Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘Fit deein, mon?’ demanded the brother opposite Anselm. He had removed his floppy velvet hat and hung it on the arm of his chair to dry; his head was completely bald and gleamed in the firelight. As if to compensate, in addition to the luxuriant grey moustache he had large bushy eyebrows, and flourishing tufts of hair emerged from his nostrils and ears. They gave him rather the look of a Green Man in a church, Gil thought, perhaps one who had been pruned slightly.

‘Forgive me, maisters,’ said Gil, bowing politely to the gathering. ‘I’m the Archbishop’s Quaestor, Gil Cunningham. Might I get a word with you all?’

‘It’s you that’s hunting for whoever slew the Deacon?’ said the one with the trembling-ill. Gil nodded. ‘Aye, well, we may no be much help, lad, but you can ask.’ He indicated the intent faces one by one. ‘Father Anselm, Maister Barty Lennox, Sir Duncan Fraser, and I’m Cubby Pringle.’

‘What’s he say?’ said the deaf brother. Barty Lennox, thought Gil. ‘Questions? Sit down and ask away, boy. What do you want of us?’

‘I’ve two questions, maisters,’ Gil said, drawing up a stool and collecting his wits. The dog sat down politely beside him, then lay down on his feet. ‘I want to hear about how you found Maister Naismith’s body, and I’d like to know when you all saw him last.’

The man with the trembling-ill, Cubby Pringle, spoke up first.

‘It was Duncan found him. He dwells down that end of the close, opposite the Douglas lodging, and the two houses next him are empty, so he’d be the only one to go that far down the path.’

‘Aye, aat’s the richt o’t,’ agreed Sir Duncan incomprehensibly from under his moustache. ‘The wee munsie wes juist liggin thaar pyntin intil the fir.’ He demonstrated, flinging out his arm in imitation of the corpse’s rigid gesture.

‘Then he shouted, and we all cam running.’

‘No running,’ said Anselm, shaking his head. ‘There’s none of us can run.’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘Hirpling, then. Andro came and all, and we agreed he was dead, and Frankie went for the laddie. What’s his name?’

‘Kennedy,’ supplied Sir Duncan.

‘Aye, young Kennedy. I wish Frankie was here, he’d tell you better. And Kennedy said he was stabbed, and we must send for you.’

‘What?’

‘He tellt me he was dead afore that,’ said Anselm in argumentative tones. ‘I kent it a’ready when we found him.’

‘There was no sign of a weapon?’ asked Gil.

‘I tell you, he says it wasny on the bedehouse land,’ reiterated Anselm. ‘The weapon’s no here either.’

‘We’ll need to find the weapon,’ explained Gil, ‘as well as his cloak.’

‘What’s he say?’ demanded Maister Lennox. They explained to him, loud and slow, and he shook his head. ‘No, there wasny a weapon. Was there, Duncan?’

‘Na, na. A saa nae dirk, sauf the capernicious buckie’s ain gully at’s bellyban.’

‘No,’ translated Maister Pringle.

‘Could he have been lying there already when you went to say Prime?’ Gil asked. This time he faced Maister Lennox and spoke slowly.

‘What d’ye say, time? Oh, Prime?’ barked the old man, and shook his head. ‘I wasny that end of the close afore Prime. Duncan, was he there afore Prime? Did ye see him?’

‘It wis pick-mark, Barty. A’d no ha saa a cast-up whaul.’ Sir Duncan mimed groping his way down the path in darkness. Gil nodded his understanding of this, smiling at him, and got a huge smile back, visible even under the sloping pent of the grey moustache.

‘No way to tell, afore bird-peep,’ agreed Maister Pringle.

‘None of you heard anything in the night?’ Gil asked, facing Maister Lennox again. The old man shook his head with a sharp yip of laughter.

‘No me, laddie!’ he said.

‘Nobody else?’ Gil looked round the circle.

‘A haard naither eechie nor ochie,’ said Sir Duncan regretfully. ‘Gin A had, A’d a gien him a han at the fellin, faae’er he wis.’

‘Aye, well,’ said Maister Pringle. ‘I did wonder if I heard voices. Murmuring like a doocot it was. But it wasny Naismith I heard, for all I’m near the gate. Next the Douglas lodging, ye ken,’ he explained to Gil.

‘Likely it was youngsters on the Stablegreen, Cubby,’ said Maister Lennox.

‘In this weather?’ retorted Maister Pringle.

‘If they canny get the privacy at home, a tree’ll do them,’ said Maister Lennox with relish, apparently following this thread quite clearly. ‘It wasny raining yestreen.’

‘I heard,’ said Anselm, clasping his hands on his stick. ‘I heard him in the night, for he woke me to tell me the man was dead.’

‘When was that?’ Gil asked.

‘Late, late. I was sleeping, and he woke me, so I rose and looked out, but it was a’ dark, save for a star low in the west.’

On a cloudy night? thought Gil. Michael or his lassie? Michael did mention a lantern.

‘And when did you last see Deacon Naismith?’ he asked.

They looked at one another, and Cubby Pringle said in his trembling voice, ‘Yestreen at Vespers, son. We’ve talked about that. He had a word for the whole house, and a strange word it was, and then we went to say Vespers and after it he gaed out.’

‘When he went out, was he wearing his bedehouse cloak and hat, or another?’

‘Aye,’s muckle bleck hap an’s wellat bunnet wi the fedder intil’t,’ supplied Sir Duncan. His gestures depicted a cloak with a badge like his own and a plumed bonnet. Gil nodded his understanding.

‘You didny see him return?’ he asked.

‘Na, na, we’d all gone to our rest,’ said Barty

‘And what was the word he had for all of you?’ he asked.

There was a pause, in which the old men looked at one another again.

‘Changes,’ said Cubby Pringle, as Humphrey had done. ‘The meat of the matter,’ he switched to a fluent old-fashioned Latin, ‘was that we were to move out of our hall, our sub-Deacon and our housekeeper were to be put out as well before the Nativity and make use of two of the empty houses, though none of these are in good repair, and Cecilia our housekeeper was to be our nurse only and accept a lesser reward for it.’

‘This was the first time you heard this?’ Gil asked.

‘It was. Cecilia asked who would be housekeeper and the Deacon replied, he was to be married and his wife would take all that into her hands.’

‘Married?’ repeated Gil. ‘Did he say who he was to marry?’

‘The Deacon did not tell us,’ said Anselm in Latin.

‘She’ll be a disappointed woman the day,’ commented Cubby in Scots, and Sir Duncan grinned uncharitably under his huge moustache.

‘She’ll be easit, mair belike,’ he said. Anselm gave him a prim smile.

‘And was that all he said?’

‘Was it no enough?’ demanded Barty Lennox in his barking voice. ‘Aye, Cubby’s gied you the sum o’t.’

‘And now he’s dead,’ said Anselm. He looked beyond Gil as the hall door opened. ‘Is that Andro? Is it time to say Nones?’

It was still raining. Gil made his way down the garden with the dog at his heels, and paused to study the yett. Drops of rusty water hung along the horizontals of the interlaced wrought-iron bands, and shook loose and fell to the threshold stone when he put the key in the lock. It turned readily, and the yett swung open silently on well-greased hinges. Michael again? he wondered. Socrates, recovering his spirits, leapt past him to attend to his own needs.

The gate led directly out on to the Stablegreen, an open expanse of ground dotted with clumps of bushes and hazel trees. Gil knew it reasonably well, since he often exercised the dog here, reaching it by way of the muddy vennel which led from Rottenrow nearly opposite his uncle’s house. He stood still, considering what it would be like for Michael’s sweetheart to stand here in the dark, alone, waiting for her lover to open the gate.