Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘Well, but this was serious,’ said Michael. ‘I mean, there wasn’t any foolery with it. They’d not left any humorous drawings, or stuffed a shirt to look like a lassie at the window, or — or anything.’ He threw another glance at Alys, and went red again.

‘Hm,’ said Lady Egidia.

‘Has anyone else been searched?’ Gil asked.

Michael shook his head. ‘We asked, but nobody’s saying. Oh, and I was to give you this. It’s from Auld — from Maister Kennedy. He said it was in his cassock in Maister Coventry’s chamber and could that be what they sought when his room was wrecked.’

He held out a small red book. Gil took it and turned the pages clumsily, one-handed.

‘It’s William’s writing,’ added Michael helpfully, ‘but it doesny make sense.’

‘Code again?’ said Alys, moving to look over Gil’s shoulder.

‘Not code,’ said Gil. ‘Initials, parts of words, a kind of private shorthand. It’s the boy’s red book with all his notes in it. Some of this will be harder to decipher. I mind now, it was on top of the pulpit in the Bachelors’ Schule where you were all dressing for the play. I asked Maister Kennedy if he knew about it and he took it for safe keeping. Michael, tell him I don’t know if it’s what they sought, but it will certainly be useful. Anything of William’s is likely to tell us something.’

‘Oh, and Jaikie at the yett bade me say he had a word for you,’ added Michael. ‘He said it was about something you spoke about yesternight.’

Feet sounded again in the outer room, the softer scuffle of one of the maidservants in her worn shoes. Jennet bobbed in the doorway.

‘If you please, mem,’ she said to Alys, ‘there’s water hot and set in your own chamber, and a comb and towels and all.’

‘Thank you, Jennet,’ said Alys, and turned to Gil’s mother, the pinched look submerged in the procedures of a civil welcome. ‘Would it please you to wash, madame?’

‘That sounds good,’ said Egidia Muirhead, rising. ‘You will come and see me while I’m in Glasgow, godson. I have messages from your home for you, and a great cake with plums in it.’

Michael agreed with enthusiasm that he would certainly wait on her, and bowed as she followed Alys to the stair.

‘Tell me what had been searched,’ said Gil. The boy’s expression changed.

‘Everything we’d marked, maister,’ he said warily. ‘Ninian’s carrel, my carrel, Lowrie’s. All our kists. My books had been moved about, for they wereny in the order I keep them, but the other two wereny sure.’

‘Papers?’ Gil asked.

‘I think so. They’d been careful,’ he said, ‘you couldny have tellt, except for Lowrie’s idea, and we got tired of knotting hairs after a bit, so if they went through all our papers one by one we’d no way of knowing.’

‘And what could they have been looking for?’ Gil asked. ‘We think William was involved in more than simply some scaffery round the college.’ Michael eyed him from under the thatch of mousy hair. ‘He may have been selling information to one faction or another. Could one of you have had something he might find valuable? A letter from home, perhaps, or a paper of some sort?’

‘William’s dead, maister,’ Michael pointed out. ‘He canny be searching the college. He’s in the bell-tower next door with two friars praying for him. They’d notice if he got up to go and search our chamber.’

‘I know,’ agreed Gil, ‘but someone is looking for something, possibly for more than one thing,’ he added, recalling a comment the mason had made, ‘which must be connected with William’s murder. A book like this, or some papers. Can you think of nothing one of you might have had that would fit that description?’

‘We’ve seven books between us,’ Michael said, ‘and papers in plenty. But nothing’s been taken, that we can see, maister.’

‘Could William have hidden something in your room,’ asked Gil desperately, ‘for someone else to collect later?’

‘That’s just — ’ began Michael, before civility stopped him. ‘No, for we were all through our papers before Vespers, and we’d have seen his writing then. You couldny mistake it.’

Gil eased the wolfhound’s head on his knee. It hardly stirred.

‘In this notebook,’ he said, ‘which I suspect is a list of secrets which William was using as a basis for his extortion, there is a page headed with a heart, which might be held to stand for the Douglases, and the letter M beside it.’ Michael, descendant of the Douglas who carried the heart of Robert Bruce to the Holy Land, said nothing, staring at him. ‘Here it says A scripsit Eng. Could the Great Douglas — the Earl of Angus — be writing letters to England? And this line has an M and another heart, and the little sign they use in pedigrees to signify marriage, and L Kilmaurs. I assume you aren’t marrying into the Cunninghams,’ he said lightly, but Michael’s expression did not change. ‘So this probably refers to the rumour which is going round my family too, that Angus is hoping to marry his daughter Marion to my kinsman Lord Kilmaurs.’

‘It’s old news now,’ Michael said.

‘William has drawn a line through it,’ Gil agreed, ‘which probably means he has either sold the information, or found it unsaleable.’

‘Is there more?’ asked Michael after a moment.

‘A little,’ said Gil, ‘but I need more time to interpret it. Can you cast any light on what should be here?’

There was another pause. Then, the ready colour rising again, Michael burst out with, ‘Maister, you willny tell my faither?’

‘What is there to tell him?’ Gil asked. ‘That you talked to a fellow student? Where did the word come from? Does it come from home?’

Michael nodded, biting his lip. ‘You ken the way the old man gossips. Forbye, I think he hopes I’ve a future as one of the King’s officers. Chancellor, or treasurer, or some such. So he writes all this news to me, how Angus is writing to England, and negotiating with Kilmaurs for his daughter’s marriage, and trying to get the Douglas earldom revived. I don’t know where he gets the half of it himself.’

‘And William found one of these letters?’

‘Aye.’ Michael scowled. ‘I kept them shut away, but last year when we were mentoring him and his fellows, he poked about in my carrel, and sold what he found to the Montgomery, who likely passed it all to Argyll. Then when the King set siege to Angus at Tantallon, you remember? William told me what he’d done and threatened to tell my father I’d sold it on if I didny tell him more. I tried not to,’ he said desperately, ‘but he’d some way of knowing when I got word from home, and he’d come and make more threats.’

‘Are all the letters still there? Was that why your chamber was searched?’

‘No, no, I looked for those the first thing after my books and my notes. They’ve no been touched.’

‘Why did you not tell your friends about this?’ Gil asked. ‘I’d have thought the three of you together were equal to anything.’

‘That’s what they said last night,’ Michael admitted, shamefaced. ‘But the more he demanded, the harder it got to tell anyone. I feel a right fool now.’

‘You’re not alone in giving in to his demands,’ Gil said, leafing one-handed through the little book. ‘There are a lot of entries here I can make little of. Near every page has a different heading. What a busy young man William must have been.’

‘Aye, he was,’ said Michael grimly, then added with a sudden show of maturity, ‘but I’m free of his threats now, and he’s deid, and never shriven of his misdeeds.’ He grinned mirthlessly. ‘It’s like that poem my father’s aye on about. How does it go, about riches? Winning of them is covatice, and Keeping of them is curious.’