Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘Information, rather, John,’ said the mason. ‘Come and sit down and tell us about yesterday.’

‘Yesterday?’ Maister Shaw followed them into the Bachelors’ Schule. ‘Oh, what a day, what a day. What d’ye need to know, Peter? You were there, and so was Maister Cunningham.’

‘Not I,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘not until after it all happened. Tell me about it. You had the procession and the feast to order, did you not?’

‘I did that. And that William underfoot,’ added Maister Shaw bitterly. ‘Correcting and criticizing, amending my greetings to the guests and the members, till I went off and left him to get on with that. I thought he might as well make himself useful,’ he added. ‘I’d to see the garlands on to Willie Sproat’s donkey-cart, with the donkey trying to eat them and Willie killing himself laughing at the sight, I’d to make sure there were horses to all the maisters, and the moth out of all the Faculty hoods, and the music to the Mass put on the donkey-cart, and John Gray the Beadle misplaced his robes and I found them in here, where that William had put them down — ’ He nodded at a cupboard under the lecturer’s pulpit. ‘Oh, what a day, what a day!’

‘But all went smoothly,’ said Gil. ‘Indeed, I thought the morning went very well, Maister Shaw. It was later, when the thunder started and they were all running about the yards, that things went wrong.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by wrong,’ said Maister Shaw, bridling slightly, ‘I thought it was bad enough when the boy Maxwell served half the high table with a dirty towel over his arm, and as for that William distracting Robert Montgomery while the Dean waited for the made dishes, words fail me, maisters, they do.’

‘None of these things prevented us enjoying the feast,’ said Gil soothingly.

‘But you have high standards, John,’ interposed the mason. ‘And when the thunder started, what happened then?’

‘Ha! All the scholars running about, shutting windows that should never have been left open, neglecting their duties. It took some doing to get them back to their tasks, I can tell you, Peter. I had to send a whole lot I found in the Inner Close about their business.’

‘Who would that be?’ Gil asked. ‘Can you remember?’

‘Now you’re asking,’ said Maister Shaw doubtfully. ‘Henry and Walter, that’s certain. You canny miss Walter,’ he added, with disapproval. ‘Andrew. Robert Montgomery, I sent him back to the kitchen, and that soft-head Ralph, poor laddie, and I met John Gray’s nephew Nicholas in the pend and chased him back to the crocks and all. There might have been more.’

‘Nicholas and Robert were not together?’ Gil asked.

‘I don’t think so. Oh, what a day!’

‘And then we found William in the coalhouse. Tell me this, Maister Shaw,’ said Gil. ‘Who would have had a key to that door?’

‘Oh, near everyone,’ said the Steward, looking startled. ‘All the regents, for certain, as well as me and Agnes, even some of the scholars. Anyone that had a chamber with a key to it. Most of the college doors is the same, maister. I’ve a notion Archie Bell only kens three patterns of lock, and we’ve got all he ever made of one of them.’

‘And the Blackfriars yett?’ Gil asked, with a sinking feeling.

‘That, too. Not that you’d need a key by daylight, the gate stands open from Prime to Compline. I’ve tellt Maister Doby many a time,’ he confided, ‘we ought to get a different lock put on the coalhouse door, for the coals goes down faster than they should. Maybe now he’ll listen.’

‘So anyone could have put William in the coalhouse,’ said the mason, watching the Steward’s retreating back.

‘Anyone with a key,’ agreed Gil. ‘So we are no further forward. Anyone who had or could borrow a key could walk into the college by the Blackfriars yett, if they were not inside its walls already, and unlock the coalhouse door and lock it again after.’

‘And this other matter.’ Maistre Pierre jerked one large thumb over his shoulder at the mouth of the porter’s pend.

‘Yes, indeed. How do you come to be present?’

‘Ah. Well. I had something to attend to at Blackfriars.’ He stared across the courtyard, and finally admitted, ‘I tell you from the beginning. Come into the middle of the yard here.’

Gil, puzzled, strolled forward to the centre of the flagstones, where none could overhear them without being seen.

‘I walked up to Blackfriars with Father Bernard,’ began Maistre Pierre.

‘When he left your house before Nones?’ Gil interrupted. ‘The women thought you had gone up to the site.’

‘I intended to,’ said the mason impatiently. ‘Wattie had sent the boy for me, I intended to go on there afterwards. But I spent longer in Blackfriars kirk than I thought to. First I was alone, and then I spent some time with Father Bernard, if you understand me.’

Confession? Gil wondered. Why now? Of course, Father Bernard speaks French. He nodded, and the mason went on.

‘We had to end the matter, for he had a lecture to deliver, and I walked into the college with him and found it buzzing like a bee-skep, those three in the yard here exclaiming what they had found, the Principal becoming flustered, half the college crowding in to look at the dead. So I had them send for you and made Lowrie stand guard with me. I would have shut the door and locked it, though small good that would have done if all the keys in the college fit the lock, but you saw how he lay. We could not close the door without moving him.’

‘And you saw nothing that might be useful?’ Gil prompted. ‘No bloodstained dagger-man running across the courtyard?’

‘No,’ agreed the mason with regret, ‘although he was probably not bloodstained. Most of the bleeding will be internal, I would say. No, but I heard something that might be to the point.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you know Blackfriars kirk?’

‘I was a student here,’ Gil reminded him.

‘Ah, of course. Then you recall the altar of St Peter? Tucked away in a corner beyond St Paul?’ Gil nodded. ‘I was on my knees there, quite unobtrusive, when I overheard a conversation out in another part of the church. It must be one of those echoes you get sometimes,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘where the vault is of just such a shape as to direct the sound, for they were not within my sight.’

‘Go on. Who spoke?’

‘Father Bernard was very clear, the other voice less so. The father wished the other to take some document or other. You recognize the writing, he said. There is nothing there of value, it must be disposed of.’

‘Ah!’ said Gil. ‘So that’s how the meat got into the nut.’

Maistre Pierre glanced at him. ‘Indeed. The other asked, I think, how he came by it, and was told that he did not need to know. Then he said — the friar said — Our intentions are the same in this. Have no fear, my son. Then two of the other friars entered the church, talking about tomorrow’s funeral, and our man went to join them.’

‘Mm.’ Gil considered this. ‘You got no sight of the other party?’

‘I did not. A young voice, I thought.’

‘And having heard this, you still spent time with Father Bernard?’

The mason shrugged. ‘I had already asked him, I could not readily withdraw. I took care, in the circumstances, to raise nothing of great import.’

‘And you were with him until you both walked across the Paradise Yard? Where the apple-trees are,’ he elucidated. Maistre Pierre nodded again. ‘So we can leave him out of the reckoning for Jaikie’s death.’

‘Indeed, we can. Though not for the other, I think?’

‘No.’ Gil stared unseeing at the door of the Principal’s lodging. ‘But if the relationship is as I think, I do not see why he would have killed William.’