‘We’ll need lanterns,’ said Gil, ‘rather than torches.’
‘You come too?’ said Maistre Pierre doubtfully. ‘I cannot take two who are new to scaffolding.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ said Gil. ‘My brothers and I climbed every tree from Glassford to Carscallan.’
‘I also,’ said Johan.
Balthasar returned across the building site with three lanterns in his arms.
‘From the Skelly Matt,’ he said, distributing these. ‘Your dog’s fair creating, maister. Your man says he’s no sure how long he can hold him.’
‘Well,’ said Maistre Pierre, lighting the candle from his lantern at Robison’s torch. He fitted it back on to the spike and closed the trap. ‘Let us go, then, and solve this puzzle we are set.’
Chapter Eleven
The door of the church opened quietly when Gil lifted the latch. They stepped in, and it swung shut behind them with a boom which reverberated in what seemed like a vast, draughty space smelling of incense and pine resin. The floor was flagged; when Gil held his lantern up the vault of the aisle where they stood glowed in the dim light, but beyond the pillars the nave vanished upward into darkness, with a faint, distant hint of high scaffolding. How do the poles stay up there? wondered Gil.
‘Mon Dieu, the carving!’ exclaimed Maistre Pierre. He held his own lantern high and turned, staring up at the walls. Pillar, vault, arch and architrave, capital and springer were carved into elaborate designs in high relief which seemed to move as the light passed over them.
‘Here is a ladder,’ said Johan. Gil craned to see where he was pointing. At the top of the wall-pillar beside the door was a complex scene: the crucified Christ surrounded by many figures. There was something which might be a ladder at one side.
‘That is a Descent from the Cross,’ said the mason authoritatively from behind Gil. ‘It will not reveal where we must ascend. But I think you are right, my friend, we look at the carvings. One of these moral jewels will tell us what we need to know.’
‘How many weeks do we have?’ asked Gil, looking round. ‘There must be thousands.’
‘We start here,’ said the mason, ‘and keep looking.’
They moved slowly eastward, pausing to identify each of the carvings so far as possible. Some were obvious, versions of the familiar scenes to be found in any church; others were more enigmatic. There were angels enough to fill seven heavens, Gil thought, and Green Men to match them, but what was an elephant doing here?
‘Here is a Dance of Death,’ said Maistre Pierre, gazing upwards at an elaborately worked arch. ‘Very handsome drafting. Look how it fills the spaces.’
‘There Death takes a man with a spade,’ said Johan, pointing again. ‘Is the money perhaps buried beneath here?’
‘Sinclair said it was in the roof,’ said Gil.
Apart from their voices and footsteps, the church was quiet, but he found himself looking uneasily over his shoulder. Perhaps it was the eyes of all the Green Men, leering out of their foliage in the lantern-light, that made him feel threatened.
‘What ever does this signify?’ he asked, pausing before the Lady Altar. ‘A falling angel, bound with a rope?’
The rope, by this light, looked as if one could lift it and knot the ends.
‘I cannot say,’ said Maistre Pierre at his shoulder.
‘The pillars,’ said Johan. They turned round, to see him staring to right and left. ‘Are these the pillars? I have heard much of them.’
‘Ah, mon Dieu,’ said Maistre Pierre again. He moved forward as if drawn by a cord, and bent to the southern pillar, holding his lantern close to the ornament and muttering incoherently. ‘Dragons — and the vines — ah, the detail! This stone, it shapes like butter, it must be a dream to work!’
‘What’s that beyond the pillar?’ Gil asked. ‘Is it stairs?’
‘They go down, not up,’ said Johan.
‘Then so shall we,’ said the mason, dragging himself reluctantly away from the pillar. ‘Oh, and see, there is a sacrifice of Isaac on the capital. Now what is down here?’
The flight went down steeply, into darkness only slightly relieved by Maistre Pierre’s lantern. Gil found himself hesitating at the top of the stairs, his uneasy feeling increasing. He opened the horn window of his own lantern and held it up, looking about him, but its light went no more than a few feet.
‘You feel it too?’ said Johan beside him.
‘Come and look,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It is the drawing-loft.’
‘Loft?’ questioned Gil, setting foot on the stair. ‘Down here?’
‘How else should I call it?’
The chamber at the bottom of the stairs was at least half the size of the nave. It was much plainer, with only one or two carvings visible, and seemed to suffer from a lack of certainty about its purpose, since it boasted an altar with piscina and aumbry and also a fireplace. As Johan followed Gil off the awkward steps and into the chamber, the mason looked round from his intent scrutiny of the north wall.
‘See, it is the working drawings.’ He gestured at the curves and counter-curves scratched into the whitewashed surface. ‘That,’ he stabbed with one big forefinger, ‘is the profile for the east window tracery, I noticed it in particular. And here is the outline for that wall-pillar, the one that has the Descent on its capital.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Gil. ‘What else is there?’
‘It is many drawings, one on top of another,’ observed Johan. Maistre Pierre, his nose inches from the wall, did not reply. Gil set off round the room, finding one or two more drawings which would have been better obliterated before the church was handed over, and paused in front of the two carvings by the altar.
‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre at last. ‘I see. It is a space at the foot of the vault.’
‘What is?’ Gil came over to look.
‘This sketch here.’ The forefinger stabbed again. ‘You see, here the vault, here the wall-head, and this is the string-course — the ornamental band along the wall-head. And here, in this other drawing, we have a space behind the string-course.’
‘Do we?’ said Gil, peering at the scratches. ‘I can’t read it, Pierre.’
‘I can,’ said Johan unexpectedly, ‘but where is it? There is a lot of that string-course. It goes right round the church, does it not?’
‘Now there I might be able to help,’ said Gil. He returned to the altar. ‘See this? The arms of the founder — old Sinclair, this lord’s father — ’
‘The engrailed cross. Yes, it is everywhere up above,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘But what is that heart doing there? That is Douglas, surely?’
‘That’s right. Sir William’s first wife was a Douglas lady, I believe. Aye, it’s a heart. Ubi thesaurus- Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,’ Gil quoted, and suddenly recalled the harper saying the same thing. Could this be what McIan meant, he wondered, rather than some cryptic observation about my marriage? ‘If we can find a heart up above too, maybe the treasure will be close by. I’ve seen none so far, but perhaps in the south aisle?’
‘It is worth the try,’ said Johan after a moment.
Maistre Pierre looked back at the scratches on the wall. ‘There is no other hint,’ he admitted, ‘and this one comes from St Matthew’s evangel. If we find no heart, we must seek all about the string-course. Assuming it is all within reach of the scaffolding.’
At the top of the stairs, the darkness receded unwillingly from their lanterns. Gil stretched his ears, wondering if he had heard something move elsewhere in the building, or imagined it. Maistre Pierre held the light to the window arch, and shook his head.
‘I never saw plants like that,’ he said. ‘And yet the carving is good, as if it is a true portrait. What are they meant for, do you think?’