Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

Gil nodded.

‘Maister Coventry,’ he said. The Second Regent raised his head. ‘I suggest you lock the door and let none past until the Dean and Maister Doby are here.’

The small man nodded, without interrupting his prayers, and followed them out of the coalhouse. Locking the door carefully, he stationed himself in front of it and took up his beads again as Gil and Nick set off across the courtyard.

The students who had formed the search party were at the foot of the stairs to the Fore Hall. The three senior bachelors were standing aside in a row, the stocky boy in the middle; two more were wrestling, some others kicking a stone about. As their seniors approached the games ceased.

‘Is it William, Maister Kennedy?’ said someone. ‘Is he hurt?’

‘Why was he in the coalhouse?’ asked someone else.

‘It is William,’ said Nick. ‘Yes, he is hurt. He is hurt bad.’

‘Will he die, maister?’ asked one of the two Ross boys, seated wide-eyed by his brother on the bottom step.

‘He is dead,’ said Nick.

‘Ninian!’ said Lowrie the tenor. ‘Catch him, Michael!’

Nick was already there as the stocky boy’s knees buckled. With Gil’s assistance he got the dead weight over to the stair and folded it up on to the bottom step beside the younger Ross, who scrambled out of the way, looking alarmed.

‘Loose his collar,’ recommended someone.

‘A key down his back.’

‘That’s for nosebleeds. Cold water on his neck.’

‘Be the first time in months,’ someone else muttered.

Maister Kennedy, ably thrusting Ninian’s head down, said, ‘I heard that, Walter. Maister Cunningham, can you go up and speak to the Dean and Principal? Michael, give a hand here. Lowrie, you know the prayers we should be saying for William. Will you begin, please?’

When Gil came down the stairs again, with the Dean and the Principal following him, the students were not visible, but the door to the Bachelors’ Schule was ajar, and a low hum of prayers floated out. Gil, reflecting on his uncle’s dictum that teachers are born, not made, led the way to the inner courtyard. Behind him, Maister Doby was still exclaiming distressfully.

‘I cannot believe it to be murder. Are you not mistaken, Gilbert, and it is merely some accident? And why should the boy be here, in the coalhouse? Oh, it is all deplorable.’

‘John,’ said the Dean in Scots, peering into the shadows at the body. ‘Haud yer wheesht.’ He stepped cautiously closer, holding his fine silk gown away from the gritty floor. ‘Aye, poor laddie. John, this is certainly murder.’

‘No a mischance?’

‘It canny be any kind of mischance,’ said Gil, understanding the anxious tone. ‘See, the buckle of the belt lies at the back of his neck. Somebody else did that to him, and did it deliberately.’

‘Aye. I see.’ Maister Doby bent his head, briefly.

Behind him in the vaulted passage, Patrick Coventry said suddenly, ‘Should we close the yett? Whoever did this may still be in the college.’

‘I asked the Steward to order it closed,’ Gil said. ‘But there is the Blackfriars gate, and the Arthurlie yett. The college is hardly secure.’

‘Well,’ said the Dean. He emerged from the coalhouse, and turned the key in the lock. ‘That puts paid to the Montgomery gift, I fear, John.’

‘I doubt you’re right, Patrick.’

‘We must inform the Faculty,’ continued the Dean, setting off across the courtyard with his black silk sleeves streaming behind him, ‘and our colleagues in Law and Theology. We must also inform the Chancellor.’

‘What, now?’ said Maister Doby, hurrying after him. The Dean glanced at him and paused thoughtfully.

‘You mean, I take it,’ he said, ‘that we should hesitate to disturb the Archbishop more often than strictly necessary.’

‘Aye. Forbye I think he’s at Stirling the now, with the King,’ added the Principal. ‘The messenger might as well wait till we’ve something better to send.’

‘Aye,’ said Dean Elphinstone in his turn. He looked at the key in his hand. ‘Whose is this?’

‘It is mine,’ said Maister Coventry.

In the Fore Hall, most of the Masters who had been present at the feast still sat talking. The harper was playing quietly, cups of spiced wine were still circulating, but the sweetmeats appeared to be finished. As the Dean appeared, conversation faltered, and those who followed him walked into a spreading silence. Behind Gil, Maister Kennedy and the cast of the play entered and clustered in a knot by the door. The young man Ninian looked ill but seemed in control of himself, his friends on either side of him. Another boy had certainly been weeping; even the gap-toothed Walter seemed subdued.

The Dean stepped on to the dais and nodded significantly to John Shaw the Steward, who took up position in front of him and thumped his great staff three times on the floor to attract attention.

‘Silence for the Dean,’ he commanded unnecessarily, bowed and stepped aside. The Dean’s blue gaze swept the hall. Gil moved back against the wall and watched the faces. Old Tommy Forsyth, anxious beneath his felt cap. David Gray still in his dazed state, with a faint dawning of — was it relief? Archie Crawford, the Faculty’s blue-jowled man of law, frowning critically. The harper and his sister, intent and concerned, the harper’s strange mood dissipated as his sister had predicted now that the body had been found.

‘Horribile dictu,’ began the Dean, and Gil, despite himself, felt a twinge of amusement. The phrase was used as an example in grammar schools all over the educated world, and he had never thought to hear it spoken in earnest. But what the Dean was recounting in his measured Latin was indeed horrible to relate.

In the buzz of shocked conversation which greeted the announcement, Maister Forsyth rose from his seat and bowed formally.

‘Dean,’ he said. ‘This is a dreadful thing which has happened.’ Many people nodded agreement. ‘Nevertheless, it is a deed committed by human hand. It is incumbent upon us to find the perpetrator and render justice to our dead fellow. The Faculty must act, and soon, to name one or more people to be responsible for this solemn duty.’

Maister Crawford rose in his turn, to stand small and neat staring across the width of the dais at the Dean.

‘Is it not rather,’ he began, ‘the duty of the Faculty to report this deplorable deed to the Chancellor, Robert our Archbishop? This having been done, he may consider the facts and name some one of our number to be quaestor.’

‘He’s feart the Faculty would pick him,’ said Patrick Coventry in Scots at Gil’s side.

‘You can tell,’ agreed Gil, grinning.

Maister Doby was explaining that the Chancellor was in Stirling with the King when he was interrupted.

‘Magistri, scholastici.’ McIan had risen to his feet. ‘I ask leave to speak. There is one here,’ he continued without waiting for permission, his Highland accent very strong, ‘has won justice already for the woman dear to me, murdered in secret in St Mungo’s yard.’ The outflung hand indicated Gil’s direction. He heard me answer Patrick Coventry just now, thought Gil. ‘He is careful and discreet and a member of your community. I commend him to you.’

‘There was some debate,’ said Gil to Maister Peter Mason. ‘But eventually it was agreed. Then I asked permission to send for you, and my clothes.’

He bundled cope and cassock together, put them down on the bench of Maister Kennedy’s reading-desk, and began to lace himself into his doublet.

‘I appreciate your wish for my support,’ said his prospective father-in-law. ‘I think,’ he added. He inspected the bench, appeared to decide it would take his weight, and sat down cautiously, his short black beard jutting against the light from the open window. ‘The more so, indeed, as the baby has refused the infallible remedy and is still crying. Alys was a good child,’ he added reflectively. ‘I had forgotten how fatiguing a crying baby is to listen to. What must we do, then? What have you set in motion?’