Beyond the closed end of the bed another chest could be seen against the wall, with a pile of discarded clothing thrown on top of it. Gil went over to this and disentangled the garments. Black hose, rather stale, a mended doublet and jerkin, a short gown with a lining of black budge: the kind of garments a man wore about his own house, when not out to impress.
‘He changed his garments before he left to go to supper,’ he said. Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘And then came in later and prepared himself for bed. He hasn’t worn the bedgown.’
‘One does not always.’
‘True.’
The pen-case on the desk was of tooled leather; Gil eased off the cover and looked inside. Several quills bound together in a scrap of paper, a penknife for trimming pens and scraping out blots, a bone rubber for smoothing paper or parchment after one had used the knife. Nothing unusual there.
He looked round. There was a candlestick with a burnt-down candle on the painted chest. He thought suddenly of Tib’s intent face over the candles in the house on Rottenrow before dawn, and then of Alys sitting beside him in the firelight in her father’s house.
‘There is his purse,’ said Maistre Pierre, breaking into that thought. ‘I have it here.’
‘True.’ Gil took the item from him. Like most of Naismith’s goods, it was large and well made, of red leather stamped with a pattern of small flowers. Undoing the strings, Gil tipped out the contents beside the candlestick, the debris of the man’s life rattling on the painted wood. Distantly aware of Mistress Mudie’s raised voice, he sorted through the items. A smaller purse of coin, a set of tablets, two or three creased scraps of paper with writing on them, two pilgrim medals and a set of beads, a tiny pot of ointment with a powerful smell, a small box of sweetmeats.
‘What is the writing?’
‘A receipt of some sort.’ Gil unfolded one scrap. ‘Herbs, quicksilver, fat from a cob swan, burnt feathers. Ointment, I suppose, but it doesn’t say for what. This is another one, and this is a list of herbs. Hot milk or ale, honey — a soothing drink, I suppose.’ He handed the slips to his companion. ‘And in his tablets, notes of this and that, Buy coal, Speak to Mungo Howie.’
Maistre Pierre looked up from the little sheaf of papers in surprise. ‘To Howie? I should have thought he could afford a better craftsman than that.’
Gil, aware of his friend’s opinion of the several carpenters and joiners in the burgh, merely nodded and turned to the next leaf. The slats of wood were as long as his hand, the outer covers wrapped in red leather, stamped with the same pattern of flowers as the purse, and the wax filling the hollowed-out centres of the leaves had been stained red to match, rather than the more usual green. Here was a long list, incised in the careful script of a man who had come to writing late in life.
‘This is a note of some property,’ he said after a moment. ‘Most of it in Glasgow. I wonder is it his own or the bedehouse’s? And several names. A gold chain, the furnishings of this lodging.’
‘Notes for a will, perhaps. Did that woman mention an announcement? Is that why he saw Agnew last night, to draw up some new document?’
‘It’s possible,’ agreed Gil. He turned as footsteps crossed the outer room. ‘Maister Millar. What did Deacon Naismith have to tell the bedehouse yesterday? Was he making great changes?’
‘Not — not for the bedehouse,’ said Millar earnestly from the doorway ‘no really.’
‘Not really,’ echoed Maistre Pierre. ‘So what were his plans? Small changes?’
Millar fell back before them as they returned to the outer room. ‘Well, there were to be changes for the wardens, I agree. I was to have one of the wee houses, and Sissie another, and the Deacon was to occupy the whole of this main range.’
‘What, as a house?’ said Gil, startled. ‘For himself alone?’
‘Oh, no. He was to be married at Yule, he told us, so he wanted the extra space.’
‘Married?’ Maistre Pierre sat down and looked in amazement at Millar. ‘He was not in Orders then?’
‘Oh, no. At least, maybe in minor Orders. He was — I think he’d been a clerk somewhere, he kent the responses well and could sing the Office wi the old men, but he was no priest. To tell truth I never liked to ask him,’ Millar confided.
‘And he wanted to take over the main range. Even the hall?’ said Maistre Pierre, lifting the bundle of papers he had left on the table. ‘But where would the old men meet?’
‘He never said.’ Millar paused, looking thoughtful. ‘Aye, you’re right. I was so — I’m right comfortable in my lodging through the wall yonder,’ he waved a hand, ‘I was so took up wi wondering how the wee houses could be brought into order before Yule, I never thought about the hall.’
‘Did he say who he was to wed?’
‘He did not. I assumed it was his mistress,’ Millar admitted. ‘He’s had her in keeping longer than I’ve been in post here, high time he did right by her. Frankie went away to break the morn’s news to her, poor soul, and he’s not back yet.’
‘And how would that have left you?’ Gil asked.
‘No great change, I suppose,’ said Millar blankly. ‘I’d still be the sub-Deacon, I thought. There might ha been less for my income,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘for a married man would want more for himself, likely. And the same for Sissie, though a course he did say his wife would take over keeping the household.’
‘Are things so tight, then?’ said Maistre Pierre from the table. Gil and Millar both turned to look at him. He had the papers spread out before him on the polished surface and his tablets in his hand. ‘The bedehouse is in poverty?’ he asked.
‘I think it isny well to do, for he’s been making cuts lately. No more wine to their dinners, for instance. They wereny best pleased at that,’ Millar confided.
‘I can imagine.’ Maistre Pierre was still surveying the papers before him. ‘Are these all the papers, would you know?’
Millar shook his head. ‘Maister Naismith saw to the accounts, though I kept them filed for him,’ he said. ‘He and Sissie dealt wi the day’s expenditure every afternoon, which she’ll want me to do now,’ he added in dismay. ‘And he saw to all the incomings and outgoings.’
‘Oh, did he?’
‘It should be all the papers, but there might be some elsewhere.’ Millar drew out one tape-bound sheaf. ‘This bundle is the — no, it isny. It’s the dealings wi the burgh mills. This one,’ he peered at the heading, ‘is the tithes from Lenzie and those are from Elsrickle. And this — that’s strange, these are all in disorder,’ he said anxiously, pulling out one drawer after another. ‘Deacon Naismith has — had his own way of working, like all of us, and these are no in the right shelves.’
‘None of them?’ Gil asked.
‘Some of them are right,’ said Millar, inspecting the contents of a package. Maistre Pierre twisted his neck to see the pages. ‘They seem to be all complete, I think maybe it’s just the packets have got rearranged, I canny think how.’
‘Where did he work?’ Gil asked. ‘At his desk, or at the table here?’
‘Mostly at the table,’ Millar was still engrossed in the papers, ‘but often in his chamber yonder. His writing-gear must be in there the now, for I don’t see it. Oh, this is a strange thing, it’s going to take all morning to sort it.’
Gil watched him pulling the bundles out and replacing them, and said casually, ‘When the Deacon left here yesterday. Before six, I think you said.’ Millar nodded. ‘Did you see which way he went?’
‘He went down the Drygate,’ said Millar. ‘Likely he’d be heading for the house by the Caichpele, as Sissie said. He’s — he’d a quite kenspeckle way of walking, wi his shoulders back and his elbows out under the cloak, there was no mistaking him even by lantern-light.’
‘And he was in the bedehouse when you got home.’
‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Millar. ‘There was a light up here and he was moving about.’ He stopped. ‘I never got a sight of him,’ he admitted, ‘but I heard him clear enough, and who else would it be? I’d no need for a word wi him, I just gaed to my lodging and to my bed.’