‘He’s sworn he’ll stand and answer,’ Gil said. ‘We can accept that, maister. I know John Veitch well.’ But well enough? he wondered. The five or six men who had taken the big seaman prisoner were reluctantly persuaded to let him stand up, and surrounded him watchfully as he lifted his plaid from the mud, then pulled his furred gown straight, replaced his lop-eared bonnet, and braced himself to face the crowd around him. Agnew was still demanding the presence of Serjeant or Sheriff and lamenting his servant. Gil cast a quick look round the gathering and turned to the other man of law.
‘Maister Agnew, wait a space,’ he said. ‘Here are ten of us in your yard, and five at least are householders. We can make a start on the matter, even if we still need to send to the Sheriff when we’re done.’
‘Aye, certainly,’ said Maister Sim eagerly at his elbow, ‘and find out what’s been going on here.’
‘Bloody death has been going on,’ pronounced Maistre Pierre, appearing on the doorsill behind Agnew. He met Gil’s eye over the heads of the crowd. ‘As has been said, a man lies within, dead in his blood and cooling fast. I would say he is dead at least an hour, perhaps two.’
‘An hour!’ repeated Agnew, turning to look at him.
‘An hour ago I was wi my uncle at the bedehouse,’ protested Veitch. ‘Send and ask him, he’ll tell you!’
‘Aye, nae doubt he will,’ said the man grasping his elbow, and there was some laughter. ‘But where were you in truth?’
‘We’ll begin at the beginning,’ said Gil. ‘Who accuses this man?’
‘Maister Agnew,’ said several voices. Agnew pulled himself together, smoothed down the breast of his dark red gown, and shooed away Socrates who was sniffing with interest at its furred hem. Gil snapped his fingers, and the dog came obediently to sit beside him.
‘I accuse him,’ Agnew said. ‘I am Maister Thomas Agnew, as you ken well, Maister Cunningham, and I’m a man of law practising here in the burgh.’ Heads were nodded round him in agreement. This was proper procedure.
‘And who is the man accused?’
‘John Veitch, as you ken well, Maister Cunningham,’ said the accused with a resilient gleam of humour. ‘Maister’s mate and one-third partner in the Rose of Irvine now lying at Dumbarton.’
‘He’s accusit,’ pursued Agnew without waiting for his cue, ‘that he slew my servant Hob, who lies in there dead, which I ken he did for I found him standing ower the corp when I came back to the house the now.’
Some of the group nodded again, but Gil’s friend Habbie Sim objected.
‘Tammas, if the man’s been dead an hour or more, that canny be right. It’s no as much as an hour since you came running out shouting. It canny be a halfhour, indeed.’
‘Aye, very true,’ agreed the man next to him.
‘An hour, half an hour, what matter?’ exclaimed Agnew. ‘I saw him, I tell you, neighbours, standing above the corp.’
‘John Veitch,’ said Gil formally, ‘what do you say?’
‘I slew nobody this day,’ said Veitch. A strange turn of phrase, thought Gil. ‘I came to the house to seek a word wi Maister Agnew here, and found the door standing unlatched. So I stepped in to wait, and found the servant lying in the hall,’ he nodded at the hall window, ‘and afore I could decide whether to call for help or if he was past aid, in comes Agnew and begins shouting Murder for the Serjeant.’
‘As well I might, seeing him standing there wi his hands all bloody!’
Veitch turned up his palms and looked at them.
‘One hand,’ he corrected. ‘Just the fingers, where I touched him.’ He held out both hands to Gil; as he said, the fingers of the right were sticky with blood, but neither the thumb nor the palm was marked. Gil pointed this out to the bystanders.
‘Aye, but it’s the man’s blood, sure enough,’ argued the man at Veitch’s other elbow, a stout fellow in St Mungo’s livery.
‘We canny tell that,’ said Gil mildly. ‘I see no other source of blood hereabouts, I agree, but it canny be proved that it is or it is not Hob’s blood. Now somebody has to view the body.’ He looked round the gathering again. More people had joined them, including some of the few women who dwelt in this street of clerics and songmen, but the original group would supply an assize. Selecting four of the likeliest including Maister Sim, he led them into the house. Agnew followed, gobbling indignantly.
‘Can we no get this over wi, send for the Serjeant and get the man taken away, so I can treat my poor servant decent and get his blood washed off him?’
‘It’ll no take long, Tammas,’ said Maister Sim, closing the door firmly in the faces of the interested bystanders.
The scene they encountered would give some of them ill dreams for months, Gil estimated. The hall stank of blood, and at its further end, on a crumpled heap of the fine rush matting, the man Hob was sprawled on his belly. Beside him, incongruously, lay a bundle of yellow-green kale leaves. The mats under him were soaked dark red, and his face was turned towards them, fixed in a grimace of astonishment. Socrates, head down and hackles up, stared warily back.
‘Aye, poor Hob,’ said one of the assize, and crossed himself. ‘He was a surly bugger, but he never deserved this. St Andrew call him from Purgatory.’
There was a general murmur of Amen and flurry of signings.
‘I have touched nothing save his cheek, to gauge how far he had cooled,’ said Maistre Pierre at Gil’s shoulder, ‘but so far as I can see it was several wounds to chest and belly that have bled like this’
‘Like Naismith,’ said Gil.
‘Aye, but all by the same hand by the look of it. None was like to be his death instantly, I would say he bled to death and it may have taken the length of a Te Deum.’
‘A good quarter o an hour,’ said Maister Sim the songman. ‘Wi all the trimmings.’
‘So it wasny a quick stab and Hob dropped deid,’ proposed the man who had spoken first.
‘Aye, you’re right, Willie,’ agreed another.
‘No, it was a savage attack on an innocent man!’ said Agnew.
‘Do you mean,’ said Maister Sim, shocked, ‘that Veitch stabbed him and then stood and watched him dee?’
‘We cannot tell that,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Certain he died unsuccoured, you have only to look, but there is nothing to say that he was watched.’
‘Now we’ve seen how he lies,’ said Gil, ‘we can look at the wounds. Pierre, give me a hand to turn him.’
They rolled Hob’s limp form over and laid him straight, staring now at the wall beyond the crumpled mats. Maister Sim, biting his lip, stepped closer but like the mason touched only the cheek of the reeking corpse, gathering his green brocade gown away from harm with the other hand.
‘I should say any of these wounds would have killed him eventually,’ said Maistre Pierre, turning back the slit and saturated jerkin. ‘You see them, maister?’
‘Aye, I see them,’ said Maister Sim, peering at the clotted hairy flesh. ‘Three to his chest at least, and a couple more in his wame.’ He retreated with some relief and looked at Gil thoughtfully. ‘You’re the Quaestor, man, and the huntmaster and all. What do you read here?’
‘There’s no sign he fought back,’ said Gil.
‘What about these mats,’ objected the fourth member of the assize, a minor cleric whose name Gil could not recall. ‘They’re turned up just where he lies, you see that.’
‘They’re none so easy rucked up,’ said the man called Willie, scuffing at the mat he stood on. ‘And there’s no other sign o a rammy Nothing owerset, and that fine pricket-stand still by the wall. Now me,’ he expanded, ‘if someone cam at me wi a knife, I’d ha seized that for a weapon. It’d take the feet from under anyone, that would.’
‘Aye, you’re right, Willie,’ agreed his friend. ‘So that’s a puzzle, that is.’
‘Was he maybe in the act of turning the mats?’ suggested Maister Sim, prodding the braided rushes with one red shoe. ‘These squares are stitched together, are they, six or eight at a time.’ He gestured to outline a mat. ‘So he was just turning a couple of them when he was surprised.’