Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘It’s what Robert Blacader pays him for,’ said Maister Kennedy, ‘so he’d as well get on with it. He’s out yonder by the gate, Gil. You took your time getting here, but at least it means there’s near enough light to see by now.’

‘So what’s happened?’ Gil asked.

‘We — we — we found him, just after the Mass,’ explained Millar. ‘Out in the garden, by the back yett, I can’t think how.’

Gil met Maister Kennedy’s eye in the grey light from the near window.

‘As near as I can make out,’ supplied his friend gloomily, ‘they all went out to their wee houses for ten minutes’ contemplation afore their porridge was ready, and Maister Duncan saw something under the tree by the back gate and went to see what. And when he saw what, he raised the cry, and fetched Andro here, and then they came to fetch us.’

‘And you were still laving the vessels by then?’ Gil asked, raising one eyebrow. ‘How long does it take you?’

‘Aye, well, we’ve to wait till they’re well out of sight afore we start,’ said Nick, apparently feeling that this was adequate explanation. ‘So when I found the blood, I sent the boys for you and Maister Mason — ’

‘That will save time, if Pierre is on his way already.’

‘- and made them put a piece of sacking over the body.’

‘Good.’ Gil glanced at the gesticulating group round the table. ‘I’ll need to speak to Maister Duncan at the least, but we’ll look at the body first, as soon as Pierre gets here. Are you sure of who it is?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ said Millar, wringing his hands. ‘It’s Deacon Naismith, right enough. I ca — canny think what’s come to him. He was well when I saw him last, and fine when he spoke to us all in the afternoon.’

Socrates rose, ears pricked, as feet sounded in the passageway. Gil looked over his shoulder.

‘Ah, Pierre. Good day to you. And to you, Michael.’

‘I have a chantier to run,’ complained the master mason. He ducked under the lintel, a bulky shape wrapped in boiled wool, another shadowy figure at his back in a student’s gown like Lowrie’s. ‘You forgive the delay, I hope, I had to give the men their instructions. I can expect no work from them next week after we celebrate your marriage, we should get on with cutting those pillars while we may, but — Yes, good dog, Socrates. So why are we summoned, Gilbert?’ he demanded, switching to French. ‘Who is dead in this House of Learned Poverty?’

The further courtyard was laid out as a little garden, with gravel walks through grass, tiny flowerbeds standing empty at this season, and several evergreens, overlooked by a row of small houses to either hand. Following Millar’s stream of incoherent exclamations down the central path, Gil counted five chimneys each side in the grey daylight. Ten houses, he thought. There weren’t as many as ten old men in the hall.

‘I’ve seen Alys this morning,’ he said quietly. Alys’s father grimaced.

‘She was wound up like a crossbow when we broke our fast,’ he said. ‘Did she say that a cart came in from Carluke with a bed on it.’

‘A bed ?’

‘In pieces, with the hangings. And a word from your mother, saying she spent her wedding night in the same bed. It arrived yesterday, after you left the house,’ Maistre Pierre said, with a sideways glance at Gil.

‘Ah,’ he said. That might explain things, he thought, if my mother is getting involved.

The garden ended in a high wall of rough-cut rubble, capped by a row of angular stones, a gate in its midst which must lead out on to the Stablegreen, with another green tree to either side of it. Millar stopped beside one of these and removed his hat, and beside him Maister Kennedy bent to draw back a length of sacking.

‘There you are,’ he said unnecessarily.

‘A terrible thing,’ contributed Millar, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny neck. He had flung on a great black cloak like those worn by the bedesmen, with a badge over the heart which Gil could not make out within the heavy folds. Replacing his hat he drew the mantle closer about him, and added, ‘I canny think how it can have happened. He’s no enemies, surely, nobody that would do this to him a purpose.’

Gil made no comment, but hunkered down by the sprawling figure beneath the tree. Socrates came to his side to sniff at the wet clothing, and Maistre Pierre crossed himself, his lips moving.

They were looking at the body of a short, rather plump man, lying partly on his left side facing the foot of the wall, right arm flung backwards almost into the lowest branches of the yew. The eyes were closed, but the mouth was wide open, giving the appearance of someone in the grip of a dream. A dream from which you’ll not wake, Gil thought, looking the length of the corpse. It was wearing hose and long-sleeved jerkin of good tawny woollen with linen showing at the neck and wrists, darkened and reddened by a wide stain on the breast which Socrates was now inspecting closely, the coarse hair on his spine standing up. A long open gown of a darker brown was rucked up to waist level under the corpse’s torso, its fur lining spiky with the rain. A belt of stamped leather, with brass buckle and fittings, supported a well-filled purse, a dagger and matching whinger, and a large bunch of keys. The smell of blood and stale urine mingled with the resiny scent of the yew-trees.

‘What’s he doing out here?’ Gil wondered, pushing the dog’s muzzle away from the sodden codpiece.

‘Waiting for the Judgement,’ said Maister Kennedy obtusely.

‘Has he been moved at all since you found him?’ asked Maistre Pierre. Gil looked up at him.

‘I wondered that,’ he agreed.

‘No, no, Gil,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘This is where he was lying. I think Duncan tried to lift him, but he’s well set, and that was when they realized he was dead.’

‘He is indeed,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. He bent over the sprawled figure and tested the rigidity of the out-flung right arm. ‘Set, but not yet begun to soften. Dead sometime last night, I suppose. Well, it is Robert Naismith, Deacon of this place, on that we are agreed. And how has he died?’

‘Last night?’ said Lowrie. ‘Not this morning?’

‘Oh, certainly.’ The mason was feeling carefully at the chubby face, and round the neck and the back of the head. ‘He is like a stock. Gil, are his feet also hardened?’

‘They are,’ Gil agreed, attempting to flex one well-shod foot.

‘Late afternoon or evening of yesterday, then.’ Maistre Pierre turned his attention to the darkened breast of the jerkin. ‘And this looks like what gave him his quittance. A knife wound, likely. There is a slit,’ he poked cautiously, ‘no, more than one, in the jerkin.’

‘It’s certainly blood,’ said Maister Kennedy.

‘We learn more when he is stripped.’ One big hand explored under the corpse’s flexed calves, then turned back a fold of the rumpled gown. ‘No more than damp beneath him. Oui, certainement , it was dry last night, though it was raw cold. That fits.’

Gil stood up and looked about him. The grass was wet and trampled for some distance round the body.

‘There was quite a crowd when he was found, then,’ he said.

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Nick Kennedy sourly. ‘The whole house of them was here, and Sissie Mudie as well, all standing round arguing what to do next. And us and all,’ he added.

Gil nodded, still looking at the garden. ‘Pierre, how much can we learn if we examine him before he softens, do you think?’

‘Likely we can see the wound,’ the mason said, straightening his back carefully. ‘There will be no stripping him before tomorrow, I should say, unless we cut the clothes from him, but we can look at his hands and such matters.’