The Nicholas Feast (34 page)

‘Are you feart I’d make you homeless?’ he said incredulously.

‘What else could you be planning?’

‘Mother, listen!’ He leaned forward and caught her wrist left-handed. ‘Listen to me. I don’t want to live in Avondale or Clydesdale.’

She stared at him.

‘We lost those lands. You know that,’ he said, echoing her phrase deliberately. ‘I don’t want to live where I can see the Hamiltons hunting our game and taxing our tenants.’

‘Not in Lanarkshire?’ she said. ‘But what will you live on? Where would you stay?’

‘Oh, in Lanarkshire,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll stay in the Lower Ward. If I marry Alys, we’ll settle here, in Glasgow. She has no kin but her father in Scotland, her mother is dead. How could I take her out of the place she knows? My uncle has offered two or three properties within the burgh that bring in a good rent. Pierre will dower her well, and I’ve a mind to convert at least some of that to property too. And then my uncle has some salaried post in mind, that he’s negotiating for. We wouldn’t be rich, mother, but we’d be comfortable.’

‘You’ll never make a living as a clerk outside the Kirk.’

‘There are more lay notaries than priested nowadays. They seem to do well enough.’

She stared at him a moment longer, then looked down at the pannikin.

‘Oh, your posset,’ she said. She added a pinch of sugar from the packet in her hand, and swirled the contents of the pan carefully, testing its warmth with the back of her wrist. Gil sat watching her, in a sort of daze of fatigue. The incongruity between the effort required to present an argument on such a subject and the aching familiarity of sitting at the hearth in his mother’s chamber, with the smell of her remembered herbs in his nostrils, had unbalanced him slightly. She was pouring the spiced and sweetened ale into a beaker now.

‘Drink this, Gibbie,’ she said, holding it out to him. He took it, and drank obediently.

‘And what of your sisters?’ she went on, as if he had not just made a long speech. ‘What’s to become of them when I’m not here? Are they to
fast With water-kail, and to gnaw beans and peas?
If you haveny an income, you canny support them, much less dower them, and whatever your uncle has in his mind,’ she hurried on, as he drew a weary breath to speak, ‘I’ll not believe it till I see the first quarter’s salary in your hand.’

‘Mother, my uncle approves. He likes Alys herself –’

‘I told you, he’s a sentimental old man.’

‘– and he is greatly impressed by her accomplishments and her learning.’

‘She is clearly an excellent housewife,’ his mother agreed, ‘and obviously widely read as well.’

‘I think more clearly when I can talk to her.’

‘Gil, there’s my point exactly! Marriage holds a young man back – here you are already, running after her instead of working.’

‘I am working!’ he said indignantly. ‘The Principal commissioned me to find William’s murderer. And Alys has already been a great help. Listen,’ he pursued as she drew breath to speak. ‘Hughie’s bairn died with its mother, didn’t it? And Edward was no even betrothed?’

‘He was six-and-twenty,’ she said, with the wooden expression she still wore when someone else mentioned her dead sons. ‘We were just beginning to seek – Christ succour me, Gil, it’s only four years since!’ she burst out, and covered her face with one hand.

‘I know, mother,’ he said more gently. ‘But you have no Cunningham grandsons. If I marry Alys, and we –’ He stopped, his throat tightening, as the full import of what he was saying struck him. His child and Alys’s – his own son. Alys’s son. ‘Do you not wish for my father’s name to go on?’

‘But what will you live on?’ she repeated.

‘Mother,’ he said, setting down the empty beaker, ‘I’ve heard enough.’

‘You’ll abandon the marriage?’

‘I will not,’ he said. ‘I have you deaving one ear and my uncle at the other, with argument and counterargument.’ He winced as he spread his hands. ‘When my closest kin fall out, I’m free to please myself. I’ll sign the contract as soon as I can hold a pen.’

She stared at him, her expression unreadable.

‘But you can aye be sure, mother,’ he concluded, ‘of our loving duty. And I know fine I speak for Alys in that, as well as myself.’

‘I’m glad you came by, Maister Cunningham,’ said Maister Coventry, waving him to a stool by the window of his chamber in the Arthurlie building. ‘We were wondering what success you have achieved in the matter of William’s death.’

‘Call him by his first name, for God’s sake, Patey,’ said Maister Kennedy from the other side of the chamber. ‘We’re all equals here, and he’s in minor orders at least.’

Maister Coventry raised his eyebrows at Gil, who nodded.

‘I should be honoured,’ he said. ‘As to what I have achieved in William’s matter, the answer is very little. The people with a reason to kill the boy had no opportunity, and the people with an opportunity had no reason that I can discern.’

‘Who had a reason?’ demanded Maister Kennedy.

‘Most of the Faculty, I suspect,’ said Maister Coventry before Gil could answer. ‘It’s good fortune that all were together at the critical moment.’

‘What is the critical moment, anyway? When was he killed, exactly?’

‘I think,’ said Gil carefully, ‘that he was throttled just about the time the Dean rose at the end of the play. Certainly he was dead and locked in the coalhouse by the time we all gathered in the Fore Hall again. I can’t say closer than that yet, and I may never be able to.’

‘Oh,’ said his friend. He stared out of the window at the wet tree-tops of the Arthurlie garden, his lips moving, and finally said, ‘Aye, that was it. D’ye ken, Gil, unless he spoke to whoever killed him, I must be the last to have had any converse with the boy.’

Gil, noting with interest that William was no longer
that little toad,
said, ‘And what did you converse about?’

‘Well, no to say converse. You mind when his tail got ripped and he marched off the stage.’ Gil nodded. ‘He stopped behind the curtains and got out of the dragon costume. Then he took up his gown –’

‘His gown?’ Gil interrupted. ‘You mean he had taken it backstage with him?’

‘Aye.’

‘So he had planned to go snooping,’ said Patrick Coventry thoughtfully.

‘Very likely. Anyway after he had his gown on, and done up all the wee hooks and fastened his belt –’ Maister Kennedy stopped and grimaced. ‘His belt. Aye. He set off towards the door. I got a hold of him and said something about,
You’re not going, are you?
He says,
Yes, I am, my part’s finished.
All this in whispers, of course. I said,
Who the – who do you think you are? I decide when you’re finished,
I said, and he shook me off and answered me back, looking down his nose that way he had,
For the first time in my life I know exactly who I am.
Then he went off out the door and the next time I saw him he was dead. Wasny that a strange thing to say?’

‘Strange indeed,’ said Maister Coventry. ‘But he was in a strange mood that morning. I thought he seemed elated, out of himself in some way.’

‘I wonder what was in the package from his mother,’ said Gil. ‘And what he did with it.’

‘You think she sent word of who his father was?’ asked Maister Kennedy.

‘I think that might explain a great deal,’ said Gil.

‘Had he never known his father’s name?’ asked Maister Coventry curiously.

‘Montgomery claims that he himself never knew, but had his suspicions,’ said Gil. ‘Though of course there is no saying what the boy had been told.’

‘If anyone else knew it,’ said Nick Kennedy, reverting to realism, ‘William would pick it out of the air. So maybe she’d sent him some kind of proof, then?’

‘Was that why his chamber was searched?’ speculated Maister Coventry.

Gil shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? I feel we are close to a solution, to finding justice for the boy, but the last links in the chain elude us. So many strange things have happened – William’s chamber searched, yours searched, Nick, the pile of William’s papers burning in Jaikie’s brazier.’

‘I have another strange thing to recount,’ said Patrick Coventry. ‘This is why I sent word to you, Gilbert.’ He hesitated. ‘I still – I don’t know its significance.’

‘Spit it out, man,’ said Maister Kennedy bracingly, ‘and let Gil judge for himself.’

‘You know, I think, that I am studying for a bachelor’s in Sacred Theology,’ said the Second Regent, taking refuge in the Latin again. Gil nodded. ‘I should have been at the lecture our chaplain gave on Sunday at two o’clock, save that I was at the feast. So I asked one of my fellow Theology students in advance if I might copy his notes.’

‘We’ve all done it,’ said Maister Kennedy.

‘What with one thing and another,’ said Maister Coventry, ‘and the Montgomery boy having a nightmare, and the death of Jaikie our porter, it was not until yesterday before Vespers that I asked Alan Liddell for his notes in order that I might copy them. But he had no notes. I do not like the implication of what I am saying, but I must say it. Father Bernard did not teach at two o’clock on Sunday. There was no lecture.’

‘None?’ said Gil. ‘Did he cancel it, or not turn up to deliver it?’

‘He cancelled it,’ said Maister Coventry, nodding approval of the question. ‘Alan said he was present in the Theology Schule while they were gathering, and left the room less than a quarter-hour before he was due to start. He was gone for a little time, and returned just after the ringing of the two o’clock bell in order to dismiss the class, saying he was unwell and would give the lecture on another day.’

‘Class
is ambitious,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘There are five of you when you’re all there.’

‘Unwell in what way? Did he specify? Did he seem as normal?’

‘Alan did not tell me that, though he did say that Father Bernard seemed quite distressed, as if ill in truth. I think he said he was trembling. He said that two of the students offered to fetch help, or assist their teacher round to the House, but these offers were spurned.’

‘Well!’ said Gil. ‘Father Bernard went to some trouble to make me think he had taught as usual, although,’ he qualified, reviewing the conversation, ‘I don’t think he lied outright. What did his class do? Did he leave first, or did they?’

‘Alan did not say. It seems the class went up to the Laigh Hall, since it was raining, and held an informal disputation which lasted till the college dinner.’

‘So they would not have seen where their teacher went next.’

‘Probably not,’ agreed Maister Coventry.

‘So Bernard Stewart skipped a lecture,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘So what? Is it important, Gil?’

‘It might be of great value,’ said Gil cautiously. ‘It confirms something I had suspected. I heard Wycliff mentioned in the Laigh Hall that afternoon.
The ship of faith tempestuous wind and rain Drives in the sea of Lollardy that blaws.
How close to the wind of reform does Father Bernard sail, Patrick? Is he at risk from a charge of heresy?’

‘Such a charge as William was hinting at on Sunday? It’s hard to teach theology without mentioning ideas which have been thought heretical at one time or another. Wycliff in particular appears from time to time.’ The Second Regent peered out at the much-trampled grass under his window. ‘I should have said Bernard was not at risk. As Dominicans go he is hardly a radical, so if any charge were to be laid his Order would support him without hesitation.’

‘Then William’s hints were an empty threat?’

‘Not completely,’ said Maister Kennedy unexpectedly. ‘There would be questions asked, his teaching suspended, delays to his students, confiscation of his books till somebody got here from Cologne to read them. Bloody inconvenient. And he’d lose the income from the chaplaincy.’

‘That goes to the Order,’ said the Second Regent.

‘Oh, aye, so it does,’ said Maister Kennedy without inflection.

‘It would be an extreme response nevertheless,’ said his colleague, ‘to kill in such a calculating way merely to avert a great inconvenience.’

‘We keep coming back to this,’ said Gil. ‘Those with a reason had no opportunity, those with opportunity had no reason that I can uncover. And yet the boy is dead.’

‘And his funeral is this morning,’ said Patrick Coventry.

‘Christ save us, it is,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘I’d best be away. I’ve to rehearse the order of the procession with John Shaw.
What a day, what a day,’
he mimicked.

‘And I have a lecture to deliver.’ Maister Coventry began searching his desk. ‘More Euclid for the bachelors, though I do not think they will listen. Perhaps Michael will have conned his answer by now.’ He lifted a sheaf of notes. ‘Gilbert, will you attend the funeral?’

‘After Sext, isn’t it? Yes, I’ll try to be there. And after it I have to present some kind of case concerning who killed the boy.’

‘The Dean will speak for most of the morning,’ Maister Kennedy warned him. ‘I’ve seen the notes.’

Gil left by the main door of the college, nodding to the Dominican lay-brother he found on duty there, and turned down the hill and in at the pend of the Masons’ house. Crossing the courtyard, he heard a succession of anguished barks from inside the main block. They continued until the door opened, and the wolfhound hurled itself out and down the steps, to rear up and paw at his jerkin, pushing urgently at his hand with its long muzzle.