He raised his hand to make the sign of the Cross, and recited their mother’s evening blessing. She spoke the familiar words with him, and he went out and back down to the hall, where his uncle was still immersed in the Murray perjury papers.
He sat down on the stone bench in his uncle’s oratory, staring at the gleam of candles on the Virgin’s gold-leaf halo and piecing the sequence of events together. He was nearly there, he knew it. Two of the stories were beginning to make sense, though the third one was harder to fit into the picture. What must I still do? he asked himself. Put my hand on Naismith’s cloak and hat, find the place where he was stabbed, identify the two weapons which stabbed him and hence name the guilty persons. Prove that John Veitch didn’t kill the man Hob, though I probably can’t prove who did kill him. And Humphrey — what about Humphrey? Does he truly not recall what happened, or is he simply not willing to tell it? And if he’s unwilling, then for which of two possible reasons?
‘Gilbert,’ said his uncle’s voice, rather sharply, and he realized the Official had spoken several times already. ‘Either be quiet or speak loud enough for me to hear you. I canny be doing wi you muttering away over there.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ He rose from his seat, blinking as he turned his eyes away from the gleaming halo. ‘I was miles away.’
‘I can tell that,’ agreed his uncle. ‘It’s late, Gil. Bid Maggie set the ale on to warm if she’s not done it already.’
Gil moved towards the kitchen stair, but before he reached it there was a loud knocking at the street door. Socrates leapt up and barked once. Gil paused in surprise, and Maggie’s voice floated up from the kitchen.
‘Our Lady save us, who’s that at this hour, and Matt out winching and me wi my stays unlaced?’
‘I’ll get it,’ Gil called. He lifted a branch of candles and crossed to the other stair, wondering how many more times he would answer the door today. The dog followed him, paused in the doorway, then hurried down the stair, claws rattling on the stone steps, tail swinging in the candlelight.
‘It’s ower late,’ said Canon Cunningham disapprovingly. ‘Who would come calling at this time o night?’
‘I think I know,’ said Gil, his spirits lifting, as he heard voices, indistinct through the heavy oak door, one deep, one lighter, male and female.
‘I had to show you this,’ said Alys, under her father’s apologies to Canon Cunningham. ‘I’m certain it’s significant.’
‘She would come up the hill now, nothing would do but I bring her — I must apologize for disturbing you at this hour,’ Maistre Pierre was saying.
‘What is it?’ Gil asked, taking her hand. She’s afraid, he was thinking, afraid of — she’s a gently reared girl with no sisters and no mother. How do I reassure her?
‘No matter, no matter,’ said the Official. ‘Is it something important?’
‘I think it is, sir,’ said Alys. Her clasp on Gil’s hand tightened briefly, then she let go and went forward to greet Canon Cunningham. He kissed her with obvious pleasure and seated her on the bench by the brazier. Socrates sat down beside her with his chin on her knee.
‘It’s aye a pleasure to see you, lassie. Fetch some refreshment, Gil.’
‘No need for that,’ said Maggie from the stair door. She came forward, wrapped in her plaid for decency, and set down the tray of spiced ale and little cakes. ‘Good e’en to ye, maister, lassie. I hope nothing’s amiss down the road?’
‘No, all’s well,’ Alys assured her. ‘All goes ahead as we have planned. Only, I wished to show Gil what I have found in this document.’
‘Document?’ said Canon Cunningham, pricking up his ears. ‘What document, lassie? No your contract, I hope.’ He laughed drily at his own joke, and Alys’s elusive smile flickered.
‘No, sir. It relates to the death at the bedehouse.’ She opened her purse and drew out Agnew’s tablets in their brocade bag. Gil froze in dismay, but without glancing at him she went on, ‘I’m not at liberty to say how I came by this, sir. It is a set of tablets belonging to Maister Agnew, and with them this.’
She extracted the parchment with its dangling seals. The Official took it from her and unfolded it.
‘A disposition, ten year since,’ he said. Gil paused in handing beakers of spiced ale to look over his uncle’s shoulder. ‘For the support of their son Humphrey, Thomas Agnew and Anna Paterson gifting a significant plot of land …’ Canon Cunningham ran his eye down the crackling sheet. ‘And after his death — yes, yes, very provident.’
‘Provident?’ Gil leaned closer. ‘That wasny my opinion. What does it — ?’
‘No, no, it reverts to the donors or their heirs,’ said his uncle, tilting the document to the light. ‘It’s perfectly clear. Quite well worded, indeed. Thomas Agnew, younger, wrote this. Aye, very neat work.’
‘Exactly,’ said Alys, meeting Gil’s eye across the hearth. ‘Do you have the bedehouse copy, Gil? You were going to bring it here for safe keeping.’
‘If it’s that poke of dusty papers you brought in the other day, Maister Gil, it’s under your bed,’ said Maggie from where she stood in the shadows.
‘Why?’ demanded her father. ‘What is this? She has not explained it yet.’
‘The bedehouse copy wording isny the same,’ said Gil cautiously. ‘I’m sure I mind a quite different final disposition.’ He handed over the beakers he carried, and made for the stair. ‘I’ll fetch it down the now.’
‘Are you saying the two copies do not agree?’ said his uncle as he left the hall. ‘I would ha thought better of Thomas Agnew.’
Returning with the sack full of documents, Gil sat down beside Alys. She reached in to extract the nearest bundle and inspected it, oblivious to her father and Canon Cunningham who were still exploring the different ways in which the two copies might have come to differ. The bundle they wanted was, inevitably, the last; Gil shuffled the rest back into the sack, while Alys untied the tape and picked through the folded dockets.
‘This is it,’ she said, opening it out. ‘And the map that was with it, as well. Yes, I was sure this was what I remembered, Gil.’
‘Well?’ demanded her father. ‘What does it say? Was it worth dragging me up the hill at this hour in the rain?’
‘Oh, it was,’ said Gil. ‘This version has the property revert to the bedehouse absolutely after Humphrey’s death.’
‘Ah!’ said his uncle.
‘And what happens now, maister?’ asked Maggie from the shadows. ‘The man’s deid, right enough, but he’s risen again. Does it stay wi the bedehouse, or go back to his family, or what? What’s the law when someone rises up?’
‘What’s more to the point,’ pronounced the Official, ‘is, why are these documents no the same and which is the true one?’ He straightened his spectacles and looked about him. ‘We need a good table. Over yonder.’
With the two documents spread out side by side on the altar in the oratory, lit by all the candles they could squeeze into the space, all four of them peered at the lines of neat writing while Maggie waited hopefully by the hearth.
‘Neither looks to have been altered,’ said Gil after a moment. ‘The dates are the same, and it’s all scribed in the one hand. Agnew tried to suggest to me,’ he explained to his uncle, ‘that Deacon Naismith might have altered some of the papers.’
‘No,’ said Canon Cunningham thoughtfully. ‘The one man has writ all of both these, and the hand and the pen are the same in the text as in his signature and monogram. I’d no swear to it being the same batch of ink, but that happens to all of us. I wonder …’ He ran careful ink-stained fingers over the surface of the parchment nearer him. ‘Gilbert, what do you think to this?’
Gil did the same, then bent to view the document against the light of the candles. It took a little time as he found separate angles to view the several folds of the parchment, but eventually he shook his head.
‘This one’s a single draft,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s been no erasure. No even a word scraped out, that I can detect.’