Pat McIntosh - The Nicholas Feast

‘I know too,’ said Alys, laughing.‘Socrates!’

‘You saw the likeness too?’ he said, turning his head to look at her.

‘Yes — the figure on the hangings behind Father Bernard. And William gave him a scroll to carry, as well! Though I don’t think William would have been convincing as Philosophy,’ she added.

‘No, the metaphor doesn’t stretch that far,’ agreed Gil.

‘Oh — metaphor!’ said the mason. ‘So the dog is yours, and his name is Socrates. Well, I have heard worse things to shout across the Dow Hill. And now tell me, madame. How did you and my daughter and her governess manage to arrive, like the Muses or the Sibyls or three goddesses in a cart of clouds, at precisely the moment it needed to break the impasse? I truly think, if you had not appeared, we could have been there yet with the priest denying everything and telling nothing.’

Lady Cunningham exchanged a look with Alys across the room. They smiled.

‘I must say,’ Gil agreed, ‘Pierre is right, mother. I was beginning to doubt whether either Father Bernard or the boy would ever break.’

‘I was surprised to recognize the laddie himself admitting us,’ she said. ‘I thought you would have kept him under your eye.’

‘His uncle wanted him present,’ said Gil, ‘so I had no need to insist. Your timing was superb, and your contribution was wonderfully apt. Had you been waiting in the outer room all that time?’

‘Lord Montgomery knew we were there,’ said Alys. ‘I could see him wondering what our business might be.’

‘It was obvious that we could assist, so we assisted,’ said Lady Cunningham simply.

‘Speaking of Robert our Archbishop,’ said Canon Cunningham, drawing a paper from the breast of his long gown, ‘as you were this moment, Gelis, I had a letter from him this morning in the bag that came to St Mungo’s.’ He unfolded it, and settled his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. ‘A scrape in his own hand, what’s more, none of your secretary copies. He sends that he’s minded to do something for you, Gilbert, after the other matter you sorted out, about the bairn’s mother, and that he has two suitable posts in mind, each with a living attached, and he’ll tell us more when he knows which is free.’

‘Let us hope his gratitude is cumulative,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘It sounds promising,’ said Gil. He looked down along his shoulder at Alys, and she smiled quickly at him, then looked away in sudden shyness. ‘We won’t starve, then.’

‘Well, if all else fails,’ said the mason, ‘you may set up a pavilion in my courtyard, and Alys may continue to oversee the household. Then I can send you the broken meats from the dinners Alys cooks for me.’

‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ Gil said, struck by it. ‘Perhaps not a pavilion, in a Glasgow winter, but we could live somewhere about the place, if you had space for us.’

‘You’d be in the midst of the burgh,’ said Alys, ‘and you could hang out your sign as a notary and get the passing trade.’

They looked at each other. There was what seemed to Gil a long pause, as if time was standing still; then Canon Cunningham said in resigned tones, ‘We ’ll have little sense out of either of them the rest of the evening. Take that dog into the garden, Gilbert,’ he ordered, raising his voice slightly, ‘and we’ll get a look at the last few points of that contract while you’re gone. If we can all agree on the wording, it should be ready for signing by the time you can hold a pen.’

The garden was warm in the evening light, full of scents of green stuff and damp soil. A blackbird was singing from the top of the roof, and the occasional sweet, heady waft from the bean patch further down the slope reached them as they walked slowly along the gravel path, Socrates ranging round them.

‘I want to invite Dorothea,’ said Gil, and paused at the gap in the hedge to look out over the burgh. Another blackbird shot across the view, calling in alarm, and the dog turned his head to watch it, ears pricked.

‘To the marriage, you mean?’ He nodded. ‘That’s your sister who is a nun,’ she recalled.

‘That’s the one. And my other sisters as well, I suppose,’ he added.

‘We have no kin in Scotland,’ she observed, ‘but we have friends in plenty in the burgh. It may be a very great feast.’

‘Soon?’ Gil said hopefully. He drew her to a stone bench by the hedge, and Socrates came and sat at her feet.

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘As soon as we can arrange all.’

‘And as soon as we’re certain we have enough to live on,’ he said ruefully. He took her in his arms. ‘But Alys, what did you say to my mother, to make her change her mind?’

She turned within his clasp to look at him.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted to speak to her. I thought I would assure her of my duty too, just as you said.’ He nodded. ‘So I dressed in my best, and took Catherine, and we had the horses brought and rode up here.’

‘That took courage,’ he said.

‘No, no, for she was perfectly civil to me yesterday, Gil. And so she was today. Maggie served wine and cakes, and I said what I had come for, and then I said I hoped Our Lady would send that we would give her grandchildren, and that we would both wish her to have an eye to their upbringing.’ Gil tightened his arms about her, and she looked down, then shyly up at him again. He bent his head to kiss her. After a while she went on.

‘Catherine talked genealogy with her for a long time. Perhaps it was that,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I think they found a connection somewhere, though it involved three marriages.’

‘What, between your family and mine?’ he said, alarmed. The wolfhound looked at him anxiously, then put his nose down on his paws again.

‘Between Catherine’s and your mother’s,’ she reassured him, her elusive smile flickering. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t need a dispensation.’

‘Praise Heaven for that!’

‘Amen, indeed. And then your mother asked me about this matter — William’s death, and the messages, and the spying. I told her what we knew, and she saw that what she knew about Father Bernard could be of use to you. So she also put on her best gown, and we went down to the college. But that was all we discussed. I don’t know what made her change her mind.’

‘Garneist with governance so gude Nae deeming suld her deir. She had brought that court dress with her?’ said Gil. Alys nodded. ‘She keeps it for great occasions. I wonder if she came prepared to be talked round?’

‘She certainly seems to favour the marriage now.’ She giggled. ‘And I haven’t heard my father making flowery compliments like that since we left Paris.’

Gil grinned. He had not yet had time for a private conversation with either Maistre Pierre or his mother. By the time he had extracted himself from the University she and Alys had already returned to Rottenrow, and when he and the mason arrived at the house in mid-afternoon she had come down in her everyday clothes to greet them, closely followed by his uncle. The compliments Alys referred to had gone in all directions, even Canon Cunningham making stately puns which not everyone noticed.

‘So we can be married soon,’ he said again.

They sat close in silence for a while. Gil found his mind ranging back over the day again, and further back, to the feast and all its consequences. Some of those young men at the University would be worth keeping an eye on. Ninian Boyd was probably destined to be a small laird and a good master, but the Douglas boy was promising, and Lowrie Livingstone was a very interesting character. Was I like that at seventeen? he wondered. Did our teachers look at Nick and me with that resigned expression? He thought of the Dean, glowering at Alys across the room, and then of Maister Forsyth, who had intercepted him just before he left the college.