Tib turned sharply.
‘See who’s here, Gil!’ she exclaimed with a bright smile. ‘You mind Michael, don’t you?’
Gil, with a sneaking feeling of shame, recognized rescue.
‘I mind Michael well,’ he agreed from the window, ‘and Lowrie. Good day, the both of you. Were you going down the road any time soon? Could you see Lady Tib to where she wants to be next?’
Robert Naismith was laid out on the board in the washhouse, with linen under him, and the length waiting to complete the embrace piled in creamy folds at his feet. His mouth was already closed and bound, sealing in the lentils and the scent of wine. Gil thought of Thomas Agnew’s vile Malvoisie, and wondered where the dead man had drunk his last draught. There were candles at the head of the board, and Sir Duncan Fraser with a fearsome set of beads at its foot, shining head bent over his fingers while the prayers slid out from under the luxuriant moustache. The dog padded in past Gil to check the space, raising his long nose to sniff at the hanging edge of the linen shroud.
‘Sir Duncan,’ Gil said softly. The old man looked up, still murmuring. ‘Did you hear anything, the night Deacon Naismith died?’
The prayers halted, and Sir Duncan peered at him with watery blue eyes. After a moment he shook his head, absently stroking Socrates. ‘Naither eechie nor ochie. A tauld ’e.’
‘Nor see anything, out in the garden?’ Gil asked hopefully. ‘Lights, maybe, or movement?’
The old man considered, his bushy eyebrows meeting in a frown. ‘A seed wir boanie Andro come hame, wi’s lantron. Gaed up his steps, juist as ayeways.’
‘What time was that?’ Gil asked, following this with difficulty.
‘Late. Lang efter Sissie was dune wi Humphra, peer saal.’
Gil nodded, and patted Sir Duncan’s bony elbow.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll not keep you from your prayers.’
‘Ye’re a lang-heidit laddie,’ said Sir Duncan approvingly. ‘Collogue wi Frankie, at’s my rede.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Gil. He was still holding his hat, out of respect for the corpse, but he bent knee and head in salute to the old man, and turned to Maistre Pierre as the lumpy black beads in the gnarled fingers slipped round and the soft ripple of prayers began again. Socrates, having completed his survey, paced out into the yard.
Maistre Pierre was peering at the back of the Deacon’s head. ‘I can find no other injury than the knife wounds,’ he reported. ‘There is only this, which still puzzles me.’ He laid the head down and turned it so that the light fell on the undamaged ear. ‘It begins to fade as he softens, but it can still be seen, this pattern on his ear and jaw.’
Gil shielded his eyes from the candles and examined the marks again. Ridges and hollows marked the skin, showing up in certain angles of the light. He touched the cold flesh, but could make no sense of the impressions.
‘I wonder, should we draw it?’ he suggested, ‘since it will fade, as you say.’
‘A good idea,’ agreed Maistre Pierre with enthusiasm, extracting his tablets from his sleeve. ‘I do that, while you inspect his clothes yonder. I hope that excellent woman has not brushed and shaken them already,’ he added in guarded tones.
Gil lifted the pile of tawny woollen and stained linen and took it to the daylight, where he turned the garments cautiously one by one. The furred gown offered no new information, other than a few pulled threads in the dark brown stuff of one sleeve which fitted well enough with the idea that the body had been put over the wall. He shook out the stinking hose and scrutinized them, holding them fastidiously by the points still threaded in the eyelets at the waist, and was rewarded by two more pulled threads and another scrap of straw caught in the weave. Agnew’s chamber in the tower had left its trace.
The jerkin and shirt, stiffened with blood across the breast, were slashed where the knife had gone through them. Was this why Humphrey said the Deacon was a robin, he wondered, seeing the extent of the dark stain. He was examining the cuts in the linen when Socrates, ranging about the yard, pricked his ears and bounded towards the entryway, tail waving. Gil heard the light footsteps in the same moment. The whole day brightened round him, and he set down the armful of fouled garments as Alys appeared round the corner of the chapel, plaid over her head against the chilly breeze. Socrates leapt round her, pushing his long nose under her hand, and she paused to greet him, then crossed the yard to meet Gil.
‘Nou skrinketh rose and lylie flour. My hands stink,’ he said, ‘I won’t touch you,’ and bent to kiss her as she tilted her face. She put up her own hand to touch his jaw, and smiled up at him.
‘I have spoken to the painter’s man,’ she said, ‘and I thought I would come out and tell you what I learned from him. Gil, what has happened? You look as if something is awry.’
‘Ah — Alys,’ said Maistre Pierre from inside the washhouse before Gil could answer. ‘We are inspecting the body. Come tell me what you think of this.’
Comparing her father’s competent rendering with the original impression on Naismith’s softening flesh, Alys said after a moment, ‘It reminds me of something. He has lain on something after he died, I suppose.’ Maistre Pierre nodded. ‘But what? Not rope, but could it be string, set close together? Something with cord wrapped round it?’ She demonstrated with her hands. ‘Where was he?’
‘I wish we knew,’ said Gil. He turned to set the pile of clothes back where he had found it. ‘He certainly went to see Agnew, and brought the proof away with him in these scraps of straw, but after that — Pierre, is the man’s purse still in his lodging?’
‘It is.’ The mason stepped away from the corpse, bowed to it and crossed himself. ‘I think the dead has no more to tell us. Now you are here, come up and help us with these accounts, ma mie. I am certain there is more to be learned from them. Gilbert, you may wash your hands at the kitchen drain if they trouble you.’
Gil, making his way obediently towards the kitchen, found Alys at his elbow.
‘I met with your sister on the road,’ she began quietly.
‘Which sister?’ he asked, pausing by the door into the building.
‘Lady Tib.’ He noted the formal reference, where Kate was always Your sister Kate or simply Kate. ‘She was with Michael Douglas and the other young man, you called him Lowrie.’ Gil nodded. ‘We stopped to pass the time of day, and she told me of the incident earlier, and also made some reference to madame here at the almshouse. I wondered,’ she went on diffidently, ‘whether anything required to be smoothed over.’
They were speaking in French, but he still dropped his voice.
‘Oh, Alys. Yes, indeed.’ He moved away from the door and from the range of outhouses, and explained rapidly. ‘She wanted to help me, so I set her to question the kitchen hands, and somehow it didn’t work. There are two women there, who began talking about witchcraft, and the kitchen-boy took fright and summoned his mistress, who was incensed.’
She nodded, her elusive smile flickering, and turned towards the buildings.
‘I’ll see what I can learn,’ she promised.
He could not work out how she did it. As they reached the kitchen door Mistress Mudie appeared from her own chamber, and cast them a glance of weary belligerence.
‘- it’s that man of law again, I hope wi no more questions, kind as he is, for my head’s as empty as a pint pot by now, and another lass wi him, is it your bride this time, maister? That’s right kind of you to bring her to see us, and such a bonnie lass and all, but I’m no certain it’s the time of day for visitors — ’