The Nicholas Feast (Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery)

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Aye, right. And what do you want?’ demanded Jaikie. ‘I’ve enough to see to, dealing with this feast, without idle conversation round my door.’

  ‘I have a package here for William Irvine.’

  The man’s expression flickered.

  ‘Ye have, have ye? Let’s see. From Billy Dog, is it?’

  Gil handed over the folded paper. Jaikie turned it in his hands, flicked at the seal with a dirty thumbnail, and grunted.

  ‘It’s no from Billy Dog. Well, ye can deliver it yirsel. That’s William Irvine out there at the yett, capering like a May hobby, welcoming the maisters.’

  ‘The boy with the red hair?’

  ‘Aye, the same.’ Jaikie cast a glance out of his window at the crowd in the street. ‘Ye’ll need to be quick. They’ll mount up soon.’

  Gil went back out to the doorway and waited while the rain stopped, the sun came out, and the red-haired boy greeted another pair of graduates with flowery compliments about the college’s sons. One of them produced a stock phrase in reply, about the fountain of wisdom; the other grunted, ‘Aye, thanks,’ and pushed past Gil into the tunnel.

  ‘William,’ said Gil. The boy turned, and recognizing Gil raised his hat briefly and attempted to look down his nose at him. Tall though he was, Gil topped him by several inches, so he was unsuccessful in this, but he assumed an expression of vague contempt.

  ‘I have a package for you from Mistress Irvine, William,’ said Gil politely, holding it out. Little Sir William, are you within? he thought again.

  ‘From –? Oh,’ said William, taking it. He turned the little bundle over, reading the clumsy writing on the cover. ‘Thank you,’ he added, as if the words tasted unpleasant, and then, almost warily, ‘Did she say anything about it?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Gil. ‘You’ll need to open it to find out.’

  ‘Well, it’s what one usually does with a letter,’ said William, with casual impertinence. Gil raised one eyebrow, and the boy looked down and turned away. ‘Thank you, maister,’ he said again, ostentatiously studying the writing on the package.

  Gil made his way through the tunnel into the Outer Close where he paused, savouring the scene. The place had scarcely changed in the eight years since he had left; the thatch was sagging, the shutters were crooked, even the weeds between the flagstones seemed the same. Now, where had that ill-schooled boy said? Yes, in the Fore Hall.

  One or two Faculty members were about in the court, but judging by the noise most were above in the hall. As Gil turned towards the foot of the stair, William hurried across the court, in too much haste even to lift his hat to a passing Doctor of Laws. He appeared to be making for a tower doorway in the south range, but before he reached it a man in the robes of a Dominican friar emerged from the tunnel which led to the Inner Close. William, catching sight of him, checked and turned to intercept him.

  ‘Father Bernard,’ he said clearly. ‘I have something here that will interest you.’

  As Gil reached the top of the stair he settled on a word for William’s expression: gleeful.

  In the outermost hall of the college building a roar of polite Latin conversation rose from the assembled Faculty of Arts of the University of Glasgow, thirty or forty men in woollen copes like Gil’s or the silk gowns of the Masters of foreign universities circulating in an aroma of cedar-wood and moth-herbs. Gil paused in the doorway to look over the crowded heads and decided against making his way to his proper station, among the other non-regent Masters, the graduates of the University who did not hold teaching positions. If he waited here, he could slip into his place as the procession left.

  He could recognize many of the company. Yonder was John Doby, small, gentle and balding. He was the Principal Regent in Arts, in charge of teaching and all matters of the curriculum, and had taught Gil Aristotle thoroughly and exactly. Beside him, tall and silvertonsured, Patrick Elphinstone the Dean, whom Gil remembered as a conscientious and alarming teacher. There was David Gray the Scribe, a poor teacher and an ineffectual man, with the red furred hood of a man of law rolled down on his shoulders and straggling grey hair showing round his felt cap.

  The procession was forming up. Gil stood aside from the door, and the Dean and the Principal passed him in their high-collared black silk gowns and long-tailed black hoods, each with the red chaperon of a Cologne doctor trailing from his left shoulder. As they reached the doorway the light changed, and the May sunshine gave way to another vicious May shower.

  ‘Confound it!’ said Dean Elphinstone, stopping abruptly. ‘The hoods will be ruined! Principal, why did you insist on the silk hoods? Fur at least would dry out.’

  ‘It’s summer, Dean.’ Maister Doby peered past his taller colleague. ‘A wee bittie rain’ll not hurt you.’

  Gil looked over their heads at the large drops bouncing off the paving stones of the Outer Close and remarked, ‘Now if only we were allowed to wear plaids with our gowns . . .’

  Both men turned to look at him. Behind him the cry of ‘It’s raining!’ had run round the hall, in Scots and Latin, and some jostling began as people dragged silk-lined hoods and rich gowns over their heads in the crowd.

  ‘Ah, Gilbert,’ said the Principal, switching to the scholarly tongue. ‘It is good to see you. Do you remember David Cunningham’s nephew, Dean, who was one of our better determinants in – let me see – ’84, wasn’t it? And then –’

  ‘Paris, sir,’ Gil supplied. ‘Law. Licentiate in Canon Law.’

  ‘Oh, aye. And now trained as a notary with your uncle, I believe?’ Gil nodded, and bent a knee briefly in response to the Dean’s inclined biretta. Someone complained as his elbow met a ribcage, and he threw a word of apology over his shoulder. The Dean was speaking to him.

  ‘Are you the man about to be married?’

  ‘I am,’ agreed Gil, bracing himself for the usual congratulatory remarks. At least this is an educated man, he thought. Not like Jaikie.

  ‘Hmf. It seems a pity to waste your education,’ the Dean pronounced. ‘Why marry her? Why not take a mistress, if you must, and pursue the church career?’

  Gil swallowed his astonishment.

  ‘My uncle thought otherwise,’ he said, taking refuge in politeness again.

  ‘Hmf,’ repeated the Dean, and surveyed him with an ice-blue stare. ‘You have never undertaken the required course of lectures, Gilbert?’

  ‘What, since I left here? No, sir. The opportunity has not presented itself.’

  ‘Would you come to see me about that? We cannot get regents from outwith the college, and if you were to carry out your duty in delivering such a course it would benefit both the bachelors and yourself, since the bachelors could add another book to their list, and by it your degree would be completed and you would be properly entitled to the master’s bonnet you are wearing.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Gil, torn between annoyance, embarrassment and admiration. Patrick Elphinstone nodded, and turned to look out at the weather.

  ‘Aha! I think it’s easing a bit. Amid, scholastici,’ he said, pitching his voice without difficulty to reach all ears above the buzz of conversation. ‘We can set out now. Full academic dress, I remind you. The rain is no excuse. Shall we go, Principal?’

  Bowing politely to one another, the two men stepped into the drizzle to descend the stair to the courtyard.

  ‘All right for him,’ muttered a voice behind Gil as the Masters of Arts followed on. ‘The number of benefices he’s got, he can afford a new gown every week if he wants.’

  ‘He’ll hear you,’ said Gil, turning to look into the black-browed, long-jawed face at his shoulder. ‘Is that you, Nick? I thought I knew the voice.’

  ‘Aye, Gil.’ Nicholas Kennedy, Master of Arts, grinned briefly at him. They slipped into place behind the last of the graduates, and Maister Kennedy continued, ‘You’re not too grand to speak to me, then, having been to Paris and all that?’

  ‘I would be,’ Gil responded, ‘but you heard the Dean. I’m not entitled
to this bonnet, and I take it you are.’

  ‘Christ aid, yes.’ His friend grimaced, his shaggy brows twitching. ‘Course of twenty lectures to the junior bachelors on Peter of Spain. This makes the fourth year I’ve delivered it. What an experience. I tell you, Gil,’ he said, making for the horses ahead of his place in the order of precedence, ‘the man who invented the regenting system was probably a torturer in his spare time.’ He hitched gown and cassock round his waist and swung himself into the wet saddle. ‘Did one of the songmen tell me you’re betrothed? Is that what the Dean was on about? I thought you were for the priesthood and the Law, like the Dean said.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gil, standing in his stirrups so that he could bundle the skirt of his own cassock to protect his hose. ‘It’s all changed. Married life awaits me. My uncle and Peter Mason are working out the terms, and we hope to sign the contract this week or next.’

  ‘And that’s you set up for life. Congratulations, man. You always did have all the luck,’ said his friend enviously. ‘God, what I’d give to get out of this place, chaplain to some quiet old lady somewhere, never see another student in my life.’ He stared round, and nodded at a knot of students in their belted gowns of red or blue or grey. ‘That lot, for instance. They’ll sing Mass for us like angels, Bernard Stewart’ll make sure of that, but they’re a bunch of fiends, I tell you. If we get through the entertainment without someone deliberately fouling things I’ll buy the candles for St Thomas’s for the year. Oh, God, there’s William.’

  ‘The entertainment,’ repeated Gil. ‘I’d forgotten the entertainment. Don’t tell me you’re in charge, Nick?’

  ‘Very well, I won’t,’ said Nick, ‘but I am. For my sins.’

  ‘What are you giving us?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a play, as prescribed. I won’t tell you any more,’ said Nick rather sourly. ‘I don’t want to raise your expectations. What does your minnie say about your marriage? I mind she had other plans for you.’

  ‘She’ll come round to it,’ said Gil, uncomfortably reminded of Alys’s remark about his mother’s letter.

  With much shuffling and jostling, and delays caused by people struggling back into gown and hood and retrieving felt caps dislodged in the process, the Faculty got itself on horseback and arranged in order. The University Beadle, peering back along the line, nodded, raised his hat to the Dean, and gave the signal to move off as the sun came out again.

  Clattering up the High Street, Gil hitched at the layers of worsted he had wadded to sit on, and looked around at the other Faculty members present. At the head of the procession the Beadle was attended by a handful of senior students, presumably all those who could muster a horse and gown for the occasion. Demure behind them, decked in the Faculty’s collection of blue academic hoods, rode a favoured five of the non-regent Masters, followed closely by those other Masters of Arts who, like Gil, were living in the burgh and had been unable to avoid the requirement to attend, and Maister Kennedy, quite out of his proper position. The Faculty’s Man of Law and Scribe, side by side in their red legal robes, were succeeded by someone Gil did not know, who must be the Second Regent, and beside him baby-faced old Thomas Forsyth, his tonsure hidden by a round felt hat with a stalk like an apple’s. Behind them rode the Dean and the Principal, with four college servants in blue velvet, and bringing up the rear, wearing the expression of a man who knows disasters are happening in his absence, was John Shaw the Faculty Steward on a fat pony. Some way behind him rattled a donkey-cart laden with the green branches which would be handed out at St Thomas Martyr’s.

  ‘Why do we have the Beadle with us?’ Gil asked Nick Kennedy. ‘He’s a University servant and this is an Arts Faculty affair.’

  ‘Ah, but John Doby is Rector this year,’ Nick pointed out, ‘and John Gray as Beadle is the Rector’s servant. So we invited him along to make the procession look good, and quite incidentally to lend us the tapestries and cushions he keeps for graduations. Half our costumes for the play are out of his store,’ he added.

  The procession clopped and jingled up through the town. Dogs barked, and several small boys ran alongside shouting rude remarks, until Dean Elphinstone himself identified one by name and promised to call on his father.

  ‘That man is an asset to the college,’ Gil observed to Nick Kennedy.

  ‘Oh, he is. You should see him in Faculty meeting. He has all those old men following him like an ox-team, and Tommy Forsyth and John Goldsmith agreeing with one another. He’s some kind of cousin of William Elphinstone in Aberdeen, and you can see the resemblance.’

  ‘And who is that riding beside Maister Forsyth?’

  Nick twisted round in time to see the man in question put out a hand to Maister Forsyth’s bridle as the horses lurched up the steep portion of the High Street called the Bell o’ the Brae.

  ‘That’s Patey Coventry the Second Regent. He’s from Perthshire somewhere. A madman. He’s all right.’

  ‘Mad? How so?’

  ‘He’s Master of Arts from some obscure foreign place, he’s already collected a Bachelor of Decreets from St Andrews, and now he’s working on a Bachelor of Sacred Theology here as well as delivering a full set of lectures and disputations. Says he just likes learning.’ Nick hauled on his reins as his horse attempted to go down the vennel that led to its stable. ‘Get on, you stupid brute, we’ve a way to go yet!’

  Past the Girth Cross, past the almshouses of St Nicholas’ Hospital, past the Archbishop’s castle, the procession continued. Residents of the upper town, cathedral staff, clergy and their dependants, paused about their business to watch. Outside the crumbling chapel of St Thomas Martyr beyond the Stablegreen Port, the leaders halted. More servants appeared to hold the horses while elderly academics dismounted. The students behind the Beadle leapt down and hastened into the chapel.

  Gil, watching, saw the red-haired William pause by David Gray the Faculty Scribe as he straightened the creases from his gown. Whatever the boy said, it carried only to the lawyer’s ears, where it was unwelcome; Gil thought Gray’s narrow disappointed face paled, and he shook his head without speaking. The student vanished after his fellows, his red hair still visible in the shadows within.

  Curious, thought Gil, and finding himself beside Maister Forsyth, lent a hand as he tried to straighten his fur-lined cope.

  ‘Thank you, Gilbert,’ said the old man. ‘That was a very elegant answer you gave on your last disputation. What was the question again . . .?’

  ‘I don’t recall, sir,’ said Gil, holding the slit at the front of the cope open.

  ‘Ah, I have it. It was in the Metaphysics, I believe.’ Maister Forsyth’s gloved hands popped out of the single opening. He sketched a benediction, and hurried into the chapel after the other senior members. Gil cast his mind back over the years, discovered that his last disputation had indeed been the one on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and marvelled. That would have been in ’84. Since then, he had spent better than five years abroad; Scotland had been convulsed by a rising which had killed King James, third of the name, and replaced him by another James, fourth of the name and the same age as some of these students; Gil’s own father and elder brothers had died in support of James Third, and he himself had spent another couple of years almost imprisoned in the Cathedral Court learning to be a notary. Maister Forsyth appeared to have noticed none of this.

  ‘It’s the Mirror of Wisdom effect. Should we go in?’

  Gil looked round, and found the Second Regent at his elbow. He was a small man in his thirties, in a blue cloth cope and hood which appeared to have been made for somebody taller; his tonsure was surrounded by a mop of black curls, and he peered up at Gil from one bright blue eye, the other being directed firmly at the bridge of his nose in the worst squint Gil had ever seen.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he said blankly, following him into the little chapel. In the chancel, beyond the heavy semicircular arch, a choir of students was arranging itself round the huge music-book on its stand, and behind t
hem in the dimness movement suggested the presence of the priest.

  ‘Senior University men,’ said the small man in graceful Latin, ‘see the world entirely through the mirror of wisdom, like poor James Ireland. This mirror does not reflect matters of politics, public life, private life, or money. Maister Forsyth is probably quite unaware of how long it is since he heard your elegant answer. How long is it, in fact?’

  ‘Eight years.’ Gil grinned. ‘I see your point.’

  ‘Forgive me – I know your name, Nick Kennedy pointed you out, but I should introduce myself –’

  ‘I could say the same.’

  The unseen priest’s voice issued the invitation to prayer, and as the six students round the music-stand tossed the words of the Kyrie higher and higher Gil suddenly realized that this was the first full Mass he had heard since his life turned upside-down. A week ago these words had formed part of his own destiny; this morning, although he did not know where he would find a living, he knew it would be on this side of the chancel arch, with Alys as his wife. The idea seemed to reshape the Mass; he found himself stumbling over the responses, which he should not have been making, like a half-taught clerk. The velvet-gowned Faculty servants beside him looked askance, and moved away a little. Pulling himself together, he tried to concentrate on the singing, over the murmured prayers and other conversations of the members of the procession.

  Whatever setting they were using, it was being dominated by the first alto line, sung in a confident, rich head-voice slightly ahead of the other singers, and Gil was not surprised to find as his eyes adjusted to the dimness that the singer was the same red-haired William.

  ‘Listen to the little toad,’ muttered Maister Kennedy at his shoulder. ‘What did I say? He sings like an angel. That cousin of his would be quite good if William wasny there.’

  ‘Hush,’ said the Second Regent. ‘Later.’

  Maister Kennedy snorted, but held his peace. The Mass wore on, and the light at the chapel’s tiny round-headed windows faded, brightened, faded again. When the door was finally dragged open and the Faculty stood back for the senior members to leave, the same group of students was revealed waiting to hand out dripping branches of hawthorn improbably decked with bunches of daisies.