Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘This is no place to discuss it. I can hear the scholars in the Inner Close. They are coming from their dinner, and we must go to ours. Alys will be sufficiently displeased with me already.’

‘She was very anxious,’ Gil said.

‘I was thoughtless.’

Gil, whose parents and siblings had come and gone without consultation throughout his youth, made no comment, but said, ‘I wish to find Father Bernard. Some points need clarification.’

‘Then we shall see you later?’ Maistre Pierre turned towards the pend that led to the street, and paused. ‘Ah, no, I am forgetting. The yett is barred. I must go out by Blackfriars.’

‘Then we can both look at Jaikie’s body, if he has been washed by now.’

William still lay in the mortuary chapel, his lanky form shrouded but identifiable, with two Theology students kneeling by his head with their beads. As Gil and Maistre Pierre entered the chapel, two more students stepped forward from the shadows to relieve the watchers. Jaikie, as a college servant, was naturally laid out here too, neatly shrouded on a trestle next to William, with candles about him and a small stout Dominican at his feet working his way stolidly through the prayers for the dead. Gil knelt briefly by the trestle, the mason for rather longer, and the brother finished his petition for mercy and got to his feet, saying,

‘Was it you that found him? Do you need to see him?’ He drew back the shroud without waiting for an answer. The theologians around William recoiled, and two of them averted their eyes. ‘His jaw’s well set, or we’d have closed his mouth. There’s the wound. Simple stab wound, nothing fancy but it did someone’s work for him.’

‘I see,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘There would be little bleeding, I think.’

‘Likely he bled within, poor man,’ said the friar. ‘And at the mouth, of course.’

The students going off duty left hastily, and the two remaining knelt with great reluctance. Maistre Pierre prodded at the gash in Jaikie’s chest and nodded.

‘A dagger or the point of a whinger,’ he said. ‘Perhaps this wide.’ He held up finger and thumb an inch or so apart.

‘There can’t be more than two thousand such in Glasgow,’ Gil observed. ‘Was it you that washed him, brother? Was there anything in his clothes we should know about?’

‘In his clothes,’ said the brother, with a sudden lapse in charity, ‘there was nothing beyond himself, an entire company of Ru’glen redfriars, and a peck of dirt. We’d to burn them, gown and all. They were past giving to the poor.’

The mason looked blank, but Gil was aware of the nearer student bedesman withdrawing the skirts of his gown. He too stepped back from the trestle and moved towards the offering-box by the door, saying, ‘God rest his soul. I think that’s all we need to see, brother.’ He dropped a couple of coins into the box. ‘Can you tell me where Father Bernard might be?’

‘I am preparing tomorrow’s quodlibet disputation,’ said Father Bernard, staring at Gil over a rampart of books. ‘I can spare you a little time, I suppose.’

‘Thank you, father,’ said Gil. He drew a stool up to the librarian’s table and sat down. His head was beginning to ache again, and he felt extremely weary. ‘It is merely to clarify a few points.’

Father Bernard ostentatiously closed a volume of St Augustine, with a slip of paper in his place, and folded his hands together on top of the book. Sunshine poured in at the window of the library. In the shadows beyond the chaplain, the ranks of the college theology collection were dimly visible, the shelf-numbers showing black on the pale out-turned fore-edges. Nearer the door, rows of smaller, much-handled volumes showed where the Arts Faculty’s Aristotle and Euclid were shelved.

‘In fact, now I think of it,’ said Father Bernard, ‘I would welcome a word with you, Gilbert, about your own future.’

‘My — ’ Gil stared at him. ‘What has that to do with it?’

‘I am responsible for your spiritual well-being, as a member of the University,’ Father Bernard reminded him, ‘and it gives me grave cause for concern to see you about to take a step which can only be detrimental to your future career.’

‘What step is that?’ said Gil. ‘Do you mean my marriage?’

‘I do indeed. It seems a rash step for a man who is widely spoken of as an able scholar and a promising man of law. If you were to enter the Church, I am very sure you would have entry to positions of power and responsibility — ’

‘I am training as a notary,’ Gil said. ‘More notaries are married men than churchmen nowadays. Now may I ask you — ’

‘But the most successful are churchmen,’ said Father Bernard triumphantly. Gil, lacking facts to argue this statement, hesitated, and the chaplain ploughed on. ‘You see, if your energies are directed to controlling and disciplining that very headstrong young woman, they cannot be directed to your calling.’

‘Headstrong?’ said Gil, staring. ‘Discipline? I shouldn’t dream of trying. She is the most intelligent girl I ever met, and thinks more clearly than many men.’

‘Then, Gilbert, I fear you will have a sad marriage. Come,’ said Father Bernard, leaning forward over his books, ‘admit it. You are led to this union by the desires of the flesh.’

‘If I did not know better, I would think you had been talking to my mother,’ said Gil. ‘I am led to the marriage by the advice of my uncle, who was approached first.’

‘Ah,’ said Father Bernard, sitting back with a faint air of disappointment. ‘I had not realized that. I feared you had allowed yourself to be diverted by a lovely face and figure.’

Gil found himself smiling at the image this conjured up for him, and straightened his expression.

‘Father Bernard, we are taking up time you can ill spare. As I have said, there are a few points I wished to clarify about William’s death.’

‘About his death?’ Father Bernard looked down at his folded hands for a moment, then up at Gil. ‘I cannot imagine why you should think me able to help you, but I will try. Well?’

Gil gathered his thoughts with an effort. ‘At the end of the play, yesterday, what did you do?’

‘At the end of the play?’ Father Bernard repeated. ‘Why, I returned to the House.’ He nodded at the view from the library window, across the Principal’s garden and into the Blackfriars grounds, cemetery and gatehouse and bell-tower clearly visible.

‘To Blackfriars? So you crossed the Inner Close and the kitchen-yard, and went through the gate.’

‘That is the way to the convent.’

‘Using your key to the gate?’

‘Why, no. I have a key,’ Father Bernard touched the breast of his habit, ‘but I hardly use it. The gate stands open all the hours of daylight. It was certainly open yesterday.’

‘May I see it?’ Gil asked innocently. ‘Is it local work, do you know?’

A wary expression in his deep-set eyes, Father Bernard fished the key out and lifted the cord over his head. Gil took the object from him and turned it curiously. It was as long as his hand, with a substantial shaft and crooked handle, but the rectangular tablet had only two notches in it. Clearly it operated a simple lock. He weighed the warm iron in his hand, and rubbed at the patch of rust near the end of the shaft. ‘It’s local work, so the Steward tells me,’ agreed the chaplain. ‘It serves its purpose.’

‘Indeed it must,’ said Gil ambiguously, handing the key back. ‘And when you crossed the close, did you see anyone? William, for instance?’

The chaplain frowned. ‘A few of the college servants were about, but surely William was still at the play?’

‘He left before it ended.’