Gil sat down, the dog leaning against his leg. The servant’s own name, he suddenly recalled, was William. He was elderly, though not as old as his master, and clearly set in his ways. Maggie would give a lot for a kitchen the size of this, he thought, and so would his own household, but here was this fellow ignoring its conveniences, chopping roots on a board on his knee, tossing them into a stewpot on the hearth.
‘And you’re caught up in the business at the hostel, aren’t you no, maister?’ William added. ‘What was it happened last night? The Canon was right distressed when he cam home, could gie me no sensible account o the matter. Was it the Deil himsel slew the woman right enough?’
‘What, in a chapel?’ said Nory derisively. ‘What did slay her, maister?’
Resignedly, Gil gave them as concise an account as he might of events at the hostel, while Socrates grew bored and lay down with his nose on his paws. They listened avidly, exclaiming in shock, and agreed that this was certain to have upset Canon Muir right bad, seeing as he was patron of the place. Eventually William recalled Gil’s stated errand.
‘Here we’re channering on about this, and you wi matters to see to, maister. What was it you wanted to ken?’
He arranged his ideas, and said carefully,
‘The night you and your maisters arrived in Glasgow, Nory.’ Both men nodded. ‘When did the household retire for the night? What time did the bar go on the door?’
The two looked at one another.
‘Couple hours afore midnight,’ said William definitely. ‘That’s when I aye put the bar up. The Canon doesny like it to be later.’
‘Was later than that,’ demurred Nory, ‘for my maisters was out in the town, you mind, it was well after midnight afore they cam in, I’d to get up and see them to their bed.’
‘I thought Canon Muir said he was still up when they came in,’ Gil said.
‘Oh, aye,’ said William. ‘He’d be asleep in his chair wi his mouth open, the sowl, thinking he was at his prayers or his books. He aye spends his evenings like that these days, maister. He wakened up when they cam in, which you’re right, Nory, it was after midnight, it must ha been well after it when I put the bar up. Then he seen them to their beds and gied them his blessing, and then Nory had to get them out their fine clothes and put young Henry’s shirt in the soak. That was never ale, Nory, was it?’
‘No,’ said Nory baldly. He was a skinny man, older than his charges though much younger than William, neatly and plainly dressed in dark blue.
‘I’d never let the Canon wear a shirt like that where he was going to get in a fight,’ said William, provoking a series of startling images in Gil’s head.
‘You think I’d argue wi them? Henry wears what he wants,’ Nory said. ‘The good broidered shirt, the high-necked doublet, he calls for it and I find it in his kist, and the same for Austin, if I value my skin.’
‘How’s his neck healing? Did that popilio unguent I gied you never work for it?’
‘No,’ said Nory again. ‘It’s right angry. Likely that collar’s rubbing it, no to mention getting the grease off the unguent all ower the lining. If I could persuade him to sit wi a hot cloth, it would maybe draw it, but he’ll no listen.’
‘It must be hard work,’ said Gil at a venture, ‘keeping garments as fine as those two wear. I’ve never had a man to tend my garments, not since I left my mother’s house, my wife sees to all. What’s involved?’
Nory gave him a quick, disparaging look which encompassed his well-worn black doublet and hose and the unfashionable sleeves of his good cloth gown.
‘Aye,’ he said inscrutably. ‘Well, it’s to keep them clean, which is no easy when your maisters is as careless wi their garments, and brush them to keep the moth away, and sew the braid back on when it gets torn off, and see their linen gets washed when needed, and-’
‘Tell him about that satin gown,’ urged William, casting another handful of chopped leaves into the pot.
‘He’s no needing to hear about the satin gown.’
‘Difficult to clean, was it?’ Gil suggested. ‘When was this?’
‘Just last night,’ said William chattily. ‘That bonnie sad red satin gown he had on, Deil alone kens what he was at wi it, for it cam home stained and stiffened, and I think he’s spilled Geneva spirits all down it forbye, did you no say, Nory?’
‘It’s no sad red, it’s marron coloured,’ said Nory.
‘Satin?’ said Gil, thinking of remarks he had heard his sisters make. ‘How do you clean satin? You’ll never send that to the wash?’
‘If I’d had it when it was first stained,’ said Nory, ‘I’d ha put oatmeal on it straight, but as it is, well! I’ve cut the braid off it, and put it to soak wi pearlash in the water, but I doubt it will be ruined, there’s as much dye coming out the thing, the water’s like blood already, and the canvas in the breast will shrink, see, and pull it in, and whose blame will it be when it canny be worn? No his, that’s for certain.’
‘Did he come in like that?’ Gil asked. What had Henry been wearing at the pilgrim hostel last night? Not red satin, he thought, or marron coloured either, whatever that was.
‘No, no, he gaed out in the marron satin after his dinner, and they were back an hour or so after, in and out the house like a whirlwind, and when I gaed up to see what they wanted I found this flung on the floor, and the other yin’s murrey velvet and all, though it’s no marked, Christ be thankit, and they’d took other gowns out the kist and gone out again, no thought o whether the colours consorted well or nothing.’
‘May I see it?’ Gil asked. ‘I’d like to ken what colour that is. My wife’s like to ask me,’ he invented, though Nory seemed unsurprised by his interest.
‘It’s in thon bucket,’ said William, adding a pile of shredded leaves to the stewpot. ‘By the wall.’
Nory was already rocking the leather bucket, dragging a quantity of wet dark-red cloth up from its depths. The water running off it was indeed red, though whether with dye or with something more it was hard to tell.
‘Course you canny tell the colour right when it’s wet,’ he said.
Extricating himself from Canon Muir’s kitchen, Gil made his way down Rottenrow, thinking deeply, the dog at his heels. With the facts he had collected today some of what he was investigating began to make more sense, though not all of it could be fitted into the same picture. It was still hard to see how the death of Barnabas was connected to anything else, and he was dubious about the attempt to strangle the dead girl at the Cross, but the rest appeared to follow a pattern. And with what Doctor Januar had told him, he hardly needed to worry himself about a motive, a reason for the deaths.
Both courtyards of the Castle were teeming with pack-animals, men in livery, clerics of all ranks, scurrying hither and yon. On the steps of the Archbishop’s lodging Otterburn, looking as near flustered as Gil had seen him, and Robert Blacader himself, in grim irritation, were surveying the bustle. Behind them the Archbishop’s rat-faced secretary, Maister Dunbar, was making notes in a set of tablets. Blacader’s glance fell on Gil, and he raised a hand and beckoned sharply.
‘Gilbert,’ he said, when Gil had elbowed his way to the foot of the steps. ‘What progress have you made? Have we a name for this grievous sinner yet?’
‘No with any certainty, my lord,’ said Gil, hat in hand, bowing over the proffered ring as he spoke.
‘Hmm.’ Blacader considered this, his heavy blue jowls stilled for a moment. ‘I’m to read the anathema tonight after Vespers. I suppose it can be done without naming him.’
‘That might be a good thing,’ Gil observed. The Archbishop scrutinised him, and nodded.
‘Fetch him out of cover, you mean. Aye, I suppose. We’ll go ahead with Quicunque vehementer percussit, then, whoever violently slew this woman.’ Gil, whose Latin was at least as good as the Archbishop’s, bowed at this and prepared to retreat, but his master gestured to him to remain. ‘Provost, you’ll send the Bellman out, I hope, wi the summons to Vespers and the ensuing. They’ve all to be there, I want as many of the burgh as possible to hear it, we’ll have no doubt what comes to any that desecrate a sacred building.’