Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘He seems to,’ said Gil.

‘Oh, is that why they wanted you at St Serf’s the day?’ said Tib in tones of innocence. ‘I thought it was just because you were at the college with that man Kennedy.’

‘St Serf’s?’ said Dorothea. ‘Is that the bedehouse? Is something wrong there?’

‘Robert Naismith the Deacon was found stabbed this morning,’ said Gil baldly. She bowed her head and crossed herself, her lips moving.

‘And has anyone tellt the lassie Veitch yet, that’s what I’d like to know,’ said Maggie from her position by the small cupboard. ‘You mind Marion Veitch, don’t you no, Lady Dawtie?’

‘Marion? What’s she — oh!’ said Dorothea. Her face, narrowly visible within the folds of white coif and black veil, took on an expression of dismay. ‘Oh, poor Marion. Where’s she staying? I must visit her.’

‘Veitch?’ said Tib. ‘You mean Marion that used to live at Kittymuir? I suppose that’s why her brother was in Glasgow, if she lives here too. What’s she to do with St Serf’s?’

‘Her brother?’ said Gil. She threw him a look. ‘Which brother? When did you meet him?’

‘It was John, the one that went to sea, but I never met him,’ she said lightly. ‘Just I saw him in the street. Yesterday.’

‘Sissie Mudie mentioned him today,’ Gil recalled. ‘I wonder what he’s doing in Glasgow.’

‘Visiting his sister,’ suggested Canon Cunningham. ‘Visiting their uncle. Did the uncle not teach you at the grammar school in Hamilton, Gilbert?’

‘Frankie Veitch!’ said Gil. ‘I never fitted it together. Aye, he did, sir.’

‘I must,’ said Maistre Pierre with reluctance, ‘go back to the chantier before dark. Madame, j’suis enchanté de vous connaıtre. ’ He bowed across the hearth to Dorothea, and she inclined her head in response. ‘Perhaps your brother would bring you to supper with us tomorrow?’

‘Indeed, aye, sir,’ said Dorothea. ‘Herbert and I are to spend the day with men of law, about the rents from our Glasgow properties. I’ll be glad of something to look forward to at the end of it. Will I meet your daughter?’

‘For certain.’

Dorothea smiled, her face lighting up in the way Gil recalled. ‘I’m truly impatient to meet her, maister. A lassie who can wrench my brother from his destined career, and then convince Mother it was right, must be worth knowing. I hope he values her as high as she does him.’

Tib’s face darkened. Gil was aware that his own expression changed, and also that Dorothea, as acute as their mother, had noticed both.

‘How long can you stay?’ he asked hastily. ‘Have they found you somewhere to lie at the castle?’

Tib’s expression soured still further, but she said nothing. Dorothea admitted to lodging at the castle, and began a lively account of a disastrous visit she had made to another Cistercian house which she forbore to name, and the moment passed.

But later, when she was bundled up in her travelling cloak again and striding down Rottenrow beside Gil, she said, ‘What’s eating at Tib?’

Gil shrugged. ‘Who kens? She read me a fine rigma-role this morn when she arrived, about no being passed about like a parcel, and no wishing to stay wi Mother or Margaret or Kate. Likely it’s to do wi first Kate marrying and now me, and she’s left at home wi no tocher.’

‘Kate was wedded wi no tocher,’ said Dorothea thoughtfully.

‘Augie Morison’s doing well enough no to look for either coin or land wi her,’ said Gil, smiling. ‘The man’s besotted on her, besides. Who we’d get to take a wild wee termagant like Tib I wouldny ken.’

They reached the end of Rottenrow and crossed the Wyndhead before Dorothea went on, ‘Gil, did Mother no tell me this is a love match, you and Alys Mason?’

‘It is,’ said Gil.

She looked up at him through the drizzle. ‘On both sides?’

He opened his mouth to say, Yes, of course , and closed it, recalling again the tension in Alys’s slender body within his arms, the way she withdrew from his kiss. Dorothea fixed her gaze on the towers of St Mungo’s, and after a moment remarked, ‘I mind Marion Veitch well. It seems she was left with nothing.’

‘I never heard,’ said Gil. ‘I knew John went to sea.’

It is a love match, he wanted to say. Alys feels as I do, I know she does. I love my lady pure, And she loves me again. But the words would not come to his mouth.

‘I’d a word wi our uncle just now,’ said Dorothea. ‘The oldest brother died in the rebellion and they couldny pay the fines. John was at sea already, and the middle brother — William, was it? — had gone for a priest, and it seems as if Marion didny fancy keeping house for him and took this man Naismith’s offer when it came to her.’

‘William Veitch was a sleekit wee nyaff,’ said Gil intemperately ‘I mind once he got me into a fight wi John with his lies, and got us both a beating. I’d not blame Marion if she didny want to share his rooftree.’

The directions Maggie had provided led them to a wynd off the Drygate. The houses along its muddy length were small, but seemed in good repair. Gossiping maidservants sheltered in the doorways, and the high wooden walls of the Caichpele were visible beyond the rooftops, though it seemed unlikely that tennis was being played in the steady rain.

The furthest house along the wynd was a two-storey structure of wood and lime-washed plaster, with a well-built chimney issuing from the centre of the thatched roof, and a tiny stone kitchen at the side of the house. They stopped before the door, and Gil rattled the wrought-iron ring up and down the twisted bar above the latch. Above them, a shutter opened, and a voice called, ‘Who’s that tirling at the pin?’

‘I’m Dorothea Cunningham. Is the mistress home?’ said Dorothea, stepping back to look up past the eaves-drips. ‘We’d like a word.’

The maidservant looked back over her shoulder, then leaned out, nodding, and beckoned them in.

‘Aye, come up, madam, come up, maister.’ She withdrew and closed the shutter. By the time they had stepped inside and fastened the latch she was coming down the narrow stair at the back of the house, a pretty girl with her hair loose, clad in a grubby kirtle with the sleeves rolled well up and carrying a small child of indeterminate gender on her hip.

‘Come away in, sir and madam,’ she said. ‘The mistress is up the stair. She’s packing.’

Marion Veitch was certainly packing.

They could hear her tramping back and forward across the boards as they crossed the hall and followed the maidservant up the stair. Emerging into the warmth of the upper floor, Gil saw first a partly dismantled tester-bed, its red woollen hangings in disarray. Then a woman appeared from the shadows behind the bedhead, carrying an armful of folded linen and heading for an open kist by the window.

Gil had last seen Marion, he reckoned, at the dangerous age of twelve or thirteen when the parents of girls began to argue about how soon they should be married off. This girl’s parents had waited too long, and she was now that awkward commodity, a pretty woman with no money of her own. Like Tib, he reflected, though a lot older. She had been a sweet, well-behaved child, and had grown into a beauty of the conventional type, with a pale, fair skin, golden hair visible under her linen coif, large blank blue eyes and a pink mouth made for kissing which just now was stretched in a doubtful smile as she stared at them. She had been weeping, he thought.

‘Marion,’ said Dorothea, and bent the knee in a curtsy, then went forward with her hands out. ‘How are you?’

‘Dorothea,’ said Marion. ‘Sister Dorothea Cunningham. A course, that’s what Eppie said.’ She put the linen down on the mattress, and took Dorothea’s hands, then embraced her. ‘I’m well, I thank you. How are you? Dorothea, my dearie, how long is it? I’d never ha known you. And you, Gil, it must be years. Will you stay to supper?’