Dunbar slipped from the room, and after a time returned followed by two acolytes, a candle-bearer, and another priest robed and bearing a reliquary in the shape of a gold hand with a jewelled cuff and several rings. Gil looked at the object and thought of the saint who shared his cloak with a beggar, but slid from his stool to kneel and cross himself when everyone else did. The robed priest intoned a Latin prayer commending St Martin, and the King, seating himself and replacing his hat, said, ‘Now, Mall, tell us again here in front of the relics. What happened between your man and this stranger?’
Mall, her eyes on the reliquary in the hands of the priest as if she thought it would turn and point an accusing finger at her, was led back through her story. To Gil’s ears it differed little from the account Kate had summarized for him, but the statesmen picked carefully at the details.
‘What yett was this?’ Blacader asked her sternly. ‘Remember, woman, you must tell us the truth.’
‘I swear it’s the truth, maister,’ she said, crossing herself again. ‘I swear on that hand and all its jewels. May St Martin himself strike me dead unshriven if it’s no the truth. They never said what yett it was, nor what else Billy had done.’
‘Surely it was your maister’s yett he was to open,’ said Knollys, hands in his gold satin sleeves.
‘No, sir, for it had never been opened when it shouldny.’
‘It was opened on the night the barrels were exchanged,’ suggested Knollys. ‘You and your limmer let him in and changed the barrels. Or was this fabulous man with the axe your limmer and all?’ he persisted avidly.
‘No!’ protested Mall.
‘If you’ll tryst with one man in a hayloft, how about another? Tell us the truth, woman.’
‘The barrel we were expecting,’ said Gil, ‘the barrel which should have been on the cart, never left Linlithgow. We found it there. The exchange was made there, no in Glasgow.’
Mall looked fearfully at him, and then at the King. She still had not looked at her master, who was listening with an expression of amazement.
‘Billy’s my – Billy was my dearie,’ she said steadfastly. ‘I never loved any man but him, nor I never trysted wi any other man. And we never opened the maister’s gates. I never did my maister any harm,’ she said, beginning to sniffle, ‘till Billy bade me get his key to his big kist, and that was the first either of us did that was a wrang to him.’
‘And why did Billy bid you do that?’ asked Blacader.
‘She admits it openly,’ said Knollys. ‘Why are we wasting our time with this thieving wee trollop, sir, when there are –’
‘I’ll decide how I spend my time,’ said James. ‘Answer your lord, lassie.’
Mall threw a doubtful look at the Archbishop, but said obediently, between sobs, ‘The man wi the axe had tellt Billy to get the key, for I heard him. I begged Billy to do no such thing. But he was feart for the axeman telling the maister, and he wouldny hear me when I said the maister would forgive him.’ She was weeping openly now. ‘The maister’s a good man, he’d maybe ha turned us off but he’d ha done no worse.’ Behind her Morison nodded, frowning.
‘Forgive him what?’ asked James. ‘What had he done?’
‘I never knew! He wouldny let on. It was something about when he opened the yett, but he wouldny tell me.’ Mall scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve.
‘This is all nonsense,’ said Knollys. He cast his hands in the air in a gesture of exasperation, and his rings glittered in the candlelight.
‘Why is she so sure it was the man with the axe killed her man?’ asked Angus from behind the King.
‘Tell us, lassie,’ said the King.
Mall looked up through her tears. ‘Who else could it ha been, sir?’
‘Any of the household, I should have thought,’ said Knollys impatiently.
‘None of the other men was marked,’ said Gil. ‘And whoever it was would certainly have blood on him, from what I have heard.’
Mall covered her face and moaned at the words, but James nodded his understanding.
‘And why were you to get the maister’s key?’ asked Blacader. ‘You realize what a sin you are confessing? To conspire to rob your own maister like this?’ Mall nodded, and mumbled something into her hands. ‘What was that? Answer me openly, Mall.’
The girl kept her head down, but lowered her hands enough to be heard: ‘He wanted Billy to seek for the rest of the treasure. He kept on about it, how there should be another bag of it, though Billy kept saying he kenned nothing of any treasure.’
‘How did he ken that?’ asked Angus. ‘This axeman – how did he ken so much?’
I would like to know that too, thought Gil.
‘He never said.’
‘Is there anything else you should tell us, daughter?’ asked the Archbishop.
Mall, slightly reassured by this form of address, raised her head enough to look at him sideways.
‘No, maister,’ she whispered. ‘I dinna think so.’
‘Well,’ said the King. ‘Mall, you have appealed to me for justice for your man, and as it happens, justice has been done.’ She stared at him. ‘The man with the axe is dead, killed in a fight with Maister Cunningham here.’
She turned her head slightly, to glance at Gil, then returned her gaze to her monarch.
‘But there must be justice for you too, Mall,’ James continued. He looked at her as sternly as Blacader had done. ‘And for your maister. You must see that.’
She nodded, and whispered some affirmative. Blacader gestured, and Dunbar, with a resigned expression, came forward to help the girl to her feet. She bobbed a low curtsy to the King, and the rest, and turning to go came finally face-to-face with her master. He looked up at her from where he knelt, with an earnest, pitying smile, and almost automatically she bobbed to him as well. Morison acknowledged the curtsy, and sketched a cross.
‘Guid save you, my lassie,’ he said. ‘Our Lady guard your rest this night.’
She whispered something, and Dunbar led her past him and out of the room.
‘Well, Maister Morison,’ said the King. Gil, aware of the elderly Blacader shifting on his padded stool, found himself thinking, Christ aid us all, he’s indefatigable. ‘Come closer, maister, and tell us about Linlithgow.’
Morison, shuffling forward on his knees, stopped and stared open-mouthed at his monarch.
‘Linlithgow?’ he said blankly. ‘I – I mean, what did you wish to hear about it, sir?’
‘What passed the last time you were there?’
Morison paused, casting his mind back, and glanced at Gil.
‘Well, we – we took my goods off Thomas Tod’s vessel at Blackness,’ he said, ‘and took the cart back to Linlithgow. It was ower late to set out by then, we’d never have made Kilsyth in daylight, so we ran the cart into William Riddoch’s barn, by the arrangement we’ve for three year now, and Billy Walker, Christ assoil him, slept under the cart and the rest of us lay at the Black Bitch by the West Port.’
‘The rest of us?’ questioned Blacader. ‘Who was that?’
‘Me myself, and Andy Paterson my servant, and Jamesie Aitken my journeyman.’
‘And how did you lie that night?’ asked the King.
‘Well enough,’ said Morison wryly. ‘Since I’d no notion what was waiting for me. Oh,’ he said, grasping what was meant. ‘We lay in the one bed, the three of us. I was at the wall, and Jamesie next me, and Andy at the outside, since he’s up and down in the night.’ Several of his older hearers nodded in sympathy at this.
‘May I ask something, sir?’ said Gil. The King gestured in reply. ‘Augie, tell me, when was Billy alone in Linlithgow? Had you lain there the night before?’
‘Aye, we had,’ Morison nodded. ‘He’d plenty time alone in the burgh. I let them be to drink or talk as they liked, I knew they’d not get ower fu or into bad company . . .’ His voice trailed off and he smiled ruefully. ‘Aye. While I went about to get a word with one or two friends I have in the place.’
‘And did you see him at all while you went about the town?’
‘I caught sight of all three of them now and then.’
‘Was he talking to a big man in a black cloak?’
‘Linlithgow’s full of men in black cloaks,’ said Angus, grinning over the King’s shoulder.
William Knollys inflated himself and stretched his neck like a cockerel about to crow, the light gleaming on his gold satin plumage. ‘Are you implying, my lord, that the Knights of St John are involved in this? That one of our brother knights slips about by night slaying unlawfully?’
‘Not the knights,’ said Gil, almost to himself. James glanced briefly at him.
‘Not me,’ said Angus, still grinning. ‘It was you said it, my lord St Johns, not me. I’m saying Linlithgow’s full of men in black cloaks, no more than that.’
‘I never saw Billy talking to such a one,’ said Morison to Gil. Knollys subsided, glaring at Angus. ‘Maybe Andy or Jamesie saw, you could ask them.’
Gil nodded.
‘This man Billy,’ said the King, ‘that the lassie wants justice for. Why did you keep him? Had he been a good servant?’
‘Not a bad servant, sir, anyways,’ said Morison, considering the matter. ‘He was pert, but they can all be pert. A good enough worker, a good carter, understood the old mare well. Understood barrels and all, with his father being a cooper.’
Out in the High Street it was raining, though the gibbous moon sailed in broken cloud above the Dow Hill. The torchbearers in the escort the King had ordered for them made a great difference, Gil found, striding down the hill behind them with a bewildered Augie Morison at his side. Two other sturdy fellows in helm and breastplate followed, keeping a watchful eye on the shadows.
There had been little more of use said after Augie’s revelation about Billy’s parentage. The Treasurer had shown signs of wishing to interrogate him further about Linlithgow, but the King, yawning ostentatiously, had announced, ‘Well, gentlemen, as you said a while since, it’s ower late. We’ll have this cleared away the now.’ A wave of relief swept round the crowded little room, and he smiled slightly. ‘We’ll be up early for Mass, after all. In the chapel here, my lord?’ Blacader nodded. ‘And after it,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I want a game of caich before we ride. Maister Cunningham, you look like a fit man. Do you play caich?’
‘I do, sir,’ Gil had said, slightly apprehensive. The quarry must feel that way, he thought now, when a twig cracks in the undergrowth.
‘You’ll gie me a game? Good! In the caichpele off the Drygate here – you ken?’
Gil knew it. It belonged to one of the canons, who found the steady supply of pence from the tennis-players and spectators of the town made a valuable income. He had played there a few times, but he and his opponents among the poverty-stricken songmen generally used an improvised court in Vicars’ Alley, with two sloping roofs to be the pents and chalked marks on St Mungo’s north wall, renewed every time it rained, for lunettes. The scorer had to have sharp eyes.
‘Good,’ said James, and rose. Gil and the two elderly statesmen rose too, perforce. ‘I’ll meet you after Mass, say about Terce. And now we’ll have you seen home, maister. Where do you lie the night?’
‘David Cunningham’s house – the Cadzow manse in Rottenrow,’ supplied Blacader.
Gil shook his head. ‘I’m bound for Maister Morison’s house in the High Street,’ he said. ‘My sister is there, and maybe Mistress Mason, keeping an eye on the bairns.’
Morison, still kneeling at his feet, put one hand over his eyes. William Knollys looked round sharply, with the arrested expression of the stag who hears the hounds.
‘What does the lady there?’ he demanded. ‘Surely Maister Morison has servants of his own?’
‘My sister was concerned for the bairns,’ said Gil again. Knollys grunted, and turned casually away to speak to a man with the eight-pointed Cross of St John on the breast of his velvet doublet.
‘Find Davie Wilkie,’ he began in a low voice. The King spoke across him, directing someone to deal with Gil’s escort, someone else to take word to the Provost that his prisoner had been released at the King’s command.
‘Released?’ repeated Morison incredulously. ‘You mean – your grace means – I can go free? I can go home?’
‘Aye, maister. Thanks to your friend here.’
Blacader nodded approval; Angus was standing back, watching enigmatically. Knollys was still speaking to his servant in a confidential mutter. Gil thought he had caught another name: ‘Bid him and John Carson . . .’ He had heard these names before, in the same muttered tone. And why, he wondered, should getting a message to them be important enough to discuss before the King?
A velvet-clad servant with the King’s badge on his chest appeared at his elbow, the King dismissed them, and they were both spirited out into the wet night where the gate-guards peered from under the vault of the gatehouse like deer in a forest. Morison seemed dumbstruck, floating along at Gil’s side staring at the torches, the people, the castle walls, as if he had never seen such things before.
Why, Gil thought now, striding down the High Street, does my mind keep running on hunting? Is it because I am being followed? He turned his head from side to side, trying to see over his shoulders, but although the shadows beyond the pool of wet torchlight in which they moved were black and jumpy he could not focus any of his unease in them.
‘Nobody will try anything on six men, maister,’ said one of the two at his back, ‘and four of them in the King’s livery.’
‘That’s a true word,’ agreed the left-hand torchbearer.
As he spoke, a group emerged from a vennel just ahead of them. Gil, bracing himself, was aware of sudden tension round him. Morison stared apprehensively. Four men with a lantern which gleamed on a selection of ill-fitting armour stared back at them in alarm; then one of them took a better grip on his cudgel and said firmly, ‘Who goes there, in the name of the King?’
‘It’s the Watch,’ said Gil in relief.
The right-hand torchbearer was already answering: ‘The King’s men, about the King’s business.’
The man with the lantern came closer, with his fellows straggling after him as if they would rather not be left in the dark. Gil could not recognize the men in this light, but felt it to be unlikely that any of them was a burgess. Most people sent a servant or other substitute when their turn to guard the burgh through the night came round. The lantern dwindled against the torchlight, which clearly showed the royal badge on cloak and velvet surcoat. Two of the Watch nodded.
‘Aye, Geordie, that’s the King’s badge,’ said one of them. ‘They’re likely from the castle.’
‘They’ll be seeing these fellows to their doors,’ said another. ‘And I hope neither of their women’s lying awake for them, for they’ll get a warm welcome, coming in at this hour o the night.’
‘Wheesht, Jaik!’ said the fourth man in a hissing whisper. ‘That’s Maister Morison. Him that found a heidit man in a barrel.’
‘Oh, aye, so it is,’ agreed Jaik in the same tone. ‘They must ha let him off wi it.’
‘On ye go, then, King’s men,’ said the one who had challenged them. ‘And a peaceful night to ye, maisters.’
‘And the same to yersels, neighbour,’ said the torch-bearer, and they moved on. The Watch plodded past them and on up the hill. After a little Gil found the feeling of being followed had dissipated, though he still felt on edge, as if the hunt was only on the next hillside.
At the gate to Morison’s Yard he halted. Beside him Morison reached out and touched the heavy planks caressingly.
‘This is the place,’ Gil said to their escort.
‘We’ll see you through the gate, maisters,’ said the left-hand torchbearer in a strong Stirling accent. ‘Is it barred, maybe? Will you need to rouse the house?’
Gil leaned on a leaf of the gate, and it swung easily, as before. Bait? he wondered. Or has there been trouble?
He peered inside, but there was no movement in the yard. There was light at the house windows, and his sister’s voice came faintly, making Morison turn his head to listen. The moon slid out from behind a cloud and lit the open expanse between gate and door, silvering the wet edge of the fore-stair. Nothing there. Why do I still feel I’m being watched?
‘All quiet?’ said the torchbearer.
‘I think so,’ Gil said, a little reluctantly, and reached for his purse. ‘Thanks for your time, fellows. You can get up the road and into the dry.’
The group, suitably rewarded, stepped back and waited while he drew Morison in and barred the gate. He heard them tramp off up the High Street and turned towards the house. The door was open, though nobody was visible. The back of his neck prickled. Drawing his whinger, catching his plaid round the other arm, he took Morison’s elbow and moved forward through the moonlit rain, two steps, three.
The creak of the gate warned him, in the same moment as a quiet voice from the house said, ‘Behind you.’
Heart thumping, he straightened his left arm, pushing the unarmed Morison sharply towards the house, and sidestepped, sword at the ready, turning towards the rush of footsteps.
One figure was approaching from the gate, another leaping down from it as he looked. The nearest had a weapon raised against the dark sky, which he knocked spinning across the yard with a sweeping blow. Wood clattered on the flagstones, and there was time to think, This has happened before, and also, This is quite ridiculous.
The other man seemed at first to have huge black wings, but as Gil ducked away, shouting, they turned into great folds of cloth which brushed across his arm. He dodged sideways and snatched out his dagger, then braced himself, the two blades poised to attack, and several more figures emerged from the shadows as if in answer.
‘Aye, Maister Gil!’ said one of them in Andy’s voice, and bent to seize the cudgel as it rolled across the yard. The man who had wielded it tripped over his stooping form, knocking him flat, stumbled over him and ran cursing for the gate, closely pursued by two more of the shadowy figures. The other assailant was struggling with someone, but a dark shape which could only be Babb loomed over the conflict and pounced; there was a startled yelp, and in the same moment a thump and rattle from next to the gate, an outcry, and then a long-drawn-out sliding, slithering crash.
Someone groaned.
‘Well done!’ said Kate from the house door. The whole thing had taken only a few heartbeats.
‘Christ and his saints preserve us!’ said Andy’s voice. Gil, peering round, placed the small man, just climbing to his feet. ‘Have we got them, then?’
‘Well, that was a welcome,’ said Morison from the darkness, sounding more alert than he had for the past hour.
‘Maister?’ said Andy, and started forward.
‘Augie?’ said Kate from the door. Morison turned and moved towards her.
‘What the deil’s name’s goin on out there?’ bellowed a voice from overhead. Gil looked up, and saw Maister Morison’s neighbour leaning out of an upper window, his linen nightcap pale in a brief gleam of moonlight. ‘Is it more thieves in the yard there?’
‘Aye, Maister Hamilton, it’s thieves,’ answered Andy. From under the thatch of Morison’s house came a child’s wail.
‘Yell need to put up a sign for them,’ said Maister Hamilton in disgust, ‘then they can just come in quietlike. Call the Watch, man, and let’s us get our sleep.’
‘We’ve got this one,’ said Babb, shaking her catch.
‘We have this one also,’ said Alys from the shadows by the gate, ‘but I think he is hurt.’
‘Alys!’ said Gil. ‘Alys, what are you –?’
He sheathed his blades and hurried over. She was bending over two shapes, which as the moon came out again resolved into a kneeling man with a knife at the throat of a recumbent one. The light slid on the glazed rims of countless tumbled pots and dishes which surrounded them. The recumbent man groaned again. Under the roof the child was still wailing.
‘The rack fell,’ Alys said. ‘All these crocks landed on him. Gil, was that Maister Morison?’
‘Come on, man,’ said the one kneeling. ‘Get on your feet.’
‘I canny,’ said the recumbent man with difficulty. ‘I’m hurt. I’m hurt bad.’
‘Let’s get him in the house,’ Gil said, ‘and the other one, and see how bad it is. Andy, is there a hurdle we can put him on?’
‘Aye, do that,’ shouted Maister Hamilton, ‘and be quiet about it!’
‘What’s to do?’ demanded another voice, from somewhere across the street.
‘Thieves at Augie’s yard,’ responded Hamilton. A dog started barking, and another answered it. ‘They should call the Watch, and let the rest of the town get some sleep.’
‘I’m right sorry, Andro,’ began Morison, from the fore-stair.
‘Augie! Is that you let loose, man? Did they let you off, then?’
To an accompaniment of mixed congratulation and heckling from neighbours and dogs, the injured man was heaved groaning on to a wicker hurdle and carried indoors. Morison issued a general invitation for the morning and went in, Babb’s prisoner was dragged in after him, and for a precious moment, as windows slammed shut to one side and another, Gil was alone in the yard with his betrothed.
‘Alys, are you all right?’ he said in soft French, and reached out to her. She came willingly to his embrace, and he drew her close, relishing the feel under his hands of the warm curves he had glimpsed earlier.
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Why should I not be? That was exciting.’
He stared down at the pale outline of her face in the moonlight, struck yet again by her power to astonish him.
‘Perhaps I should teach you to use a sword,’ he said, and kissed her.
‘I should like that,’ she said hopefully after a moment, leaning against him. ‘We ought to go in, Gil. These men must be questioned. And was that really Maister Morison? Is he free?’
‘Soon,’ he said, and kissed her again. ‘Oh, I have missed you. Nas never pyke wallowed in galantyne As I in love am wallowed and ywounde.’
‘And I have missed you, trewe Tristram the secounde,’ she said, capping the quotation, and kissed him back.
When they finally went into the brightly lit hall, Kate was seated rather stiffly in Morison’s great chair, Morison himself on his knees beside her with his arms full of two small girls. Gil looked at his sister’s expression and found his mind going back to an older poem than the Chaucer he had just quoted to Alys: Yern he biheld hir, and sche him eke, Ac noither to other a word no speke. The two captives were before them in the centre of the hall. Babb still had a punishing grasp of the man in the cloak, but it was evident that the other was unlikely to run far. Alys went forward and knelt beside him, and he opened his eyes.
‘A priest,’ he moaned. ‘I need a priest.’
‘You’ll tell us what you were after in this house first,’ said Andy fiercely.
‘I’m deein!’
‘Is he?’ asked Kate.
‘Probably not,’ said Alys judiciously, ‘but there are broken bones. Several ribs at the least.’ The prisoner yelped as she felt carefully at his chest. The hurdle creaked under him, and Gil caught his breath, transported for a moment to the moonlit pinnacles of Roslin. ‘And maybe some bruising to his insides also,’ Alys finished. She passed her hands cautiously round the man’s black felt coif, without eliciting a reaction, and rose to her feet.
Gil studied the man. He was wearing a sturdy leather jack, and there was a sheath at his belt for the whinger which Andy had brought in from the yard. His hair showed under the edges of the coif, dark round the collar of the jack, a white tuft sticking sweatily to his brow.
‘I’m deein, I tell ye,’ croaked the prisoner. ‘Fetch me a priest.’
‘But what was going on?’ asked Morison. ‘Why were these fellows in our yard?’ He looked down at his daughters. ‘My poppets, you must go back to your bed now. Da will still be here in the morning.’ Ysonde, her hands clamped on the facings of his gown, said something muffled into his shoulder. ‘What’s that, my honey?’
‘She said you’d get your head cut off.’
‘Well, I haveny See, it’s still fastened on.’
‘She said the man wi the axe would cut it off.’
‘The man with the axe is dead,’ said Gil firmly. The man Babb held looked round quickly, dismay in his expression, but the other prisoner closed his eyes again and the crease deepened between his brows.
‘Who said that to you, Ysonde?’ Morison asked in concern.
‘I’ll wager it was Mall,’ said Kate, breaking a long silence. ‘She said a few things I’d like to skelp her for, before she left. Wynliane, Ysonde, you must go back to bed now. Da will be here in the morning.’
‘No,’ said Wynliane. Morison looked quickly down at her, then at Kate, his eyes wide. She nodded, smiling slightly, and he swallowed and turned back to the children.
‘I have to talk, down here, poppets,’ he said. ‘I’ll come up to you once you’re in your bed.’
‘No,’ said Wynliane.
Ysonde’s grip tightened on her father’s gown. Gil thought Morison’s clasp on the girls tightened in response. His sister must have seen it too, for she said, ‘Oh, let them stay, Augie. Nan, their father will bring them up when he can.’ Nan, waiting quietly in the stair doorway, bobbed to the company and withdrew. Kate looked at Morison again. ‘Our Lady guard you, man, sit down properly, then Gil and Alys can sit down too. Andy, bring the settle forward for him – no, there.’
Andy obeyed, and Morison rose, slightly impeded by his satellites, and sat down opposite Kate. Settling the children on either side of him, he stared round the room and said, ‘Were you looking for these fellows, Andy? Were you expecting an inbreak?’
‘Aye, we were,’ said Babb happily. ‘We were looking for them to come for this treasure that’s never been here. And we were right.’
‘You set the watch as you intended, then?’ said Gil.
‘Not quite,’ admitted Kate.
‘Watch?’ said Morison. ‘I thought it was all over. What need of a watch?’
‘You can see what need. It’s not over yet,’ Kate pointed out.
Gil, seating Alys on a backstool, said, ‘Are you saying these are the two who were seen in the Hog earlier this week? Let that one go, Babb, so he can answer our questions.’
‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed the man who had helped Alys. ‘And I’d a word wi them the night and all. Tellt them all about how the maister keeps a locked kist at the foot o the great bed in the chaumer there.’ He grinned. ‘I never tellt them about the watch in the yard, did I, you gangrel thieves.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ said Gil, looking closely from one to the other. ‘I last saw these two on the Pentlands yesterday sometime after noon, pelting downhill with Socrates on their heels. And before that there was a matter of a dead pig above Linlithgow. The biter’s been bit,’ he said agreeably. Most of his hearers looked blank, but the man on the hurdle closed his eyes and groaned.
‘I never!’ said the standing prisoner. ‘It wasny me. I’ve been in Glasgow the whole time. So’s he.’ He jerked his head at the man on the hurdle.
‘A pity Socrates is not here,’ said Alys. ‘Where did you leave him? We could see if he knows them.’
‘Ye’ve no need to set a great hound on us,’ said the standing prisoner apprehensively. Gil raised an eyebrow, and the man swallowed, realizing what he had given away. ‘It wasny us,’ he repeated.
‘He cutted the pig’s head off wi his sword,’ said a small voice from within Morison’s gown. He lifted his arm and looked down; Ysonde blinked back at him.
‘You were dreaming, my poppet,’ he said indulgently. ‘Go back to sleep. The man hasn’t got a sword.’
‘Does too. He had a sword this morning.’ She pointed at the standing prisoner. ‘When he looked in our gate, but Nan and me told him to go away and he went.’
‘You see!’ said Babb’s prisoner. ‘The bairn kens! We’ve been here the whole time.’
‘So you were poking round here earlier, were you?’ demanded Andy, and the man swallowed again.
‘Which of you is John Carson?’ Gil asked. Alys looked round at him. The recumbent man opened his eyes, but the other one made no move. ‘So you must be Davie Wilkie,’ he went on. The man still did not move, but Gil saw the faint stirring of his cloak as his shoulders tensed. ‘You had a hat with a feather in it yesterday,’ he said conversationally. ‘I suppose it must have fallen off, somewhere between the Pentlands and here.’
‘It could be out in the yard,’ said Morison, still trying to follow the exchange.
Gil nodded. ‘It could. And Carson there gets called Baldy,’ he went on.
‘He’s no bald,’ said the man nearest the hurdle. ‘See, he’s got more hair than Andy there. It’s all sticking out the back o his coif.’
‘You stay out o this, Ecky Soutar,’ growled Andy.
‘It’s sticking out the brow of his coif too,’ said Gil. ‘Take it off for him, Ecky, will you.’
Ecky obliged, despite the injured man’s feeble attempts to push his hands away. The coif came away, revealing damp hair flattened to the man’s skull, dark in the candlelight except for the sharp-edged streak of white hair which grew forward over his forehead.
‘And that,’ said Gil, ‘is why he’s called Baldy, like a horse. Not because he’s called Archibald, and not because he’s bald, but because he’s got a white blaze.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Morison.
‘It means we’ve made the two ends of the circle join up,’ said Gil. ‘Would you send someone to call the Watch, Augie? These fellows should be put somewhere safe for the night, what’s left of it.’
Only a royal summons would have got Gil out of his own bed in the attic in Rottenrow before Nones. As it was, despite a cold wash, a shave and a meal of bannocks still warm from the girdle, he felt as if he would rather sleep for another week than plod down to the caichpele with the long spoon-shaped racket over his shoulder to play tennis with his monarch.
It had been more than an hour after the Watch were summoned, before he could leave the lower town and head for home. He had had to explain to the Watch why these dangerous miscreants should be held in the Tolbooth rather than the castle, without letting them suspect that in the castle he feared Wilkie, at least, would find himself free as the Axeman had. Then, once the reluctant procession had left, supplemented by two of Augie’s fellows to keep the Watch safe as far as the Tolbooth, he had attempted to persuade Alys and his sister to go home.
‘Catherine will long since have had the door barred,’ said Alys. ‘No, no, I can very well share a bed with Kate and Babb.’
‘But Kate will go back to Rottenrow, surely,’ he said.
‘Not me,’ said Kate firmly. ‘I’ll not leave without saying farewell to those bairns.’ Her eyes rose to the ceiling, where Morison’s voice could be heard quietly from the floor above. Alys gave Gil another of her significant glances, and shook her head.
‘Leave them,’ said Morison, when he had persuaded his daughters to sleep. ‘I’ll be glad of the company, Gil, to tell truth.’
‘Do you want someone else to watch?’ Gil asked quickly, but Morison shook his head.
‘No, no. That’s no the difficulty. I just – I just – it’s good to have friends round me,’ he achieved, ‘and you have to go back up the hill, if you’re to be at the caichpele betimes. And if Mistress Mason’s to stay and all,’ he added, ‘then all’s decent. The two of them and Babb will be down here in the chamber yonder,’ he nodded at the inner door from the hall, ‘where they can bar the door for privacy, and the men are out in the bothy, and I’m above-stairs within call.’ He glanced at the ceiling-boards, as Kate had done.
‘I’ve no doubt of that,’ said Gil, who had not thought about it. ‘I just thought it might be imposing on the household.’
‘Considering what she’s – they’ve done for me,’ said Morison, ‘I’d say the imposing goes all the other way. Leave them here. They’re more than welcome.’
Now, before Terce, the first beasts of the baggage-train were already making their way down the High Street to cross the river and head south for Kilmarnock. Behind them, arguments, bustle and French curses floated over the castle walls. Across the Wyndhead and into the Drygate, Gil turned up the pend which led to the high wooden walls of the caichpele. There was obviously a game in progress already: he could hear the irregular thud of the ball against the planks, and the occasional spatter of applause.
The door was guarded by two men in royal livery, who let him pass when he gave his name. Within, the near gallery was crowded. Another royal servant greeted him, ushered him into the other gallery, where only two men stood at the far end, their heads together: Angus and his brother-in-law, Boyd of Naristoun. They looked up and nodded to him as he entered, acknowledged his brief bow, went back to their conversation. Gil leaned on the window, watching the play. The young King was serving, his back to them, and Archie Boyd’s brother Sandy was at the hazard end.
‘Still don’t like it,’ said Sandy’s kinsman emphatically at the far end of the gallery.
‘Archie, it might no happen,’ soothed Angus. ‘They’ll maybe no take to one another. She’s got every chance to turn him down.’
‘What, turn down her –’
‘Wheesht, Archie!’
‘And what does that do to us all,’ Boyd went on, soft but still indignant, ‘if he pursues her and she sends him off?’
‘We find another one,’ said Angus. ‘I’d fly my own Marion at him, but she’s handfasted wi Kilmaurs. Your lassie’s the only other in the close kin that’s the right age for him, but we can try one of the older lassies if we have to.’
Well, well, thought Gil. The players had changed ends, and Sandy Boyd served, putting a spin on the ball that dropped it off the other wall on to the smooth-packed floor before the King could get to it. The scorer called numbers.
‘It might no work.’
Angus made an impatient noise. ‘Christ save us, he’s a Stewart. Ye have to feed his appetites. He’d lose the Honours of Scotland at the cards, or any other game ye name, gin he were left to play unwatched, and as for the other, he’s quite old enough to slip out and pass himself off as second sackbut in the burgh band, only to get closer to some trollop he’s taken a notion to. We have to set him on to a lassie we can trust, for his first. And we have to distract him, Archie. He’s taking altogether too much interest in the business of running the country, and he doesny understand it all yet. You saw him last night.’
‘Mind you,’ said Naristoun thoughtfully, ‘that might pay off.’
‘Wheesht, Archie.’
Sandy Boyd served again, and this time the King was ready for him, or perhaps Sandy put the ball where the King would be ready. There was a chase, the ball bandied back and forth across the net, which ended in a point for the King, and applause from the other gallery under the pent as the two players shook hands. His grace had won the set and, it seemed, the match.
Acknowledging the applause, James stripped off his doublet and threw it to a ready servant, accepted a wet towel from another and a goblet from a third. A clerk approached him with some documents, another with a quiet message, and he looked about.
‘Maister Cunningham?’ he called. ‘What about that game you promised me? Aye, Sandy, a good match. You’re a strong player, sir. Give me five minutes, maister, to deal with these papers, and we’ll have a fresh ball and begin.’
Gil, stripping off gown and doublet in his turn, stepped out on to the court and bowed to his opponent.
It was an excellent game. The King, as he had seen while watching from the gallery, was a vigorous player with a sound grasp of the strategies. He was also in good practice. Gil, willing to play with tact, found he had no need to do so. He was faster, and had a longer reach; the King had a stronger stroke, and the ball they were chasing was from his own box. Set by set, the match went the full eleven, and by the time the King took the final point both men were stripped to the waist, shining with sweat, hair plastered to their faces.
‘And the match point!’ called the scorekeeper, with what sounded to Gil like relief. ‘The King’s grace takes the match.’
There was another patter of applause. Gil lowered his racket and found himself grinning at his opponent, the involuntary response to a rewarding game.
‘St James’s staff and shells!’ said the King. He met Gil’s grin with one of his own, and threw his racket to yet another servant. ‘What a chase, that last set. Maister Cunningham, we’ll ha another game the next time I come through Glasgow, or my name’s no James Stewart.’ He offered Gil his hand, and used the clasp to draw him under the net to his side. ‘I thought you looked like a good player, man. Come and wash.’
He led him towards the service gallery, where Angus and the Boyds still watched. The blue-liveried servants came forward with wet towels, a folding table, goblets, a tray of biscuits, and retired again. James handed Gil a towel, mopped happily at his neck and chest, then said, with another grin, ‘Dicht my back for me, Maister Cunningham, and then I’ll do yours.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Gil inadequately, trying to conceal amazement. James turned, peering into the shade of the gallery. His back was lean, well muscled, decorated here and there with spots. The chain belt showed at his waist above the top of his hose. Gil wadded his own towel and wiped hesitantly at the royal hide.
‘Harder, man,’ commanded the King. ‘You’ll never shift the salt playing pat-a-cake like that. Aye, that’s better. Now, while we’re not to be interrupted,’ he said, staring direct at the three men in the gallery, ‘tell me what you didn’t tell me yestreen.’
Gil froze for a moment, then continued rubbing at the King’s shoulders.
‘How much of it, sir? There’s a fair bit.’
‘Let’s have the kernel of it. Some of my late father’s hoard,’ he crossed himself, and his other hand strayed involuntarily to the iron chain at his waist, ‘was being moved about the country, and it seemed to me someone was trying to thieve it on its way. Am I right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Gil again. ‘There was also some part of what may have been a loan from the Knights of St John. It was still in the sacks, with the seals on. I would say his late grace never saw it.’
‘And if my father never kent it was there,’ said James, leaning back against Gil’s ministrations, ‘and it could be stolen away, whoever got it could write it down sheer profit.’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘Who?’
‘I would say you’ve guessed, sir.’
‘Aye, but guesses are no proof. Have you proof, maister? Let’s hear it.’
‘I have,’ said Gil. He gave as compressed a summary as he might of the successive attempts to intercept the search for the identity of the dead man and the remainder of his load. The King listened intently; halfway through, without interrupting, he turned, gestured to Gil to turn his back, and twisting his own towel into a rope began rubbing Gil down as if he were a horse. The three watchers in the gallery never stirred.
‘And these two you took last night,’ said the King when Gil finished his tale, ‘that the Watch have put in the Tolbooth for you, are the same as attacked you along with the axeman on the Pentlands, and have been seen with him in Glasgow.’ Gil nodded. ‘Body of Christ, the road from here to Edinburgh must be smoking by now. Even at this time of year with the long days, it’s a hard ride across Scotland. And how much have they admitted, maister?’
‘Unless the Watch got anything from them,’ said Gil, ‘not even their names, though I know what those are, and the injured man at least is linked to –’
‘Ah!’ said the King, and paused. ‘I suppose he could still deny it.’
‘No matter, sir,’ said Angus from the shadows. ‘If we tell him they’re taken –’
‘Aye, and ask for his seals. We’ll have both off him, my lord Angus, before we leave Glasgow. The Treasurer’s seal and the Comptroller’s both.’
‘And gladly, sir,’ said Angus emphatically. ‘Bring them to you, will I?’
‘Aye, for we’ll need to discuss who gets them next. But first,’ said James, as a thought struck him, ‘I want enough coin off him for two-three days. Including,’ he slapped Gil on the shoulder quite as if he were a horse, ‘there you are, maister, you’re done, including two, no, three purses for this morning. You know the sort of thing, my lord.’