The King's Corrodian (4 page)

‘Good dog,’ Alys said shakily. ‘Clever dog.’ Socrates gave her a considering glance, then grinned, his teeth white in the flickering light.

‘It’s his shoe, all right,’ said Dickon. ‘Seen ’em often enough. But where’s the rest o him? If he’s been carried away wi the Deil right enough, why leave his foot ahint?’

‘I think this heap of ashes must be him,’ said Gil. Then: ‘Bear up, sweetheart. Do you want to go outside? Aye, he’s here, I’m afraid.’

The two lay brothers crossed themselves simultaneously, staring. Alys stepped back, away from the grey tumble of cinders, and reached for her beads.

‘Christ on a handcart,’ said Brother Dickon reverently.

‘But what,’ Dod swallowed, ‘here, I’ve seen folk that was burned to death. It’s no, it’s no a bonnie sight, but there’s a corp to be seen, no a heap o— a heap o ash like a bonfire. How come he’s burned to a cinder and the house still standing round him?’

‘That,’ said Gil grimly, ‘is what I mean to find out.’

‘But how could it happen, mem?’ demanded Jennet.

All the servants were agog, hanging on every word of the narrative which their master and mistress provided over the stewed kale and stockfish in pepper sauce.

The meal had appeared almost as soon as they emerged from the corrodian’s lodging, but that was some time after their unpleasant discovery. Brother Dickon, recovering his self-assurance, had sent his junior for ‘a wee brush, a couple shovels, a fair linen cloth out the sacristy and a good stout box’. When Brother Dod returned, the two lay brothers had set about lifting the heap of crumbling, flaking fragments with care, meantime muttering the
Ave Maria
interspersed with curt instructions. Gil looked anxiously at Alys, but she had retired to the doorway where the dog was leaning heavily against her knee, so he hunkered down to join the two men at their charitable task. It was he who found the several lumps of metal buried in the pile, small twisted things which glinted brassily when he rubbed the black deposit off, and a larger knot of dark iron.

‘Well, well,’ said Brother Dickon, cautiously sitting back on his heels, peering over his shoulder at the objects. ‘Belt-findings, likely. And could yon be the missing key, d’ye think, maister?’

‘I’d forgotten about that.’ Gil turned the misshapen object. ‘It’s the right weight, certainly. But what a heat the fire must ha been, to melt iron like that.’

‘Aye.’ Dickon tipped another shovel-full of fragments into the box, and reached across the patch of ashes to lift another small object. ‘How about this? A finger, maybe?’

Gil drew the candles closer.

‘Aye,’ he agreed, ‘or from the other foot. Is there more of it?’

‘Canny see any.’ Dickon set the fine bone in the box beside the shoe with its gruesome content, and turned back to coax more crumbling scraps from the same area onto the shovel. ‘No, I see no more, though there’s a few teeth here. Brother Dod, easy wi that brush, I’ve no wish to swally Leonard Pollock’s mortal remains.’

‘Will we need to tell Faither Prior?’ Dod wondered. ‘And ring the passing-bell?’

‘A course we need to tell him, daftheid!’ said Dickon. ‘The bell can wait, mind you, it’s waited long enough a’ready, no to mention the proper prayers. But what exercises my mind,’ he said to Gil, ‘is where this is to lie till we get word to the Prior.’ Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘See, if it was the Deil indeed struck the man wi fire, then it’s hardly fit for him to lie in the kirk. Faither Prior’s the one to decide on that.’

‘You could leave him here meantime,’ said Alys, from the doorway. ‘There are lights already, after all. Maybe the outer chamber would be better.’

‘A good thought, mistress. And we’ll ha two o the lads to watch,’ said Brother Dickon, ‘for either way prayers’ll no hurt the matter. They can get their bite o supper after.’

‘But also, brother,’ she went on, ‘if there’s to be any prayers said, you need to get a mat or the like, to protect the friars’ habits when they kneel. This greasy floor …’

‘Aye,’ said Dickon thoughtfully, looking down at his own knees. ‘I’ll tell you, mistress, my boots hasny squeaked since the day we entered this lodging. Swimming in lard, it was.’

‘Was it set cold?’ she asked, rubbing her toe on the broad boards nearest her. ‘Or did it still run?’

‘Atwixt and atween. It’s soaked well in by now.’

By the time they had contained the inseparable ashes of Leonard Pollock and his great chair, and set the box decently on a stool with the linen cloth to cover it, the little bell had begun ringing again and the members of the community were gathering from study and from daily tasks to wash hands before the evening collation, making their way half-seen in the twilight in their white habits and black cloaks, with sidelong glances at the fateful lodging. The meal, Gil knew, would be followed directly by Compline, which was begun in the refectory and ended in the priory church. He also knew that little or nothing was permitted to interrupt Compline. Informing Father Prior, he reckoned, would have to wait until afterwards.

The guests were not expected to attend the service, it seemed. A lay servant had carried in the dishes and helped to set up the table by the fire in one of the smaller chambers, promising to return later for the crocks. He was accompanied by the kitchen cat, a large black animal with a white bib and paws, who leaped onto a windowsill to inspect them all from a safe distance, established that Socrates knew how to be polite to cats, then sauntered impudently off when Gil called the dog to heel.

The accommodation which they had been allowed was more comfortable than Gil had expected, now that their servants, who numbered three house-servants and two grooms borrowed from Gil’s uncle Canon Cunningham for the journey, had spent some time re arranging the sparse furniture and kindling the fire. Gil had still not worked out how they would arrange themselves for sleep; Jennet could hardly lie in the same chamber as the men. Perhaps Alys had the answer, he decided.

‘How was the whole wee house no burned down?’ Jennet went on now, mopping pepper sauce from her platter with a piece of hard bread. ‘It makes no sense, unless it truly was the Deil carried him off.’

‘Was it no one of the novices set fire to him?’ asked Nory, Gil’s body-servant. He was a skinny fellow in his forties, very neat in the suit of clothes he had had as a New Year’s gift; he had been in Gil’s service for four months or so and promised well. ‘The lad ’at brought our dinner was saying they’ve one of the novices locked away, for that he confessed to killing the man. No that it’s any great loss, he says,’ he added primly. ‘Seems he wasny well liked.’

‘Aye, but the lodging was locked tight against thieves,’ said Tam, one of Canon Cunningham’s grooms. ‘So how did he get in to set fire to the man?’

‘And how will the poor fellow be rising from his grave at the Last Day, all burned to ashes as he is?’ wondered the Ersche gallowglass.

‘With God all things are possible, Euan,’ said Alys.

‘Aye, mistress,’ agreed Euan, his long narrow face ser ious, ‘but God will be having a lot to see to on that day. Maybe He’ll no be bothered wi one man’s troubles.’

‘Aye, but if it was the Deil struck him down,’ said the other groom, a wiry man called Dandy, ‘then likely he’s in the Bad Place a’ready and no need of judgement or rising up.’

Euan considered this doubtfully, and Gil broke off another piece of bread and dipped it in the sauce-dish.

‘Did the fellow say aught else about the dead man, Nory?’ he asked.

‘Why, only that. He’d ha said more, I think,’ Nory admitted, ‘but their cook called him fro the kitchens, and he’d to go.’

‘See what you can get from him later,’ Gil suggested. ‘I can learn little enough about Pollock from the friars. I think they’re reluctant to speak ill o the dead, and there seems to be little good to say o him.’

‘Will I be talking to the man and all?’ said Euan hopefully.

‘No, I’ve another task for you, though it will have to wait for the morning now.’ Gil cast his mind back to the last time he had been in this guest hall. Out in the great chamber, its high ceiling now filled with shadows, then bright with summer sunlight, the elderly Infirmarer had tended to Tam and another groom while his assistant knelt over a dying man. ‘The sub-infirmarer’s an Ersche speaker, by what I recall. I want you to get a word wi him and any other Erschemen there might be about the convent, learn what you can about the dead man and about what’s going on.’

‘Och, yes,’ said Euan with enthusiasm. ‘I can be doing that. Never fear, Maister Gil, I’ll get anything there is to be kent from them.’

‘So what’s to do the night?’ asked Jennet. ‘Is there tasks for us, or do we sit about the fire and tell pilgrim tales, the way my auntie said they did when she went to St Andrews?’

‘The pilgrim tales, I think,’ said Gil, ‘but don’t stay up too late. I’ll try and get a word wi the Prior once he comes from Compline, unless he goes straight to his rest. They’ll be up again after midnight to sing Matins and Lauds, after all.’

‘Where does he sleep?’ Alys asked. ‘There was hardly room in that study, and I saw no door to another chamber. Does he have his own lodging?’

‘He’ll sleep in the dorter wi the rest,’ Gil said, recalling his one sight of a Dominican’s cell. ‘It’s a great long chamber, wi a row of beds at one end for the novices and the younger brethren, and the other end partitioned into spaces just big enough for a bed, two stools and a table, so the older men have a place to study. A Dominican Prior keeps no great state, even in a house like this.’

‘Well, if you do get a word wi him, maister,’ said Nory, ‘I’ll wager he’ll no sleep much after he hears you. It’s a troubling tale.’

Prior Boyd’s reaction was much the same, though his reasons were a little different.

‘You are certain the body was entirely consumed to ashes?’ he said in his elegant Latin, and answered himself. ‘Indeed, you would not say so if it were otherwise. This gives the matter quite another complexion.’ He rose and took a jerky turn about his study. ‘By what means could a fire be set inside a locked house – indeed, a locked chamber within a locked house – and such a fire, at that, a fire which consumed only the man’s body and not the furnishings and hangings of the chamber, let alone the other timbers of the house. By what means, Gilbert?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Nor I. But I fear the answer, truly.’ Another turn about the room. ‘I think we have to face it, nevertheless. Either it was the Devil carried the man’s soul away, setting fire to his body, or it was,’ he swallowed, ‘witchcraft. And such witchcraft as speaks a practised witch, long sunk in evil.’

‘Or it happened by some mortal means,’ said Gil. ‘As I implied before, I should prefer to consider either of these answers only if I can prove no other method.’

His kinsman studied him closely in the candlelight, and seemed to relax slightly.

‘Aye. That is a better approach. How will you set about your inquiry?’

‘I need to gather information, by questioning many people.’ Gil ticked off the list on his fingers. ‘The other persons present when the lodging was opened. Those members of the community who had dealings with Pollock. A list of all the brethren would be valuable for that. The knight of Perth who saw something that night. The man you have confined because he confessed to the deed.’ He paused, watching the Prior. His kinsman bent his head so that the shadow of his cowl hid his face.

‘Aye, you must. I see that.’

‘And yourself, sir.’ Another pause. ‘Perhaps we could begin,’ he pursued carefully, ‘by discussing Pollock himself. How long had he been lodged here? Was he a valued guest? Did he take a part in the life of the community?’

‘All our guests are valued,’ Boyd reproved. Gil waited. The Prior seated himself, and said at length, ‘His corrody originated from the late King – from James Third. I suppose it was erected in ’82 or thereby, to a good value.’

‘Of which I believe he calculated every penny that was spent on him,’ Gil said.

‘Every farthing,’ the Prior corrected, without expression. ‘The man took some part in our daily life, by walking about and talking to the servants at their work, by sitting in his small garden in fine weather, by hearing Mass daily and also some of the Office, but …’ He considered his next words and finally said, ‘I did not feel that he immersed himself in our spiritual observance as a man should do at the end of his life.’

‘Was he liked by the community?’ Gil asked. ‘Did the servants like him?’

‘I suggest you ask them.’

‘Thank you, sir, I will do that. Now, the novice who is confined.’ His kinsman looked directly at him, and then away. What is going on here, Gil wondered. ‘I understand he confessed at Chapter of Faults. When was that?’

‘Andrew Rattray.’ The Prior studied his folded hands. ‘A very promising novice, indeed one of the most promising in many years.’ He sighed. ‘On the day after the discovery, when I had already consulted with Bishop Brown and he had written to Archbishop Blacader, we held a Chapter of Faults as is our custom. I had noticed, indeed, that Brother Andrew was in some distress at my lecture the previous afternoon, but in my abstraction did not question him. Therefore it was a shock to me as well as to the rest of our brothers when he knelt before us and asked our forgiveness for causing the vanishing away of our corrodian.’

‘In so many words?’

‘In so many words. His Latin is excellent. However, when I questioned him, first in Chapter and later in private, he could give me no reasoned narrative of how he had done this deed, but only seemed convinced he was instrumental. I judged it best to confine him for prayer and reflection, to see if he might come to some sensible conclusion, but none has so far emerged, though he remains persuaded of his guilt. I have prayed with him daily myself.’ The Prior contemplated his hands a little longer. ‘I should find it very hard to believe the young man capable of witchcraft,’ he said at last.

There was a bell ringing, urgently, clanging and clashing, and the dog was barking. He had slept in his shirt. Why had he slept in his shirt? Gil struggled up out of sleep into an unfamiliar place, Alys beside him up on her elbow, Jennet across the room exclaiming in fright. Through the dog’s noise he could hear shouting, a word which spurred him into action.