Pat McIntosh - The Stolen Voice

Gil pushed the pup away, lifted the crossbow and drew it out of its linen bag. The weapon was, as Currie said, a good one, and well cared for. He turned it over, admiring the finish and shaping of stock and crosspiece. Not an ounce of spare timber, he judged.

‘An arbalest!’ exclaimed the Bishop. ‘I never knew Jaikie had an arbalest.’

‘Nor did I, my lord,’ said Maister Gregor.

‘Our Lady save you, my lord, it’s no an arbalest,’ said Currie over the old man’s remark. ‘You’d never get an arbalest into thon wee kist. It’s a crossbow, just.’

‘It’s a crossbow,’ agreed Gil. ‘Not my weapon, but my brother Edward was skilled with the crossbow.’ He held it up, sighting along the stock, then passed it to Currie, whose hands closed on it covetously. ‘It’s a bonnie thing, but it’s unusable.’

‘Unusable?’ said Currie sharply, staring at him. ‘How’s it unusable?’

‘There’s no means of bracing it.’ Gil gestured at Maister Gregor’s inventory lying in the open lid of the kist. ‘There should be a belt-hook, or a goat’s foot, or the like.’

‘I thought that,’ remarked Maister Gregor proudly.

Seeing the Bishop’s blank look, Gil explained, ‘It’s the means of bracing the bow so it can be loosed, my lord. The arblaster sets his foot in yon stirrup at the nose of the bow,’ he pointed, and Currie raised the weapon, which he was still cradling. ‘Then he attaches something to the cord, and straightens up, and that draws the cord and lodges it there — ’ He pointed to the nut that held the cord braced till the bow was loosed, and the Bishop peered closer and looked away again, shuddering.

‘It’s an unchristian weapon,’ he declared. ‘So you’re saying Jaikie couldna loose this?’

‘Nobody could loose it,’ Gil said, ‘because nobody could brace it.’

‘I thought that too, you ken,’ repeated Maister Gregor. Everyone else turned to him, and he ducked his head and bleated in faint dismay at the attention. ‘When I put all Jaikie’s gear by,’ he said almost pleadingly. ‘I saw there was no means to brace the cord, and I saw there was no bolts to it and all.’

‘So why is it in his kist, if he couldny use it?’ demanded the Bishop.

‘I think it isn’t his. I think someone hid it among his gear,’ said Gil. Brown met his eye across the chamber, but was silent. ‘Maybe in haste, so that he forgot to lodge the belt-hook and the bolts there too.’

‘What use would that be?’ wondered Maister Gregor. ‘He could never use it, whoever it belongs to, while it was in Jaikie’s kist.’

‘Maister Gregor,’ said Gil. The old man looked at him, still frowning in puzzlement. ‘Did you tell me you had walked in the garden that evening, the evening Maister Stirling died?’

‘I did, I did that, though a course,’ he qualified, ‘I never knew Jaikie was dead then.’ He crossed himself and murmured something. Gil waited till he finished, then went on:

‘I think you said my lord was there too, with Jerome.’ The chaplain nodded. ‘Do you recall that, my lord?’

‘I do,’ said Brown. ‘Wat, be still. Where are you off to, man?’

‘You’ll want a couple of the men — ’ Currie began.

‘Be still,’ said Brown again, quite mildly, and the stew-ard’s feet were rooted to the spot. ‘I also recall that the supper was late, and I can see by the way you hold it that you know every inch of that dreadful weapon. Wat, why did you kill Jaikie?’

‘No!’ Currie fell to his knees, his plump face suddenly glistening with sweat. ‘No, I never, I didny! It wasny me!’

‘I’m told you’re the best shot with a crossbow in Perth,’ Gil said, and then with sudden comprehension, ‘and Mitchel named you as he died, man.’

‘I never — I never did! I had to!’

‘Who was it then?’ asked the Bishop, looking very solemn, his voice gentle. ‘Who killed Jaikie Stirling, Wat, if it wasna you? Or why would you have to? A man never has to kill, Wat, you ken that.’

‘Maister Gregor knows why he killed him,’ said Gil.

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Maister Gregor. ‘Er — me? Ken why? Why?’

‘Tell me again,’ Gil invited, ‘the crack Jaikie made at Wat’s expense that day at the noon bite. Tell my lord.’

‘At the — oh! Aye, it was right comical.’ He recounted the tale of the new way to cook mutton yet again, clearly unaware of what he was saying. Gil met the Bishop’s eye.

‘ Write it down ,’ he repeated, ‘ and sell it in the Low Countries . Maister Stirling had realized who was selling information. He had to be killed before he told you.’

‘Why did he no tell me first off?’

‘I was doing no sic a thing!’ protested Currie, scrambling to his feet. ‘I never — I would have — ’

‘The man Mitchel?’ said Brown to Gil. Gil shook his head.

‘Mitchel is dead,’ he said. ‘My men were attacked outside the town as they brought him to Perth today. But I’ve spoken to Doig, I’ve spoken to his wife, and — ’

‘Stop him!’ exclaimed the Bishop. Gil spun round, in time to see Currie dive out of the door, fling himself across the next room and on to the stair. He plunged after him, followed by an excited Jerome, as shouting and the sounds of a fight broke out below them.

‘Let me pass, you fools!’ howled Currie. ‘I’ve an errand won’t wait! Let me pass!’

‘Hold him, lads!’ Gil shouted, swung himself down the newel stair after the steward, and leapt on to the battle at its foot. The two Stronvar men he had posted there, Ned’s henchmen, were having trouble holding Currie. More of the Bishop’s servants were appearing in answer to his cries for help, but with Gil’s assistance they were held off and the man was overcome, his arms pinned at his sides, the point of Gil’s dagger under his chin, while his master came down the stair at a more dignified pace.

‘Take and bind him,’ the Bishop said, ‘and send to the constable to come for him. Treason is a plea of the Crown,’ he said to his servant, ‘and by Christ I’ll see you tried and hung by the Crown for this, clerk or no clerk, Wat Currie. And bid the constable release the man Cornton now.’

‘I still don’t see how Jaikie got into the tanpit,’ said Maister Gregor. ‘And the badges and all, what had the badges to do wi’t?’

‘Nor I,’ admitted Bishop Brown. ‘Can you tell us that, Maister Cunningham?’

After the steward had been removed, still struggling and protesting his innocence, the two churchmen had spent some considerable time at prayer. Gil had occupied himself in searching the man’s own chamber, with two of the Bishop’s men as witnesses. He had found documents sufficient to condemn Currie out of hand, notes of the content of the English treaty, a half-written letter to a Fleming whose name Brown recognized (‘Margaret of Burgundy uses him,’ he said cryptically) and other papers which the Bishop immediately confiscated and placed in his own locked kist.

‘The badges have nothing to do with it,’ Gil said, ‘excepting that they led us to find Stirling’s body. He’d given his badge of St Dymphna — ’

‘That was her!’ exclaimed Maister Gregor. ‘Diffna!’

‘To Andrew Drummond, for reasons connected with whatever they confessed to each other that afternoon on the Ditchlands. It was sewn on to the hat, he’d have had to cut it off, and I suppose loosened the Eloi badge at the same time, and that fell off when Doig and the man Mitchel were getting his body into the tanyard.’

‘I see,’ said the Bishop. ‘So it’s St Eloi’s doing, or perhaps St Dymphna’s, that he was found and can be given Christian burial.’

‘It is,’ agreed Gil, taken with this. ‘If — I’ll not speculate what they discussed — ’