‘Not as sorry as I am to be like it,’ said Kate.
‘I prayed for you yestreen.’
Kate’s chin went up. ‘You never thought there’d be a miracle, did you?’ she said challengingly.
‘Une tête?’ said Alys from beside her father. ‘A head? In a barrel?’
Gil grimaced. Kate looked from one to another of them, and then at the dish of coins on the bench, and raised her eyebrows.
‘It’s mine,’ said Morison awkwardly.
‘What, the head?’ said Kate, and he blushed.
‘Well, it’s not mine, it ought to ha been mine. The fill of the barrel, I mean.’ He took a deep breath and began again, with a more coherent explanation of the circumstances. The two girls heard him out, Alys sorting coins as she listened.
‘Why should you hand it to the Provost,’ asked Kate when he had finished, ‘and have him take the credit for finding it?’
‘He’s the Archbishop’s depute in the burgh,’ Gil pointed out. ‘It must all be done with due process.’
‘Hah!’ she said, but Alys looked up from a stack of coins and said seriously:
‘And who is the dead man? He cannot be a shore-porter from the Low Countries, can he, Gil? The serjeant must be wrong.’
‘Well, he might, but I don’t see how he can have died there,’ Gil agreed. ‘Unless the King’s treasure has been out of the country and back again. We need to find out where Balthasar of Liège has gone.’
‘Oh, is that why you wish to go to Kilmarnock?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘To trace the musician? It is now three months ago he went there. He has surely moved on by now.’
‘The McIans will know,’ said Alys. ‘But I think they are in Stirling.’
‘The McIans?’ said Morison. ‘Is that that harper you were telling me about? And you’re tutor to his son, you said.’ Gil nodded. ‘Is he not here in Glasgow?’
‘He and his sister came by the house last week,’ said Alys, ‘to see the bairn, and to say they were leaving the burgh for a time. They have invitations to play at one house and another, and I am sure he said they would be in Stirling by now. You could ask for them there, Gil, at least.’
‘These jewels are bonnie,’ said Kate. Gil looked round, and discovered that Morison had unrolled the wet velvet on the arbour bench beside her. ‘Look at the goldsmith work. And is that a sapphire? What a colour it is!’
Morison mumbled something. She looked sharply at him, and said as if recalling her manners, ‘I was sorry to hear of Agnes, maister. Two years past, isn’t it?’ He nodded, and opened his mouth, but she went on speaking. ‘And you’ve — two bairns, I heard. How old are they?’
‘Wynliane is near seven, and Ysonde is four,’ said their father.
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What are their names? Wynliane — Ysonde! Augie Morison, only you could have named two bairns like that.’
‘They’re bonnie names,’ he protested, reddening. ‘Out of the romances.’
‘Oh, I ken that. Greysteil and Sir Tristram. Well, if they hope for either to come and carry them off, they’ll grow old hoping,’ said Kate acidly. ‘There are no heroes left in Scotland, maister. If you’ve a set of tablets on you we can make a list of these jewels, while my good-sister counts the coin.’
Sir Thomas Stewart of Minto, the Archbishop’s civil depute in Glasgow, Bailie of the Regality and Provost of the burgh, small, neat and balding in good murrey velvet furred with marten, stood on the fore-stair of his lodging in the castle, surveyed the gathering in the outer yard and scowled.
‘Serjeant, ye’ve rounded up the scaff and raff of the town again,’ he said. ‘I’ll likely need my own men to keep the peace before this is over. Walter,’ he said to his clerk, ‘gang to Andro and bid him bring five-six of the men, just to keep an eye on things.’
‘It’s none of my doing if the better sort never answers the bellman,’ said the serjeant in righteous indignation as the clerk slipped away, his pen-case and inkhorn rattling at his waist. ‘I’ve a burgh to watch and ward, sir, I’ve no time to go calling on each man by name for a case like this.’
‘Aye, well,’ said Sir Thomas irritably. ‘Silence them, then, man.’ He glanced at Gil and his companions, standing nearest him. ‘These gentlemen at least have better matters to attend to than all this giff-gaff. We’ll get done wi and get about our day.’
He glowered at the source of the loudest conversation and comment, the group around the head, which was exhibited on a trestle in the centre of the yard and guarded by the same reluctant constable and a colleague. The barrel stood on the ground beside the trestle, and had come in for some attention itself; one tavern-keeper from the Gallowgait had already offered to purchase it from Maister Morison when all was done. Gil recognized Morison’s carter, the stocky, sandy-haired Billy, in the thick of the group, his blue bonnet wagging as he talked to those interested. What was he telling them? wondered Gil.
The serjeant, shouldering the burgh mace, stepped up on to the mounting block and shouted for silence, his voice carrying without effort across the yard. The clerk returned, half a dozen armed men tramped after him, and the proceedings began. Gil, used to the Scottish legal process, was not surprised by the length of time it took to select fifteen respectable men to form an assize, but as the sixth name was agreed upon, he could feel Maistre Pierre becoming restive at his side.
‘Is it always like this?’ the mason asked as someone objected to the proposed seventh juror on the grounds of infamy, since his wife was well known to serve ale in short measure.
‘We’re getting on well,’ said Morison at Gil’s other side. ‘Gil, tell me more of last night. What did they do for your sister, over yonder? Was there a Mass?’
Gil nodded, and glanced at the towers of St Mungo’s where they loomed above the castle wall.
‘My uncle said Mass for her,’ he said, ‘before the shrine.’
The saint’s shrine stood in the centre of the lower church, a dim, pillared place like the undercroft of a tower-house. Last night, entering the Laigh Kirk by its south door, he had paused to look out over St Mungo’s kirkyard in the evening light. Near at hand the ground was shadowed by the building site where the Archbishop’s plans to add to his cathedral were going ahead in fits and starts as the funding permitted. The clumps of trees cast long fingers beyond that, and the gable-ends of the tall stone manses at the edge of the kirkyard glowed bright where the light caught them. Eastwards the sky was darkening as he watched.
‘Gil?’ said his sister behind him. ‘You going to sleep there?’
He stepped aside quickly. ‘Forgive me, Kate. I’m keeping you standing.’
‘I can stand forever,’ she said. ‘It’s getting up or down that’s the difficult part. Come on, they won’t wait all night for us.’
She turned on her crutches with clumsy expertise, and thumped towards the few steps down from the doorway. Gil followed watchfully as she worked her way down into the shadows. He knew better than to offer help.
Under the vaulting immediately opposite the doorway, within the wooden screens which defined the Lady chapel, candlelight flickered on the carved latticework. The Virgin herself, small and ancient with a blackened foot, presided from her pillar, her babe perched on her arm. Kate paused, leaning on her crutches, looked towards the figure briefly, crossed herself, and swung to her left, towards the ornate structure of St Mungo’s tomb.
The altar to the west of the tomb was lit and furnished, and before it their uncle knelt in his Mass vestments, while the remainder of the little group waited in silence. Gil caught Alys’s eye over his sister’s shoulder, and smiled quickly at her. Maistre Pierre had his head bent over his beads; the two servants of the Official’s household who had known Kate since childhood were present, Maggie sitting on the base of a pillar with a lantern at her feet, Matt standing beside her, and beyond them towered Babb. She was gazing at the brightly painted end of the tomb, her lips moving silently. Kate on her crutches thumped past the draped side of the altar, David Cunningham rose from his knees, Gil moved hastily into place and lifted the smoking censer, and the Mass began.