Hue and Cry (38 page)

‘Aye, if a little
animated
.’

‘Excellent. It’s what I hoped. Though they are diligent enough they seem a little shy of me. It is to be expected. They must miss their regent.’

‘I employ you, that they may not miss him,’ Gilchrist answered curtly.

‘That is my intent.’

‘I cannot approve of the theme that you set,’ the principal
frowned. ‘“Does woman have a soul?” You know, of course, that that is spurious?’

‘For certain. It was just a trick to exercise their wits. I would have them more at ease with me. In truth, I have felt at a loss as to how to win their confidence. I have come to them so late, and am so inexperienced. Since you think ill of it, I do repent it,’ Hew excused himself humbly. ‘I am glad of your advice.’

‘Well then, we’ll let it pass. Your newness vindicates you. If you come up to my rooms tonight, I will show you a list of more proper arguments. But there is another matter I would raise with you, the case of Duncan Stewart.’

Hew nodded. ‘He does not come to lectures, sir. I am concerned for him.’

‘Yet you will not read them over, is that so?’

‘He has not asked me to.’

‘
I
am asking you. His father is in college and is anxious to have news of Duncan’s progress. You must make report. What will you say?’

‘I should say his progress would be greater if his father did not take him to the town, when he ought to be in college.’

‘Tsk, you must not say that.’

‘No, forgive me. I shall say that Duncan’s progress is as steady as expected, and we hope to see him triumph on the black stone in July. Then I shall entrust the bursars with his closer education. They will help him learn his themes. They’re clever boys. And for myself, I will come to him in the evenings and read over all the lectures he has missed.’

‘Good, that’s good,’ the principal smiled. ‘The father left a present of a longbow. Is the son proficient at the butts?’

Hew looked sceptical. ‘I had not noticed it.’

‘A pity, that’s a pity. It is to be encouraged, don’t you think? We have a competition here among the colleges that I had thought to formalise with the provision of a prize. I hoped he might subscribe to it. No matter, you must do your best. This evening
you will sup with me. We’ll go through the themes, and drink a little wine, for I have something else that I would put to you.’

‘I thank you, sir, you are too kind.’

The students were returning from their dinner and Hew had little time to think about the dyer’s wife. He spent the afternoon attending to their themes. At last, at six o’clock, his class was dismissed. He returned to St Salvator’s to dissect the case with Giles. But Giles Locke was absent from the college. He had not turned up to give the morning lecture, and had not been seen since breakfast. Anxiously, Hew cornered Paul.

‘Professor Locke was called away this morning,’ the servant reported. ‘Your sister sent a message. He has not returned.’

Hew’s first fears were for Meg. He cut through the close to the south street, pounding on the Fletts’ front door. The house stood locked and bolted with its usual dour contempt for all the street. He hammered with his fists until a servant opened up the shutters, grumbling, ‘Whisht, you’ll wake them!’

‘
Wake
them?’

‘Wait, I’ll let you through.’ She put her fingers to her lips, in a gesture of exaggerated patience, shuffling down the stairs to let him in. ‘Be quiet, sir. Ye’ll want the doctor. Here he is.’

Giles came down the stair, wiping his hands on a cloth. His cap sat awry and his shirt-cuffs were spattered with blood. Yet he was smiling.

‘Meg!’ Hew cried out in alarm.

‘For goodness sake, you’ll wake the dead! They’re all asleep!’ his sister answered, scolding. She stood behind him in the hall.

‘But what has happened?’ he stammered.

‘Well, I’m done here,’ Giles answered calmly. ‘Do try to make less noise, Hew. You may write to let your cousin know that he has two fine sons. Lusty and hale as ever I saw.’

‘
Two
sons?’

‘Aye, it was twins,’ confirmed Meg. ‘Poor Lucy, and we blamed the sugarplums! Robin will be proud!’

* * *

Robin Flett, returning home, proved to be ungrateful. The loud and lusty voices of his twins did little to dispel the storm. ‘I gave clear instruction that my wife must not have converse at the weaver’s house,’ he raged at Hew. ‘Now she speaks of nought but scandals. Worse, she writes to me that she has been with Agnes, and that Agnes Ford has killed her husband, if you please. Your sister, sir, has led her into this. She is no longer welcome in my house.’

‘My sister has been a good friend to her,’ objected Hew. ‘When your sons were born, she helped to save her life.’

‘Lucy says she is indifferent company. Before she lost her wits, she left my wife alone for hours.’

‘Meg has not lost her wits,’ Hew corrected him. ‘She has the falling sickness, as you know.’

‘The pair of you, deranged! As I had understood, the sickness was controlled. Now I find it has recurred, and far from bringing comfort to my wife, she turns a pregnant woman from her bed . . .’

‘It was Lucy’s choice to put her there.’

‘. . . has turned her from her bed and sought for comforts, while my wife herself has done without. Physicians calling daily! Without mention of the cost.’

‘There is no cost. It is a friend of mine.’

‘With no regard to Lucy’s feelings.’ Flett ignored him. ‘Therefore, she must leave. I have found a nursemaid in the town who will serve our purpose well. Return her to her father’s house, and say we were deceived in her.’

‘I see,’ Hew answered coldly. ‘Then will she take the monies that my father paid to keep her?’

Robin flushed. ‘Well, we were deceived in her. It was she that broke the contract. And the money has been spent.’

‘On the
Angel
, I presume,’ Hew confided privately to Meg. ‘In truth, I could not bear to see you in that house. And Father will be glad to have you home.’

‘As to that,’ she answered thoughtfully, ‘I may not return to him.’

‘How so?’ he teased. ‘He will not have you?’

‘I may have another home. My father will be welcome there. Doctor Locke has asked to marry me.’

‘Giles?’ he echoed, startled, ‘asked Father if he may
marry
you?’

‘No, Hew,’ she said tartly. ‘He asked
me
. He wishes me to help him in his practice. He thinks his days are numbered in the college.’

‘And you said yes? I thought that you disliked him?’

‘Did you, though?’ She smiled at him. ‘I wonder why.’

Meg was to be married from her father’s house. Hew returned on Sunday to collect her things. Lucy Linn was pleased to see him, all ill will forgotten in the light of her most recent acquisitions. The painter had returned at last, a little worse for wear, and had planted two stout cuckoos in the painted nest. Hew was admiring the fat twins, more from politeness than conviction, when Robin burst into the room, crying, ‘Scoundrel! Thief!’

‘What is it?’ Lucy begged him in alarm.

He glared at Hew as if he were responsible. ‘We shall be ruined!’

‘But what has happened?’

‘Gilbert Strachan,’ Robin spluttered.

‘Gilbert Strachan?’ echoed Hew. ‘Your friend?’

‘He is no friend of mine,’ his cousin answered rudely. ‘Aye, I’ll see him hanged. He took the
Angel
, Lucy! We are ruined!’

‘Peace, Robin, for you make no sense,’ she scolded. ‘The
Angel
’s safe in harbour. Gilbert’s overseas.’

‘Aye, he is
now
, in the
Angel
. He has stolen her.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ demanded Hew, ‘that Gilbert has returned to Scotland?’

‘Aye, man, don’t you listen? He came here last night. He came secretly, and falsely, and this morning went to the shipmaster and bought out his share. Can you believe, he paid him with
my
money, that I gave to buy
him
out, and has made off with her!’

‘It was my father’s money,’ muttered Hew.

Lucy asked shrewdly. ‘Has he taken Agnes?’

‘Agnes? Damn it, aye, he did! He has taken the
Angel
, that is the point! He sold his share to me, to buy the other third so that he might steal the whole! And the shipmaster swears that Strachan told him
I
had sold my share to
him
!’

‘I am confused,’ said Lucy. ‘Do not shout. You will disturb the babies.’

‘Disturb them? Don’t you understand? It’s them he robs. It is their future gone. Villain! Treachery!’

‘Hush, Robin, do. You’ll have another ship. Or Gilbert will return her. He will, won’t he, Hew?’

But Hew was staring in astonishment. ‘Agnes Ford was right. He did come back for her.’

As the news spread through the town, Hew approached the coroner. ‘Now that Agnes and Gilbert have fled,’ he petitioned, ‘will you not write to the justice clerk, and bid him drop the charge against Nicholas Colp?’

The man shook his head. ‘It is not as simple as that.’

‘Strachan killed the dyer. Dyer killed the boy. That much is simple.’

‘Aye, perhaps. I hear your plea,’ the coroner acknowledged. ‘But there are no witnesses.’

‘There is a twelve-year-old child, Dyer’s daughter, who could identify the man who killed her father.’

‘A child may not bear witness,’ the coroner said patiently.

‘If you dredge the Kinness Burn, you’ll find his velvet cloak. It’s thick with dye.’

‘And say we find the cloak, who swears it’s his?’

‘But still,’ persisted Hew, ‘unless Agnes and Strachan are to testify, there can be no case against Nicholas.

‘I allow they are defaulters. There are charges against them, and they are both denounced as rebels since they do not come to answer them. Agnes is indicted for the murder of her husband,
Strachan for assisting her escape. And Robin Flett has brought a charge of piracy, for the thieving of his ship. Even if they did compear, the court would disallow their evidence against him.’

‘Well then, drop the charge.’

‘If it were simply murder, then we might. There is a second charge against your friend, of sodomie.’

‘Of
sodomie
? How can there be witnesses to that? If Strachan is discounted . . .’

‘It was not Strachan who brought the charge.’

‘Who, then?’ Hew said, baffled.

‘It was James Gilchrist, principal of St Leonard’s College. He was most emphatic. There were letters and a gown set forth in evidence.’

‘Gilchrist? Aye, of course. Yet you must allow that he is not impartial in this case. You have heard him make allegations of the sort before, wild and importunate, and with as little substance. Will the justice not accept his wit’s impaired?’

‘I have seen him sorely distracted, as you say. I believe he bears a grudge. You and I know his evidence may well be skewed. Yet I doubt the justice clerk would see it in these terms. Gilchrist is a man of some importance in the town. Since he makes the charge, it must be heard.’

‘Then how shall we defend it? It’s his word against ours.’

‘You may not, sir. As you know, it lies to him to prove it, not to you to contradict it. The pity is, the boy is dead.’

In November came St Andrew’s Day, and the last market fair of the year. The harbour saw its last influx of ships before the sleet and ice storms closed its straits. Apples and onions and sacks full of grain were banked against famine like sand against floods. Hew gave his students leave and walked along the shore towards his father’s house. He had not meant to come so far. But the house stood reassuringly aloft among the trees, and in the great stone hearth the fire was lit. His father welcomed him.

‘We were not expecting you. But I am glad enough to have you here, God knows. Your sister’s making wedding plans, and sets my head a-buzzing with her endless inventories. She prates of nothing else but beds and bolsters, silver plate and counterpanes. Should she wear the green silk or the grey? Are there sufficient spices set by for the banquet? Will the Fletts be offensive and drink too much wine?’

‘The green, I think,’ reflected Hew. ‘That will set off the colour of her eyes. And there will be sufficient spice. And for the Fletts, that much is certain. They will be offensive, and will drink too much. You may tell her this, and let her mind be settled.’

‘There is no settling of her,’ Matthew grumbled. ‘I fear she wants her mother, and I am no good to her. Her prattle wears me thin. Had I known that marriage would reduce her wits to pottage then I should never have approved it.’

His grumbling hid a plain delight. His happiness and pride were clear to see.

‘Then Giles has been to see you?’ Hew deduced.

‘Aye, he has. They are to wed next summer, at the end of Whitsun term, for professors at the college are forbidden to take wives.’

‘That does not trouble most of them,’ his son remarked.

‘Aye, for sure. But your friend is a man of principle, who wants to do things properly. He is looking for a house where they may live in openness. And if there are objections then he means to leave his post. He has half a mind to anyway, he says.’

‘Aye,
half
a mind,’ grinned Hew. ‘You have him in a nutshell there. Still, if he resigns, then it will be their loss.’

‘He hopes to start a practice in the town,’ Matthew went on.

‘Aye, so I heard. Will you help him?’

‘He does not want my help. And I would not offend him. For all that he prevaricates . . .’

‘Ah, you noticed that,’ Hew put in dryly.

‘. . . For all he does prevaricate,’ his father smiled, ‘I think he knows his mind.’

Meg came in at that moment, with silks from the market. She shook out the ribbons for them to admire, and Matthew rolled his eyes.

‘You see, Hew? Quite addled!’ he muttered.

Hew remarked how well she looked. She laughed and kissed them both. ‘You’ll be sorry when I’m gone.’

‘I had thought to be rid of you once,’ Matthew retorted, ‘now here you are, both of you home again. Now since we are talking of ribands, and other such trifling expenses, you know, my dears, that I begrudge you nothing, and in general terms, you do not overspend. And yet I fear—’