Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘Douglas?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘The Douglas arms? The same which you wear, maister?’

Gil looked attentively, for the first time, at the embroidered badge on Millar’s cloak.

‘The Douglas arms, with a difference. A heart on a shield,’ he said, ‘and an open book below it. Was it a Douglas founded the place?’

‘The shield should be chained to the book,’ said Millar, distracted, ‘and LP on the pages of the book, to signify the House of Leirit Puirtith, but the stitches aye wear away. It was James Douglas of Cauldhope was our founder, near sixty year since, as a house to support ten poor learned men. We pray daily for his soul and his wife’s.’

‘I never realized that,’ said Gil. ‘That must have been my godfather’s sire — or his grandsire, indeed. Ten, is it? You don’t have ten staying here now, do you?’

‘No, no,’ said Millar anxiously. ‘There are si — six bedesmen. And I’d best leave you now, maisters, and go and lead them to Terce. I’ll come back as soon as they’ve right started.’

‘We must not delay the Office,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, and Millar hurried off down the creaking fore-stair. Gil set the lantern back on the court-cupboard and prowled round the chamber, opening the shutters so that the damp air stirred and more light fell on the well-swept boards under their feet. Maistre Pierre laid the dead man’s purse and belt on the table and looked about him.

‘He did himself proudly,’ he commented. He moved to the rack of papers and drew out a bundle. ‘What are all these, I wonder? The accounts of the bedehouse, I suppose. I wonder where he wrote? I see no pen or ink. Perhaps in the inner room.’

‘This does not add up,’ Gil said. His companion nodded, peering at the papers he held. ‘He was moving about up here two hours before midnight, with a locked door between him and the place where he was found dead this morning. He must have been killed almost immediately after he was heard here, but where did it happen?’

‘His keys were on him. They could have been used to open the door.’

‘But how did his killer get out again, through the locked door?’

‘Perhaps it was one of the old men. Or Millar, or that talking woman. Who else has a key?’

‘I hope the boys may find something to the purpose.’ Gil turned his head as a sound of shuffling feet rose from the yard. ‘And there is Naismith’s bedchamber to search.’

The inner chamber was half the size of the outer, most of the floor space taken up by a free-standing box bed positioned to avoid the worst of the draughts from the windows. It had a counterpane of the same verdure tapestry, and a matching curtain was drawn back on its one open side.

‘Is that the kind of piece madame your mother has sent?’ asked Maistre Pierre, following Gil into the room, ‘or is it a tester-bed with pillars? The canvas was still over the cart when I left this morning.’

‘It’s this kind,’ said Gil rather shortly. He was aware of his friend eyeing him sideways again, but concentrated on studying the rest of the chamber. There was a painted chest with a businesslike lock by the bedside, a rug made of two goatskins lay crumpled beside it, and a tall desk stood next to one of the windows, the inkhorn and pen-case Maistre Pierre had missed resting on a shelf beside the writing-slope.

‘The bed has been slept in,’ the mason said, ‘this one I mean, I have no doubt of that.’

‘Nor I,’ said Gil.

Indeed, he thought, it could hardly be clearer. The sheets were creased, the counterpane rumpled, and the blankets had been flung back when its occupants — occupant rose before the dawn. He pulled back the bedding, and drew each layer up over the mattress until all was straight, then looked about him. A pair of slip-slop shoes sat neatly by the foot of the bed; a furred brocade bedgown hung on a nail in the bedpost above them.

Beyond the closed end of the bed another chest could be seen against the wall, with a pile of discarded clothing thrown on top of it. Gil went over to this and disentangled the garments. Black hose, rather stale, a mended doublet and jerkin, a short gown with a lining of black budge: the kind of garments a man wore about his own house, when not out to impress.

‘He changed his garments before he left to go to supper,’ he said. Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘And then came in later and prepared himself for bed. He hasn’t worn the bedgown.’

‘One does not always.’

‘True.’

The pen-case on the desk was of tooled leather; Gil eased off the cover and looked inside. Several quills bound together in a scrap of paper, a penknife for trimming pens and scraping out blots, a bone rubber for smoothing paper or parchment after one had used the knife. Nothing unusual there.

He looked round. There was a candlestick with a burnt-down candle on the painted chest. He thought suddenly of Tib’s intent face over the candles in the house on Rottenrow before dawn, and then of Alys sitting beside him in the firelight in her father’s house.

‘There is his purse,’ said Maistre Pierre, breaking into that thought. ‘I have it here.’

‘True.’ Gil took the item from him. Like most of Naismith’s goods, it was large and well made, of red leather stamped with a pattern of small flowers. Undoing the strings, Gil tipped out the contents beside the candlestick, the debris of the man’s life rattling on the painted wood. Distantly aware of Mistress Mudie’s raised voice, he sorted through the items. A smaller purse of coin, a set of tablets, two or three creased scraps of paper with writing on them, two pilgrim medals and a set of beads, a tiny pot of ointment with a powerful smell, a small box of sweetmeats.

‘What is the writing?’

‘A receipt of some sort.’ Gil unfolded one scrap. ‘Herbs, quicksilver, fat from a cob swan, burnt feathers. Ointment, I suppose, but it doesn’t say for what. This is another one, and this is a list of herbs. Hot milk or ale, honey — a soothing drink, I suppose.’ He handed the slips to his companion. ‘And in his tablets, notes of this and that, Buy coal, Speak to Mungo Howie.’

Maistre Pierre looked up from the little sheaf of papers in surprise. ‘To Howie? I should have thought he could afford a better craftsman than that.’

Gil, aware of his friend’s opinion of the several carpenters and joiners in the burgh, merely nodded and turned to the next leaf. The slats of wood were as long as his hand, the outer covers wrapped in red leather, stamped with the same pattern of flowers as the purse, and the wax filling the hollowed-out centres of the leaves had been stained red to match, rather than the more usual green. Here was a long list, incised in the careful script of a man who had come to writing late in life.

‘This is a note of some property,’ he said after a moment. ‘Most of it in Glasgow. I wonder is it his own or the bedehouse’s? And several names. A gold chain, the furnishings of this lodging.’

‘Notes for a will, perhaps. Did that woman mention an announcement? Is that why he saw Agnew last night, to draw up some new document?’

‘It’s possible,’ agreed Gil. He turned as footsteps crossed the outer room. ‘Maister Millar. What did Deacon Naismith have to tell the bedehouse yesterday? Was he making great changes?’

‘Not — not for the bedehouse,’ said Millar earnestly from the doorway ‘no really.’

‘Not really,’ echoed Maistre Pierre. ‘So what were his plans? Small changes?’

Millar fell back before them as they returned to the outer room. ‘Well, there were to be changes for the wardens, I agree. I was to have one of the wee houses, and Sissie another, and the Deacon was to occupy the whole of this main range.’