‘And why should you think it might be Barty?’ asked his sister.
‘What do you recall about him?’ countered Gil.
‘Nothing that would identify a dead man,’ said the harper rather harshly. ‘Voice and manner do not survive.’
‘His eyes,’ said the lute-woman. The man in blue looked sharply at her.
‘Aye, his eyes,’ agreed Ealasaidh. ‘They are different colours. One blue, one brown.’
‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘So I recalled.’
‘He has an earring,’ added Ealasaidh. ‘Just the one.’
‘And is that what you have found?’ asked the harper. ‘A dead man with odd-coloured eyes?’
The words fell into a silence as the singers paused again, and suddenly everyone was paying attention.
‘We found,’ said Gil, picking his words with care, ‘the head of a man, put in a barrel of brine. The dead man had short dark hair, he had worn an earring at some time, and he had one blue eye and one brown. We think the barrel had been exchanged for one unloaded at Blackness on Monday last.’
‘Barty’s hair is long,’ said Ealasaidh with relief. ‘Down on his shoulders, it is.’
‘Hair can be cut,’ said McIan.
‘Just his head?’ said one of the singers, a round-eyed woman with gold curls, and a great deal of swelling flesh above her low-cut velvet bodice. ‘Who is it?’
‘Barty,’ said the tenor beside her.
‘Alissy’s saying it’s Barty,’ qualified the bass vièle.
‘Our Lady protect us!’ said the plump singer, crossing herself energetically. ‘And to think I saw him just yesterday.’
‘Yesterday?’ said Gil. ‘Where was this?’
‘Linlithgow, I think,’ she said vaguely.
‘You were here in Stirling yesterday,’ the tenor reminded her.
‘Well, maybe it was the day afore. When were we through Linlithgow, Georgie?’
‘Tuesday,’ said the bass vièle confidently.
‘Oh, aye. I mind now. Everyone was coming from the Mass at St Michael’s, and I saw Barty among them.’
‘Did you speak to him?’ Gil asked.
‘Oh, aye.’
‘Did he answer you, Marriot?’ asked McIan heavily, and Gil recalled tales his nurse had told him, of people seen clearly after they were dead.
‘He did,’ said Marriot, nodding her head so that her gold curls bounced. ‘He said he was fixed in Linlithgow a day or two. He had to meet someone, he said.’
‘And that was Tuesday,’ said Gil.
‘Aye, it was Tuesday,’ agreed the bass vièle. He propped his instrument against his shoulder, reaching round it to count on his fingers. ‘We left Edinburgh on Monday, played at Linlithgow that evening and Falkirk on Tuesday evening, reached here yestreen.’
‘And now he’s deid,’ said Marriot in round-eyed regret.
‘No if you saw him on Tuesday, lass,’ said the tenor next to her. The lute-woman closed her eyes and crossed herself, and the man in blue velvet, without looking at her, gripped the neck of his instrument so that his knuckles showed white in the candlelight.
‘I don’t see what you mean,’ said Marriot, reluctant to be balked of her drama. ‘He could have dee’d after I saw him.’
‘The man who is dead was dead before that,’ said Ealasaidh.
‘The barrel that we found the head in,’ Gil explained, ‘left Linlithgow early Tuesday on a merchant’s cart. By the time you saw Balthasar coming from Mass, both barrel and head were halfway to Castlecary.’
‘Oh,’ said Marriot, not fully convinced.
‘I’m glad to hear you saw him,’ said Gil encouragingly, ‘for I liked the man. I still have to find a name for the dead man, but at least I’ve eliminated one.’
‘Just leaves the whole of the rest of Scotland, eh?’ said the flute player.
‘If the dead had odd eyes like Barty,’ said the man who had admitted Gil, ‘was he maybe some kind of kin to him? It’s no that common a feature, see.’
This was generally agreed to be a good point.
‘There you are, maister,’ said the lutenist with the green ribbons. ‘Gang to Linlithgow, find Barty, and you’ll get a name for your corp.’
‘If he’s still there,’ said the bass vièle.
‘If he wasny, he’d be here, where the pickings are,’ said the tenor singer beside Marriot.
One or two of the men laughed, but McIan said, with sudden authority, ‘Go to Linlithgow the morn, Maister Cunningham, and ask your questions again. There will be answers.’
‘But the now,’ said the bass vièle, ‘he said he was the audience. We aye need an audience. Gie the man another drink, Alissy, and he can listen to this new piece for us. I still say you want to be half a tone higher there, Edward,’ he went on, turning abruptly to the flute player. ‘It’s away too sweet like that.’
Chapter Four
Kate Cunningham, sitting in the arbour in her uncle’s garden, stared out over the lower town and thought bleakly about her future.
It seemed to contain very little that was positive. St Mungo had been her last resort. Restricted though their income was, she had travelled widely in the past two or three years, following the pilgrim roads of Scotland with offerings and petitions for saints from Tain to Whithorn without success. She wondered if she had offended Mungo by turning to him the last, and found her mouth twisting in a bitter smile.
‘What has changed?’ said Alys in her accented Scots.
Kate looked round, and found her new relation sitting on the grass nearby. The smile softened; in the few days since they had met she had found a great liking for this slender, elegant, terrifyingly competent girl.
‘Changed?’ she said now.
‘Since yesterday, for example,’ said Alys.
Kate turned her head to look out over the burgh again, trying to decide whether she could answer that.
‘All my hopes are away,’ she said at last. ‘The rest of my life’s still the same, but now I’ve no hope of ever getting rid of — these.’ She nodded at the crutches propped beside the arbour.
‘All your hopes?’
‘You sound like my brother. No, I suppose, not all. I still have my hope of salvation, but what else is there? How can I lead a useful life? How can I lead a good life, even?’
‘You said,’ said Alys diffidently, ‘that the saint bade you Rise up, daughter.’ Kate nodded. ‘Dreams often go by image and metaphor. Do you think, perhaps, he meant you were to rise up above your difficulties? To ignore them?’
‘He could have said so,’ Kate said sourly. ‘It’s no that easy to ignore having to be carried downstairs every day.’
Alys was silent for a while. Then she said, ‘I came out to ask for your help.’
‘Mine? What help can I be? Did you not hear me, Alys?’
‘Your brother,’ said Alys, colouring slightly as she always did when she mentioned Gil, ‘left me a task. Someone must speak to Maister Morison’s men about the bringing home of that cart, with the barrel on it, and the sooner the better. I need a companion. Would you come with me?’
‘Why not take one of your lassies?’ said Kate, aware that she sounded pettish. ‘Or that Catherine?’
‘I’d rather have this Katherine,’ said Alys, her elusive smile flickering. ‘My lassies will be busy about the dinner just now, and Catherine will be asleep over her prayer-book, since she last saw me in my father’s care. Will you not help me? We can have your mule brought round, and you can ride down, and Babb and I can walk. Then you may dine with us, and come home after.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Kate after a moment. ‘I might as well, I suppose.’
The three women halted in the gateway to Morison’s Yard, staring at the disorder within.
‘Mon Dieu,’ said Alys after a moment, ‘quelle espèce de pagaille!’
‘You’ve not been here before?’ said Kate, as her mule pricked his long ears at a blowing wisp of straw.
‘No,’ admitted Alys, looking round. ‘How ever could he let his men work like this? I would be ashamed to — of course his wife is dead.’