Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘I’ve asked,’ said Gil. ‘I asked the fellow at the tap.’

This time the question had met with understanding; the tapster knew Barty Fletcher. He just couldny say if he was in the town the now.

‘Bide you there wi your jug of our good ale, maister, and I’ll ask about for ye,’ the man offered, wiping the inside of another jug with his apron. ‘My brother’s marriet on Alice Fletcher, he can likely find out.’

‘I’d be grateful.’ Gil indicated his gratitude with a coin on account, which vanished inside the tapster’s doublet. Since then he had been aware of quiet questions going about the room, of the odd curious glance in his direction. Someone came in, spoke to the tapster, went out again. What have I set in motion? he wondered.

‘But who else do we look for?’ asked Maistre Pierre now.

‘The dog should go out,’ said Gil. ‘Let us walk him.’

‘I kom viz you,’ pronounced Johan.

‘Johan,’ said Gil, ‘I sink ve could lose ze accent.’

‘Accent?’

‘I heard you shriving Rob,’ said Gil, and bit back another tide of mixed emotion. After a moment he went on, ‘Your Scots is near as good as Pierre’s, here.’ The sergeant met his challenging look, and then shrugged and smiled wryly. ‘Have we said anything useful?’

‘No,’ the other man admitted. ‘But it vos — was worth the try.’

‘Can you tell me why the Preceptory is interested?’

‘No.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Gil, ‘but if you won’t, then why should I help you? You don’t kom viz us.’

‘Fair enough,’ echoed the Hospitaller, shrugging again.

Accompanied by a well-fed dog, Gil and Maistre Pierre strolled outside and gravitated naturally into the building site next door. In the evening light, piles of timber and slates lay under tarred canvas, but the stone-cutter’s lodge stood empty. Work had stopped for the day, and the masons had all gone home to the houses which the chapel’s founder had built for them, more than doubling the size of the castle’s little town.

‘Ah, mon Dieu!’ said Maistre Pierre, soft-voiced. ‘Look at those lines. The proportions.’

‘I can’t see past the scaffolding,’ said Gil with regret.

‘So who do we look for?’ asked Maistre Pierre.

‘The musician,’ said Gil quietly. The mason nodded agreement. ‘The cooper’s boy. The dead man’s kin, very possibly.’

‘Why should those be here?’

‘Because Riddoch’s yard lies at the back of the Engrailed Cross tavern. Those were Sinclair’s men I saw in the street before the tavern, and Sinclair’s men were collecting the barrels of salt herring when we arrived. I saw one going into the barn where we found the empty barrel. I’ll wager Sinclair owns the whole of that toft and has let the backlands to Riddoch for his house and his yard. Riddoch is Sinclair’s man.’

‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘As well as — ’ He stopped short, staring into the distance. Gil made no comment, and the mason went on, ‘So is Sinclair behind all this?’

‘I’d say he is involved,’ said Gil. ‘He asked me, when I saw him in Stirling, whether our friend in the barrel was a thief or a fighting man. And I think he has our books.’ He kicked at the scraps of wood and slate underfoot. ‘But I don’t think he is behind these repeated attacks, any more than the Preceptory.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ said Maistre Pierre involuntarily.

‘I think St Johns is involved.’ He looked at his friend in the evening light. ‘If they send this fellow with us, an experienced fighting man who is also a priest, though priests aren’t supposed to bear arms — ’

‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre, distracted. ‘He is probably not priested. I have not asked him,’ he admitted, ‘but I have seen this before, where they will confess and absolve a companion in extremis , where no priest is present.’

Socrates, ranging round them, paused in his inspection of a stack of timber and stared at the gate of the site. Gil looked round, to see a familiar, elegant figure picking its way across the trampled ground. Clad in a worn leather doublet and patched hose, the man still had all the presence of a performer. He halted in front of them and bowed, waving his feathered hat in the elaborate French style.

‘Balthasar of Liège at your service, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’m told you were asking for me.’

He straightened up and looked from one to the other. Even in the dwindling light, the colour of his eyes was obvious: one blue, one brown.

‘I’m very glad to see you alive, man,’ said Gil. ‘Do you mind me? Gil Cunningham, from Glasgow.’

‘I do, sir,’ said the musician. ‘You were a good friend to the McIans a few months back, were you no?’

‘And still am, I hope,’ said Gil.

‘So what can I do for you, maisters?’

‘We may have sad news for you,’ said Maistre Pierre. Balthasar raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you any kin with your eye colour?’

‘What, odd eyes? It runs in the family. I’ve a sister has one ee green and one grey.’

‘No, but have you male kin,’ said Gil, ‘with one blue and one brown?’

The musician looked at him. ‘This is serious, isn’t it?’ he said, and scratched his jaw. ‘I wonder, maisters, have you found my cousin Nelkin? We’d looked for him back afore this.’

‘Ah,’ said Gil. ‘Where had he been?’

Balthasar shrugged. ‘We heard word he’d gone on a pilgrimage,’ he said, ‘to Tain or some such. It didny seem like our Nelkin,’ he added.

‘And who had you heard this from?’

‘From himself.’ Balthasar jerked his head in the general direction of the castle. ‘From Sinclair. He’s been one of Sir Oliver’s men-at-arms these ten years.’

‘Ah!’ said Maistre Pierre.

Gil glanced at him, and said, ‘Noll Sinclair told you he’d gone on a pilgrimage?’

‘Well, no,’ admitted the musician. ‘That fool Preston told his sister, but he said it as if the word came from himself — from Sinclair.’

‘Is that all the word you’ve had?’

‘I think so. What’s this about, maister? Have you found him? You’re saying he’s deid, and canny answer for himself, are you no?’

‘It seems very like it,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I am sorry. Was he close to you?’

‘He was kin,’ said the musician tensely. ‘What came to him? What have you found?’

‘We found,’ said Gil carefully, ‘a man’s head. Short dark hair, one ear pierced, odd coloured een. Oh, and the remains of a blued ee.’ He touched his cheekbone. ‘He’d been headed, and the head put in a barrel of brine along wi a bag of coin and jewels from the old King’s hoard.’

Balthasar bent his head and crossed himself.

‘It sounds like,’ he said. ‘The blued ee sounds like our Nelkin. Ah, weel, I feart as much. When the laddie — ’

‘What laddie?’ asked Gil.

‘Oh, just — just one o his kin.’

‘Nicol Riddoch, would that be, the cooper’s boy?’ guessed Gil. Balthasar’s head came up sharply. ‘What kin is he to you?’

‘None o mine. His stepmother’s some kind o kin by marriage to Nelkin’s brother.’ The musician crossed himself again. ‘Would you excuse me, maisters? I’ll need to break it — ’

‘I could do with a word with Nicol Riddoch,’ said Gil. ‘What did he say? I take it he didn’t see your kinsman killed, but did he bring the other bag of coin here?’

Balthasar stared at Gil in the failing light.

‘You ken the maist o it already, sir,’ he said. ‘Why are you asking me?’

‘I never heard what it was,’ said Nicol. ‘Just it was worth a good bit.’

He stood uneasily before them, a spare youngster at the hands and feet stage, with a strong resemblance to his father the cooper. He had emerged reluctantly from the inner chamber of the house to which Balthasar had delivered them, and was taking some persuasion to fill in the gaps in Gil’s account of what had happened. Socrates, lying at Gil’s feet, watched him carefully.