The Nicholas Feast (29 page)

‘But they all swear to each other,’ objected the mason.

‘I know.’ Gil frowned, trying to recall names. ‘Nick Kennedy swore in my hearing he’d throttle the boy. Patrick Coventry. Maister Forsyth. That’s all the regents I can think of. John Shaw the Steward.’

‘Father Bernard,’ said Alys, writing carefully.

‘He denied that William approached him,’ said Maistre Pierre. Alys glanced at him again, and went on writing.

‘Now the scholars.’ Gil took another draught of ale. ‘Michael Douglas. Richie – now what is his name? Write down Richie Scholar, Alys. And I suppose Ninian Boyd.’

‘Any more?’

‘Agnes Dickson and one of the kitchen hands. Tam, I think his name is, like my uncle’s man.’

‘The boy’s friends?’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘That poor Ralph and the young man Montgomery.’

‘Yes, if you think Ralph has the gumption to do such a thing. As Nick said, I’d put nothing past the Montgomery, but Robert was in the kitchens with Nick Gray.’

‘Laughing a vengeful laugh,’ said Alys. Her father looked startled.

‘Who else?’ Gil wondered. ‘It must all be in the book, which we must look at next.’

‘That makes sixteen names,’ said Alys.

‘The porter?’ suggested the mason. ‘This elusive dog-breeder?’

‘The dog man was at the door,’ said Alys. ‘I’m sorry, I had forgotten. He came by this afternoon asking for you by name.’

‘Did he so?’ Gil stared at her. ‘What did he want?’

‘He asked after the dog. He was supposed to take it back to his kennels yesterday morning, but he didn’t get it before William died. Its keep is paid for, it seems.’

‘And he is worried by this?’ asked the mason. Alys flicked him another glance, and tightened her mouth.

‘I thought he was concerned for the dog,’ she added to Gil. ‘About its food, and whether you had collar and leash for it. I assured him you were well able to rear and train a hunting dog, and he went away.’

‘Collar and leash?’ repeated Gil. He reached into his doublet. ‘We found a collar and leash in the press in Jaikie’s chamber.’ And was this the collar Dorothea meant in my dream? he wondered.

‘The dog’s, do you think?’ said the mason. ‘Certainly the boy Livingstone assumed it.’

The pup stood up to put a paw on Gil’s knee, and sniffed carefully at the strips of leather.

‘He recognizes it,’ said Alys.

‘And I recognize the badge on the leash.’ Gil held it out. ‘I’d say it was a piece off someone’s bridle, put to good use, and look what’s stamped on it. Little fish-tailed crosses, all along the leather.’

‘The cross of St John,’ said Alys.

‘Oh!’ said her father, craning to see. ‘And where has that come from, do you suppose?’

‘Anyone may use a second-hand bridle,’ said Alys thoughtfully.

‘I think they were gilded.’ Gil tilted the leather so that it caught the light. ‘This has been expensive work.’

‘Something the dog man had by him?’ said Alys.

‘I had best go and speak to him,’ said Gil. ‘It sounds as if he feels responsible for the beast.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘It’s still an hour or more to Compline. I can go down there after we finish making this list.’

‘And what about the porter’s death?’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Michael Douglas again,’ said Gil, ‘and Robert Montgomery and his uncle Hugh.’

‘I know where my money lies,’ said the mason. He cut himself another slice of cheese. Gil did the same, and shared it with the dog.

Alys, writing names, said, ‘So two people are on both lists.’

‘My own thought is that Hugh Montgomery killed Jaikie,’ said Gil, ‘though I have no firm knowledge of why, but the two scholars were also at the yett without witnesses shortly before he died.’

‘The Montgomerys will bear witness for each other,’ observed the mason.

‘My point precisely,’ said Gil.

‘Do all these names remain on the list?’ asked Alys, surveying it. ‘I am sure you said these two were under your eye, and these four, no, five remained together.’

‘I am certain of Nick Kennedy and Maister Coventry,’ Gil agreed. ‘The group of five all swear to one another, so unless we impute conspiracy as well as secret murder to the senior members of the Faculty, we must cross them off. A pity,’ he added, ‘for they were the only ones who ate the spiced pork, apart from Jaikie and the kitchen hands.’

‘I told you before you should question the kitchen,’ Alys said.

‘The scholars – Michael and Ninian can go, and Ralph. Who does that leave us with?’

‘John Shaw the Steward,’ Alys read, smoothing names out of the wax. ‘Father Bernard. Robert Montgomery and Richie Scholar. Mistress Dickson and Tam.’

‘All equally unlikely but one,’ said the mason gloomily.

‘I agree, there is a case against him,’ said Gil. ‘But the trouble is, while he denies that William approached him, I don’t know what reason he would have to kill him, and in fact I suspect he might have had good reason to give the boy support and some sort of acknowledgement.’

‘What?’ said the mason.

‘Father Bernard,’ Gil pointed out, ‘knew exactly how old William was.’

The shops and stalls at Glasgow Cross were being packed up, with a lot of shouting and joking about the day’s trade. Apprentices cleared their masters’ wares off counters which would fold upwards like shutters, journeymen stowed the stock in bags or boxes or great trays. The burgh’s licensed beggars whined hopefully round the food stalls.

‘And there,’ said Maistre Pierre, nodding at one of the booths against the Tolbooth, ‘is William’s barber. I asked another of the students, before you reached the college this afternoon.’

‘Ah,’ said Gil. ‘Is he any good?’

‘I may not go back, but he is certainly popular. He has two assistants, and there were several people waiting while I was barbered, even on a Monday.’

‘So what did you learn?’

His companion pulled a face. ‘The Watch cleared several alehouses last night. Two of the girls at Long Mina’s are planning to retire. Robert Blacader has made over land to somebody’s nephew. It may be that they were guarding their tongues because I am not a regular,’ he admitted. ‘In general I let Daniel Dickson clip me. But it does seem to me that one must spend a lot of time there to gather much information.’

‘So perhaps that wasn’t William’s source.’

They picked their way through the bustle, avoiding the rotting vegetables and broken crocks underfoot, and turned eastward past the Mercat Cross into the Gallowgait.

‘I can walk this far on my own,’ Gil said.

‘I am happy to leave the house. I am in disgrace, a little.’

Gil turned his head to look at his companion. ‘She was very much alarmed when Wattie came to the door asking for you.’

Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘Life was a little difficult before we left Paris,’ he admitted. ‘It is four years since, but Alys is still concerned if she does not know where I have gone.’

Gil waited, pacing along the sandy roadway, but no more information was forthcoming.

‘There was rioting on the Left Bank,’ he recalled, ‘when the King tried to impose his will on the Faculty of Theology again. Students on the Continent are more combative than in Scotland, I suppose because they are generally older.’

‘And the universities are larger, so there are more of them,’ said the mason absently.

They made their way to the East Port and out through the gate, nodding to the two keepers. The senior, a stout man who reminded Gil strongly of the late Jaikie, eyed them suspiciously, but appeared to decide that they had neither goods nor profits to be taxed, and waved them idly through.

‘Where does the dog-breeder stay?’ Gil asked, pausing.

‘It’s no far,’ said the younger gatekeeper, taller and more helpful than his colleague. He pointed. ‘A wee bit out yonder. Ye canny miss it, maisters, the reason being, all the dogs is barking. Ye can hear it from here.’

‘You can indeed,’ agreed the mason.

‘Just follow your ears,’ said the senior keeper, and laughed raucously.

‘We return before Compline,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Well, you’ll no return this road after it, maisters,’ said the younger man, ‘for we’ll shut the gate.’

Beyond the port, over the wooden bridge which crossed the Mill-burn, the condition of the roadway deteriorated sharply. Inside the burgh there were regulations about middens, about the housing of pigs, about keeping the street before one’s door passable. Since most of the burgesses observed these from time to time, particularly when threatened with a fine by the burgh officers, they had some effect. Outside the gate there were no regulations, and though the road which led in from Bothwell and Cadzow was well defined, since carts and pack-trains came in this way, it appeared to go through some of the middens. On either side was the usual suburban huddle of small houses, the homes of those who could not afford to live in the burgh, with a few larger properties among them where some tradesman had become wealthy enough to ignore the by-laws about indwelling burgesses. Children, pigs and hens scuffled in the alleys, a goat browsed thoughtfully on a patch of nettles, and over all the dogs howled.

‘That way, I think,’ said Maistre Pierre, gesturing to their left. ‘There is a vennel of sorts which goes in the right direction.’ His glance fell on the crumbling chapel standing where the paths diverged, and he added, ‘Ah, there is Little St Mungo’s. Your uncle was saying the roof needs repair, and he is perfectly right. Those children will have the building down.’

‘The vennel goes on to the Dow Hill,’ said Gil. ‘The dog man lives on the Gallowgait, so Robert Montgomery said.’ He caught the eye of a dirty boy, one of several waiting to swing on a heavy rope knotted into the overhanging eaves of the chapel. ‘Can you take us to Billy Dog’s?’

‘What’s it worth?’ demanded the child. Two or three more came jostling eagerly forward.

‘I ken, maisters. I’ll show ye! Dinna tak him, he’ll lead ye astray. I’ll show ye, maisters!’

The dog-breeder’s home, down Little St Mungo’s Vennel, was a low thatched cottage like its neighbours, distinguished mainly by being next to a tanner’s yard. One of the boys led them confidently past the interested stares of several gossiping women and stopped in front of the open door. He gestured at a well-trodden path which emerged round the end of the house and led down the vennel to a plank bridge over yet another burn.

‘That’s where she walks the dogs. Mistress Doig!’ he shouted. ‘Here’s two men wants ye!’

Gil handed over the coin they had agreed on, and the boy bit it, thrust it into some recess of his filthy clothing, and ran off, followed by the friends who had escorted them.

‘There is nobody at home,’ said the mason doubtfully. ‘Perhaps they have been driven out by the smell.’

‘I should have kept that compress on my wrist,’ said Gil.

‘It takes folk that way at first,’ said a rasping voice, low down behind them.

Gil turned, and stared.

The dog-breeder was not much taller than an ell-stick, and consisted mainly of a big-featured head and a barrel chest. His arms were short, bare and furred with coarse black hair, and at first glance he seemed to have no legs, but a pair of well-shod feet which were just visible under the turned-up hem of a leather apron. Gil found himself recalling one of his nurse’s tales.

The man moved forward, raising his blue woollen bonnet, and ducked a grotesque courtesy which made it clear that his legs were short and bowed.

‘Good e’en to ye, maisters,’ he said politely, though from his wry smile he knew exactly Gil’s thoughts. ‘And what can Billy Doig do for ye?’

Gil, recovering his own manners, introduced himself and the mason with equal politeness.

‘I’ve got William Irvine’s dog in my keeping,’ he said.

‘I hear he’s deid, poor laddie.’ Maister Doig crossed himself with a hairy paw.

‘He is,’ said Gil. ‘I think you had some arrangement with him about the pup’s keep.’

‘Oh, I had,’ said Billy Doig rather hastily, ‘but the money’s all used up, maister. If I was to get the dog back, I’d need more coin for it.’

‘That’s understood,’ said Gil. ‘What was the arrangement you had?’

Maister Doig looked at them, his eyes wary under thick greying brows.

‘Come in the house,’ he said. ‘No need to discuss it afore half the Gallowgait.’

‘May we not rather go round to the dog-pens?’ asked the mason.

‘Aye,’ said Maister Doig after a moment, and set off with a rolling gait like a cog in a cross-wind, round the end of the house.

The barking redoubled in volume as they followed him into the yard at the back. It was lined with rows of pens, from which big dogs, little dogs, wolfhounds, deerhounds, otterhounds, spaniels, two sorts of terrier, barked and howled and leapt up and down, tails going madly, demanding attention.

‘Mon Dieu!’
said the mason.

‘What a lot of dogs,’ agreed Maister Doig, with irony. ‘Be quiet!’ he shouted, and most of the dogs fell silent, watching him intently. A pair of terriers in the nearest pen yipped impatiently. ‘Quiet, youse!’ he said again, and they scurried to the back of their cage, where they could be heard squabbling over something.