The Nicholas Feast (Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery)

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Huh! What’s that for?’

  ‘For being Maggie.’

  ‘Saints preserve us, who else should I be?’ she demanded, but he was quite unable to explain.

  The hall was dark, and smelled of the herbs his mother liked to burn. He crossed it in the pool of light from his candle, the shadows leaping avidly round him, and made his way to the upper floor. The solar was also in darkness, but a line of light showed under his uncle’s chamber door, and another under the door to the best chamber. He paused for a moment, then crossed the room towards the smell of herbs, and tapped on the painted planks.

  ‘Come in, dear,’ said his mother.

  She was seated by the fire, wrapped in a furred bedgown he remembered from before he went to France, her prayer-book on her knee. He stood just inside the door and looked at her, and she stretched out a hand to him, smiling.

  ‘Come and sit down. Are you very tired?’

  ‘Very,’ he agreed, and obeyed, kneeling first to kiss her hand. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I said I would wait up for you.’

  ‘And I said I would be late,’ he countered.

  ‘And are you late to good purpose? Have you found who killed the poor boy?’

  ‘Not yet. Why is Nan not with you? I saw her in the kitchen just now.’

  ‘She snores, which is why she’s not on the truckle-bed here, or in the attic next to you as David suggested. I hope she won’t keep Maggie awake.’

  ‘I think nothing would stop me sleeping tonight,’ he confessed. She drew the candle nearer, and surveyed him, then rose, tightening the girdle of her furred gown, and began to delve in one of the packs which were stacked beyond the great curtained bed.

  ‘I know what you need,’ she said, as she emerged with a pannikin and a waxed linen scrip.

  ‘How are my sisters?’ he asked, watching her without seeing what she was doing.

  ‘Kate and Tibby are well, and send their love.’

  ‘Give them mine,’ responded Gil automatically.

  ‘I will. I wrote to Dorothea a week since, but I’ve heard nothing, which I assume is good news.’ She was measuring spices, a pinch of this and a speck of that, out of little packages in the scrip. ‘And Margaret is like to make you an uncle again this autumn.’

  ‘How many is that?’

  ‘Only her third, as you know very well.’ Lady Cunningham poured ale from the jug on the dole-cupboard on to the spices in the pannikin, and set it in the hearth, then tilted her head, sniffing. ‘Do I smell violets?’

  ‘My wrist.’ Gil held up his hand. ‘To draw out the bruising, so Alys said.’

  ‘Ah.’ His mother suddenly became intent on the pannikin of ale. ‘The demoiselle Mason. A very giftie lassie.’

  ‘Mother,’ said Gil. She looked up, and met his eye.

  ‘I am not blind to her virtues, my dear,’ she protested. ‘And her nurse is by-ordinar. I had quite a conversation with the nurse. Her father, too. That is a very civilized man. Their house might almost be in Paris. I’m glad to see you with a friend who shares your interests, I told you so this morning.’

  ‘Alys shares more than that.’

  ‘What? Gilbert, what have you done?’

  ‘Mother!’ said Gil, as he had not done since he was eighteen. ‘I mean that she’s clever, and learned, and she thinks more clearly than any woman I know except you and Dorothea. She was of great help in finding out who killed the woman I found dead in the building site at St Mungo’s two weeks since, and she has been at least as much help as her father over this business at the college. I want to teach her philosophy,’ he added irrelevantly.

  ‘You’re too late,’ she said, staring at him.

  ‘Too late? What do you mean?’

  ‘I think she already knows some. At least, she quoted Plato today while I was washing my hands.’

  Gil’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Plato?’

  ‘She said it was Plato.’ Lady Cunningham bent to the little pan on the hearth. ‘Oh, my dear. You’ve got it very bad, haven’t you?’

  ‘There was never a girl like her in the world,’ said Gil, recovering. ‘Now do you see why I want to marry her? How many women in Scotland can quote Plato?’

  ‘Not many, since the Queen died and the old King’s sister Eleanor was married abroad,’ said his mother, ‘but still I canny countenance it.’ She swirled the contents of the pannikin, and set it down again. ‘Sugar. I know I have some sugar.’

  Gil watched her cross the room to the pile of baggage.

  ‘Why in this world not? Is it only the money? The living?’

  ‘Gilbert.’ She peered at him round the neatly bagged wool brocade curtain of David Cunningham’s best bed. ‘We never planned this for you. I told you, we –’

  ‘I never planned it either, mother!’ he expostulated. ‘An hendy hap ich hab yhent. I met her on May Day, I met her father the next day – about cathedral business,’ he added hastily, before she could comment, ‘and by the Sunday, last Sunday indeed, only a week since, he had approached my uncle and then spoken to me. I admired Alys the moment I met her, but I had no thought of overturning your plans for me till the offer was put to me. It came from them, I didny seek it, but I wish it now more than I’ve ever wished anything in my life.’

  ‘But my dear, you’ve no land, you must get a benefice or preferably two so you can live on the teinds, you must be a priest.’ She made it sound like a logical progression.

  ‘Pierre will dower her –’

  She straightened up and returned to the fire with another small waxed packet.

  ‘How can we match that? We’ve no land to spare, Gilbert!’

  ‘My uncle has offered –’

  ‘Your uncle, your uncle! Well enough for him,’ said his mother desperately, ‘with all his benefices. Son, I have two parcels of land, you know that. I can keep myself and your sisters on the rents of one, and run the horses on the grazing of the other, and we win a living. If I give you either property for your home, how can I –’

  ‘Are you feart I’d make you homeless?’ he said incredulously.

  ‘What else could you be planning?’

  ‘Mother, listen!’ He leaned forward and caught her wrist left-handed. ‘Listen to me. I don’t want to live in Avondale or Clydesdale.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘We lost those lands. You know that,’ he said, echoing her phrase deliberately. ‘I don’t want to live where I can see the Hamiltons hunting our game and taxing our tenants.’

  ‘Not in Lanarkshire?’ she said. ‘But what will you live on? Where would you stay?’

  ‘Oh, in Lanarkshire,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll stay in the Lower Ward. If I marry Alys, we’ll settle here, in Glasgow. She has no kin but her father in Scotland, her mother is dead. How could I take her out of the place she knows? My uncle has offered two or three properties within the burgh that bring in a good rent. Pierre will dower her well, and I’ve a mind to convert at least some of that to property too. And then my uncle has some salaried post in mind, that he’s negotiating for. We wouldn’t be rich, mother, but we’d be comfortable.’

  ‘You’ll never make a living as a clerk outside the Kirk.’

  ‘There are more lay notaries than priested nowadays. They seem to do well enough.’

  She stared at him a moment longer, then looked down at the pannikin.

  ‘Oh, your posset,’ she said. She added a pinch of sugar from the packet in her hand, and swirled the contents of the pan carefully, testing its warmth with the back of her wrist. Gil sat watching her, in a sort of daze of fatigue. The incongruity between the effort required to present an argument on such a subject and the aching familiarity of sitting at the hearth in his mother’s chamber, with the smell of her remembered herbs in his nostrils, had unbalanced him slightly. She was pouring the spiced and sweetened ale into a beaker now.

  ‘Drink this, Gibbie,’ she said, holding it out to him. He took it, and drank obediently.

  ‘And what
of your sisters?’ she went on, as if he had not just made a long speech. ‘What’s to become of them when I’m not here? Are they to fast With water-kail, and to gnaw beans and peas? If you haveny an income, you canny support them, much less dower them, and whatever your uncle has in his mind,’ she hurried on, as he drew a weary breath to speak, ‘I’ll not believe it till I see the first quarter’s salary in your hand.’

  ‘Mother, my uncle approves. He likes Alys herself –’

  ‘I told you, he’s a sentimental old man.’

  ‘– and he is greatly impressed by her accomplishments and her learning.’

  ‘She is clearly an excellent housewife,’ his mother agreed, ‘and obviously widely read as well.’

  ‘I think more clearly when I can talk to her.’

  ‘Gil, there’s my point exactly! Marriage holds a young man back – here you are already, running after her instead of working.’

  ‘I am working!’ he said indignantly. ‘The Principal commissioned me to find William’s murderer. And Alys has already been a great help. Listen,’ he pursued as she drew breath to speak. ‘Hughie’s bairn died with its mother, didn’t it? And Edward was no even betrothed?’

  ‘He was six-and-twenty,’ she said, with the wooden expression she still wore when someone else mentioned her dead sons. ‘We were just beginning to seek – Christ succour me, Gil, it’s only four years since!’ she burst out, and covered her face with one hand.

  ‘I know, mother,’ he said more gently. ‘But you have no Cunningham grandsons. If I marry Alys, and we –’ He stopped, his throat tightening, as the full import of what he was saying struck him. His child and Alys’s – his own son. Alys’s son. ‘Do you not wish for my father’s name to go on?’

  ‘But what will you live on?’ she repeated.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, setting down the empty beaker, ‘I’ve heard enough.’

  ‘You’ll abandon the marriage?’

  ‘I will not,’ he said. ‘I have you deaving one ear and my uncle at the other, with argument and counterargument.’ He winced as he spread his hands. ‘When my closest kin fall out, I’m free to please myself. I’ll sign the contract as soon as I can hold a pen.’

  She stared at him, her expression unreadable.

  ‘But you can aye be sure, mother,’ he concluded, ‘of our loving duty. And I know fine I speak for Alys in that, as well as myself.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I’m glad you came by, Maister Cunningham,’ said Maister Coventry, waving him to a stool by the window of his chamber in the Arthurlie building. ‘We were wondering what success you have achieved in the matter of William’s death.’

  ‘Call him by his first name, for God’s sake, Patey,’ said Maister Kennedy from the other side of the chamber. ‘We’re all equals here, and he’s in minor orders at least.’

  Maister Coventry raised his eyebrows at Gil, who nodded.

  ‘I should be honoured,’ he said. ‘As to what I have achieved in William’s matter, the answer is very little. The people with a reason to kill the boy had no opportunity, and the people with an opportunity had no reason that I can discern.’

  ‘Who had a reason?’ demanded Maister Kennedy.

  ‘Most of the Faculty, I suspect,’ said Maister Coventry before Gil could answer. ‘It’s good fortune that all were together at the critical moment.’

  ‘What is the critical moment, anyway? When was he killed, exactly?’

  ‘I think,’ said Gil carefully, ‘that he was throttled just about the time the Dean rose at the end of the play. Certainly he was dead and locked in the coalhouse by the time we all gathered in the Fore Hall again. I can’t say closer than that yet, and I may never be able to.’

  ‘Oh,’ said his friend. He stared out of the window at the wet tree-tops of the Arthurlie garden, his lips moving, and finally said, ‘Aye, that was it. D’ye ken, Gil, unless he spoke to whoever killed him, I must be the last to have had any converse with the boy.’

  Gil, noting with interest that William was no longer that little toad, said, ‘And what did you converse about?’

  ‘Well, no to say converse. You mind when his tail got ripped and he marched off the stage.’ Gil nodded. ‘He stopped behind the curtains and got out of the dragon costume. Then he took up his gown –’

  ‘His gown?’ Gil interrupted. ‘You mean he had taken it backstage with him?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘So he had planned to go snooping,’ said Patrick Coventry thoughtfully.

  ‘Very likely. Anyway after he had his gown on, and done up all the wee hooks and fastened his belt –’ Maister Kennedy stopped and grimaced. ‘His belt. Aye. He set off towards the door. I got a hold of him and said something about, You’re not going, are you? He says, Yes, I am, my part’s finished. All this in whispers, of course. I said, Who the – who do you think you are? I decide when you’re finished, I said, and he shook me off and answered me back, looking down his nose that way he had, For the first time in my life I know exactly who I am. Then he went off out the door and the next time I saw him he was dead. Wasny that a strange thing to say?’

  ‘Strange indeed,’ said Maister Coventry. ‘But he was in a strange mood that morning. I thought he seemed elated, out of himself in some way.’

  ‘I wonder what was in the package from his mother,’ said Gil. ‘And what he did with it.’

  ‘You think she sent word of who his father was?’ asked Maister Kennedy.

  ‘I think that might explain a great deal,’ said Gil.

  ‘Had he never known his father’s name?’ asked Maister Coventry curiously.

  ‘Montgomery claims that he himself never knew, but had his suspicions,’ said Gil. ‘Though of course there is no saying what the boy had been told.’

  ‘If anyone else knew it,’ said Nick Kennedy, reverting to realism, ‘William would pick it out of the air. So maybe she’d sent him some kind of proof, then?’

  ‘Was that why his chamber was searched?’ speculated Maister Coventry.

  Gil shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? I feel we are close to a solution, to finding justice for the boy, but the last links in the chain elude us. So many strange things have happened – William’s chamber searched, yours searched, Nick, the pile of William’s papers burning in Jaikie’s brazier.’

  ‘I have another strange thing to recount,’ said Patrick Coventry. ‘This is why I sent word to you, Gilbert.’ He hesitated. ‘I still – I don’t know its significance.’

  ‘Spit it out, man,’ said Maister Kennedy bracingly, ‘and let Gil judge for himself.’

  ‘You know, I think, that I am studying for a bachelor’s in Sacred Theology,’ said the Second Regent, taking refuge in the Latin again. Gil nodded. ‘I should have been at the lecture our chaplain gave on Sunday at two o’clock, save that I was at the feast. So I asked one of my fellow Theology students in advance if I might copy his notes.’

  ‘We’ve all done it,’ said Maister Kennedy.

  ‘What with one thing and another,’ said Maister Coventry, ‘and the Montgomery boy having a nightmare, and the death of Jaikie our porter, it was not until yesterday before Vespers that I asked Alan Liddell for his notes in order that I might copy them. But he had no notes. I do not like the implication of what I am saying, but I must say it. Father Bernard did not teach at two o’clock on Sunday. There was no lecture.’

  ‘None?’ said Gil. ‘Did he cancel it, or not turn up to deliver it?’

  ‘He cancelled it,’ said Maister Coventry, nodding approval of the question. ‘Alan said he was present in the Theology Schule while they were gathering, and left the room less than a quarter-hour before he was due to start. He was gone for a little time, and returned just after the ringing of the two o’clock bell in order to dismiss the class, saying he was unwell and would give the lecture on another day.’

  ‘Class is ambitious,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘There are five of you when you’re all there.’

  ‘Unwell in what way? Did
he specify? Did he seem as normal?’

  ‘Alan did not tell me that, though he did say that Father Bernard seemed quite distressed, as if ill in truth. I think he said he was trembling. He said that two of the students offered to fetch help, or assist their teacher round to the House, but these offers were spurned.’

  ‘Well!’ said Gil. ‘Father Bernard went to some trouble to make me think he had taught as usual, although,’ he qualified, reviewing the conversation, ‘I don’t think he lied outright. What did his class do? Did he leave first, or did they?’

  ‘Alan did not say. It seems the class went up to the Laigh Hall, since it was raining, and held an informal disputation which lasted till the college dinner.’

  ‘So they would not have seen where their teacher went next.’

  ‘Probably not,’ agreed Maister Coventry.

  ‘So Bernard Stewart skipped a lecture,’ said Maister Kennedy. ‘So what? Is it important, Gil?’

  ‘It might be of great value,’ said Gil cautiously. ‘It confirms something I had suspected. I heard Wycliff mentioned in the Laigh Hall that afternoon. The ship of faith tempestuous wind and rain Drives in the sea of Lollardy that blaws. How close to the wind of reform does Father Bernard sail, Patrick? Is he at risk from a charge of heresy?’

  ‘Such a charge as William was hinting at on Sunday? It’s hard to teach theology without mentioning ideas which have been thought heretical at one time or another. Wycliff in particular appears from time to time.’ The Second Regent peered out at the much-trampled grass under his window. ‘I should have said Bernard was not at risk. As Dominicans go he is hardly a radical, so if any charge were to be laid his Order would support him without hesitation.’

  ‘Then William’s hints were an empty threat?’

  ‘Not completely,’ said Maister Kennedy unexpectedly. ‘There would be questions asked, his teaching suspended, delays to his students, confiscation of his books till somebody got here from Cologne to read them. Bloody inconvenient. And he’d lose the income from the chaplaincy.’

  ‘That goes to the Order,’ said the Second Regent.