The Nicholas Feast

by Pat McIntosh

Hugh Lord Montgomery was standing before the empty fireplace in the Principal’s lodging, radiating rage like a hot brick. When Gil entered the room, with the mason watchful at his back, the Dean was explaining why no word had yet been sent to Archbishop Blacader.

  ‘You tellt me all that already,’ said Montgomery, glaring at Gil. ‘Is this what’s trying to sort it out? This – this Cunningham?’

  ‘Gil Cunningham, of the Cathedral Consistory,’ said Gil, bowing with a flourish of the illegal master’s bonnet. ‘And this is Maister Peter Mason, of this burgh.’

  The man who had been head of his house since he turned fourteen, who had personally killed two Cunninghams and a Boyd, was big, though not so big as the mason, and his dark hair sprang thickly above a square-jawed face. Dark angry eyes glittered under thick brows as he stared down his nose at Gil.

  ‘And what, if anything, have you done to the point?’ he asked. ‘Why have ye no hangit the ill-doer already?’

  ‘Gilbert is an able -’ began the Principal injudiciously.

  I dinna want able,’ said Montgomery quietly. I want quick.’

  ‘The trouble with quick,’ said Gil, ‘is that it might also be wrong, and then where would we be? Supposing we hangit a Drummond or an Oliphant, or worse, a Murray or a Ross, and then found out he wasny guilty, my lord, who do you think his kin would attack? The college or the Montgomerys?’

  ‘I’ll take my chance on that,’ said Montgomery.

  I think the college would prefer not to,’ said Gil. There was a pause, which seemed very long. Then Montgomery produced a sound like a snarl and flung himself down in the Principal’s great chair.

  ‘Well, tell me what you have found, then,’ he said savagely.

  ‘The young man called William Irvine was strangled with his own belt,’ said Gil, picking his words with care, ‘and hidden in the college coalhouse. This makes it secret murder, not murder chaud-mellé. We are working from two directions, trying to establish who had a reason for killing him and also who had the opportunity.’

  ‘And who had a reason?’

  I have found no good reason so far,’ said Gil.

  ‘Folk gets killed for bad reasons,’ said Montgomery. ‘Look for the bad reasons, Cunningham law man. What about opportunity? Who had the chance to kill him?’

  ‘Most of the college, at the moment,’ said Gil. ‘We will get closer than that once we speak to everyone.’

  ‘Pick a likely culprit and put him to the thumbscrews,’ said Montgomery. ‘I’ve a set I can lend ye, if the college has none. That’ll get ye a confession, quick as winkin.’

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ said the Principal.

  ‘Listen, Maister Doby,’ said Lord Montgomery, getting to his feet. ‘This is Sunday, right? We’ll have the funeral Tuesday or Wednesday, and if this long drink of water hasny named our William’s killer to me by the time William’s in the ground, I’ll come in here myself with the thumbscrews and –’

  ‘Not,’ said the Dean in glacial tones, ‘on University premises.’

  There was another of those pauses.

  ‘No?’ said Lord Montgomery softly. ‘Then how about outside? Ye canny hide in yir two closes in saecula saeculorum, clerk. I’ll be waiting. I’ll pick them off as they go into the town, and put them to the question. Ye’ve got till after the funeral,’ he said again to Gil, and strode past him.

  The mason stepped out of his way, and closed the door carefully behind him.

  ‘He must think a great deal of William,’ he observed, moving to the window which looked out into the courtyard.

  ‘I confess, Patrick,’ said Maister Doby in wavering tones, ‘that I feel the college could do without that man’s money now.’

  ‘I too, John,’ agreed the Dean. ‘Is that all you have learned so far, Gilbert?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Gil. The Dean waited. So did Gil.

  ‘We speak to William’s friends next, no?’ said the mason after a short time. ‘Where do we find them?’

  ‘I will have them sent for,’ said the Dean, giving in.

  ‘You may use this chamber. But you must make haste, Gilbert,’ said Maister Doby anxiously, ‘for Vespers will be early and solemn tonight and the college will go in procession to the Blackfriars kirk from the Fore Hall.’

  Ralph Gibson proved to be the lanky boy who had played Collegia, now revealing a remarkable crop of spots. Traces of paint still showed in front of his ears and at his hairline, and there was blue on his puffy eyelids. He sat down when bidden, and stared at Gil anxiously, his bony hands clasped between his knees.

  ‘You know what has happened, Ralph?’ said Gil. The boy nodded. ‘William Irvine is dead, and somebody killed him.’ Ralph nodded again.

  ‘It wisny me, maister!’ he bleated earnestly. ‘William was my friend. Him and Robert and me.’

  ‘That’s why I hope you can help me,’ Gil said. ‘Tell me about William.’

  ‘He was just William,’ said Ralph, taken aback.

  ‘Was he good company?’ Gil asked. Ralph nodded again.

  ‘Oh, aye, he was. He knew all sort of things,’ he added.

  ‘William told you things?’ said the mason. The boy glanced sideways at him under the blue eyelids. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘All sort.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Well, where Maister Forsyth got his lecture notes from. Who tellt Maister Stewart that you canny believe all the doctors of the Kirk have wrote.’

  ‘He told you these things?’ Gil said, with no particular intonation.

  ‘Well, maybe no.’ Ralph wriggled a little. ‘But he kent them himsel. He said so. And I tellt him things.’

  ‘That hint about Father Bernard – was that what William meant by his question at the meeting?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Ralph, floundering slightly. ‘I think quite likely, maister.’

  ‘William was a good friend?’ asked the mason.

  Ralph, understanding the phrase in the Scots sense, nodded again.

  ‘He got me out of trouble with Maister Gray,’ he disclosed, ‘and he lent me money to pay my fees when my faither’s rick-yaird burnt out. Maister, will I hae to pay that back?’ he burst out. ‘For I haveny got it. William’s heir might want it, mightn’t he no?’

  The pup, curled up on Gil’s gown by his chair, raised its head to study him, then tucked its nose under a hairy paw and went back to sleep.

  ‘William was a bastard,’ Gil said. ‘His nearest kin will get his goods and money. If there is nothing written down, Ralph, there is no proof of the loan at law –’

  ‘Oh, but he wrote it down,’ Ralph said. ‘In his wee red book.’

  ‘A red book?’ Gil asked, memory stirring faintly. ‘What book was that?’

  ‘He wrote everything down,’ said Ralph, with vicarious pride. ‘He was aye making notes.’ He mimed a careful scribe, writing small into his cupped left hand. That was it, Gil thought, recalling the sight of William writing in his tablets while the Dean’s golden oratory rolled over their heads. Writing that draft testament we found? ‘He said, you never kent when a thing would come in handy, and there it would be in his bookie.’

  William’s kin would not be bound by what the boy set out in his fictive will, but they might be prepared to be guided by it, Gil considered, looking at the tear-stained face in front of him. And half of William’s goods, or even a quarter of the worth of what they had found in the wrecked chamber, would be a considerable sum to this mourner.

  ‘Whoever is the nearest kin,’ he said, ‘I will speak for you in the matter of the loan. Now, tell us, Ralph, what did you do at the end of the play? Was anyone with you?’

  ‘At the end of the play?’ Ralph stared uncertainly for a moment. ‘Oh, aye. We all ran out when the rain begun. Robert and me went to our chamber, for he’d left some notes of William’s at his window and I’d left my other hose to air. Wringing wet they were, too,’ he added.

  ‘Where is your chamber?’ the mason asked. Ralph p
roduced some tangled directions to one of the stairs in the inner courtyard.

  ‘And then you both went back to the Fore Hall?’ said Gil. ‘Did you go anywhere else first? How about the privy? Did you see anyone else?’

  ‘Well, everyone else was running about too,’ said Ralph reasonably. ‘There was Henry and Walter, up our stair, for I heard them shouting about Walter’s boots. And when I was back down in the close I mind there was Andrew, and Nick Gray. And then I just gaed back and took off my costume and cleaned my face, and then I gaed up to the Fore Hall, for there was some of the comfits for the players.’

  ‘And Robert went with you, did he?’ asked Gil. ‘This is Robert Montgomery?’

  ‘No, no, he’d to go back to the kitchen. He’d been serving at table, see,’ Ralph explained. ‘He had to go back and clear. Walter and Henry and Andrew and me,’ he counted off on his fingers, ‘all gaed back to the Bachelors’ Schule thegither. Robert and Nick were wantit in the kitchen. Maister Shaw was there and sent them back.’

  ‘Did they go to the kitchen together?’ Gil asked.

  Ralph shook his head. ‘I didny see. Likely they did.’

  ‘What did you eat at the feast?’ Gil asked.

  Ralph, startled by the change of subject, blinked at him, but answered readily enough, ‘Rabbit stew and some of the onion tart. I didny get much. We had to go and get changed for the play.’

  The mason turned from the window where he had been looking out into the outer courtyard.

  ‘Tell us this, boy,’ he said. ‘Who do you think might have killed William?’

  ‘I don’t know, maister!’ There were tears in the young voice. ‘But I wish he hadny done it!’

  ‘Poor boy,’ said Maistre Pierre, when Ralph had gone.

  ‘A poor creature,’ Gil agreed. ‘I suppose William saw that too.’

  ‘And what of this red book?’

  ‘I have seen such a thing.’ Gil frowned. ‘I can’t remember where.’

  ‘It will come to you,’ said the mason with certainty. ‘Shall we have in the other boy now? Maister Doby said we should make haste.’

  Having seen the head of the family, Gil felt there was no doubt that Robert Montgomery was entitled to his surname. The dark hair sprang from the wide forehead in the same way, and there was the same effect of radiant rage, no less powerful for being subjugated to the good manners of a well-taught student.

  ‘The Dean said you wished to question me, maisters.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Gil. ‘Please be seated.’

  The boy sat down, staring intently at Gil.

  ‘Well? What d’you wish to ask me? We’re singing solemn vespers for him, I have to go and robe,’ he said. ‘And I need time to con the line, since I’ll be singing his part and no my own.’

  ‘William was your friend?’ said Gil.

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’ A shrug of one shoulder. ‘He’s – he was one of ours, even if he was a bastard. We spent time together.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘I don’t have to like all my kin, thank God.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Gil ambiguously ‘Tell me about William. Do you know who his parents were?’

  Again that intent stare.

  ‘If I did I wouldny say so,’ the boy declared roundly. ‘If you want the dirty linen, you can ask at my uncle Hugh. And good luck to it.’

  ‘Then what can you tell me about him?’

  Another shrug. ‘Clever bastard. Liked to know things. Kept himself separate.’

  ‘Would you say, nosy?’ asked the mason. Robert turned to stare at him.

  ‘You could say that,’ he said after a moment. ‘Some folk collects money, or relics, or plate armour. William collected information.’

  ‘What kind of information?’

  ‘All kinds. Who wedded who, what estates the King’s giving away, how the harvest was in Avon-dale – he’d write it all down.’

  ‘And sell it?’ said the mason. Robert froze for a moment, then turned to face Gil again.

  ‘I dinna ken,’ he said, with another shrug. ‘He wouldny tell me if he did, would he?’

  ‘Was his question at the Faculty Meeting about that kind of thing, do you think?’ Gil asked.

  ‘I tell you I dinna ken. I’ve no idea what he was on about.’

  ‘Ralph thought it might be about something the chaplain had said,’ said Gil, in deliberate misrepresentation.

  ‘Ralph’s a fool,’ said Robert dismissively.

  ‘Do you recognize this creature?’ Gil stirred the pup gently with one foot. It produced a muffled yip and its paws paddled briefly.

  Robert’s angry gaze softened. ‘That’s a good wolfhound. Looks like one of Billy Dog’s.’

  ‘Billy Dog?’

  ‘His right name’s William Doig. He stays out the Gallowgait, beyond the East Port. Breeds dogs.’

  ‘I have heard of him,’ said the mason.

  ‘You’ve never seen this one before? This is the dog we found in William’s chamber.’

  ‘In his chamber? I didny –’ began Robert, and checked. ‘I didny ken he had a dog in his chamber. I thought it was against the statutes.’

  ‘It is,’ said Gil.

  ‘It wasny in his chamber last time I was there.’ Robert considered the pup, which was now sitting up yawning, and snapped his fingers at it. ‘It’s a bonnie beast, right enough. Maybe he was keeping it down at Billy Dog’s,’ he suggested. The pup went forward, stretching out its long nose to sniff at his hand. He patted it, feeling gently at the shape of the skull.

  ‘Good bone on him,’ he said, and then, indignantly, ‘Who’s cut his skull for him, then?’

  ‘We found him like that.’

  ‘That should ha been seen to before now,’ said Robert, turning the pup’s head to the light.

  ‘I’ll get him physicked when I go home.’

  ‘Billy Dog would gie you something for it. They say he’ll cure anything on four legs.’

  They all watched as the pup turned and wobbled drowsily back to its makeshift bed, circled once and lay down with a sigh.

  ‘You were serving at table, I think,’ said Gil after a moment.

  Robert blinked slightly. ‘Aye, I was.’

  ‘When did you eat? What did you have?’

  ‘Anything I could get a mouthful of,’ he said frankly, ‘every time I went back to the servery. They never tellt us we’d have to eat after the rest, and handing out all that food on an empty wame was more than I could do.’

  ‘What did you think of the Almayne pottage?’ Gil asked, and smiled slightly at the grimace the boy pulled. ‘Agnes is famous for it.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘Did you get a taste of the spiced pork?’

  ‘I did not. I canny take fennygreek. Gives me hives. We never get it at home. I’d some of the onion tart, and a lump of the pike after John Shaw had mangled it. Never saw anyone make such a mess of splatting a pike.’

  Gil glanced at the mason, and went on, ‘And after the play, what did you do?’

  ‘Went to close my window and move some of my notes out of the rain.’

  ‘Your notes. Not William’s?’

  ‘Mine.’ The square chin went up. ‘Then I went back to the kitchen, to see if there was any food, and found myself shifting crocks from the Fore Hall.’

  ‘Who else did you see when you went to your chamber?’

  Robert paused, considering this question.

  ‘Ralph cam with me. He’s my chamber-fellow, poor fool. I heard Walter and Henry. I heard Andrew, and Nick Gray cam into the kitchen just after me. I think I heard Lowrie Livingston and that, arguing on their stair. They’re aye arguing, those three, though if you look sideways at one of them the whole three of them gets on to you.’

  ‘Any more?’

  ‘If I think of any more I’ll tell you.’ Robert looked past the mason at the sky. ‘I need to go, maisters. Is that all your questions?’

  ‘Just the one more,�
�� said Gil. ‘Who would have a reason to kill William?’

  There was a pause, in which the anger built up behind Robert’s intent stare again.

  ‘How the deil would I know who he’d done an ill turn to?’ he said softly, and rose. ‘Good e’en to ye, maisters.’

  The door closed behind him with a gentle firmness which was somehow more offensive than if it had slammed. The mason whistled.

  ‘Veuillez votr’ universite,’ quoted Gil ironically, ‘prier pour l’âme.’

  ‘Even his friends do not regret him,’ Maistre Pierre agreed. ‘Except for that poor Ralph. Now what must we do? I confess, every time you ask about the feast I am more aware of being hungry.’

  ‘We should clearly speak to this Nicholas Gray, but he will shortly go to Vespers like the rest of the college.’ Gil bent to lift the pup and reclaim his short gown. ‘I want one word with Nick Kennedy, and then I think we can go home to supper, provided Alys has not fed it to the pig.’

  ‘I think you may be too late for Maister Kennedy also.’ The mason closed the shutters as the sound of the Te Deum floated in from the courtyard. ‘The procession is leaving already.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Let me see, what do we know?’ said Gil.

  They were seated in the mason’s panelled closet, with a jug of ale circulating. The household had long since eaten its supper, but Alys had greeted them with pleasure and produced a substantial meal for all three of them. The wolfhound was still licking hopefully at its empty plate, holding it down with a large hairy paw.

  ‘We have been told, and we may believe, I think,’ said the mason, picking crumbs off a platter which had earlier held half a raised pie, ‘that the young man was knocked unconscious and put in the limehouse as a joke of sorts.’ He pulled a disapproving face. ‘Prentice stuff. One expects better of scholars, surely.’

  ‘No,’ said Gil, recalling his own student days.

  ‘No, father,’ said Alys.

  Maistre Pierre grunted. ‘And we have deduced that quite shortly after he was put there he was throttled, still in the limehouse, and transferred to the coalhouse after he was dead.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ asked Alys, her brown eyes intent on his face.

  ‘No sign of a struggle, in either place,’ Gil said. ‘He was killed before he recovered his senses, and it seems he was already beginning to stir when he was shut in the limehouse.’