The King's Corrodian (24 page)

Gil looked at the faces turned towards him.

‘Can any confirm that?’ he asked. ‘Did any hear White or Wilson leave the dorter?’

Further round the ring of seated brethren a cautious hand rose.

‘Brother Bernard,’ said the Prior.

‘Thomas is next me,’ said Brother Bernard, a round-faced man with a pair of wire-framed spectacles tied onto his face with a black ribbon. ‘I thought I heard him moving about, early on, no so long after Compline. I took it he’d the bellyache again, same as he complained o the other night. I never heard him come back up, but—’ His face changed as he recalled why, and he crossed himself.

‘Anyone else?’ said Gil. A few heads were shaken. ‘Well, it’s something. Where were we? Arguing over Henry White in the cloister out there,’ he recalled. ‘What happened next?’

‘We bound Brother Sandy,’ said Robert Aikman diffidently, ‘and Archie went for Brother Euan to see to Faither Henry, for we could see he’d hurt his head, and folk brought lights, and then Archie fetched Faither Prior and yoursel, maister.’

Gil nodded.

‘That’s clear enough. While you were all arguing over White, did anyone try the library door? Or see anyone else try the library door?’

‘I’d ha had plenty to say if they did,’ said Raitts angrily. ‘There’s nobody allowed in there if I’m no there.’

Looking at the man, Gil thought he was quite unaware of what he had just said. He glanced about the room; one or two expressions suggested their wearers had had the same thought, but nobody seemed inclined to admit to trying the door.

‘What happened then?’ he asked. ‘Mind me.’

‘Faither sent us to bed,’ said someone, without putting his hand up.

‘Did all go there?’ Gil pursued. ‘Two went to pray over Andrew Rattray, I’d ha thought.’ Two hands were raised, two heads nodded. ‘There were several in the infirmary, as I recall.’ Another three hands went up. ‘Anyone else?’ After a moment he looked directly at Raitts. ‘I think you went into the kirk. How long were you there?’

‘I stayed there till Matins,’ said the librarian sullenly. ‘They two can tell you that.’

One of the two bedesmen nodded. The other looked blank. Making a mental note to question them privately, Gil went on, ‘Those o you that were moving about at that time, did any o you notice anything or anyone out o place? Anything at all, even if there was a good explanation for it,’ he added. There was a silence. Finally he drew out his tablets and continued, ‘I’ll not keep the meeting by questioning each o you the now, but I’d like a list o all those that were about at that time, so I can get you later.’

‘Raise your hands,’ said Boyd, ‘any that were out their beds between Compline and Matins.’ He looked about the chamber, and began dictating the names to Gil. ‘That’s about right,’ he added when he had finished. ‘I canny recall that I saw any others at that hour.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Gil. ‘And one final question afore we move on to Matins. Did any set eyes on Thomas Wilson atween Compline and the time you were all sent back to bed?’

There was a long silence, into which someone muttered, ‘One o us must ha done.’

‘And I could name him,’ said another voice.

‘Who said that?’ Gil demanded. Perhaps wisely, the speaker did not identify himself. After a moment Gil went on, ‘Now, when you rose for Matins, was all as usual apart from the absence o Wilson and White?’

‘I thought so,’ said the Prior beside him. ‘Did any notice aught amiss?’

Heads were shaken, there were murmurs of
No
and
No, till we were in our places
.

‘Everyone else was present that should ha been?’

‘Apart from those occupied in the infirmary,’ qualified the Prior, ‘I saw no gaps in the stalls other than Henry’s and Thomas’s. We sought Thomas immediately the Office was over, and he was found as you have seen him, I think.’

Well, not quite as I saw him, Gil thought. ‘Who found him?’ he asked. There was a pause, and several heads turned, looking at one place on the bench.

‘Archie and me,’ said Brother Dickon from his corner. ‘Brother Sandy said we should search there.’

‘I did,’ admitted Raitts reluctantly, under the stares of his brethren. ‘I thought maybe he’d sneaked in there wi’out permission, and there he was, blood all ower the floor, the reading-desk couped ower. Archie and Dickon were there ahead of me,’ he added.

‘I’m told the library wasny locked.’

‘I lost the key,’ said Raitts defensively. ‘I canny tell where it went. I’ve no had it these three weeks or more. Since afore Yule.’

‘Is that generally kent in the house?’

Murmurs of agreement suggested that it was.

‘And what did you do when you found Wilson?’

‘He yelled out,’ said Jamesie. ‘And they all cam running.’

‘Who decided he was dead?’

‘It was obvious,’ said another brother. ‘Lying staring like that, never blinking in the light. I tried his pulse,’ he demonstrated at his own throat, ‘but you could tell, any road.’

‘What state was he in?’ Gil asked.

‘Well, he was dead,’ offered the friar. ‘No a very good state.’

‘I mean,’ said Gil patiently, ‘had he begun to stiffen? Was he cold, or still warm? When you found the blood, was it still wet?’

‘He was stiff as a board,’ said another man.

‘No, his legs was still limber,’ said someone else, ‘for they were a ower the place when we put him on the hurdle.’

‘His arms was set, just the same. And he was cold.’

‘No that cold. No as cold’s the floor, say. No very warm, mind.’

‘So he’d been dead a few hours,’ said Gil.

‘Aye,’ said someone.

‘Aye,’ said Prior Boyd. ‘Slain in secret by one o his brothers. One o us here in this Chapter House. This is no dwelling together in unity. This is no honouring God whose temple each o us is. This is foul murder, and though we may love the sinner we must hate the sin. I call upon the man who murdered Thomas Wilson to confess now, afore us all.’

There was a silence, which grew and grew. One or two heads turned, to see if any looked like coming forward; a few sat back, to emphasise that they would not.

After what seemed an eternity, the Prior said in weighty tones, ‘Well, if you will not confess, it seems I must name you mysel. Alexander Raitts, I accuse you o—’

‘No!’ Raitts sprang to his feet. ‘No, you canny, it wasny me!’

‘—enticing Thomas Wilson secretly away from his proper place into the library o this house—’

‘No, I never, I canny, I’ve no knife nor any weapon!’

‘—and there stabbing him to death. And I think it likely you slew Andrew Rattray and all.’

‘No!’ shouted Raitts. ‘I did no sic a thing. I’m innocent!’

The men nearest him hastened to seize his arms. He struggled, and more friars joined him, with a couple of the lay brothers. The first-year novices were staring, the second-year men looked appalled. Gil himself was deeply dismayed: this was not the outcome he had hoped for.

‘Take him out and confine him,’ said the Prior. ‘There must be a storeroom to the purpose.’ He turned to Gil. ‘Maister Cunningham, Gregory says,
if scandal arise from truth, the scandal should be borne rather than the truth be set aside
. You’ve made the truth right clear to us, and I thank you for it, though the outcome grieves me sair.’

‘No, I agree,’ said Alys. ‘That man could hardly kill twice, and nearly a third time, and not show it. But could he have done it otherwise? What reason could he have?’

‘Plenty for Wilson,’ said Gil, ‘to judge by what I saw yesterday. Sweet St Giles, was it only yesterday? Less for White – they are reputed to have got on well, but I suppose encountering him after killing Wilson, he might have stabbed him to prevent him talking of it. In which he is successful so far,’ he added. ‘White is still in his swound, though I suspect Brother Euan is keeping him that way.’

‘And the boy Rattray?’ Alys bent to throw another log on the fire. It spat and sparked as the flames licked at the bark.

‘Raitts had as much opportunity as any in the place,’ said Gil slowly, thinking about it, ‘but I cannot tell that he had any reason, any more than he had reason to kill the other novices.’

‘He had more reason to kill the one named Simpson,’ Alys observed wryly, ‘if he misused a book. I suppose he might be protecting whatever secret Pollock had discovered about him, if any of the others had learned it. He did say Wilson was talking about him in the town?’

‘Aye, though he said he was talking about him, not asking questions about him. And I suppose either of the others could have learned something by accident.’

‘What other reason could there be for killing the two who are dead?’

‘You don’t think Pollock was killed?’

‘Not deliberately, no. And not by the same person, I am certain. I should have more to tell you later.’ She glanced at the light through the high windows. ‘I hope Tam comes back soon. What do Rattray and Wilson have in common?’

‘Little, I’d have said.’ Gil considered the two. ‘They’re an essay in contrasts, indeed. The novice a promising man, a good scholar, ardent, devout. Wilson not one of the world’s learned, known to be peculating in the matter of the rents, not greatly devout. What did the other boy say of Wilson?’

‘He was careful to say nothing,’ said Alys, ‘though he was less clever than Father Henry about concealing the fact.’

‘We can assume he at least knew about the rents,’ agreed Gil.

‘Why was the man in the library?’ Alys wondered. ‘Was he looking for something, or meeting someone – the person who killed him, perhaps – or hiding from someone?’

‘No sign that he tried to run, by what they described who found him,’ Gil said. ‘That’s a good point. Why was he there? I suppose, with the rule of silence at the moment, any wanting to have a conversation would need to use secrecy.’

‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘so it must have been someone he had no reason to fear. I should not think he would meet secretly with the librarian. How would you persuade such a man to meet with you in private?’

‘Ask for pastoral advice?’ Gil suggested.

‘Yes, that would work. He would have been flattered, I suppose. But who? Nobody else admitted to being out of his place.’

‘Nobody we’ve not accounted for, and I’d checked with Brother Euan that none of his helpers vanished for any length of time.’ Gil sighed. ‘The trouble is, because he has Raitts locked up, Boyd sees no purpose now in my questioning the rest. He has sent to the Provost, to say there has been a death and the man responsible is taken, and also to the Bishop, and refuses to lift the injunction of silence. I suppose I can still speak to the servants, the outdoor men, the folk in the infirmary, who are not enjoined, but not the others.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Now I’ve warmed up?’ He looked about him. ‘Take the dog for a walk, outside this place, and think. Will you come with me?’

‘No,’ she said regretfully, ‘for if Tam has been successful I have something to do.’

Bundled in his plaid over the leather doublet, his hands encased in thick woollen mittens, Gil strode briskly along the banks of the Town Ditch, nodding to the occasional passer-by, with Socrates loping happily around him. There seemed to be interesting smells and trails everywhere, to judge by the way the dog’s long nose twitched and snuffled near the ground. At least one of us has something to follow, Gil thought, and glanced to his right where the Blackfriars’ easternmost outbuildings sat behind their wall. What was going on in that place? Who had killed two men, injured a third, for no reason he could make out? Raitts made an unconvincing villain, though his protestations of innocence were not wholly convincing either. What was he up to, Gil wondered, wandering about the place in the dark, hiding in the library from strange women.

No, the answer had to lie somewhere with what linked the three dead or injured. All were Dominicans, though one was a senior man, one an ordinary friar, one a novice. That was hardly the answer; it did not single them out in their community, and failing the work of the Devil their attacker must be a member of the same community. Two were able scholars, the third must be a cunning man if he had practised the deceit over the rents for any length of time. White was a priest, he did not know about Wilson, and he could probably assume the young man Rattray was not yet priested. In most ways he could think of, the three men were different rather than similar. So what linked them?

He paused, looking about him. The path he had followed along the bank was about to join the muddy network of tracks and roadways through the next patch of suburban building, clustered about the northwest port of the burgh. Several dogs of mixed size and type were surveying Socrates warily from a gap in a fence, and a handful of hens scurried for cover in the damp bushes. He whistled to Socrates and turned back, passing a man with a stout kist on his shoulder, a smell of new wood drifting after him. Probably delivering it somewhere, Gil thought.

Working his way back along the Ditch, he reviewed what he knew of the three men, trying to call each to mind, though the image of Rattray as an eager, ardent young man sat badly with the thought of his smoke-blackened, contorted remains. Put them together, he thought, and how do they act? In his mind’s eye the three drew together into a group, heads bent, manner quiet and decorous. Father Henry appeared to be praying aloud, the other two paying close attention, their beads in their hands.

Then the image of Rattray turned and looked straight at Gil. He could see the bright red curls about the boy’s brow, the earnest pale face, the freckles across the cheekbones. Blue eyes met his, and the lips moved.

‘I took him for my brother,’ the young man said, his voice hoarse and intense. ‘Get him. Mak him confess.’

‘I’ll get him,’ he answered aloud. ‘
Trouthe the shal delivere, hit is no drede
.’

‘Mak him confess,’ said the hoarse voice again as the image in his head was dispelled.

‘Maister?’ said another voice entirely. ‘What are you at?’

He looked about him, blinking, and found he was standing at the very edge of the Ditch, with Tam at his elbow and Socrates at his knee both staring anxiously at him. Rapid red-brown water, thick as lentil broth, gurgled coldly a few inches from the toes of his boots. He stepped back in some alarm.