Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘Oh.’ Father Bernard closed his mouth over the yellow teeth and frowned. ‘Oh.’

‘Does that convey anything?’ Gil asked.

‘No. Why should it?’

‘So when did you return to the college?’ Gil asked after a moment.

‘Almost immediately. I had a lecture to deliver at two o’clock, and I had only gone for some notes which I needed, so I returned to the college to spend some time in prayer in the Theology Schule before my students joined me.’

‘In prayer?’ said Gil. ‘Is that usual?’

‘When lecturing in Theology,’ said Father Bernard, ‘it is my practice. One does not interpret the will or word of God without asking for assistance.’

Gil nodded, and pain stabbed across his temples. ‘Did you see anyone on your return? You came back by the road you went — by the kitchen-yard and the close to the Theology Schule door?’

‘Why should I do otherwise? I may have seen some of the students, but I was about to take a lecture, Gilbert, my mind was not on my surroundings.’

‘I appreciate that,’ said Gil. ‘It’s unfortunate, for it would help me to confirm some of the other stories I have. Someone in your position, who knows all the students in the college, is more likely to be of help than a Master of Arts who left several years ago.’

There was another of those pauses.

‘And you then remained in the lecture-room until after the lecture?’

‘Unfortunately, no,’ said Father Bernard. He looked out of the window, then down at his hands, then at Gil with an assumption of man-to-man heartiness. ‘I was, shall we say, compelled to leave briefly, before I began to speak.’ Gil waited. ‘The Almayne pottage,’ said Father Bernard obliquely. ‘It disagreed with me, rather suddenly.’

‘So you went back out to the kitchen-yard. This could be very helpful,’ Gil said. ‘Who did you see at that point?’

‘I was not paying attention,’ said the chaplain primly. He looked at his hands again. ‘I may have seen Robert Montgomery. On my return across the Inner Close I certainly saw a number of people.’ He thought briefly. ‘There was a group of four men, your age or older. I have been chaplain here less than three years, they were certainly before my time.’

‘That is valuable,’ said Gil, with perfect truth. ‘I know who they were. And in the Outer Close?’

‘Consider, Gilbert,’ said Father Bernard kindly. ‘I was now late for my lecture in the Theology Schule. I had no need to enter the Outer Close. Who knows who was at large there? Not I, for sure.’

‘What a pity It could have been valuable. And after the lecture? What did you do then?’

‘At three o’clock I returned to the House, from where I was summoned at length to conduct a Provisional Absolution for William, along with Maister Forsyth.’

Gil considered for a moment. ‘How well did you know William, father?’

‘You have asked me that before. I knew him as one among the students here, no more.’

‘So he never came in your way when you were chaplain to Lord Montgomery?’

‘I left before he was born.’

‘Why was that? Surely such a position could be yours for life?’

‘My superiors decreed that I should go to study in Cologne.’

‘And you didn’t know William was keeping a dog.’

‘I did not.’

‘Or that he was practising extortion.’

‘Nor that either.’

‘And what about his papers? There was a bundle of papers with William’s writing on them, smouldering in Jaikie’s brazier when the man was found dead just now. How could they have got there? They should have been in William’s chamber.’

‘I’ve no idea about that.’

‘And have you any idea,’ said Gil casually, ‘why he wanted to speak to you yesterday morning? Did he show you his letter?’

‘Our colloquy was brief and uninformative. Now, if you will forgive me, I am a busy man with teaching commitments to fulfil. If all you wish to do is repeat questions I have already answered — truthfully,’ he emphasized, looking Gil in the eye, ‘I must call an end to this.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil, ‘I hope you will forgive me. One more question, which I haven’t asked before. If you didn’t know William, you wouldn’t know Robert Montgomery either, but can you tell me anything about him?’

‘I knew his father Alexander well,’ said Father Bernard heavily. ‘He died at Stirling field, like your father, I believe. God rest their souls.’

‘Amen,’ said Gil, with an unlikely surge of fellow feeling for a Montgomery.

‘Robert is very like him. They’re all alike, these Montgomery men. A strong sense of family, a strong sense of property, a hot temper.’

‘You could call it that,’ said Gil. He rose, and bowed. ‘I will leave you, father. So you were not in the Outer Close after the beginning of the lecture?’

‘Not until I left the Theology Schule again.’ Father Bernard half-rose also, delivered a remote blessing, and had seated himself and opened his volume of Augustine before Gil had left the room.

The way back to the Blackfriars gate led across the Paradise Yard, where a few students were talking in subdued groups under the apple-trees. On an impulse Gil left the path and made his way down towards the Molendinar.

Sitting in the dappled sunshine under one of the trees, he leaned back against its trunk and looked up at the pattern of pink blossom and young leaves. Somewhere a blackbird called, and smaller birds chirped and sang in the bushes. The mills clattered along the burn. The voices of the scattered groups of students, the burgh and its problems, all seemed very far away.

Small and clear, images danced across his vision. A man with a sword, who might or might not be Hugh Montgomery. Three armed men, leaping round him in twilight. The lanky, red-haired William, a busy ghost aye flickering to and fro, darted from victim to victim, gowned scholars who flinched away from him under the arched branches of the apple-trees, until he became a victim himself.

‘William’s victims,’ he said aloud, and opened his eyes. The blackbird was still singing, but most of the students had gone.

Is that the key? he wondered. The list of those the boy confronted? The names in the red book? And how was Jaikie’s death connected?

And meantime his own problems loomed large. At twenty-six he needed nobody’s permission to marry, though since his uncle was his sponsor into the Law it would be foolish to act without the old man’s approval. He knew he had that, and it had been an unpleasant surprise to discover that his mother held other views.

But what are her objections? What did she say this morning? That there was no more money — well, I knew that — that he was educated for the Church and the Law — but I will still embrace the Law. And that he must pray for his father and brothers.

I wonder, is that the crux of the matter? he thought, and recalled the last year-mind service in the church in Hamilton. The small altar beside his father’s box tomb had been dusty and neglected, and the brocade altar-cloth was so old that mice or moths had eaten it into holes. Beside it the newly painted carving had been bright in the candlelight: the family blazon in the centre of one long side of the tomb, with a kneeling knight on one side, a lady on the other, and their three sons and five daughters ranked neatly behind them.

He could see it now as if he was there. Two of the small male figures were in armour, the third gowned as a scholar. One of the daughters was in her shroud, two had flowing, improbably yellow hair, one wore the same kind of elaborate gold-painted headdress as the kneeling figure of their mother, and the eldest was in the white robes of a Cistercian nun. The image was so vivid that he was quite unsurprised when the nun turned her head and looked directly at him, her long-chinned face narrow and intent within the folds of her veil.