visit, even if Gowdie’d kent about him. Poor soul,’ sighed Mistress Irvine. ‘She was a bonnie bairn and all. So when the letter cam, with the paper for William in it, I brocht it to Glasgow, seeing I was coming to see how our Davie did.’

‘A letter? You can read, Mistress Irvine?’

‘Oh, aye,’ she agreed. ‘Well, my name, and a wee bit more. I can write my name and all. I learned when the holy faither learned her, when she was a wee thing. She would have him teach me at her side. That was like her,’ she confided, her face softening. ‘Bonnie and loving and generous, she was, but she was obstinate as they come. Once she decided I’d to learn my letters and all, there was no shifting her. That’s how I kenned Lord Montgomery would never learn whose bairn it was, no matter the beatings he threatened her. Not that he’d have done any of those things. So,’ she continued, unexpectedly recovering the thread of her answer, ‘she’d put my name, and she’d writ clear so I could read it that the other bit paper was for William. The messenger said it was in her jewel-box when she dee’d.’

‘Was that the letter I delivered for you? Do you know what it was?’

‘I don’t,’ she said regretfully. ‘It never said in her letter, and it was sealed that close – well, you saw it yourself. Did he get it, maister? I wouldny like to think he went to his death without a word from his minnie.’

‘I gave it into his hands. But we never found it in his room,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘Was he expecting it?’

‘He was expecting it today, since I tellt him yesterday I had it, but I know he’d no more idea what it was than I did, for I asked him. I journeyed here yesterday with Sandy Wag the carrier who was fetching sacks of meal up for Lord Montgomery,’ she elucidated, ‘and I went to ask for him as soon as I’d heard Vespers, but I never had the paper wi me then, for I didny recall how close the college lies to the Greyfriars kirk. And the man was that disobliging about sending for him. Oh, and if I’d kenned that was my last speech with him –’

‘Lord Montgomery took an interest in William,’ Gil prompted.

‘Aye, that he did. Paid me well to foster him. I think he’d a fondness for her – for the laddie’s mother,’ she confided, ‘they all did, come to that, but it would never ha done. Too close, they were. Holy Kirk would never consentit.’ She turned her head as Alys approached from the other end of the hall. ‘I understand there’s to be a wedding in this house,’ she said, with tear-stained archness. ‘I wish ye very happy, maister, and you, my lassie. I was never in such a well-run house. Such kindness as I’ve been shown under this roof, maister.’

‘Thank you for your good wishes,’ said Alys, taking Mistress Irvine’s large red hand in hers. ‘You are most generous. Gil, have you any more questions? Kittock has brewed a posset to help her friend to sleep.’

‘Then she must drink it while it’s hot. Thank you for talking to me, mistress.’ Gil helped the woman to her feet, and watched as she was led off to the kitchen.

The mason found him deep in thought, staring out at the garden which sloped in the evening sunlight down towards the mills on the Molendinar. The pup was seated on his feet.

‘By what Alys tells me, that was not hunting,’ he said. ‘That was poaching.’

‘Like tickling trout,’ Gil agreed. ‘Poor woman, her grief at least is genuine.
She wept the starns doun frae the lift, she wept the fish out o the sea.
My uncle might know who this Isobel was. He might know about the legitimation procedure as well, since it would have to go through the Archdiocese. I must go home, Pierre.’

‘Alys is seeing to the bairn. She will be down in a little. Shall we keep that dog tonight? The baby has taken a liking for him.’

‘Aye, and Maggie will have enough to do seeing to my mother’s men, without finding scraps for a growing dog. I’d be grateful. That is, if he’ll stay.’

‘If we put food in front of him, he will stay. What must we do tomorrow?’

‘I need to speak to Nick Kennedy. I could do that on my way home. Tomorrow I must see the young man Nicholas Gray, and I think the chaplain, and we must talk to the dog man, and to William’s barber. There is the list Nick made for us, of who was present at the feast.’

‘Alys must decipher those papers for us. Is that all?’

‘We need to look for William’s notebook.’

‘Indeed. None of this seems likely to lead us to the killer,’ complained the mason.

‘It could have been nearly anybody,’ Gil agreed, ‘or almost nobody.’

‘If you sleep on it,’ said Alys, emerging from the stair that led to the upper floors, ‘it may become clearer. I am taking this bairn to Nancy. Gil, I set milk to warm for the dog. If you bring him down to the kitchen we can feed him.’

In the kitchen, the household was beginning to settle itself for the night. Two of the maidservants were clearing crocks, cooking pots which had been scoured earlier and set to dry by the fire were waiting to be carried out to the scullery, straw mattresses spilled out of an opened press. Kittock and her guest had their heads together in a corner, drinking something pun-gently herbal out of wooden beakers. A pottery jar with a face on it, of the sort that contained usquebae, stood on the floor at their feet.

Alys led the way to the fire, handed the infant John to Nancy and drew the little crock of milk from the ashes.

‘Bread and milk,’ she said, pouring the warm milk over the crumbs in another bowl. ‘That will fill his belly. Ah, I have heated too much milk.’

She prodded the soaking crumbs with a carved spoon, while the pup’s nose twitched.

‘I think he is used to bread and milk,’ said Gil. He set the animal down, and John immediately exclaimed something and waved his hands. Alys put the dish of bread and milk on the floor, and the pup plunged into it, tail swinging.

‘Oh, mem!’ said Nancy. ‘Oh, mem, look!’

She held the baby up. He was gazing intently at the pup, and smacking his lips.

‘He’s hungry!’ said Nancy.

Leaving Alys spooning bread and milk into the willing baby while the wolfhound watched with interest, and her father exclaimed his intention of walking up to Greyfriars later to hear Compline, Gil went out into the High Street and strolled the short distance to the college gate. It was shut, and he had to bang on it with the hilt of his dagger before Jaikie came to open the postern.

‘Oh, it’s you, Maister Cunningham,’ he said, standing aside grudgingly as Gil stepped over the wooden sill. ‘What are you after at this hour? I’d a thocht you’d be in a warm bed by this,’ he added, descending into an unpleasant camaraderie. ‘And better than a hot stone to warm it, eh?’

He nudged Gil, and grinned at him, releasing fumes of usquebae and spiced pork.