Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘The engrailed cross. Yes, it is everywhere up above,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘But what is that heart doing there? That is Douglas, surely?’

‘That’s right. Sir William’s first wife was a Douglas lady, I believe. Aye, it’s a heart. Ubi thesaurus- Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,’ Gil quoted, and suddenly recalled the harper saying the same thing. Could this be what McIan meant, he wondered, rather than some cryptic observation about my marriage? ‘If we can find a heart up above too, maybe the treasure will be close by. I’ve seen none so far, but perhaps in the south aisle?’

‘It is worth the try,’ said Johan after a moment.

Maistre Pierre looked back at the scratches on the wall. ‘There is no other hint,’ he admitted, ‘and this one comes from St Matthew’s evangel. If we find no heart, we must seek all about the string-course. Assuming it is all within reach of the scaffolding.’

At the top of the stairs, the darkness receded unwillingly from their lanterns. Gil stretched his ears, wondering if he had heard something move elsewhere in the building, or imagined it. Maistre Pierre held the light to the window arch, and shook his head.

‘I never saw plants like that,’ he said. ‘And yet the carving is good, as if it is a true portrait. What are they meant for, do you think?’

‘Who knows?’ Gil stared at the carved leaves flopping back around what seemed to be fat heads of grain, then looked around. A bagpiper. An inscribed quotation from — from — the book of Esdras, his memory supplied. What seemed to be the seven virtuous actions, though something was out of key about them. He moved on. On the other side of the virtues, appropriately enough, the seven deadly sins, and in the window -

‘Ah!’

‘You found?’ asked Johan, and joined him. ‘Ach, ja , is a heart.’

‘An angel holding a heart,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘So the treasure must be aloft, on angel wings.’ He shone his lantern on the other corner of the window-embrasure. ‘And here we have Moses, if I do not mistake, with the tablets of the commandments, and on his head the horns of enlightenment. It fits. It fits well.’

‘Is here?’ Johan looked doubtfully at the vault of the aisle above them.

‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘in the roof of the nave, and next to the rib above this one.’

‘And how do we get to it?’ asked Gil. ‘Fly into the rafters, like St Christina the Astonishing?’

‘It is a vault, not rafters. Maister Robison spoke of a ladder.’

They found the ladder at the west end of the building, propped against the lowest levels of a tower of scaffolding which rose up into the dark. Maistre Pierre looked at it with disapproval, and clicked his tongue.

‘I took him for a better craftsman,’ he said. ‘One does not leave the ladder like this to tempt the idle.’

‘This rises up here, at this end,’ said Johan. ‘We wish to be yonder.’ He waved his free hand eastward.

The mason gestured into the roof, just as airily. ‘The church is in use. They do not wish to fill it with Eastland logs. This tower section is only to go up by — you can see from outside that further along, the poles come in at the clerestory and cross above the nave. There are no poles at floor level, so the clerks may make processions when they need to.’ He was testing all the bindings on the structure within his reach as he spoke. ‘Now, we climb up. I go first, you follow, my friend, and then Gilbert. Follow me closely,’ he said, very seriously, ‘and watch where I put my feet and my hands. And leave the lantern,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘if you cannot climb with it.’

He set off up the ladder with surprising nimbleness for such a big man, with one hand on the rungs, carrying the lantern in the other. Johan put one foot on the bottom rung, paused, put the lantern on the ground, and followed him cautiously. Gil gave him time to get to the first of the creaking wattle platforms, eight feet off the ground, then stripped off his short gown and dropped it by the foot of the ladder, thinking its folds would impede his movements, laid his sword on top of it and climbed up in his turn, taking his own lantern. As he found his footing on the platform at the top, Maistre Pierre spoke from the other side of the building.

‘Three more to go. The next ladder is over here.’

Gil could see it, lit by the mason’s lantern, rising into the dark.

‘I — ’ said Johan.

‘What is it?’ asked Gil. The man was rigid beside him, his arms held away from his sides. ‘Is it too high?’

‘N-no,’ said Johan with difficulty. ‘I–I — ’

‘You must go back,’ said Maistre Pierre, striding across the hurdles. The whole structure bounced resonantly. Gil braced his feet and swayed with the movement, but Johan cried out and dropped to his knees. ‘I have seen this before. It is the balance,’ the mason said to Gil, and bent over the kneeling Hospitaller. ‘Some cannot take it. Like seasickness. Come, man. The ladder is here. Not far.’

Johan was persuaded on to the ladder, where he clung for a moment.

‘I am sorry!’ he gasped, and scrambled downwards. At the foot he stepped on to the flagstones and stood with one hand to his head, clinging to the ladder with the other.

‘You must stay here,’ said Maistre Pierre, bending to look at him over the edge of the wicker panels, ‘sword in hand, to defend us from attack. Can you do that, brother?’

‘I can,’ said Johan, releasing his grip of the ladder. He nodded, gasping a little, the lantern-light gleaming on the pale skin of his brow. ‘I can.’

Maistre Pierre watched him for a moment, then nodded and returned to the next ladder, Gil following him.

‘Maybe you go first, Gilbert,’ he said. ‘If I fall on you, we neither of us survive.’

They climbed up, and up again, and then again. It was strange climbing into the dark. The small light from the lanterns illumined the wooden rungs and glimmered faintly on the scaffolding poles and their rope lashings, but beyond them it struggled to touch anything in the void. Maistre Pierre came off the fourth ladder, looked about him, and set off with a confident, careful step along the hurdles. Gil followed him trustfully, walking in the small patch of wickerwork visible around his lantern, aware that if he missed his step there was a long flight in the dark to the same judgement which Rob now faced.

At this level they were above the heads of the tall clerestory window-spaces, with the cool night air around them. The vaulted roof bent over them, patterned with stars, and then beyond the next vault-rib with roses.

‘Be handsome when they paint this,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Blue, I expect, and the stars gold. Two — three — four. It should be here. And it is. Well thought, Gilbert.’ He leaned sideways, clinging to the nearest upright, and Gil realized there was a significant gap between the hurdle they stood on and the head of the wall. ‘ Peste! Gil, can you shine your lantern here?’

The string-course was at hip-height, carved with flowers in roundels and crenellated with little upstanding tabs on its upper edge. Gil, studying this briefly, decided it was typical of the whole building that the two patterns, the roundels and the tabs, were differently spaced. He raised his lantern and held it near the curve of the roof and there, next to the vault-rib, behind the tabs of the string-course, was a dark shadow.

‘You have the longer reach, I think,’ said the mason. ‘Set down your lantern, and feel what may be there. I will brace you.’

This is too easy, thought Gil. Not that it was easy, precisely, but — after the hunt, the long pursuit of the dead man’s identity, the attacks on their party, this seemed too simple. His wrist clamped in the mason’s firm grasp, he leaned out to reach over the stringcourse with the other hand, and found a hollow space, almost a small aumbry. There were shapes in it, hard objects.