Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘Mon Dieu, have they run mad?’ the mason exclaimed. ‘You must have the bite burned.’

‘Naw. All terriers fight.’ Doig inspected the thumb and pushed it into his mouth. ‘You were telling me about the pup’s collar, maister.’

‘Just an ordinary collar,’ said Gil, as Mistress Doig shut the gate with her free hand. The mason leaned cautiously over the fence to look at the frantic dog, which was hurling itself against the fence raging at its kennel-mate. ‘But there was another in Jaikie’s chamber when we searched it, along with a great bundle of papers. Could that be the one you want?’

‘Along with the papers? Where?’ asked Doig round his thumb, frowning, but his wife turned with the latch-rope of the terrier pen still in her hand. The dog still bundled in her skirts squirmed convulsively.

‘Searched Jaikie’s chamber?’ she repeated. ‘Where was Jaikie? That sirkent ablach let ye search his chamber?’

‘After he was dead,’ explained the mason, and she stared at him.

‘Jaikie’s deid and all? When was this?’

‘This day about noon,’ said Gil, studying both Doigs.

‘About noon,’ repeated the dog-breeder, and gave his wife another hard look. ‘That would be about when I took the hounds up the Dow Hill, wouldn’t it no, mistress?’

‘Aye,’ she said, and licked her lips. ‘Aye, Doig, it would,’ she agreed earnestly.

‘We should get a Mass said for him,’ continued Doig. ‘He put folk in our way now and then. It’s aye good to get new custom,’ he said to Gil with a broad smile.

‘That’s true,’ agreed Gil, ‘though I would think you had custom enough. Dogs like these are far to seek.’

‘That’s a true word,’ agreed Doig. ‘My lord Bothwell had two off me last summer, and he put more of the Hepburns and the Humes on to me. I’d even the Earl of Angus after me for one of Bluebell’s last litter, but they were all spoken for already.’

‘You must hear a thing or two,’ said Gil. ‘You get a few men leaning over a fence like this, the talk must be of some strange matters.’

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Doig easily. ‘Only last week, there was two young Hepburns and a gentleman from the Bishop’s household — Archbishop,’ he corrected himself, ‘all wi’ wonderful tales of some merchant in the Low Countries and what like things he’d send. Fair to split his sides one of them was,’ he reminisced, ‘telling of how his lord sent for cushions and got a barrel full of straw mats.’

‘Clearly, they have never tried to import a wheelbarrow,’ said Maistre Pierre, without looking up from the silent terrier pen.

‘And what were you doing, Mistress Doig,’ Gil asked politely, ‘while your man was exercising the dogs on the Dow Hill? There must be plenty for two to do in a trade like this. Jimmy had two boys just to keep the pens clean, I mind.’

‘The pens is no bother,’ said Doig, ‘the reason being, I’ve an arrangement wi’ Sandy the Tanner next door. He sends two of his laddies twice a day wi’ buckets and shovels, and he gets to keep what they lift. So if you had they boots in Glasgow in the last four years, Maister Cunningham, it was my dogs provided the making of the leather.’ He grinned broadly, exposing the blackened teeth again. Gil looked down and flexed one ankle in the newly waxed boot.

‘They’re wearing well,’ he said. ‘Did he make that apron to you?’

The dog-breeder looked down at himself, and up again.

‘Aye. Aye, he did. That’s his work, right enough.’

‘I thought it might be. I can see he’s a good neighbour,’ said Gil. ‘Is that dog suffocating, mistress? He’s very quiet.’

‘He’s asleep.’ She let the layers of damp brown cloth fall over the grey kirtle, revealing a somnolent dog tucked under her arm. As they all looked, the little beast emitted a buzzing snore. ‘I’ll put him in an empty pen. We’ll ha’ to keep them apart for a bit, Doig.’

‘Aye, do that.’ Doig was wrapping his thumb in the hem of his jerkin.

‘So what were you doing, mistress?’

‘Seeing to the dogs’ feed,’ she said. She suddenly turned and bent to check that the latch-rope was fitted over the peg on the gate. ‘Aye, that’s right,’ she added, kicking the turnbutton on the bottom of the gate into place. ‘I was making the dogs’ dinner — ’

At the word, the spaniels in the pen began to bark, leaping up and down, and every other dog in the place joined them. Gil covered his ears, laughing, and Maistre Pierre flinched.

‘Quiet!’ screamed Mistress Doig, and silence fell, broken only by excited whimpers from the nearest dogs. ‘Doig cuts the meat up fresh every time, but the mash takes the best part of an hour to boil beforehand. And they’re to be fed again, maisters, so if you’ll excuse us — ’

‘We’ll get out of your way,’ agreed Gil. ‘I thank you for your time. Oh, one other thing.’

They stared at him, with identical expressions of faint dismay. Behind them, the mason stooped quickly to lift something from the cobbled surface of the yard.

‘William was given to extortion,’ Gil continued. ‘I wondered if he ever approached you, or any of your other customers.’

‘He tried nothing wi’ me,’ said Doig confidently, ‘for he’d ken fine that I would just turn round and let on to his teachers what he was up to. And if he’d spoke to the Hepburns or the Humes, maister, do you think they’d tell me?’

‘True,’ agreed Gil. ‘What do you mean, what he was up to? What would you tell his teachers?’

‘Why …’ Doig paused, and swallowed. ‘About him keeping the pup, and having it in his chamber, and coming down here, all at times he should ha’ been at his studying.’

‘No more than that?’

‘Is that no enough? I could have tellt his sponsor and all. The Lord Montgomery wouldny care to hear how his money’s being wasted,’ declared Doig with fluency.

‘Ah, well,’ said Maistre Pierre, leaving the terrier pen. ‘That expenditure is at an end now. God rest the boy’s soul.’

‘Amen,’ said Doig, and he and his wife crossed themselves. ‘I’ll see ye out, maisters. And if ye gang down this vennel and cross the Poldrait Burn, the track links up with the one frae the Old Vennel and yell find yourselves back on the High Street.’

‘That must cross the Mill-burn too,’ said Gil, interpreting the stumpy gestures. ‘Is that where you exercise the dogs, Maister Doig?’

‘Between the two burns,’ agreed the dog-breeder. ‘They need to get running about. They bring me a cony now and then,’ he added.

Pausing on the far bank of the Poldrait Burn, Gil looked back at the mason splashing through the shallows and beyond him, back up the track. Billy Doig still watched them, a small grotesque figure like a chess-piece standing in the middle of the way. As Gil looked, he nodded briefly and turned to shamble back into his own yard.

‘That was interesting,’ said Maistre Pierre, coming up out of the burn. He stamped water from his boots and went on, ‘He knew more about William’s doings than he would admit.’

‘I agree.’ Gil began to stroll up the track away from the burn. ‘It was also interesting that he asked about William’s death but not about Jaikie’s.’

‘There is more than that.’ Maistre Pierre groped in his purse. ‘What about this?’

He handed over a twist of wet rag. Gil shook it out to inspect it, and a waft of spirits reached his nose.

‘Usquebae!’ he exclaimed.

‘I suspect the two little dogs were quarrelling for possession of that cloth. It fell when they came out fighting and were seized by their owners. The dogs,’ said the mason portentously, ‘were not mad, but drunk.’

‘Jaikie’s missing bottle?’