Pat McIntosh - St Mungo's Robin

‘There could be if you’re wanting it, maister,’ said Maggie. ‘Have you no found what’s wrong wi the papers then?’

‘I think I have,’ said Alys. ‘Look here.’ She spread out the document she held in front of the Annunciation. ‘All the signatures and the seals are here at the foot of the writing.’

‘Where you would look for them, in effect,’ said her father.

She flicked him a brief glance and went on, ‘There’s a crease right across between the signatures and the main text, but otherwise nothing to show any difference. Not even a change of colour. But if you look on the back of the skin — ’ She turned over one margin of the document. ‘See here? See the join? It doesn’t lie on the crease on this side, it is easier to see.’

‘It is,’ said Gil, feeling carefully. ‘It is a join. He’s scraped the skin down so well it barely shows, and the colour matches as you say, Alys.’

‘Is that how you mend parchment, then?’ said Maggie with interest from behind Gil’s shoulder. ‘You make the two edges thin and then stick it thegither? It’s just like joining pastry.’

‘Before or after the inscription was written, do you think?’ asked the Official, peering at the fold of parchment. ‘Maggie, what about that spiced ale?’

‘If I was using a mended piece like this,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘I’d turn it so that I wrote across the join, simply to avoid questions like that.’

His uncle nodded. ‘Aye, you’ve a point there.’

‘The signatures have been removed from the original,’ said Alys, ‘and attached to a different text.’

‘ Mon Dieu! ’ said the mason. Gil nodded.

‘Well, well,’ said Canon Cunningham. ‘You’ve sharp eyes, lassie. I’ll ha you to my clerk any time Richie’s away. And which copy is this, then, that’s been tampered wi?’

‘The family copy,’ said Alys. ‘The copy which was with Maister Agnew’s tablets.’

‘So whose work is that?’ demanded Maggie. ‘Why would the man change one copy and no the other?’

‘He had not yet succeeded in altering the bedehouse copy,’ said Alys. ‘Gil, did you not say he was looking for it?’

‘He was,’ agreed her father.

‘It would not have been easy to convince other people his was the true version,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘for the Deacon had clearly looked at his copy recently. See, Father.’ She handed him the paper which had been folded inside the disposition. He gave her a quizzical look, but tilted it obediently to the light, and whistled.

‘Indeed!’ he said. ‘Look at this, David. The man had most ambitious plans for the plot that was gifted.’

Alys stepped away from the window-embrasure and Gil followed her.

‘I meant to tell you as well, Gil,’ she remembered, ‘that our man Thomas told me he met a stranger by the Consistory tower, today about Sext, who asked the way to Vicars’ Alley. Could that have been John Veitch?’

Gil nodded absently, and looked about the hall. Maggie had gone to fetch the second batch of spiced ale, their elders were still discussing Naismith’s building project, and they had a moment to themselves.

‘Alys,’ he said softly, taking her hand. She looked up at him, with that expression which always made his heart turn over. ‘Sweetheart, I’ve worked it out, I think. What Dorothea meant.’ And no need to admit my youngest sister had to help me, he thought. Alys had dropped her eyes, colouring up in the candlelight. ‘We won’t — we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ she whispered. ‘I do want to. I just — ’

He pulled her into his arms, and kissed the top of her head. Her hair was silky under his lips, and smelled of rosemary.

‘All will be well,’ he promised. ‘We love one another. Nothing else matters.’

‘I’d swear to it being the same cart,’ said Tib, eyeing the heap of matting askance. ‘The more so wi that great bundle of stuff on top of it. What is it, anyway?’

‘More evidence,’ said Gil. ‘It’s the flooring from Agnew’s hall, that I want a look at. You’re sure, then?’

‘Aye.’ She bent to trace the swirls of white paint on the dark end panel of the handcart. ‘I mind thinking it was unusual, these curly bits instead o denticles or arcading or the like.’

‘Thanks, Tib.’ Gil took hold of a corner of the matting, and pulled. The bundle came off the cart, and he shook it so that the stiffened folds opened out across the flagged floor of the washhouse. Socrates loped in from the yard to look, but Tib stepped back, gathering her skirts together.

‘What’s the stains on it? Is that blood, Gil?’

‘It is.’ He was bending over the creases. ‘This is where the man died yesterday.’

‘The man John Veitch slew?’ She crossed herself.

‘The man John Veitch found dead,’ he corrected. ‘No, this tells me little enough. It must have lain — ’ He dragged another fold aside. ‘Something like that, I suppose. The man lay on his belly about here, and these are the — ’

‘Ugh!’ said Tib, crossing herself again. ‘But what does it tell you? Can you say who killed the man, if it wasny John Veitch?’

‘No,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘No yet. I wonder why he was lifting the matting?’ He looked over his shoulder at the door of the outbuilding. ‘Is it still dry out in the yard? Aye, dry enough. Tib, go and see if one of the men’s about, to give me a hand wi this.’

‘I’ll help,’ she offered, a little reluctantly, and bent to lay hands on an unmarked section. ‘Do you want it out in the daylight?’

They carried the bundle out between them, and spread Thomas Agnew’s prized possession on the damp cobbles.

‘Aye, it was this way up,’ said Gil. Socrates stepped delicately on to the braided squares, his nose a nail’s breadth from the rushes, his hackles standing up all down his narrow back. Gil pushed the dog away, arranging the folds again. ‘And he lay there. But what’s this?’

Tib came to look where he pointed, using her knee to keep the dog off.

‘It’s all just blood,’ she said. ‘You’d think the poor man had been cut like a stag.’

‘Oh, he was.’ Gil drew the overturned folds of the matting further. ‘He bled to death. No that he could ha been saved, by what Pierre says, but he needn’t a been left to die alone. Look at this, though, Tib. Would you say these two stains were the same age?’

‘What would that mean if they were?’ She bent closer. ‘Anyway, they areny. That’s nearly fresh, and this is going brown. Socrates, get off. Leave it!’

‘That’s what I thought. And it doesny go right through the matting the way the fresh one does. Are there more like the older one?’ He shifted the folds again, and Tib pounced, just ahead of the dog.

‘There! And there’s another.’

‘And here,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘is one where the fresh one crosses the older one.’

‘So what does that tell you?’ she asked, straightening up. Socrates, finally unimpeded, blew relentlessly across the stained squares.

‘It tells me why Hob was killed.’

‘Why?’

‘For doing what he was paid to do,’ said Gil grimly. He sat back on his heels, rubbing at his palm where the braided rushes had left their mark, then paused, staring at his hand. The impression on the skin was ridged and furrowed, like ploughland left to grazing, like a rope binding. ‘And it tells me more than that,’ he said after a moment. He pushed the dog away, drew the layers of matting on top of one another and lifted one end. ‘Give me a hand to put this back under cover, Tib. I’ll need to take it to the quest, but first I’ll need to get a word wi the Sheriff.’