The Nicholas Feast (Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery)

by Pat McIntosh

  She sat down on the stool he indicated, and launched into an extensive eulogy which bore little resemblance to the portrait of William painted by his friends at the college. Gil let her talk, picking the occasional nugget out of the torrent. William was cleverer than any, his manners were more polished than all the Montgomerys, his voice was sweeter than the lady Isobel’s had been. When he was eight he had defeated a juvenile Douglas in scholarly dispute. Hugh Montgomery had intended to make a churchman of him, and legitimation proceedings had begun.

  ‘Did the lady Isobel marry someone else?’ Gil asked casually.

  ‘She did indeed, before her bairn was a twelvemonth old, Lord Montgomery found her a husband and he was good to her. Poor soul, she fell sick afore Pace, there, and was shriven and in her shroud afore May Day. Five bairns she’s left greetin for their mammy, and the oldest but thirteen year old. Nae doubt their daddy’ll take another afore the year’s end.’

  ‘Did William know her?’

  ‘He kent her name, but he never met her, no since he was, oh, the age of the bairn here. She’d send him gifts now and then, but she was far too far to visit, even if Gowdie’d kent about him. Poor soul,’ sighed Mistress Irvine. ‘She was a bonnie bairn and all. So when the letter cam, with the paper for William in it, I brocht it to Glasgow, seeing I was coming to see how our Davie did.’

  ‘A letter? You can read, Mistress Irvine?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ she agreed. ‘Well, my name, and a wee bit more. I can write my name and all. I learned when the holy faither learned her, when she was a wee thing. She would have him teach me at her side. That was like her,’ she confided, her face softening. ‘Bonnie and loving and generous, she was, but she was obstinate as they come. Once she decided I’d to learn my letters and all, there was no shifting her. That’s how I kenned Lord Montgomery would never learn whose bairn it was, no matter the beatings he threatened her. Not that he’d have done any of those things. So,’ she continued, unexpectedly recovering the thread of her answer, ‘she’d put my name, and she’d writ clear so I could read it that the other bit paper was for William. The messenger said it was in her jewel-box when she dee’d.’

  ‘Was that the letter I delivered for you? Do you know what it was?’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said regretfully. ‘It never said in her letter, and it was sealed that close – well, you saw it yourself. Did he get it, maister? I wouldny like to think he went to his death without a word from his minnie.’

  ‘I gave it into his hands. But we never found it in his room,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘Was he expecting it?’

  ‘He was expecting it today, since I tellt him yesterday I had it, but I know he’d no more idea what it was than I did, for I asked him. I journeyed here yesterday with Sandy Wag the carrier who was fetching sacks of meal up for Lord Montgomery,’ she elucidated, ‘and I went to ask for him as soon as I’d heard Vespers, but I never had the paper wi me then, for I didny recall how close the college lies to the Greyfriars kirk. And the man was that disobliging about sending for him. Oh, and if I’d kenned that was my last speech with him –’

  ‘Lord Montgomery took an interest in William,’ Gil prompted.

  ‘Aye, that he did. Paid me well to foster him. I think he’d a fondness for her – for the laddie’s mother,’ she confided, ‘they all did, come to that, but it would never ha done. Too close, they were. Holy Kirk would never consentit.’ She turned her head as Alys approached from the other end of the hall. ‘I understand there’s to be a wedding in this house,’ she said, with tear-stained archness. ‘I wish ye very happy, maister, and you, my lassie. I was never in such a well-run house. Such kindness as I’ve been shown under this roof, maister.’

  ‘Thank you for your good wishes,’ said Alys, taking Mistress Irvine’s large red hand in hers. ‘You are most generous. Gil, have you any more questions? Kittock has brewed a posset to help her friend to sleep.’

  ‘Then she must drink it while it’s hot. Thank you for talking to me, mistress.’ Gil helped the woman to her feet, and watched as she was led off to the kitchen.

  The mason found him deep in thought, staring out at the garden which sloped in the evening sunlight down towards the mills on the Molendinar. The pup was seated on his feet.

  ‘By what Alys tells me, that was not hunting,’ he said. ‘That was poaching.’

  ‘Like tickling trout,’ Gil agreed. ‘Poor woman, her grief at least is genuine. She wept the starns doun frae the lift, she wept the fish out o the sea. My uncle might know who this Isobel was. He might know about the legitimation procedure as well, since it would have to go through the Archdiocese. I must go home, Pierre.’

  ‘Alys is seeing to the bairn. She will be down in a little. Shall we keep that dog tonight? The baby has taken a liking for him.’

  ‘Aye, and Maggie will have enough to do seeing to my mother’s men, without finding scraps for a growing dog. I’d be grateful. That is, if he’ll stay.’

  ‘If we put food in front of him, he will stay. What must we do tomorrow?’

  ‘I need to speak to Nick Kennedy. I could do that on my way home. Tomorrow I must see the young man Nicholas Gray, and I think the chaplain, and we must talk to the dog man, and to William’s barber. There is the list Nick made for us, of who was present at the feast.’

  ‘Alys must decipher those papers for us. Is that all?’

  ‘We need to look for William’s notebook.’

  ‘Indeed. None of this seems likely to lead us to the killer,’ complained the mason.

  ‘It could have been nearly anybody,’ Gil agreed, ‘or almost nobody.’

  ‘If you sleep on it,’ said Alys, emerging from the stair that led to the upper floors, ‘it may become clearer. I am taking this bairn to Nancy. Gil, I set milk to warm for the dog. If you bring him down to the kitchen we can feed him.’

  In the kitchen, the household was beginning to settle itself for the night. Two of the maidservants were clearing crocks, cooking pots which had been scoured earlier and set to dry by the fire were waiting to be carried out to the scullery, straw mattresses spilled out of an opened press. Kittock and her guest had their heads together in a corner, drinking something pun-gently herbal out of wooden beakers. A pottery jar with a face on it, of the sort that contained usquebae, stood on the floor at their feet.

  Alys led the way to the fire, handed the infant John to Nancy and drew the little crock of milk from the ashes.

  ‘Bread and milk,’ she said, pouring the warm milk over the crumbs in another bowl. ‘That will fill his belly. Ah, I have heated too much milk.’

  She prodded the soaking crumbs with a carved spoon, while the pup’s nose twitched.

  ‘I think he is used to bread and milk,’ said Gil. He set the animal down, and John immediately exclaimed something and waved his hands. Alys put the dish of bread and milk on the floor, and the pup plunged into it, tail swinging.

  ‘Oh, mem!’ said Nancy. ‘Oh, mem, look!’

  She held the baby up. He was gazing intently at the pup, and smacking his lips.

  ‘He’s hungry!’ said Nancy.

  Leaving Alys spooning bread and milk into the willing baby while the wolfhound watched with interest, and her father exclaimed his intention of walking up to Greyfriars later to hear Compline, Gil went out into the High Street and strolled the short distance to the college gate. It was shut, and he had to bang on it with the hilt of his dagger before Jaikie came to open the postern.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Maister Cunningham,’ he said, standing aside grudgingly as Gil stepped over the wooden sill. ‘What are you after at this hour? I’d a thocht you’d be in a warm bed by this,’ he added, descending into an unpleasant camaraderie. ‘And better than a hot stone to warm it, eh?’

  He nudged Gil, and grinned at him, releasing fumes of usquebae and spiced pork.

  ‘My day’s darg isny done,’ said Gil with intense politeness, ‘unlike yours. We haven’t found who killed William yet.’

  ‘Oh, him. Small lo
ss, he is. I dinna ken why you bother.’

  ‘What did you know of the boy, Jaikie? What like was he?’

  Jaikie looked cautiously up the tunnel towards the courtyard, and beckoned Gil into his little room, where a rushlight competed with the small illumination from the narrow window. Closing the door behind them both he leaned close to Gil and hissed, ‘He was a nasty, boldin wee bystart.’

  ‘He’d a good opinion of himself, had he?’

  ‘Oh aye. He had that. Well, you seen him yourself, Maister Cunningham, out in the street to greet the company as if he’d been the Dean his self. And he wouldny be tellt. None o’ the rules was to touch him, but he’d run about looking to see who broke the bylaws and report them to Maister Doby Even those that did him favours,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘I’m sure he found nothing to report about you,’ lied Gil.

  ‘Oh, no,’ agreed Jaikie. He turned to poke at the brazier, and belched, adding his own contribution to the smells which already choked the room. ‘Though I did him favours enough,’ he added, leering sideways above the reluctant flame, ‘and small return for them.’

  ‘What kind of favours?’

  ‘Oh, just things.’

  ‘He collected information,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘Someone like you, here at the yett where everyone comes and goes, must have plenty information.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be dumfounert, maister. They come through here, down the pend, past my door, aye talking, and no always in the Latin tongue. I hear a thing or two, I can tell you.’

  ‘And William paid you for it?’

  ‘Paid! That lang-nebbit rimpin pay for a thing? No, it was Jaikie, I seen such-and-such of your doing that the Dean would like to ken. Tell me what you’ve got, or I’ll pass him the word. And then he’d leave papers for me to give to this or that man chapping at the yett, and aye sealed.’

  ‘Small gain if they hadn’t been sealed,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘for they were in code. We’ve found a page all in code, that was in his purse.’

  ‘His purse? I thought that was stolen.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Oh, one of them.’ Jaikie jerked his head towards the courtyard. He left the brazier finally alone and flung himself down in his great chair, reaching for the stone bottle beside it. ‘Usquebae, maister? No? Ye’ll no mind if I take a wee drop. Ye’d be surprised at the secrets I get out of a jar of usquebae.’ Removing the rag which did duty as a stopper, he tipped the bottle, swallowed and wiped his mouth. ‘Aye, well, code, was it? Doesny surprise me.’

  ‘Who collected these papers?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Just folks. They’d ask for them. No anybody I’d seen before.’

  ‘You were just telling me how much you learn, here by the street door,’ Gil observed. ‘Is there anybody in Glasgow you don’t know by sight?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Jaikie sourly. ‘The reason being, I’m tied here by this door, so if they don’t come up the High Street, I canny see them. Anyway, it wasny Glasgow folk. You could tell by the way they spoke. Ayrshire, maybe, or over that way somewhere. I got a sight of a badge one time, same as on that house along the way. Montgomery’s place.’

  ‘What, the men had Montgomery’s badge?’ said Gil, startled. ‘You mean he was simply writing letters to his kinsman?’

  ‘Aye, maybe,’ said Jaikie after a moment. He took another pull at the usquebae, and grunted irritably. ‘That’s another one finished. Well, it can join the others.’ He rose, to add the bottle to a row standing under the shut-bed which occupied one end of the room, and took another from the press under the narrow window. ‘Will ye have some of this one, maister?’

  Gil shook his head, and the man sat down again and took out his eating-knife to break the seal on the new bottle. ‘Aye, maybe he was just writing home. But he made a rare parade of it. And near every week. None of them writes letters every week, even the ones that misses their mammies.’

  ‘And the dog?’ Gil asked, recalling something. ‘Was that another of the favours he asked you?’

  ‘Oh, aye. He’d leave it here for Billy Dog to fetch away, or Billy ’ud bring it to wait here for him. He was training it, it seems. So he said. Billy’s been here looking for it three times the day, starting when they were all at that feast.’

  ‘You mean it wasn’t William’s dog?’

  ‘Ask at Billy Dog. I wouldny ken. It answered to him well enough.’

  ‘Thank you, I will.’ Gil turned to open the door, and turned back. ‘These letters. Was it only Montgomery’s men that collected them? Were there any for anybody else?’

  Jaikie, taking another draw at the usquebae, lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth before shaking his head.

  ‘They wereny all from Ayrshire, if that’s what ye mean, maister, but as to where they were from – I could make a guess, maybe. If it was worth my while.’

  ‘You saw no other badges?’

  ‘No on the messengers.’ Jaikie eyed the stone bottle broodingly ‘No on the messengers. But I’ll tell you one I did see,’ he added.

  ‘What one was that? Where was it?’

  ‘Aye, ye’d like to know, wouldn’t ye no? I’ll tell ye what it was, though.’ Jaikie took another mouthful of spirits, and belched resoundingly. ‘The fish-tailed cross, it was.’

  ‘What, the cross of St John?’ said Gil, startled. ‘Who was carrying that?’

  ‘Secrets, secrets,’ said Jaikie, leering at him. ‘No Christian soul, I’ll tell ye.’

  Feet sounded in the tunnel, and someone knocked on the twisted planks of the door. Gil drew it open and Jaikie said aggressively, ‘And what are you after, Robert Montgomery?’

  ‘Maister Kennedy wants his friend sent for,’ said Robert, looking down his nose in a manner very like his dead kinsman’s.

  ‘What friend? Is it this one here?’

  Robert transferred his gaze to Gil, now looking at him round the door, bent the knee briefly and said with more civility, ‘Maister Cunningham, aye, it is. Maister Kennedy wants you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gil. ‘Is he in his own chamber?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Robert, ‘and he’s got his troubles the now.’

  The truth of this became evident as they stepped into the courtyard. A number of students loitered about the door of Maister Kennedy’s stair, sniggering from time to time, and the well-loved teacher’s voice floated out, raised in what Gil at first took to be fervent prayer and then recognized for equally fervent cursing.

  ‘What in the world –?’ he said.

  ‘Ye should go on up, maybe,’ said Robert. ‘Maister Kennedy’s a wee thing overset.’

  ‘I can hear that.’ Gil picked his way through the group and into the stair tower. The words became clearer as he ascended, a startling mixture of several languages, presumably gleaned from colleagues who had studied abroad. He reached the chamber door as its occupant paused for breath.

  ‘What ails you, Nick?’ he began, and stopped, open-mouthed on the threshold as the question answered itself.

  The room was wrecked. Like most scholars, Maister Kennedy had few enough possessions, other than his books, but what he possessed was strewn across the floor and trampled. A shoe with the sole ripped off lay on an ink-dabbled shirt, more ink daubed the fur of a shoulder-cape on the bench, paper in single sheets was everywhere, and the straw mattress had been slashed open and emptied. The bookshelf gaped unoccupied.

  ‘Christ and his saints preserve us,’ said Gil. Maister Kennedy turned to look at him.

  ‘Come in, Gil,’ he said savagely. ‘Come and see the reward for three years’ work. I think they got everything.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ Gil asked.

  ‘While we were at Vespers. The Dean did William proud – Christ aid, you’d think he’d been the next Pope but two, the way he went on – must have been near an hour for that alone, let alone the singing. I got back here not long since and found this.’

  ‘Has anyone else been searched?’ Gil began lifting handfuls
of straw and stuffing them back into the mattress.

  ‘How would I know? I’ve been here.’

  ‘Have you told the Principal? The Steward?’

  ‘I tell you I’ve been here. The students ken – maybe they’ve tellt someone.’ Maister Kennedy picked his way to the bench and sat down. ‘I canny think. Maybe I should tell the Principal.’

  ‘I’ll send someone.’ Gil left the mattress and went down to the courtyard. The group of students was beginning to disperse now that Maister Kennedy was no longer performing, but a few remained.

  ‘You two,’ he said to the nearest, ‘will you carry a word to Maister Doby for me?’ They nodded, looking apprehensive. ‘Say to him with my compliments that I’d be grateful to see him in Maister Kennedy’s chamber as soon as convenient. Can you mind that?’

  One of them repeated the message accurately enough, and they hurried off. Gil looked at the remaining boys.

  ‘And you can find out for me, if you will, whether anyone else found anything wrong when they came back from Vespers, and if so, send them to me here.’

  ‘Aye, maister,’ said one of them. ‘How bad is it, maister? It looked a fair old fankle.’

  ‘Well, I hope nobody intended a joke,’ said Gil, ‘for it’s far beyond that.’

  He went back up to the fair old fankle. His friend was now lifting odd sheets of paper and throwing them down again, staring round helplessly.

  ‘I canny see what’s missing,’ he confessed. ‘St Nicholas’ balls, Gil, they’ve wrecked my only shoes, I’ll ha to wear these boots till I get them seen to.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Gil wondered. ‘And what were they after?’

  ‘None of the college. We were all at Vespers.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘I think so. We can find out. Besides, who in the college –?’ Nick looked round. ‘Maybe someone hates me.’

  Slow footsteps on the stair proclaimed the arrival of Maister Doby He halted in the doorway as Gil had done, staring, until Patrick Coventry appeared at his back and eased him into the room.

  ‘My faith,’ said the Principal at length. ‘Who has done this?’ He groped his way to the other end of the bench and sat down. ‘What a day! What a day, with two such evil-doers in our midst. All your papers, Nicholas, and your ink-horns. And your books!’ he exclaimed in horror as Maister Coventry lifted an abused volume from under the bed-frame.