Pat McIntosh - The King's Corrodian

‘No. Faither Prior — no Prior Boyd but the previous one, Prior Blythe that’s novice-master now — he put his foot down when there was to ha been another, said we’d enough to do wi one, we’d ha no more. That one went to the Greyfriars, I heard. No, Pollock had no friends in the convent, though he’d spend enough time talking wi one or another o the friars, getting wee favours of them, getting them to run errands for him.’

‘Getting the friars to run errands?’ Gil repeated.

‘Aye.’

Brother Jamesie arrived with an armful of baskets, and a great sheet of tarred canvas folded into a bundle over his shoulder.

‘See, we could stack them on this, Brother Dickon,’ he said, ‘easier to get them all out the road after. Or I suppose we can use them for backfill,’ he added.

‘We’ll find a use for them,’ agreed his superior. ‘Good thinking, lad.’

‘And Sandy Raitts is in a right passion, ower there in the cloister,’ added Brother Jamesie, grinning. ‘Seems the pilgrim lady wants into his library, and he’s no for letting her in.’

‘What have I tellt ye about gossip, lad?’ said Dickon.

‘She said she wanted to see the library,’ said Gil with misgivings, and Brother Jamesie went red and ducked his head in apology.

‘She was being right civil to him,’ he assured them. ‘He’ll maybe no say anything that bad to her. Just he doesny like ladies ower much.’

‘Jamesie!’ said his superior sharply. ‘Get back to work, and less o your prating.’

‘Aye, but he doesny,’ argued Jamesie. ‘That’s why he’s been minding the library these two year and no out on the road, ken, so he doesny have to speak to ony ladies. How he managed afore he was tonsured- a’richt, I’m going, I’m going!’

‘And so I should think! Gossip’s a sin,’ Brother Dickon reminded him. ‘You’ll ha to confess that.’

‘Aye,’ said Jamesie, bitterly. ‘And if those better’n me ever confessed their faults likewise, I’d ha less objection.’

‘Jamesie.’

At the warning in his superior’s voice, Jamesie offered no more argument, but swung away to the section where he had been working. Brother Dickon glared at his back, but returned to his own task in silence.

‘Did Pollock have other friends?’ Gil asked after a moment. ‘I think you mentioned folk who visited him from the town.’

‘Aye, a few. They’d come and go freely enough in the outer yard, never tried to get inside the cloister that I noticed. I can let you have their names, likely.’

‘Had he money of his own? Apart from what was paid for his keep, I mean.’

‘Now that I couldny say.’ Brother Dickon hoisted his first basket of sherds and made for the tarpaulin. ‘But,’ he paused before tipping the blackened mass out, ‘he never wore the clothes that were provided him. Nor the shoes. Aye well clad he was, warmer than us this weather, and plenty coal and kindling to his wee house, more than my lads ever fetched to him.’

‘Did you ever run into him afore?’ Gil asked. ‘When you were still sergeant-at-arms, I mean. Given you were both members o James Third’s household.’

‘I did,’ replied Brother Dickon baldly. ‘I couldny say if he minded me,’ he added. ‘I’m a wee thing changed since then. The beard makes a difference.’

‘He’d hardly have enemies in a house of Religious like this,’ Gil went on delicately, slinging broken tiles as he spoke. His companion produced a sardonic grunt. ‘But did he have any particular unfriends about the place?’

‘Oh, I couldny say,’ said Brother Dickon. He shifted another handful of tiles, and paused, staring through the charred timbers below them. Gil paused too, watching him, as Dickon turned, very deliberately, threw the tiles into the waiting basket, and turned back to look closer. Then he crossed himself.

‘Is that-?’ Gil began.

‘Aye, it is, maister. We’ve found our missing laddie.’

Gil picked his way to join the lay brother. At the far end of the building, the other men gradually stopped, straightened up, watched them. When Gil bent his head and removed his hat the two grooms did likewise, and one by one the whole group left their task, drifted out of the tangle of ash and timber, drew closer. The little group of novices stood shoulder to shoulder, staring in awful fascination.

‘It’s him, then,’ said one. ‘I hoped he’d- I hoped …’

‘He’d ha turned up by now if he’d escaped the fire, Sandy,’ said another. ‘It was aye more likely.’ He crossed himself, tears in his eyes.

His neighbour, a tow-headed muscular young man, said quietly, ‘I wonder how he didny get out? Or was he maybe right at the heart o the fire? Could it ha started wi him?’

‘Don’t be daft, Adam,’ said someone else roundly.

‘He’s deid, then,’ said one of the lay brothers, possibly Brother Dod.

Brother Dickon gave him a look which should have shrivelled him, crossed himself again and began, ‘ Subvenite, sancti Dei, occurrite, angeli Domini .’ By the second phrase his cohort had joined in, and the novices followed. Aid him, ye saints of God, meet him, angels of the Lord : the prayer for the dead, to be said as soon as life departed. A bit late, Gil thought, staring down at what he could see through the criss-crossed beams of the roof. Nobody alive looked like that.

The body lay on its back, partly covered by a very singed blanket and black woollen habit. It was curled up and set into a strange, contorted position, the knees drawn up into the belly, the fists clenched before the face, but he could see enough of the face that he wished he could not. The lips were drawn back, the gums and broken teeth exposed, the tongue showing red in the shadows behind them. All the visible skin was blackened, presumably with soot; coppery curls as singed as the blanket clung about the brow where the skin had split. It had split on the backs of the hands too, and across the jaw, exposing rather cooked-looking flesh. There was a smell of singed hair, singed wool, burned meat, which- he found himself gagging, and turned away.

Brother Dickon finished the prayer, crossed himself and said with some sympathy, ‘Aye, it gets to ye. Right, lads, we’ll get him out o there, and then someone can let them ken we’ve found him. Have a care how you go, we’d no want bits falling off him.’

‘Is that him right enough?’ asked Dandy. ‘Is it no some blackamoor?’

‘No wi red hair,’ said Tam. ‘Whoever seen a blackamoor wi red hair?’

‘It’s the smoke, see,’ said Brother Dod. ‘It blackens all it touches, ye ken.’

In fact it took all hands, under Brother Dickon’s competent direction, to clear the debris over the body and bring matters to a point where they felt they could lift it out onto the grass. By that time word had spread, the convent bell was tolling and the community had gathered, watching in sombre silence as the remains of the young man’s bedstead were hoisted complete with the burned bedding and the blackened corpse, and carried out to set at Prior Boyd’s feet.

He took a step back in dismay at the sight, and looked round for Gil.

‘Is it him?’ he said helplessly. ‘It — you’d never ken this face, it’s no-’

‘I never met him,’ Gil pointed out. ‘Does nobody else ken him?’

‘The hair’s right,’ observed Brother Dickon, standing at attention beside the exhibit. ‘Naeb’dy else in the place has hair like that.’

‘But he — and the teeth-’

‘It’s never Andrew, it’s some blackamoor, for certain,’ pronounced the subprior. One of the novices sobbed quietly.

‘I suppose he was owercome by the smoke,’ said Prior Boyd, still staring in horrified fascination. ‘Poor laddie. What a way to-’