by Pat McIntosh
‘I never saw plants like that,’ he said. ‘And yet the carving is good, as if it is a true portrait. What are they meant for, do you think?’
‘Who knows?’ Gil stared at the carved leaves flopping back around what seemed to be fat heads of grain, then looked around. A bagpiper. An inscribed quotation from – from – the book of Esdras, his memory supplied. What seemed to be the seven virtuous actions, though something was out of key about them. He moved on. On the other side of the virtues, appropriately enough, the seven deadly sins, and in the window –
‘Ah!’
‘You found?’ asked Johan, and joined him. ‘Ach, ja, is a heart.’
‘An angel holding a heart,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘So the treasure must be aloft, on angel wings.’ He shone his lantern on the other corner of the window-embrasure. ‘And here we have Moses, if I do not mistake, with the tablets of the commandments, and on his head the horns of enlightenment. It fits. It fits well.’
‘Is here?’ Johan looked doubtfully at the vault of the aisle above them.
‘No,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘in the roof of the nave, and next to the rib above this one.’
‘And how do we get to it?’ asked Gil. ‘Fly into the rafters, like St Christina the Astonishing?’
‘It is a vault, not rafters. Maister Robison spoke of a ladder.’
They found the ladder at the west end of the building, propped against the lowest levels of a tower of scaffolding which rose up into the dark. Maistre Pierre looked at it with disapproval, and clicked his tongue.
‘I took him for a better craftsman,’ he said. ‘One does not leave the ladder like this to tempt the idle.’
‘This rises up here, at this end,’ said Johan. ‘We wish to be yonder.’ He waved his free hand eastward.
The mason gestured into the roof, just as airily. ‘The church is in use. They do not wish to fill it with Eastland logs. This tower section is only to go up by – you can see from outside that further along, the poles come in at the clerestory and cross above the nave. There are no poles at floor level, so the clerks may make processions when they need to.’ He was testing all the bindings on the structure within his reach as he spoke. ‘Now, we climb up. I go first, you follow, my friend, and then Gilbert. Follow me closely,’ he said, very seriously, ‘and watch where I put my feet and my hands. And leave the lantern,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘if you cannot climb with it.’
He set off up the ladder with surprising nimbleness for such a big man, with one hand on the rungs, carrying the lantern in the other. Johan put one foot on the bottom rung, paused, put the lantern on the ground, and followed him cautiously. Gil gave him time to get to the first of the creaking wattle platforms, eight feet off the ground, then stripped off his short gown and dropped it by the foot of the ladder, thinking its folds would impede his movements, laid his sword on top of it and climbed up in his turn, taking his own lantern. As he found his footing on the platform at the top, Maistre Pierre spoke from the other side of the building.
‘Three more to go. The next ladder is over here.’
Gil could see it, lit by the mason’s lantern, rising into the dark.
‘I –’ said Johan.
‘What is it?’ asked Gil. The man was rigid beside him, his arms held away from his sides. ‘Is it too high?’
‘N-no,’ said Johan with difficulty. ‘I – I –’
‘You must go back,’ said Maistre Pierre, striding across the hurdles. The whole structure bounced resonantly. Gil braced his feet and swayed with the movement, but Johan cried out and dropped to his knees. ‘I have seen this before. It is the balance,’ the mason said to Gil, and bent over the kneeling Hospitaller. ‘Some cannot take it. Like seasickness. Come, man. The ladder is here. Not far.’
Johan was persuaded on to the ladder, where he clung for a moment.
‘I am sorry!’ he gasped, and scrambled downwards. At the foot he stepped on to the flagstones and stood with one hand to his head, clinging to the ladder with the other.
‘You must stay here,’ said Maistre Pierre, bending to look at him over the edge of the wicker panels, ‘sword in hand, to defend us from attack. Can you do that, brother?’
‘I can,’ said Johan, releasing his grip of the ladder. He nodded, gasping a little, the lantern-light gleaming on the pale skin of his brow. ‘I can.’
Maistre Pierre watched him for a moment, then nodded and returned to the next ladder, Gil following him.
‘Maybe you go first, Gilbert,’ he said. ‘If I fall on you, we neither of us survive.’
They climbed up, and up again, and then again. It was strange climbing into the dark. The small light from the lanterns illumined the wooden rungs and glimmered faintly on the scaffolding poles and their rope lashings, but beyond them it struggled to touch anything in the void. Maistre Pierre came off the fourth ladder, looked about him, and set off with a confident, careful step along the hurdles. Gil followed him trustfully, walking in the small patch of wickerwork visible around his lantern, aware that if he missed his step there was a long flight in the dark to the same judgement which Rob now faced.
At this level they were above the heads of the tall clerestory window-spaces, with the cool night air around them. The vaulted roof bent over them, patterned with stars, and then beyond the next vault-rib with roses.
‘Be handsome when they paint this,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Blue, I expect, and the stars gold. Two – three – four. It should be here. And it is. Well thought, Gilbert.’ He leaned sideways, clinging to the nearest upright, and Gil realized there was a significant gap between the hurdle they stood on and the head of the wall. ‘Peste! Gil, can you shine your lantern here?’
The string-course was at hip-height, carved with flowers in roundels and crenellated with little upstanding tabs on its upper edge. Gil, studying this briefly, decided it was typical of the whole building that the two patterns, the roundels and the tabs, were differently spaced. He raised his lantern and held it near the curve of the roof and there, next to the vault-rib, behind the tabs of the string-course, was a dark shadow.
‘You have the longer reach, I think,’ said the mason. ‘Set down your lantern, and feel what may be there. I will brace you.’
This is too easy, thought Gil. Not that it was easy, precisely, but – after the hunt, the long pursuit of the dead man’s identity, the attacks on their party, this seemed too simple. His wrist clamped in the mason’s firm grasp, he leaned out to reach over the stringcourse with the other hand, and found a hollow space, almost a small aumbry. There were shapes in it, hard objects.
‘Boxes,’ he said. ‘Two – no, three. Two are of wood. Kists, really.’
‘How big? Can you lift them, or is it too awkward? We need the one with the St Johns money in it.’
‘I can lift them, but it will need two hands. Can you hold me?’
‘I wish we had a rope.’
‘There’s a rope here,’ reported Gil, feeling further round the embrasure. He drew out the coil of hemp, and passed it back to his companion. ‘I suppose whoever placed these here will have used it, and left it against their removal. Pierre, there is something embossed on the metal box. A shield, with – with –’ He shut his eyes, all sensation in his fingertips. ‘Ah! An animal of some sort, with a bordure flory counterflory.’
‘The arms of Scotland.’
‘I think it must be. So we can leave that one. I’ve no wish to make an enemy of Sinclair.’
‘Can you reach the others? Come back, and I will rope you.’
With several passes of the hank, Maistre Pierre contrived a harness of sorts, and belayed the long tails round the nearest upright.
‘You had better not slip,’ he said, ‘unless your codpiece is well padded. Alys will not thank me for gelding you before you are wedded.’
‘I’ve no intention of slipping.’ Gil checked the loops of rope himself, hitched at the two strands to which his friend referred, and braced himself to lean out over the dark again.
He took the smaller of the two wooden kists first. It was not large, perhaps the length of his forearm, half as wide, a little less deep, but it was not an easy matter to turn it within the dark space so that he could grasp the rope handles at each end, lever it over the stringcourse, tilt it so that it would clear the carved tabs of stone. Maistre Pierre, tensely watchful at his back, heaved on the knotted ropes of his makeshift harness and drew him upright, and he set the kist on the wattle between them.
‘It is very dirty,’ he said. ‘This has been hidden, here or elsewhere, for a long while.’
‘I do not think it is what we seek,’ agreed the mason. ‘Does it open? Should we make sure?’
There was no lock, only a length of tape tied in a dusty loop to keep the lid fastened. Gil slipped it free and raised the lid, and brought his lantern closer.
‘Paper?’ said Maistre Pierre.
‘One parchment.’ Gil lifted it and unrolled the beginning one-handed. ‘Sweet St Giles! It seems to be a map, but of what? I have never seen such a coast.’ The mason took the other end, and they spread the parchment out. ‘Ah – there is the northern sea, and I suppose Norway, and Iceland. But what lies beyond?’
‘Grunland,’ said Maistre Pierre. He peered closer. ‘And Estotilanda.’
‘Where? I’ve heard those names somewhere.’ Gil relinquished his grasp of the curling skin and turned to the open kist. ‘What have we here? A broken sword, very old, and a little box with –’ He held it to the light, the contents rustling under his gentle touch. ‘Look, Pierre, it is some kind of grain, long dried. I never saw grain with leaves like that. Could this be some of the plants on the window below us?’
‘It could,’ said Maistre Pierre cautiously. He let the map roll up, and stared into the box. ‘It could, but I never saw grain like that either. Wherever is it from?’
‘I think I could guess,’ said Gil, in growing amazement. ‘But that would mean the stories about Earl Henry are true.’ He reached out to the kist again. ‘And if those are true, what else may be? What might be in that bag –’
Maistre Pierre put his hand over Gil’s.
‘No.’ They looked at each other in the lantern-light. ‘No, Gil. Not for us, I think.’
Gil dropped his gaze to the bag in the bottom of the kist. Worn embroidery gleamed dully in the light, rich silk brocade visible between the stitched saints. A bag for a relic. A very rich bag, for a very important relic, the relic guarded by the Sinclairs with their canting arms, the cross engrailed which appeared here and there all over this rich little building. Whatever the brocade bag held would, he knew, be wrapped in more silk and brocade, to keep it from harm, but its shape, smaller than one would have expected, was just discernible under the padding. There would be a slip of parchment in the wrappings, with an inscription saying what was inside them. In what language, he wondered. What alphabet, even. As for the thing inside – to hold it – to touch it – even to look at it –
‘No,’ he said after a moment, and crossed himself. ‘We are not worthy. But how I wish I was. And to be this close to it . . .’
‘Et moi, je le veux aussi,’ said the mason fervently.
And how, Gil wondered, packing the little box of exotic grain and the rolled parchment back into the kist, how does Pierre know what might be under that brocade? He knows a surprising amount about what we are doing.
The other wooden box was the right one. Once the first one, with its strange cargo, had been restored to its place in the shadows and the other lay on the wattle at their feet, Maistre Pierre hauled Gil in, and he stood letting the darkness settle round him while the mason bent to study their booty.
‘Three sacks of coin inside it,’ he reported. ‘And there are seals, the eight-point cross. This is what we seek.’
‘Robison mentioned two with the St Johns seal,’ Gil recalled, ‘and one with the old King’s.’
‘I suppose Sinclair restowed them,’ speculated his friend. ‘The King’s purse will be in the other kist, the metal one, by now.’
‘How do we get them down?’ Gil asked. ‘Three sacks will make quite a burden, and we can’t take the box down between us. I wish I hadn’t taken off my gown. It would have made a sling of sorts.’
‘And the rope is not –’ Maistre Pierre put up a hand. ‘Listen.’ They both listened, and heard the scaffolding creak. Wattle squeaked. ‘Merde, alors,’ said the mason. ‘It must be Johan. He has tried again. He will assuredly turn to stone on the next level. Gilbert, it is best if I go down and stop him, before he gets any further. Can you stay here alone?’
He snatched up his lantern and set off without waiting for an answer, leaving Gil isolated in his own little patch of light. Moving cautiously, he disengaged himself from the coils of rope, and wound it into a hank. Another Green Man grinned at him without humour from one of the knots of vegetation on the vault-rib. Outside the moon had risen, and there were great pale bars across the flagstones far below. The wicker sang and crackled as Maistre Pierre made his way to the flight of ladders, the poles creaked and hummed as he descended first one ladder, then the next. Gil heard his voice, speaking reassuringly, and recognized the change in the movement of the scaffolding as he stepped on to the third ladder, climbed down it, set off across the lowest level of hurdles.
‘Johan?’ floated up through the darkness. ‘Johan, wo sind Sie?’ Johan’s voice answered. And then, sharply, Maistre Pierre: ‘You?’ and louder, in real alarm, ‘Gil, have a care!’
Gil tensed, staring as if he could see through the wattle he stood on. The scaffolding spoke shrilly of hasty movement, in which there were grunting noises, a gasp, an exclamation which rang in the curve of the roof. Something fell, someone shouted. There was what seemed a very long pause, with more gasping movement in it.
‘Pierre?’ he called.
There was another pause, then the pine logs creaked again. Ears stretched, he tried to locate the sound. There was someone on one of the ladders, but was it more than one person? More than one ladder?
‘Pierre?’ he called again. The creaking stopped, and there was a breathless silence. Not Pierre, then. But if not Pierre, who?
‘Guard yourself!’ said a hoarse voice from the dark depths. ‘He goes free.’
That was Johan, whom they had left at the foot of the ladder. Pine sang again. What had Sinclair said? That fool Preston never chained him, and he struck down the guard and ran. Could this be the axeman? Quietly, Gil opened the horn panel of his lantern, licked his fingers, pinched out the flame of the candle. Darkness covered him, in which the scaffolding began to creak again.
‘Cunningham?’
Below, on the floor of the church, there was shuffling movement across the bars of moonlight. Voices rose outside. The door boomed. Up here in the darkness among the echoes, with the night air stirring, there was the crack and rustle of wickerwork, and as the echoes died a whispered question.
‘Where are you, Cunningham?’
Turning his head, he tried to place the sound. His pursuer must be westward, where the ladders were, but the whisper rattled in the vault, and came at him from all sides. The wicker hurdles flexed like a corach he had sailed in. Did the fellow have a weapon? he wondered, and was assailed by the sharp recollection of his sword, on top of his short gown, conveniently placed by the foot of the first ladder. And what had come to Pierre? And Johan?
Johan’s voice rose on the cue from the barred floor of the church.
‘Maister Cunningham! Are you safe? Are you hurt?’
The echoes shot his name round the roof. I dare not answer, he thought, not with an enemy hunting me in the dark. He already knows where I was when I put the light out.
‘Cunningham?’ The whisper again, surrounding him. ‘I ken you’re no hurt. No yet.’
There was a patch of light growing in the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw a silvery glow, as if someone to the east of his perch had another lantern. A hand appeared, and beckoned in silence. He lifted the coi
l of rope and moved cautiously towards it, leaving the box with its three sacks where they were. There was just enough light to make out the walkway in front of him, not enough to see who held the lantern, but he was sure the whisperer on the ladders was more of a threat.
There was a ladder here. He descended, cautiously, pausing to listen. Down here away from the vault, level with the huge empty windows, it was easier to determine direction, and the creaking was coming closer.
‘Where are you hiding?’ Again the whisper, from the same place as the creaking. ‘Where have you hid the gold?’
The light beside him still did not illuminate its bearer. The hand pointed to the window-space. He moved out, into moonlight, and found himself stepping from one pole to another among a forest of flying buttresses and pinnacles, the thin soles of his riding-boots gripping the bark, more poles at head height offering support. The mesh of scaffolding, mounted on the roof of the south aisle of the chapel, was like the biggest tree he had ever climbed. Below him strange cavities and hollows showed blackly where the vaults of the south aisle roof had not yet been covered. He had swung on tree-branches out over the Linn pool whose depths had never been drawn. These dark cavities did not alarm him.
‘Cunningham!’
It was the axeman, right enough. He appeared further along the tangled structure, stepping like Gil out through an empty window-space, white face and hands floating in the pale light until he clambered out and his black-clad body was outlined against a lit pinnacle. Gil ducked behind a buttress. The man appeared to have a weapon; he thought it was an axe rather than a sword. Neither would be good news, since he only had his dagger.
‘Come here, you scabby clerk. I swear by the Magdalen’s tits I’ll pay you for the trouble you’ve cost me. I’ve an axe here for you, ’ull trim your pen no bother. It’s no Maidie, God rest her soul, but it’s sharp enough for the job. Come and face me. Where have you put the gold?’
Gil looked about, gauging his chances of tackling his opponent. Not good. Then the lantern-lit hand appeared at another window – how had its owner got there so silently? – and beckoned. Gil moved, lightly and rapidly, and pulled himself in on to the scaffolding again. The wickerwork creaked as he stepped on it, and his pursuer shouted.