‘I will, sir,’ said Tib, more at home with this reasonably conventional request.
‘Aye, and your sins shall be white as snow, though they were red as blood,’ said Humphrey earnestly.
Tib bent her head and crossed herself, still blushing, and Maister Kennedy said, ‘Humphrey get away in and stop worrying the lassie. She’s no worse than the rest of us, she’s no need of your lectures.’
‘I was just going to my prayers,’ said Humphrey, ignoring this, ‘in my own lodging. So you’ll ken I’m asking forgiveness for you.’
He nodded to all three of them and turned to go back into the building. Maister Kennedy watched him going, clicking his tongue impatiently.
‘Poor soul,’ he said. ‘He should be locked away.’
‘Cloudy hath bene the favour That shoon on him ful bright in times past. He does no harm,’ said Gil. ‘Get away down the road, Nick. You’ve a lecture to deliver, if I mind right.’
Mistress Mudie, having seen her favourite out of sight, hurried across the yard with an armful of linen and a basin, pausing to curtsy but not speaking directly, and vanished into the washhouse. A fragment of her chatter floated past them.
‘- all to do in this place, the dinner to see to and the Deacon to be made decent — ’
Leaving Tib to insinuate herself into the bedehouse kitchen in her own way, Gil stepped into the hall and paused, looking at the brothers where they sat, as he had seen them before, round the brazier at the far end. Neither Millar nor Humphrey was present; of the others, Maister Veitch, Cubby and Barty had their heads together in loud and animated discussion, Duncan was listening and nodding, and Anselm was sitting with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his breast. Gil went forward to bend over him and touch the hands.
‘Father Anselm? Might I have a word?’
‘I wasny asleep,’ said Anselm, blinking up at him past his crooked spectacles.
‘I never thought it, sir,’ said Gil, and pulled up a stool.
‘You had a dog wi you yesterday,’ said Anselm, peering around for Socrates.
‘I left him out in the yard the day,’ Gil said clearly.
‘Pity It’s a good hound,’ said the old man. ‘Was that no a terrible thing yesterday? And those laddies trying to search our lodgings and all. Terrible, terrible. The world goes from bad to worse.’
‘It’s a sorry business,’ Gil agreed diplomatically. ‘Father Anselm, might I ask you a thing?’
‘You can ask me,’ said Anselm, blinking. ‘I might no ken. I forget, you understand.’
‘Yesterday morn,’ Gil prompted. ‘Can you tell me what you all did? You went to say Matins just as usual?’
Anselm nodded, and clutched at his spectacles as they slid on his nose.
‘Just as usual,’ he confirmed.
‘So how did that go? Did you meet here?’
‘Aye, here in the hall,’ Anselm concurred, ‘and Andro had the keys and unlocked the door to the Deacon’s yard. I don’t like it being locked,’ he confided, ‘what if there was a fire or a great flood or the like? I could never get ower that wall if there was a great flood.’
‘That’s a good thought,’ agreed Gil. ‘Maybe it should be considered. So Maister Millar unlocked the door. Then what?’
‘We went in a procession, just as we aye do. It was raining,’ he added. ‘So we went across the yard in a procession and Andro unlocked the chapel as he aye does, and we gaed in and said Matins and Prime.’
‘Were you all six there?’
‘Seven,’ agreed Anselm.
‘Six,’ said Maister Veitch, turning his head.
‘What did ye say?’ demanded Barty
‘The lad that was thurifer at the Mass thought he saw seven,’ said Gil.
‘Seven,’ said Anselm flatly. ‘He wasny there yesterday morn. He spoke to me in the night, but he’d to be elsewhere in the morning.’
‘Where?’ asked Gil, wondering if he would regret the answer.
Anselm pointed a wavering hand at the murky windows on the garden side of the hall, and smiled toothlessly. ‘Out yonder, a course. He’d to say the Intercession for the Deacon.’
‘Anselm, there was only the six of us,’ said Maister Veitch.
‘What are ye saying?’ demanded Barty.
‘There was seven, Frankie,’ said Anselm again. ‘Humphrey and you and me on the one side, Cubby, Barty and Duncan on the tither, and Andro as well. Makes seven.’ He counted the names off. Gil nodded.
‘So who was sitting beside you?’ he asked.
‘Frankie here.’
‘I sit beside him,’said Maister Veitch at the same moment.
‘And on your other side?’
The old man thought, nodding slowly, and then gave him a look through the lopsided spectacles which Gil could only describe as crafty.
‘He came in late. It wasny him, you ken that, don’t you no?’
‘It wasny who, Anselm?’ asked Maister Veitch. ‘Your friend? Was it your friend? Or was it the Deacon?’
‘There was naebody on the end,’ asserted Barty
‘No on your side. He wasny your side,’ said Anselm. ‘He was my side.’
‘But who was it?’ asked Gil. ‘Father Anselm?’
‘It wasny him,’ said Anselm, and champed his jaws at them. ‘That’s all I’m telling you. It wasny him.’
No persuasion could extract any more lucid statement from the old priest. Gil gave up when he judged that Anselm was becoming distressed, and left quietly to find Millar. He met the sub-Deacon in the narrow passageway, on his way to summon the brothers to Terce.
‘His keys?’ Millar said distractedly. ‘I can give you those after the Office, Maister Cunningham, if you wouldny mind waiting. Aye, Sissie’s laying him out the now, she was wi him when I came across the close.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Gil, aware of animated discussion from the kitchen beside them. His sister’s voice was raised among the rest, apparently trying to correct someone. ‘I’ll not hold up the Office,’ he went on, ‘I’ll get a word wi you after, if you don’t mind.’
‘Aye, gladly,’ agreed Millar. ‘The sooner this is cleared up the better I’ll like it.’ The young man Gil had seen before popped out of the kitchen doorway like a rabbit pursued by a ferret, looked at them in alarm and set off for the outer yard, head down, cooking-knife still in his hand. ‘The brethren are all overexcited, maister, and Humphrey was neither to hold nor to bind yestreen at supper, what wi the rain and his brother and everything else, though Sissie got him calmed down after it — ’
As if on cue, Mistress Mudie hurried back into the building from the yard, the young man behind her, and dived into the kitchen. Socrates followed them, but came to push his nose under his master’s hand. As Mistress Mudie passed, Gil caught a wave of marjoram and a shred of her perpetual chatter: ‘- turn my back an instant, interfering wi my kitchen, I’ll sort this — ’ He felt the old, familiar sinking sensation in his stomach. Millar, with great presence of mind, nodded to him and moved in dignified haste into the hall to summon the community to prayer. Gil, gathering his courage, stayed where he was.
His misgivings were justified. Mistress Mudie’s voice rose sharply over the argument, which had almost ceased at her entrance.
‘- and what has it to do wi you, lassie, whoever you are, coming into my kitchen and working the three of them up about witchcraft or the Deil Hisself in the close, no need of saying you was sent here, putting the blame on that man of law indeed, I never heard of such impudence and you gently-bred and all, you’ll get out of my kitchen afore I — ’
‘I never mentioned witchcraft,’ said Tib indignantly. ‘It was them. I was trying to say it couldny be witchcraft, it was cold iron stabbed the man — ’
Gil moved to the doorway. His sister was giving ground before Mistress Mudie, who was puffed up like an angry partridge and chattering on, red-faced,
‘- no excuses, encouraging them to talk when they should ha been getting the dinner on, asking questions about matters better left alone — ’