Hue and Cry (4 page)

He hardly seemed to notice what he was doing as he slipped the packet of letters into the folds of his clothes.

Agnes was nodding. ‘He looks after him well. It irritates Archie. He never felt that he deserved . . .’

Her words trailed away as Nicholas went on, ‘I wonder if he took his cloak?’

Nicholas looked pale and grey in his shirt. He appeared to be shaking, from sickness or fear. ‘Are you ill?’ Hew asked again. But Nicholas seemed not to hear.

‘May I look in the kist?’ Without waiting for an answer, Nicholas lifted the lid of the dark oak chest where Alexander kept his clothes. Carefully he lifted out the contents and laid them one by one on the bed. Alexander had been well provided for with saffron yellow shirts, new and freshly dyed, dark velvet doublets and good leather shoes, a blue winter bonnet, caps and gloves and a length of blanket plaid. His cloak, a dark-green mantle cloth, had fallen on the floor. It lay crumpled by the bed, the only thing disturbed in the neatness of the room. Hew picked it up.

‘Was this his?’

Agnes nodded. ‘But he likes to go about without it, as boys will. I don’t think he has much else.’

Nicholas had lifted out a little bundle from the bottom of the chest and placed it on the cot, where together they looked over the contents. It was a poignant collection: a couple of pieces of
oddly shaped driftwood, childishly fashioned to form a crude boat, a handful of pebbles, smooth from the sea, a carved wooden whistle and a tiny painted horse, together with a purse of gold and silver coin. Nicholas picked this up and weighed it in his palm. It was a while before he spoke.

‘He has not run away,’ he concluded bleakly. ‘Here are all his things. It almost looks as if . . .’ He closed his eyes and whispered, ‘
Let it not be that.
’

Archibald Strachan, revived by his supper of barley and potherbs, sipped a cleansing cup of red wine as he stirred the embers of the fire. ‘Mark my words, Colp, he’ll have run away to sea. We won’t be seeing him again. I’ll have word sent to my brother in Perth and you can explain to Gilbert why you chose to be so hard on him that he’d rather be a cabin boy than pass into the university.’

‘Hush, Archie,’ Agnes interjected. ‘No, you know he wasn’t hard on him. And we’ve no reason to think he’s gone to sea. You know he likes to walk upon the sands. No doubt he has forgot the time, and will be back by dark.’

‘Did you beat him, sir?’ cried Nicholas. Hew heard his voice rise hysterically high. He put out his hand to steady him. It was fear, no doubt. The castle cliffs were treacherous. A boy had fallen to his death in their first year at St Andrews. Hew had watched the parents arrive at the college to take home their dead son, just five weeks into the new term.

‘Words, we had words, sir,’ the weaver said smoothly. ‘My brother wants him to do well, but for some reason bade me never raise a hand to him. It was
you
, sir, that did break his heart, and telt him that he would not make a scholar, and ye would not have him at your university.’

‘I said none of that,’ Nicholas protested, ‘only at thirteen, he is still too young.’

‘It’s all the same,’ the weaver said morosely, ‘for the lad has gone.’

Before Nicholas could answer, the apprentice boy Tom came
running in from the workshop below, stammering out to his mistress, ‘I cannot find that bolt of cloth we finished yesterday, the sea-blue wool. I wondered had you moved it? Will you help me look?’

‘Oh Tom, do not fuss,’ Agnes scolded. ‘I swear I can’t help you. I have not been down to the shop.’

‘Please, mistress,’ the boy whispered wretchedly. He glanced fearfully at Strachan. ‘For if I cannot find it . . .’

‘What can’t ye find?’ Strachan purred dangerously.

‘Whisht,’ Agnes softened. ‘Whisht, let us look.’ She reached for the lamp. ‘Help us, will you, gentlemen? It will be dark below. She held out her hands to Hew, as if in supplication, holding out the light. Both of you, bring candles.’

Agnes looked pale. Hew took up the lamp and followed her, with Nicholas behind. It seemed the place unnerved her. No doubt there were rats. Together, they searched the back of the shop. Tom kept house effectively. The finished bolts of cloth were neatly racked or folded, the combs and cards were stacked against the walls. It seemed to Hew unlikely that anything here could go astray. The place was all too carefully ordered. Each bolt, each carded nap and scrap of thread, pretentiously fluffed and plumped, was held to account. Nonetheless he made a show of looking around him. There was little enough to see. In the rushlight the struts of the loom cast branching shadows on the walls. Like childhood puppetry, they made him ill at ease and fearful. He thought they sketched a plough, a tree, a gallows, then a gate. But there was nothing. Spindles, puppets, fire and shadows. Noise from the street and rooms above came dulled to him in the darkness. Archie Strachan maybe ranged his chair across the floor and called to Tibbie for a stoup of wine to fill his cup, or Alexander’s footsteps crossed the cobblestones, coming home at last.

He became aware of Agnes by his side clutching her shawl around her shoulders. Did she feel it too, the sudden aching chill that gripped his bowels? She let her hand rest on his arm, as if to draw strength in the darkness. Then came her voice, unexpectedly
clear: ‘I haven’t touched anything in here, Tom. Are you sure that’s where you left it?’

‘Aye.’ The boy looked sullenly at her. ‘Mebbe Alexander took it. They’re both gone, aren’t they?’

‘What would Alexander want with it?’

‘What’s that over there at the back?’ Nicholas had picked up a lamp. He motioned towards a dark outline in the shadows against the far wall.

‘The closet? It pulls down into a bed,’ answered Agnes. ‘Tom lies there for warmth in the winter months. In summer he prefers to sleep beneath the counter.’

‘I’ve my workday clothes in there, sir, nothing more,’ Tom put in defensively. But Nicholas had made his way to the back of the room. He held up the light to the cupboard, and in its glare the others glimpsed a fragment of grey-blue cloth between the doors. Nicholas spoke bleakly, ‘The doors are fast, Thomas, help me.’ Together they tugged until the closet flew open, and out tumbled a bundle of soft sea-blue wool. Tom flushed, beginning to stammer, but Nicholas interrupted, ‘No, Tom, mistress, go back.’

Nicholas’ voice was low and cold. He had caught the bolt in his arms as it fell. He seemed to fall back with the weight of it, and now he moved very slowly and wearily. He laid the cloth on the ground and knelt stiffly down in front of it. He had placed the lamp beside him on the floor, and Hew, standing a little behind him, saw blood leach from his thigh as he began to open out the cloth. The plaid appeared mottled in the lamplight and at first Hew did not understand the layers unfolding. He saw but did not comprehend the strangeness of the patterning, a circle of bright flame above the drab storm-blue. He saw Nicholas unfold and gather in his arms a boy with ashen skin and flame-red hair. He saw him hold him there and touch his face, and stare down uncomprehending at his own hand bright with blood. And as Nicholas stared he let the boy’s head drop so that Hew saw the splinter of bone, a ragged streak of pink beneath the hair.

After Alexander’s death St Leonard’s College closed its doors and Hew did not see Nicholas again for several days. Even Giles was unable to penetrate, for the college had closed in on itself, pulling in its horns like a snail inside a shell. Gilchrist responded to all whiff of scandal by holding his breath and turning his back to the world. Hew was called to the courtroom to make his report, where he established himself as a credible witness. The coroner advised him to remain in St Andrews until Gilbert Strachan had arrived and their statements could be sworn. It was clear he had no explanation for the crime. The murder of a child that had survived the storms of infancy was rare and cruel.

And so Hew was left without purpose, to renew his old acquaintance with the town. He walked the empty cloisters of the college to the once-familiar peal of Katherine’s bell, and wandered through the vennels and the lanes. In search of solitude, he did not frequent the streets. He found himself exploring long-forgotten paths, across the windswept golf links to the Eden estuary, or on the cliff tops of the Swallowgait, gazing out to sea. He traced the course of the Kinness Burn down to the harbour and to the east sands, and wandered through the caves beneath the castle rock. Where the sea was wild, he took solace in the waves. When he grew tired, he read in Giles Locke’s tower. In the evenings they drank claret and discussed philosophy. Once he stopped to watch the fishermen unloading their catch, until a dead fish tumbling from the nets brought the boy to mind so vividly he vomited, a thin spray that soaked his boots and caused the fisherman to stare and curse at him. Ashamed, he did not mention it to Giles. He climbed towards the castle, high upon the cliffs, and saw the fortress open and unfold its inner life. A clutch of boats were beached on the
foreshore, and he watched a small procession turning through the gate that barred it from the sea. In the sunlight it displayed its workings like the glinting gears inside a clock; crates and kegs and vats of wine went winding up the steps, while sentries marked the process from the tower. The death of a boy, like a trough in the sand, made no impression here. He turned into the grounds of the cathedral. Already its walls had begun to decay, and the vaults of the pilgrims were quarried for stone. The hopeless courage of their ancient histories could not make sense of that small death, or overwhelm its poignancy for Hew. Centuries of magnitude and loss, antiquity itself, could not displace the image of the bruised and broken boy. Agnes, when she understood at last, had been inconsolable. Whatever she had feared most, in her worst imaginings, it had not been that. In the shrieking of the seabirds in the bay he heard her cry. Nothing in the vast and onward rush of tide threw back into perspective that one small and circling grief.

On the third day, Hew sensed a sea change. Returning to the harbour, he discovered that the ships were in, and his trunk and saddlebags were waiting in the customs house. The quayside thronged with merchants, all the noise and business of an international port, and he saw a channel open to the world, lost and found again amidst the dust and sunshine. The return of his possessions restored his sense of purpose. He felt a sudden longing to go home. He took the saddlebags to Giles Locke’s turret room, where he changed into black satin peascod and hose, embroidered with fine silver thread. Thus fortified, he set off to the marketplace to purchase a flagon of whisky for Giles. He drank a stoup of watered ale and downed a rather dubious pie, receiving little change for his gold crown. Then he called in at the Mercatgait stables to arrange the carriage of his trunk. He felt recklessly light and refreshed.

‘Do you know of a merchant will change my French coin?’ he enquired of the man.

The ostler looked interested. ‘How much do you have?’

‘About three hundred livres, in crowns. Nothing small.’

‘Ah, then that’s the trouble,’ said the ostler sympathetically. ‘That much is hard to change. Now here at the inn, all currency is sound to us – your French ecus, your Dutch, your
English
even’ – he spat superstitiously into the straw – ‘all is sterling here. But still I could not change so large a sum.’

‘Are Scots pounds worth so little now?’

The ostler tutted. ‘Falling all the time. Still, your crowns are good.’

‘Except I can’t get change for them,’ Hew observed ruefully.

‘I see your point. But I’m afraid I cannot help you there. Unless . . .’

‘Aye, then, what?’ persisted Hew.

‘Unless of course, you want to buy a horse. Then I could do you a deal and throw in a purse of Scots coin on the side. A man that’s come from France will likely want a horse. It happens that I have one that I don’t know what to do with, for he is too rare and brave to put out to hire. I had him from a gentleman, in payment of a debt, and he was loath to part with him, and he is called Dun Scottis. The horse,’ he clarified, ‘and not the gentleman.’

‘What, Duns Scotus, like the schoolman?’ Hew smiled. ‘Then he must be a subtle and ingenious horse.’

‘Most subtle and ingenious indeed. A most prodigious horse. Come, sir, come and look at him. Do not say yay or nay until you’ve seen him, now.’

It had not occurred to Hew, before the man suggested it, that he required a horse, and yet the thought immediately appealed to him. Though he could ride tolerably well, he had never possessed a mount of his own. As a student in St Andrews he had little need of one. In Paris he had hired a horse and wagon as required. Now the thought of riding home in his peascod coat and slops upon a brave new saddle horse was almost irresistible. The ostler broke into his reverie.

‘Here he is. Dun is his colour, and Scottis for you know he is a Scots-bred horse, though I don’t remember that gentleman’s name. His mother was a Highland pony, stout and sure-footed as
ever you saw, but his father was an Arab courser, fierce and swift and proud.’

Hew was a little disappointed. In his mind’s eye he had seen a white horse or a grey, or a black with a blaze to set off his clothes. The horse that stared back was a mud-puddle brown.

‘So if you want a courser, sir,’ the ostler rambled on, ‘Dun Scottis is your horse. But if you want an ambler, sir, Dun Scottis is your horse. But if you want to trot him, sir, or rack or leap or gallop him . . .’

‘Dun Scottis is your horse?’ Hew ventured humorously.

‘I see you have his measure, sir,’ the ostler smiled. ‘Look, he seems to like you. It is by no means common that he takes to you so well. In truth, I am amazed by it, for he is a gentleman’s horse, and of a nervous temperament. Often have I seen him shake his ears at strangers. It’s almost like he knows you! Here, give him some bread.’

Hew broke off a crumb of the coarse loaf of horsebread, and held it out to the dun-coloured horse. The animal received it with shy solemn grace, flashing a fine set of teeth. Its back was sleek and broad.