The King's Corrodian (7 page)

‘His
Compositum de Compositis
,’ he said, handing her the volume. ‘It’s a beginning. You read Latin as well as quoting it, a course?’

‘A course.’ She carried the book to the nearest reading-desk, handling it lovingly. He watched with approval as she checked the spine and front of the binding, then opened the heavy boards and inspected the first leaf and the last where the list of the contents had been inscribed, keeping the place he had found for her with one hand.

‘Does any here make a special study of alchemy?’ she asked casually. He paused, on his way back to his own desk.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s no an interest o this house. A comparison of Brother Albert,’ he nodded at the volume before her, ‘and Brother Thomas on the Epistles of Paul, a new commentary on the Sentences, a wider study o witchcraft, but no alchemy.’

‘Using one shining light of the Church to illumine another. Which is your own interest, sir?’ she asked. Always a good way to engage a scholar, Mère Isabelle had said.

‘The witchcraft is mine.’

‘What do you find?’ she pursued, trying to ignore Jennet crossing herself at the words.

‘I find,’ he said, watching her face, ‘I find that there’s no sic thing. It’s no a popular stance, I’ll admit, but I’ve concluded that the curses, the spells, the summoning o their Black Master, are all illusions.’

‘But—?’ she prompted, answering his intonation rather than any word.

‘But those who practise such things are generally far gone in heresy and wickedness.’

‘That makes sense,’ she said. ‘My husband would say the same.’

‘You could try the Greyfriars,’ he added, as if she had passed some test. ‘I’ve heard they dabble wi sic things alchemical there.’

‘Whereas here you dabble wi witchcraft,’ she said.

‘
Exactement
,’ he said. There was approval in his tone, but he returned to his book without further comment. She drew her tablets from her purse and applied herself to Albert the Great, aware that Jennet had withdrawn to a position out of the draught from the door and had started on her spinning.

The book was a good manuscript copy of Albert’s work, in a clear hand, with few of the abbreviations which could make reading difficult if they were idiosyncratic. The first section of the work she sought dealt with the forming of metals from sulphur and mercury, something she had always had doubts about, though she had never been able to procure enough of either to try them in the fire. She worked her way steadily through the three humid principles of sulphur without striking anything of use, but as she turned the page the door opened with a crash.

It was not the librarian who entered, but a much younger friar, breathing hard. He paused on the threshold, staring in surprise at Alys, then bowed briefly to White, as outside, the convent’s small bell began to ring slowly.

‘They’ve found,’ he began, and crossed himself. ‘They’ve found Andrew. In the, in the, in the ruins, Faither. They’re lifting him now.’

‘Ah.’ White crossed himself too, bent his head and muttered a prayer. Everyone said
Amen
, and he closed his book on the crow’s feather again, and said to Alys, ‘I should be present, if you’ll forgive me. He was one o my pupils.’

‘I’ll stay here,’ she assured him. ‘We’ll meddle wi nothing.’

Jennet, who would have clearly preferred to go and watch the excitement, cracked open the shutter of the window next the door, and peered out as the two friars left.

‘They’re a’ running across the yard,’ she reported, ‘going out-by. Is that where the bit was that burned down?’

‘Likely.’ Alys crossed herself, murmuring a prayer for the young man whose life had ended in flames and terror, drew a deep breath and addressed herself to Albertus again. She had just caught sight of something useful – ah, there it was. Indeed, yes.
De putrefactione
, was the heading: Of Putrefaction.
Mors & vita ab igne fiunt
… Death and life come from fire. Extrinsic fire, approaching a body – the similar element which exists in the body … As she had found with other alchemical writings, the passage did not really explain what she wanted to understand, but it provided a new way to think about it. She groped for her tablets, drew the little stylus from the case and began to copy what she read, speculation whirling in her mind.

‘They’re a’ coming back the way,’ Jennet reported, an unknown length of time later. ‘Oh, Our Lady save us, they’re bringing the corp. You can see it, mem, it’s covered ower wi a cloth but you can see where it’s a’ curled up. Where will they take him, I wonder? They’ll no can wash him, his skin would all peel off wi the water like peeling an orange.’

‘You ken a great deal about it,’ Alys said, distracted. Processional singing floated through the open shutter, deep-voiced and sincere, one of the penitential psalms. The singing was not as good as at Glasgow, where they had the resource of the College to draw on for voices, but the grief was unmistakable.

‘My sister Bess helped the layers-out, after that row o houses got burned down in Ru’glen last year. She tellt me all about it. Gied her quite a turn, it did, when the skin cam off the first one she took a cloth to.’ Jennet craned to follow the procession. ‘Aye, they’re taking him direct to the kirk. He can lie there till they coffin him, I’ve no doubt. Be an orra-shaped coffin, so it will,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘They never soften, see, if they’re burned.’

The community vanished into the church. It was probably Sext by now, Alys considered; Gil would be at a loose end if they had taken the body with them and he had nobody to question. She half hoped he might come and find her, but he did not appear, and she applied herself to copying Albert’s solid Latin prose.

She had just finished when the librarian returned, taking up his post at the writing-desk with a silent, resentful glare. Brother Henry followed him, and then several young men, very subdued, who all drew copies of the same text from the shelf by the door and looked about them for places, except one who drew out his eating-knife and began to clean the ash from under his nails. Brother Alexander, seeing this, drew a sharp breath and hurried across to him.

‘Put that away! We’ll ha no knives in here! There’s no need o sharp knives in a library, it’s no the place for it,’ he ordered, his voice trembling with outrage. The young man looked at him, then down at his knife.

‘Forgive me, brother,’ he said in Latin, and put the blade away. ‘I forgot.’

‘And
you
’ll need to go now,’ said the librarian, turning triumphantly to Alys. ‘There’s no room. The desks are all wanted.’

‘Very well, sir,’ she said, and curtsied again. ‘I hope I may come back tomorrow?’

‘We’ll see about that,’ he retorted, came round the desk and almost snatched the volume she had been working from. ‘What? Where did you get this? How did you find it? You’ll no get—’

‘No summoning of demons,’ she said. ‘I ken that, sir. It was on yon shelf, third one down, at the end of the row of Albert’s works.’

Henry White looked up and nodded briefly as she turned to leave. Jennet came forward from the window with relief, and exclaimed before the door had closed behind them, ‘What’s at greetin-face? He’s like a man that’s swallowed a lemon.’

‘Maybe he has troubles we don’t know of,’ said Alys. She drew her plaid up against the rain, and turned towards the slype.

‘Where are we going now, mem?’ Jennet asked. ‘Somewhere there’s more folk to talk to, maybe?’

It took longer to get away from Blackfriars than she had expected. The friars’ dinner was served, and that for the guest hall was carried in at the same time; after it she felt it necessary to dose everyone in the household with her cough elixir, and to send a flask of the stuff into the convent with her compliments and a placatory message to the Infirmarian. Dinner had been a silent affair; the men were all morose after their morning’s work, the reek of smoke and – yes, burned flesh – which hung over them discouraged conversation, and Gil was disinclined to discuss matters, though he pointed out that it was Father Prior’s decision as to whether he should investigate the death of the young man in the ashes; this would have to wait for a Chapter meeting.

‘What’s in that stuff, mem?’ Tam asked as they made their way out of the gate. ‘Right tasty, it is, I’d never ha taen it for medicine.’

‘That would be the honey,’ Alys said, choosing her path with care over the muddy ruts in the roadway. ‘Then there’s pepper, and sage tea, and thyme. They were out of celery seed, so I had to make the sage tea extra strong.’

‘Pepper,’ Jennet said thoughtfully. ‘Ye’d think it would bite, then, but it doesny. It’s warmer than a comforter at your neck, so it is.’

‘Where are we going, anyway?’ Tam stared about him in the drizzle, and craned to see over the fence into the dyer’s yard they were passing. ‘No the best part o the town, this, is it? A’ the stinking trades by the brig-end, a’ these wee houses; it’s no like Rottenrow.’

‘This way,’ said Alys with confidence, turning onto the path by the Ditch. She had made certain to get directions from the servant who carried out the empty crocks after dinner.

‘Is it that woman that saw the Deil rise up from the man’s house?’ said Jennet, brightening. ‘We’ll can sit in her kitchen and hear it all from her servants, eh, Tam?’

‘If she’ll see me,’ said Alys.

Mistress Buttergask was very happy to see Alys. She was a well-padded woman in a gown of good dark-green wool, hastily assumed over a striped kirtle to welcome her guest, with a very up-to-date black woollen headdress framing a round, sweet face. Her eyes were pale blue and rather vague, though Alys suspected they saw more than appeared.

Having rattled at the pin by the door of the neat stone-built house she had been directed to, Alys found the three of them warmly greeted and drawn in out of the rain, to the accompaniment of a stream of unceasing, welcoming chatter. Tam and Jennet were despatched to the kitchen along with two young maids and orders to bring in spiced wine and cakes, and herself led into a cosy, untidy solar where a small woolly dog had been yapping endlessly since she stepped into the house.

‘Be quiet, Roileag!’ said her hostess without effect. ‘That’s right kind in you, my dearie, to call on me in this weather, I was near deid wi boredom mysel and those two lassies driving me daft wi their prattle. Come in, come in, hae a seat. Gie me that plaidie, we’ll just shake the rain off it,’ she cracked it like a whip and droplets spat and fizzled on the brazier in the centre of the chamber. ‘Hang it here, it’ll be dry by the time you leave, you’ll get the good o’t when you go out again. Be
quiet
, Roileag! My!’ She sat down opposite Alys and studied her with interest while her dog jumped onto her knee and growled faintly. ‘And who did you say you were?’

‘I’m Alys Mason, from Glasgow, at your service, mistress. We’re lodging at the Blackfriars the now, while my man looks into this matter o the fellow,’ she paused, choosing her words, ‘carried off by the Deil.’

‘Oh!’ Mistress Buttergask breathed, the blue eyes going round with excitement. ‘Oh, I can tell you—’

‘I hoped you might,’ Alys said, with a complicit smile. ‘Prior Boyd has tellt us what you saw, a course, but I thought I’d as soon hear it from you.’

‘And your man’s looking into it, you say?’ Mistress Buttergask tilted her head, frowning. ‘Why would he need to do that? It’s a’ seen to, is it no? Though a course they couldny ha a quest on him, seeing there was no corp to examine. My – my friend said they’d no notion what to do in the matter on the Council.’

‘Holy Kirk wants an inquiry,’ Alys said. Their eyes met, and both nodded. What Holy Kirk wanted, Holy Kirk got. ‘So I hoped you’d tell me at first hand what you saw, for I’m sure it was more than Prior Boyd ever said.’

‘D’you ken?’ Mistress Buttergask clasped her plump hands together. The dog Roileag lurched on her knee and complained, with a sound between a growl and a whine. ‘I was certain that would happen. He never wanted to hear what I saw, you could tell that, only acause I hear things, he thinks I canny tell what I see wi my own een. It was only when my – my friend bore out everything I tellt them that they listened at all.’

‘He saw it too?’ Alys said. The other woman relaxed slightly at her tone, and nodded. Alys wondered if her neighbours were inclined to be sanctimonious about her ‘friend’.

A tapping at the door heralded one of the young maids with a tray. It held two horn cups, which gave off a welcome spicy smell, and a platter of little cakes. Once she had departed, they had toasted one another, and Roileag had been fed one of the cakes, which she took under the chair to consume, Alys said, ‘Are you close to the Blackfriars here? I’m all turned about,’ she admitted, ‘wi the way the path winds to come here. I’m not sure what way the house looks.’

‘Aye, it’s like a morris-maze,’ agreed Mistress Buttergask. ‘But that’s the Blackfriars at the foot o my garden.’ She nodded at the window of the little chamber, shuttered against the January weather. ‘It’s the outside wall o the very house, mistress.’

Alys rose and went to the window. It was deeply recessed; a new-looking crucifix had been hung on the panelling at one side of the recess, a print of the Annunciation on the other. She peered through the small greenish panes of the upper portion. The garden was long and narrow, the typical shape of an urban toft, and dismal in the rain, the kale shining dark green; at the far end was a fence, and beyond that, presumably on the other side of a path of some sort, was a well-built stone wall. Slabs of dark-red dressed stone, in many shapes and sizes, well fitted together in the same style as the front of Pollock’s house, rose to a roof of what must be local slate. The wall extended right and left into the drizzle; further to her left the bulky shape of the Blackfriars’ church loomed darkly, to the right the roof ended, showing where the row of small houses stopped, but the wall itself continued. She looked intently at the nearest section again, and made out the blocked window, on a level with three other little windows carefully shuttered against the weather. It was indeed Pollock’s house which faced her, and those must be the windows of the other small lodgings.