Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

The clerks in the chancel had completed Vespers and moved on to Compline. Beside him Pierre and Alys both murmured the responses with the acolytes. Gil stepped away, peering in the gloom at the flagstones where the handcart would rest, and the black shadows overhead. Socrates came to help, but seemed to find nothing to interest him.

‘ Liberavit me de laqueo venantium ,’ recited the clerks. He has delivered me from the net of the hunter … He shall cover you with his wings, you shall find refuge under his pinions . Was that where Humphrey got his fixed idea about the birds? Gil wondered. And if the Deacon was a robin, who was the sparrow? And yet he said there was no sparrow. What else would kill a robin? Both Maister Veitch and his nephew he saw as kites, his own brother was the white eaglet. A white chick, an unfledged youngster, would hardly hunt for itself, but the parents might bring it a robin. The Agnew parents are dead, surely. I am not on the right trail here, he thought. I have lost the scent somewhere. I wonder if Humphrey has forgotten that as well as everything else? Sweet St Giles, deliver me from the net of the hunter.

At the end of the Office, the congregation drifted out into the street, sharing lights, passing flame from lantern to lantern, but showing no inclination to make their way home in the deepening twilight. The day’s news was much more interesting; the bedehouse miracle was much discussed, but Gil caught several versions of the fight in Agnew’s garden, and two people were as convinced as Tam had been that Hob had sat up and denounced his killer.

‘What now?’ said Maistre Pierre at his shoulder. ‘It must be near supper-time. Should we attempt anything else, or call it the end of the day?’

‘I should like to do more today,’ Gil said. ‘I’ve done little enough for John Veitch’s case since Marion asked me to help. I need to find if he asked anyone for Agnew’s house.’

‘One of these neighbours might know,’ said Alys softly.

‘My thought,’ he agreed, and moved forward to the nearest knot of people. One of the women in the group, raising her lantern to light his face, exclaimed,

‘You were here the morn, maister! Are you no the man that gart the corp speak?’

‘The corp never spoke, Isa,’ said the man next her. ‘I was at the door and seen it all. He cried out when the man touched him, but he never spoke a clear word.’

‘A terrible thing,’ said Gil, recognizing the impossibility of correcting the facts. ‘To be slain at his work like that.’

‘Aye, terrible,’ agreed the woman who had spoken first. ‘And likely it could ha been any of us! The man you took for it must be stark wood, to go into a house and slay a stranger!’

‘I had a word wi Hob just after Prime,’ observed someone. ‘He was out wi a lantern cutting old kale leaves to clean the matting like I tellt him. And next I heard he was deid.’

‘I spoke wi the madman,’ said a younger voice behind her. Several people turned their lanterns to reveal a young man in St Mungo’s livery who ducked his head shyly in the sudden glow of light. ‘He was a great big fierce fellow, but he didny seem wood to me,’ he added.

‘When did you speak wi him?’ asked the man next to Isa.

‘They can be awfy cunning about hiding madness,’ said someone else sagely. ‘They can seem like you or me, till out comes the knife to slit your throat.’

‘Hob’s throat wasny slit,’ objected another voice. ‘He couldny ha spoke wi a slit throat.’

‘When did you speak wi him, Eck Paton?’ repeated the man beside Isa. ‘Was it the day?’

‘Oh, aye, Maister Pettigrew, it was,’ said Eck earnestly. ‘He asked me whereabout Maister Agnew dwelt, and I pointed him to the house there.’ He nodded at the darkened dwelling. ‘And he went in, and not the space of an Ave after it Maister Agnew came home and cried Murder.’

‘And where were you the while?’ asked Isa in suspicious tones.

‘Cutting kale in my maister’s front yard,’ said Eck righteously, ‘and I stopped to lift a hantle o weeds while I was about it.’

‘In case you found out anything more about Maister Agnew’s caller,’ suggested Pettigrew. Eck ducked his head again, but grinned.

‘I did, an all,’ he pointed out.

‘What time was this?’ Gil asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘Well into the day. After Sext, maybe.’

‘And you’re certain the man wasny in the house long when Maister Agnew came home? Did you hear anything?’

‘No a thing.’ Eck looked round, and expanded visibly as he realized the entire group was hanging on his words. ‘See, I went on lifting weeds, and the madman went to Maister Agnew’s door, and tirled at the pin, but Hob never answered it. And then the man pushed at the door and it opened — ’

‘You mean it wasny latched?’ Gil asked him.

Eck shrugged his shoulders. ‘I never heard him unlatch it. Just he pushed and it opened, and it squeaked the way it aye does, and he called out and stepped within. And I never heard another sound till Maister Agnew came round the corner o the chapel here to his own gate.’

‘And then what?’ asked someone else.

‘Why he went in at his door and began to cry Murder.’

‘As soon as he stepped in the house?’ Gil asked.

‘Oh, aye.’

‘Tell the Serjeant,’ suggested another voice. ‘You’re a witness, laddie.’

‘No me!’ said Eck in alarm. ‘I never saw anything! I helped capture the madman, but I never even seen the mats that Maister Agnew took out his house,’ he added regretfully, ‘all wet wi Hob’s blood. A fellow hurled them away on the St Andrew’s handcart the now afore Vespers, and I never got a right look.’

Gil edged his way backward out of the group, and found Alys waiting at its margin, the dog at her side.

‘Useful,’ he said, and reached into his purse for his tablets to make a note of the young man’s name. He checked in dismay as his fingers encountered, yet again, the brocade cover of Thomas Agnew’s set instead of his own.

‘What is it?’ said Alys as his expression changed. He shook his head.

‘Not here,’ he said guiltily, and drew her away from the chapel. ‘Where is Pierre?’

‘He went to make sure the men had shut everything down. He said he would go home after.’ She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Does that fit, do you think? Is the boy a good witness?’

‘He seemed very clear,’ Gil agreed. ‘I wish we had a light — I never meant to be out so long. Come back to the house and get a lantern, and I’ll walk you down the hill.’

Maistre Pierre had not gone home, but was waiting for them in the house in Rottenrow, alone in the hall with a jug of spiced ale.

‘I knew you would come this way,’ he proclaimed, acknowledging Socrates’ greeting. ‘You would need to fetch a light. Your uncle is home,’ he added more soberly. ‘He is above just now, speaking with your sister.’

‘And Dorothea?’ Gil asked.

‘Has returned to the castle meantime, though she said she would be here for supper.’

Gil nodded. ‘I’m just as glad to see you here,’ he admitted. ‘Pierre, I’m still carrying Agnew’s tablets about with me. What on earth can I do with them?’

‘Agnew’s tablets?’ said Alys. ‘What do you mean?’

Her father grinned. ‘An object lesson in the perils of excess, ma mie . He purloined them last night from the man’s chamber, on our way home.’

‘ Mon Dieu! ’ said Alys. ‘No wonder your head ached today.’

‘I haven’t drunk so much since I left Paris,’ Gil said, a little defensively, annoyed to feel his cheeks burning.

She smiled, but held her hand out. ‘Give them to me, Gil. I can return them.’