He had carried the boy back to St Leonard’s himself, hammered on the door, insisting that the principal be roused. Roger had drifted in and out of consciousness, sorely drubbed and dazed, but had recovered well enough to respond to questioning. To Andrew’s great relief, he was not maimed or killed, and none of the effluvium had flowed into his mouth. Andrew had expected there would be recriminations. He knew they were deserved. For there was little friendship to be found betwixt the colleges. When St Leonard’s had been mentioned, Andrew’s heart had sunk. The St Leonard’s principal had been steadily opposed to the reforming of his syllabus, to teaching Aristotle in the ancient Greek, and had come round only recently, reluctantly, and cautiously. If it was not the syllabus, then it was the doves. Bitter words were spoken, bitter insults thrown, over several months. Now there was a truce, of sorts, though it was not an easy one. St Mary’s men had almost killed a young St Leonard’s lad, and Melville had expected fully to account for that; their conduct had been shameful, he could not defend it. Since they were his disciples, their fault must be his. To his great astonishment, the St Leonard’s principal had come down on his side. Roger had disgraced his college, and must be expelled. Melville had capitulated, pleading Roger’s case. What was a little muck, between two fellow colleges? Roger had explained that he had done it as a challenge – a defiance, he had said, which was something like a dare – and Melville could discern no malice in the boy. He had played no part in the attack upon the hawthorn tree, for he had been in class, safely at St Leonard’s, when the bladders burst. In which case, Andrew argued, he was undeserving of so harsh a punishment that would blight his progress through his later life. In further mitigation, the boy had lost his father. Andrew had been orphaned at an early age. And he himself had met with such a warmth and kindness he would not see a bright bairn broken in the bud.
The St Leonard’s principal had Roger put to bed, and promised to look into it. But in the morning, he sent word to Andrew Melville that the boy must be expelled, without plea or remedy, that he was a menace and a viper in their midst. Andrew had returned to him, raging at him then. He had spoken bitter words that he now was sorry for, accused him of conspiracy, of covering his tracks. And the St Leonard’s principal had kept his head throughout. He answered, cool and calm, that there were certain matters he would not disclose. And he would say no more, but for one scrap of information that knocked Andrew back, ending all his clamour at the college door. Melville had the message sent to Hew at Kenly Green. He was confident that Hew would understand its meaning, and was further troubled to be called up from his prayers. He felt that he had earned a quiet hour with God.
‘I wonder at you, sir, that you should show your face. Your place is at St Leonard’s. There is nothing for you here.’
‘I do not understand.’ Hew had gleaned a little from the porter at the gate. A first year student from St Leonard’s had broken in to the college, and attempted an assault on Master Andro’s house. Two stalwarts of the kirk had caught him at his game, and brought him to a justice many had approved, though the guid Master Andro had not. He was fair as sour and stomachat as when he had the flux, though it was the stalwarts that were in the shit house.
‘Was it vengeance for your sister? I should tell you, I have questioned Dod Auchinleck, and he has sworn it was not him she spoke with at your father’s grave. You have exposed his faults, and made plain his frailty. He is brought low to his bed, and is a broken man. I knew that you had wit, sir. I did not think that you were cruel. And to use the boy! The poor fools might have killed him, Hew!’
‘Honour me, and say, sir, what part I had to play in this?’ Hew responded, baffled.
‘That student did not work alone. Someone set him on.’
‘And you think that I did that? Why would you think that?’
Andrew Melville sighed. ‘Must I spell it out? For he is Roger Cunningham, the son of Richard Cunningham, your master at the bar. And, as I am told, he is in your charge.’
It had taken Hew some while to impress on Andrew Melville that he had no part in this. And when he had convinced him, he had not convinced himself; he was guilty of a kind of art and part, a fatal dereliction, if of nothing more. It was now two years since he had been a lodger at the house of Richard Cunningham, under his instruction at the bar. Richard had inducted Hew into the justice court, and given him what he required to practise as an advocate, a twist in fate that ultimately cost the man his life. No court in earth or heaven blamed Hew for his death, but deep in his own conscience, he accused himself. He had not practised since.
Hew had taken on the care of Richard’s children, James and Roger Cunningham, and their sister, Grace. But he had not seen them in a while. Roger, he remembered as a dark and subtle boy, clever and resourceful, who liked to play at chess. Grace was sweet and bairnlie; no doubt that had changed. James had been already entered at St Leonard’s, and they had not met. Hew paid their board and scolage, settled their accounts, but left his interest there. He knew that he was guilty of a grave neglect.
The provost of St Leonard’s plainly thought so too, for he regarded Hew with a cold and careful scrutiny, and would not hear his plea. Hew knew him as a quiet, conscientious man, who spoke thoughtful, gentle sermons at the college chapel, Hew’s own parish kirk. Compared with Andrew Melville, he was mild as milk, which made his lack of mercy all the more extreme. ‘That boy has no conscience. He must be removed.’ What monster, wondered Hew, could he expect to find? And if there was a fault, a damage or a flaw, what part of it was his? He dredged up a memory, hollow in his mind, of a young boy brooding, darkly, on a stair.
Roger was kept under guard, in his college room. But Hew did not turn off towards the students’ lodging house that looked out on the gardens on the south side of the court. The college of St Leonard’s, its chapel, hall and schools, were as familiar to him as the beat of his own heart. He knew each pane of glass and stone, each broken slate and branch of tree, where Roger had climbed out, the fields and woods beyond. St Leonard’s was another world and one which was a home to Hew, for he had grown up to a man behind its gentle walls. The college was set back, secluded from the street, and entered through a passageway between the building where the masters lived – known as the stone trance – and the quiet church. To the stone trance Hew turned now, returning to the rooms of the regent Robert Black, where he had spent a term, and taught in place of Nicholas. Robert Black, he knew, would tell to him the truth, and everything he kent of James and Roger Cunningham would soon be known to Hew. Old habits failed to die; Robert would hold out on him, but not for very long.
Robert Black did not seem pleased. He was sitting by the window at his writing desk, the window and the desk that overlooked the square, and though three years had passed since Hew had been there last, little there had changed. They fell back to the places they had left unfilled, as though a door had closed, and opened up again, and stripped the air of quietness, infused it with regret.
Black excused himself. ‘I was going out.’
‘You do not look,’ objected Hew, ‘to be going out.’
Robert closed his book. ‘I have to read the lecture.’
‘Not for half an hour.’ The lecture hours, of course, were printed on Hew’s mind, pressed upon his conscience, both as man and boy. The inkpot was still full, and the ink was fresh. A new pen had been sharpened to a point. Hew blew a puff of powder clean across the page. ‘This looks like a beginning, rather than an end. Are you making verses?’
‘It is private, Hew. Not that I expect you to respect the word.’
Hew said, ‘I am hurt. Is this how you acknowledge an old friend?’ Robert was a goldsmith’s son, cynical and unambitious, warily resigned. He was good at heart, but liked a quiet life. A quiet life was not in prospect while Hew was around.
‘I will take a drink with you, or sup with you, and argue on philosophy. I will hire a horse, and ride to Kenly Green if you will quit the college, now, and leave me here at peace.’
<
br /> ‘You are, of course, most welcome there,’ Hew smiled. ‘But why are you so careful I should quit the college? Have you had forewarning not to speak with me?’
‘What warning would I need?’ Robert rounded bitterly. ‘Your coming is a marker of a rare kind of revenge, that will bring a trail of devils shrieking through our doors. It makes my poor heart quake, to see you at the college; you are never here, but there is trouble in your wake.’
There had been no trouble since the fall of the old principal, no sodomy or scaffery, and no suspicious deaths. The petty squalls and squabbles that took place between the colleges had melded to a commonplace, too trifling to report.
‘Perhaps it is the trouble brings me. Have you thought of that?’
‘You are the trouble, Hew.’
Hew walked back to the window, and looked down upon the square. St Leonard’s was the college, still, to which he felt the most attached. And he felt no great will to feel into its pond, and prise apart the limpets clinging to its rocks. He answered with a sigh. ‘Tell me what you ken of James and Roger Cunningham, and I will leave you peaceful here, and never come again.’
‘That is quickly accomplished. Nothing at all. They are not in my class.’
‘Then you had not heard, for instance, that they have been expelled?’
‘Roger has,’ corrected Robert. It did not take him long to realise his mistake. ‘I will tell you what I heard, if I can have your word on it, that you will go away.’ He accepted the defeat. ‘And it will be quite clear to you than none of this must reach the ears of Andrew Melville, if you have any conscience, Hew, or feeling for the boy.’
Hew settled on the bed, where he once had slept.
‘This is hearsay, Hew, which you will understand,’ Robert Black began, ‘and I cannot – dare not – answer to the truth of it. But Roger was expelled because he is involved in strange unnatural practices, and not, you may be sure, because he chose to skitter Andrew Melville’s door. There are several in the college here would tip their caps to that.’
‘What practices?’ asked Hew.
‘I will come to that. But first I will relate some facts of his history – a history with which ye might be well acquainted, had you spent more time at home among the colleges and less time in the lowlands, chasing after windmills. Roger is a quent, unkindly kind of boy. When he began last year, we lodged him with a friend, a sickly, sallow lad, who fell in a decline and had to be sent home. The two lads had been close, and had had some falling out. The other students claimed that Roger put a curse on him.’
‘Such slandering is vile, and a pernicious force. The master is at fault, that did not put a stop to it,’ Hew said with a scowl.
‘I do not dispute that,’ Robert sighed. ‘And, in truth, we tried. But you yourself well know how hard it is to quell a rumour that has taken root. The provost and the regents tried to help his cause, but the students in the college still refuse to sit with him. He sleeps and eats alone, and has no companion but his brother James.’
‘Dear God,’ muttered Hew. ‘And for this the boy is blamed, when he should be pitied.’
‘He does not want your pity, Hew. The pity is, he does not help himself. He might be more gentle, passive, quiet, meek. But he is not those things. It pleases him to startle and to terrorise his colleagues. He plays up to the part that they have writ for him, and seems to like the power it gives him over them. His assault on Andrew Melville was a part of that same ordinance, by which he seeks the notice and suspicion of his friends. Tis hard to understand.’
‘Nothing you have said disposes me to think that he is justly used, or treated with the pity that his case deserves.’
‘You do not know him, Hew.’
‘But I have known him once. And nor, in truth, do you.’
Robert hesitated. ‘You must be aware that he is not the child that once you thought you knew. There is an air about him, which discomfits and disquiets. His interests are significant, singular, and solitary. When they brought him here last night, he was taken to his room, where bare upon the board he had left out his materials, the substance of his craft.’
‘What craft is that?’ asked Hew. But in his heart, he knew; the boy that he once knew had shown an interest in anatomy.
‘The matter was the body of a cat, with the eyes and entrails drawn, and the body nicely carved. From the matter, ye may seek to know his craft.’
‘He has an interest,’ Hew defended, ‘in the natural world.’
‘Is that correct?’ Robert smiled. ‘I do confess, I know no world where such an interest is considered natural. You, I am aware, are wont to move at will in darker worlds than mine. Yet I think that even you are like to understand why our provost has expelled him, and why he will not let the cause be telt to Andrew Melville; for the sake of both the college and the boy himself, he would not have him taken for a witch.’
‘God help him, then,’ said Hew. ‘The boy is an anatomist; a cunning one at that. But he is not a witch. But tell me one thing more. You were at St Mary’s at the wedding lecture, and you saw the bleeding tree. Do you think that Roger was responsible for that?’
‘He may have been responsible,’ Robert Black considered, ‘if he is a witch.’
‘Put that from your mind,’ insisted Hew, ‘for the bleeding hawthorn was not done by witchcraft. It was a bladder filled with blood, and just the sort of trick that might have been imagined by a boy like Roger, who likes to cut up animals and make his friends afraid of him.’ He felt in his pocket for the shepherd’s sling, remembering what the boy had said, It is not a weapon for a proper man.
‘Then I do not see how. For he was kept here at the college, at the master’s side.’
‘And his brother James?’
‘James was at the lecture, with the other tertians. He was in the hall. I cannot see a way in which he could be implicat.’
Nor, for the moment, could Hew. But he was not prepared yet to discount the possibility. ‘What sort of man is he?’
‘As unlike his brother as you could conceive. By all accounts, he is a model student, thoughtful, proper and devout, and well liked by his friends. I hear but small report of him, and all of that is good. He is greatly troubled by this business with his brother, and has tried to plead for him . . . He is grieving sorely at it, for his mother’s sake.’
‘I must thank you, Robert,’ Hew acknowledged, thoughtful. ‘Now I am prepared.’
‘Then I will wish you luck with it. I know you will not take it very much amiss, when I say I hope you will not call again.’
Hew left Robert to his books and crossed the quiet square. He took a moment then, to look back at the stone trance and the little church, where on countless Sundays he had said his prayers, and on to the refectory, the common hall and schools. He did not for a moment think their kindness could be closed to him, that there would come a time, when he could not return.
Chapter 14
An Uncommon Kindness
The room had been stripped of its contents, apart from a low trundle bed. On the bed was a grey woollen blanket, a slim book of psalms, in the Latin, and a bare-footed boy, in breeches and shirt, who sat at the top of it, clutching his knees. A boy of fourteen, small for his age. His left cheek was swollen, blue as a plum, and his dark hair was puddled with filth. There was blood on his collar, and filth on his face, but Hew noticed no trace of tears.
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Magister.’
As though all masters were the same. Roger did not seem to notice, or perhaps to care about, his own predicament. Perhaps he had been damaged by a blunt blow to the head. He would not be the first.
‘I am Hew Cullan, lawman at St Salvator’s. You may speak in Scots.’
‘Do I want a lawyer, then?’
‘Sincerely, I hope not. But we have met before, when you were a boy, at your father’s house.’
‘I do not recall.’
Was it possible, thought Hew, that those momentous weeks, that
led to Richard’s death, were wiped from Roger’s mind? ‘I stayed for several weeks.’
‘I do not recall that, sir.’
‘I knew your father well.’
‘I do not remember him.’
In the court outside, a bell began to ring. They heard hurried footsteps, several doors were closed, a flurried snatch of laughter drifted from the quad. Something in its echo seemed to wake the boy. ‘I must go now, sir. Or I will be late for the lecture.’
‘Did they not tell you? You are expelled.’
The boy stared at his hands. ‘They did. I had forgotten it.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘For that I put some muck on Andro Melville’s door, defouling his clean house.’
‘And why did you do that?’
‘To make them like me here. They do not like me much.’
‘There is a bangstrie in the college,’ Hew reflected, ‘that is no better now than when I was a student. I stayed here, in a room like this. I had forgotten how sparing, how Spartan it was.’
‘There were more comforts, once. They took away my things. I do not know if they will give them back.’
‘Then we will have to look into that. I shared with a friend. But you seem to lie here alone.’
‘There was someone else, once,’ Roger admitted. ‘He fell sick of a pest, and they sent him home. I did not miss him much. I do not remember his name.’
‘Why did you throw muck at Andrew Melville’s house? Did someone set you on to it? Or was it your idea?’
‘I thought of it myself.’ Hew believed him then. For Roger’s quiet answer had a note of pride in it; he was Richard’s son.
‘I climb out at night. There is a tree by the wall. Everyone kens.’
Hew nodded. The exit from the college was an open secret, in evidence when he was a boy. New masters came and went, and none had put a stop to it. He had climbed out there himself.
Friend & Foe Page 15