Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘Pick a likely culprit and put him to the thumbscrews,’ said Montgomery. ‘I’ve a set I can lend ye, if the college has none. That’ll get ye a confession, quick as winkin.’

‘That will not be necessary,’ said the Principal.

‘Listen, Maister Doby,’ said Lord Montgomery, getting to his feet. ‘This is Sunday, right? We’ll have the funeral Tuesday or Wednesday, and if this long drink of water hasny named our William’s killer to me by the time William’s in the ground, I’ll come in here myself with the thumbscrews and — ’

‘Not,’ said the Dean in glacial tones, ‘on University premises.’

There was another of those pauses.

‘No?’ said Lord Montgomery softly. ‘Then how about outside? Ye canny hide in yir two closes in saecula saeculorum, clerk. I’ll be waiting. I’ll pick them off as they go into the town, and put them to the question. Ye’ve got till after the funeral,’ he said again to Gil, and strode past him.

The mason stepped out of his way, and closed the door carefully behind him.

‘He must think a great deal of William,’ he observed, moving to the window which looked out into the courtyard.

‘I confess, Patrick,’ said Maister Doby in wavering tones, ‘that I feel the college could do without that man’s money now.’

‘I too, John,’ agreed the Dean. ‘Is that all you have learned so far, Gilbert?’

‘Not quite,’ said Gil. The Dean waited. So did Gil.

‘We speak to William’s friends next, no?’ said the mason after a short time. ‘Where do we find them?’

‘I will have them sent for,’ said the Dean, giving in.

‘You may use this chamber. But you must make haste, Gilbert,’ said Maister Doby anxiously, ‘for Vespers will be early and solemn tonight and the college will go in procession to the Blackfriars kirk from the Fore Hall.’

Ralph Gibson proved to be the lanky boy who had played Collegia, now revealing a remarkable crop of spots. Traces of paint still showed in front of his ears and at his hairline, and there was blue on his puffy eyelids. He sat down when bidden, and stared at Gil anxiously, his bony hands clasped between his knees.

‘You know what has happened, Ralph?’ said Gil. The boy nodded. ‘William Irvine is dead, and somebody killed him.’ Ralph nodded again.

‘It wisny me, maister!’ he bleated earnestly. ‘William was my friend. Him and Robert and me.’

‘That’s why I hope you can help me,’ Gil said. ‘Tell me about William.’

‘He was just William,’ said Ralph, taken aback.

‘Was he good company?’ Gil asked. Ralph nodded again.

‘Oh, aye, he was. He knew all sort of things,’ he added.

‘William told you things?’ said the mason. The boy glanced sideways at him under the blue eyelids. ‘What sort of things?’

‘All sort.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Well, where Maister Forsyth got his lecture notes from. Who tellt Maister Stewart that you canny believe all the doctors of the Kirk have wrote.’

‘He told you these things?’ Gil said, with no particular intonation.

‘Well, maybe no.’ Ralph wriggled a little. ‘But he kent them himsel. He said so. And I tellt him things.’

‘That hint about Father Bernard — was that what William meant by his question at the meeting?’

‘Maybe,’ said Ralph, floundering slightly. ‘I think quite likely, maister.’

‘William was a good friend?’ asked the mason.

Ralph, understanding the phrase in the Scots sense, nodded again.

‘He got me out of trouble with Maister Gray,’ he disclosed, ‘and he lent me money to pay my fees when my faither’s rick-yaird burnt out. Maister, will I hae to pay that back?’ he burst out. ‘For I haveny got it. William’s heir might want it, mightn’t he no?’

The pup, curled up on Gil’s gown by his chair, raised its head to study him, then tucked its nose under a hairy paw and went back to sleep.

‘William was a bastard,’ Gil said. ‘His nearest kin will get his goods and money. If there is nothing written down, Ralph, there is no proof of the loan at law — ’

‘Oh, but he wrote it down,’ Ralph said. ‘In his wee red book.’

‘A red book?’ Gil asked, memory stirring faintly. ‘What book was that?’

‘He wrote everything down,’ said Ralph, with vicarious pride. ‘He was aye making notes.’ He mimed a careful scribe, writing small into his cupped left hand. That was it, Gil thought, recalling the sight of William writing in his tablets while the Dean’s golden oratory rolled over their heads. Writing that draft testament we found? ‘He said, you never kent when a thing would come in handy, and there it would be in his bookie.’

William’s kin would not be bound by what the boy set out in his fictive will, but they might be prepared to be guided by it, Gil considered, looking at the tear-stained face in front of him. And half of William’s goods, or even a quarter of the worth of what they had found in the wrecked chamber, would be a considerable sum to this mourner.

‘Whoever is the nearest kin,’ he said, ‘I will speak for you in the matter of the loan. Now, tell us, Ralph, what did you do at the end of the play? Was anyone with you?’

‘At the end of the play?’ Ralph stared uncertainly for a moment. ‘Oh, aye. We all ran out when the rain begun. Robert and me went to our chamber, for he’d left some notes of William’s at his window and I’d left my other hose to air. Wringing wet they were, too,’ he added.

‘Where is your chamber?’ the mason asked. Ralph produced some tangled directions to one of the stairs in the inner courtyard.

‘And then you both went back to the Fore Hall?’ said Gil. ‘Did you go anywhere else first? How about the privy? Did you see anyone else?’

‘Well, everyone else was running about too,’ said Ralph reasonably. ‘There was Henry and Walter, up our stair, for I heard them shouting about Walter’s boots. And when I was back down in the close I mind there was Andrew, and Nick Gray. And then I just gaed back and took off my costume and cleaned my face, and then I gaed up to the Fore Hall, for there was some of the comfits for the players.’

‘And Robert went with you, did he?’ asked Gil. ‘This is Robert Montgomery?’

‘No, no, he’d to go back to the kitchen. He’d been serving at table, see,’ Ralph explained. ‘He had to go back and clear. Walter and Henry and Andrew and me,’ he counted off on his fingers, ‘all gaed back to the Bachelors’ Schule thegither. Robert and Nick were wantit in the kitchen. Maister Shaw was there and sent them back.’

‘Did they go to the kitchen together?’ Gil asked.

Ralph shook his head. ‘I didny see. Likely they did.’

‘What did you eat at the feast?’ Gil asked.

Ralph, startled by the change of subject, blinked at him, but answered readily enough, ‘Rabbit stew and some of the onion tart. I didny get much. We had to go and get changed for the play.’

The mason turned from the window where he had been looking out into the outer courtyard.

‘Tell us this, boy,’ he said. ‘Who do you think might have killed William?’

‘I don’t know, maister!’ There were tears in the young voice. ‘But I wish he hadny done it!’

‘Poor boy,’ said Maistre Pierre, when Ralph had gone.

‘A poor creature,’ Gil agreed. ‘I suppose William saw that too.’

‘And what of this red book?’

‘I have seen such a thing.’ Gil frowned. ‘I can’t remember where.’

‘It will come to you,’ said the mason with certainty. ‘Shall we have in the other boy now? Maister Doby said we should make haste.’

Having seen the head of the family, Gil felt there was no doubt that Robert Montgomery was entitled to his surname. The dark hair sprang from the wide forehead in the same way, and there was the same effect of radiant rage, no less powerful for being subjugated to the good manners of a well-taught student.