Giles Locke, the medicinar, and principal of the ‘Auld’ college of St Salvator, further on the North Street, was a proposition quite apart. He was well kent for a Catholic, in outlook if not in his observance at the kirk, attending to a faith that foolishly believed it had some subtle influence upon a dead man’s fate. Which was not the case. Giles Locke was the Visitor, appointed by the Crown to look into the cause of unexpected deaths; and his interest in their outcomes was not called for here. For now was not the best of times, but counted with the worst.
These considerations, and others of their kind, convinced the college principal to set aside his qualms and send Henry for the barrow he had noticed by the wall. Wilkie went himself to fetch the curtains from his bed, which were put out to be aired. In these, he now proposed, they should wrap the corpse. ‘For it will not do to wheel a body bare. Mind and bring them back. No scrap nor thread of ours can be left to cling to him.’
Lord Sempill was rolled up and hoisted in the cloth, and, anchored by his buttocks safe inside the wheelbarrow, soon was firmly lodged, while Robert Black ensured that all was well tucked in. It took the boys the best part of the hour to trundle through the wood, taking it in turns to hold aloft the lamp that lit them on their way, the shortest journey stalled with many starts and stops. When at last they came to the back lands of St Mary’s, their lantern was extinguished in the rising sun. They found a sheltered spot close to the college gate. Lord Sempill, tumbled out, and shaken from his bonds, fell naturally at ease to find a resting place. The grass on which he lay was damp with morning dew.
‘It does not seem right,’ Robin said, ‘to leave him there, unclaithed.’
‘He had no clothes when he came,’ Henry said, ‘and he shall have none when he goes.’ And whether he had meant his passing through St Leonard’s or his passage through the world, it was all the same a fitting epitaph.
Henry gave Robin sixpence from the bottom of his purse to take the barrow back to the college on his own. The morning’s work had wearied him, and he retired to bed.
The bell that morning did not ring till sometime after six. And though the scholars who enjoyed an extra hour of sleep observed that Robin Grubb was quiet and subdued, James Wilkie made no mention of it in the morning prayers. Henry Balfour slept, quite righteously, till noon. There could be no question of recrimination; he had played his part. They were conspirators, all four. Five, if Lord Sempill was included in the count. And why should he not be? It was his secret they kept.
The principal experienced a murmuring regret for little Robin Grubb, who was green and young. It did not run deep, and it did not last long. He stopped short of suspecting Robin of the kind of innocence for which there was no precedent established in his kirk. Yet he was not, by any means, untouched. He developed a dislike for the curtains round his bed, and when the laundress came he asked her to dispose of them. ‘They are full of moths.’
The laundress stroked the cloth. ‘That is fine silk velvet. And there are no holes.’
Conscience had betrayed him; he did not lie well. ‘The truth is, I am mindit now to do away with vanities.’
‘Bed curtains are a vanity?’
‘They are,’ he iterated, ‘an unnecessary thing. And I am resolved to keep nothing in my house that is not essential. Have them for yourself.’
‘I thank ye, then. I will,’ she said. ‘Is this to do wi’ they men, who wanted to see the accounts?’
His answer sounded hoarse. ‘It is to do with them.’
‘Then is there nothing ither you would be without?’
Helpless, he had promised her to see what could be found. So when she came across the clothes, puddled in a doorway next to the latrine, she thought he kept his word, and took them for her own. The linen and the shoes would do her youngest son. The coat and the breeks were of very good stuff, and, if she kept canny, would fetch a high price.
II
The servants were asleep when Hew Cullan left for town. The silence in the house retained a quiet melancholy, but, he was aware, the trouble in his heart had settled there and stilled. No longer did he fear to close the gate behind him, no longer did he feel the plummet of his heart, the clenching fist of dread, on lifting up the latch to open it again. And in the first faint shadow of the morning sun he found a peace in solitude, and an understanding; felt, at last, content.
That content was transitory, he was well aware. For the past three months, he had not felt like this. Then he had been thrawn, and had not dared to hope. Still, the world went on. He could scarcely fathom how the world went on, though he saw it did. Already it was May, the rose burst from its bud, the haar began to clear, the hawthorn was in flower.
It was early still. He was riding to St Andrews, four miles to the north, where he was professor at the college of St Salvator. His absence had been felt there over the last term. Now he was returning to take up his place again, to assist his friend the principal Giles Locke. The college was preparing to receive the king’s commissioners, who were making an inspection of the university. Their commission had begun a month ago in April, examining all three of the colleges in turn. St Salvator’s had satisfied: a student called Johannes Blick had proved himself exemplary, and all the rest appeared at least sufficient to the task. St Mary’s had protested mitigating circumstances, while St Leonard’s, in particular, had failed to show its best. This second visit purposed to examine the accounts, which none of the three colleges intended to supply. The commissioners were led by the Lord Justice Sempill – depute in his time to the crown justiciar – who put many intricate questions, and wrote down a flurry of notes in a niggardly, quivering hand. At the very first trial that Hew had defended, seven years before, Judge Sempill had presided at the high court bar. Sempill had been ponderous, difficult, and dim, frequently objecting that the case perplexed him. It was to the good if he had since forgotten it.
Giles had tidied up. He had removed from the turret tower some of his more personal and peculiar effects – exploratory instruments and pickled body parts – and many of his books, which were rare and singular, concealing them from inventory. It troubled Hew to come upon this bare and barren place, the spirt of his friend dilute if not dissolved. He looked for reassurance in familiar things. ‘Will there be trouble?’ he asked.
‘Not in the least,’ Giles assured him. ‘We shall be civil, and the meeting will be brief. I have excused Master Wilson from attending. He does not feel up to it.’
‘Will they not expect him? Since he is economus, in charge of our accounts?’
‘It matters not a whit whether they expect him. He will not be here. I have explained, also, that you have no interest in accounting at the college, since you live outside the compass of the town. You are here solely as my witness.’
‘And I hope, your friend.’
‘Dear Hew, always that. You look well. It lifts my heart to see you looking well.’
‘Have I not always looked well?’
‘To speak plainly, you have not. The turbulence since Candlemas has wrought its worst in you; you became a ghost. Yet, I am thankful, that storm seems to have passed.’
‘Because of you and Meg,’ Hew said, awkward at the flood of feeling it released in him.
‘Now, none of that. God present your strength. Did I tell you, I heard some sad news? Alison Pearson, of Boarhills, has been taken for a witch. She will come to trial at Edinburgh at the end of this month. Archbishop Patrick Adamson has sworn a writ against her.’
The turn towards a subject dark enough to cover him was almost a relief. ‘For the physic that she gave him? That was years ago,’ Hew said. Alison had been a tenant on his land. And obliquely he believed his fate was linked with hers.
‘Five, to be exact. She escaped them this long while. But they have flushed her out.’
‘Then I do pity her.’
‘Pity her, indeed. The trial has provoked a relish in the town that I fear is symptom of a general ignorance. Involvement of a man as notorious as Patr
ick is was bound to cause a stir. Yet I cannot help but think that this crying of a witch is louder, more persistent, than it was some years ago. Then a witch was rare, and her fate remarkable; now I seem to hear it murmured everywhere I go. It is an unwelcome advance.’
‘Is that why you have hidden half your books?’ Hew asked.
‘I confess it is, in part. But for the most part it was economical. I would not have accompted in the college revenue assets of my own.’
Hew made no reply, for they were interrupted by a sharp rap on the door, and the appearance of the king’s commissioners, a little in advance of their appointed time. They numbered in their ranks David Carnegie, laird of Colluthie; Master Philip Clench, and a servant William Soutar, who fulfilled the role of clerk. The laird of Lundie and the provost of Dundee were absent by design. Lord Sempill, their president, was absent by default.
The laird of Colluthie launched at them abruptly, ‘Good morning to you, sirs. Where are your accounts?’
‘Where is Lord Sempill?’ Giles Locke returned.
Philip Clench was hesitant, glancing at his colleague. ‘We had supposed that he had come ahead of us. What can have become of him?’
Colluthie said, ‘No matter whether he is present here or not, we three are sufficient to attend upon the business.’
‘Ah, but, you know,’ Giles contradicted him, ‘it matters quite a lot. Lord Sempill is in charge of the king’s commission. He has the right to put to us the question. In his absence, I am not persuaded you have that authority. Indeed, I am persuaded you do not. I remark, also, that it is unlike him to miss an appointment.’
Master Clench agreed. ‘It is most unlike, and cause for some disquiet, sir. The last time that we saw him, he was not himself.’
‘In what way?’ Giles asked, drawn to a distraction which Philip Clench provided somewhat indiscreetly.
‘We had come lately from St Leonard’s College, where he had not been satisfied with the principal’s account of affairs conducted there. He accused him of shifting answers, swore if he kept secrets, he would find him out. Nor would he let lie, but it possessed his mind.’
Hew asked, ‘When was this?’
‘Last night, at suppertime. We have not seen him since.’
The laird of Colluthie cut his colleague short. ‘That is not pertinent here. The likelihood is he has returned to St Leonard’s to resume his inquiries. There we shall go next, and oblige him with the records we bring with us from St Salvator’s.’
‘That will not be possible,’ said Giles. ‘Quite apart from the matter of your ain authority, which is in dispute, we do not have them here.’
‘You were warned, were you not, that they were expected?’ That Colluthie was vexed at the challenge to his state was plain in his expression and the tone of voice he took.
‘Aye, indeed we were,’ Giles answered patiently. ‘And as I explained to Lord Sempill at the time, the charters were interred in the college grounds, many years ago. So says our economus, who oversaw the planting of them, buried in a kist, long before my time. The pity is, despite his best intentions, he has been unable to remember where he put them. As to the accounts, some were in the keeping of a man called Cranston, who left us at the plague. And some, as I believe, are kept here at his house.’
‘Then send to his house, and have the man fetch them, with no more ado.’
‘That I would gladly do, on Lord Sempill’s authority. But Master Wilson, our economus, has not been well today, and must not be disturbed. He is of an age that does not well accommodate. It is, you will allow, a reasonable position.’
‘It is not reasonable at all.’ But Colluthie understood that no progress could be made without the aid of Sempill. He called a retreat, if only for the while. ‘Expect our soon return, when you will assist us in a thorough search. Whosoever digs a pit may find he falls into it,’ he warned.
Giles replied, ‘Indeed. We must hope such hazard has not happened to Lord Sempill.’
‘Is it true?’ Hew asked, once the coast was clear. ‘Were the papers really buried in the grounds?’
Giles said, ‘Master Wilson says so. And who are we to question the word of our economus? He promises to look for them. I cannot help but find Lord Sempill’s absence strange. It is not like him at all. Still, it buys us time.’
‘There is little love between him and Colluthie,’ Hew observed.
‘As I imagine, none at all. We may have our troubles, Hew. But they are small, and pale before those of the world.’
At St Leonard’s, the commissioners had no more success. Lord Sempill, it turned out, was nowhere to be found. ‘We have not seen him this day,’ the principal said carefully. ‘Not this day, indeed.’ Without Lord Sempill’s sanction, he was not prepared to admit them to his college. On no account at all would he show up his books. The commissioners were obliged to continue to St Mary’s, where they met a welcome of a carping kind. Master James Melville, in the absence of his uncle, proved willing to invite them in and to show them round. He took them on a tour of dilapidated walls, stinking drains and sinks and saturated lavatories, unsanitary kitchens and schoolrooms that were damp, the students forced to bide in a debilitating poverty, injurious to health. There was, of course, no question of accounts. The troubles Andrew Melville had struggled to contend with over the last years had meant that none were kept. As James was sure Lord Sempill would fully understand. His submission was affecting; Philip Clench was moved to slip a shilling to the poorest clerk when Colluthie’s back was turned. But they left the college with no document to show for it.
The St Leonard’s college principal, from his stronghold further down the South Street, kept an eye on the proceedings all the while. When he saw that the commissioners had concluded with St Mary’s, and were returning to the West Port for their dinner break, he was much alarmed. He summoned Henry Balfour, shaken from his sleep, and the bursar Robin Grubb to meet him at his house.
‘I telt you to leave him where he would be found.’
‘We did,’ Henry said. ‘By the garden gate, where the gardener could not help but come upon him.’
‘It is remarkable, I doubt, you claim to ken so much. Yet you were deceived. Lord Sempill is not found. That is a terrible thing. I never meant for him to lie alone for hours.’
‘I do not think,’ said Robin, meaning it for kindness, ‘tis likely he will mind.’
‘I mind,’ the principal snapped. ‘There is only one recourse. You boys will have to find him. You ken where he is. Go now. You shall say – what shall you say – say I have sent you to complain about their doves. They have been marauding through our corn again. They are ever doing that. Say I sent you to speak of it to the gardener, and that you came upon Lord Sempill lying in the grass. Make sure it is St Mary’s where you raise the cry – run straight to the Melvilles – and on no account return it here to us.’
‘May I say something, sir?’ Henry requested.
‘If it is pertinent.’
‘Twas only to applaud the cunning of your lie.’
‘You may not say that. You are a wicked boy. And were it not for the extraordinary circumstances – extremis malis extrema remedia . . . Go. Go at once. And do not return until Lord Sempill has been found.’
Once the boys had gone, the principal knelt down upon his bare stone floor, and portioned for himself an hour of serious prayer. But his devotions – his contentions with himself and God – were not advanced so long when he was disturbed by a knocking on his door, and Robert Black appeared. ‘I do not want to put you to alarm,’ he said, in the kind of voice disposed to do just that, ‘but I have something here that you will want to see. A student found it, in the college jakes. And as luck would have it, handed it to me.’ He showed up a pocket, tied with a string.
The principal felt sick. His tongue clung claggy, thick, filling up his mouth, so it was a struggle to enunciate the words. He managed only, ‘His?’
‘I imagine so. You had better see what he kept inside.’ Robe
rt opened it, and taking out the contents with delicate distaste, placed them on the desk where the master read his books, where he cut his pens, and, worst of all, where he wrote the sermons he delivered in the kirk. Wilkie shuddered at the thought. ‘What horror have we here?’ he said. When Robert Black did not reply, he gathered up the things and returned them to the pocket, which he locked at once inside his writing slope. ‘Do you suppose there is anything more?’
Robert shook his head. ‘I made a proper search. No trace of his clothes, nor other note was left. Let us believe that this was the last of him.’
‘Ah, that I could!’ the principal cried. ‘God help us, Robert! What have we done?’
The boys took no great hurry on their journey through the woods. A feeling for the delicate, not earlier in evidence, appeared to hold them back. ‘He was barely cauld when we left him,’ Robin said. His country childhood taught him certain facts of life he felt it was his duty to report. ‘He may not be as hale, or wholesome as he was. There may be birds or beasts have come to make a feast of him.’ He cast his mind upon a sheep that he had once found in a ditch. ‘Not all of him, of course.’
Henry felt the lurching of a sudden squeamishness, rising in a wave from his belly to his throat. He did his best to brace himself. ‘Wild beasts or not, he will be altered. He must be altered. A dead man is not fresh for long.’
But when they arrived at the place they had left him, he was not so much altered as gone.
Henry knelt down in the space. ‘This is where he was, where the grass lies flat.’ The college gate was open, and they could hear the gardener singing at his work. There was no stir behind him but the buzzing of the bees. ‘He was dead, though. He was. Properly dead. Was he not?’
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