by Pat McIntosh
To the left, against the pale bulk of the cathedral itself, the Archbishop’s new work was in shadow. Robert Blacader, Bishop of Glasgow, now since last January Archbishop of Glasgow, wanted to elaborate his cathedral, and his eye had fallen on the Fergus Aisle. If one was precise about it, the little chapel off the south transept was not new work, but something started more than a hundred years ago over the burial-place of that holy man Fergus whose death had brought the young Kentigern to his dear green place. It had been soon abandoned, probably when the Chapter of the day ran out of money, the foundations open to the weather ever since.
Gil considered the building site. The walls had now reached shoulder-height, and stood surrounded by stacks of timber for the scaffolding. A neat row of blocks of stone waited to be cut to shape in the masons’ lodge whose thatched roof Gil could see beyond the chapel. Hurdles supported on more scaffolding made a ramp for a wheelbarrow. Tomorrow he must meet the master mason there.
The Sempill party had left the kirkyard. Patting his purse, which was significantly heavier for the evening’s card-play, Gil set off for home. Several of the songmen thought they could play Tarocco, but had not learned the game, as he had, from the card-players of Paris.
He wondered later how much difference it would have made if he had gone to look in the building site then, rather than in the morning.
Chapter Two
It was surprising how much of the singing one could hear, sitting shivering outside the cathedral at five o’clock in the morning, trying very hard to remember whether a building site was consecrated ground or not.
Here in the kirkyard the birds were shouting. Inside, the Vicars Choral had dealt with Matins and were cantering through Lauds, with more attention paid to speed than sense. A lot of the sound came through the windows, but a certain amount of it, Gil reasoned, came by the door which used to be the south transept entrance and now stood firmly shut and locked above the muddy grass of the Fergus Aisle, quite near to where someone had recently been sick, and just above where the dead woman was lying.
He sat on the scaffolding, fingering his beads and staring at her. She had given him a most unpleasant turn. Coming out early to meet the mason, since he was awake anyway and there was no chance of breaking his fast until Maggie got the fire going, he had climbed up the wheelbarrow ramp and into the chapel to have the closer look he had passed over last night, and there she was, lying half under the planks by the far wall. He had thought at first she was asleep, or drunk, until he smelled the blood; and then he had touched her shoulder and found it rigid under his hand.
The last paternoster bead reached his fingers. He rattled through the prayer, added a quick word for the repose of the lady’s soul, whoever she might be, and rose to have another look, the question of consecrated ground still niggling at his mind.
She was lying on her right side, face hidden in the trampled grass as if she was asleep, one hand tucked under her cheek. The other sleeve of her red cloth gown was hitched nearly to the shoulder, the tapes of the brocade under-sleeve half-torn, and the blood-soaked shift stiffened in sagging folds round her arm. The free hand was strong, white, quite clean, with surprisingly long nails and calloused fingertips. She wore a good linen headdress, with a neat dark French hood over it. Round her waist was a belt of red-dyed leather shod with silver, with no purse attached to it, and she had no jewellery beyond a set of finely carved wooden beads. She looked like a decent woman, not one of the inhabitants of Long Mina’s wellknown house in the Fishergait. Gil could not rid himself of the feeling that he had seen her before.
The sound of chanting was diminishing towards the vestry on the other side of the nave. He realized Lauds must be over, and there was still no sign of the mason, and nobody to help him move the corpse, which could certainly not stay there.
A door clanked open, east along the buttressed honeycoloured flank of St Mungo’s. Children’s voices soared, then paused as an angry adult voice entered at full volume.
‘Andrew Hamilton! William! Come here this instant!’
That was the chanter himself, sounding surprisingly alert after last night’s drinking session. Gil got to his feet, intending to shout to him, and found himself looking out over the roof of the masons’ lodge at Patrick Paniter, broad-shouldered and angry in his robes, confronting two blue-gowned trebles.
What were you about, that you were three beats late in the Gloria? What was so interesting?’ The chanter pounced. One boy ducked away, but the other was slower. ‘Give me that!’
Strong hands used to forcing music from the cathedral’s two organs had no difficulty with a twelve-year-old’s grip.
‘Ow! Maister Paniter!’
Maister Paniter’s dark tonsured head bent briefly over the confiscated object. ‘A harp key? What in Our Lady’s name did you want with a harp key? It’ll never tune your voice, you timber-eared skellum!’
‘It’s mine - I found it!’ The boy tried to seize it back, but the chanter held it easily beyond his reach.
‘Then you’ve lost it again.’ His other hand swung. ‘And that’s for boys who don’t watch the beat. What have I told you about that? And you, Will Anderson, hiding behind that tree! What have I told you? It’s-. . Y
‘It’s wickedness, Maister Paniter,’ they repeated in reluctant chorus with him.
‘Because …?’
‘Because it interrupts the Office,’ they completed.
‘Remember that. Now get along to school before you’re any later, you little devils, and you may tell Sir Adam why I kept you.’
The fair boy, rubbing a boxed ear, ran off down the path to the mill-burn. His friend emerged from behind the tree and followed him, and they vanished down the slope, presumably making for school by the longest way around.
Gil drew breath to call to the chanter. He was forestalled by a creaking of wood behind him, and a voice which said in accented Scots, ‘Well, what a morning of accidents!’
He glanced over his shoulder, then back again, just in time to see Maister Paniter hurl some small object into the trees, and then withdraw, slamming the crypt door behind him.
Gil turned to face the master mason, staring. The man standing on the scaffolding was big, even without the furtrimmed gown he wore. A neat black beard threatened; under the round hat a sharp gaze scanned the kirkyard and returned to consider the corpse.
‘What has come to this poor woman in my chantier?’ he demanded, springing down from the planking. ‘And who are you? Did you find her, or did you put her there?’
‘I am Gil Cunningham, of the Cathedral Consistory,’ said Gil, with extreme politeness, ‘and I should advise you not to repeat that question before witnesses.’ The French mason, he thought. Could this be the father of his acquaintance of yesterday?
‘Ah - a man of law!’ said the big man, grinning to reveal a row of strong white teeth. ‘I ask your pardon. I have other troubles this morning already. I spoke without thinking.’ He raised the hat, baring dark red hair cut unfashionably short and thinning at the crown, and sketched a bow. ‘I am called Peter Mason, master builder of this burgh. Maistre Pierre - the stone master. Is a joke, no? I regret that I come late to the tryst. I have been searching for the laddie who did not sleep in his bed last night, although his brother was come from Paisley to visit him. Now tell me of this.’
‘I found her when I came for the meeting,’ said Gil. ‘She’s stiff - been killed sometime last night, I’d say.’
‘Been killed? Here? She has not died of her own accord?’
‘There’s blood on her gown. Yes, I think here. The grass is too trampled to tell us much, this dry weather, but I would say she is lying where she fell.’
Maistre Pierre bent over the corpse, touching with surprising gentleness the rigid arm, the cold jaw. He felt the back of the laced bodice, sniffed his fingers, and made a face.
‘See - I think this is the wound. A knife.’ He looked round. ‘Perhaps a man she knew, who embraced her, and slipped in the knife, khht! whe
n she did not expect it.’
‘How was her sleeve torn, then?’ asked Gil, impressed in spite of himself.
‘He caught her by it as she fell?’ The big hands moved carefully over the brocade of the under-sleeve. ‘Indeed, there is blood here. Also it is smeared as if he wiped his hand. There is not a lot of blood, only the shift is stained. I think a fine-bladed dagger.’
‘Italian,’ offered Gil. The bright eyes considered him.
‘You know Italy, sir?’
‘There were Italians in Paris.’
‘Ah. Firenze I know, also Bologna. I agree. What do we do with the poor soul? Let us look at her face.’
He laid hold of the shoulder and the rigid knee under the full skirt, and pulled. The body came over like a wooden carving, sightless blue eyes staring under halfclosed lids. The black velvet fall of the French hood dropped back, shedding tiny flakes of hawthorn blossom and exposing a red scar along the right side of her jaw. Poor woman, thought Gil, she must always have kept her head bent so that the headdress hid that, and with the thought he knew her.
The knowledge made him somehow decisive. He reached out and drew a fold of velvet up across the staring eyes, and the woman’s face immediately seemed more peaceful.
‘It’s one of the two who sings with the harper,’ he said.
‘But of course! The one with the baby, I should say.’
‘A child, is there?’ said Gil, and suddenly recalled his uncle using the same words. ‘Then I know who must be told, as well as the harper. She is on St Mungo’s land, we must at least notify the sub-dean as well, and he is probably the nearest member of Chapter in residence just now. I have no doubt he will want to be rid of her. Do you suppose the Greyfriars would take her until we can confirm her name and where she is and find her kin?’
‘But certainly. Go you and tell whom you must, Maister Cunningham. I will bide here, and by the time you return my men will be come back from searching for Davie-boy and we can put her on a hurdle.’
A plump maidservant opened the door to Gil when he reached the stone tower-house by the mill-burn.
‘Good day to you, Maister Cunningham,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is it the maister you’re wanting?’
‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘Can I get a word with him, Kirsty?’
‘Oh, aye. He’s just breaking his fast. Will you wait, or interrupt him? Mind, he’s going out hawking in a wee bit.’
‘I’d best see him now. I need a decision.’
Agog, she led him up a wheel stair and into the subdean’s private closet, where James Henderson, red-faced and richly clad, was consuming cold roast meat with bannocks and new milk in front of a tapestry of hunting scenes.
‘Here’s Maister Cunningham for you,’ she proclaimed, ‘and it’ll no wait.’
‘St Mungo’s bones!’ exclaimed Canon Henderson. ‘What ails ye, Gil? Will ye take bannocks and milk?’
‘No, I thank you,’ said Gil with regret. ‘I’ve come to report a corpse in the Fergus Aisle. I found her just now.,
‘A corp!’ said Kirsty. ‘Who is it? What’s come to her? And at May-tide, too!’
‘A corpse,’ repeated Canon Henderson. ‘In the Archbishop’s new work? You mean a fresh corpse?’
‘Stabbed, last night, I would say, sir.’
‘Save us! I never heard anything last night,’ said Kirsty.
‘Is she from the Chanonry? A dependant, a servant? Her household must be notified.’
‘I think she’s one of the harper’s singers.’
‘Oh, a musician,’ said the sub-dean distastefully. ‘If she belongs down the town then it’s hardly proper for her to stay here. Maybe the Greyfriars -‘
‘I thought so too.’
‘And Gil …’ The sub-dean hesitated, staring at the woven heron, caught in the moment of its death. He tapped his teeth with a chewed fingernail. ‘How did she die? Stabbed, you say? And on St Mungo’s land. I suppose we have a duty to look for the man responsible, even if she is a minstrel.’
‘We do,’ agreed Gil.
‘Aye, we do!’ said Kirsty. ‘Or we’ll none of us can sleep easy, thinking we’ll get murdered in our beds.’
‘Be silent, woman!’ ordered Canon Henderson.
‘Well enough for you,’ retorted Kirsty. ‘It’s me that’s at the side nearest the door!’
‘Is there anyone else I should report this to?’ Gil asked.
‘No,’ said the sub-dean hastily. ‘Just get her moved. Maybe the mason’s men can bear her to the Greyfriars. See to it, Gil, will you? And as for finding the malefactor, you’d be well placed to make a start. After all, you found her. I’ll speak to your uncle - perhaps at Chapter.’
Gil, seeing himself out to the sound of a blossoming domestic quarrel, did not take the direct path to the building site, but cut across the slope of the kirkyard to the stand of tall trees opposite the door of the lower church.
He made his way through the trees, scuffing the bluebells aside with his feet, many thoughts jostling in his head. It seemed he would be spending more time away from his books. Surely it should not feel as if he had been let off his leash. And when he finally became a priest, scenes such as this morning’s would become part of his existence, both the encounter with a recent corpse and the slice of home life he had just witnessed. The corpse he could cope with, he felt. One would usually have some warning, and there were procedures to be gone through, shriving, conditional absolution, prayers for the dead. One would know what to do. But what could one do about the other matter - the behaviour of what his uncle referred to, with dry legal humour, as The concordance of debauched canons. Nothing to do with Gratian’s classic text, of course.
He sniffed the green smell of the new leaves he was trampling, and tried to imagine himself, a senior figure in the Church, taking a servant to his bed like Canon Henderson, or setting up a woman of his own class as an acknowledged mistress with her own home, like Canon Dalgliesh. The image would not stay before him. Instead he saw his uncle, whom he knew he would resemble closely in thirty years’ time, and the scholar who had taught him logic at the University.
He looked about him, a little blankly. What was it Aristotle said about incongruity? The dead woman was a thing out of place; the harp key the trebles had found was another. There was, of course, a significant and bawdy double meaning attached to the object, but the chanter appeared to have discarded it as an irrelevance, rather than as a source of corruption.
He began to search more carefully under the bluebells, and was rewarded by a lost scrip, empty, a broken wooden beaker and one shoe. He was casting about nearer the church, trying to judge where the implement might have landed after the chanter threw it this way, when a blackbird flew up, scolding, and something snored behind him.
Wild boar! he thought as he whirled, drawing his sword. Then it dawned on him that there could be no wild boar in St Mungo’s kirkyard. Feeling slightly foolish, he stared round under the trees, sword in hand, waiting for the sound to be repeated. There it was again - over there among those bushes. He made his way cautiously through the long grass, and carefully parted the leaves with the point of his blade.
The mason’s men, three sturdy fellows in aprons, were gathered inside the walls of the chapel, standing on the muddy grass staring down at the corpse. Their master was issuing instructions about a hurdle when Gil climbed the scaffolding.
‘Ah - maister lawyer,’ he said, breaking off. ‘What have you learned? Where does she go home?’
‘Greyfriars,’ said Gil. ‘But we’ll need another hurdle.’
The three men turned to stare at him. One was squat and grizzled, one was fair and lanky, and the middle one was the journeyman called Thomas, who had argued with a merchant’s son in the High Street. So her father is the master mason? he thought.
‘Is your missing laddie about fifteen, wearing striped hose?’
Thomas swallowed.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Rare proud of them he is, too. What d’ye mean, a hurdle, maiste
r? Is he - have you -?’
‘I’ve found him,’ said Gil.
The boy was not dead. He lay on his face in a little huddle under the bushes, blood caked on a vicious wound on the top of his head, breathing with the stertorous snores that had attracted Gil’s attention. There was no other mark on him, but he was very cold.
‘It needs that we nurse him,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I have heard men breathe so before.’ He looked round, to where two of the men were approaching with a hurdle, and held up one large hand. ‘A moment, Wattie. Maister Cunningham, do you see something strange?’
‘Very strange,’ agreed Gil. ‘I wondered if you would see it. There is no sign of the man who struck him that blow. I followed the boy’s own tracks into the bushes. Someone else has run by him, a couple of paces that way, but hardly close enough to hit him like that.’
‘You must stand still to strike so hard a blow,’ said the mason thoughtfully. He scratched the back of his head, pushing the hat forward. ‘I have seen a man walk away after he was struck and fall down later. Perhaps he was not struck here.’
‘Can we move him, maister?’ demanded the grizzled Wattie. ‘If he’s no deid yet, he soon will be, laid out here in the dew like that.’
‘Aye, take him up, Wattie,’ said his master, straightening the hat. ‘You and Thomas, bear him to our house. Send Luke ahead to warn the household, and bid him fetch a priest,’ he added. ‘He must be shriven. Ah, poor laddie.’
The limp form was lifted on to the hurdle. Gil, on sudden impulse of pity, pulled off his short gown and tucked it round the boy.
‘His bonnet’s here,’ said Wattie, lifting it. ‘It was under him.’
‘Give me,’ said the mason. ‘Has he been robbed?’
‘Two pennies and a black plack in his purse,’ reported Wattie, ‘and he’s still wearing this.’ He pulled aside the folds of the gown to display a cheap brooch, the kind exchanged by sweethearts, pinned to the lad’s doublet. ‘His lass gave him that at St Mungo’s Fair.’