The King's Corrodian (23 page)

‘In the
library
?’ Gil repeated in astonishment. ‘Why was I not woken?’

‘Aye,’ said Brother Dickon flatly. Across the table Alys was looking dismayed. ‘I’d ha woken you mysel, my son, but Faither Prior was determined I wouldny, said you’d hear all in the morning.’

‘And nobody heard anything?’ said Alys. ‘Noticed anything? When did it happen?’

Dickon shook his grizzled head.

‘He’s likely been lying there while all the tooraw about Faither Henry was going on. And how Brother Archie never thought to fetch me to that, I canny tell,’ he added.

Jennet set her spoon down in her porridge bowl and said, ‘Surely there’s a curse on this place. We ought to be getting hame, maister, it’s no a good idea to wait about here. We’ll all be murdered in our beds afore we go.’

‘I hope not, lass,’ said Brother Dickon.

‘Tell me again,’ said Gil. ‘Wilson was missed when?’

‘At Matins. He was out o his place, and after the Office Faither Prior sent to the infirmary to see if he was there, and when he wasny he set up a search. We were roused to help, and it was Archie and me found him in the library. Which by rights should ha been locked, save that our librarian says he lost the key a month ago.’

‘And he’d been stabbed,’ said Gil. ‘You were right, sweetheart,’ he said to Alys, ‘the knife is clearly not down the infirmary well.’

‘But how,’ said Alys in puzzlement, ‘how did he come to be there? Why would anyone meet another, alone in the dark, when there has been one death already? It makes no sense.’

‘He’s – he was a brawny fellow,’ said Gil. ‘It must ha been someone he trusted, to get close enough wi that knife. Assuming it’s the same knife.’

‘Aye,’ said Brother Dickon. ‘He’ll ha been stripped and washed by now, you’ll can get a look at the wound by daylight. But it’s no so like there’d be two knives at liberty about the house, it’s like to be the same one. And where was it hid when we searched the place last? I looked everywhere, desks and dorters and ahint the books in the library.’

‘You’ll have to show me where he lay,’ said Gil. ‘And I’ll need to see the body afore Chapter. Let me get my boots on.’

There was a lay servant on his knees with a bucket and scrubbing brush just inside the door of the library. Brother Dickon used an unsuitable expression under his breath, and hurried forward.

‘Gie’s a moment, Attie, lad,’ he said. ‘Maister Cunningham needs a look at the marks.’

‘It’s no lifting,’ said Attie, sitting back on his heels. ‘You can see it clear.’ He pointed. ‘Is this where he was stabbed, then, maister?’

‘It’s where he died, certain,’ said Dickon.

‘How was he lying?’ Gil asked. Dickon looked about him.

‘On his back, wi one arm out. You’ll see him, he’s set like that. As if he’d gone ower backwards, knocked that desk out the way, gone down off it.’

Gil studied the scene.

‘And the bloodstain? Under him when he was lifted?’

‘Aye, it must ha soaked into his cloak and then into the wood.’

‘So he’d ha been standing here,’ Gil moved into position, ‘just within the door at any road, and was stabbed – where?’

Dickon put out a broad hand, the fingers stiffened, and prodded Gil in the breastbone.

‘Got him in the heart this time. I reckon he didny die immediate – there was blood at his mouth and plenty soaked into his clothes, but it would ha been quick.’ He pulled a face. ‘We’ll need to move the furniture; naeb’dy’s going to want to stand here to study.’

‘Right,’ said Gil, and stepped back. ‘I want a look at him now, and then I suppose it’s Chapter. You can carry on,’ he said to Attie, who had been listening avidly.

The murdered man was laid out in the little house between Pollock’s and the makeshift infirmary, candles burning at his head and feet and two of his brothers in religion kneeling beside him with their beads. Gil, wondering briefly what had happened to the remains of Leonard Pollock, drew back the linen sheet to uncover Thomas Wilson, washed and stretched on a board in the attitude in which he had died, a narrow wound over his breastbone. His eyes were open, an expression of astonishment on his face, as if he felt so small a gash in his flesh should not have been wide enough for his life to escape by.

Hunting about, Gil found several straw mattresses rolled in a corner of the inner chamber. Drawing out a length of straw he inserted it carefully into the wound, and found it nearly a palm’s-breadth deep.

‘Likely nicked the heart, or one o the big vessels next it,’ Brother Dickon said. ‘He’d no last long once it happened, even if there had been help at hand.’

‘This is an expert blow,’ said Gil. ‘Someone kent what he was doing.’

‘I thought that,’ said Dickon. ‘Same’s Andrew Rattray, though if you’ve killt a pig or two you can cut a throat.’

‘No other marks on him?’ Gil was feeling the skull, checking the arms and hands. ‘Help me roll him till I see his back.’

‘No marks that Archie mentioned,’ said Brother Dickon, obliging. ‘He said, it looked as if he’d been taken by surprise.’

‘Like Faither Henry,’ said Gil, setting the body back as he had first seen it. ‘And the boy Rattray was sound asleep, I’d ha said. It’s been nobody he saw as an enemy.’

‘Aye,’ said Dickon. ‘It’s an internal matter, right enough.’ He drew the linen over Wilson’s surprised face and turned to leave the chamber. ‘Doesny seem right, leaving him staring like that, but we’ll no get his een closed till he softens.’

‘So he was well stiffened when he was found,’ Gil stated.

‘Oh, aye. The most o him was set solid, though his legs was still limber. He wasny that cold, either.’

‘Is that so?’ said Gil.

When they emerged from the slype, such members of the community as were not engaged in praying over the dead or caring for the injured could be seen filing quietly into the Chapter House on the far side of the cloister. Following them, Gil found the chamber already nearly full, but young Brother Martin was lying in wait, bowed politely and led him in silence to a stool near the great chair which awaited Prior Boyd.

He sat quietly, watching the friars gathering in their silence under the vaulted roof, observing how companionship and sympathy of thought could be expressed without word or gesture simply by the angle of head or shoulders, the turn of the neck. The brothers took their seats on the wall-bench, the novices stood in one corner near the door, the outdoor lay brothers in the other. The librarian sat isolated in the midst of the crowd, every face turned away from him. The first-year novices might as well have been leashed together like hunting dogs, looking about them but moving as a tight group.

The great door swung open again, the subprior entered, all rose and David Boyd paced in, the length of the chamber, and nodded to Gil. Turning to face his flock, he raised a hand and pronounced, ‘
In nomine Domini
.’

All responded with
Amen
, and they sat down with a ru? e and hush of heavy woollen fabric, a shuffle of booted feet. The Prior held out a hand and the subprior set a book into it; opening it at the marker Boyd said in Scots, ‘I’ll no read from the next chapter following yesterday’s reading. This is more apposite to our case.’

Gil, seated beside him, could see the round Latin script and the painted decorations on the page, simple curlicues and the occasional leaf, but found he was listening to a clear, confident Scots version.

‘Hae nane disputes, but if ony should arise, bring them to ane speedy end, lest anger grow into hatred, the mote into the beam, and your saul into a murderer’s. For he that hates his brother is ane cut-throat, ane slayer.’ The Prior paused to clear his throat. ‘If ye hae injured another …’ he continued.

The excerpt from Augustine’s Rule was lengthy. Gil, watching the faces as the rich Scots washed over them, could not feel it was reaching its target. Raitts sat solitary, shivering from time to time; the outdoor men with Brother Dickon in their midst stood at grim attention near the door; the novices in another group all seemed to be hanging attentively on the Prior’s words. Other faces were serious, anxious, dismayed; a few men were watching Gil, glancing away as he looked at them.

The Prior, having reached the end of his chapter, offered a prayer for guidance and protection in troubled times, sat back and considered his audience.

‘Likely you’ll all ken by now,’ he said, ‘that disaster has visited us again. Our brother Thomas Wilson was found this morning, cruelly done to death in the library. Afore that, our brother Henry White was stabbed. One o our number has sinned grievously against the whole community. We’ll ha to call in the Sheriff, but afore that Maister Cunningham, that has practice in sic matters, will help us order our thochts and maybe find the sinner in our own way, rather than give any brother ower to the Sheriff’s questioning. If Maister Cunningham asks a question and any o ye has an answer, he’s to raise his hand, and I’ll call on him to speak. Understood?’

Not the introduction I’d have wished, Gil thought, and leaned forward.

‘
Let him not imagine that his sin will pass unnoticed
,’ he quoted, using the original Latin. ‘
He will surely be seen, and by those he thinks not of.
’

A small stir of surprise went round the chamber: laymen did not usually have knowledge of the Rule. No need to mention that he had just read that sentence in the copy held by the Prior. Gil glanced from face to face and said carefully, ‘Right now, we canny tell just what happened. But each of you kens some wee bit of the picture, and if we put them all thegither we can learn more, and maybe enough, as Faither Prior has said, to save one o the community from torture.’ He paused, but nobody spoke. Well, they were still under an order of silence. ‘Think back to the end of Compline last night. It’s my understanding that you go from Compline straight to your beds, is that correct?’

‘It is,’ said David Boyd beside him.

‘At that point, was anyone out o his place? Does anyone recall noticing a gap where one o the brethren should ha been?’

There was a certain amount of shuffling, of looking from side to side, of shaking of heads. One of the lay brothers raised a hand.

‘Brother Archie,’ said the Prior.

‘Me and Brother George was helping in the infirmary,’ said Brother Archie diffidently. In the other corner of the chamber Brother George nodded agreement.

‘So you wereny in your bed, but you were in your place,’ said Gil. ‘Anyone else?’ Nobody else stirred, so he went on, ‘The next thing to happen, I think, was someone knocking at the gates demanding to see Faither Prior. Who was porter last night?’

Another of the lay brothers raised his hand.

‘Brother Jamesie,’ said the Prior.

‘It was me,’ said Brother Jamesie, ‘and what I did was, I let her into the yard wi her folk, seeing she wouldny take No for an answer and kept shouting at me, and I went through the slype and up the dorter to wake Faither, and he said he’d come out to the guest hall and to ask Maister Cunningham if he’d be present, and when I’d done that I went back to the lay dorter to wait in the warm till she’d to be let out the place.’

‘And she left in due time?’ said Gil.

‘Aye, she did, and a face like a skelped arse on her and all. I’m right sorry for her servants, so I am.’

‘Jamesie,’ said the Prior in reproof. Brother Jamesie bowed and muttered something apologetic.

‘While Mistress Trabboch was in the guest hall,’ Gil continued, ‘I think Brother Archie and Brother Robert Aikman,’ the two looked up from the midst of their respective groups, ‘crossed the guest-hall yard from the new infirmary and came through the slype into the cloister here. Were Mistress Trabboch’s horses still in the yard?’

‘Aye, they were,’ contributed Archie, ‘for one o them let fly a kick at me. We went through the slype, see, intending to go and waken Faither, since we didny ken he was a’ready awake, and just by the library door we cam upon our librarian bending ower Faither Henry—’

‘We didny ken it was Faither Henry,’ said Aikman. ‘He was bent ower something on the ground, and when he seen us he ran, so I ran after him and I brought him down, and Archie said, here was Faither Henry and he was deid, and Brother Sandy was shouting at us and we was shouting back, which brought Andrew Jackson and Patey Simpson both out the church where they were praying for Andrew Rattray, and they joined in and that fetched a good few folk out the dorter, and—’

‘Stop there,’ Gil said. ‘Now, we ken Henry White isny dead. When did he rise from his bed? Does anyone mind seeing him? Did he go to bed after Compline, or did he wait up?’

There was an expectant hush, with heads turning to see if anyone had any knowledge.

After a few moments Raitts straightened up, looked about him, and said dully, ‘I saw him go past my cell.’

‘When was that?’ Gil asked, taking this in.

‘Once all was asleep?’ said Raitts vaguely. ‘I canny mind. I was – I was thinking.’

One or two of the friars stirred restlessly, as if they would have made an immediate accusation.

Gil said, ‘When did you leave the dorter?’

‘Maybe an hour after Henry?’ said Raitts after another pause. ‘Maybe longer, I canny mind. Thomas went down and all,’ he added.

‘Afore or after Henry White?’ Gil asked.

‘Afore,’ said Raitts on reflection.

‘Was this afore or after Jamesie came to wake your Prior?’

‘Oh, long afore it,’ said Raitts, suddenly quite clear about something. ‘And when I heard Jamesie name Agnes Trabboch I thought a bit longer and then I went down and all.’ He caught himself up, looked about in alarm, and went on hastily, ‘To hide, you ken, for that there shouldny be women in the place. Two dwelling in the guest hall’s bad enough, at least those two’s civil and shamefast,’
I must repeat that to Alys
, Gil thought, ‘but more o them demanding to come in at sic an hour o the night, it’s no right at all. I thought I would hide in the library, but I fell ower something by the door, and I was just seeing what it was when these two cam out the slype and shouted at me. So I ran, in case it was that woman, and there was no need for knocking me down,’ he ended with resentment.