The King's Corrodian (20 page)

‘Fremit? What kind of foreigner?’

Nory shook his head.

‘Just no from here. Archie’s no a travelled man himsel for all he was a soldier – he’d reckon anyone from further than Glasgow or Aberdeen was a foreigner – but I think this one had some kind o accent, spoke funny, and he’d a badge wi a rose on it on his jerkin.’

‘Oh!’ said Gil. ‘And this was after Pollock dis appeared? How long after, did Archie say? Had he seen the man before?’

‘He never said,’ Nory reported with regret.

‘A red rose or a white?’ asked Alys.

‘I never asked him. I could ask him the morn,’ Nory offered.

‘Aye, do that.’ Gil frowned. ‘Odd that the messenger never called on Pullar. He said he’d been expecting one about now.’

‘What messenger’s that, maister?’ Nory asked, and Gil recounted his visit to Andrew Pullar. The man listened, and offered, ‘Likely he went away again, never spoke to the man o law, thinking there’d be no money, when he found Pollock wasny here.’

‘You’d think he might check with the other contact.’

‘Unless Pollock was to give him the direction to Pullar’s place of business,’ Alys suggested. ‘I wonder where the coin is going?’

‘It will be going into Ireland, to the O’Neill,’ said Euan. ‘It will be for the new Duke of York, that is certain.’

‘Of course!’ said Gil, and Alys nodded. ‘This fellow that’s maybe, or maybe no, the Duke o York. Claims to be the son o Edward Fourth, or the like – one o the two boys that were prisoned in the Tower at London,’ he explained to the two grooms, who were looking blank. ‘There’s more than one o the monarchs of Europe friendly to him, if only to annoy Henry Tudor. I’ve heard he’s some friendship wi the O’Neill, but I suspect we’ll see him in Scotland afore too long, if this has been the Treasury sending him money.’

‘Och, no, he is planning to go to England and fight King Henry,’ said Euan confidently.

‘In any case,’ said Gil, ‘it looks as though Pollock was supporting the man’s cause, for whatever reason. Thank you, Nory.’

‘How are your hands?’ Alys asked. ‘I have a cream for your finger-ends, if the rope has chafed them.’

‘Dandy,’ said Gil over Nory’s murmured thanks, ‘did you learn aught to the purpose? What did you do the day?’

‘Dod and Jamesie was redding up the plough-harness,’ said Dandy, ‘so I gied them a hand, did a couple wee mends, we got it all greased and laid out ready for the ploughing. So natural enough, working at that, we spoke o where we’d come fro, and then where others were raised and all. Seems Wilson’s a local man, Henry White’s from Lanarkshire though he’s been here for years, and the man Raitts is out of Ayrshire they think, though he’s very close as to his history. As Nory here says, they’d little knowledge o the novices, though they both had a liking for the laddie that’s slain, thought him a decent fellow, like to make a good friar and a good preacher.’

‘Did they say aught at all o the others?’ Gil asked.

‘No a lot. Calder’s ower serious and just as like to report you to Brother Dickon, though to be fair they say Brother Dickon doesny like his men reported to him. He sees to their discipline hissel, says there’s no need for some youngster owerseeing them. Munt and Simpson, is that the names? They’re aye good for a laugh, it seems, and up to all the kind o tricks laddies that age gets up to. It’ll no last, they reckon, they’ll be as solemn as the rest by the time they’re done. The one, Mureson, is ower solemn already, they said.’

‘And Andrew?’ said Gil. ‘The dead laddie? Was he lively and all, or was he serious?’

‘Kinna in atween, by what they said. Certainly up to tricks, they reckoned he’d a lassie in the town, covered for him a time or two when he’d been out and shouldny.’

Gil nodded.

‘Very useful. Thanks, Dandy. Had they any notion how he died? Who might have cut his throat and burned the infirmary to conceal it?’

‘Oh, they reckon Sandy Raitts. They all hold him to be a pirlie, ragglish fellow, liable to all kinds o cantrips. They wouldny put it past him to do an orra thing like that.’

Jennet muttered agreement, but Alys said, ‘No, surely no. He’s a poor creature, I’ll admit, but he’s no destructive.’

Gil looked at her.

‘What, you think he would kill but not set the fire?’

‘I think he would not kill, and certainly not set a fire. That’s a thoughtless action.’

‘Arson always is,’ Gil agreed. ‘Well, perhaps. And you, Euan, have you learned anything of use?’

‘Och, indeed,’ said Euan proudly. ‘I was sitting with the old man again, the one that’s deeing, to ease Brother Euan’s work. He’s a dispensation from the silence, Brother Euan has, seeing he must question his patients, so we was chatting away in the Gaelic whenever it was quiet. He’s been telling me all the history of the folks here, and who gets on wi who, and what their quarrels are. You’d never know the wee things they quarrel over, what wi being shut in and obedient.’

‘So what have you learned?’ Gil prompted.

‘Well, well, the man Raitts has quarrelled with the most of his brothers, saving maybe Henry White, over his books. This one has ill-treated a book, that one has put one back wrong, all those sorts of things.
You’d think they was his own books
, says Brother Euan. The brother called Thomas Wilson has been farming the rents, though Father Prior doesny ken yet. The second-year novices has been brewing ale in one o the barns, and put all sorts into the mash and gave theirsels some bad dreams. It’s a wonder what the Infirmarer knows about the folk in the place, so it is.’ He paused, closing his eyes to think. ‘The one Raitts is accusing Wilson of talking about him in the town. Seems he told someone he was spreading tales o him, though he never said what sort of tales—’

‘Ochtaway, this is all just well-head clash!’ protested Rob. ‘There’s no purpose in any o’t!’

‘And how is it any different Jamesie telling you tales o the same man?’ demanded Euan, firing up.

‘Be at peace, both of you!’ said Gil. ‘You’ve both done what I asked o you, and it’s a matter o fortune whether simply talking to folk raises useful information or no. Tell me more about the novices, Euan. What did the sub-Infirmarer have to say about them?’

‘Och, they’re good enough laddies, by what he tells me. They’ve called at the infirmary daily to ask after their friend while he was shut away, though that’s had to cease now, and sent him messages and words o comfort each time. That would be the first-year novices, a course. Euan never let them in to see him, so he says.’

‘Did he mention John Blythe?’

‘Him that’s novice-master? Do you know, he did, now – and what was he telling me o him?’ Euan closed his eyes again, the better to recollect. ‘Och, yes, he’s no been sleeping well, the poor man, and has had a sleeping-draught to him the last few weeks or more. Euan was just making up some more the day.’ Despite much racking of his memory, he produced no further useful recollections.

At length, giving up, Gil said, ‘Very well. We’ll brew up a stoup of buttered ale and put all thegether, see if we can work out what’s been happening. Where did that jug of ale go? Should we send into the kitchen for another?’

Once they were gathered round the fire, watching Jennet pour the hot spiced brew into wooden beakers, Euan remarked airily, ‘It will not be any surprise that the O’Neill has disposed of the man Pollock.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Tam asked in sceptical tones.

‘Why, if Pollock had learned some secret of his, the way he was finding out things to everyone’s discredit, the O’Neill would certainly have him killed.’

‘What, an old man here in a priory in Perth?’ said Tam, the scepticism even stronger. ‘How would he do that, when he never left the place?’

‘The man was having folk call on him here,’ said Euan, ‘and who is to say what secrets they brought him? And the O’Neill has a long arm, I can tell you that.’

‘That’s speculation,’ said Gil firmly. ‘What do we ken for certain about the man?’

‘We ken how he died,’ said Alys, grimacing. Socrates put his head on her knee, and she stroked his ears. ‘Burned up by fire behind locked and barred doors.’

‘He was given to extortion,’ said Gil. ‘So there are a good few folk who disliked him, possibly enough to kill him.’

‘Was he not writing down the reasons for his extortion?’ asked Euan.

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Names, initials, but nothing about the original misdeeds. I’ve no doubt he feared it getting into other hands.’

‘Now that’s a pity,’ said Euan. ‘Interesting it would be, to know what misdeeds might be in a house of religion like this.’

‘Who do we ken was on his list, maister?’ asked Tam.

Gil hesitated.

‘I’ll not name the living,’ he said after a moment. ‘Better if that doesny get about.’ Tam grinned, his glance flicking to Euan and back in the firelight. ‘We ken he had a go at Andrew Rattray, thinking the lady in the town was his mistress no his sister, and he had a go at one o the other novices and all, and was denied.’

‘And what was that about?’ asked Euan avidly before he could go on.

‘A book from the college library at St Andrews, all confessed and dealt wi,’ said Gil repressively, and Euan subsided.

‘There are others, then, maister?’ said Tam. Gil nodded. ‘But did you no say the doors was barred? How would anyone get in to set fire to the man, whoever it was?’

‘Down the chimney?’ suggested Dandy.

‘Blocked,’ said Alys. ‘So is the window to the inner chamber, and the inner door was locked and the key in the man’s purse, or so we assume,’ she glanced at Gil, ‘since it was found among his ashes.’

‘It’s impossible,’ said Dandy. ‘He might as well be in a lead coffin, and how would you get at a man in a lead coffin?’

‘No, but a lead coffin’s well sealed,’ said Tam. ‘Naught can get in or out, that’s its purpose. Even wi the doors barred, there’s plenty can get into a wee house like yon.’

‘Like what?’ challenged Dandy. Euan was silent.

‘Rats. Mice. You ken as well’s me they can get anywhere. Fire, a draught o air, rain down the chimney – unless it’s sealed off complete, mistress?’

‘So you’re saying a trained rat ran in wi a wee firebrand in its mouth?’

‘There was fire in the house already,’ Alys said over Tam’s indignant response. They stopped arguing to look at her. ‘He had a brazier to keep him warm, and he must have had a light in that chamber, for he had been looking in his kist.’

‘We never found a candlestock,’ Gil said.

‘Likely it was wooden,’ said Tam. ‘It would burn up wi the rest.’

‘But how did the fire consume the man completely?’ demanded Dandy. ‘I’ve been and looked in the kist where they’re praying ower it, there’s just wee bits o ash and bone. The other laddie wasny consumed, and that fire was hot enough, Our Lady kens. If your clothes catches alight, all you do is, you put it out. You don’t just sit there and burn, do you?’

‘If you’re bout-fou you might,’ argued Tam. ‘You might no notice till it’s well alight. Happened to my auntie’s good-faither. He’d had the most o a jug o Bordeaux-wine he’d won in a wager and fell asleep by the fire, except she noticed and tossed the dishwater ower him. He wouldny ha minded,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘but she never took the crocks out first. The great one caught him a wallop in the cods, had him limping for a week.’

‘Was the man a drinker?’ Alys asked.

‘Brother Dickon said not,’ said Gil. ‘I asked him.’

‘So how did he catch on fire?’ Dandy persisted.

‘This is unsatisfactory,’ said Alys. ‘On the one hand,’ she held one hand out, ‘we have a man dead in a locked chamber, locked from the inside, and no way to tell which of his enemies might have had a means of getting into the chamber. On the other,’ she withdrew her other hand from Gil’s clasp and held it out too, ‘the means by which he died is not clear. How did the fire start and why was it so fierce?’

‘Aye,’ began Tam.

‘That sums it up well, sweetheart,’ said Gil, retrieving her hand, ‘but—’

‘But that’s my point!’ she broke in, gesturing again with the free hand. ‘It seems like nothing done by a human agency, nothing started by a mortal hand, given that we saw no mechanical contrivances, no artificial hearth or the like. And no trained rats,’ she added, ‘though I suppose those would hide from Socrates.’

The dog beat his tail on the hearth a couple of times in acknowledgement of this. Gil said, ‘Go on. Where does this lead?’

‘If it’s not a human action,’ she turned to look earnestly at him in the candlelight, ‘it must be either a wholly natural one, some sort of accidental occurrence, or a supernatural one. Are you agreed?’

‘Aye,’ he said, and Tam murmured something. Dandy seemed less convinced.

‘The supernatural happens very rarely,’ she went on. ‘We know there are supernatural events, Holy Church teaches us so, but I never witnessed such a thing as the Devil coming into this world—’

‘There was what that woman saw, mem,’ objected Jennet. ‘Wi his great wings rising up, and his red een.’

‘I think she saw the smoke from the great fire,’ said Alys. ‘No, it seems to me so much more likely that Pollock died by some natural occurrence that I have been trying to make it happen again, in a small way. I hope we know more the morn.’

‘Oh, is that …’ said Tam, then fell silent. Gil considered this proposition cautiously.

‘I’d need something solid enough to convince Blacader,’ he said at length. ‘No to mention Brown and the Prior.’

‘That should be possible,’ said Alys, with equal caution. ‘If I can make it work once, I can do so again with witnesses.’

‘Aye,’ he said, unwilling to question her further in front of the servants. ‘Well, we’ll look at this again when we’ve a bit more to go on. Now, what about the young man Rattray? What do we ken about him?’

‘He was well liked,’ offered Tam.

‘Someone didny like him,’ said Dandy.

‘Aye, but he’d no enemies that anyone’ll name,’ argued Tam.

‘He thought he had killed the man Pollock by hating him,’ said Alys.

‘Aye, but what’s that to say to his death, mem?’ Jennet said. ‘I’d ha said they were all glad to be rid o that man.’

‘It’s something we know of him,’ Alys said. ‘Until we have solved the matter, every detail may be important.’