Pat McIntosh - The Merchant's Mark

‘May I ask something, sir?’ said Gil. The King gestured in reply. ‘Augie, tell me, when was Billy alone in Linlithgow? Had you lain there the night before?’

‘Aye, we had,’ Morison nodded. ‘He’d plenty time alone in the burgh. I let them be to drink or talk as they liked, I knew they’d not get ower fu or into bad company …’ His voice trailed off and he smiled ruefully. ‘Aye. While I went about to get a word with one or two friends I have in the place.’

‘And did you see him at all while you went about the town?’

‘I caught sight of all three of them now and then.’

‘Was he talking to a big man in a black cloak?’

‘Linlithgow’s full of men in black cloaks,’ said Angus, grinning over the King’s shoulder.

William Knollys inflated himself and stretched his neck like a cockerel about to crow, the light gleaming on his gold satin plumage. ‘Are you implying, my lord, that the Knights of St John are involved in this? That one of our brother knights slips about by night slaying unlawfully?’

‘Not the knights,’ said Gil, almost to himself. James glanced briefly at him.

‘Not me,’ said Angus, still grinning. ‘It was you said it, my lord St Johns, not me. I’m saying Linlithgow’s full of men in black cloaks, no more than that.’

‘I never saw Billy talking to such a one,’ said Morison to Gil. Knollys subsided, glaring at Angus. ‘Maybe Andy or Jamesie saw, you could ask them.’

Gil nodded.

‘This man Billy,’ said the King, ‘that the lassie wants justice for. Why did you keep him? Had he been a good servant?’

‘Not a bad servant, sir, anyways,’ said Morison, considering the matter. ‘He was pert, but they can all be pert. A good enough worker, a good carter, understood the old mare well. Understood barrels and all, with his father being a cooper.’

Out in the High Street it was raining, though the gibbous moon sailed in broken cloud above the Dow Hill. The torchbearers in the escort the King had ordered for them made a great difference, Gil found, striding down the hill behind them with a bewildered Augie Morison at his side. Two other sturdy fellows in helm and breastplate followed, keeping a watchful eye on the shadows.

There had been little more of use said after Augie’s revelation about Billy’s parentage. The Treasurer had shown signs of wishing to interrogate him further about Linlithgow, but the King, yawning ostentatiously, had announced, ‘Well, gentlemen, as you said a while since, it’s ower late. We’ll have this cleared away the now.’ A wave of relief swept round the crowded little room, and he smiled slightly. ‘We’ll be up early for Mass, after all. In the chapel here, my lord?’ Blacader nodded. ‘And after it,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I want a game of caich before we ride. Maister Cunningham, you look like a fit man. Do you play caich?’

‘I do, sir,’ Gil had said, slightly apprehensive. The quarry must feel that way, he thought now, when a twig cracks in the undergrowth.

‘You’ll gie me a game? Good! In the caichpele off the Drygate here — you ken?’

Gil knew it. It belonged to one of the canons, who found the steady supply of pence from the tennis-players and spectators of the town made a valuable income. He had played there a few times, but he and his opponents among the poverty-stricken songmen generally used an improvised court in Vicars’ Alley, with two sloping roofs to be the pents and chalked marks on St Mungo’s north wall, renewed every time it rained, for lunettes. The scorer had to have sharp eyes.

‘Good,’ said James, and rose. Gil and the two elderly statesmen rose too, perforce. ‘I’ll meet you after Mass, say about Terce. And now we’ll have you seen home, maister. Where do you lie the night?’

‘David Cunningham’s house — the Cadzow manse in Rottenrow,’ supplied Blacader.

Gil shook his head. ‘I’m bound for Maister Morison’s house in the High Street,’ he said. ‘My sister is there, and maybe Mistress Mason, keeping an eye on the bairns.’

Morison, still kneeling at his feet, put one hand over his eyes. William Knollys looked round sharply, with the arrested expression of the stag who hears the hounds.

‘What does the lady there?’ he demanded. ‘Surely Maister Morison has servants of his own?’

‘My sister was concerned for the bairns,’ said Gil again. Knollys grunted, and turned casually away to speak to a man with the eight-pointed Cross of St John on the breast of his velvet doublet.

‘Find Davie Wilkie,’ he began in a low voice. The King spoke across him, directing someone to deal with Gil’s escort, someone else to take word to the Provost that his prisoner had been released at the King’s command.

‘Released?’ repeated Morison incredulously. ‘You mean — your grace means — I can go free? I can go home?’

‘Aye, maister. Thanks to your friend here.’

Blacader nodded approval; Angus was standing back, watching enigmatically. Knollys was still speaking to his servant in a confidential mutter. Gil thought he had caught another name: ‘Bid him and John Carson …’ He had heard these names before, in the same muttered tone. And why, he wondered, should getting a message to them be important enough to discuss before the King?

A velvet-clad servant with the King’s badge on his chest appeared at his elbow, the King dismissed them, and they were both spirited out into the wet night where the gate-guards peered from under the vault of the gatehouse like deer in a forest. Morison seemed dumbstruck, floating along at Gil’s side staring at the torches, the people, the castle walls, as if he had never seen such things before.

Why, Gil thought now, striding down the High Street, does my mind keep running on hunting? Is it because I am being followed? He turned his head from side to side, trying to see over his shoulders, but although the shadows beyond the pool of wet torchlight in which they moved were black and jumpy he could not focus any of his unease in them.

‘Nobody will try anything on six men, maister,’ said one of the two at his back, ‘and four of them in the King’s livery.’

‘That’s a true word,’ agreed the left-hand torchbearer.

As he spoke, a group emerged from a vennel just ahead of them. Gil, bracing himself, was aware of sudden tension round him. Morison stared apprehensively. Four men with a lantern which gleamed on a selection of ill-fitting armour stared back at them in alarm; then one of them took a better grip on his cudgel and said firmly, ‘Who goes there, in the name of the King?’

‘It’s the Watch,’ said Gil in relief.

The right-hand torchbearer was already answering: ‘The King’s men, about the King’s business.’

The man with the lantern came closer, with his fellows straggling after him as if they would rather not be left in the dark. Gil could not recognize the men in this light, but felt it to be unlikely that any of them was a burgess. Most people sent a servant or other substitute when their turn to guard the burgh through the night came round. The lantern dwindled against the torchlight, which clearly showed the royal badge on cloak and velvet surcoat. Two of the Watch nodded.

‘Aye, Geordie, that’s the King’s badge,’ said one of them. ‘They’re likely from the castle.’

‘They’ll be seeing these fellows to their doors,’ said another. ‘And I hope neither of their women’s lying awake for them, for they’ll get a warm welcome, coming in at this hour o the night.’

‘Wheesht, Jaik!’ said the fourth man in a hissing whisper. ‘That’s Maister Morison. Him that found a heidit man in a barrel.’

‘Oh, aye, so it is,’ agreed Jaik in the same tone. ‘They must ha let him off wi it.’