Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘Guard yourself!’ said a hoarse voice from the dark depths. ‘He goes free.’

That was Johan, whom they had left at the foot of the ladder. Pine sang again. What had Sinclair said? That fool Preston never chained him, and he struck down the guard and ran . Could this be the axeman? Quietly, Gil opened the horn panel of his lantern, licked his fingers, pinched out the flame of the candle. Darkness covered him, in which the scaffolding began to creak again.

‘Cunningham?’

Below, on the floor of the church, there was shuffling movement across the bars of moonlight. Voices rose outside. The door boomed. Up here in the darkness among the echoes, with the night air stirring, there was the crack and rustle of wickerwork, and as the echoes died a whispered question.

‘Where are you, Cunningham?’

Turning his head, he tried to place the sound. His pursuer must be westward, where the ladders were, but the whisper rattled in the vault, and came at him from all sides. The wicker hurdles flexed like a corach he had sailed in. Did the fellow have a weapon? he wondered, and was assailed by the sharp recollection of his sword, on top of his short gown, conveniently placed by the foot of the first ladder. And what had come to Pierre? And Johan?

Johan’s voice rose on the cue from the barred floor of the church.

‘Maister Cunningham! Are you safe? Are you hurt?’

The echoes shot his name round the roof. I dare not answer, he thought, not with an enemy hunting me in the dark. He already knows where I was when I put the light out.

‘Cunningham?’ The whisper again, surrounding him. ‘ I ken you’re no hurt. No yet.’

There was a patch of light growing in the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw a silvery glow, as if someone to the east of his perch had another lantern. A hand appeared, and beckoned in silence. He lifted the coil of rope and moved cautiously towards it, leaving the box with its three sacks where they were. There was just enough light to make out the walkway in front of him, not enough to see who held the lantern, but he was sure the whisperer on the ladders was more of a threat.

There was a ladder here. He descended, cautiously, pausing to listen. Down here away from the vault, level with the huge empty windows, it was easier to determine direction, and the creaking was coming closer.

‘Where are you hiding?’ Again the whisper, from the same place as the creaking. ‘Where have you hid the gold?’

The light beside him still did not illuminate its bearer. The hand pointed to the window-space. He moved out, into moonlight, and found himself stepping from one pole to another among a forest of flying buttresses and pinnacles, the thin soles of his riding-boots gripping the bark, more poles at head height offering support. The mesh of scaffolding, mounted on the roof of the south aisle of the chapel, was like the biggest tree he had ever climbed. Below him strange cavities and hollows showed blackly where the vaults of the south aisle roof had not yet been covered. He had swung on tree-branches out over the Linn pool whose depths had never been drawn. These dark cavities did not alarm him.

‘Cunningham!’

It was the axeman, right enough. He appeared further along the tangled structure, stepping like Gil out through an empty window-space, white face and hands floating in the pale light until he clambered out and his black-clad body was outlined against a lit pinnacle. Gil ducked behind a buttress. The man appeared to have a weapon; he thought it was an axe rather than a sword. Neither would be good news, since he only had his dagger.

‘Come here, you scabby clerk. I swear by the Magdalen’s tits I’ll pay you for the trouble you’ve cost me. I’ve an axe here for you, ’ull trim your pen no bother. It’s no Maidie, God rest her soul, but it’s sharp enough for the job. Come and face me. Where have you put the gold?’

Gil looked about, gauging his chances of tackling his opponent. Not good. Then the lantern-lit hand appeared at another window — how had its owner got there so silently? — and beckoned. Gil moved, lightly and rapidly, and pulled himself in on to the scaffolding again. The wickerwork creaked as he stepped on it, and his pursuer shouted.

‘I hear you! I’ll get you!’

The axe glinted as its bearer scrambled for the next window, swung himself in on to the walkway, rushed forward. Gil slipped back out into the moonlight, working his way between the pinnacles, while the axeman blundered along the wicker platform just inside the wall.

Gil had no very clear plan, just a conviction that if he kept the other man moving, sooner or later he would make a mistake. Always supposing I don’t make one first, he thought, sliding between two buttresses. Inadvertently he looked down.

For a long moment he clung, staring down past the stonework to the silvered grass at the wall’s foot, while his grip tightened on the stonework and the depths seemed to reach for him. He could feel himself beginning to topple outwards.

There was movement at the edge of his vision. With difficulty, he dragged his gaze from the dazzling depths of air and turned it towards the dark windows. Round a pinnacle a moonlit hand appeared, stretched towards him, just out of his grasp. He fixed his eyes on it, took one hand from the gritty stone, stretched out for the bleached fingers. The hand drew back, and he leaned inwards, still straining towards it. Then suddenly his weight was all inside the wallhead, inside the web of wooden poles. He was safe.

He gasped his thanks and clung to the pole at shoulder height, his eyes closed in relief. By the time he opened them the other had gone, but the man with the axe was still snarling blasphemously at the far end of the building.

Holding tightly now to the scaffolding, Gil worked his way westward, reasoning that if he climbed in at the furthest window he would be close to the ladder and might get down before the axeman realized where he was. And then what? he wondered. Where is Pierre? He must have been hurt, if he hasn’t joined the hunt.

‘I see ye, traitor! Gallows-cheat!’

The hurdles within the gaping windows crackled and sang as the man trampled along them, his wild movements making the whole wooden structure buck, inside the church and out, like a corach in a high wind. Gil froze by the window, clinging tightly to the pine-logs, fearing he would be thrown off into the half-completed vault of the aisle below him. The man arrived at the aperture hefting the axe, braced himself and swung at Gil’s hand grasping the pole beside his head.

It seemed to happen very slowly. The axe swung, shedding moonlight into the dark air. Gil released his grip, but could not seem to move his hand. The man’s expression changed, little by little, from triumphant fury to amazement and then to horror. Gil’s eye was drawn down, and he saw, very clearly, a pale hand thrusting the axeman’s back foot backwards. Back over the edge of the wicker hurdle. Off into the fathomless dark of the church. The leg followed it, the other foot slid, the body contorted trying to save itself. A hand dragged at the edge of the hurdle, but the other still held the axe, and only succeeded in cutting splinters from the wickerwork. The man fell, vanishing downward like the roped angel.

There was an unpleasant sound from below, and a clatter as the axe hit the flagstones, followed by some shouting, and running feet.

A face appeared in the space the axeman had vacated. The lantern-light, or moonlight, robbed the man’s eyes of colour, but Gil could see that one eye was pale and one was dark.

‘Thanks, friend,’ he said shakily. ‘I owe you for that.’

The other grinned at Gil, shook his head. A pale hand came up in a salute, then the face turned away. Gil leaned against the nearest piece of stonework and closed his eyes. For there is not so much joy in holding high office , he thought, as there is grief in falling from a high place. Who wrote that? Something about the Order of Knighthood, was it?