Gil stepped back, the better to meet the dark Montgomery gaze.
‘You expect me to come under your roof? What warranty will you offer me?’ he challenged.
‘Feart, are you?’
‘I’ve no wish to be the third Cunningham head at your gates.’
‘Ach –’ Lord Montgomery shook his head angrily. ‘I’m no killing the day. Bring your good-father up wi’ you if you wish. He’s safe enough – I can’t afford the blood money for a merchant-burgess of Glasgow before next quarter-day.’ He spread his hands. ‘I’m no armed, save for my eating-knife. Come on, man. I want a word.’
Gil exchanged a glance with Maistre Pierre, who shrugged, and gestured towards the wooden fore-stair of the tower.
They were admitted by a grim-faced man who looked as if he missed his armour. Across the bare hall, Hugh, Lord Montgomery stood scowling by a fireplace which would have sheltered a small encampment. A diminutive blaze perched across the fire-irons was putting out no heat whatever. Two large dogs rose and growled as Gil crossed the threshold, and their master cursed and kicked at the nearer.
‘Cunningham,’ he said, apparently in welcome. ‘And you, Maister Mason. Thomas, we’ll have some ale.’
Thomas grunted, and slouched off. The dogs lay down, still watchful.
‘Right, man,’ said Montgomery, turning to Gil in the firelight. ‘What have you learned? How near are you to finding who killed our William?’
Gil, who had been expecting a question like this, shook his head.
‘I’ve struck a lot of people off the list,’ he said, ‘but I still have more names on it than I want.’
‘All I want’s one name,’ said Montgomery.
‘The boy was dear to you?’ asked Maistre Pierre.
‘Dear enough. He was close kin.’
‘For his mother’s sake?’ Gil suggested. ‘Grievous to lose the boy so soon after the mother.’
Montgomery’s eyes glittered in the firelight. ‘What do you know about his mother?’
‘I know who she was, and her husband. She’s dead, no need to fling her name about.’
Montgomery made a sound between a grunt and a snarl. The manservant reappeared with a jug, a handful of wooden beakers, and a platter of small cakes. He set these on a bench by the fire, and stumped off glowering at Gil.
‘Aye,’ said Montgomery. ‘Well. She never let on who was the father, though I’ve aye had my suspicions.’ He turned away from the fire to pour ale into the beakers, and thrust two out at arm’s length so sharply that liquid splashed into the hearth, making the dogs jump and glare at the fire. ‘Drink, maisters,’ he said abruptly over the hissing of the embers.
‘To a satisfactory conclusion,’ said Gil.
‘To the name of someone I can hunt down.’
They drank. The ale was cool and strong.
‘Do you know if William had enemies?’
‘He was one of ours. We have enemies. Maybe it was a Cunningham!’ said Montgomery with a mirthless laugh.
‘There are no Cunninghams in the college just now,’ said Gil. And the saints be praised for that, he thought. ‘Had he no enemies on his own account? How much do you know about what he was doing?’
‘He was studying,’ said William’s kinsman. ‘I intended him for the Church. Or maybe the Law,’ he added. ‘What do you mean, what he was doing? What should he have been doing?’
‘We think,’ said Maistre Pierre with caution, ‘he was gathering information.’
‘Aye?’ said Montgomery after a moment. ‘And what was he doing with it?’
‘Selling it,’ said Gil succinctly.
‘Or asking payment not to sell it,’ expanded Maistre Pierre.
‘Then he’d ha’ been a wealthy man,’ said Montgomery, ‘for anything William did, he did to extinction.’
‘Oh, he was,’ said Gil. ‘He was. We found both coin and jewels in his chamber, and new boots and good clothes.’ He met Montgomery’s eyes in the leaping firelight, and grinned at him. ‘A meld of twenty points, I should say, my lord.’
‘You play Tarocco? Both of you?’
‘I do,’ said Gil with confidence. ‘Pierre?’
‘Not I,’ said the mason, shaking his head.
‘Then we’ll play now, Maister Cunningham.’
‘For what stakes?’
‘Information.’ Montgomery was searching inside the cupboard at the end of the hall, patting the shelves with a hard hand. A pewter dish fell with a clang and he kicked it, cursing. One of the dogs raised its head to look, then went back to sleep. ‘Aye, here they are. Information, Maister Cunningham. The currency of this reign. Here, sit down. Where the devil has Thomas put the candles?’
The bench was hard, but it was against the wall. Gil leaned back gratefully while their host dragged a pricket-stand closer, lit the strong-smelling tallow candle, kicked two stools across the room and placed them where they would catch the light.
‘Ye might as well be seated,’ he flung at Maistre Pierre, seating himself. ‘Who deals?’
‘The cards are yours, my lord,’ said Gil, trying to gather his thoughts. ‘A short game, do you think? Twenty cards each, one point for a trick?’
Montgomery grinned. ‘You’ve no patience for a long game, is that it?’
‘I’ve no strength for a long game,’ said Gil frankly. This was more like Paris. Although two of his books had been the prizes of a game, he had never played for large sums in money or jewels, but he had once defended a friend’s mistress on a charge of theft, won her freedom, and learned some remarkable things about the city, all as the result of a casual stake. ‘As you know well, my lord,’ he added.
‘Nor has Thomas,’ said Montgomery with a feral grin. ‘I’ll shuffle if you’ll cut, and then I deal. Is that agreeable?’
He was already running the cards from hand to hand. Gil nodded, and he riffled the slips of pasteboard a couple of times and set the pack down to be cut.
The dark-eyed foreign faces were the same ones current in Paris. Propping his aching wrist on his knee, Gil found enough strength in his right thumb to hold the cards, and arranged them clumsily with his left hand. The Fool and two Kings, three of the great Trumps (a meld of twenty points, indeed, he thought) and a handful of small cards. Not a good hand.
‘I’ll change four,’ he said.
‘Oh, those rules. Aye, if I can change five.’
They made the exchange, a card each in turn, and Gil propped his new cards in his hand. His opponent held his own cards close to his chest, tilting them from time to time to let the candlelight fall on them.
‘Twenty points,’ he said, looking up at Gil.
‘And I have twenty-five.’ Twenty points, he thought, could be one or two of the big melds, or several smaller ones. Five points for a run of four cards, or fifteen for the other two Kings and the World or the Magician.
‘Your good-father can keep the score. You’ll find a bit chalk on the cupboard yonder, Maister Mason. Just mark the tally on the wall.’
There were advantages and disadvantages to the short game. One of Gil’s talents, that of knowing almost without thinking what cards were in hand and who held them, had no place in a situation where barely more than half the pack of seventy-eight had been dealt out. His other gift, for reading his opponent’s play, would be more help. He had already summed Hugh Montgomery up as a practised player rather than a good one.
‘A question for every trick,’ said Montgomery, ‘and the winner gets to ask another question. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ said Gil. And what he asks could tell me as much as what he answers me, he thought.
‘Your lead,’ prodded Montgomery.
Gil put a card down.
‘Five of Cups,’ he said. Montgomery, the firelight gleaming on his teeth, laid another on top.
‘Three,’ he said. ‘My trick.’
Maistre Pierre made a startled noise in his throat. Gil turned to nod agreement.
‘Cups and Coins are reversed,’ he explained. ‘The ace is high, the ten is low.’
‘My question,’ said Montgomery. He paused a moment, frowning, and one of the dogs snored. ‘What was in William’s purse?’ he asked, and laid a card out.
‘Coin,’ said Gil. ‘And a letter in code. Some notes, and a draft will on a set of tablets.’
‘So you did find the purse. No key?’
‘That is another question,’ Gil pointed out. ‘No, there was no key.’ He selected a card and set it down. Montgomery lifted both.
‘My trick,’ he said again. ‘What was in his chamber, besides what you already narrated?’
‘Little of interest,’ said Gil.
‘Very little paper,’ said Maistre Pierre.
‘The dog,’ added Gil.
‘Aye, the dog.’ Montgomery scowled at Gil’s response to his next card. ‘The one you had with you at the college? That’s mine and all. Where is the beast now?’
‘In my house,’ said Maistre Pierre. Montgomery, thinking deeply, took another trick.
‘And the papers?’ he asked. ‘Where are they?’
‘In my house,’ said the mason again. He chalked the mark against Montgomery’s tally, and cast Gil an anxious look.
‘In safe keeping,’ said Gil, ignoring it. Montgomery’s scowl grew blacker.
‘And the boy’s clothes, that he died in?’ he said, gathering up the next two cards.
‘Also in my house,’ said the mason.
‘I’ll maybe just move in myself,’ said Montgomery sardonically. ‘When can I have them back?’
‘That’s another question,’ Gil observed. Montgomery played another card. Queen of Coins, Gil thought, setting the King on top. Has he no more Coins, or is he testing the play? ‘That’s mine, I think. Why were you at the college yett this day noon?’
‘I wanted a word with our Robert.’ Montgomery tipped his head back to look at Gil down his nose, then turned his attention to his cards.
‘And mine again. What about?’
‘Family matters.’
‘Such as?’
‘William’s funeral. Money. Show me the student that can live inside his allowance. Your play.’
Gil laid down the seven of Batons. Montgomery looked at it, then at his cards, and selected one.
‘My trick.’ He set out the King of Batons, its double-ended figure entwined in tendrils of leafy growth from its wand, the crowns barely visible among the arrow-head leaves. Three court cards and three numbers, Gil thought, and I have the Knave. What’s still in his hand?
As if for answer, his opponent played the two. Gil put the Knave down and swept the two slips of card to his end of the bench.
‘Who did you see at the college?’ he asked.
‘My nephew. That snivelling boy, what’s his name?’ Gil recognized Ralph. ‘Couple of other scholars were sent to find Robert when I wanted him. Who should I have seen?’
‘That’s a question?’ Gil played the seven of Coins, and Montgomery slapped the three on top of it.
‘Let’s stop playing here,’ he said, apparently not in reference to the card game. ‘What do you know about how William died?’
‘That’s quite a question.’ The Knight and Knave of Coins. ‘Your trick. We know,’ he said carefully, ‘that William was knocked down and put in the limehouse as a joke. His hands were bound, to make it harder for him to free himself. While he was still dazed, someone else whose hands smelled of cumin came into the limehouse and strangled him with his own belt. After he was dead, he was moved into the coalhouse, where he was found.’
‘By the same person? My trick.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gil, ‘but there are already too many people running in and out of the limehouse for the story to have any credibility. It seems ludicrous to postulate another.’
‘Credibility?’ exploded his opponent. ‘I never in all my days heard such a tale. What has the cumin to do with it? Why the devil move him into the coalhouse? What gain is that? Was he robbed? No, you said there was money on him. His chamber had been searched, but I canny tell whether they got anything of value. Why was he killed, Maister Cunningham? Tell me that? You haveny found that out, with your nonsense about cumin and coalhouses.’
‘When I know why,’ said Gil calmly, watching Montgomery add five pairs of cards to his pile of discards, ‘I’ll know who.’
Montgomery glared at him, and put down the two of Coins. Gil stared at it, thinking, Is that all he has left, or is he bluffing? It hardly mattered; there were no more Coins in his own hand. He selected the picture-card with the image of a naked woman incongruously called L’Estoile. ‘My trick, my lord. If you’re asking me why William was killed, I take it you don’t know, so I’ll ask you a different question. Why was Jaikie killed?’
‘Who the devil’s Jaikie? What’s he got to do with it?’
‘Jaikie was the college porter.’
‘Oh, him. Glumphy impertinent bugger. Tried to buy – tried to make out he knew all about William’s affairs. Gave him the back of my hand for it.’
‘Knocked him down, you mean?’ asked the mason.
Montgomery threw him a glance. ‘I did not. Last I saw him, after Robert went back into the college, he was snoring in that great chair of his, with half a jar of usquebae under his belt. I heard he was dead, but it wasny me that stabbed him,’ said his lordship, sounding very like his nephew. ‘Likely it was whoever I heard arguing with him.’
‘Arguing?’ Gil repeated. ‘When was this?’ Jaikie argued with everyone, he reflected.
‘Is that another question? When I got to the yett, looking for Robert, I heard someone arguing with the porter. Your play, Cunningham.’
‘A moment,’ said Gil. ‘Did you see this person?’
‘I did not. The surly chiel never rose to let me in, and when I stepped into his chamber to tell him off for that there was no other there. And I looked behind the door and all,’ he added. ‘Are you going to play this game or no?’
Gil, setting aside disbelief, surveyed the four pairs of cards aligned beside him, and the row of tricks now neatly herringboned on the bench by Montgomery’s knee. He had weeded out all the small stuff, and had only high-value cards left. Let’s see what’s in his hand, he thought.
The next trick went to his opponent. Gil, avoiding Maistre Pierre’s eye, watched Montgomery arrange his cards while he considered his questions.
‘Who d’ye suspect?’ he demanded bluntly at last.
‘I won’t answer that,’ said Gil with equal bluntness. ‘Never mind the law of slander, my position if I name someone in error and you act on what I say, my lord, would be very precarious.’
‘Lawyers,’ said Montgomery in disgust. ‘Tell me this, then. What else of William’s have ye found?’
‘There was the notebook,’ said Gil.
‘A notebook,’ repeated his opponent. ‘What like notebook?’
‘Just a notebook,’ said Gil. ‘Red leather cover, a lot of writing in it. Mostly notes, by the look of it, and accounts. It’s in Maister Mason’s house,’ he added. Montgomery snorted, but did not interrupt as Gil continued, with all the innocence he could muster, ‘And there was some kind of medallion, or pilgrim badge, or such like. Made of brass, with a figure in the middle and the alphabet round the outside like a criss-cross row. That was in the lining of his doublet, as if it was something he valued.’
‘It was, was it?’ said Montgomery with equal innocence, rearranging his cards again. ‘I’ll send Thomas for that. He can lift the lot off your hands. He’ll come by your door with ye when ye leave here.’
‘As you please,’ said Gil. He watched as Montgomery, tight-lipped, played the four of Coins, and after a moment set the trump called La Lune on top of it.
‘So who did search William’s chamber?’ he asked.
‘Not me,’ said Montgomery.
‘Who do you suspect it was?’
‘Now why should I answer that one, after what you just said?’
Gil half-bowed over the cards in acknowledgement of the point.
‘Today,’ he said, picking up the next trick wrong-handed, ‘there was a bundle of papers in Jaikie’s brazier –’
‘No idea. Your play.’
‘And what was Billy Doig doing up at the college?’
‘Doig?’ said Montgomery sharply. ‘When?’
‘About midday.’
‘Never saw him. Who is he, anyway? Your play.’
Gil looked at the two cards in his hand, and laid down Judgement. The woodcut figure, in angular draperies with sceptre and scales, flickered in the light. One of the dogs raised its head, then sat up, staring across the hall.
‘Uncle?’ said a voice in the shadows.
Gil jumped convulsively, and looked beyond the circle of brightness. He felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle, and Maistre Pierre drew breath sharply. Outlined against the half-lit door to the stair was a gangling figure in a student’s belted gown, a chance beam from the distant lantern glowing redly on its springing, curling hair.
‘Uncle?’ said the voice again. The figure moved, and stepped into the hall. ‘I’m just away back to the college,’ said Robert Montgomery, coming nearer the fire.
‘Aye, right,’ said his uncle, twisting round to look at him. They exchanged a significant look, before the older man added, ‘Can you get in without trouble?’
‘There are ways,’ Gil said. Robert’s glance flicked to him and back to his uncle, before he raised his cap in a general courtesy to all three adults.
‘Good night, sirs. I’ll see you the morn, uncle.’
Hugh Montgomery waved his free hand and muttered a perfunctory blessing, and Robert left. Gil sat staring after him for a long moment.
‘Your play,’ said Montgomery impatiently. Gil, looking down, found Judgement neatly obscured by the Knave of Swords.
‘How well do you know Bernard Stewart?’ he asked, setting that trick with the others he had gained. His opponent stared at him.
‘What in the Fiend’s name has he to say to the matter? He was chaplain in my house for a good few years, tutored my brother Alexander and – and others, but it was better than sixteen years since. I know that, for he went to the Blackfriars’ Paris house before Alexander was wedded. His mother married my grandsire’s youngest brother as his third wife, but I haveny set eyes on him since, not till he came to Glasgow and they made him chaplain here, just after Robert came to the college. Are ye playing that last card, Cunningham law man, or are ye turning to stone at my hearth?’
‘The card.’ Gil looked down, and set the Fool on the bench beside him. ‘Je m’excuse. The last card out.’
‘Your trick,’ said Montgomery in disgust, throwing down the image of a woman improbably wrenching open the jaw of a complacent lion. ‘Ask your question, while your good-father tots up the scores.’
‘I’ve no more questions for now,’ said Gil. ‘I’ll save them for tomorrow, when I’ll have two, for I think I’ve won the game.’
‘You have,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, counting strokes of chalk on the wall by the hearth. ‘But it was close. You have taken eight tricks, his lordship has twelve, and with the other points from the cards you held I think you win by one point.’
‘Aye,’ said Montgomery sourly, and looked at the windows, where the last of the sunset was faintly red beyond the rooftops of the houses opposite. ‘Well. It’s been an interesting evening.’
‘It has,’ agreed Gil, stretching his long legs. ‘You’re a gratifying opponent, my lord.’
For a moment he thought he had overreached his mark. Hugh Montgomery’s face darkened in the candlelight, and his eyes glittered. Turning his head he roared, ‘Thomas!’ The dogs leapt up, barking, and he cursed at them. ‘Thom-as! Get up here wi’ your boots on, you lazy ablach.’
‘I’m in the lower hall, no’ in Irvine,’ said Thomas on the stair. ‘No need o’ the shouting.’
‘Then why so long to answer me? Be silent, Ajax, you stupid lump! I want ye to convoy these gentry home and bring back the things they’ll gie you. Not the dog, I canny take the dog while these brutes are here, but I’ll want a look at it. It’s a matter of our William’s graith, Thomas, it’s no likely to tax your strength.’
‘We may not be able to put hand on all of it at this hour,’ said Gil, realizing with resignation that Montgomery had not forgotten his threat.
‘Then Thomas can wait till ye do, can’t he no?’
‘No, he can not,’ said the mason unexpectedly. ‘It is after all my house, my lord, and I do not choose to entertain your man.’ He rose and came forward from where he sat. ‘I myself will undertake to return all your kinsman’s goods before noon tomorrow. Agreed?’
‘That’s a fair offer,’ commented Thomas.
‘You keep out of this,’ snarled his master. He glared at Maistre Pierre, showing his teeth, and finally said, ‘Aye. Agreed.’
‘My hand on it.’
They spat and shook hands as if it was a trading agreement.
‘Now get out of here,’ said Montgomery. ‘I’ve a lot to think on, and William’s funeral tomorrow.’
Maistre Pierre set the jug of ale down on his desk and wiped his mouth.
‘The house was like a barn,’ he commented. ‘No hangings, no cushions, no comforts at all, and only that ill-conditioned servant to wait on him.’
‘He planned a brief visit,’ Gil surmised as the wolfhound scrambled on to his lap. ‘His lady has stayed behind in Irvine. She might not wish to leave the children, and bringing them would be a lot of work for a short stay. I’ve no doubt there are cushions in plenty in his other houses.’
‘And I did not understand the play at all.’
‘It was hardly play,’ said Gil.
Alys, rubbing violet-scented oil into the bruising on his wrist, nodded, but her father said, ‘What do you mean? I was keeping score.’
‘They were both more interested in the information than the game, father,’ said Alys. She turned Gil’s hand, and he winced. ‘You should not have used this. You won’t be able to sign your name for days.’
‘You are quite right,’ he said, and smiled wearily at her. ‘I was certainly buying questions, and the ones Montgomery asked were even more interesting than the answers he gave me. I don’t know whether he felt the same way,’ he added. ‘He isn’t a strong player but I should hate to underestimate him.’
‘So what have we learned?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘And what have we given away, apart from the cipher disc?’
‘The cipher disc is small loss,’ said Alys. ‘It isn’t a simple substitution, so we would need another the same, so that the message could be deciphered at its destination.’
‘Montgomery seemed eager to get it back,’ said Gil, heaving the wolfhound into a more comfortable position. ‘This creature has grown again. We have promised Montgomery – you have promised,’ he corrected himself, and Maistre Pierre pulled a face and nodded. ‘William’s clothes, the notebook, the papers, and the cipher disc. I must have a look at the notebook, but the rest can go back to his kin without harming anyone.’ He scratched rhythmically behind the pup’s ears, and it groaned in ecstasy. ‘What have we learned? Montgomery knows or suspects who William’s father was, and he knows that William was gathering information. He didn’t search the boy’s chamber, he doesn’t know who killed him, and he probably didn’t kill Jaikie, which leaves us with the dog-breeder for that. I hope he thinks we haven’t read the cipher letter. He would have liked us to believe he didn’t know Billy Doig, and I have brought Bernard Stewart to his attention. Oh, and I think he wants a look at the dog too.’
‘Pretty well, for one game of cards,’ said Alys approvingly.
‘But what don’t we know yet?’ asked her father. ‘And what have we let Montgomery know? I thought you let him win far too many questions, Gil.’
‘His questions were very informative,’ said Gil. ‘As I let him find out, which was a mistake. What don’t we know? We don’t know who killed William, or why, though we know he had cumin on his hands. I think we know who killed Jaikie, and possibly why, but for William’s killer we are still searching in the dark.’
‘I thought that was the object of our search.’
‘So did I. Pierre, I must go up the hill. I am too tired to think. Saints be praised, there is a moon tonight. Alys, where is the notebook?’
‘I will fetch it.’
She slipped away, and Gil sat quietly petting the dog and staring at the painted panelling of the small room.
‘I suspect we don’t have all the pieces,’ he said at length. ‘Did you ever break a plate? One of those majolica ones with a picture?’
‘Frequently.’
‘Some of the pieces may have a hand and a foot, or an elbow and a head, and only when you set all together do you see they belong to different figures. I think it’s like that – too many of the pieces we have refer to more than one figure.’
‘I was never good at metaphor,’ declared the mason, and poured himself more ale. ‘We have till noon tomorrow. What will that man do if we have no answer for him?’
‘I feel he will not challenge the Dean and the Faculty to Tarocco.’ Gil sat up straight as Alys returned, holding the notebook.
‘Kittock has just told me,’ she said, ‘that someone came from the college an hour or two since, to say Maister Coventry would like a word with Maister Cunningham.’
‘Too late now,’ said Gil, glancing at the window. He fumbled one-handed with the buckle of the dog’s collar. ‘I’ll leave this beast with you again, and be off up the road, but first I must loosen this. He has quite definitely grown. It fitted him yesterday.’ He slipped the long tongue of the collar through the keeper, and pushed the animal off his knee. ‘Go with Alys. Good dog.’
The pup looked up at him, then doubtfully at Alys, and wagged its tail.
‘Good dog!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gil, he knows my name!’
‘He is an exceptional dog,’ said Gil, as he had said before, and got to his feet. ‘I must go. I’ll talk to Patrick Coventry in the morning.’
The stone house in Rottenrow was quiet, but not dark. Picking his way by moonlight from the Girth Cross, Gil could see the glow of candles in several windows. By this hour the great door at the foot of the stair-tower would be barred, so he plodded wearily along the house-wall and in at the little yard by the kitchen door.
He paused there, hand raised to the latch. It seemed like a very long time since he had left the house by this door. Could he remember what was behind it? Was there still a place for him? Would everything have changed? He was assailed by a sudden feeling that he was about to step into the unknown. It was yesterday morning, he told himself irritably, and rattled at the latch.
‘Is that you, Maister Gil?’
‘It’s me,’ he agreed. His uncle’s stout, red-faced housekeeper opened the heavy plank door, closed it behind him and dropped the bar across.
Inside, all was warm and familiar. The kitchen-boy snored in the shadows, and his mother’s maidservant Nan sat by the fire with a cup of spiced ale.
‘Your minnie’s about given you up, I jalouse,’ said Maggie. She returned to the hearth and lifted her own cup of ale. ‘And what have you been doing to yourself?’
‘Fighting, Maggie.’ Gil sat down on the bench opposite Nan. She clicked her tongue.
‘Haven’t I aye warned you about that? I hope you gave better than you got.’
‘I think so. They seemed satisfied. Is all well in Carluke, Nan?’
‘It is,’ she said, beaming at him over her ale. ‘And my lady Gelis is well and all,’ she added, using the Scots form of Lady Egidia’s name. ‘Likely she’ll still be up, Maister Gil.’
‘She said she’d wait for me. Is the old man abed?’
‘He was at his prayers, the last I saw him,’ said Maggie. She sniffed. ‘Is that violets?’
‘To draw out the bruising,’ said Gil. ‘Or so Alys said.’
‘Oh, if she put it on you, that’s another matter. Were ye wanting anything, Maister Gil, or will ye get out of my kitchen and let Nan and me get to our beds? There’s a candle there on the meal-kist.’
He rose obediently, and suddenly put his good arm round her ample waist and kissed her cheek. She bridled with pleasure.
‘Huh! What’s that for?’
‘For being Maggie.’
‘Saints preserve us, who else should I be?’ she demanded, but he was quite unable to explain.
The hall was dark, and smelled of the herbs his mother liked to burn. He crossed it in the pool of light from his candle, the shadows leaping avidly round him, and made his way to the upper floor. The solar was also in darkness, but a line of light showed under his uncle’s chamber door, and another under the door to the best chamber. He paused for a moment, then crossed the room towards the smell of herbs, and tapped on the painted planks.
‘Come in, dear,’ said his mother.
She was seated by the fire, wrapped in a furred bedgown he remembered from before he went to France, her prayer-book on her knee. He stood just inside the door and looked at her, and she stretched out a hand to him, smiling.
‘Come and sit down. Are you very tired?’
‘Very,’ he agreed, and obeyed, kneeling first to kiss her hand. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I said I would wait up for you.’
‘And I said I would be late,’ he countered.
‘And are you late to good purpose? Have you found who killed the poor boy?’
‘Not yet. Why is Nan not with you? I saw her in the kitchen just now.’
‘She snores, which is why she’s not on the truckle-bed here, or in the attic next to you as David suggested. I hope she won’t keep Maggie awake.’
‘I think nothing would stop me sleeping tonight,’ he confessed. She drew the candle nearer, and surveyed him, then rose, tightening the girdle of her furred gown, and began to delve in one of the packs which were stacked beyond the great curtained bed.
‘I know what you need,’ she said, as she emerged with a pannikin and a waxed linen scrip.
‘How are my sisters?’ he asked, watching her without seeing what she was doing.
‘Kate and Tibby are well, and send their love.’
‘Give them mine,’ responded Gil automatically.
‘I will. I wrote to Dorothea a week since, but I’ve heard nothing, which I assume is good news.’ She was measuring spices, a pinch of this and a speck of that, out of little packages in the scrip. ‘And Margaret is like to make you an uncle again this autumn.’
‘How many is that?’
‘Only her third, as you know very well.’ Lady Cunningham poured ale from the jug on the dole-cupboard on to the spices in the pannikin, and set it in the hearth, then tilted her head, sniffing. ‘Do I smell violets?’
‘My wrist.’ Gil held up his hand. ‘To draw out the bruising, so Alys said.’
‘Ah.’ His mother suddenly became intent on the pannikin of ale. ‘The demoiselle Mason. A very giftie lassie.’
‘Mother,’ said Gil. She looked up, and met his eye.
‘I am not blind to her virtues, my dear,’ she protested. ‘And her nurse is by-ordinar. I had quite a conversation with the nurse. Her father, too. That is a very civilized man. Their house might almost be in Paris. I’m glad to see you with a friend who shares your interests, I told you so this morning.’
‘Alys shares more than that.’
‘What? Gilbert, what have you done?’
‘Mother!’ said Gil, as he had not done since he was eighteen. ‘I mean that she’s clever, and learned, and she thinks more clearly than any woman I know except you and Dorothea. She was of great help in finding out who killed the woman I found dead in the building site at St Mungo’s two weeks since, and she has been at least as much help as her father over this business at the college. I want to teach her philosophy,’ he added irrelevantly.
‘You’re too late,’ she said, staring at him.
‘Too late? What do you mean?’
‘I think she already knows some. At least, she quoted Plato today while I was washing my hands.’
Gil’s jaw dropped.
‘Plato?’
‘She said it was Plato.’ Lady Cunningham bent to the little pan on the hearth. ‘Oh, my dear. You’ve got it very bad, haven’t you?’
‘There was never a girl like her in the world,’ said Gil, recovering. ‘Now do you see why I want to marry her? How many women in Scotland can quote Plato?’
‘Not many, since the Queen died and the old King’s sister Eleanor was married abroad,’ said his mother, ‘but still I canny countenance it.’ She swirled the contents of the pannikin, and set it down again. ‘Sugar. I know I have some sugar.’
Gil watched her cross the room to the pile of baggage.
‘Why in this world not? Is it only the money? The living?’
‘Gilbert.’ She peered at him round the neatly bagged wool brocade curtain of David Cunningham’s best bed. ‘We never planned this for you. I told you, we –’
‘I never planned it either, mother!’ he expostulated. ‘An hendy hap ich hab yhent. I met her on May Day, I met her father the next day – about cathedral business,’ he added hastily, before she could comment, ‘and by the Sunday, last Sunday indeed, only a week since, he had approached my uncle and then spoken to me. I admired Alys the moment I met her, but I had no thought of overturning your plans for me till the offer was put to me. It came from them, I didny seek it, but I wish it now more than I’ve ever wished anything in my life.’
‘But my dear, you’ve no land, you must get a benefice or preferably two so you can live on the teinds, you must be a priest.’ She made it sound like a logical progression.
‘Pierre will dower her –’
She straightened up and returned to the fire with another small waxed packet.
‘How can we match that? We’ve no land to spare, Gilbert!’
‘My uncle has offered –’
‘Your uncle, your uncle! Well enough for him,’ said his mother desperately, ‘with all his benefices. Son, I have two parcels of land, you know that. I can keep myself and your sisters on the rents of one, and run the horses on the grazing of the other, and we win a living. If I give you either property for your home, how can I –’
‘Are you feart I’d make you homeless?’ he said incredulously.
‘What else could you be planning?’
‘Mother, listen!’ He leaned forward and caught her wrist left-handed. ‘Listen to me. I don’t want to live in Avondale or Clydesdale.’
She stared at him.
‘We lost those lands. You know that,’ he said, echoing her phrase deliberately. ‘I don’t want to live where I can see the Hamiltons hunting our game and taxing our tenants.’
‘Not in Lanarkshire?’ she said. ‘But what will you live on? Where would you stay?’
‘Oh, in Lanarkshire,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll stay in the Lower Ward. If I marry Alys, we’ll settle here, in Glasgow. She has no kin but her father in Scotland, her mother is dead. How could I take her out of the place she knows? My uncle has offered two or three properties within the burgh that bring in a good rent. Pierre will dower her well, and I’ve a mind to convert at least some of that to property too. And then my uncle has some salaried post in mind, that he’s negotiating for. We wouldn’t be rich, mother, but we’d be comfortable.’
‘You’ll never make a living as a clerk outside the Kirk.’
‘There are more lay notaries than priested nowadays. They seem to do well enough.’
She stared at him a moment longer, then looked down at the pannikin.
‘Oh, your posset,’ she said. She added a pinch of sugar from the packet in her hand, and swirled the contents of the pan carefully, testing its warmth with the back of her wrist. Gil sat watching her, in a sort of daze of fatigue. The incongruity between the effort required to present an argument on such a subject and the aching familiarity of sitting at the hearth in his mother’s chamber, with the smell of her remembered herbs in his nostrils, had unbalanced him slightly. She was pouring the spiced and sweetened ale into a beaker now.
‘Drink this, Gibbie,’ she said, holding it out to him. He took it, and drank obediently.
‘And what of your sisters?’ she went on, as if he had not just made a long speech. ‘What’s to become of them when I’m not here? Are they to fast With water-kail, and to gnaw beans and peas? If you haveny an income, you canny support them, much less dower them, and whatever your uncle has in his mind,’ she hurried on, as he drew a weary breath to speak, ‘I’ll not believe it till I see the first quarter’s salary in your hand.’
‘Mother, my uncle approves. He likes Alys herself –’
‘I told you, he’s a sentimental old man.’
‘– and he is greatly impressed by her accomplishments and her learning.’
‘She is clearly an excellent housewife,’ his mother agreed, ‘and obviously widely read as well.’
‘I think more clearly when I can talk to her.’
‘Gil, there’s my point exactly! Marriage holds a young man back – here you are already, running after her instead of working.’
‘I am working!’ he said indignantly. ‘The Principal commissioned me to find William’s murderer. And Alys has already been a great help. Listen,’ he pursued as she drew breath to speak. ‘Hughie’s bairn died with its mother, didn’t it? And Edward was no even betrothed?’
‘He was six-and-twenty,’ she said, with the wooden expression she still wore when someone else mentioned her dead sons. ‘We were just beginning to seek – Christ succour me, Gil, it’s only four years since!’ she burst out, and covered her face with one hand.
‘I know, mother,’ he said more gently. ‘But you have no Cunningham grandsons. If I marry Alys, and we –’ He stopped, his throat tightening, as the full import of what he was saying struck him. His child and Alys’s – his own son. Alys’s son. ‘Do you not wish for my father’s name to go on?’
‘But what will you live on?’ she repeated.
‘Mother,’ he said, setting down the empty beaker, ‘I’ve heard enough.’
‘You’ll abandon the marriage?’
‘I will not,’ he said. ‘I have you deaving one ear and my uncle at the other, with argument and counterargument.’ He winced as he spread his hands. ‘When my closest kin fall out, I’m free to please myself. I’ll sign the contract as soon as I can hold a pen.’
She stared at him, her expression unreadable.
‘But you can aye be sure, mother,’ he concluded, ‘of our loving duty. And I know fine I speak for Alys in that, as well as myself.’