Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘I wondered if the bedehouse papers were here,’ she said, ‘but these are the documents for the man’s own possessions. What about this? Ah!’ She scooped another handful from a different compartment and gave half to Gil. He contrived to touch her fingers as he took them, and she looked round, smiled as their eyes met, looked quickly away. What is the matter, he wondered, trying not to look at the bed beyond her. Mistress Mudie had obviously been up to clean the lodging, for the mattress was stripped, the bare pillows piled at its head and the tapestry counterpane folded neatly at the foot.

‘Here is the Kilsyth gift,’ said Alys. She handed him the crackling document. ‘Is this the complete disposition?’

‘It is,’ he agreed, running his eye down the lines of careful script. ‘Drawn up by Thomas Agnew the younger, it says — ’

‘Is that the same man?’

‘It must be. It doesn’t add much to what we know already,’ he admitted. ‘The property seems to be dedicated to Humphrey’s keep, and to revert to the bedehouse absolutely after his death.’

‘Unwise,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘What if he became worse and had to be sent somewhere he could be shut away? How would he be supported then?’

‘I suppose the parents felt the bedehouse would pay for that out of this gift.’

‘Perhaps the previous Deacon was less acquisitive.’

He nodded, and folded the parchment carefully back into its creases. ‘I’ll ask Millar if I may take all these documents for safe keeping just now. Then we can go through them at more leisure.’

‘A good plan. And what is this?’ Alys lifted a piece of paper from the floor. She turned it over, looking at the writing, and unfolded it. ‘It’s a map, with notes. Did it fall out when I unfolded that disposition? There are names on it — is that Auchenreoch? Queenzie?’

‘It must have,’ said Gil, answering her second question. ‘Those are names from the Kilsyth property.’

‘Someone has planned great things.’ She turned the sheet of paper to read more of the notes. ‘A vast house, by the look of it. How many cartloads of stone? Do you know the writing?’

‘It’s Naismith’s.’ Gil grinned. ‘The bedehouse properties are at the Deacon’s disposition, and he has certainly made the most of the situation, as your father said. Ambitious!’

‘Did you say,’ she recalled thoughtfully, ‘that the man of law suggested he might have been altering the terms of the dispositions?’

‘I did.’ Gil unfolded the parchment again and spread it out on the swept boards between them. ‘I wonder. What do you think? I see nothing irregular here.’

‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s all in the one hand, isn’t it.’

He looked down at the neat paragraphs, and then at her face beside his, leaned forward and kissed her. She moved at the last moment, so that it landed on her cheek rather than her mouth, but she turned her head slightly and returned the salute, a single, clinging kiss. Then, with a little shiver, she drew away and scrambled to her feet.

‘I must go down the hill,’ she said. ‘There are things I must see to.’

‘We’ll show this to Pierre,’ said Gil, ‘and get these papers packed up, and then I’ll come with you. I have to find John Veitch’s lodging and speak to the widow.’

Leaving Maistre Pierre planning to go out and find his men, they set out to walk down the High Street, arm in arm, the dog at their heels. The wind was still chilly, with spatters of rain in it.

‘I hope it will be dry next week,’ said Alys doubtfully, pulling her plaid up with her free hand. ‘The brocades will be spoiled if it’s wet.’

‘We should have made it a double wedding with Kate and Augie Morison, in September, as they suggested. They had a fine day.’

‘I wish we had, now.’ She looked up at him, and quickly away. ‘It would all be …’

‘All be what?’ Gil drew her aside to avoid a ranging pig outside one of the small cottages on the steep slope called the Bell o’ the Brae. ‘All be over by now? Is that how it seems to you, Alys?’ He stopped, turning to look down at her. ‘Something to be got over?’

‘No!’ she protested, going scarlet. ‘Gil, no!’ She glanced about them, moved closer and put her hand on his chest. ‘I want to be married, more than anything, I swear it. We’ll be together, we’ll be partners, man and wife. It’s just …’

‘Just what?’

She looked away, biting her lips.

‘I can’t explain. I don’t know.’

‘Alys.’ He gathered both her hands in his. ‘Something’s troubling you. Tell me.’

‘I can’t explain,’ she repeated, shaking her head. Resolutely she pulled away, took his arm and set off down the street again. ‘Gil, can you tell me anything about this — this bed your mother has sent?’

‘Bed,’ he repeated. ‘Oh, Pierre mentioned it.’

‘Sh-she says it was her marriage bed.’

‘If it’s the one I think,’ he said cautiously, ‘it’s a box bed like the one in Naismith’s lodging, much the same size but with a lot of carving about it. Saints and Green Men and so forth. The hangings were red cloth, if I mind right.’

‘Red,’ she said doubtfully. ‘They are still in the canvas. Lucky we decided on blue for the walls, then. It ought to fit in the chamber if it’s a box bed. I was afraid it might be a tester-bed,’ she admitted, ‘built for a higher room.’

‘Do you mind?’

‘It’s generous of her.’

‘That doesn’t answer me.’ She was silent. ‘Did we have a bed other than this one?’

She shook her head. ‘I hadn’t — I was going to — there are several beds in the house that would be suitable.’

‘Your mother’s bed?’

She crossed herself at the mention of her dead mother. ‘My father sleeps in that.’ She sighed. ‘Red hangings will be very smart, and I expect the men can set it up easily once the painters are done. Perhaps we should get the hangings out of their canvas now and air them.’

Gil whistled to the dog as they reached the pend which gave entry to the mason’s sprawling house.

‘I’ll leave you here, sweetheart,’ he said, handing her the packet of the bedehouse documents. ‘We need to talk, but I must get this matter out of the way as soon as I can.’

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘Do you want to leave Socrates with me? He can play with John in the kitchen till you come back.’

The children running in St Catherine’s Wynd broke off their chase and nodded when he asked for Veitch’s landlady, grinning and pointing at the building beside them, and one boy who seemed to be their leader shouted up at the windows, ‘Haw, Widow Napier! Mistress Napier! Ye’re socht!’

‘Who seeks me?’ returned a shrill voice. A shutter two floors up was flung wide, and a white-coifed head peered out. ‘And you bairns should be away hame for your noon bite by this, the lot of ye!’

‘We’re to get one last game, Mistress Napier,’ called the ringleader. ‘You’re het, Davie Wilson.’

Gil identified himself as the children scattered again, and the widow peered suspiciously down into the wynd.

‘You’d best come up, sir,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s yon stair there, two up and at your left.’

The building was a timber-framed structure with a skin of boards, and a peeling figure of some saint painted near the stair door might have been St Nicholas, patron of children, students and sailors. As he picked his way cautiously round the turns of the stair Gil reflected that not only the presence of the patron saint of sailors might make John Veitch feel at home here; the building creaked like a carvel in a gale.

‘And what’s your business wi me, maister?’ demanded the widow in her doorway.