Pat McIntosh: The Nicholas Feast

‘Sh!’ said Maister Coventry. ‘I want to hear Lowrie Livingstone. He will speak next.’

The fourth-year student sat down, to applause from his peers and teachers. The younger students were fidgeting audibly now. A fair boy two rows from the front began to gather himself together to rise to his feet, but before he could do so the red-haired alto stood up and said in clear and fluent Latin, ‘Teachers, masters, brothers, I have a question to ask.’

Heads turned. The fair boy dropped back on to his bench, mouth open. Gil, looking at the senior members of Faculty seated in the stall-seats on either side of the pulpit, saw David Gray freeze like a hare that hears a dog.

‘Then ask, William,’ said the Dean. William bowed gracefully.

‘This is my question,’ he said. ‘We are taught to regard the college as our mother.’ The Dean inclined his head. ‘But what if one discovers that another of her sons is ill-using her?’

‘Make yourself clearer,’ directed the Dean after a moment.

‘What if another of the college’s sons has misused her money,’ said William in that clearly enunciated Latin, ‘or has inculcated heretical beliefs in her students?’

There was a sudden murmur of scandalized exclamation. The Dean, lifting his voice over it, said, ‘If one were to suspect such terrible and painful things of another member of the college, he should go quietly and reveal his suspicions to the Principal of the college, who would set due enquiry in motion.’ He fixed William with his eye. ‘Does that answer your question?’

‘But what if,’ persisted William, ‘the Principal is not impartial in the matter? To whom should one go then?’

‘What is the little toad up to now?’ asked Nick Kennedy.

‘He should go to the Rector,’ said the Dean, his manner cooling with every word, ‘when those are separate persons. If they are the same person, as for instance just now, then he should go to the Chancellor of the University, that is to Robert our Archbishop. However I must point out that one who brought such serious allegations against a fellow scholar without a firm foundation of truth would be guilty of perjury, being in clear breach of his oath of allegiance to the Rector and to the college.’ There was a crackle of ice in his voice. ‘Does that answer your question?’

‘It answers it,’ said William, allowing a shred of doubt to creep in.

‘Then let us continue,’ said the Dean.

‘But what was he playing at?’ Gil asked, as the procession entered the Fore Hall for the feast.

‘Who knows?’ Nick Kennedy, drawing Gil firmly to the table for the non-regent Masters, claimed two places and gestured at one. ‘Sit down. Indeed, who cares, except those who have to sit next to him?’

‘He is not popular?’ said Gil. He dipped his fingers in the faintly rose-scented bowl which a blue-gowned student was holding for him, and wiped them on the linen towel, nodding his thanks. He got an abbreviated bow in return, and looked again at the boy, reminded of William’s discourtesy at the yett. This was a different fellow, with darker hair springing from a wide brow, but the way he looked down his nose at Gil’s scrutiny was similar.

‘Depends who you speak to,’ said Maister Kennedy. He dabbled his fingers in his turn and wiped them on his cope. ‘I think he’s a clever arrogant little toad, but Bernard Stewart thinks the sun shines out of his — his ears, and the Dean says he’s one of our most promising students, though I think he wasn’t best pleased with him today. Aye, Robert,’ he added to the boy, who moved off, a gleam of amusement in his expression. Nick said roundly, ‘I don’t want to think about William. Tell me about Paris.’

Gil’s description of Paris drew in the Master of Arts opposite, who had been there shortly before Gil himself, and the Master on the end of the table, who had lectured there for a year. Nick listened in discontent until the college chaplain rose to deliver a very long grace in a strong, musical voice. Gil looked at him with some interest, recognizing the man whom William had accosted in the Outer Close. He was, as usual, a Dominican, wearing the robes of his order rather than an academic hood, but instead of the fair chubby man who had held the post in Gil’s time this was a dark, intense creature in his forties with sunken eyes and a mouthful of large teeth.

When the grace was over Nick said, ‘St Peter’s bones, how I wish I’d gone abroad when I had the chance. I wouldn’t be stuck here at the hinder end of nowhere teaching ungrateful brats to dissect syllogisms. What’s the library like at Paris?’

‘Do you mean the library of the Scots College?’ asked the man at the end of the table, whose name Gil had not caught. ‘Or the library of the Faculty of Arts? Or those of the Faculties of Theology, Canon Law, Civil Law?’

Maister Kennedy groaned, and hid his shaggy eyebrows with one hand as the first course of the feast was borne in. To some rather muffled music supplied by a group of students with recorders and lute, a pheasant in train was carried round to be admired, and a succession of mismatched plate and pewter went to the high table, where the Dean ceremoniously broke a loaf and placed it on the alms dish to be given to the poor. The student musicians, hastily tucking their instruments under a bench, armed themselves with long towels and wooden platters and waited to bear portions of freshly carved roast meats away from the impromptu servery midway down the long wall. Harassed servants carried in more dishes to set on the lower tables, one between four.

‘What have we got?’ said Maister Kennedy, sniffing. ‘Oh, God, rabbit and ground almonds. It’s the Almayne pottage again. Pass me the red comfits, Gil.’

Spooning indifferent stew, Gil studied the other guests at the feast. Behind him across the hall another table surrounded by non-regent Masters buzzed happily. At the far end, two tables of students produced an astonishing level of noise and, as the ale-jug went round, a continuous flight of bread pellets like finches in a hedgerow. By the servery the ubiquitous William was in close colloquy with the fingerbowl boy. As Gil’s eye fell on them, Maister Shaw the Steward bustled up. William sauntered off to join the singers, and the other student, accepting an obvious rebuke with gritted teeth, seized a dish and ladle and plunged across the hall towards the high table.

Not a pleasant young man, little Sir William, Gil thought.

On the dais, in front of painted hangings from the Beadle’s supply, the Faculty office-bearers and regents were ranged along one side of the elaborately draped board as if they were people in a prayer-book miniature, conversing politely or glaring at the students, as prompted by temperament. The Dean and Maister Doby were instructing the Steward; David Gray the Scribe was staring into a flan dish as if he could see the flames of Hell among the points of pastry which decorated it. Next to him was old Tommy Forsyth, and then Patrick Coventry, putting out a steadying hand as a ladleful of bright yellow stew slopped alarmingly near to Maister Forsyth’s fur-lined cope.

‘Where will the play be?’ he asked Maister Kennedy, who took another handful of the cinnamon comfits and said gloomily,

‘Below in the Lang Schule. There’ll be yet another procession, round the yard and in at the door. I hope they’re setting up the hangings for us now. I’ll need to go and see to that before the second course is done.’

‘Did you write it?’

Nick nodded. ‘I and two of the older boys. There’s been some friction,’ he added grimly. ‘William has improvements to suggest every time he opens his mouth, but since they all enlarge his part, which is already large, at the expense of others I didn’t take many. Had it not been made clear to me that it was expected he would take part,’ he added, the passive verb forms falling neatly in the Latin, ‘the little toad would have been booted out the second time he criticized someone else’s acting.’