Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘Quhat blessitnes has than richess?’ Gil capped the lines, aware of a quite ridiculous level of pleasure in the boy’s implicit compliment. ‘Indeed. So William has found, I suppose.’

‘I’m no one for poetry,’ Michael confided, ‘no like Lowrie, or my kinsman Gavin at St Andrews, but whiles ye can see the point of it.’ He looked at the sky. ‘Maister, I must be gone. I’ve missed two lectures now and it’ll soon be dinner time.’

‘Very well,’ said Gil. ‘Give Maister Kennedy my message. And will you also tell Nicholas Gray I need a word with him? I hope to be at the college later today and I can speak to him then.’

‘Yes, Bernard was the Montgomery’s chaplain,’ said Egidia Muirhead. She sat back as Alys began to clear the small table at which they had eaten. ‘That was quite delicious, Mistress Mason. For, I suppose, ten years. Certainly from the time Hugh and his brother were still in tutelage. Bernard’s mother used to boast about how well Montgomery trusted him, until the scandal.’

‘Scandal?’ said Gil.

She looked affectionately at him. ‘You sound like your uncle David. Yes, a scandal. I forget the details, which I suppose is an object lesson. One thinks at the time one will never live it down, but the world forgets. Let me see — was it land or a leman?’

‘This was in Ayrshire?’ Gil prompted. She nodded, accepting a glass of Alys’s cowslip wine. ‘How did you hear of it?’

‘Gil, it was fifteen years ago, the year your sisters had the measles. I heard about it when I went back to Stirling after Elsbeth died. Or am I thinking of that business of Meg Douglas’s? Your good health, Mistress Mason.’

‘It must have been difficult for Father Bernard, being chaplain to Lord Montgomery,’ said Alys, when they had drunk a toast each. Gil and his mother both looked at her. ‘These great houses are usually full of dogs,’ she pointed out.

‘That would be no trouble for Bernard,’ said Lady Egidia blankly. ‘He used to hunt with the household, his mother told me. I recall her boasting about some occasion when he saved Montgomery himself from being slashed by a boar. They’d be hip deep in dogs.’

‘Curious,’ said Gil, looking down at the wolfhound, which was lying at his feet watching him with an alert eye. ‘This fellow tried to attack him as soon as he saw him, and his explanation was that dogs often dislike him because of his robes.’

‘What a strange thing to say,’ said his mother. ‘Of course, he wouldny hunt in his habit. Does the beast attack other friars?’

‘He’s a very well-mannered dog,’ said Alys, before Gil could speak. ‘Whoever schooled him has done well by him.’

‘He had no objection to the Dominicans at prayer beside William’s bier.’ Gil looked down at the animal again, and it raised its head hopefully. ‘Later,’ he said, and it sighed and put its nose on its paws.

‘Bernard always was inclined to say what seemed right at the moment,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘I should make little of it, Gil. Now, are you coming up the hill with me?’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I must go back to the college and speak to the young man’s friends.’

‘You should be staying quiet,’ said Alys, ‘with that compress on your wrist again.’

‘My fingers are less painful.’ Gil tried to move them, and stopped. ‘I have until noon tomorrow to find out who killed William Irvine, or Hugh Montgomery will take the law into his own hands. I should have been out questioning half the college this morning.’

‘Then I shall see you at supper tonight,’ said his mother.

‘It depends,’ he said cautiously. ‘If Maister Mason returns from seeing to his men he will help me, and things may go faster, but I may be late home.’

‘Very well, dear. I’ll wait up for you.’ Lady Cunningham rose, and turned to Alys. Gil thrust his feet into the pair of the mason’s slip-slop shoes Alys had procured for him and rose likewise as his mother continued, ‘Mistress Mason, I must thank you again for your hospitality, and for your charity in taking in my son. And now I must trespass on your time no longer. Is my groom still in your kitchen?’

‘He is,’ said Alys, ‘and your horse is easily fetched, but will you not stay longer? I am sure my father would like to talk to you. He only went out because his journeyman sent to ask his advice.’

‘I am expected in Rottenrow.’ Lady Cunningham smiled sweetly at Alys and shook out her muddy skirts. ‘I am quite sure we’ll meet again, my dear. Your father and my son appear to be good friends.’

‘Mother,’ began Gil in exasperation, but Alys returned the smile with equal sweetness and bent her knee in a formal curtsy.

‘I’m sure we will,’ she agreed. ‘I look forward to it.’

Gil stared rather grimly at Lady Cunningham and her groom vanishing round the curve of the High Street.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said. Alys put a hand on his arm.

‘Don’t say anything you’ll regret,’ she counselled. He looked down at her with a reluctant smile, and she drew him back through the pend into the courtyard of her father’s house.

‘She’s being very difficult,’ he said. ‘And I haven’t time to coax her round now.’

‘Does coaxing her round work?’ Alys asked, watching the wolfhound which was stalking a bee.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘She makes up her own mind. My sister Dorothea’s the same.’

‘That’s your oldest sister? The one who is a nun?’ He nodded, and flinched. ‘Gil, does your head still ache?’

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘I need to look at that list of names your father got out of the flower-pot. I need to speak to people at the college. I hope you can get to the kitchen-girls, and there’s William’s notebook and William’s coded writing to decipher. I can’t think what to do first. And more important than all of these, more important to me than the future of the college, I want my mother to like our marriage.’

‘Come into the house,’ said Alys. ‘We can do nothing about courting your mother’s good opinion at this moment, but the other matters can be dealt with. I haven’t had time to tell you yet — Annis brought the two college servants by our kitchen this morning, and I got a word with them.’

‘Alys!’ He stared down at her. ‘What did they have to say?’

She pulled a face. ‘Not girls I would have in my household. Good enough workers, I’ve no doubt, but silly. I wouldn’t leave them in charge of a bowl of milk. So it took me a while to get them to the point. Is it always like that, questioning witnesses?’

‘It can be,’ he agreed. ‘Did they recall what you were asking them about?’

‘Eventually It was difficult, for I had to speak to them out here where Mistress Irvine wouldn’t hear, and they were alarmed by being taken aside by Annis’s dame. Eventually I had to resort to flattery.’

‘I’ve always found it a useful weapon.’

She smiled quickly, and nodded. ‘It worked in this case. In the end, all it came down to was — I hope I have the names right — that they heard Nick Gray say that William was in the limehouse, poor boy, and that Robert Montgomery also heard it and — so they said — laughed a vengeful laugh.’

‘A vengeful laugh,’ he repeated.

She nodded again. ‘They seem addicted to ballads. I took it to be the perception of hindsight.’

‘And a vengeful laugh laughed he.’ Gil scuffed thoughtfully at the cobbles with the toe of his borrowed slipper. ‘So they felt Robert disliked William.’

‘I asked them that, and they said nobody liked William. What a dreadful thing, to be disliked by everybody.’

‘He had one admirer among his fellows,’ said Gil, ‘and Robert his kinsman tolerated him, but I should say he was one who liked himself well enough for nobody else’s opinion to matter.’ He sighed. ‘Well, we can set that aside now. I had hoped it would be of more value.’