Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘This wicked dog!’ Catherine stumped into the little room, brandishing the missing collar. ‘Look what he has done to his handsome collar. We found it in his corner just now. It is quite destroyed!’ She thrust the object at Gil, who took it. The pup, wakened by the commotion, raised its head to seize one end of the leather and tried to start a game with it.

‘No,’ said Gil firmly, pinching the animal’s jaw to make it let go. He pushed the pup off his knee and fended it off with one foot while he inspected the damage to the collar. The padded centre-section had been well gnawed. The leather was torn and wet and the straw packing was escaping, but something white also showed in the gap. Gil drew it out carefully.

‘The lining is coming out. He has chewed up the stitching. You must beat him for such destructive behaviour, maistre !’ declaimed Catherine.

‘He’s only a baby,’ said Gil absently, unfolding a curving spill of paper. ‘All young animals chew things. I dare say he is cutting teeth, they always are at this age. Would you beat John, madame, for chewing — ’ He stopped speaking to stare.

‘What is it?’ asked Catherine. ‘Is it something important, maistre? The dog man was here again this morning asking for the collar. Is that why he sets such value on it?’

‘I don’t know if this is what Billy Doig wants,’ said Gil, ‘but it is certainly something I want.’ He passed it to the mason, and continued, ‘You know the dog man, madame?’

‘Not to say know him.’ She sniffed. ‘I know his wife by sight, for I see her every day exercising the dogs out there.’ She gestured to the window, with its view down the long garden and across the Mill-burn.

‘On the Dow Hill? Did you see her yesterday?’

‘I did. My sight is good at a distance, maistre, and I saw her clearly from the demoiselle’s chamber where I was attending your lady mother as she washed the dirt of the roads from her person.’ She stared across the burn. ‘As clearly as I see her now, indeed.’

‘What?’ Gil twisted round to look. ‘Sweet St Giles! Pierre, see this.’

The mason rose to join them at the window and watch the cart jolting up across the Dow Hill. On it were piled a precarious heap of household goods, and what seemed, from this distance, to be the kind of basket in which puppies were transported if necessary. Beside it and leading the fat pony trudged the small chess-piece figure of Maister Doig, and behind it his wife was attempting to control the largest mixed leash of dogs Gil had ever seen.

‘Pray God they do not start a rabbit,’ said Maistre Pierre after a moment. ‘What do we do about that?’

‘Little we can do,’ said Gil, still watching.

‘But he is escaping.’

‘We have no proof he killed Jaikie,’ said Gil slowly, ‘only a strong supposition. Short of a witness in the street yesterday or a signed confession, there is no case worth bringing against him. Even if we did bring a case, he could always claim it was a fair fight, or an accident. There might be blood-money for the man’s kin, but I hardly think Doig would hang.’

‘A fair fight? A man that height, against one like Jaikie?’

‘Precisely,’ said Gil.

‘So it does not matter,’ said Catherine, ‘that the dog has destroyed his collar? Is he not to be scolded for his misdeed?’

‘I’ll scold him,’ Gil promised her. She grunted at him, and stumped out muttering darkly, passing Alys in the doorway.

‘So is this paper what I think it is?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Alys, look at this. It was in the dog’s collar.’

‘I’m sorry I was so long,’ she said, handing Gil the singed covers of the notebook. ‘Nancy was feeding John by the fireside, and he spilled his sops on my gown.’ She looked over her father’s arm at the paper he was holding, and read, ‘Hodie in matrimonies — This day, the morrow of the feast of All Souls, 1475, were joined by me in holy matrimony Isobel Montgomery and — and who? The paper is torn. Oh, how tantalizing! What can the missing name be? Is there nothing to tell us?’

‘Say rather, it’s chewed.’ Gil took the page, piecing together the damp flaps of the ragged lower margin. ‘That’s an A.’

‘A-L,’ said Alys, pointing with a slender finger.

‘E,’ contributed her father.

‘Then there is a piece missing completely. But that is definitely an N, and a D.’

‘Alexander?’ wondered Alys.

‘I think it must be. And we know the surname. We have the name of William’s father.’

‘Alexander Montgomery,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘But is this a reason to kill the boy?’

‘There is another name missing,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘The officiating priest usually signs this kind of document. It says This day were joined by me- I think he did put his name to it.’

‘You think that was why William wanted to speak to Father Bernard?’ said Alys.

‘You mean it was his name? He married them?’ The mason craned his neck to see the ragged edge of the paper. ‘No, there is no more writing. The dog must have eaten it. May I assure you now, I shall not follow him round the yard waiting for the facts to emerge.’

‘Nor I.’ Gil sat down again, looking at the fragile document. ‘If Bernard Stewart did marry these two, he would be in some trouble, even sixteen years later, both from the Montgomery for going against his wishes, and from his Order for marrying two people who were within the forbidden degrees of relationship.’

‘Surely he could brazen it out?’ suggested the mason.

‘One of the pages in the notebook was headed B.S. and contained a number of reformist quotations which I would not like to have imputed to me,’ said Gil. ‘What if William did have speech with Father Bernard on Sunday morning? He — Father Bernard told me he had to arrange for the music to be carried to St Thomas’s, and therefore had no time for the boy, but John Shaw itemized the music in the list of things he had had to see to.’

‘So he did,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I remember.’

‘If William showed Father Bernard this document,’ said Gil, ‘or at least told him he now had possession of it, and threatened to report him for heresy if he would not support a claim of legitimacy — ’

‘I should think Father Bernard would be desperate,’ said Alys.

‘He would lose either way,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘But is it sufficient reason?’ Gil looked up as the Blackfriars bell began to ring. ‘Plague take it, that must be for the boy’s funeral! I meant to borrow a Master’s gown and hood and join the procession, but it’s too late now. I must go as I am and slip in at the back. Pierre, are you coming? Does Mistress Irvine go?’ He folded the paper with care and tucked it into his purse.

‘Brother Andrew forbade it,’ said Alys. ‘She is still sore stricken with grief. Gil, I know you have no gown, your own won’t come back for several days. That kind of mending is specialized work. But at least let me find the funeral favours, so Lord Montgomery won’t be offended.’

‘It was Montgomery’s men who ruined my gown,’ Gil pointed out, but she had hurried off up the stairs.

Blackfriars kirk was half-full. Gil made his way in by the west door just as the first singers of the University procession reached the north porch, and was surprised by the numbers already present, and the buzz of conversation in the nave.

‘I suppose half the town is here out of interest,’ said his friend behind him.

‘You could be right,’ Gil answered him, staring over the heads. Seats had been placed nearest the nave altar for the Dean and Principal and other senior members of the college, and the small stout Dominican who had laid Jaikie out was keeping space behind these for the ranks of scholars, not without some difficulty. On trestles before the altar, with candles at head and foot, lay a solid elm coffin. Hugh Montgomery had evidently decided to do the thing properly. He and his henchmen were standing on the south side of the church, their predatory stares directed at Father Bernard who was fidgeting about on the altar steps. The procession sang its way into the nave and filed into its places. Dean Elphinstone, in his silk gown and hood with the red chaperon pinned to his shoulder, glared along the length of the coffin at Lord Montgomery while the scholars, behind him, worked their way through an elaborate setting of the funerary sentences. Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live … But some of the singers were younger than the dead boy, Gil reflected. It seemed unkind to put these words into their mouths. And what Patrick Paniter, chanter at St Mungo’s, would make of their rendering of his setting did not bear thinking about.