Pat McIntosh: The Nicholas Feast

‘She’ll come round to it,’ said Gil, uncomfortably reminded of Alys’s remark about his mother’s letter.

With much shuffling and jostling, and delays caused by people struggling back into gown and hood and retrieving felt caps dislodged in the process, the Faculty got itself on horseback and arranged in order. The University Beadle, peering back along the line, nodded, raised his hat to the Dean, and gave the signal to move off as the sun came out again.

Clattering up the High Street, Gil hitched at the layers of worsted he had wadded to sit on, and looked around at the other Faculty members present. At the head of the procession the Beadle was attended by a handful of senior students, presumably all those who could muster a horse and gown for the occasion. Demure behind them, decked in the Faculty’s collection of blue academic hoods, rode a favoured five of the non-regent Masters, followed closely by those other Masters of Arts who, like Gil, were living in the burgh and had been unable to avoid the requirement to attend, and Maister Kennedy, quite out of his proper position. The Faculty’s Man of Law and Scribe, side by side in their red legal robes, were succeeded by someone Gil did not know, who must be the Second Regent, and beside him baby-faced old Thomas Forsyth, his tonsure hidden by a round felt hat with a stalk like an apple’s. Behind them rode the Dean and the Principal, with four college servants in blue velvet, and bringing up the rear, wearing the expression of a man who knows disasters are happening in his absence, was John Shaw the Faculty Steward on a fat pony. Some way behind him rattled a donkey-cart laden with the green branches which would be handed out at St Thomas Martyr’s.

‘Why do we have the Beadle with us?’ Gil asked Nick Kennedy. ‘He’s a University servant and this is an Arts Faculty affair.’

‘Ah, but John Doby is Rector this year,’ Nick pointed out, ‘and John Gray as Beadle is the Rector’s servant. So we invited him along to make the procession look good, and quite incidentally to lend us the tapestries and cushions he keeps for graduations. Half our costumes for the play are out of his store,’ he added.

The procession clopped and jingled up through the town. Dogs barked, and several small boys ran alongside shouting rude remarks, until Dean Elphinstone himself identified one by name and promised to call on his father.

‘That man is an asset to the college,’ Gil observed to Nick Kennedy.

‘Oh, he is. You should see him in Faculty meeting. He has all those old men following him like an ox-team, and Tommy Forsyth and John Goldsmith agreeing with one another. He’s some kind of cousin of William Elphinstone in Aberdeen, and you can see the resemblance.’

‘And who is that riding beside Maister Forsyth?’

Nick twisted round in time to see the man in question put out a hand to Maister Forsyth’s bridle as the horses lurched up the steep portion of the High Street called the Bell o’ the Brae.

‘That’s Patey Coventry the Second Regent. He’s from Perthshire somewhere. A madman. He’s all right.’

‘Mad? How so?’

‘He’s Master of Arts from some obscure foreign place, he’s already collected a Bachelor of Decreets from St Andrews, and now he’s working on a Bachelor of Sacred Theology here as well as delivering a full set of lectures and disputations. Says he just likes learning.’ Nick hauled on his reins as his horse attempted to go down the vennel that led to its stable. ‘Get on, you stupid brute, we’ve a way to go yet!’

Past the Girth Cross, past the almshouses of St Nicholas’ Hospital, past the Archbishop’s castle, the procession continued. Residents of the upper town, cathedral staff, clergy and their dependants, paused about their business to watch. Outside the crumbling chapel of St Thomas Martyr beyond the Stablegreen Port, the leaders halted. More servants appeared to hold the horses while elderly academics dismounted. The students behind the Beadle leapt down and hastened into the chapel.

Gil, watching, saw the red-haired William pause by David Gray the Faculty Scribe as he straightened the creases from his gown. Whatever the boy said, it carried only to the lawyer’s ears, where it was unwelcome; Gil thought Gray’s narrow disappointed face paled, and he shook his head without speaking. The student vanished after his fellows, his red hair still visible in the shadows within.

Curious, thought Gil, and finding himself beside Maister Forsyth, lent a hand as he tried to straighten his fur-lined cope.

‘Thank you, Gilbert,’ said the old man. ‘That was a very elegant answer you gave on your last disputation. What was the question again …?’

‘I don’t recall, sir,’ said Gil, holding the slit at the front of the cope open.

‘Ah, I have it. It was in the Metaphysics, I believe.’ Maister Forsyth’s gloved hands popped out of the single opening. He sketched a benediction, and hurried into the chapel after the other senior members. Gil cast his mind back over the years, discovered that his last disputation had indeed been the one on Aristotle’s Metaphysics , and marvelled. That would have been in ’84. Since then, he had spent better than five years abroad; Scotland had been convulsed by a rising which had killed King James, third of the name, and replaced him by another James, fourth of the name and the same age as some of these students; Gil’s own father and elder brothers had died in support of James Third, and he himself had spent another couple of years almost imprisoned in the Cathedral Court learning to be a notary. Maister Forsyth appeared to have noticed none of this.

‘It’s the Mirror of Wisdom effect. Should we go in?’

Gil looked round, and found the Second Regent at his elbow. He was a small man in his thirties, in a blue cloth cope and hood which appeared to have been made for somebody taller; his tonsure was surrounded by a mop of black curls, and he peered up at Gil from one bright blue eye, the other being directed firmly at the bridge of his nose in the worst squint Gil had ever seen.

‘I’m sorry?’ he said blankly, following him into the little chapel. In the chancel, beyond the heavy semicircular arch, a choir of students was arranging itself round the huge music-book on its stand, and behind them in the dimness movement suggested the presence of the priest.

‘Senior University men,’ said the small man in graceful Latin, ‘see the world entirely through the mirror of wisdom, like poor James Ireland. This mirror does not reflect matters of politics, public life, private life, or money. Maister Forsyth is probably quite unaware of how long it is since he heard your elegant answer. How long is it, in fact?’

‘Eight years.’ Gil grinned. ‘I see your point.’

‘Forgive me — I know your name, Nick Kennedy pointed you out, but I should introduce myself — ’

‘I could say the same.’

The unseen priest’s voice issued the invitation to prayer, and as the six students round the music-stand tossed the words of the Kyrie higher and higher Gil suddenly realized that this was the first full Mass he had heard since his life turned upside-down. A week ago these words had formed part of his own destiny; this morning, although he did not know where he would find a living, he knew it would be on this side of the chancel arch, with Alys as his wife. The idea seemed to reshape the Mass; he found himself stumbling over the responses, which he should not have been making, like a half-taught clerk. The velvet-gowned Faculty servants beside him looked askance, and moved away a little. Pulling himself together, he tried to concentrate on the singing, over the murmured prayers and other conversations of the members of the procession.