‘Will you be quiet?’ demanded his brother. ‘Haud yer wheesht and let wiser folks talk. Which is just about a’body in Glasgow,’ he added bitterly. Austin shuffled back a couple of steps, with what might have been meant for an ingratiating grin.
‘So what time did you get back to the house?’ Gil asked casually. ‘I wonder if you saw anything that might be helpful.’
Muir shrugged.
‘We were in bed by midnight, so it must ha been afore that.’ He paused to consider. ‘There was the prentice battle, like I tellt you, and a few folk going home from their drinking. Nothing I can mind.’
‘There was the man wi that handcart,’ said Austin, ‘that I heard when we went up Rottenrow.’
‘There was no handcart, you daftheid!’ said his brother. ‘I tell you, you imagined it, or you’re making it up!’
‘Aye, Henry,’ said Austin docilely. ‘But how did I hear it if I’m making it up?’
‘Any road, I’m wanting a word wi that doctor,’ Muir continued, ignoring this. ‘Doctor Christian, or whatever his name is. I want to ken how does our kinsman.’
‘He hasny long, I believe,’ said Gil.
‘Aye, but how long is that?’ he demanded. ‘How long does whoever’s stole Annie away have to keep her hid?’
‘Keep her hidden?’ Gil repeated. ‘Are you thinking it’s someone Sir Edward would never contemplate wedding her wi? That he’s waiting till her guardian’s gone?’
‘What else would it be, man?’ said Muir contemptuously, while Austin grinned and nodded behind him. ‘And if I’d thought it would work, I’d ha done the same. I just wish I’d kent who it was that was after her, I’d ha dealt wi them aforehand. All that land, to go out o the family!’
‘Sir Edward did not wish to see her wedded at all, I thought,’ Gil offered.
‘Foolishness,’ said Muir. ‘Leave her property all unstewarded? Sheer waste. And what is this about the second death, then?’ he demanded, with an abrupt reversion to his subject. ‘The auld fool hadny a plain tale to tell, he’s right stonied by it all and makin’ no sense. When was it?’
‘Yestreen,’ Gil said. Muir frowned.
‘Yestreen. So when was he killed? Who was it? One o the vergers, you said.’
‘Aye,’ Gil said. ‘A man called Barnabas. He was found some time after Compline, and had likely been dead no more than a couple of hours.’
Muir was still frowning, working something out. Austin said,
‘Oh, well, that’s no a worry, Henry-’ He stepped back, not fast enough to avoid the swinging backhander, and recovered himself to stand rubbing his mouth and nose, staring at his brother in dumb reproach.
‘So no that long afore Vespers,’ said Muir, as if nothing had happened. Gil nodded agreement. ‘But why? It’s a daft thing to do, put a man down a well in a kirk!’
‘Daft thing to do, to throttle a lassie after she’s dead,’ Gil observed.
‘What d’you mean by that?’ demanded Muir, hackling up.
‘Why, that it’s a daft thing to do,’ said Gil. ‘No other.’
‘He’s right there, Henry,’ said Austin, ‘the one’s as daft as the other. Here, d’you think it was-’
‘Will you haud your wheesht?’
‘D’you think it was what, Austin?’ Gil asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Austin, rubbing at his mouth again. ‘Forgot what I was going to say.’
‘Henry, Austin, I thought I heard you,’ said Dame Ellen in the doorway of the women’s hall.
‘There you are!’ said Muir in the same breath. ‘Madam,’ he added. She gave them both a simpering smile.
‘You’re here in a good hour, laddies. You can escort me over to St Mungo’s, till I offer another prayer for my poor brother.’
Chapter Nine
‘Kittock sent these,’ said Alys, setting the basket of pasties down on the bench in the masons’ lodge.
This was not strictly true. When asked for a bite to offer the men Kittock had cast her eye about the kitchen and said reluctantly, ‘Well, they’ve aye liked the cheese pasties, mem, and I could make some more for our own supper, you could take them those if you wanted.’ She had then added a handful of parsley in a cloth and a dozen of the little cakes from the day’s baking; Alys herself had drawn a large jug of ale from the barrel in the brewhouse. Jennet set this down now beside the basket and pushed her fair locks back over her shoulders, smiling at Maistre Pierre’s man Thomas who had paused in his work to watch them.
‘She had no need to do that,’ said Maistre Pierre disapprovingly. ‘We have gone home at noontide in the usual way.’
‘An extra bite is always welcome when the men are working hard,’ Alys suggested. She sat down on the bench, looking out at the busy scene beside the lodge. The men she knew, Wattie and Thomas and Luke, were working on what looked like the mouldings for a window tracery, while two more journeymen were blocking out the stones they would need next. The familiar music of chisel and mell competed with the birdsong in St Mungo’s kirkyard, with the crows which swirled about the tall trees adding their own harsh bass. ‘You make good progress. Is that the second window going forward now?’
‘It is. Blacader has found some funds, so I begin to hope his new work will be completed in my lifetime.’
‘So your marriage has brought you good fortune,’ Alys said brightly. He looked hard at her, and she maintained the smile with a little difficulty. After a moment he grunted, and sat down beside her.
‘Perhaps so, truly. Are you well, ma mie?’
‘I am, Father. How does my stepmother?’
‘She is well too. And your husband? How does he fare with this matter of the missing lady? I have not seen him today.’
‘I think he planned to speak to the Provost about it,’ she answered, ‘and then to pursue the death of the cathedral servant. That is a very strange thing. I suppose you saw nothing from here.’
He gestured beyond the fence which separated his industrious men and the building site which was Archbishop Blacader’s contribution to the fabric of his cathedral, from the path which ran between the kirkyard gate and the doorway of the Lower Kirk.
‘Ma mie, there are many people on that path, a dozen, two dozen in an afternoon.’ This could well be true, she recognised; there were three people visible just now, two women heading for the church, their beads in their hands, gossiping happily, and one of the canons pacing the other way. No, not a canon, it was William Craigie. ‘And in any case, I think the man was killed long after we had gone home to our dinner. We talked it over here in the lodge this morning, and none of us can recall even seeing the man Barnabas, much less someone waving a strangler’s cord. I think the man and his killer both went down from the Upper Kirk to where he was found.’
‘The Dean is very certain that did not happen, so Gil says. That he was killed outside the church and carried to where he was found.’
‘Hah!’ said her father sceptically.
‘What you say seems the most likely,’ she agreed, thinking how much she had missed this, the talking over of events, the companionable sharing of ideas. Since they came to Glasgow from Paris, after her mother’s death, it had been herself and her father, and then Gil who had fitted into the family quite seamlessly. Her stepmother thought in a different way, and would not hear other points of view, which made discussion difficult, and in any case she seemed to be jealous of Alys herself.
Her thoughts paused as that idea presented itself. Jealous? Was that the problem? Why had she not seen it before?
‘I have no idea what Gilbert has learned today,’ her father was saying. ‘They were to search the man’s lodging, I do not know if they discovered anything there.’
‘You could send Luke or Berthold to find Gil and ask him,’ Alys suggested. ‘Or go yourself.’
‘I cannot leave these lazy fellows,’ said her father, nodding at Thomas, who was contriving to talk to Jennet without breaking off his work. ‘And I cannot spare Luke, because Berthold is at home today.’
‘At home?’