Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘Young men?’ said Anselm doubtfully. ‘He never said there was young men here.’

‘Wheesht,’ said Duncan.

‘They were dancing in a reel-of-three,’ Humphrey continued, ‘naked and shining as newborn babes, and each of them had the face of my friend Andrew Stevenson, who was drowned when he and I went fishing. Then I wept for my guilt in Andrew’s death, but one of the three came forward and drew me out into the light, and kissed me on the brow and the cheek and the mouth. And I woke, and kent that I was forgiven.’

That was it, thought Gil. That same inner calm that he had seen in Dorothea radiated from Humphrey’s thin square face.

‘Now I understand,’ said Anselm, and pushed his spectacles straight.

‘But who were the young men?’ said Barty who seemed to have heard this without difficulty.

Anselm retorted, with unaccustomed vigour, ‘Don’t be a fool, Barty. Who else would it be but the Blessed Trinity? He tellt me that,’ he added.

‘You have received a most particular grace, Humphrey,’ pronounced Duncan in Latin.

‘Have I not!’ agreed Humphrey.

‘No just forgiven,’ said Maister Veitch, ‘but cured. You ken you’ve been mad these ten year and more, laddie?’

‘Is it a miracle?’ asked Alys.

They had escaped from the bedehouse, where the brothers were settling down to discuss the event in full theological detail, while Millar composed a letter to the Archbishop. Sir James had returned just as they left, but Gil had managed to avoid him; he had no wish to analyse the situation for his godfather’s benefit. They had returned to Rottenrow, collected the dog, and were now out on the Stablegreen as Dorothea had first suggested.

‘I’ve heard of it happening,’ said Gil, ‘that a hanged felon survives, though it’s rare. But the dream, or vision, or whatever it was, is outside my knowledge. That does seem like something beyond the ordinary frame of things.’

‘It seems like a singular grace,’ Alys said. ‘The man is so altered. And not only Humphrey himself, Gil, did you notice how much Mistress Mudie is changed too? I suppose if it was her prayers brought it about, she must feel …’ Her voice trailed off.

They wandered along the path from Rottenrow, hand in hand in silence for a little. The short November day was nearly over. It had stopped raining for now, but the grasses were dripping and the wet bare branches of the hazel-scrub gleamed in the low light. Socrates galloped ahead, hunting for interesting scents. Gil was simply enjoying being in Alys’s company with no other intrusions, and when she finally spoke again she echoed this:

‘How long since we had time like this, Gil? Just the two of us?’

‘Days,’ he said.

‘A mistake,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why should it be your fault?’

‘I’ve been too busy,’ she said. ‘I see it now. I left the house today when Dorothea brought me the news, and …’ She paused, considering her words. ‘Your sister’s concerns — Tib’s, I mean — are a more important matter than the feast. I am sure my household can manage without me. And if they can manage without me for this, they can manage for other reasons, and I should have left them before.’

‘Is that what Dorothea meant, just before Simmie came for me?’

‘No,’ she said quietly after a moment, then halted, looking round. ‘Is that the back of the bedehouse? Where was the cart that Tib saw?’

‘Here,’ he said, accepting the change of subject, and stepped off the path into the long wet grass to look for the marks of the handcart’s legs. She picked up her skirts and followed him, peering at the two little indentations, and then looked up and down along the wall.

‘And the linen scarf?’ she asked.

‘That was yonder.’ He nodded at the clump of hazels. ‘I suppose he heard Tib following him, saw her lantern perhaps, and drew away from the gate, and saw the trees as a place to hide. He must have been nearly as alarmed as she was, when she simply stood here waiting for Michael to open the gate. I could wring her neck,’ he added. ‘She was always the spoilt one, but this is outside of enough.’

‘She is very much in love,’ said Alys. ‘That affects one’s judgement.’

‘Not mine.’

She smiled quickly, hitched her skirts higher and set off towards the hazel stand, picking her way carefully through the rough grasses. He paused a moment to admire her ankles, then followed her, catching up in time to point out the footprints still visible among the tree-roots, and the place where the piece of linen had lain.

‘These are good boots,’ she agreed, studying the prints, ‘but there’s nothing distinctive about them, is there? Did you say John Veitch’s boots were the right size?’

‘Short of measuring them,’ said Gil cautiously ‘I’d say so. But so would Millar’s be, or Humphrey’s indeed.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and looked about. ‘And while he stood here, whoever he was, he dropped the scarf. Do you still have it with you?’ He produced it from his sleeve and she took it, turning it over carefully. ‘Marion Veitch knew it, you thought.’

‘She studied it as if every stitch was familiar,’ he confirmed. ‘And the man Elder recognized it as John’s neckie, though he tried to deny it afterwards.’

She turned the end with the initials over.

‘I wonder how else it might have got here,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose if it isn’t John Veitch’s then it has no connection with the death.’

‘It could be quite unconnected,’ Gil agreed. ‘But the initials are his.’

‘Yes, if it is I V ,’ she admitted. She folded the strip of linen and handed it back to him. ‘And the cart. I wonder how the cart got here — what path it took to the bedehouse gate. There are these prints here, so could the tracks of the wheels still be there?’

‘They could,’ agreed Gil. He looked about. ‘There are three ways it could get on to the Stablegreen, assuming it didn’t come out of the bedehouse. The way we came in just now,’ he pointed, ‘or the vennel off Castle Street, or the path that comes in from the Port.’

‘Which is most likely?’

‘The Castle Street vennel is nearest.’

Socrates came loping back with a satisfied grin just as they found a single wheeltrack, in a patch of damp earth near the Rottenrow end of the path. He inspected the place they were studying, and turned towards the open ground again, nose down, apparently following a trail.

‘For a sight-hound,’ said Alys, ‘he seems to have a good nose. What has he found?’

‘I can’t believe the scent is still there,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder if he remembers finding the trail before, when I first brought him out here after the death?’

They followed the dog back out on to the green, hand in hand again.

‘So what did my sister mean?’ asked Gil as they approached the bedehouse wall. ‘What is it we’ve to dispute between us?’

‘Oh.’ Her fingers tightened nervously on his. ‘Well, it’s — I think it’s — ’

‘Symmetry,’ he said, into the pause. ‘We’d been saying, just before she came down, that we both lacked something. Was that it?’

‘Yes, but — I think she saw something more than that,’ said Alys doubtfully. ‘I think she wished to say that there is a symmetry in what we lack. That you and I have been praying for the same thing, or for something which matches. But it hardly seems — ’ She stopped again, face downturned, the bright colour washing over her cheek. Gil studied her for a moment.

‘Do you feel she’s meddling?’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed Alys, turning to face him. ‘No, she spoke out of concern for us, that was clear. I just can’t — ’