The King's Corrodian (8 page)

‘Tell me about it,’ she said, returning to her stool.

Mistress Buttergask set down her beaker and clasped her hands again before her round bosom. ‘Oh, mistress!’ This was clearly a well-rehearsed tale.

‘Oh, it still makes me that wambly to think on it!’ She paused, considering her audience. ‘I rose in the middle of the night, see, and when I’d done wi the jordan and eaten a bite out the dole-cupboard, I went to the window to see how the night was progressing.’

‘The window looks the same way as this one?’

‘It’s the chamber above this.’ On the word, they heard footsteps overhead, and chattering voices. Roileag yapped, and Mistress Buttergask smiled tolerantly. ‘Och, those lassies, they’ll be showing your servants where I looked out and what it was I saw.’

‘Did you open the shutter?’ Alys asked, one ear cocked for the responses above her.

‘I did.’ Mistress Buttergask nodded. ‘I did that, for it was a mite stuffy in the chamber, for all it was so cold. Bitter cold it was, and a clear night, wi a hard frost. So I looked out,’ she went on, regaining her narrative, ‘and the moon was shining on the rooftops, and sparkling on the frost, right bonnie it was, and not a thing moving. And I was just thinking what a sight it was, wi the moon and the stars like jewels, when I seen this great black shape rise up fro the roof there.’

She waited expectantly. Alys obliged by saying, ‘A shape? What sort of a shape?’

‘Oh, my!’ The other woman set one hand at the base of her throat and looked away, down at the floor beside her. ‘What a sight it was! All hunched ower, ye ken, what wi carrying the man, but there was flames flitterin about it, and a pair o great red een. I crossed mysel, you can be sure,’ she suited the action to the words, ‘and woke Rattray, and got him out his bed to look. And he seen it and all, and bore me out when I tellt Father Prior,’ she added, ‘so he’s no need to doubt me or shorten the tale. I was feart for my mortal soul, I can tell you, mistress, and Rattray’s and all.’

‘He hadny shortened it by much,’ said Alys, studying her. There could be no doubt it had been a genuine account of something the woman had seen or thought she saw; she showed signs of distress now at the recollection. Roileag had jumped possessively onto her lap again, and now curled up firmly; her mistress stroked her fur, as if for comfort. ‘Will I call your servants for more of the wine?’ Alys asked. ‘Or should you eat one o the wee cakes, to settle your humours?’

Mistress Buttergask drew a hand down her face and straightened up.

‘No, no, mistress, I’m well. Aye, maybe a cake.’ She accepted one when Alys handed her the platter, and nibbled it cautiously. ‘It just cam ower me all o a turn, there, how we’d escaped sic a fate as that poor man. No matter what an ill-doer he was, it’s no a thing I’d wish on anyone, to be carried off to the Bad Place and tormented by fiends the rest o yir life.’

Alys, appreciating the charity which underlay the statement, made no comment on its theology.

After a few moments her hostess said reflectively, ‘And it’s just come to me: none o my voices had a word to say that night.’

‘Would they usually?’ Alys asked, as being the most non-committal comment she could think of.

‘Oh, aye.’ Mistress Buttergask gave her a wary look. ‘It’s no – it’s no like I hear sounds, you ken. It’s like a voice right inside my head, telling me things, and sometimes I can picture them and all. There’s my grandam now telling me you’re a kind lassie, and well intentioned, but you’ve your own reasons for talking to me.’

Taken aback, aware she was blushing, Alys could only say honestly, ‘Aye. That’s true, mistress.’

‘Och,’ said the other woman, ‘you’re asking it for your man. Your man’s work must aye come first, lassie, I see that.’

No wonder Prior Boyd had not wished to hear this woman, Alys thought briefly. Trying to recover her poise, she said, ‘How long did – what you saw stay there? How long were you watching it?’

‘Oh!’ Clearly nobody had asked this before. Mistress Buttergask stared at Alys for a long moment, then raised her eyes to the window, her fingers moving as if she was telling her beads.

‘The length of three
Aves
, maybe,’ she said eventually. ‘Or four. Proper ones, no the ones you say when you’ve left the dinner too near the fire.’

Not long then, thought Alys. Well under the quarter of an hour, but longer than I had assumed.

‘And then what did it do?’

‘Why, he rose up, and flew away northward. No fast, mind, I never saw his wings flapping or nothing, he just kind a floated off the way a buzzard does.’

‘Could you still see the flames and the red eyes?’

‘No, well, I never saw the eyes, would I, if he was flying away. And the wee flames had stopped and all, now you ask me.’ She nodded. ‘Likely they blew out when he flew off.’

‘You’ve been blessed,’ said Alys, hoping to offer some comfort. ‘There’s not many of us allowed such a vision. It’s a dreadful warning.’

‘That’s what Rattray said,’ the woman admitted. ‘Likewise that he wouldny ha believed me telling it if he hadny seen it himsel, but men are like that, are they no?’

Alys smiled in agreement, though she had never yet tested Gil in that way.

‘Is he in Perth the now?’ she asked.

‘No.’ Mistress Buttergask deflated slightly, then recovered and said with faint defiance, ‘He’s out o the town the now, a week or more. At his other house. Wi his wife.’ She crossed herself. ‘She’s doted, poor soul. She’s older than he is, a good few year. She canny be left alone now, the servants has to wash her and that. No a happy thing.’

Their eyes met. Alys put a hand out and touched the other woman’s wrist.

‘That’s hard,’ she said. ‘For everyone. Is he good to you?’

Mistress Buttergask turned her own hand to grasp Alys’s a moment, then gestured around her.

‘He feued this house to me,’ she said simply. ‘It’s my own – I could sell it the morn.’

‘That’s generous.’ With a need to change the subject, Alys suggested, ‘Might I see the window where you looked out?’

The chamber above was low, with a slanting roof where panels had been fixed to the rafters of the house, and furnished with a box bed, a settle and two carved kists, the bed-curtains and window-hangings in red dornick with bright flowers embroidered on it. There was a man’s doublet hanging on a nail near the bed, a pair of well-trodden pantofles half under the bed, a good furred gown thrown on one of the kists. Roileag scurried about the place, her claws rattling on the polished boards, snuffling in corners and under the bed. Alys crossed to the window and peered out, past the crucifix and the woodcut of the Visitation which protected this view.

The window was set into the eaves, with a low sill, and offered a clear view of the roof opposite, of the red tiles with the blackened portion near the ridge, of the absence of any way into the convent or the house from this side. Alys could see nothing which offered more information, though she pressed her brow against the little panes to look up and down the line of the priory wall.

Mistress Buttergask was chattering on in her ear, pointing out the direction in which the Devil had flown, the way he had risen up from the house roof, where the moon had been.

‘And your friend saw it all as well,’ Alys said, drawing back into the chamber.

‘Aye, indeed he did. Well, he was here at my side,’ the woman qualified, ‘just in time to see – to see
him
towering ower the wee house like a great hawk, and then to watch him flee away. I’d to tell him about the flames and the red een and that. But he saw it all, so he did.’ She paused a moment, and sighed. ‘It’s been right strange, these past two weeks, what wi Faither Prior and then my lord Bishop wanting to hear the tale, and a man of law to write down all I said, and then the neighbours wanting to hear it and all.’

‘None o your neighbours saw anything?’ Alys asked. Mistress Buttergask shook her head.

‘No, none o them. It was just a chance that I was up at that time and keeked out. I suppose they didny happen to do likewise. Come away down to the warm, lassie, it’s chilly up here.’

The mood in the town was no better than it had been when they rode through yesterday – could it only be yesterday? Surly groups of men stood on street corners in the drizzle, gaggles of women had their heads together in doorways. The word
witchcraft
floated on the wind. Alys picked her way along the darkening Skinnergate and past St John’s Kirk, hoping the two servants could obey her instructions and keep silent at her side long enough to get through the burgh. She was aware of curious glances, as a stranger in town, and also of Jennet peering at the stalls and booths they passed, nudging Tam to point out a leatherworker’s display on the Skinnergate, but they reached the South Port without drawing undue attention to themselves, emerged through it and took the short path to the Franciscan monastery.

Its buildings were less ostentatious than the Blackfriars’ foundation, with a low plain church surrounded by timber-framed structures, a hall and dorter and Chapter House, and a paling fence round about the policies. Alys had noticed it as they rode into Perth and had thought then how characteristic it was of the Franciscans with their vow of poverty.

‘What, more friars?’ said Jennet in discontent. ‘Could we no get questioning someone wi a friendly kitchen, mem, same as the last one? Those lassies were right good company, weren’t they no, Tam?’ Tam grunted agreement, and she went on, ‘Tellt us all what their mistress seen fro the window, and how the Bishop was there telling her no to pass the word on, and that wee dog o his stole a good leather glove and chewed it all to ribbons, and then picked a fight wi her doggie and all. Our dog would never do a thing like that.’

‘No, indeed.’ Alys led the way to the west door of the church. ‘I may need you, if I can get a private word wi one o the friars, so don’t stray.’

‘As if I would!’ said Jennet, offended.

To Alys’s relief, she had gauged the afternoon correctly; at this time of year it began to grow dark well before the clergy began to think of their evening devotions. The church was busy, with lay people kneeling before one saint or another, several Franciscans moving among them in their grey gowns with the knotted rope girdle. I hope they wear enough under those, Alys thought irrelevantly. They could die of the cold. The Rule was written for Italy, not Scotland. She looked about her, and caught the eye of one of the friars, who made his way towards them.

‘Can I help you, daughter?’ he asked.

‘Faither,’ she said, and curtsied, aware of Jennet crossing herself, Tam muttering something like
Amen
. ‘I hope so. I read something in a book lately, and I hoped someone here might explain it to me.’

‘A book,’ he said in disapproving tones. ‘You can read?’

‘My mistress is aye reading,’ said Jennet proudly. ‘Our maister says she’s a great scholar.’

The friar shook his head. ‘Better to leave sic things to the men, daughter, and mind your household,’ said the friar, his disapproval deepening.

‘Nevertheless,’ Alys persisted, ‘now I have this matter in my head, I’d as soon have it expounded.’

‘What’s this matter, then? What book were you reading in?’

‘Albert the Great. He mentions the secret fire.’ She watched the changes in his expression, keeping her smile as innocent as she could manage.

After a moment he said, ‘Hah! I’ve no time to deal wi sic things the now. Bide here, lassie, and I’ll see who I can send out to you.’

Seating herself on the stone bench at the wall-foot, she drew her beads from her purse and prepared to wait, the two servants beside her. In fact, it was no more than a quarter of an hour before another Franciscan came into the church by the friars’ door, looked about, and made his way hastily towards them through the gathering shadows. He was a plain, bony man with a shaggy mop of greying brown hair and light, piercing eyes. She rose at his approach, and curtsied.

‘The secret fire?’ he said, without preamble. ‘What do you know of it?’

‘Only what Albert the Great writes,’ she said. ‘And a little I learned when I was still in Paris. I hoped you could tell me more.’

‘Paris.’ He peered at her, but shook his head. ‘Never been there. What do you need to know? Why are you asking about sic a thing?’

She sat down, and patted the stone bench. He settled himself at a slight distance, still gazing intently at her through the gloom, his hands tucked into his sleeves.

‘Albertus wrote,’ she said, calling up the Latin phrases, ‘
Fire, coming into contact with a body, sets into motion
—’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said dismissively, ‘that’s elementary. In all senses, that’s elementary. But the secret fire—’

‘Is it different?’ she asked. ‘Does it operate by different laws, or the same ones?’

He grunted. ‘Why are you asking this? What do you want it to do? What do you need it to do?’ He looked beyond her at Jennet and Tam, and back again. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

‘That’s Mistress Alys Mason,’ said Jennet stoutly, ‘fro Glasgow. She’s marriet on the Archbishop’s quaestor, that’s looking into the man that’s disappeared at the Blackfriars.’

‘Only he hasny,’ said Tam. ‘Disappeared, I mean.’

The friar stiffened, and looked hard at Alys.

‘How much did you find?’ he demanded after a moment.

‘One foot, still in its shoe,’ said Alys. ‘Bones of hands or the other foot. Ashes.’ She considered him. ‘You have heard o this afore, then.’

‘Aye. I wondered, when word first reached us.’ He turned his head, gazing into the chancel, or somewhere more distant than that. ‘I read o’t years ago – what was it in? Where was I?’ He almost bounced round to face her again. ‘Tell me about it. When was this found? There’s been no word. We only hear the town’s gossip the now, a course, wi them almost besieged in their house, but I’d ha thought—’

‘Only last night,’ said Alys soothingly, ‘and then there was the fire, and the young man dead.’

‘Aye, they’ve no to seek for their troubles. Tell me,’ he ordered, crossing himself briefly at the mention of the death.

She described what they had found in Pollock’s house, as clearly as she might. He listened intently, almost sucking in her words, nodding from time to time, and sat back when she had finished, staring into the distance again.