Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘It’s ower late,’ said Canon Cunningham disapprovingly. ‘Who would come calling at this time o night?’

‘I think I know,’ said Gil, his spirits lifting, as he heard voices, indistinct through the heavy oak door, one deep, one lighter, male and female.

‘I had to show you this,’ said Alys, under her father’s apologies to Canon Cunningham. ‘I’m certain it’s significant.’

‘She would come up the hill now, nothing would do but I bring her — I must apologize for disturbing you at this hour,’ Maistre Pierre was saying.

‘What is it?’ Gil asked, taking her hand. She’s afraid, he was thinking, afraid of — she’s a gently reared girl with no sisters and no mother. How do I reassure her?

‘No matter, no matter,’ said the Official. ‘Is it something important?’

‘I think it is, sir,’ said Alys. Her clasp on Gil’s hand tightened briefly, then she let go and went forward to greet Canon Cunningham. He kissed her with obvious pleasure and seated her on the bench by the brazier. Socrates sat down beside her with his chin on her knee.

‘It’s aye a pleasure to see you, lassie. Fetch some refreshment, Gil.’

‘No need for that,’ said Maggie from the stair door. She came forward, wrapped in her plaid for decency, and set down the tray of spiced ale and little cakes. ‘Good e’en to ye, maister, lassie. I hope nothing’s amiss down the road?’

‘No, all’s well,’ Alys assured her. ‘All goes ahead as we have planned. Only, I wished to show Gil what I have found in this document.’

‘Document?’ said Canon Cunningham, pricking up his ears. ‘What document, lassie? No your contract, I hope.’ He laughed drily at his own joke, and Alys’s elusive smile flickered.

‘No, sir. It relates to the death at the bedehouse.’ She opened her purse and drew out Agnew’s tablets in their brocade bag. Gil froze in dismay, but without glancing at him she went on, ‘I’m not at liberty to say how I came by this, sir. It is a set of tablets belonging to Maister Agnew, and with them this.’

She extracted the parchment with its dangling seals. The Official took it from her and unfolded it.

‘A disposition, ten year since,’ he said. Gil paused in handing beakers of spiced ale to look over his uncle’s shoulder. ‘For the support of their son Humphrey, Thomas Agnew and Anna Paterson gifting a significant plot of land …’ Canon Cunningham ran his eye down the crackling sheet. ‘And after his death — yes, yes, very provident.’

‘Provident?’ Gil leaned closer. ‘That wasny my opinion. What does it — ?’

‘No, no, it reverts to the donors or their heirs,’ said his uncle, tilting the document to the light. ‘It’s perfectly clear. Quite well worded, indeed. Thomas Agnew, younger, wrote this. Aye, very neat work.’

‘Exactly,’ said Alys, meeting Gil’s eye across the hearth. ‘Do you have the bedehouse copy, Gil? You were going to bring it here for safe keeping.’

‘If it’s that poke of dusty papers you brought in the other day, Maister Gil, it’s under your bed,’ said Maggie from where she stood in the shadows.

‘Why?’ demanded her father. ‘What is this? She has not explained it yet.’

‘The bedehouse copy wording isny the same,’ said Gil cautiously. ‘I’m sure I mind a quite different final disposition.’ He handed over the beakers he carried, and made for the stair. ‘I’ll fetch it down the now.’

‘Are you saying the two copies do not agree?’ said his uncle as he left the hall. ‘I would ha thought better of Thomas Agnew.’

Returning with the sack full of documents, Gil sat down beside Alys. She reached in to extract the nearest bundle and inspected it, oblivious to her father and Canon Cunningham who were still exploring the different ways in which the two copies might have come to differ. The bundle they wanted was, inevitably, the last; Gil shuffled the rest back into the sack, while Alys untied the tape and picked through the folded dockets.

‘This is it,’ she said, opening it out. ‘And the map that was with it, as well. Yes, I was sure this was what I remembered, Gil.’

‘Well?’ demanded her father. ‘What does it say? Was it worth dragging me up the hill at this hour in the rain?’

‘Oh, it was,’ said Gil. ‘This version has the property revert to the bedehouse absolutely after Humphrey’s death.’

‘Ah!’ said his uncle.

‘And what happens now, maister?’ asked Maggie from the shadows. ‘The man’s deid, right enough, but he’s risen again. Does it stay wi the bedehouse, or go back to his family, or what? What’s the law when someone rises up?’

‘What’s more to the point,’ pronounced the Official, ‘is, why are these documents no the same and which is the true one?’ He straightened his spectacles and looked about him. ‘We need a good table. Over yonder.’

With the two documents spread out side by side on the altar in the oratory, lit by all the candles they could squeeze into the space, all four of them peered at the lines of neat writing while Maggie waited hopefully by the hearth.

‘Neither looks to have been altered,’ said Gil after a moment. ‘The dates are the same, and it’s all scribed in the one hand. Agnew tried to suggest to me,’ he explained to his uncle, ‘that Deacon Naismith might have altered some of the papers.’

‘No,’ said Canon Cunningham thoughtfully. ‘The one man has writ all of both these, and the hand and the pen are the same in the text as in his signature and monogram. I’d no swear to it being the same batch of ink, but that happens to all of us. I wonder …’ He ran careful ink-stained fingers over the surface of the parchment nearer him. ‘Gilbert, what do you think to this?’

Gil did the same, then bent to view the document against the light of the candles. It took a little time as he found separate angles to view the several folds of the parchment, but eventually he shook his head.

‘This one’s a single draft,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s been no erasure. No even a word scraped out, that I can detect.’

‘Nor this one,’ said Alys in puzzled tones. ‘There’s a correction here to the name of the bedehouse, but that is the only one.’

‘The signatures,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Do they accord?’

‘Whose marks are they?’ Alys asked. ‘The Deacon’s is there — whatever is his name? Aller — Allerinshaw? Diaconus sancti Servi. And the sub-Deacon. Both these are the same on the two documents.’

‘Here is Thomas Agnew of Kilsyth,’ supplied Maistre Pierre, ‘and his wife’s mark below it, properly attested in both places. And also their son Thomas Agnew younger, who I suppose is the man we know. Is this what you mean by his monogram?’ he asked, one large forefinger on the elaborate penwork below Agnew’s signature. ‘What does it depict? A mercat cross?’

‘Aye, that’s his monogram,’ agreed Gil. ‘And the witnesses — James Paton, William Scott. I wonder if either of them would recall the terms of the gift? No, I doubt it, they’re both clerks in the tower, aren’t they, sir? They’ll witness a dozen such things in a week, and this was ten years ago.’

‘They are.’ David Cunningham was still running his fingers over the lines of script on the two documents. ‘This is very odd, Gilbert. I canny think what he’s been about here. The seals are undisturbed, all the signatures compare, the writing is original in both, and yet — ’

‘May I see that one, sir?’ said Alys, nodding at the copy further from her. The Official handed it over, avoiding the candles, and stepped back.

‘It’s ower hot here wi all these lights,’ he complained. ‘I’ve seen as much as I want for the now, let’s be more comfortable. Maggie, is there more o that spiced ale?’