Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘I’ll send John Hucheson,’ offered Maister Coventry.

‘I wouldn’t offend John by asking him.’ Nick looked around, catching the eye of several of the cast. ‘William can look out for himself.’

Wallace eventually reached the end of a chapter, and the harper’s sister sat down, to some applause. The Dean raised his hand, and the Steward, standing to one side, summoned the players in ringing tones. As Maister Kennedy and his group progressed formally up the length of the hall, Gil found Ealasaidh McIan at his side.

‘Himself wishes me to warn you,’ she said without preamble. ‘There is death in this place, and more than death. He felt it as soon as we came here.’

‘More than death?’ Gil questioned involuntarily.

‘Strangling and secrecy,’ she said. ‘Many secrets.’

‘Is it someone in this hall?’ asked Patrick Coventry at her other side.

She turned to look down at him, shaking her head. ‘I am not the one with the sight. You must be asking himself that.’

‘Where is William?’ said the Dean loudly. ‘He must be sought for.’

With the words the harper rose, blank eyes wide, his instrument clasped in one arm, and flung the other hand high with an exclamation in Gaelic that set the brass strings ringing. The Steward and the Dean, arrested in movement, stared at him, as did nearly everyone else in the hall, but his sister hurried to his side. Maister Coventry stepped forward and together they shepherded the tall figure to the side of the hall, answering him in Gaelic as they went. Gil dragged a bench forward and the harper was thrust on to it, his sister scolding him in a hissing whisper.

‘Where is Maister Cunningham?’ he asked, putting out his free hand in its furred velvet sleeve.

‘I am here,’ said Gil, alarmed, and grasped the hand. This man was a professional musician and habitually more dignified than the Archbishop. What had shaken him to this extent? He was speaking in Gaelic again, urgent jerky sentences.

‘The one the Dean asks for,’ Patrick Coventry translated softly, ‘is in the dark, behind an iron lock, and he is no longer living.’

‘What does he say?’ demanded Dean Elphinstone from the dais. There was a sudden buzz of sound as those nearest, who had heard, informed those who had not.

‘Haivers!’ said the boy who had played Knowledge. ‘Not our William!’

‘Speak Latin, Walter,’ said the Principal automatically.

‘Quid est Latinus pro haivers?’ muttered Walter.

‘How can he ken that?’ the Dean pursued in Scots. ‘Maister Harper, what gars ye — ’

‘I am a harper,’ said Angus McIan. ‘It is given to me.’

‘Aye, well, so was old Rory MacDuff a harper when I was a bairn,’ said the Dean, ‘and he didny take these strunts.’

‘Best you look for the one who is missing,’ said Ealasaidh urgently to Gil. ‘Himself will not be right till the daylight reaches the dead man.’

‘It came to him,’ said Gil to a nodding Maister Coventry, ‘when the Dean asked where was William. Moreover the Dean has already said — ’

‘Maister Kennedy,’ said the Dean, cutting across the rising noise in the hall. ‘Rehearse to us the names of those who took part in this play, edifying and entertaining us with well-turned verse and golden precept.’ He looked, Gil thought, as if the balanced phrases tasted sour.

Nick, stumbling slightly over the Latin forms of the surnames, listed his cast and the roles they had performed, deprecating the play and commending the players who had learned their parts, identifying William last as Fortune and the dragon Idleness. From time to time he glanced at the door, as if he expected the missing boy to appear round it at any moment. The Dean replied in another elaborate speech, promising each of the cast by name some academic exemption or dispensation as a reward for hard work. At the end of the dais, David Gray scribbled notes, prodding at the wax in his tablet with jerky movements. Gil, watching him, thought he looked dazed, and wondered how accurate the final list would be.

The boy who had played Collegia was pushed forward, and in bleating Latin produced a short but formal acknowledgement of the favours granted in return for this poor entertainment, so ably supervised by their well-loved teacher Maister Kennedy.

‘And now William Irvine is to be sought for. His reward will be granted when he is present.’

‘Now, Dean?’ said Nick.

‘Now. I wish to speak to him.’

The well-loved teacher clapped his hands at the cast.

‘Find William, then!’ he said. ‘Hurry! You know the kind of places to look.’

Gil disengaged his hand from the harper’s with a quiet word, and went forward to join Nick as the students made for the door. On the dais, the senior members of the Faculty were watching in varying degrees of disapproval; around the hall, now that the harper had stopped providing entertainment, the sweetmeats and spiced wine were circulating again.

‘If he is not in his chamber,’ said Patrick Coventry at Nick’s other elbow, ‘nor in the library, then are there likely spots to search or do we comb the entire college?’

‘Yes,’ said Maister Kennedy, following the group of students. ‘It’s one of the things I dislike about him,’ he added, pausing on the steps outside. ‘He crops up everywhere, like columbine-weed, whether he has any business to be there or not. Henry, Walter!’ he called. ‘Go and check William’s chamber. Andrew and Ralph, see if the library is unlocked and if so whether he is there. Ninian, Lowrie, Michael — ’

‘I thought we’d search the Inner Close, Maister Kennedy,’ said the yellow-haired tenor, a lanky youth just beginning to broaden at the shoulders, ‘and see if he’s troubling the kitchens as well.’

‘Very good, Lowrie. You do that. Robert Montgomery, Richie Shaw, you search the Inner Close as well.’

‘Please, Maister Kennedy.’ The treble from the singing group put his hand up, snapping his fingers like a schoolboy. ‘What will David and me do?’

‘You and your brother may run to the Arthurlie building,’ said Maister Coventry promptly, ‘and ask anyone you meet there whether William Irvine has been seen.’

‘And come back and report to me here,’ said Nick as the boys scattered across the wet flagstones.

Gil made his way down the steps. Patrick Coventry followed him, saying thoughtfully, ‘Why the kitchens?’

‘I wondered that,’ said Gil. ‘I noticed those three come back together after the rain started, and one of them is lacking his belt.’

He headed for the vaulted tunnel which led between the silent Law lecture-rooms and into the inner courtyard, Maister Coventry behind him. As they emerged into the daylight, shouting erupted in the kitchens at the far side of the courtyard. Gil, hitching up cope and cassock, quickened his pace, and sprang up the kitchen stair in time to meet the tenor and his two friends, retreating backwards from a gaunt woman enveloped in a sacking apron.

‘And stay out of my kitchen!’ she ordered shrilly, with a threatening sweep of her ladle.

‘I’m sorry, Agnes,’ said one of the boys, the fineboned mousy-haired one. ‘We didny mean to annoy you — ’

‘Annoy me, he says! Three great louts under my feet asking daft questions — get out of my way, and don’t let me set eyes on you this week!’

‘Agnes Dickson,’ said Gil from behind the students. One of them turned to look at him, and the cook paused open-mouthed. ‘I knew you were still cook here as soon as I saw the Almayne pottage,’ Gil pursued, with perfect truth. ‘I’ve tasted nothing like it since I left the college.’

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Mistress Dickson, less shrill but still hostile. ‘Is this lot anything to do with you? Getting in my way when I’m short-handed, with the rest of the college still to feed, and half the dishes up in the Fore Hall. They should know better by their age.’