Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘I have also — ’ She tugged at his arm. ‘Come into the house and I’ll see the dog and the baby fed. I have also begun work on the coded notes.’

‘When did you find the time?’ he marvelled. ‘And …?’

‘I have discovered the correct setting of the cipher disc, and deciphered the superscription.’

‘The superscription? You mean it is a letter?’ Gil followed her up the stair to the door, the dog at his heels.

‘To his kinsman, Lord Montgomery.’ Alys paused to look back at him. ‘Why would he write to his kinsman in code?’

‘Ah,’ said Gil. ‘That fits with something Michael said. William sold some information to the Montgomery last year — obviously he was still collecting for him. What else does it say?’

‘That I have yet to find out.’

‘It could,’ said Gil slowly, ‘this letter, be what they were searching for when I was attacked. I’m reasonably sure those were Montgomery’s men, possibly even the man himself, in which case I’m lucky to be alive. And they didn’t find what they wanted, since they returned what they took. Alys, we need to know what it says.’

‘Well, I got no further — Annis arrived with the two girls — but now I have the disc set it should take little time. Shall I go on with that, or do you want to look at the list out of the flower-pot, or the notebook?’

When Alys returned to the mason’s panelled, comfortable closet, carrying a little beaker and a jug of something which gave off a herbal-scented steam, Gil had the pages of Maister Coventry’s neat writing spread out on the desk.

‘I think we must deal with this first,’ he said. ‘From this I can decide who to question next, and then you can decipher the coded letter. If you have the time,’ he added, raising his head to look at her.

‘The dinner is in hand. What does this tell us?’

Gil bent to the orderly sheets again.

‘He said they asked where each was after the play,’ he recalled, ‘and who was with them. If we can put them all into groups who confirm one another’s lists, we should be able to eliminate most of them.’

‘We may need a slate,’ said Alys. ‘Or several. Drink this.’

‘What is it?’ he said suspiciously.

‘Mostly willow-bark tea. It should help your head.’

‘My head is — ’ he began, but she held the beaker out insistently. ‘Oh, very well.’ He tossed back the dose and made a face. ‘I’ve tasted worse. You’ll never make an apothecary if your potions are palatable.’

‘I won’t bother putting honey in it next time. Now what must we do with this list?’ She bent over one of the pages. ‘Maister William Anderson, crossed Outer Close and Inner Close, stood in kitchen-yard, with Maister John Scoular, Maister Robert Kerr, Maister James Murray, saw many students in the close.’ She looked thoughtfully from one sheet to another. ‘Your friends have done half the work in the way it is set out. I will fetch a slate, or perhaps two, and we can divide up the groups as you said.’

‘You will have to write,’ he said ruefully, looking at his damaged hand.

‘Yes, and you may soak that in this hot water. I put mallow in it, and violet leaves.’

‘I don’t need anything for it,’ he said.

That once settled, they started rearranging the list. Gil was surprised by how rapidly it went. He sat by the window, his bruised arm immersed to the elbow, and read each entry aloud to Alys. She stood at the tall desk, and copied the names down in a grid which she had drawn up on one of the large slates from the heap in the courtyard, nodding and muttering to herself as each of the blocks filled up.

‘This is strange,’ she said as they reached the final page.

‘What is?’ Gil asked, finger on the next name on the list.

‘There seem to be two different sets of people who can say they saw Father Bernard.’

‘Perhaps there were.’

‘No, but — ’ She looked from one box to another. ‘They didn’t see one another. These four were crossing the Inner Close when they saw him, and this pair stayed in the Outer Close.’

‘Perhaps he crossed one and then the other,’ said Gil, ‘on the way to or from Blackfriars.’

‘Mm,’ she said, still scowling at her grid. ‘What does he say himself?’

‘He doesn’t seem to have been asked,’ Gil reported, turning pages one-handed.

‘Well, you must ask him. Give me the other names.’

Gil read the names for her, and she wrote them carefully in the appropriate boxes, and finally sat back and shook her head.

‘No, it still doesn’t fit. People contradict themselves, and nobody remembers everybody they saw, but everyone else was seen by someone from more than one group. See, you and your friends are here, where this group saw you going to the Arthurlie building, wherever that is, and here, where this group bears them out, and here again where two of this larger group noticed you returning. But only these people here noticed Father Bernard in the Inner Close, very soon after the play, and only these two saw him crossing the Outer Close.’

Gil peered over her shoulder, holding his wet arm out to one side, and finally shook his head.

‘I can’t see it. I accept what you say,’ he said hastily as she drew breath to explain again, ‘but I can’t make it out. Maybe when my head’s clearer. What interests me is what he was doing in the Outer Close. The door to the Theology Schule is in the Inner Close.’

‘Was he giving a lecture?’

‘So Nick Kennedy said.’

‘Gil, you’re dripping everywhere. Let me dry that.’ She lifted the towel she had laid ready and mopped carefully at his wrist. ‘Is it any easier now?’

‘Maybe.’ He tried his fingers again. ‘Maybe a little.’ He put his arm over her shoulders, drawing her close, and turned back to the spidery lines on the slate. ‘What you are saying is that everyone else is vouched for, but Father Bernard, who was not interviewed, seems to be in two places at once.’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying about Father Bernard. Something is strange, and I need to look at it more closely. But, yes, everyone else is spoken for.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘It is.’ She turned to look up at him, and her flickering smile lit her eyes. ‘You could hardly have kept them till this morning, just the same. Your friends have asked the right questions.’

‘I told them what I needed to know. They have done it well.’ Gil stared down at the slate. ‘I wonder … Alys, I need to go round to the college. It is past Nones, and I must speak to so many people. Including Father Bernard, as you say.’

‘You had much better — ’ she began, and was interrupted.

‘Mistress? Are ye there, mem?’ One of the maidservants was puffing up the stairs.

‘What is it, Annis?’

‘Here’s Wattie, mistress, wondering where the maister might be, and there’s two more laddies at the door for Maister Cunningham. Where’ll I put them all?’

‘Where my father is?’ repeated Alys. ‘But he went up to the site!’

‘I’ll come down,’ said Gil, rolling down his shirt sleeve. ‘Are they in the hall?’

Alys on his heels, he descended the spiral stair, stepping with care in the borrowed shoes, and found the mason’s grizzled journeyman admiring the fit of the stones behind the tapestry hangings. Beyond him, beside the display of plate at the far end of the shadowy, beeswax-scented hall, the two Ross boys stood shoulder to shoulder in their belted gowns. They turned as he stepped off the stair, and bowed hastily, saying across Wattie’s greeting,

‘Can ye come, maister?’

‘Maister Doby sent us — ’

‘It’s important.’

‘What has happened?’ he asked, nodding to Wattie, and crossed the room to them. ‘Has Maister Doby learned something new?’