‘Aye, but he’d have to say that,’ muttered Walter. Gil put one foot on the edge of a tub of daisies and leaned forward, meeting the young man’s eyes.
‘Walter, you said your maister’s pictures had been taken as well?’ Walter nodded. ‘What were they, can you tell me?’
‘One was the angel’s salutation,’ Walter raised one hand in the conventional pose of Gabriel in an Annunciation, ‘and the other was St John Baptist baptising Our Lord, wi the water all up round his waist, paintit on a wee board.’
‘So one showed Our Lady and the other showed Our Lord.’ Walter nodded. ‘Do you really think the Deil could carry away somebody wi those images in his pack?’ Is that a syllogism? he wondered. Something is defective in the logic, but this laddie won’t notice.
‘You see?’ said the soutar triumphantly. ‘I tellt you it was nonsense.’
‘You mean he’s no in Hell?’ Walter stared at Gil, a huge relieved grin spreading across his face. ‘Oh, thanks be to Our Lady! She must ha saved him! Oh, wait till I tell our Mirren.’
Gil exchanged a glance with the soutar, and decided to leave well alone.
‘Afore you do that, Walter,’ he said, ‘had Maister Rattray taken all his gear wi him?’ The young man shook his head, still grinning. ‘Can you tell me where the rest is? What happened to it?’
‘It’s a’ packed up and lying in the corner o my shop,’ said the soutar, turning to go back in. ‘You can tak a look if you want.’
Rattray’s discarded gear was not copious. Emptying the canvas sack on to the floor, Gil turned over the contents and identified a shirt, a pair of worn hose, one ancient house-shoe, some mismatched table-linen. There was a platter and wooden bowl but no beaker, several spoons of wood or horn, a couple of blackened cooking-crocks which had rubbed soot on everything round them, and two worn blankets padding the bundle.
‘He had very little,’ he commented, comparing this collection with the well-appointed houses of his friends among the songmen at Glasgow.
‘He’s took the best wi him,’ said Walter eagerly. He had cheered up enormously with Gil’s reassurance, and was almost bouncing beside the heap of goods. ‘See,’ he went on, ‘he had a new blanket, and other four sarks besides that one that was in the wash, and some linen besides, and four bonnie wee metal cups and a wooden one, and a pair o good boots my brither made to him — ’
‘Boots,’ repeated Gil.
‘Stout sewn boots, oxhide wi a double boar’s-hide sole,’ itemized the soutar.
‘Aye, and the great socks to go in them that our Mirren knittet,’ contributed Walter. ‘My good-sister’s a fearsome knitter,’ he informed Gil. ‘I’m right glad my maister had a pair of her socks wi him. That’ll keep his feet warm.’
‘He’s set off on a journey, hasn’t he, maister?’ said the older Muthill. Gil sat back on his heels and nodded.
‘I’d say so,’ he agreed. ‘A long journey, at that. I wonder where he’s gone?’
The Bishop was absent from his Cathedral at present, but being on official business Gil had been able to claim lodging for himself and his escort at the Palace. Strolling back across the precinct, he considered what he had learned so far. It hardly seemed to lead him anywhere, other than to more witnesses. The Drummond boy might have confided in his friend, or the fellow Kilgour might know something useful, Rattray appeared to have left willingly for a long journey, and that was the sum of it. Perhaps Canon Drummond could help him, he thought doubtfully, and wondered why he was putting off speaking to the Canon. Was it the fact that, a month after being told his brother had reappeared, Andrew Drummond had still neither visited nor written to his family? Or was it the slight wariness of sub-Dean Belchis’s reference to the man?
He glanced at the sky. Most of Dunblane would be sitting down to its dinner shortly, and then the quireman and his fellows would be singing Vespers. Best to go and see what was to be had from the Palace buttery, and consider what to do next.
‘No, you don’t want to talk to Andrew Drummond,’ said John Kilgour. ‘Even if he wasny — ’
‘We never do, if we can avoid it,’ said one of the other quiremen. ‘He doesny like singers. Mind the way he got across John Rat, all last winter? All because John got before him in the procession at Candlemas.’
‘No, he really hates singers,’ agreed another voice.
‘Why’s that, then?’ asked Gil innocently, and reached for the nearest jug of ale.
He had heard Vespers in the Cathedral, standing in the nave while the familiar chants floated through the choir-screen, and then had made himself known to one or two of the choir as they left the vestry. As he had hoped, a friend of Habbie Sim of Glasgow was welcome, the more so when he stopped by the Tower tavern on the way back to Kilgour’s lodging and paid for enough ale for most of the choir for the evening.
‘You’ll mind it better than me, Jockie,’ said Kilgour’s neighbour. ‘You were at the sang-schule wi him, were you no?’
‘I was, Adam,’ agreed Kilgour. He was a balding, fairish man in his forties, with a light, breathy speaking voice, though when he had joined in the snatches of chant in the street his deep tones had astonished Gil. ‘I was. It was a bad business.’
‘What happened?’ Gil asked.
‘He was never much liked, save by the adults,’ said Kilgour, with what seemed to be reluctance, ‘but he’d a good voice, maybe the best mean, the best alto, I ever heard in my life, pure and clear wi a compass to astonish you, so a course he sang in the Play of the Resurrection. In the nave at Pace-tide, you ken.’
Gil nodded. He knew the kind of thing Kilgour meant, more of a dramatized service than a play as such. The Resurrection would mean at the least three women’s parts, two or three disciples, perhaps an angel, and Christ. Not all the parts would be for boys’ voices.
‘Who did he sing?’ he prompted.
‘Judas,’ said Kilgour. ‘A big part, and the second year he’d sung it.’
‘But the rope slipped,’ said someone else. Gil looked from one face to another in dismay.
‘What, you mean he was hanged in earnest? But he’s — ’
‘No, no,’ said the man called Adam. ‘No that bad. But he fell off the stool, and his throat was hurt bad wi the rope.’
‘How did it happen?’ Gil asked. ‘Was anyone to blame, or was it an accident?’
‘My brother aye said he’d seen a cord,’ remarked someone in the corner. ‘But he never jaloused who had pulled on it. To upset the stool, you ken,’ he expanded. Gil nodded, taking this in. ‘He said the enquiry was something fierce, but nobody ever owned up nor clyped, the more so as the mannie that was to fix the rope — one of the cathedral servants, you ken — dee’d not long after.’
‘What happened to him?’ asked his neighbour. The narrator shook his head.
‘My brother never said. I think it was some kind o accident round the building. Fell off the window walk, or the like.’
‘And nobody admitted to causing Andrew’s accident,’ said Gil, digesting this.
‘Andrew was never well liked,’ said Kilgour.
‘Why not?’ Gil asked.
‘Boys can take a dislike to someone,’ said Adam. ‘Often enough there’s no accounting for it.’
‘The way my brother tellt me,’ protested the man in the corner, ‘there was plenty reasons to dislike Andrew. The football, for one.’
‘I’d forgot that,’ said Kilgour. Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘A sorry thing that was, too. One of the fellows had a football, a rare good one, for a yuletide gift. We’d several games wi it, and the boy it belonged to thought he was in Heaven, for everyone would be his friend, you ken.’ Gil nodded, recalling the muddy prints on the wall of Cossar’s manse. ‘Then one day at the noon break it was found under his bench flat as a bannock, knifed beyond mending.’
‘Sweet St Giles!’ said Gil, and several people exclaimed with him, obviously hearing the tale for the first time. ‘And Andrew Drummond was blamed for it?’