Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘He is not hunting,’ he said, ‘he’s curious. Look — his hackles are still down.’

The wolfhound reared up with one paw on Maistre Pierre’s knee, bringing its muzzle within reach of the baby, who reached out with both arms. One small hand grasped a soft grey ear, the other reached for the shiny black nose. The pup’s tail swung, and there was an unfamiliar sound.

John McIan or Sempill was laughing.

‘Well!’ said Alys.

‘Well!’ said the mason, and freed one hand to wipe his eyes. All three adults exchanged idiotic smiles, while the pup scrambled awkwardly on to the mason’s knee beside the baby.

‘The question is,’ said Gil, watching critically as it tried to hitch up a dangling back leg, ‘whether the dog will stay with John or follow me when I leave the room.’

‘Where are you going?’ said Alys, looking up quickly.

‘To speak to Mistress Irvine. What can you tell me about her?’

‘That she is a Paisley body, married to one of Montgomery’s tenants, not lacking for money in any way,’ said Alys, on an apologetic note, ‘and that she has gone to hear Vespers with the rest of the household. They will be back in good time. What else do you need to see to this evening?’

‘The boy’s clothes,’ said the mason. ‘Where did you leave them, Gil?’

The pup looked anxious, but did not attempt to follow Gil, and wagged its tail in relief when he returned with the unsavoury bundle.

‘Of all vanegloir the lamp and the mirour. William certainly had his vanities. His hair was newly barbered, and these are excellent boots,’ he said, unrolling them from the folds of worn blue-grey stuff. ‘They do not match with the gown at all.’

‘Nor with the remainder of the garments,’ agreed Alys, prodding fastidiously at the hose. ‘These are past washing, they must be burnt. Have they nobody to mend their heels and toes? I will put the linen to soak and it can be washed tomorrow.’

‘Are there not statutes concerning dress?’ asked the mason.

‘There are,’ said Gil. He set down the boots and lifted the gown. ‘Most folk ignore them if they can afford better. This was not new when William got it, I would say. It has seen much use.’ He turned the garment, looking at the frayed lining. ‘No — I hoped there might be somewhere to conceal secrets, but it appears not.’

‘Perhaps the doublet?’ suggested the mason, easing the sleeping baby into a more convenient position. ‘What sort of secrets do we search for?’

‘Just secrets.’ Gil put the gown aside, and Alys picked it up and began to fold it neatly. ‘William was a magpie for stray facts, as far as I can make out, and there is this red book the boy Gibson mentioned, which was certainly not concealed in his room.’

‘Or if it was,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘the searcher found it before us, with the other papers. There were no papers in the chamber at all.’

Gil looked up from William’s doublet. ‘Yes, I suppose so. He — the searcher — would be at pains to destroy any evidence against himself.’

‘Surely,’ said Alys, lifting the other side of the doublet where it trailed on the floor, ‘the best evidence is what you deduce from sign, like a huntsman? The book can only suggest names to us.’

‘I think I will teach you philosophy,’ said Gil. ‘You think more logically than most men I know already.’

She coloured, and looked down at the doublet. Gil put out a hand to caress the side of her face, and found his fingers caught in her hair as she bent her head, suddenly intent.

‘What’s this? There’s something in the lining. It feels too big to be a coin.’

‘A medallion?’ suggested the mason. Alys turned the inside of the garment to the light.

‘He has slit the lining and made a pocket for this,’ she reported, easing at the cloth. ‘I think he did it himself, because it’s a very tight fit. Ah, here it comes!’

Something with the dull gleam of bronze slid on to her lap.

‘Mon Dieu! Look at that!’ she said. She lifted the object, and handed it to Gil. Their fingers caught and clung for a moment as he took it.

‘Whatever is it?’ he wondered, and turned the object over. It was a disc about as large as the palm of his hand, with a flat outer ring which could turn about the inner portion. The centre was engraved with the portrait of a saint whose attributes Gil could not make out, and around the saint and on the outer ring were two sequences of letters in order. ‘Some kind of bronze hornbook?’

‘Have you never seen one of these?’ Alys took it back, and turned the outer ring carefully. ‘It’s a cipher disc. See — if I set the A on the outer ring against the D on the inner one, then all the other letters are set against the letter four along, and all I have to do to cipher a message is to read off the letters I want to make the word, instead of having to count on my fingers. This will be very useful. Which reminds me, father,’ she added, ‘I deciphered the letter from John of Castile. He writes that the mad Italian has got money for his voyage. He may have sailed by now, who knows?’

‘What, that man who wants to find the western passage to the Indies?’ Gil asked.

‘Sooner him than me,’ said the mason. ‘Can you imagine? How long will it take him, do you suppose? And shut up on a boat with a crew of madmen, for he will certainly not find sane men to sail with him.’

‘The inner ring is rearranged,’ said Alys, still studying the cipher disc. ‘It doesn’t generate a simple substitution. It must be one of a pair, then. I wonder who has the other disc? It means, you realize,’ she went on, looking up at Gil, ‘that I can decipher that paper from the boy’s purse as soon as I get the time.’

‘Ah, yes, the paper,’ said the mason. ‘What of the other, the one which is not in code?’

‘This one?’ Alys turned and reached on to her father’s tall writing-desk. From under a green-glazed pottery frog she drew a sheet of paper. ‘Yes, this is the one. It refers to many people, but only by an initial.’

Gil took the paper, tilting it as the mason craned to see without disturbing his sleeping burden of child and dog.

‘M will be in G ,’ he read again. ‘H passed through for Irvine. I wonder-’

‘Montgomery is in Glasgow,’ Alys said. ‘I think that must be right. And Catherine tells me Lord Hepburn went to Irvine last week to take ship for France.’

‘Oh, yes, about the King’s French marriage.’ Gil looked down at the paper again. ‘It’s a list of small facts like that.’

‘Did he collect them for his own interest, do you suppose,’ speculated Maistre Pierre, ‘or for someone else’s?’

‘He bought these boots recently,’ said Alys. She turned one up and showed them the sole, still flat and even.

‘Yes,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘And he had that device for writing in cipher in his possession.’ His eye ran down the creased paper, and he grinned. ‘Alys, we are observed. See this line? C marriage to dau of burgess. And yet I had to tell him my name. He’s had this by hearsay.’

‘He has collected all the gossip of Glasgow,’ said Alys. ‘I wonder who he was selling it to?’

‘Espionage, in effect,’ said the mason.

‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘And the question, as Alys says, is who he was spying for.’

‘But I know where he was getting the gossip,’ said Alys. Gil looked up and met her eye.

‘The barber’s,’ they said together.

When the household returned from Vespers Gil and Alys were in the courtyard, seated on the stone bench at the foot of the stairs while the wolfhound ranged about inspecting the flower-pots.

‘When will your mother reach Glasgow?’ she asked, drawing away from his arm as the voices echoed in the pend.