‘We were right!’ she said to Alys. ‘The Preceptory is involved! Mall said a strange thing,’ she explained to Gil. ‘She heard the man with the axe say to Billy that the Baptizer wanted his gear back. At first we wondered if it might mean the Knights of St John. It is the Baptist that’s their patron, isn’t it, not the Evangelist?’
‘It is,’ he agreed, through another mouthful of bannock.
‘But then the old man said the Treasurer’s title is Lord St Johns, so could it be him?’
‘The Baptizer,’ he repeated. ‘Well, the Preceptory is involved, I ken that for certain now. The Baptizer might fit. Listen to the rest of it.’
He went on with the tale. They heard him out, Kate frowning, Alys thoughtful.
‘I am truly sorry about Rob,’ she said when he had finished. ‘He was a good servant, and kind to the horses.’
‘Aye,’ said Kate. ‘He’d been to Rome, had he not, Gil? St Peter bring him to bliss, then.’
‘Amen,’ said Alys, and they all crossed themselves.
‘We have nearly all we need,’ Gil said after a moment. ‘We’ve still to find the man Baldy, and the one with the feather in his hat, and find out which side they were working for. Did you say they’d been seen in the Hog?’
‘On Wednesday,’ Kate nodded. ‘It sounds like the same men. And the fellow who saw them thought Mattha Hog knew them. Mind, it’s second-hand news, Gil. The two we sent down there last night were tellt this by another.’
‘There are more than two sides,’ said Alys, ‘that is obvious.’
‘The cooper is Sinclair’s man,’ said Kate, counting them off on her fingers. ‘So was the man in the barrel, Our Lady defend him. This Johan and the knight were for the Preceptory. The Axeman — I’m right glad to hear he’s dead, and so will Babb be — he was against both the others, but were Sinclair and the Preceptory acting together?’
‘Not entirely,’ Gil admitted. ‘However that’s sorted now. And I did think that Treasurer Knollys was very eager that I should go into Ayrshire.’ He reached for another bannock, and found the platter empty.
‘So the old man said. But surely he’s involved anyway,’ said Kate, ‘both as Treasurer and as Preceptor.’
‘The two interests may conflict,’ said Alys.
‘But then who did the Axeman mean by the Baptizer?’ wondered Kate again. ‘Who was he working for? The Preceptory, or Knollys, or someone else? And who is his woman? We’ve had no luck asking about this Maidie.’
‘He called his axe Maidie,’ recalled Gil.
‘His axe?’
‘He cannot have been from the Preceptory,’ said Alys.
‘You see that too?’ said Gil. Kate looked from one to the other. ‘He wasn’t with the cooper,’ Gil expanded, ‘else he would never have had to ask about the carts, and the cooper would never have told me he did ask. But we ken the cooper is with the Preceptory, since he sent Simmie to warn them we were on the road.’
‘Um,’ said Kate. ‘It’s far more complicated than I realized. I thought you just went about asking questions till the right answer came out.’
‘But how do we get proof?’ said Alys, pursuing her own train of thought. ‘He will never admit it without some kind of proof.’
‘It may be more complicated than that anyway,’ suggested Gil. She nodded absently.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Kate. ‘Have I missed part of the conversation?’
‘It depends who paid the man Baldy,’ said Alys suddenly. ‘What a pity you did not catch him too.’
‘We lacked forethought there,’ he admitted, and she giggled, and then finally met his eye and smiled at him a little sheepishly.
‘Could it have been Noll Sinclair who paid him?’ said Kate. ‘Or the cooper, even, setting a trap for someone with you as the bait?’
‘Now I never thought of that,’ admitted Gil. ‘Though I thought the trap was for us. I still feel a fool, being decoyed up on to the hillside to look for a dead pig’
‘We know the Axeman killed Sinclair’s man in the cooper’s yard,’ offered Kate.
‘Something was killed in the cooper’s yard,’ corrected Gil. She pulled a face, but nodded agreement.
‘And probably the same night,’ supplied Alys, ‘the barrel of books was taken off Maister Morison’s cart and the barrel with the head and the treasure put on it.’
‘Why?’ said Gil. ‘That’s the strange thing. Why send the barrel to Glasgow?’
‘Accident,’ said Alys. She sat up straight. ‘I know! Kate, you know we thought the Axeman was left-handed. It is the kind of mistake they make. We had a left-handed kitchen-lassie once and she could never put things in the proper place.’
‘So it simply went on the wrong cart!’ said Kate.
‘That must be it. It should have gone to Leith.’
‘Of course,’ said Gil. ‘The cart for Leith was a big mixed load, so Riddoch said. Far likelier, if it went on that, the exchange could have gone unnoticed till it could be collected.’
They exchanged another look, and Alys nodded agreement.
‘And if the Axeman did not enquire at the cooper’s until Wednesday, there had been time for him to go to Leith and find his barrel was not there and return to Linlithgow. And then he came straight to Glasgow,’ she speculated. ‘He must near have worn a groove in the road.’
Gil, rarely aware of her accent, was suddenly, delightfully, distracted by the foreign turn she gave to the Scottish placenames. Concentrating with an effort, he found his sister saying, ‘But we still don’t know who the Axeman was, or who this Baldy and Feather Hat might be, or whose men they are, or why they are so persistent about it.’
‘A fair summary,’ said Gil.
‘You forgot Sinclair and Knollys,’ said Alys.
Gil opened his mouth to answer her, and was forestalled by a sudden commotion outside in the dark yard. Shrill voices, a thump as if the gate had been slammed, questions and shouting. Women’s voices. Then, through it, a deeper note: ‘Friend, I’m a friend. Word for Maister Cunningham. Is that you, Babb? Is Nan no here?’
‘Matt?’ said Gil. He jumped up and hurried to the house door just as his uncle’s man reached the top of the fore-stair. ‘Matt, is all well?’
Matt stepped in and pulled off his bonnet, saying drily, ‘Aye, Lady Kate. Your watch is waukin.’
‘I never expected callers this late,’ said Babb from the doorway.
‘Watch?’ said Gil. ‘What watch? Kate, what is going on here? Where are the men, anyway?’
‘Sleeping,’ she said, ‘save for two we sent down the Hog again. The rest of them will watch the second half of the night, we’re taking the first half.’
‘Kate!’
‘You can see for yourself it works,’ she pointed out, laughing at him. ‘They caught Matt, but they’ve done him no damage.’
‘Kate, this is a fighting man we’re seeking. How can a bunch of women — ’
‘Wi no argument,’ said Matt succinctly.
‘Aye, well, you came quiet,’ said Babb, grinning, before she turned away to go back down the stair into the yard.
‘I’ll stay here, then,’ said Gil.
‘You will not,’ said his sister, though Alys’s expression brightened.
‘No,’ said Matt. ‘You’re sent for, Maister Gil. The castle. Robert Blacader wants a word.’
‘To the castle?’ repeated Gil blankly. ‘Whatever does he want?’
‘How did he know you were back in Glasgow?’ said Alys.
The moon, five days past the full, was just rising behind the towers of St Mungo’s as Gil made his way by lantern-light up from the Wyndhead towards the castle gatehouse. Noise and bustle floated over the wall; lute music came from the Archbishop’s lodging, a more raucous singing from one of the towers, and a smell of new bread suggested the episcopal bakehouse was working through the night.
Gil gave his name to a guard, and after a short wait a sleepy-eyed page in a velvet jerkin appeared and conducted him across two courtyards, past the fore-stair of the Provost’s lodging — Sweet St Giles, Gil thought, was it only two days since that we had to climb that in a hurry? — and up a turnpike stair. There were lights at most of the windows, and torches burned beside other doorways.