Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

The college kitchen, having long since served up dinner in the Laigh Hall for the remaining scholars and regents, was resting from its labours. The charcoal fires out of the long brick cooking-range had been tipped into the hearth and lay in smouldering heaps, the blue smoke curling up past the long iron spits. Two sturdy lasses and a pair of grooms were scouring crocks in a corner, and another groom and a boy in a student’s belted gown were carrying them away. Some older women were seated round the table and Mistress Dickson, in a great chair in the corner, her feet in their large cracked shoes propped on a stool, was just sending another groom for some of the college’s wine.

‘Well, Maister Cunningham!’ she greeted him. ‘Sit you down and tell me about your marriage, then. What like’s your bride? Can she bake and brew?’

‘With the best,’ Gil assured her. He drew up the stool she indicated and the pup settled beside him on the flagged floor. ‘Agnes, is there any chance of some scraps for this beast? He must be yawpin with hunger, poor creature, for he can’t have been fed since before Terce.’

‘There’s some of the rabbit pottage left that it could have,’ said one of the women at the table, ‘and a wee take of the spiced pork. The plain roastit meat’s all ate up.’

‘There were just the two made dishes, is that right?’

‘Aye, and that was enough,’ said Mistress Dickson briskly. ‘For the money they allowed me, I did them proud, anyone’ll tell you that. Two made dishes, one of them kept for the high table, three sorts of plain roastit meat, an onion tart with flampoints to each table, all the breid they could eat.’ She checked the items off on long bony fingers. ‘And for the second course, a pike, kale pottage with roots in, a big dish of fruminty to each table. Raisin-cakes and cheese to clear it with.’

‘And the pheasant,’ said someone.

‘Aye, I forgot the pheasant. Sic a trouble it was to get it back in its skin.’

Gil, uncertain of how such a young animal’s belly would react to spiced pork, negotiated tactfully for a portion of the Almayne pottage, and began to remove the meat from the splintery bones with his knife. The dog accepted each morsel delicately, making no attempt to snatch or snap at his fingers, its hunger apparent only in the speed with which it swallowed. Mistress Dickson watched approvingly, over a cup of wine.

‘So that William turned up,’ she said at length.

‘He did,’ agreed Gil, picking another fragment of bone out of the bowl. ‘In the coalhouse.’

‘Tam, there, was in the coalhouse not an hour before he was found,’ said Mistress Dickson. Gil looked round, and found one of the grooms grinning importantly. ‘Weren’t you no, Tam?’

‘I was, and all,’ agreed Tam. ‘He wisny there, but,’ he added in tones of disappointment.

‘Saints preserve us, what a thocht!’ said one of the sturdy girls in the corner. The other one giggled.

‘Well, he wouldny be,’ said the student helping Tam. ‘Seeing it was the limehouse he was in anyway.’

‘What time was that?’ Gil asked. ‘Was it raining?’

‘What time? It was when I sent him for coals,’ Mistress Dickson interpolated.

‘And when would that be?’

After some discussion, with help from the three women at the table, it was agreed that Tam had gone for coals after one shower but before another.

‘What were the coals for? Whose dinner were you cooking by then, Agnes?’ Gil asked.

‘Aye, now you’re asking.’ Mistress Dickson scowled at the pup for a moment, chewing her lip. ‘I think it was the college dinner. I think I got the feast cooked on one carry of coals, and Isa there put the water on for the kale for the college dinner, and then we needed more. And lucky we did, for if Tam’d been later he’d have found the coalhouse door locked, by what I hear, and the dinner still to cook.’

‘And was that about the time the thunder started?’ Gil asked.

‘By here, you’re right, maister!’ said Tam. ‘For I mind now, I heard thunder when I was in the coalhouse. I thought it was the coals falling down on me!’ He laughed hugely at his own joke.

‘It was after that he went in the limehouse,’ observed the student.

‘It was the coalhouse, Nicholas,’ said Mistress Dickson crossly, ‘as Adam there’ll tell you.’

‘They said they’d put him in the limehouse.’

‘Who said that?’ asked Gil, feeding the dog another morsel.

The young man Nicholas, finding everyone looking at him, went red, but persisted. ‘When Maister Shaw sent me back to help with the crocks. I saw Lowrie Livingstone and the other two carry him into the passage that goes by the limehouse. They didny see me,’ he added.

‘They put him in the coalhouse, Nicholas,’ repeated Mistress Dickson. ‘I don’t know why you’re aye on about the limehouse.’

‘They said the limehouse,’ repeated Nicholas sulkily.

‘When did they say that?’ Gil asked.

‘When they came out of the passage. I was at the top of the kitchen stair,’ said Nicholas, pointing at the door, ‘and they came out just under my feet laughing about it. One of them said he’d be heard when he shouted, and Lowrie said In the limehouse? The walls are three feet thick. Then they went away across to the Outer Close.’

‘So was it them that killed him?’ asked one of the women at the table.

‘Why did they lie about him being in the limehouse?’ wondered Tam.

‘Well, it’s certain he was found in the coalhouse,’ said one of the men scouring crocks, ‘for I helped to bear him out of there.’

‘Aye, you did, Adam,’ agreed Mistress Dickson. ‘Just when I was needing you to fetch me another sack of meal.’

‘Did you see Father Bernard?’ Gil asked.

Nicholas looked blank. ‘Him? No. Was he about?’

‘One or two people were about,’ said Gil vaguely ‘Who else was here in the kitchen?’

‘I was,’ admitted Adam, pausing again in his work, ‘and I mind now, Nicholas, you came in and said something about William in the limehouse. I wonder how he got into the coalhouse,’ he speculated, ‘for he couldny open the door, with his hands tied like that. Strange we never heard him shouting or anything.’

‘Was his hands tied?’ said another of the women at the table avidly.

‘You heard nothing?’ asked Gil. ‘Where were you all?’

‘We were all here,’ said Mistress Dickson, ‘for Adam and Aikie yonder had shifted the most of the crocks already, while they were all at their play, and there was no more for us to do in the Fore Hall.’

‘Everyone who’s here now?’ Gil persisted. They looked round at one another, and several people nodded.

‘And Robert,’ said Tam.

‘I’d sent Robert to make sure all the crocks was shifted,’ said Mistress Dickson. In the corner, the two scullery-lasses looked quickly at one another and away again. ‘Rightly that’s John Shaw’s business, but he’d enough to see to, he asked me to oversee the crocks.’

‘I saw that William before that,’ said the third woman at the table.

‘Did you so? Where was he?’ Gil asked.

‘He crossed the Inner Close, here, and went up the next stair. He seemed as if he was in a hurry.’

‘Maybe you were the last to see him alive, Eppie,’ said the woman beside her with a pleasurable shudder.

‘Except for who killed him,’ Eppie pointed out. ‘I wondered at the time,’ she added, ‘for they were all still at their daft play, and I ken fine his chamber’s in the Outer Close where the siller dwells, but we’ve been ower thrang here, maister, to worry about one ill-natured laddie getting somewhere he shouldny.’

‘You found him ill-natured?’ said Gil innocently. A courteous paw was placed on his arm, and he handed over the last piece of meat. ‘The Dean and the Principal spoke very highly of him.’