Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

The pup looked up at him, then doubtfully at Alys, and wagged its tail.

‘Good dog!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gil, he knows my name!’

‘He is an exceptional dog,’ said Gil, as he had said before, and got to his feet. ‘I must go. I’ll talk to Patrick Coventry in the morning.’

The stone house in Rottenrow was quiet, but not dark. Picking his way by moonlight from the Girth Cross, Gil could see the glow of candles in several windows. By this hour the great door at the foot of the stair-tower would be barred, so he plodded wearily along the house-wall and in at the little yard by the kitchen door.

He paused there, hand raised to the latch. It seemed like a very long time since he had left the house by this door. Could he remember what was behind it? Was there still a place for him? Would everything have changed? He was assailed by a sudden feeling that he was about to step into the unknown. It was yesterday morning, he told himself irritably, and rattled at the latch.

‘Is that you, Maister Gil?’

‘It’s me,’ he agreed. His uncle’s stout, red-faced housekeeper opened the heavy plank door, closed it behind him and dropped the bar across.

Inside, all was warm and familiar. The kitchen-boy snored in the shadows, and his mother’s maidservant Nan sat by the fire with a cup of spiced ale.

‘Your minnie’s about given you up, I jalouse,’ said Maggie. She returned to the hearth and lifted her own cup of ale. ‘And what have you been doing to yourself?’

‘Fighting, Maggie.’ Gil sat down on the bench opposite Nan. She clicked her tongue.

‘Haven’t I aye warned you about that? I hope you gave better than you got.’

‘I think so. They seemed satisfied. Is all well in Carluke, Nan?’

‘It is,’ she said, beaming at him over her ale. ‘And my lady Gelis is well and all,’ she added, using the Scots form of Lady Egidia’s name. ‘Likely she’ll still be up, Maister Gil.’

‘She said she’d wait for me. Is the old man abed?’

‘He was at his prayers, the last I saw him,’ said Maggie. She sniffed. ‘Is that violets?’

‘To draw out the bruising,’ said Gil. ‘Or so Alys said.’

‘Oh, if she put it on you, that’s another matter. Were ye wanting anything, Maister Gil, or will ye get out of my kitchen and let Nan and me get to our beds? There’s a candle there on the meal-kist.’

He rose obediently, and suddenly put his good arm round her ample waist and kissed her cheek. She bridled with pleasure.

‘Huh! What’s that for?’

‘For being Maggie.’

‘Saints preserve us, who else should I be?’ she demanded, but he was quite unable to explain.

The hall was dark, and smelled of the herbs his mother liked to burn. He crossed it in the pool of light from his candle, the shadows leaping avidly round him, and made his way to the upper floor. The solar was also in darkness, but a line of light showed under his uncle’s chamber door, and another under the door to the best chamber. He paused for a moment, then crossed the room towards the smell of herbs, and tapped on the painted planks.

‘Come in, dear,’ said his mother.

She was seated by the fire, wrapped in a furred bedgown he remembered from before he went to France, her prayer-book on her knee. He stood just inside the door and looked at her, and she stretched out a hand to him, smiling.

‘Come and sit down. Are you very tired?’

‘Very,’ he agreed, and obeyed, kneeling first to kiss her hand. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I said I would wait up for you.’

‘And I said I would be late,’ he countered.

‘And are you late to good purpose? Have you found who killed the poor boy?’

‘Not yet. Why is Nan not with you? I saw her in the kitchen just now.’

‘She snores, which is why she’s not on the truckle-bed here, or in the attic next to you as David suggested. I hope she won’t keep Maggie awake.’

‘I think nothing would stop me sleeping tonight,’ he confessed. She drew the candle nearer, and surveyed him, then rose, tightening the girdle of her furred gown, and began to delve in one of the packs which were stacked beyond the great curtained bed.

‘I know what you need,’ she said, as she emerged with a pannikin and a waxed linen scrip.

‘How are my sisters?’ he asked, watching her without seeing what she was doing.

‘Kate and Tibby are well, and send their love.’

‘Give them mine,’ responded Gil automatically.

‘I will. I wrote to Dorothea a week since, but I’ve heard nothing, which I assume is good news.’ She was measuring spices, a pinch of this and a speck of that, out of little packages in the scrip. ‘And Margaret is like to make you an uncle again this autumn.’

‘How many is that?’

‘Only her third, as you know very well.’ Lady Cunningham poured ale from the jug on the dole-cupboard on to the spices in the pannikin, and set it in the hearth, then tilted her head, sniffing. ‘Do I smell violets?’

‘My wrist.’ Gil held up his hand. ‘To draw out the bruising, so Alys said.’

‘Ah.’ His mother suddenly became intent on the pannikin of ale. ‘The demoiselle Mason. A very giftie lassie.’

‘Mother,’ said Gil. She looked up, and met his eye.

‘I am not blind to her virtues, my dear,’ she protested. ‘And her nurse is by-ordinar. I had quite a conversation with the nurse. Her father, too. That is a very civilized man. Their house might almost be in Paris. I’m glad to see you with a friend who shares your interests, I told you so this morning.’

‘Alys shares more than that.’

‘ What? Gilbert, what have you done?’

‘Mo ther !’ said Gil, as he had not done since he was eighteen. ‘I mean that she’s clever, and learned, and she thinks more clearly than any woman I know except you and Dorothea. She was of great help in finding out who killed the woman I found dead in the building site at St Mungo’s two weeks since, and she has been at least as much help as her father over this business at the college. I want to teach her philosophy,’ he added irrelevantly.

‘You’re too late,’ she said, staring at him.

‘Too late? What do you mean?’

‘I think she already knows some. At least, she quoted Plato today while I was washing my hands.’

Gil’s jaw dropped.

‘Plato?’

‘She said it was Plato.’ Lady Cunningham bent to the little pan on the hearth. ‘Oh, my dear. You’ve got it very bad, haven’t you?’

‘There was never a girl like her in the world,’ said Gil, recovering. ‘Now do you see why I want to marry her? How many women in Scotland can quote Plato?’

‘Not many, since the Queen died and the old King’s sister Eleanor was married abroad,’ said his mother, ‘but still I canny countenance it.’ She swirled the contents of the pannikin, and set it down again. ‘Sugar. I know I have some sugar.’

Gil watched her cross the room to the pile of baggage.

‘Why in this world not? Is it only the money? The living?’

‘Gilbert.’ She peered at him round the neatly bagged wool brocade curtain of David Cunningham’s best bed. ‘We never planned this for you. I told you, we — ’

‘I never planned it either, mother!’ he expostulated. ‘An hendy hap ich hab yhent. I met her on May Day, I met her father the next day — about cathedral business,’ he added hastily, before she could comment, ‘and by the Sunday, last Sunday indeed, only a week since, he had approached my uncle and then spoken to me. I admired Alys the moment I met her, but I had no thought of overturning your plans for me till the offer was put to me. It came from them, I didny seek it, but I wish it now more than I’ve ever wished anything in my life.’