Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

They moved closer together, and the older boy put out his hand to touch one of the silver cups gleaming on the cupboard in the dim light, the kind of thing to be seen in the hall of any well-to-do home, as if he found it reassuring.

‘It’s Jaikie,’ he said after a moment.

‘He’s deid, maister,’ said the younger one, on a rising note. ‘Like William.’

‘What, throttled?’ said Gil involuntarily.

‘It was a knife,’ said the older boy. ‘Someone’s killed him in his chamber.’

‘There’s blood,’ said his brother, and sniffled. ‘And he’s all sharny.’

‘Let me put my boots on,’ said Gil.

‘Gil,’ said Alys in a small voice. He turned to her, nearly falling over the wolfhound, and found that Catherine had come up from the kitchen and was standing behind her nurseling, staring inscrutably at Wattie from under her black linen veil. ‘Gil, Wattie says my father has not been to the site today.’

‘Perhaps he went somewhere else?’ Gil suggested, taken aback. ‘It must have been a pressing matter, to take him out of the house when he had a guest.’

‘I understand,’ said Catherine in her gruff French, ‘that there is a little difficulty with madame your mother? Perhaps our master absented himself as a matter of diplomacy.’

‘He went out because Wattie sent for him,’ said Alys in Scots.

‘Oh, aye, I sent for him,’ agreed Wattie, ‘but he never came.’

‘Could he have met someone else he wanted a word with?’ said Gil, wondering privately if Catherine was not right.

‘But who else? And for so long?’

‘My uncle?’ Gil suggested. ‘Perhaps he thought of something they needed to discuss. You know what they’re like when they get together.’

‘That’s likely,’ said Wattie.

‘Vraiment,’ agreed Catherine.

‘Perhaps,’ said Alys doubtfully, ‘but he has not been home to eat, either.’

‘Maggie would feed him if he’s talking to my uncle. Perhaps,’ Gil added hopefully, ‘he and my mother are coming to some harmony by now.’

‘Maistre le notaire a raison, ma mie,’ said Catherine.

‘Now, who would do him harm, mistress?’ said Wattie, in the tone of one regretting that he had raised the subject. ‘He’s no enemies, and the size he is nobody’d trouble him.’

‘I’m sure you are right,’ she said in unconvincing tones, and became aware of the maidservant still standing open-mouthed by the stair. ‘Annis, take these laddies down to the kitchen and find them a bite to eat while Maister Cunningham gets his boots on. Bide here, Wattie, while I think what to do.’

She drew Gil back up the spiral stair to where his boots, newly waxed, stood neatly at the corner of the best bed. As he eased the first one on, pulling awkwardly one-handed at the heel, she said in anxious French, ‘I do not like it. He never vanishes like this.’

‘He is a grown man,’ Gil observed. ‘He may not be pleased if you set up a search for him without reason.’

‘I know that.’

‘How long since he left the house?’

‘When Father Bernard did. Gil, that is what worries me.’

Gil straightened up to look at her.

‘I don’t trust Father Bernard,’ she said earnestly. ‘I think he isn’t being truthful, and he knows more about William than he says. What if he has — ’

‘I agree,’ said Gil slowly, ‘that Father Bernard doesn’t appear completely truthful. I have already caught him out in something. But that doesn’t make him capable of harming your father, who must be twice his size. It’s Jaikie who has come to grief, not your father.’

‘No, but — ’

He trod down on the heel of the second boot, wriggled his toes into position, and said, ‘Alys, I must go to the college. I want to see the porter before they move him. I will ask for Father Bernard when I am there — after all, he left here to go and prepare a disputation, he should be about the place. If I learn anything that causes me worry I will send to you immediately.’ He cupped his hand round her jaw. ‘Your father has done something unexpected and it has taken longer than he intended. I’m sure that’s all, sweetheart. Send Wattie back up to St Mungo’s, and stop worrying.’

She bit her lip and nodded.

‘There has been only the two of us and Catherine for so long,’ she said after a moment. ‘And in Paris — ’

‘This is Glasgow, not Paris, and there are three of us and Catherine now.’ Gil shrugged on his short gown and kissed her. ‘Go and find those boys, and try not to be foolish.’

The college yett was shut again.

‘Maister Doby shut it behind us,’ said the younger Ross.

‘They’re all in the pend,’ said his brother. Gil looked at them. They had followed him, slightly sticky and a little more cheerful, from the mason’s house, but were becoming round-eyed and quiet again.

‘I’ll knock at the yett,’ he said. ‘You two go round by the Blackfriars gate, in case Maister Doby’s in his house, and tell him I’m here.’

‘We could go in at his door,’ said the younger boy. ‘We’re allowed.’

‘On you go, then.’ Gil watched them run back to the street door of the Principal’s house, then turned and hammered on the yett with the hilt of his dagger, as he had done the previous evening. The postern swung open immediately, and he found himself face to face with the missing Maistre Pierre.

‘At last!’ said the mason, at the same time as Gil said,

‘So this is where you are!’

‘I sent for you a good half-hour since,’ said Maistre Pierre reproachfully.

‘Wattie sent for you,’ Gil countered, ‘and has just come down to the house looking for you.’

His friend’s face changed.

‘Alys will be worried. I must send — ’ He stood back, so that Gil could enter. The pend was crowded and noisy with conversation and a buzzing of flies, and there was a foul smell in which Gil identified a top-note of burning paper. Yet another group of marvelling students was taking turns to stare in at the door of the porter’s small room, past the barricade provided by a resolute Lowrie Livingstone. The mason laid a big hand on the shoulder of the nearest blue gown, which jumped convulsively as its owner twisted to look at his assailant.

‘You, my friend. Run down to my house, which is the one with the sign of the White Castle,’ he instructed, ‘and tell them there that Maister Mason is at the college. Ah, Maister Doby,’ he continued seamlessly. ‘My son-in-law is arrived.’

‘Oh, Gilbert,’ said Maister Doby, pushing through the dissolving crowd of onlookers as the messenger, recovering his poise, slipped past Gil and away in a cloud of flies. ‘We are finding out who last saw him alive. Is not this a dreadful thing? Who could have done such a deed? Is it connected to William’s death, do you think? I would have moved him long since, but Maister Mason said — ’

‘Tell me what has happened,’ said Gil. The last of the goggling students drifted out of the pend into the courtyard, and Lowrie, with obvious relief, lowered his arm and stepped to one side.

‘He’s in there,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Someone’s knifed him.’

Just inside the doorway, Jaikie lay on his back beside his overturned chair, his head tipped back and away from them, one leg drawn up and his codpiece and the legs of his hose dark and stinking. His mouth was wide open, showing his blackened teeth. He could have been drunk, except for a dribble of blood running from his mouth down towards his ear, and the flies crawling on that, on his wide-open eyes, and on the bloody rent in the breast of his greasy blue livery gown.

On the floor beside the brazier a bundle of blackened papers explained the smell of burning.