Giles accepted cautiously, ‘Indeed.’ He had not seen Sir Andrew since the meeting in the hall.
‘And a master stroke,’ said Andrew Wood, ‘by Geoffrey Traill. I do not think the tumult proved a bad thing,’ he confided. ‘For it released an energy, that like the whirlwind pent would leave more damage in its wake, were it not given scope to run its course. Now it has been diminished, as I think. Therefore,’ he said graciously to Giles, ‘I cannot hold you very much to blame. The fault was partly mine, for insisting on this course, and the outcome was restorative; nothing lifts the mood, like a good and bloody fight.’
‘And yet the poor boy, George Buchanan,’ Giles reminded him, ‘was gravely hurt.’
‘Collateral winds blow cross. We must expect some casualties,’ Andrew Wood said callously. Hew exchanged a sober glance with Giles.
‘The baxters, too, have called a truce,’ the coroner went on.
Giles nodded. ‘Honeyman is most contrite. He does not wish to lose the contract for the college bread, and he accepts he was hotheaded, and intemperate in the hall. He understands that I had meant no slur upon his bakehouse.’
‘The truth is,’ Hew pointed out, ‘that if we are no longer seen to buy his bread, the rumour that his flour is tainted can be thought to gather strength.’
‘Precisely so. And he knows well that James Edie will be quick to take advantage of it. Therefore are the baxters’ grumblings turned amongst themselves, and away from us. He is pleased to accept William Wishart’s apologia,’ Giles observed to Hew, ‘for whatever slight he felt was done to him.’
‘I will oversee it,’ promised Hew.
‘Honeyman is shamed, as a bailie of the peace, that he should take such part in disorder and affray. His reputation and his business were on brink of ruin,’ reported Andrew Wood. ‘Therefore, he must swallow down his pride, however sour the taste. I must confess, to a small prick of sympathy. He claims – would you credit it – that someone threw a bit of bread at him. He thought his life in danger, and so he did strike out. For that reason, I excused him his part in the affray. If you give up the culprit, I should be obliged to you. For while I have concluded that the battle was a useful one, still this public riot must be seen to be condemned. Else we will have a plague of civil disobedience.’
‘Yet why do you suppose,’ asked Hew, ‘that we must have the culprit in our hands?’
‘For he must be a student,’ Andrew Wood explained. ‘The baxters had brought with them no bread. If you have not discovered him, any name with do.’
‘I think, sir, that it will not do!’ Giles was plainly shocked by this.
‘Is this your justice?’ Hew demanded.
‘It is my example,’ answered Andrew Wood.
‘I have no name to give you,’ Giles informed him quietly. ‘If you would seek to have one, then you must take mine.’
‘I see.’ Sir Andrew let the words hang heavy in the air. ‘Then I shall expect you to observe a closer discipline, and keep your students cloistered from the town.’
‘We have forbidden them the town, on the most stringent penalties, until the end of the term,’ Professor Locke confirmed.
‘Then that must be enough.’
Hew dared to hope the coroner had let the matter drop. Sir Andrew turned to speak to him. ‘The matter of the windmill is still to be resolved. You have assured me that the millers’ deaths were not an accident. And yet you have no evidence. And, as it would seem, no way of finding evidence, that might point out the killer.’
‘The killer, sir, is hiding in the crowd,’ asserted Hew, ‘that congregates in kirk, and round the mills. He is like a corn seed, in a sack of grain.’
‘Or perhaps like the blight, of which the doctor spoke,’ Andrew Wood said dryly. ‘Tis plain enough to me, that you will not thresh him out. Therefore I am resolved, to take another tack. And I have a notion, how we must proceed.’
‘What do you propose?’ asked Hew.
‘I will tell you that tomorrow, at your house at Kenly Green, where I shall come to dine with you, at two o’clock.’
‘But I am not at home,’ objected Hew. He had remained in college, in support of Giles.
‘You will be there tomorrow,’ the coroner informed him, as he took his leave.
‘What do you make of him?’ Giles inquired of Hew.
Hew answered thoughtfully, ‘He is not Michael Balfour, to be sure.’
Chapter 16
A Gift Horse
The arrival of the coroner caused consternation in the kitchens of the house at Kenly Green, for there had been no guests since Matthew Cullan’s funeral.
‘What will the sheriff eat, sir?’ the cook demanded nervously.
‘What he is given,’ answered Hew. ‘Bannocks and salt fish.’
‘We canna gie him that, sir!’ The cook was scandalised.
Hew took pity on her. ‘Aye then, very well. Bake a pie of rabbits, to my sister Meg’s receipt, and serve it with a flagon of the gascon claret wine. To follow it, a pottage of pippins, pears and plums. We will take it in the great hall. Set a place for Nicholas.’
Since Hew had moved to town, the great hall had been closed and its furnishings kept free from dust in linen drapes and sheets. The chimneys had been swept, and the fires had not been lit for several days. The room was cold and desolate. ‘The place will soon warm up,’ the servant said.
The place had not warmed up since Matthew Cullan’s death, when the great hall had been filled with the feast that marked his funeral, where cushions, rugs and tapestries around the great oak bed, and the flare of beeswax candlelight, had mellowed the stone walls. And a bleak enough winter that was.
‘It need not be so warm,’ Hew said. Not for Andrew Wood.
‘When a man comes to another’s house, with intent of threat, then that is hamesucken,’ he remarked to Nicholas.
‘Do you think,’ his friend replied, ‘that he intends to threaten you?’
‘I have no earthly notion what he may intend. I wish that you would watch him, and comment on his character.’
Nicholas demurred. ‘I am a poor judge of men.’
‘You are pure in heart. Then look into his heart, and tell me if you see a soul.’
‘You seem to speak,’ said Nicholas, ‘as though you had invited the devil to the hearth.’
‘Though he comes uninvited, so I feel I have,’ admitted Hew.
By the striking of the clock at the kirk tower of St Salvator’s, Sir Andrew Wood arrived upon the quarter hour, that followed after two. At Kenly Green, the time was measured loosely by the sun, the turning of the tide and the browning of the pie, which, by two o’clock, was slightly overdone, its sweetly pungent liquor bursting from the seams. It lay upon the board, in a fragrant pool of stickiness. It was, thought Hew, too good for Andrew Wood.
The coroner had left his servant waiting by the door.
‘Will your servant sit with us, or in the kitchens down below?’ Hew inquired politely.
‘He will not,’ said Andrew Wood. He had taken off his gloves, yet had not removed his sword. The servant at the door was fully armed. ‘He will remain until I leave, and what he may do then, will depend on you. Who is this?’ he demanded, glancing at Nicholas.
‘Nicholas Colp, my secretary,’ said Hew.
‘Nicholas Colp. I know the name.’ The coroner allowed his eyes to rest on Nicholas, who did not flinch, but met his scrutiny with quiet, measured gaze.
‘You came into the king’s will. Indicted for a felony,’ the coroner remarked.
Hew replied for Nicholas. ‘You are well informed.’
‘Quite so. He may leave us,’ answered Andrew Wood. Nicholas flushed, glancing at Hew. Hew said, ‘Nicholas may stay, for he is in my confidence. He always dines with me.’
‘Though he may have your confidence, yet he does not have mine,’ said Andrew Wood.
‘This, sir, is my house,’ objected Hew. ‘And Nicholas remains. For if the matter here is secret, I shall want a secre
tar. And if is not secret, then there is no cause for my secretar to go.’
Sir Andrew Wood said coldly, ‘I advise you, sir, do not chop logic with me.’ He turned to speak to Nicholas. ‘I think you will not mind to take your dinner in the kitchens, among the other servants in the house?’
‘I do not mind it,’ Nicholas replied. ‘By your leave,’ he said quietly to Hew, ‘I will go back to the library.’
Hew sighed, ‘As you will.’ The servant at the door stepped aside to let him pass.
‘You have a done a great discourtesy,’ Hew accused the coroner, ‘to my dearest friend.’
Sir Andrew was amused. ‘Was that your dearest friend? I thought your dearest friend was Doctor Locke.’
‘My other dearest friend,’ said Hew, blushing at the foolishness.
‘You have an open heart, my friend, that you should guard more closely.’
‘I am not your friend,’ Hew blurted out, before he could restrain himself. He felt that he was drawing closer to the precipice, about to plunge headlong into the abyss with his horse. He dearly wished that Nicholas had stayed.
‘So I do infer,’ Sir Andrew smiled. ‘Yet I am glad to note your evident hostility does not extend so far as to blight your hospitality. I see you have a banquet set out on the board. What is in the pie?’
‘Conies,’ Hew confessed, ‘from our warrens in the wood, baked in their own blood, with a wine and sorrel sauce.’
The coroner approved, ‘A ripe autumnal feast.’ He took up a serving spoon, and cut into the pie.
‘I will call the serving lass,’ said Hew.
‘No servants, I implore. Let us manage by ourselves.’ Sir Andrew ladled steaming flesh and juices to a plate and handled it to Hew, who took his seat reluctantly. It struck him as absurd that he was served his dinner at his own house and great hall, unwilling and ungrateful, by the coroner of Fife.
‘It is better,’ said Sir Andrew, ‘if we are not overheard; as you have learned from the example of your colleague, Bartie Groat.’ He wiped his mouth fastidiously, though Hew had seen no trace of liquor pass his lips. The coroner poured out the wine and gave a cup to Hew, as if he were the master in someone else’s house. He followed Hew’s quick glance towards the servant at the door. ‘He remains there till I leave.’ Sir Andrew read Hew’s mind. ‘At which time, you may serve him as you will, for he is to remain with you until you go to Ghent.’
‘Am I to go to Ghent?’ demanded Hew, in mingled indignation, excitement and surprise. ‘To Ghent!’
‘As I dare to hope; that you may find the answer to the riddle of the mill. Take Jacob’s book and letters to the beguinage.’
‘What makes you think the answer lies in Ghent?’ asked Hew.
‘For it is plain enough we have not found it here. And Jacob had a secret purpose when he put that windmill on the ship. So much is implicit in the words that he has written to his wife: I feared he had suspected me, and found out my intent. It seems that only she can tell us what he meant by it. I have a feeling that our friend was sent by someone else. He said as much to Maude, for as you will infer, I too did take the time to question her.’
‘He said,’ remembered Hew, ‘that he was not himself, as he wrote also in the closing of his letter, in the rigour of his sickness, And how then should you know me, when I do not know myself?’ The pattern of the words stayed pressed upon his mind, the dark and hopeless franking of a last despair.
‘So he may seem,’ Sir Andrew said, ‘a man bewitched, transfigured in his sickness from his own true form.’
‘As he was, from conscience, as I think,’ said Hew.
‘Perhaps. And yet,’ reflected Andrew Wood, ‘I think that Maude mistook the words that Jacob said to her. My man that kens the Flemish has informed me Ik niet mijn eigen ben means not, as Maude supposed, I am not myself, but rather I am not my own.’
‘I am not my own?’ repeated Hew.
‘Aye. Tis plain enough. He told her he was someone else’s man. And so I bid you find whose man he was, and with what dark purpose he came here to these shores. The windmill has a force in her that seems to be malevolent. For even now her dizzy sickness turns us upside down, while honest men have died for her. I fear her for a Trojan horse, sent to bring us tumbling to our graves.’
‘Then you should take her down,’ suggested Hew, taken by surprise at the frankness of this confidence.
‘I wish to God I could,’ the coroner said fervently, ‘and yet, I fear, by doing so I might unleash more horrors in her wake. For all, I cannot quite disperse the deeper dread of witchcraft. Supposing she were cursed?’
‘You do not believe that,’ Hew assured him, ‘For you are strong-reasoned, and an honest, doubting man.’
‘Ah, but do I not?’ the coroner demurred. ‘What is a curse? Is it a real, and a palpable truth, or a sick man’s terror, that starts us from our sleep? I do not understand what these forces are, or by what means they are sent here to unsettle us, but I know that they do unsettle us. You have witnessed their effect upon the town. I see no other way that this chaos will be stilled, unless we trace the whirlwind to the place from where it came.’
‘But why do you send me?’ questioned Hew.
‘Have I not said?’ Sir Andrew answered wearily. ‘So that we might know the nature of the threat, in finding out its source, and better understanding it, were better able to defend ourselves. Find why Jacob put that windmill on the ship, and at whose request.’
‘That is not my question,’ Hew repeated, ‘Why would you send me?’
‘Because you have a knack in finding secrets, that has not gone unnoticed,’ the coroner explained.
‘It seems you have been watching me,’ Hew reflected wryly.
‘Many men are watching you,’ answered Andrew Wood. ‘And it were well, that you were made aware of it. You have come into the notice of the king. The king thought well of you – the king thinks well of you,’ he corrected quickly. ‘Where the king takes notice, other eyes will turn. You saved a man, and you condemned a man, that some did count as curious.’
‘Not curious at all,’ Hew disagreed, ‘when I am trained up as an advocate.’
‘And yet you do not practise as one,’ Andrew Wood observed. ‘I wonder, why is that?’
‘Because I would not be a man for hire,’ owned Hew.
‘Ah, is that so? I had a notion,’ Wood allowed a smile, ‘that it might be something of that sort. Nonetheless, it is my hope, that you will accept this small commission.’
‘And suppose that I do not?’
‘That is ill-advised. Yet it must remain as your prerogative.’
Hew sat thoughtful for a moment, before he pointed out, ‘The millers in the town were killed by human agency.’
‘So I understand,’ the coroner agreed.
‘And if I am removed to Ghent, then I will have no chance of finding out the killers.’
‘I have considered that. And yet it seems to me, in spite of your best efforts, that the trail goes cold. The faces of the killers have been hidden in the crowd.’
‘That is the case,’ admitted Hew.
‘Then so it seems to me that there is little purpose in your staying here in town. It is rather to be hoped that a distant, measured gaze may turn a sharper angle on the people in the crowd, where from a close perspective, your vision may be skewed. And I shall set the garrison to closely guard the mill, and make it known that no decision will be made upon her fate, until we have the news that you report from Ghent. And that, I think, will stay the killer’s hand, that by the grace of God, we may see no more deaths. And meanwhile, no petitions shall be heard.’
‘Nor that of your own brother?’ Hew inferred.
The coroner replied, ‘I do not understand you, sir.’
‘Your brother, Robert Wood, who has been most assiduous in his claims to the windmill.’
‘Ah, now, I see!’ Sir Andrew Wood acknowledged, for the first time, smiling openly. ‘You have fallen for the common misconception
that I favour my own brother, Robert Wood. Aye, you do think that – and yet there’s more!’ The coroner began to laugh. ‘You must learn to dissemble, Hew! You think that I am sending you to Ghent, to protect my brother from suspicion of these crimes. Yet, I can assure you, that is not the case.’
He was serious again. ‘Do you have any reason to suspect my brother?’
Hew admitted he had not. ‘Yet both the men who died were engaged to work his mill.’
‘That is true enough,’ conceded Andrew Wood. ‘Yet since the deaths were plainly to his disadvantage, he can hardly be indicted on that count. You should know, sir, that my brother is no different in my eyes from any other man. And if you bring me evidence that Robert is a murderer, then I will take him to the gibbet and hang him there myself. And I will do it without passion or pity, or conscience, or grief. So you must understand me, if you are to be my man.’
‘God help me, for I do,’ said Hew. ‘And though I will go to Ghent for you, I will not be your man.’
‘Then I doubt that must suffice,’ the coroner said cheerfully. ‘In truth though,’ he concluded, ‘there may be a reason yet to keep you far from Robert, for his silly young wife Clare has lost her heart to you.’
‘But we have scarcely met!’ Hew protested with a start.
‘Yet you have impressed her. For it was at their house I heard your praises sung, not, as I misremembered it, by Robert, but by Clare. Clare is weak and vulnerable, and women of her sort are more treacherous and deadly than the villain with his sword, for they twine their grasping fingers in the sinews of your heart. Beware her, Hew, and all her kind,’ Andrew Wood advised.
‘I fear that you have lost me, sir,’ Hew shook his head in bafflement. ‘For I have not the slightest notion what you mean.’
‘Then see you keep it so. As to the matter, now,’ the coroner returned, ‘I have brought with me the letters and book, that I wish you to take with you to the beguinage in Ghent, to the woman, Beatrix, to whom they are addressed. Take also Jacob’s ring, which you will recover in the morning from Professor Locke. You may spend a moment in your sister’s house, making your farewells, yet your visit must be brief. There is a ship sailing from Dundee to Campvere. God willing, it will sail in four days’ time; since winter now draws close, boats are few and far between. Once you are in the nether lands, you will have four or five weeks, at the most, before the last ship sails, or you may find yourself stranded until spring. Michael here will go with you, and take you to the ship.’
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