1588 A Calendar of Crime

by Shirley McKay

‘Neither of you caused the candlemaker’s death. And though it may be true the time was out of joint, the season was most pertinent, most poignantly, for him.’

  ‘Well,’ reflected Giles. ‘I will write that we both did act in honest faith, and that Sam’s actions, surely, did the man no harm, save that they sparked off a sad train of events, which could have taken place at any other time. And yet, I count it strange it came to him at Candlemas. There is a kind of fate we cannot understand, and are powerless to control. Still, this tragic tale could well have been averted, if the surgeons and physicians were on better terms, and more like to trust each other. I will write that too.’

  ‘I believe it true. Balance in all things,’ said Hew. ‘Is not that the principle, on which your art is based?’

  He returned to Kenly Green, with a light and steady heart, and with Johannes’s candles safely in his hands. The house was strange and dark. ‘Where are you, my love?’ he cried out to the hall. ‘I have brought a gift will light you to a smile.’

  A servant came out from the kitchen, an elderly woman he had thought long retired. ‘Peace to you, sir, do not be alarmed.’ Never had such words impressed on him more violently, the opposite effect.

  ‘Where is my wife?’

  ‘Mistress Meg is here, and the midwife too. All is in hand.’

  ‘What midwife here?’

  ‘The labour has begun.’

  He stared at her. ‘It cannot have begun. It is far too soon. I must go to Frances.’

  ‘Whisht, will you sir, you cannot see her now. Leave them to their work. She is in good hands. Come to the kitchen. There is a fire, and a warming drink.’

  ‘I do not want your fire,’ Hew protested peevishly, ‘I want to see my wife.’ His house rebelled against him, thwarted and distorted his will at every turn. Gavan Baird appeared, with his crumpled coat and foolish ruffled hair, grinning from the library. ‘Come and sit with me. For there is a book I want to share with you. We need not interrupt the ladies at their work. They will be some while.’

  Hew was consumed with a wild dislike of him. ‘Have you gone quite mad? I want to see my wife!’

  ‘Now is not the time.’

  Hew pushed Gavan Baird, and his simpering, away, and leapt upon the stair. He had not reached the landing place upon the second floor when Robert Lachlan came, welcome as an ogre rising in a dream, a nightmarish attempt to keep him from his task. Lachlan, unlike Baird, would not be pushed aside, and he was quite prepared to match Hew blow for blow, if ever Hew were fool enough to attempt to fight. Finding his way blocked and further progress barred, Hew assailed him fiercely, ‘Is this friendship, Robert? To deny me the entrance to my own house?’

  ‘Dinna disport like a bairn. You don’t want to go there, and the women do not want you. She is well provided for, with Meg and Bella too. Whit wad they want with you? Leave it to a lass.’

  ‘But what can I do, Robert? How can I help?’

  ‘I recommend strong liquor. It will make the time pass, wondrously. When Bella lay in with wee Billy, the whole thing went by in a flash.’

  ‘When Billy was born,’ Hew corrected, ‘you were out cold for three days.’

  ‘What did I say to ye? Done in a flash. And a grand bonny babby is he.’

  His sister Meg appeared, the calmest voice of reason in this frantic world, coming down the stair. ‘Keep your voice low, Hew. You make too much noise.’

  ‘What has happened, Meg? How does Frances do? Why have you left her?’ he cried.

  ‘Did I not just tell you to keep down your voice? Frances is quite safe, for now, with Bella Frew. Her labour has begun. It cannot be of help to her to hear you rage and shout.’

  ‘But Meg, it is too soon.’

  ‘It is early, yes. But babies do not mark the days off on the calendar. They come when they will come. Trust her with us, Hew. I came out for a moment, to find one of your servants. For I think the time has come, to send a man for Giles.’

  A panic came upon him, gripping at his bowel. Physicians were not called upon, never were they called upon, until there was a real and present threat of death. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Why, then, should I not? He is my husband, and your dearest friend.’ Meg’s response was bright. But she could not conceal the shadow in her face.

  Bewildered, he whispered, ‘It cannot be now. I have brought candles for her.’

  BOOK II

  Now is the month of Maying,

  When merry lads are playing.

  Fa la la la la la la la la.

  Fa la la la la la la.

  Of Thomas Morley the first booke

  of balletts to fiue voyces, 1595

  I

  In St Leonard’s College on the South Street of St Andrews, a boy of fourteen lay half the night awake. His name was Robin Grubb, and he was the smallest of the poor scholar clerks, who paid for their degrees by completing menial tasks. It was Robin’s turn on Tuesdays to ring the bell to call the college from its sleep, to light the fires and fetch the water from the well, and introduce his colleagues briskly to a day which they were more inclined to take their time to meet. Robin was a country boy, and natural instinct told him when he ought to rise. And yet, on Tuesday last, his country sense had failed. He had overslept. It was already a quarter to six when the sun had streaked into the dust of his room and spilled on his white face to wake him, and it was six o’clock before the bell was rung. The shame of it engulfed him now, and kept him from his sleep. For when he closed his eyes he could hear again the censure of the college principal, magnificent, benign, and measured in reproof. He had not called Robin to account for his fault, nor shown his disapproval of him in a word or look. Instead, he had preached a sermon against sloth, taking as his theme ‘the sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he beg in harvest’, and hot blood had flown to fill Robin’s cheeks, as surely as though he had slapped them.

  Tonight there was no moon, and Robin could not quell, through the dim dead hours, the fear that the daylight somehow might escape him. He left his bed at last to look out on the darkness where the lanterns hung, hoping for a glimpse of the college clock. He gasped at what he saw, rubbing at his eyes, uncertain for a moment if he was awake.

  The wind of Robin’s gasp, blowing through his dreams, caused the fellow student who shared a bed with him to mutter in his sleep, turning on his back and flinging out a foot, beyond the blanket’s grip. It was only this, a foot more stout and ominous than either of his own, that stamped on Robin’s will to rush across and wake him. He gathered up his breeks about his slender hips, and flimsily protected, tiptoed from the room.

  He paused at the door of the regent, Robert Black, believing it was safest to report to him. Robert was in charge of the third year class. He had been a regent a dozen years or more, without promotion to professor or a living at the kirk, and nothing could surprise him in this weary world. His most withering reproach was a cynical disdain. He was also quite sharp in his wits, once the whiff of a crisis had prised him awake. This had been tested the previous term, when the snuff of a candle, carelessly flicked, had threatened to burn them alive in their beds.

  Robin gave a knock, and when there was no answer entered Robert’s room. The master was asleep in a truckle bed. It was rumoured at the college that the masters dreamt in Latin, save for at St Mary’s, where they dreamt in Greek. Robin did not choose to put this to the test, for though the students were constrained to speak Latin at all times, it felt to him a leaden and unwieldy instrument. He could read it well enough – it was for that reason that the minister of his parish kirk had recommended him to the university – but he found it cumbersome and foreign on his tongue. It lacked the sense of urgency that was wanted here – how could he be adamant, fishing for a verb? And so he spoke in Scots. ‘Sir, sir, ye maun wake up now, sir,’ lifting up the sheet to pull at Robert’s shirt. And Robert Black confirmed his intuitions were correct, for he sat bolt upright, wild-eyed and bright as a ghost in a tale, and
answered him at once.

  ‘What is the matter, child?’

  Words in no language were adequate enough. ‘Ye maun come an’ look.’ Robin tugged at him. ‘Is that no the gentleman that was here the day?’

  The window to the chamber opened to the south. Robert Black looked out. ‘Upon my soul,’ he said, ‘I believe it is.’

  ‘He is, ah, he is—’

  Robert answered gently, ‘I can see that too. You did well to wake me. And I would like to think you have shown no one else.’

  ‘Wha would I show? They are all asleep.’

  ‘That is to the good. But you must fetch the principal.’

  ‘Must I?’ Robin said.

  ‘Certainly you must. Run and wake him now. I will deal with this.’

  The boy set off reluctantly, while the master dressed. And Robert kept an eye on the dancer in the square, who did not seem to know or care that he was watched.

  The dance was grave and strange, the dancer with his head inclined, as though he were attuning to a distant sound, too rare and faint a melody to touch the common ear. His trunk and neck were still, the movement of his feet at first quite slow and stately, turned to skip and lilt, to sway upon the ball, and finally to leap, spinning in the air with a speed and grace surprising in a man so fleshly in his form, light upon the toes that did not miss a beat. The slender limbs that bore the full force of his gravity maintained his bulk aloft, and held it proud and stern, as Atlas bore the weight upon him of the world. The dancer entranced, as though he cast a spell. The more, since he was dressed in not a stitch of clothes.

  The regent Robert Black made his way outside and approached the dancer, holding out in front of him his folded scholar’s gown. ‘Your honour, are you well? The night air is cold. Will you take my robe?’

  The dancer paused his flight, and turned to stare at him. His eyes were dazed and dark. The principal appeared, in his shirt and pantofills, with little Robin Grubb close upon his heels. ‘How now, my lord,’ he said. ‘This will not do at all.’

  The dancer held their gaze, and did not seem to hear. He answered not a word, but as his dance was paused, it seemed as though the sound to which he harked had stopped, the music that had worked him coming to a close, and there and then, he dropped, lifeless as a puppet broken at the strings, reflecting in the shimmer of his sightless eyes the sliver of a light that he would not see again.

  From the solace of his slumbers in a tavern loft, the student Henry Balfour was wakened with a grin and a warning from its landlord: ‘It will soon be light. You had best be off.’

  Henry kissed his lass, once upon each breast, and once upon that place kept sacred just for him, to console her loss. ‘When will you be back?’ she protested sleepily.

  ‘Tomorrow, if you will.’ Already he was up, threading through his points.

  ‘Promise me,’ she said.

  ‘Barring death or accident.’

  He gave the man a shilling, for good manners’ sake, no more than a fraction of his mounting debt. A young man’s pleasures paled when his purse strings were constrained, and Henry was aware that his would soon run out. For this, he blamed his father, who requited poor performance in examinations with a pitiless assault upon his son’s allowance. That was cruel indeed, and Henry thought illogical, to vent upon a body that had never served him ill; what hurt had the allowance ever done to him? The punishment would fall upon the pillars of the town – the fleshers, cooks, and tavern keepers to whom it was pledged – and they would be the poorer for it. Old man Balfour, doubtless, had not thought of that, and Henry had more practice in his father’s moods to care to point it out. It would be plain enough, when the bills came in. His fair-day friends, no doubt, would all be gone by then.

  He did not count Mary in this. Mary was convinced she was in love with him, and bestowed her goods most willingly in kind. And on a day like this, in the lovers’ month of May, with the dawning promise of a rose-pink sky, he could be persuaded that he loved her too. He would write a poem to her, that morning in his ethics class, if he stayed awake.

  He expected to meet no one on his way back to St Leonard’s, unless it was the baxter coming with the bread, little Robin Grubb or the college cook, all of whom he counted close among his friends. The porter on that day was taken ill in bed, which had stripped the hazard from an opportunity. Henry was light in his heart when he climbed the wall and swung down from the tree, well placed to offer access to the college court. He did not expect to drop squarely into such an incident, almost in the lap of the college principal. Nor did he expect to come upon a corpse. Cornered as he was, he let slip a profanity to make his masters flinch and little Robin blush. No young man of decency should swear before a clergyman. And Henry understood that he was properly at fault. The principal said, in a terrible voice, ‘Stand where you are, sir, right there.’

  Henry was a young man of considerable resource, and while he was aware of the pickle he was in – he had never once before, in his four years at the college, been spoken to emphatically in such a dreadful voice – he could see at once that at least one other person present at the scene was in a worse predicament. And so he took his chance, deflecting the attention deftly from himself. ‘Lord, sirs! Is he deid?’

  ‘We wonder that ourselves,’ Robert Black said mildly. ‘Though we fear he is.’

  ‘Here is a feather.’ Henry, nothing daunted, plucked it from the ground. ‘Shall we make a trial of it?’ Receiving no objection, he placed the feather carefully across the dead man’s face, where it did not quiver by the whisper of a breath. ‘Aye, no doubt of it. And bless me, if it is not the Lord Justice Bumbaise – Sempill, I mean.’

  Young Balfour showed no feeling but an honest interest, for he felt no pang of pity for the man. He had come across Lord Sempill several weeks before, where he had a part to play in Henry’s present woes. Sempill was inspecting, on the king’s behalf, the standards that were held at St Andrews University. He was present at the time that Henry was examined for his bachelor’s degree. And on that occasion, he had professed himself baffled – bumbaised, he repeated, as his favourite word – that a student could put up so brave a show of ignorance. Nor was he content with humiliating Henry on a public stage. He had followed with a letter of bumbaisment to Lord Balfour, who Henry had made certain would be absent on the day. And the public inquisition had been superseded swiftly by a painful private one. Though he was not disposed to bear a man a grudge, Henry marked his fate with cheerful curiosity. ‘What happened to him, then? And why has he no clothes?’

  The simplicity with which his student phrased the question brought home to the principal the horror of the sight. ‘Cover him,’ he said. ‘Cover his poor face.’

  Robert Black obliged with his college gown, which covering the face, did not extend quite far enough to reach down to the toes. Two spindle shins, of bare skin and bone, were left sticking out. Robin Grubb admired them. ‘What little feet he has!’

  ‘Mebbe we should send for Doctor Locke,’ Robert said, ‘His house is close to here.’

  The principal said heavily, ‘We must, of course, send out for him, to find the cause of death. There will be questions, perhaps also a trial. Lord Sempill is a man of importance at the court. He was lately here with us on business of the Crown. The answers that we gave him failed to satisfy. Therefore, we must brace ourselves for further inquisition. Giles Locke will bring Hew Cullan with him to investigate. And Hew will turn our college upside down.’

  Robert said, ‘No doubt. He always does. We may pray for their discretion. But we dare not hope for it.’

  The four of them stood silent, looking at the corpse, and though they were agreed upon a course of action, no one made a move to put it to effect.

  ‘It is a pity,’ Henry said, putting into words what was in their minds, ‘that whatever happened to him, had to happen here. The New College, after all, is so very close. How much more convenient had it happened there.’

  ‘Since it did not happen there,
your comment is not helpful,’ Robert Black rebuked him.

  ‘I mention by the by,’ Henry went on undeterred, ‘that there is a handcart over by the wall – a barrow of a sort – left there by the man who comes to prune our trees.’

  ‘That is an irrelevance.’ The principal glared at him. ‘And I do not understand what can be meant by such impertinence.’

  ‘I mean nothing by it, sir. I merely point it out, as an observation. I have noticed too that there is a path which is not overlooked, running through the woods that overlap our lands and those belonging to the New College, leading to a gate on their south side by the burn. Tomorrow is the day – I should say, this morning, for it is but an hour away – the college gardener comes, and enters through that port.’

  ‘Speak plainly to me, sir, what is it you say?’

  ‘Nothing more than this. Master Andrew Melville, the master of that college, is an honest Christian man, who does not shirk his duty with a shy dismay. He is accustomed to controversy. Some might say he welcomes it.’

  The principal turned pale. ‘What you propose,’ he hissed, ‘what I do infer, to be your foul proposal, since you are not brave enough to dare to spell it out, is an abomination that will not be borne. An abomination, is it not, Master Black?’

  ‘An abomination,’ Robert Black agreed. They stood there side by side, staring at the feet that peeped out from Robert’s gown, as though young Balfour’s impudence had left them lost for words. Then Robert asked, quietly, ‘Is it?’ When he was not repelled, he added in the form of a tentative aside, ‘What he says of Andrew is quite true, of course.’

  The principal said, in no more than a whisper, ‘Do you think at all, Robert, that it might be possible?’

  The colleges were rivals at the best of times. There was a proximity, largely geographical, between St Leonard’s and the ‘New’ college of St Mary, and a proximity in faith that was nominal at least; it did not mean the principals were friends. James Wilkie at St Leonard’s liked a quiet life. Andrew Melville, the reformer who was provost at St Mary’s, did not flinch before a storm, and would not be perplexed to come upon a corpse; more fitting then by far that he should have to deal with it. Sempill would be treated to a quiet funeral, without a song and dance, sending off his spirit to its final resting place. Which might as well be Faerie land, for all the college kenned.