Hue and Cry
Authors: Shirley McKay
Hue & Cry
A Hew Cullan Mystery
SHIRLEY M
C
KAY
This ebook edition published in 2011 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
First published in 2009 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd
Copyright © Shirley McKay 2009
The moral right of Shirley McKay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ebook ISBN: 978-0-85790-018-0
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
For Neil, always and only
Thank you to Caroline Knox and Lynn Curtis, who both provided invaluable editorial advice on early versions of the manuscript; to Caroline Oakley, for her careful and constructive reading; to Anita Joseph, for her shrewd and sympathetic editing; and to Neville Moir of Polygon, who caught a glimpse of sunshine in the haar.
Thanks also to Neil Rhodes, for advice (not always welcomed) and for his constant love and support; to Alice, for believing; and to Peter, for putting up with it, even though he wished I had a proper job.
And above all, to my agent John Beaton, without whose tireless guidance, patience and persistence, Hew Cullan and his friends would not have braved the world.
In the year 1580, King James VI of Scotland turned fourteen. On his first royal progress he visited the town of St Andrews where he saw a play performed in the courtyard of the New Inn of the priory as part of the entertainments. The event was noted in the diary of James Melville, who left a record of his time at St Andrews University. This moment, snatched from history, underlies the fiction that is
Hue and Cry
. With the exception of King James and his retinue, the people in this book have had no previous lives.
St Andrews, Scotland
1579
In the privacy of that small room, blanched yellow in the candlelight, Nicholas spoke to the boy in his own tongue, no longer accusing but low and soft like a girl. It was a mistake perhaps, because Alexander’s eyes began to fill with tears. The kindness felt too clumsy and too intimate. He struggled to recover his authority.
‘We will talk more of this tomorrow. In the meantime, please try to apply yourself. Study your text for an hour or so more. We’ll go over the passage again.’
‘Won’t you just look at them?’ The boy spoke in Scots, so quietly that Nicholas took a moment to hear him. He did not look up as he spoke, but stared hopelessly down at the paper between his fumbling hands. Nicholas forced down the impulse to hurt him, to say something childishly spiteful in reply.
‘You would do better to spend more time with your books and less making verses, if you ever hope to matriculate. But yes, I will look at them when I return. Now read a little longer. And Alexander . . .’
Nicholas turned at the door, exasperation failing at the sight of the boy huddled miserably over his work in the guttering light, and spoke again, in Latin now, to mask the gentleness. ‘Alexander, take the blanket from the cot. The evenings are too chill to sit in your shirt. And remember to blow out the candle.’
The boy’s bright hair, he thought, was the only warmth in the sour and windowless room. It was a relief to escape down the narrow stair to the last of the late summer sun.
From the deck of the Dutch flieboat
Zeedraak
a young man looked out to shore. As the land unfurled before him like a map he began to feel less sick. For it was not the motion of the ship but the length of his absence that caused his soft belly to flutter and fall. The sight of the town reassured him. It looked as it had always done, fronted by the ramparts of its castle, etched on the horizon by the starkness of its rock. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the strip of land between the castle and the shore appeared to have diminished as it weathered the encroaching of the tide. And the cathedral, by the square-built tower and chapel of St Rule, had crumbled further into stone, allowing the sunlight to stream through its frame and illuminate the town that had grown up in its shade. Beyond, from east to west, were ranked the four main thoroughfares: the fair and leafy south street, with its colleges and kirk; the broad and bustling Mercatgait; the north street, with its college halls and chapel braced against the winds; the Swallowgait that opened on the Castlegait and cliffs, falling sheer into the water, sweeping west towards the links and eastwards to the harbour, where the shallow basin washed into the sea. These four streets converged on the cathedral, and with their rigs and gardens set the pattern of the town. Criss-crossed between them, from north to south, vennels, wynds and closes narrowed and made deep its inner life.
True to its name the flieboat had crossed the North Sea from Holland fiercely and swiftly and soon disgorged its contents in the sunlit bay. The young man, Hew Cullan, found little to detain him. Since he was no merchant he had nothing to declare. In fact he had nothing at all. He had travelled from France through Flanders to Campvere, where he was shown to one boat and his
belongings inexplicably were thrown upon another bound for Leith. He had only a purse of French coin and the fine suit of French clothes he stood up in, which now seemed unfit for the drab Scottish soil. He felt a pleasing lightness as he scrambled from the boat, coming back as a stranger to find his old faith with the town.
St Andrews was constructed on parallel streets within and between which its business took place. He climbed from the harbour through the sea gate to the pends that opened out upon the south street. Behind him stood the old cathedral and the priory vaults and cloisters where the merchants thronged on fair days, to the right the grand houses, some in mid-construction, where they pawned their wealth. On his left – and here he paused – were the college and the chapel of St Leonard. This was where, as a boy of fourteen, he had first entered the university to begin the education that had taken him to France. For four years he had worked and dreamt behind these quiet walls. Since it was September now, the gates were closed. The term would not begin for several weeks, and the present crop of students had not yet arrived to straggle obediently from college to kirk, from lecture to links, snaking through the town.
A little further up the street he passed the Kirk of Holy Trinity, turning sharply at its corner to the Mercatgait. Here stood the tolbooth, house of law and commerce, the marketplace with its rows of shops and luckenbooths, the ancient well, the mercat cross and tron. The cross and the tron, where butter was weighed, hid a more sinister side. Hew shivered as he passed. It was a short step from the tolbooth to this place of persecution, to the pillories and whipping posts where the sins of the people were exposed to public shame. It was in part his horror of such things that had deflected his purpose in the study of the law. The closer he came to its practice the more acutely he considered its effects. Today he was relieved to find there were no jeering crowds, no victims to be vilified and branded in the street. The marketplace was empty. It was now past six o’clock and there was little passing trade.
Somewhere above him he heard a door close. A thin man
dressed in scholar’s black hurried down a forestair and brushed past him, absently clutching his gown. Hew gave a wry smile. Once, and not so long ago, he had himself been so immersed, so preoccupied in study, he had failed to see the world. The stairway belonged to a shop, grander than most of those that flanked it and no doubt more recently built. Perhaps the scholar lodged above. Below was some sort of a workshop, at this late hour still open to the street. Intrigued, he looked inside.
The whitewashed walls were clean and the floor freshly swept. A row of new candles lit up the counter on which lay bolts of woollen cloth in varied natural shades of russet, ash and clay; blue-green and stiff grey Sunday plaids, lengths of woven leine flax and saffron-coloured shirtcloth. Behind lay rare imported wares on wooden shelves: slubbed silks and velvets, mohair, milk-white linens and Flanders lace in violet, primrose, straw and plunkett blue. And in the gloom beyond these riches were looms strung with yellow threads, skeins of dyed and undyed wool, a brace of spinsters’ stools, spindles, shuttles, fleeces, reels and pins. A solitary black-haired boy swept up the fallen threads.
‘Leave that the noo, Tom, and help load the cart!’ A squat, bearded man in scarlet hose bustled in from the back of the shop. His cloak was a soft tawny brown, napped like velvet, brooched and belted in mulberry silk. A gold-tasselled purse clinked from his sleeve. ‘We’ve an early start to market . . . ah, beg pardon, sir; I did not see you there.’
Hungrily, he gazed at Hew, who was trying to make a strategic retreat.
‘In point of fact we’re closed.’ He took in Hew’s clothes, the peascod coat and full round hose. ‘But if there’s something in the shop you care to see?’
‘No, not at all. Some other time.’
‘Oh, you
are
a Scot!’ Clearly this had proved a disappointment. But the merchant was quick to recover. ‘Though you’re evidently used to more outlandish fashions. French, I would hazard? You’re not from round here.’
‘Aye, I was once.’ Hew gave nothing away. He edged towards the door. ‘Since you’re closed, I will not keep you.’
The shopkeeper seemed torn between the wish to tempt his prey and his earlier concerns. The boy with the sweeping brush stood waiting patiently.
‘Well,’ he conceded, as Hew stepped outside, ‘you may call again on Monday. Or, sir, if you care to go to Crail, we are there all day tomorrow for the Sunday market. You see, we have very fine cloths.’
‘Thank you, I’ll think on it,’ Hew said politely.
‘I am not, you see,’ disconcertingly, the man had followed him into the street, ‘your common cottage woolman. In addition to the house and shop I have a sizeable flock on the outskirts of the town. My wife and daughter spin the wool for my looms and the looms themselves are seldom still. And my brother is a merchant, sir, a most ambitious man.’
At this point a young girl appeared, barefoot on the forestair, calling ‘Dadda! Mammie says she’s finished with the wools.’
She was prettily dressed in a pale greenish-grey, like rivulets of water from the burn. She tossed her curls appraisingly at Hew while her father adjusted the scope of his pride.
‘Ah, Isabel! My Tibbie! Bonny, is she not?’
But the woolman put his question to the wind, as Hew took the chance to escape. He hurried past the tron and out of sight. Moments later he was standing in the cookshop on the corner of the Fishergait and Castlegait, just as he remembered it.
‘It’s Saturday, so no hot meat. Will you leave your name?’
Hew found an old Scots merk at the bottom of his purse. ‘No, I’ll pay for it.’
His name still remained on the wall by the bar. He was reassured to find the system was unchanged: the same yellowed debts on thin scraps of paper, the same smell of onions and old gravy stains. Yet he preferred to stay a stranger for a while, allowing old sensations to come upon him slowly. He was not ready to go home. He ordered herrings fried in oatmeal and a stoup of ale, taking his cup out to sit in the courtyard, where half an empty
barrel had been set out as a stool. Presently the girl came with a plate of buttered oatcakes. ‘We’re full tonight with sailors. Did you want a room?’
Hew shook his head. He had recognised some of the crew from the
Zeedraak
, whose raucous shanties spilled into the street.
‘And yet you’re not from here?’ the lass persisted.
‘I lived here once. I have been gone a while.’
‘You’ll see some changes, then.’
Behind her he could see the castle and the cliffs sweeping to the sands, the gulls dipping out of the last of the sunlight. Reluctantly he answered: ‘One or two.’