Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘What, as a house?’ said Gil, startled. ‘For himself alone?’

‘Oh, no. He was to be married at Yule, he told us, so he wanted the extra space.’

‘Married?’ Maistre Pierre sat down and looked in amazement at Millar. ‘He was not in Orders then?’

‘Oh, no. At least, maybe in minor Orders. He was — I think he’d been a clerk somewhere, he kent the responses well and could sing the Office wi the old men, but he was no priest. To tell truth I never liked to ask him,’ Millar confided.

‘And he wanted to take over the main range. Even the hall?’ said Maistre Pierre, lifting the bundle of papers he had left on the table. ‘But where would the old men meet?’

‘He never said.’ Millar paused, looking thoughtful. ‘Aye, you’re right. I was so — I’m right comfortable in my lodging through the wall yonder,’ he waved a hand, ‘I was so took up wi wondering how the wee houses could be brought into order before Yule, I never thought about the hall.’

‘Did he say who he was to wed?’

‘He did not. I assumed it was his mistress,’ Millar admitted. ‘He’s had her in keeping longer than I’ve been in post here, high time he did right by her. Frankie went away to break the morn’s news to her, poor soul, and he’s not back yet.’

‘And how would that have left you?’ Gil asked.

‘No great change, I suppose,’ said Millar blankly. ‘I’d still be the sub-Deacon, I thought. There might ha been less for my income,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘for a married man would want more for himself, likely. And the same for Sissie, though a course he did say his wife would take over keeping the household.’

‘Are things so tight, then?’ said Maistre Pierre from the table. Gil and Millar both turned to look at him. He had the papers spread out before him on the polished surface and his tablets in his hand. ‘The bedehouse is in poverty?’ he asked.

‘I think it isny well to do, for he’s been making cuts lately. No more wine to their dinners, for instance. They wereny best pleased at that,’ Millar confided.

‘I can imagine.’ Maistre Pierre was still surveying the papers before him. ‘Are these all the papers, would you know?’

Millar shook his head. ‘Maister Naismith saw to the accounts, though I kept them filed for him,’ he said. ‘He and Sissie dealt wi the day’s expenditure every afternoon, which she’ll want me to do now,’ he added in dismay. ‘And he saw to all the incomings and outgoings.’

‘Oh, did he?’

‘It should be all the papers, but there might be some elsewhere.’ Millar drew out one tape-bound sheaf. ‘This bundle is the — no, it isny. It’s the dealings wi the burgh mills. This one,’ he peered at the heading, ‘is the tithes from Lenzie and those are from Elsrickle. And this — that’s strange, these are all in disorder,’ he said anxiously, pulling out one drawer after another. ‘Deacon Naismith has — had his own way of working, like all of us, and these are no in the right shelves.’

‘None of them?’ Gil asked.

‘Some of them are right,’ said Millar, inspecting the contents of a package. Maistre Pierre twisted his neck to see the pages. ‘They seem to be all complete, I think maybe it’s just the packets have got rearranged, I canny think how.’

‘Where did he work?’ Gil asked. ‘At his desk, or at the table here?’

‘Mostly at the table,’ Millar was still engrossed in the papers, ‘but often in his chamber yonder. His writing-gear must be in there the now, for I don’t see it. Oh, this is a strange thing, it’s going to take all morning to sort it.’

Gil watched him pulling the bundles out and replacing them, and said casually, ‘When the Deacon left here yesterday. Before six, I think you said.’ Millar nodded. ‘Did you see which way he went?’

‘He went down the Drygate,’ said Millar. ‘Likely he’d be heading for the house by the Caichpele, as Sissie said. He’s — he’d a quite kenspeckle way of walking, wi his shoulders back and his elbows out under the cloak, there was no mistaking him even by lantern-light.’

‘And he was in the bedehouse when you got home.’

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Millar. ‘There was a light up here and he was moving about.’ He stopped. ‘I never got a sight of him,’ he admitted, ‘but I heard him clear enough, and who else would it be? I’d no need for a word wi him, I just gaed to my lodging and to my bed.’

‘And you were talking with Patey Coventry and the rest of the class till the time you left the college?’ Easily enough confirmed, if he was, Gil thought.

‘Aye,’ began Millar, and was interrupted by an outbreak of furious shouting below them in the inner yard. Socrates barked once, his deep warning tone. Gil, nearest the windows, stepped over to look through the glass, then hastily unfastened the shuttered lower portion.

‘Look at this!’ he said as Maistre Pierre reached him.

His friend stared down into the garden in some amusement. ‘It seems the young men have angered the old ones. Should we defend them, Gil?’

The rain had eased slightly, and outside one of the little houses, Michael and Lowrie stood at bay, the dog in front of them. They were surrounded by an indignant gathering of elderly men, two of them waving sticks in a threatening manner, with Mistress Mudie clutching her plaid round her head and adding her voice to the chorus. The dog barked again. At the far end of the garden one or two passers-by were staring with interest over the wall from the Stablegreen.

‘Merciful Christ,’ said Millar at the next window, ‘what have they done to set them off?’

‘What’s he say?’ echoed someone from below. ‘Tell me what’s he say?’

‘Sneaking around like thieves! And claiming you were ordered to search!’

‘Fit war ye deein, loons?’

‘- no way to behave in a decent bedehouse, as if any of my old men would do a thing like that — ’

‘Magpies! Pyots! And they were sent from that hoodie!’ exclaimed a resonant voice, and continued in Latin; Gil had just time to recognize a phrase from the Apocalypse before Millar said again,

‘Oh, merciful Christ. Sissie!’ he shouted, leaning out at the open shutters. ‘Sissie, get Humphrey out of there before he — ’

‘Maister Cunningham, is that you?’ exclaimed Lowrie in relief, catching sight of Gil at the other window. ‘They’re no for letting us search their lodgings!’

Socrates gave out another deep bark.

‘I never thought,’ said Gil in dismay. ‘I should have warned them no to try.’ He leaned out like Millar and shouted ‘Quiet!’ at his dog. Socrates threw him a resentful look, but reduced his utterance to a threatening rumble, all his white teeth on display. There was something on the ground between his forepaws.

Mistress Mudie at the back of the group was tugging at the arm of one of the brothers, a man twenty years younger than his confreres by his bearing, the source of the sonorous Latin. She succeeded in dragging him away, still waving the other arm and declaiming, and they made for the door below the watchers’ feet, Latin and Scots rising in a kind of motet.

‘- those who claim to be apostles but are not — we will throw you into prison, to put you to the test, for ten days you will suffer cruelly — ’

‘- there now, Humphrey my poppet, calm yourself, they’re no harm to you — come and sit down quiet and I’ll make you a lovely cup of hot milk wi honey in it — ’

‘I’d best deal wi this,’ said Millar, making for the door. ‘They’ll never digest their dinner if we don’t get them calmed down.’

‘He is garbling that text,’ said Maistre Pierre critically. As Millar left he turned away from the window to the tall rack of papers, and extracted another bundle at random.