by Pat McIntosh
Gil waited, pacing along the sandy roadway, but no more information was forthcoming.
‘There was rioting on the Left Bank,’ he recalled, ‘when the King tried to impose his will on the Faculty of Theology again. Students on the Continent are more combative than in Scotland, I suppose because they are generally older.’
‘And the universities are larger, so there are more of them,’ said the mason absently.
They made their way to the East Port and out through the gate, nodding to the two keepers. The senior, a stout man who reminded Gil strongly of the late Jaikie, eyed them suspiciously, but appeared to decide that they had neither goods nor profits to be taxed, and waved them idly through.
‘Where does the dog-breeder stay?’ Gil asked, pausing.
‘It’s no far,’ said the younger gatekeeper, taller and more helpful than his colleague. He pointed. ‘A wee bit out yonder. Ye canny miss it, maisters, the reason being, all the dogs is barking. Ye can hear it from here.’
‘You can indeed,’ agreed the mason.
‘Just follow your ears,’ said the senior keeper, and laughed raucously.
‘We return before Compline,’ said Maistre Pierre.
‘Well, you’ll no return this road after it, maisters,’ said the younger man, ‘for we’ll shut the gate.’
Beyond the port, over the wooden bridge which crossed the Mill-burn, the condition of the roadway deteriorated sharply. Inside the burgh there were regulations about middens, about the housing of pigs, about keeping the street before one’s door passable. Since most of the burgesses observed these from time to time, particularly when threatened with a fine by the burgh officers, they had some effect. Outside the gate there were no regulations, and though the road which led in from Bothwell and Cadzow was well defined, since carts and pack-trains came in this way, it appeared to go through some of the middens. On either side was the usual suburban huddle of small houses, the homes of those who could not afford to live in the burgh, with a few larger properties among them where some tradesman had become wealthy enough to ignore the by-laws about indwelling burgesses. Children, pigs and hens scuffled in the alleys, a goat browsed thoughtfully on a patch of nettles, and over all the dogs howled.
‘That way, I think,’ said Maistre Pierre, gesturing to their left. ‘There is a vennel of sorts which goes in the right direction.’ His glance fell on the crumbling chapel standing where the paths diverged, and he added, ‘Ah, there is Little St Mungo’s. Your uncle was saying the roof needs repair, and he is perfectly right. Those children will have the building down.’
‘The vennel goes on to the Dow Hill,’ said Gil. ‘The dog man lives on the Gallowgait, so Robert Montgomery said.’ He caught the eye of a dirty boy, one of several waiting to swing on a heavy rope knotted into the overhanging eaves of the chapel. ‘Can you take us to Billy Dog’s?’
‘What’s it worth?’ demanded the child. Two or three more came jostling eagerly forward.
‘I ken, maisters. I’ll show ye! Dinna tak him, he’ll lead ye astray. I’ll show ye, maisters!’
The dog-breeder’s home, down Little St Mungo’s Vennel, was a low thatched cottage like its neighbours, distinguished mainly by being next to a tanner’s yard. One of the boys led them confidently past the interested stares of several gossiping women and stopped in front of the open door. He gestured at a well-trodden path which emerged round the end of the house and led down the vennel to a plank bridge over yet another burn.
‘That’s where she walks the dogs. Mistress Doig!’ he shouted. ‘Here’s two men wants ye!’
Gil handed over the coin they had agreed on, and the boy bit it, thrust it into some recess of his filthy clothing, and ran off, followed by the friends who had escorted them.
‘There is nobody at home,’ said the mason doubtfully. ‘Perhaps they have been driven out by the smell.’
‘I should have kept that compress on my wrist,’ said Gil.
‘It takes folk that way at first,’ said a rasping voice, low down behind them.
Gil turned, and stared.
The dog-breeder was not much taller than an ell-stick, and consisted mainly of a big-featured head and a barrel chest. His arms were short, bare and furred with coarse black hair, and at first glance he seemed to have no legs, but a pair of well-shod feet which were just visible under the turned-up hem of a leather apron. Gil found himself recalling one of his nurse’s tales.
The man moved forward, raising his blue woollen bonnet, and ducked a grotesque courtesy which made it clear that his legs were short and bowed.
‘Good e’en to ye, maisters,’ he said politely, though from his wry smile he knew exactly Gil’s thoughts. ‘And what can Billy Doig do for ye?’
Gil, recovering his own manners, introduced himself and the mason with equal politeness.
‘I’ve got William Irvine’s dog in my keeping,’ he said.
‘I hear he’s deid, poor laddie.’ Maister Doig crossed himself with a hairy paw.
‘He is,’ said Gil. ‘I think you had some arrangement with him about the pup’s keep.’
‘Oh, I had,’ said Billy Doig rather hastily, ‘but the money’s all used up, maister. If I was to get the dog back, I’d need more coin for it.’
‘That’s understood,’ said Gil. ‘What was the arrangement you had?’
Maister Doig looked at them, his eyes wary under thick greying brows.
‘Come in the house,’ he said. ‘No need to discuss it afore half the Gallowgait.’
‘May we not rather go round to the dog-pens?’ asked the mason.
‘Aye,’ said Maister Doig after a moment, and set off with a rolling gait like a cog in a cross-wind, round the end of the house.
The barking redoubled in volume as they followed him into the yard at the back. It was lined with rows of pens, from which big dogs, little dogs, wolfhounds, deerhounds, otterhounds, spaniels, two sorts of terrier, barked and howled and leapt up and down, tails going madly, demanding attention.
‘Mon Dieu!’ said the mason.
‘What a lot of dogs,’ agreed Maister Doig, with irony. ‘Be quiet!’ he shouted, and most of the dogs fell silent, watching him intently. A pair of terriers in the nearest pen yipped impatiently. ‘Quiet, youse!’ he said again, and they scurried to the back of their cage, where they could be heard squabbling over something.
‘All the dogs from Dunbar to Dunblane,’ said Gil. Maister Doig had clearly heard the quotation before. ‘Are these all your breeding?’ Gil continued, peering into a pen of spaniels. A black-and-white speckled bitch stood up against the palings to speak to him, and he offered her the back of his hand to sniff.
‘That’s Bluebell. Soft as butter she is. Had five good litters off her,’ confided Maister Doig, ‘but she’s resting the now. Aye, they’re mostly mine. That one there I got off Jimmy Meikle out past Hamilton.’ He pointed to another pen. ‘He throws good deerhounds, but his tail’s a wee thing short. The gentry likes a dog wi’ a good long tail.’
‘That never bothered us,’ said Gil, scratching the spaniel’s ears. ‘How is Jimmy Meikle? He was our dog man,’ he added to Maistre Pierre.
‘Jimmy Meikle’s deid,’ said the dog-breeder curtly, ‘as you’d surely ken if he was your dog man.’
‘We lost the land in ’88,’ Gil reminded him. ‘He went to the Hamiltons, like all else. I’m sorry to hear that, for he knew dogs like no other. That’s another of his breeding, isn’t it?’
‘No, she’s mine,’ said Maister Doig, ‘but you’re right, her sire was one of Jimmy’s.’ There was a pause, in which the terriers could be heard snarling. ‘So what did you want to discuss, maisters?’
‘How did you come to meet William Irvine?’
‘How did he die, maisters?’ countered Doig, looking from one to the other. ‘It was sudden, I take it, for he was well enough on Saturday.’
‘You could say that. It was murder,’ said Gil.
Maister Doig’s big-featured face tightened briefly.
‘How?’ he said after a moment. ‘Where did it happen? Jaikie never –’
‘Strangled,’ said Gil, ‘within the college.’
‘No by Jaikie?’ speculated the dog-breeder. ‘He threatened it often enough.’
‘Probably not by Jaikie,’ said Gil. ‘Do you know of any other enemies William had?’
‘Me,’ said Maister Doig frankly, ‘but I wasny by the college till after he was found. I came up to ask for the dog as arranged and Jaikie told me William was dead and he didny ken where the pup was.’
‘Why would you have killed him?’ asked the mason curiously. ‘What did you have against him?’
‘I never said I would have killed him,’ retorted Doig. ‘I said I was one of his enemies.’
‘You would have killed him if you had the chance?’
The light eyes under the grey brows turned to Maistre Pierre.
‘Look at me, maister. How could I kill something the height of that laddie?’
‘I look at you,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I see a very strong man.’
‘Aye, well.’ Maister Doig turned away. ‘I didny. As for why I might have, maister, he was a boldin wee bystart, and no near as clever as he thought he was.’
‘Was he no?’ asked Gil with interest. ‘His teachers were pleased with him.’
Doig grunted.
‘But he was a customer,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Did he pay well?’
‘Him?’ said Doig witheringly ‘Aye after what he could get, and never opened his purse if he could avoid it.’
‘So what arrangement did you have with him?’ Gil asked.
‘Arrangement?’ said Doig, visibly startled. ‘About the dog, you mean? I kept him here. Is he well, maister?’
‘He’s well. Someone broke his head for him, but it’s a skin wound only, and Maister Mason’s daughter physicked it –’
‘What wi’? What did she put on it?’
‘Comfrey,’ said the mason confidently. Maister Doig pursed his wide mouth and nodded.
‘He’s like to eat the kitchen bare. If I can settle it with William’s kin, I’d like to keep him,’ said Gil casually, ‘so I’ll want to know about his feeding and rule. What did William name him?’
‘Mauger,’ said Doig.
‘Despite,’ Gil translated into French for the mason. ‘Not a bad name for a wolfhound. So he lived here, did he? And you took him up to the college now and then?’
‘Aye, to get to know his master.’
‘More usual, surely,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘for the boy to visit the dog?’
A seismic movement of the massive shoulders appeared to be a shrug.
‘It suited. It would ha’ suited better if Jaikie had been less of a glumphy scunner.’
‘So the dog passed back and forth between you,’ said Gil, ‘with Jaikie as middle-man.’
The spaniel he was still petting dropped on to four paws and rushed to the corner of her pen where she stood whimpering and peering through the slats, her tail going.
‘No always,’ said Doig. ‘Times William brought him back himself.’
‘Times I took him up for ye,’ said a harsh female voice at the house-corner. Gil turned, and saw an angular woman being towed across the yard by a leash of spaniels.
‘My wife, maisters,’ said Doig informally. Mistress Doig inspected her husband sharply, while the dogs pawed at their friends through the fence as if they had been parted for weeks. ‘Maister Cunningham’s asking about the wolfhound, mistress.’
‘I hear that, Doig,’ she said, turning the acute gaze on them. ‘And why would they be doing that?’
‘I’m trying to find out who killed William,’ said Gil, ‘so I’m asking questions of everyone that knew him.’
‘Well, you needny bother asking us,’ she said in her harsh voice, ‘for we didny kill him. Doig never saw him all day, did ye? For all he was up the town three times asking at the college yett. Did ye say about the collar?’ she added to her lord. He tipped his head back and gave her a hard look, and she turned to unleash the spaniels and let them into their pen, expertly using the bedraggled hem of her heavy homespun skirts to stop the other dogs getting out of the opened gate.
‘Collar?’ said the mason.
‘There’s a dog-collar of mine,’ said Doig, ‘outstanding as movable property. Cost me a penny or two at the cordiner’s, it did, and I’d be glad to see it back and the leash with it. What was on the pup when you had him?’
Gil opened his mouth to reply, but was forestalled by a fearsome outbreak of snarling, worrying noises from the terrier pen. Doig rolled across to bang on the gate and shout, without effect. The snarling grew more savage, and one of the dogs yelped in what sounded like pain.
‘Fiend take it, stop that!’ yelled Doig, fumbling at the catch to the gate. His wife hurried over to join him, and they hauled the gate open and pounced on the rolling mass of brindled fur which tumbled out. The dogs were dragged off one another, still snapping and snarling defiance, long white teeth bared. Mistress Doig bundled one into her brown woollen skirt, revealing a patched grey kirtle, and Doig thrust the other back through the gate with his foot and fell back, cursing a bitten thumb.
‘Mon Dieu, have they run mad?’ the mason exclaimed. ‘You must have the bite burned.’
‘Naw. All terriers fight.’ Doig inspected the thumb and pushed it into his mouth. ‘You were telling me about the pup’s collar, maister.’
‘Just an ordinary collar,’ said Gil, as Mistress Doig shut the gate with her free hand. The mason leaned cautiously over the fence to look at the frantic dog, which was hurling itself against the fence raging at its kennel-mate. ‘But there was another in Jaikie’s chamber when we searched it, along with a great bundle of papers. Could that be the one you want?’
‘Along with the papers? Where?’ asked Doig round his thumb, frowning, but his wife turned with the latch-rope of the terrier pen still in her hand. The dog still bundled in her skirts squirmed convulsively.
‘Searched Jaikie’s chamber?’ she repeated. ‘Where was Jaikie? That sirkent ablach let ye search his chamber?’
‘After he was dead,’ explained the mason, and she stared at him.
‘Jaikie’s deid and all? When was this?’
‘This day about noon,’ said Gil, studying both Doigs.
‘About noon,’ repeated the dog-breeder, and gave his wife another hard look. ‘That would be about when I took the hounds up the Dow Hill, wouldn’t it no, mistress?’
‘Aye,’ she said, and licked her lips. ‘Aye, Doig, it would,’ she agreed earnestly.
‘We should get a Mass said for him,’ continued Doig. ‘He put folk in our way now and then. It’s aye good to get new custom,’ he said to Gil with a broad smile.
‘That’s true,’ agreed Gil, ‘though I would think you had custom enough. Dogs like these are far to seek.’
‘That’s a true word,’ agreed Doig. ‘My lord Bothwell had two off me last summer, and he put more of the Hepburns and the Humes on to me. I’d even the Earl of Angus after me for one of Bluebell’s last litter, but they were all spoken for already.’
‘You must hear a thing or two,’ said Gil. ‘You get a few men leaning over a fence like this, the talk must be of some strange matters.’
‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Doig easily. ‘Only last week, there was two young Hepburns and a gentleman from the Bishop’s household – Archbishop,’ he corrected himself, ‘all wi’ wonderful tales of some merchant in the Low Countries and what like things he’d send. Fair to split his sides one of them was,’ he reminisced, ‘telling of how his lord sent for cushions and got a barrel full of straw mats.’
‘Clearly, they have never tried to import a wheelbarrow,’ said Maistre Pierre, without looking up from the silent terrier pen.
‘And what were you doing, Mistress Doig,’ Gil asked politely, ‘while your man was exercising the dogs on the Dow Hill? There must be plenty for two to do in a trade like this. Jimmy had two boys just to keep the
pens clean, I mind.’
‘The pens is no bother,’ said Doig, ‘the reason being, I’ve an arrangement wi’ Sandy the Tanner next door. He sends two of his laddies twice a day wi’ buckets and shovels, and he gets to keep what they lift. So if you had they boots in Glasgow in the last four years, Maister Cunningham, it was my dogs provided the making of the leather.’ He grinned broadly, exposing the blackened teeth again. Gil looked down and flexed one ankle in the newly waxed boot.
‘They’re wearing well,’ he said. ‘Did he make that apron to you?’
The dog-breeder looked down at himself, and up again.
‘Aye. Aye, he did. That’s his work, right enough.’
‘I thought it might be. I can see he’s a good neighbour,’ said Gil. ‘Is that dog suffocating, mistress? He’s very quiet.’
‘He’s asleep.’ She let the layers of damp brown cloth fall over the grey kirtle, revealing a somnolent dog tucked under her arm. As they all looked, the little beast emitted a buzzing snore. ‘I’ll put him in an empty pen. We’ll ha’ to keep them apart for a bit, Doig.’
‘Aye, do that.’ Doig was wrapping his thumb in the hem of his jerkin.
‘So what were you doing, mistress?’
‘Seeing to the dogs’ feed,’ she said. She suddenly turned and bent to check that the latch-rope was fitted over the peg on the gate. ‘Aye, that’s right,’ she added, kicking the turnbutton on the bottom of the gate into place. ‘I was making the dogs’ dinner –’
At the word, the spaniels in the pen began to bark, leaping up and down, and every other dog in the place joined them. Gil covered his ears, laughing, and Maistre Pierre flinched.
‘Quiet!’ screamed Mistress Doig, and silence fell, broken only by excited whimpers from the nearest dogs. ‘Doig cuts the meat up fresh every time, but the mash takes the best part of an hour to boil beforehand. And they’re to be fed again, maisters, so if you’ll excuse us –’
‘We’ll get out of your way,’ agreed Gil. ‘I thank you for your time. Oh, one other thing.’
They stared at him, with identical expressions of faint dismay. Behind them, the mason stooped quickly to lift something from the cobbled surface of the yard.