‘And you were talking with Patey Coventry and the rest of the class till the time you left the college?’ Easily enough confirmed, if he was, Gil thought.
‘Aye,’ began Millar, and was interrupted by an outbreak of furious shouting below them in the inner yard. Socrates barked once, his deep warning tone. Gil, nearest the windows, stepped over to look through the glass, then hastily unfastened the shuttered lower portion.
‘Look at this!’ he said as Maistre Pierre reached him.
His friend stared down into the garden in some amusement. ‘It seems the young men have angered the old ones. Should we defend them, Gil?’
The rain had eased slightly, and outside one of the little houses, Michael and Lowrie stood at bay, the dog in front of them. They were surrounded by an indignant gathering of elderly men, two of them waving sticks in a threatening manner, with Mistress Mudie clutching her plaid round her head and adding her voice to the chorus. The dog barked again. At the far end of the garden one or two passers-by were staring with interest over the wall from the Stablegreen.
‘Merciful Christ,’ said Millar at the next window, ‘what have they done to set them off?’
‘What’s he say?’ echoed someone from below. ‘Tell me what’s he say?’
‘Sneaking around like thieves! And claiming you were ordered to search!’
‘Fit war ye deein, loons?’
‘- no way to behave in a decent bedehouse, as if any of my old men would do a thing like that — ’
‘Magpies! Pyots! And they were sent from that hoodie!’ exclaimed a resonant voice, and continued in Latin; Gil had just time to recognize a phrase from the Apocalypse before Millar said again,
‘Oh, merciful Christ. Sissie!’ he shouted, leaning out at the open shutters. ‘Sissie, get Humphrey out of there before he — ’
‘Maister Cunningham, is that you?’ exclaimed Lowrie in relief, catching sight of Gil at the other window. ‘They’re no for letting us search their lodgings!’
Socrates gave out another deep bark.
‘I never thought,’ said Gil in dismay. ‘I should have warned them no to try.’ He leaned out like Millar and shouted ‘Quiet!’ at his dog. Socrates threw him a resentful look, but reduced his utterance to a threatening rumble, all his white teeth on display. There was something on the ground between his forepaws.
Mistress Mudie at the back of the group was tugging at the arm of one of the brothers, a man twenty years younger than his confreres by his bearing, the source of the sonorous Latin. She succeeded in dragging him away, still waving the other arm and declaiming, and they made for the door below the watchers’ feet, Latin and Scots rising in a kind of motet.
‘- those who claim to be apostles but are not — we will throw you into prison, to put you to the test, for ten days you will suffer cruelly — ’
‘- there now, Humphrey my poppet, calm yourself, they’re no harm to you — come and sit down quiet and I’ll make you a lovely cup of hot milk wi honey in it — ’
‘I’d best deal wi this,’ said Millar, making for the door. ‘They’ll never digest their dinner if we don’t get them calmed down.’
‘He is garbling that text,’ said Maistre Pierre critically. As Millar left he turned away from the window to the tall rack of papers, and extracted another bundle at random.
‘I must go down too,’ Gil said after a moment. ‘Are you staying here?’
‘Oh, for certain,’ said Maistre Pierre, not looking up from a close scrutiny of the papers he held. ‘Leave Naismith’s keys with me if you are going. As I thought, Gil, none of this adds up. I would like Alys to see it,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘but not now.’
‘Not now,’ agreed Gil, flinching from the idea. He set the keys on the table by the dead man’s purse and belt and crossed the room, listening carefully. Mistress Mudie’s voice came up through the floorboards, babbling on like the mill-burn; Maister Humphrey replied, still in flowing Latin but less loudly. She seemed to be meeting with some success. Gil went out and down the fore-stair.
In the dripping garden, Millar had already drawn the bedesmen away from their siege, and the audience on the Stablegreen had drifted away. When the two students saw Gil they slipped round to meet him; Michael bent first, attempting to pick up whatever it was the dog had found, but Socrates put one hairy paw on top of it and bared his teeth a little further, then snatched the object up himself and came to be praised for defending the young men, waving his tail. Gil patted him, accepted his gift, and said in apology, ‘I should have warned you no to try their lodgings, or at least to be careful how you went. Did they strike you?’
‘Oh, it was no worse than my grandsire shouting at the servants,’ said Lowrie easily. ‘We’ve no found the cloak so far, maister.’
‘Did the dog find anything? No signs of blood? What’s this he’s brought me?’
‘No,’ said Michael in his gruff voice before his friend could speak. He had grown in the six months since Gil had first encountered him at the University, but was still shorter than Lowrie, lightly built and mousy-haired, with a pointed chin and sharp cheekbones. ‘No a thing. He checked the place where the corp was lying again, but he never went anywhere else after it.’
‘This is a stocking,’ Gil said in surprise, looking at the object his dog had given him. ‘Where did he find it? I’d best return it.’ He broke off, looking more closely. Still crumpled in the folds in which it had been slid off its wearer’s leg, the item was wet from the grass and from Socrates’ mouth, but otherwise relatively clean. He shook it out; it was finely knitted of linen thread, with clocks of fancy work on either side of the ankle, and it was barely longer than Gil’s hand and forearm. The mark of the garter was clearly visible near the top.
‘This was never an old man’s garment. It’s a lassie’s stocking,’ said Gil. ‘What’s that doing in the alms-house?’
The two young men glanced at one another.
‘Er,’ said Michael, the scarlet flooding up over his face. ‘Er …’
‘Michael has access to the Douglas lodging,’ said Lowrie candidly, ‘which is the last house yonder by the gate, and a key to the gate itself. Need we say more, maister?’
Michael threw him a grateful look. Gil glanced at the stocking again and knew a surge of envy. Al nicht by the rose ich lay. To be alone with one’s sweetheart — abed with one’s sweetheart, indeed — without all the tumult of feasts and invitations, wedding-clothes and linen lists -
‘Well, well,’ he said, mustering a grin from somewhere, and handed the stocking over. ‘Don’t make any promises your father won’t approve, Michael. I hope you got her out well before it was light.’
Michael nodded, mumbling something indistinct, and hastily stowed the delicate object in the breast of his gown.
‘We’d best be away, maister,’ said Lowrie. ‘We’ve a lecture at eleven o’clock.’
‘So Nick said,’ agreed Gil. ‘Come in out the rain first, and tell me what you’ve found.’
‘That’s easy done,’ said Lowrie, following him into the passageway through the main range. ‘We’ve found neither cloak nor hat, and the dog showed no more interest in any of the places we’ve been.’
‘And where was that?’
‘No the chapel,’ said Michael.
‘No the chapel,’ agreed Lowrie, ‘since they were saying Terce, but we’ve looked in all the outhouses that were unlocked, save where the Deacon’s laid out, and we looked in the kitchen. Mistress Mudie took the huff,’ he confessed, ‘and insisted we look in her own chamber off the kitchen and all, and in her kist. That was a bit — she’d that Maister Humphrey in the kitchen, the mad one, and the dog wasny very taken wi him. Anyway, we’ve been everywhere we could, except the Deacon’s lodging and Maister Millar’s. Oh, and we looked in here,’ he added, waving a hand to encompass the shadowy hall.