Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

Gil shielded his eyes from the candles and examined the marks again. Ridges and hollows marked the skin, showing up in certain angles of the light. He touched the cold flesh, but could make no sense of the impressions.

‘I wonder, should we draw it?’ he suggested, ‘since it will fade, as you say.’

‘A good idea,’ agreed Maistre Pierre with enthusiasm, extracting his tablets from his sleeve. ‘I do that, while you inspect his clothes yonder. I hope that excellent woman has not brushed and shaken them already,’ he added in guarded tones.

Gil lifted the pile of tawny woollen and stained linen and took it to the daylight, where he turned the garments cautiously one by one. The furred gown offered no new information, other than a few pulled threads in the dark brown stuff of one sleeve which fitted well enough with the idea that the body had been put over the wall. He shook out the stinking hose and scrutinized them, holding them fastidiously by the points still threaded in the eyelets at the waist, and was rewarded by two more pulled threads and another scrap of straw caught in the weave. Agnew’s chamber in the tower had left its trace.

The jerkin and shirt, stiffened with blood across the breast, were slashed where the knife had gone through them. Was this why Humphrey said the Deacon was a robin, he wondered, seeing the extent of the dark stain. He was examining the cuts in the linen when Socrates, ranging about the yard, pricked his ears and bounded towards the entryway, tail waving. Gil heard the light footsteps in the same moment. The whole day brightened round him, and he set down the armful of fouled garments as Alys appeared round the corner of the chapel, plaid over her head against the chilly breeze. Socrates leapt round her, pushing his long nose under her hand, and she paused to greet him, then crossed the yard to meet Gil.

‘ Nou skrinketh rose and lylie flour. My hands stink,’ he said, ‘I won’t touch you,’ and bent to kiss her as she tilted her face. She put up her own hand to touch his jaw, and smiled up at him.

‘I have spoken to the painter’s man,’ she said, ‘and I thought I would come out and tell you what I learned from him. Gil, what has happened? You look as if something is awry.’

‘Ah — Alys,’ said Maistre Pierre from inside the washhouse before Gil could answer. ‘We are inspecting the body. Come tell me what you think of this.’

Comparing her father’s competent rendering with the original impression on Naismith’s softening flesh, Alys said after a moment, ‘It reminds me of something. He has lain on something after he died, I suppose.’ Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘But what? Not rope, but could it be string, set close together? Something with cord wrapped round it?’ She demonstrated with her hands. ‘Where was he?’

‘I wish we knew,’ said Gil. He turned to set the pile of clothes back where he had found it. ‘He certainly went to see Agnew, and brought the proof away with him in these scraps of straw, but after that — Pierre, is the man’s purse still in his lodging?’

‘It is.’ The mason stepped away from the corpse, bowed to it and crossed himself. ‘I think the dead has no more to tell us. Now you are here, come up and help us with these accounts, ma mie. I am certain there is more to be learned from them. Gilbert, you may wash your hands at the kitchen drain if they trouble you.’

Gil, making his way obediently towards the kitchen, found Alys at his elbow.

‘I met with your sister on the road,’ she began quietly.

‘Which sister?’ he asked, pausing by the door into the building.

‘Lady Tib.’ He noted the formal reference, where Kate was always Your sister Kate or simply Kate. ‘She was with Michael Douglas and the other young man, you called him Lowrie.’ Gil nodded. ‘We stopped to pass the time of day, and she told me of the incident earlier, and also made some reference to madame here at the almshouse. I wondered,’ she went on diffidently, ‘whether anything required to be smoothed over.’

They were speaking in French, but he still dropped his voice.

‘Oh, Alys. Yes, indeed.’ He moved away from the door and from the range of outhouses, and explained rapidly. ‘She wanted to help me, so I set her to question the kitchen hands, and somehow it didn’t work. There are two women there, who began talking about witchcraft, and the kitchen-boy took fright and summoned his mistress, who was incensed.’

She nodded, her elusive smile flickering, and turned towards the buildings.

‘I’ll see what I can learn,’ she promised.

He could not work out how she did it. As they reached the kitchen door Mistress Mudie appeared from her own chamber, and cast them a glance of weary belligerence.

‘- it’s that man of law again, I hope wi no more questions, kind as he is, for my head’s as empty as a pint pot by now, and another lass wi him, is it your bride this time, maister? That’s right kind of you to bring her to see us, and such a bonnie lass and all, but I’m no certain it’s the time of day for visitors — ’

‘You must be Mistress Mudie,’ said Alys. ‘I’m Alys Mason. I’m told you are herb-wise, and I wished for your advice, madame.’

Mistress Mudie’s expression altered. ‘- depends what you were wanting, there’s matters I’ll no deal wi — ’

‘Of course there are,’ agreed Alys. She stepped into the kitchen and bobbed a neat curtsy. The two women exchanged formal kisses, and though Mistress Mudie’s conversation did not seem to halt as she bustled in and out of her own chamber, by the time Gil had rinsed the uncompromising smell of stale urine off his hands at the stone sink in the corner she and Alys were seated at the long table discussing a small pot of ointment, while Socrates watched alertly from the doorway and the young man hacking vegetables worked on at the other end of the board. A coin was exchanged, Alys murmuring something about a donation, and Mistress Mudie’s dimple appeared as she smiled.

‘- oh, that’s kind, I canny take payment in course but this’ll buy a wee treat for my old men, this should sort your lassie’s hands in a day or so, dearie, Mallie there has the same trouble and I aye give her some of this to put on when it’s bad — ’ The two kitchenmaids looked round at this, then returned hastily to their work as Mistress Mudie glared at them and chattered on, now apparently to Gil, ‘- that good of you to come out to help us when you’re as taigled, but the idea that someone made away wi the Deacon I canny get used to, it’s surely a mistake of some sort, it’s made Humphrey sore distressed, the poor soul, you saw him the now, he’d like a wee word, if you’d be so good, he’s still here in my chamber where his brother canny find him if he comes by again wi no warning — ’

‘Maister Humphrey?’ said Gil, picking this thread out of the tangle. ‘How is he now?’

‘- oh, he’s as jumpy as a flea, and no wonder, wi his own kin making such accusations against him, so if the two of you could indulge him, lassie, Maister Cunningham, I’d take it as a real deed of charity — ’

‘I’ll speak to him, of course,’ said Gil, wondering how it was that he was still Maister Cunningham but Alys was lassie as soon as she stepped into the kitchen. ‘Alys?’

‘And I,’ she said, a little reluctantly.

Humphrey was sitting by the brazier in Mistress Mudie’s chamber, biting at his cuffs and staring anxiously at the wall. Hoccleve again, Noon abood, noon areest, but al brain-seke , thought Gil. When they entered he looked round sharply, shrinking back, but recovered when he recognized a familiar face.

‘It’s you that’s asking the questions,’ he said through Mistress Mudie’s tumbling speech. ‘I saw you this morn. And this one’s your bonnie make.’ Alys, tense beside Gil, nodded in acknowledgement. ‘And I see it now, maister, you’re no a hoodie. I took you for a hoodie, but I can tell now you’re a heron.’