Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘I must go down too,’ Gil said after a moment. ‘Are you staying here?’

‘Oh, for certain,’ said Maistre Pierre, not looking up from a close scrutiny of the papers he held. ‘Leave Naismith’s keys with me if you are going. As I thought, Gil, none of this adds up. I would like Alys to see it,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘but not now.’

‘Not now,’ agreed Gil, flinching from the idea. He set the keys on the table by the dead man’s purse and belt and crossed the room, listening carefully. Mistress Mudie’s voice came up through the floorboards, babbling on like the mill-burn; Maister Humphrey replied, still in flowing Latin but less loudly. She seemed to be meeting with some success. Gil went out and down the fore-stair.

In the dripping garden, Millar had already drawn the bedesmen away from their siege, and the audience on the Stablegreen had drifted away. When the two students saw Gil they slipped round to meet him; Michael bent first, attempting to pick up whatever it was the dog had found, but Socrates put one hairy paw on top of it and bared his teeth a little further, then snatched the object up himself and came to be praised for defending the young men, waving his tail. Gil patted him, accepted his gift, and said in apology, ‘I should have warned you no to try their lodgings, or at least to be careful how you went. Did they strike you?’

‘Oh, it was no worse than my grandsire shouting at the servants,’ said Lowrie easily. ‘We’ve no found the cloak so far, maister.’

‘Did the dog find anything? No signs of blood? What’s this he’s brought me?’

‘No,’ said Michael in his gruff voice before his friend could speak. He had grown in the six months since Gil had first encountered him at the University, but was still shorter than Lowrie, lightly built and mousy-haired, with a pointed chin and sharp cheekbones. ‘No a thing. He checked the place where the corp was lying again, but he never went anywhere else after it.’

‘This is a stocking,’ Gil said in surprise, looking at the object his dog had given him. ‘Where did he find it? I’d best return it.’ He broke off, looking more closely. Still crumpled in the folds in which it had been slid off its wearer’s leg, the item was wet from the grass and from Socrates’ mouth, but otherwise relatively clean. He shook it out; it was finely knitted of linen thread, with clocks of fancy work on either side of the ankle, and it was barely longer than Gil’s hand and forearm. The mark of the garter was clearly visible near the top.

‘This was never an old man’s garment. It’s a lassie’s stocking,’ said Gil. ‘What’s that doing in the alms-house?’

The two young men glanced at one another.

‘Er,’ said Michael, the scarlet flooding up over his face. ‘Er …’

‘Michael has access to the Douglas lodging,’ said Lowrie candidly, ‘which is the last house yonder by the gate, and a key to the gate itself. Need we say more, maister?’

Michael threw him a grateful look. Gil glanced at the stocking again and knew a surge of envy. Al nicht by the rose ich lay. To be alone with one’s sweetheart — abed with one’s sweetheart, indeed — without all the tumult of feasts and invitations, wedding-clothes and linen lists -

‘Well, well,’ he said, mustering a grin from somewhere, and handed the stocking over. ‘Don’t make any promises your father won’t approve, Michael. I hope you got her out well before it was light.’

Michael nodded, mumbling something indistinct, and hastily stowed the delicate object in the breast of his gown.

‘We’d best be away, maister,’ said Lowrie. ‘We’ve a lecture at eleven o’clock.’

‘So Nick said,’ agreed Gil. ‘Come in out the rain first, and tell me what you’ve found.’

‘That’s easy done,’ said Lowrie, following him into the passageway through the main range. ‘We’ve found neither cloak nor hat, and the dog showed no more interest in any of the places we’ve been.’

‘And where was that?’

‘No the chapel,’ said Michael.

‘No the chapel,’ agreed Lowrie, ‘since they were saying Terce, but we’ve looked in all the outhouses that were unlocked, save where the Deacon’s laid out, and we looked in the kitchen. Mistress Mudie took the huff,’ he confessed, ‘and insisted we look in her own chamber off the kitchen and all, and in her kist. That was a bit — she’d that Maister Humphrey in the kitchen, the mad one, and the dog wasny very taken wi him. Anyway, we’ve been everywhere we could, except the Deacon’s lodging and Maister Millar’s. Oh, and we looked in here,’ he added, waving a hand to encompass the shadowy hall.

‘And the old men’s lodgings?’ Gil asked.

Lowrie made a face. ‘We’d already looked in Michael’s lodging — the Douglas house, the one at the far end on the right — and we’d got into all of them except the mad one’s, which is when they cam tottering out wi their sticks displayed. So we never risked that one, maister, being wholly taken up wi defending ourselves,’ he admitted. ‘The dog wasny interested in any of their doors, except Michael’s, and all he found in Michael’s place was la — the lassie’s stocking. So we’ve no been much help.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil. ‘That’s very useful. I wonder where the cloak is?’

‘Why does it matter?’ asked Michael.

‘He went out in it,’ said Lowrie, ‘and now he’s no wearing it.’

‘He might have left it somewhere.’

‘Miggle, you’ve seen him often enough.’ In the thin light from the two doors Lowrie’s lanky frame was briefly transformed to mimic a smaller, stouter, more self-important man. ‘He’d never have left his bedehouse cloak, wi all that braid and the badge and all. Never mind it was a cold evening.’

‘So now we ken it’s no in the bedehouse,’ said Gil, ‘or at least if I can check Millar’s lodging we’ll ken. And thank you for searching.’

‘There’s another thing,’ said Lowrie. ‘I know about things setting after they’re deid, maister, but how sure is the timing? It’s a man we’re talking about, after all, no a side of mutton.’

‘Well, it can take longer,’ said Gil, ‘it can be slower, but it’s no often quicker. Why?’

‘Well, I wondered if the Deacon might ha been alive this morning.’

‘This morning?’ repeated Gil, startled. ‘No, he’d never have set that quickly. Why?’

‘Well, that’s it,’ said Lowrie. ‘I thought I saw him in the chapel, when we came to say Mass, though he wasny in his usual place. So how could he have been dead last night, if he was at Mass this morning?’

‘A good question,’ agreed Gil. ‘How certain are you that you saw him? Could it have been someone else?’

‘No very,’ admitted Lowrie. ‘But I’d swear I saw an extra person within the quire, just the dark figure wi the badge on the breast like the others, and who else was it like to have been?’

Gil looked from one young man to the other. ‘Did you see this, Michael?’

Michael shook his head. ‘I’d the candle. You don’t see much past that.’

‘Come and show me where you saw him, Lowrie.’

They went out and across the outer courtyard to the chapel door, which was now closed. Within, the candles still burned on the altar of St Serf, on either side of a clumsy wooden crucifix.

Even with these, even with daylight seeping reluctantly through the narrow windows, the little box-shaped building was full of shadows. As a place intended for clerks to worship in, it had no separate nave, but the stall seats faced inward, six on either hand, and their high backs and partial sides of Norway pine formed a sort of internal quire, with a painted screen and curtained doorway at its westward end to shut out the worst of the draughts. Socrates set off, claws clicking on the worn tiles, to explore the dim space between the pine uprights and the plastered outer walls where there was room for any lay folk who wished to hear the Office or the Mass.