The Nicholas Feast (2 page)

‘But if your nearest kin can’t agree about your marriage –’

‘Perhaps when my uncle can spare me, I should go out to Carluke,’ he suggested.

‘Yes!’ She smiled up at him. ‘If you can discuss it with her, I’m sure you will coax her round.’

‘Tell her how Alys will be dowered,’ said Alys’s father robustly. ‘That will persuade her.’

‘It’s possible,’ said Gil, concealing his doubts. He pulled off his short gown and began to unlace his doublet. ‘Meantime I need help with these ridiculous garments.’

‘They are not ridiculous!’ she said again. ‘Which way round does this go?’

Maistre Pierre watched in mounting astonishment as Gil was arrayed in the black cassock and cope (‘At least this one has two slits for my hands. Some only have one.’), the furred shoulder-cape, the blue fur-lined hood, proper to a Master of Arts of the University of Glasgow.

‘All of these garments are wool,’ he observed. ‘You will be warm. And what is that scarf thing? At least that is silk, though it is furred as well.’

‘Oh, father,’ said Alys. ‘You remember the men of law wearing those in Paris, surely? It goes on his shoulder. It’s a pity it’s red when your hood is blue,’ she added. ‘Does it need a pin, perhaps?’

‘This is the first time I have worn it all complete,’ said Gil, craning over his shoulder at the hood. ‘I must look like a Yule papingo,’ he added in Scots.

‘A parrot?’ said Maistre Pierre, grinning.

‘No, no, it looks magnificent,’ Alys declared.

‘At least I won’t be alone. The entire procession will be in formal dress.’

‘And you are to ride in those long skirts?’ continued the mason, as Alys shook the moth-herbs out of the white rabbit-skin lining and stood on tiptoe to pin the red
chaperon
on to the layer of fur already on Gil’s shoulder. ‘Where is your horse?’

‘My uncle sent down to the college earlier with half a dozen beasts loaned from the Chanonry I’ll have the use of one of those.’ Gil settled his felt hat on his head, then took Alys’s hands in his and kissed them. ‘I must go. Tomorrow we’ll write to my mother, sweetheart,’ he promised her.

‘Which reminds me indirectly,’ said Maistre Pierre. He got to his feet. ‘I see you to the street. Our neighbour is expected in town.’

‘What, Hugh Montgomery?’ Gil turned to stare. ‘What brings him to Glasgow? The King’s at Stirling, by what my uncle says, and the rest of the Court with him.’

‘Catherine thought it might be to do with the college,’ said Alys.

‘How does Catherine learn these things?’ Gil wondered. ‘She speaks no Scots.’

‘Your pardon, maisters, mistress,’ said an anxious voice from the kitchen stairway.

They all three turned. In the door at the head of the stairs stood a stout, comely woman dressed in respectable homespun. As they looked she bobbed a nervous curtsy and came forward.

‘Your pardon for interrupting,’ she said again, ‘but they’re saying in the kitchen you’re for the college the day, maister? Is that right?’

‘This is Mistress Irvine, Gil,’ said Alys. ‘A kinswoman of Kittock’s –’

‘Aye,’ agreed Mistress Irvine, nodding and beaming. ‘My good-sister’s good-sister, that’s who Kittock is, and a good friend to me and all.’

‘– and Davie’s aunt,’ continued Alys. ‘She has come from Paisley to see him.’

‘How is the boy today?’ Gil asked, with sympathy.

‘He’s still sleeping the maist o’ the time,’ said Mistress Irvine, looking troubled. ‘And he minds nothing even when he’s awake. I think it was you that found him, maister? Blessings on ye for that, sir, and his mother’s and all.’

‘He improves slowly,’ said the mason.

‘It’s only two weeks, father,’ said Alys. ‘It takes longer than that for a broken skull to mend. Mistress Irvine was very distressed to see her nephew in such a state, Gil, the more so as her foster-son at the college is strong and healthy.’

‘The contrast must be painful,’ Gil commented wryly. The mason’s injured mortar-laddie was a reminder of an episode which he would have wished to forget, had it not resulted in his betrothal to Alys. ‘Has the other boy visited Davie? The company would be good for him.’

‘Och, no. William’s ower busy at his studies,’ explained Mistress Irvine, and bobbed another curtsy. ‘I wonder if I might trouble ye, sir? It’s just to leave this paper for him with the man at the yett. It’s for William Irvine.’ She produced a folded and sealed package.

‘That’s no trouble.’ Gil put his hand out. A line of verse popped into his head:
Little Sir William, are you within?
Which of the ballads was that?

‘Only he said he’d be busy today, he can’t come to see me, and I don’t like to go back, the porter was as awkward yesterday about sending to fetch him to the yett, and if they’re all taigled with this feast I’d only be in the way. It’s a shame I never took it with me when I went out to Vespers.’

So the guardian of the college’s great wooden door must be the same fellow Gil remembered from his own time. ‘It’s no trouble,’ he said again.

She put the little package into his hand and curtsied again. ‘Blessings on ye, sir. Oh, here, you’ve lost your wee scarf.’ She stooped to lift the swatch of silk and fur. ‘You’ll not need that round your neck the day, maister, it’ll be warm enough when it’s no raining. And I’ll away back down to the kitchen, mistress, and see to that remedy I promised Nancy for the bairn. We’ll see if we can’t get him taking more than milk with honey and usquebae, won’t we no?’

‘We will be aye grateful if you do, mistress,’ said Alys. ‘I believe he has eaten only by accident since his mother died.’ She watched Mistress Irvine puffing her way down the kitchen stair, then turned to fasten the scarf back on Gil’s shoulder. ‘There, I have used two pins this time. Take care,’ she said earnestly. ‘Of the Montgomerys, I mean.’

‘Yes indeed.’ The mason made for the door. ‘Maybe you do not go about alone for a while. Bah! It is raining again.’

‘The Montgomerys have killed no Cunninghams for at least six months,’ Gil said. ‘That I know of,’ he added.

He hugged Alys, and bent to kiss her. For a long moment she returned his embrace, with the eager innocence which he found so enchanting; then she drew away, suddenly shy, and he dropped another quick kiss on the bridge of her nose, and followed Maistre Pierre down the fore-stair and across the courtyard in the rain.

Pacing up the High Street with the dignity imposed by the heavy garments, Gil glanced at the tall stone house belonging to Hugh, Lord Montgomery and wondered again what that turbulent baron wanted in Glasgow. Montgomery had no Lanarkshire holdings and no need to keep on the good side of the Archbishop, unlike Gil’s own kindred, and the holdings and privileges in Ayrshire which were the cause of Montgomery’s bloody dispute with the Cunninghams were all administered from Irvine. Perhaps, Gil speculated, Alys’s governess was right and the family wished to make its mark on the college in some way.

The High Street was now completely blocked outside the college gateway by the mounts waiting for the procession. John Shaw the Steward was welcoming another arrival. Gil avoided the heels of a restless mule and picked his way to the door. Here he was met by the same student he had seen earlier, a gangling youth with a faded gown and a fashionable haircut, who bowed deeply, flourishing his hat so that raindrops flew from it.

‘Salve, Magister.
The college greets you. May I know your name?’

‘Maister Gilbert Cunningham,’ said Gil, ‘determined in ’84.’

The student straightened abruptly, clapping the hat back on his head.

‘Gang within, maister, if ye will,’ he said, cutting across Gil’s greeting to the college. ‘The Faculty’s in the Fore Hall.’ He waved a long arm towards the great wooden yett and the vaulted passage beyond it, and turned away.

A little startled by this incivility, Gil made his way into the passage, pausing at the porter’s door. As he had surmised, the occupant of the rancid, cluttered little room was the same man he remembered from his own days at the college, a surly individual with a bald head and a flabby paunch.

‘Good morning, Jaikie,’ he said politely. ‘I see you’re still in charge here.’

‘Oh, it’s you, Gil Cunningham,’ said Jaikie, looking him up and down. ‘I thought ye’d be here earlier, but maybe since ye’re to be married, ye’re done with early rising.’ He produced an unpleasantly suggestive leer. ‘And I hear there’s a bairn already?’

‘There is,’ agreed Gil, ever more politely. ‘A motherless bairn being fostered by the household.’

‘Aye, right. And what do you want?’ demanded Jaikie. ‘I’ve enough to see to, dealing with this feast, without idle conversation round my door.’

‘I have a package here for William Irvine.’

The man’s expression flickered.

‘Ye have, have ye? Let’s see. From Billy Dog, is it?’

Gil handed over the folded paper. Jaikie turned it in his hands, flicked at the seal with a dirty thumbnail, and grunted.

‘It’s no from Billy Dog. Well, ye can deliver it yirsel. That’s William Irvine out there at the yett, capering like a May hobby, welcoming the maisters.’

‘The boy with the red hair?’

‘Aye, the same.’ Jaikie cast a glance out of his window at the crowd in the street. ‘Ye’ll need to be quick. They’ll mount up soon.’

Gil went back out to the doorway and waited while the rain stopped, the sun came out, and the red-haired boy greeted another pair of graduates with flowery compliments about the college’s sons. One of them produced a stock phrase in reply, about the fountain of wisdom; the other grunted, ‘Aye, thanks,’ and pushed past Gil into the tunnel.

‘William,’ said Gil. The boy turned, and recognizing Gil raised his hat briefly and attempted to look down his nose at him. Tall though he was, Gil topped him by several inches, so he was unsuccessful in this, but he assumed an expression of vague contempt.

‘I have a package for you from Mistress Irvine, William,’ said Gil politely, holding it out.
Little Sir William, are you within?
he thought again.

‘From –? Oh,’ said William, taking it. He turned the little bundle over, reading the clumsy writing on the cover. ‘Thank you,’ he added, as if the words tasted unpleasant, and then, almost warily, ‘Did she say anything about it?’

‘Not a thing,’ said Gil. ‘You’ll need to open it to find out.’

‘Well, it’s what one usually does with a letter,’ said William, with casual impertinence. Gil raised one eyebrow, and the boy looked down and turned away. ‘Thank you, maister,’ he said again, ostentatiously studying the writing on the package.

Gil made his way through the tunnel into the Outer Close where he paused, savouring the scene. The place had scarcely changed in the eight years since he had left; the thatch was sagging, the shutters were crooked, even the weeds between the flagstones seemed the same. Now, where had that ill-schooled boy said? Yes, in the Fore Hall.

One or two Faculty members were about in the court, but judging by the noise most were above in the hall. As Gil turned towards the foot of the stair, William hurried across the court, in too much haste even to lift his hat to a passing Doctor of Laws. He appeared to be making for a tower doorway in the south range, but before he reached it a man in the robes of a Dominican friar emerged from the tunnel which led to the Inner Close. William, catching sight of him, checked and turned to intercept him.

‘Father Bernard,’ he said clearly. ‘I have something here that will interest you.’

As Gil reached the top of the stair he settled on a word for William’s expression: gleeful.

In the outermost hall of the college building a roar of polite Latin conversation rose from the assembled Faculty of Arts of the University of Glasgow, thirty or forty men in woollen copes like Gil’s or the silk gowns of the Masters of foreign universities circulating in an aroma of cedar-wood and moth-herbs. Gil paused in the doorway to look over the crowded heads and decided against making his way to his proper station, among the other non-regent Masters, the graduates of the University who did not hold teaching positions. If he waited here, he could slip into his place as the procession left.

He could recognize many of the company. Yonder was John Doby, small, gentle and balding. He was the Principal Regent in Arts, in charge of teaching and all matters of the curriculum, and had taught Gil Aristotle thoroughly and exactly. Beside him, tall and silvertonsured, Patrick Elphinstone the Dean, whom Gil remembered as a conscientious and alarming teacher. There was David Gray the Scribe, a poor teacher and an ineffectual man, with the red furred hood of a man of law rolled down on his shoulders and straggling grey hair showing round his felt cap.

The procession was forming up. Gil stood aside from the door, and the Dean and the Principal passed him in their high-collared black silk gowns and long-tailed black hoods, each with the red
chaperon
of a Cologne doctor trailing from his left shoulder. As they reached the doorway the light changed, and the May sunshine gave way to another vicious May shower.

‘Confound it!’ said Dean Elphinstone, stopping abruptly. ‘The hoods will be ruined! Principal, why did you insist on the silk hoods? Fur at least would dry out.’

‘It’s summer, Dean.’ Maister Doby peered past his taller colleague. ‘A wee bittie rain’ll not hurt you.’