They unpacked the box, with more care than had gone into packing it. Currie clicked his tongue disapprovingly as he refolded crumpled garments, but said nothing. The roll of papers was near the bottom, under the crossbow in its linen bag, tucked into one of Stirling’s riding-boots along with a carved St James whose paint was wearing off his scrip and broad-brimmed hat, and a pair of unwashed hose. Gil untied the tape which bound the documents, and flattened the curling sheets out on the table.
‘Is it maybe letters?’ asked Currie. He shook out the hose, releasing a waft of stale sweat into the room, and peered round Gil’s arm.
‘There are letters,’ agreed Gil, ‘but the first ones go back a few years. They don’t tell me much.’ He turned the sheets, scanning the different scripts. There were several letters from the man’s family, with brief accounts of the harvest and the well-being of his kin, and requests for prayers. Under those were two different contracts, which he studied closely, detailing sums which Stirling had borrowed from merchants of Perth. Each was duly signed off by both parties, so the money had all been repaid.
‘He’s never lacked for coin?’ he said casually.
‘Never since I’ve known him,’ agreed Currie. ‘Which is what you’d expect, seeing how he’s placed wi my lord. Weel ben, weel beneficed, as they say.’
‘So I wonder what he did with this that he borrowed?’ Gil flattened one of the contracts for the steward to see. ‘This one a year since, and another two years before that, good sums both times. Have you any knowledge of this?’
‘Oh, he wouldny let on about sic a thing,’ said Currie, shaking his head. ‘Nor any of the household wouldny need to know, seeing he’s often about Perth on my lord’s business.’ His finger fell unerringly on the note of the sum of money. ‘Fifty merks! Saints preserve us, what would he want that for?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know.’ Gil leafed further through the bundle. ‘He’s borrowed and repaid it within the contract, each time, which suggests something gey profitable to me. What have we here? More letters, a docket from my lord — he seems to keep them in order by the date, so you’d think whatever he did with the money the evidence would be with the contracts.’
‘Maybe his man of law would tell you,’ suggested Currie, indicating the elaborate penwork with which the notary had blazoned his mark on the finished contract. The loops and curls depicted a conventional mercat cross surmounted by some kind of bird of prey. ‘That’s Andro Gledstane’s mark, you ken.’
‘No need to disturb him,’ Gil said. He had reached the outermost sheet of the roll of papers. ‘Here it is. Our man’s bought a pair of properties on the Skinnergate, and paid back the loans out of the rents.’ He whistled, running a finger down the page. ‘As well he might. Look at this, Maister Currie. He’s collecting seven — no, eight merks a quarter on this one alone.’
The steward peered at the writing, and nodded.
‘Those are both the far end of the Skinnergate, next the Red Brig Port,’ he said. ‘That accounts for it, I’d say. The lads wouldny ha thought to ask for him so far along, seeing my lord’s properties are this end, and the fellow I sent round the ports would never ha spoke to the houses.’
‘What question did your man ask at the ports?’ Gil asked.
Currie straightened up, frowning, and after a moment said, ‘I bade him ask if Maister Stirling had been by the port. And if they didny know Maister Stirling, I bade him describe him as a clerk, tall and well-made, in a good gown of tawny wool, wi dark hair and a wine-coloured hat stuck all round wi pilgrim badges, and going about his lone.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I suppose you’d call it his one weakness. He collects the things wherever he goes wi my lord, the good silver ones not the pewter sort, and pins them on that hat. He’s got another hat for his best,’ he jerked his head at the box, ‘I’ve just saw it in there, but he aye wears — wore — wears the one wi the badges.’
Gil swallowed hard. Somehow this detail brought the man before him as if he was present in the chamber. Currie looked at his expression, and nodded rather grimly.
‘I’ll send for Peter,’ he said, ‘and he’ll can show you where these properties lie, and the other houses he enquired at forbye. Have you lodging for the night, maister? If you come back here afore Vespers you’ll get a bite, and a word wi Rob Chaplain if you’re wanting it, and I’ll can fit you and your men in somewhere.’
The man Peter, a stocky, long-headed fellow in the Bishop’s outdoor livery, led Gil by one vennel and another, talking cheerfully as he went.
‘Next the port, Maister Currie tells me, his last place. No wonder we lost him, then,’ he pronounced as they emerged into St John’s Square, ‘though I’m right annoyed at mysel not casting further along the street for him. We’ll pick him up this time, maybe. Mind you, the trail’s cold by now,’ he added.
Gil nodded absently, looking about him. They were next to the high east end of St John’s Kirk, a huge, handsome building set in its kirkyard, its tower casting a long shadow over the small houses round about. Folk came and went, the morning’s marketing over, the work of the day still to be done. Two women argued shrilly over a basket of washing.
‘Which is the baxter’s shop?’ he asked.
‘Where the two men went missing from?’ asked Peter intelligently, and pointed. ‘That’s it there. They had the upper chambers, to the side there, but they’re let again long since,’ he added. ‘They left all seemly, took their boots and their scrips wi them, or so the baxter’s man tellt me when I spoke wi him in the Green Man tavern.’
‘So I heard,’ Gil agreed, studying the building. The chambers Peter had indicated were off a good stone fore-stair; the tenants could have left at any hour without disturbing the rest of the household. He had spoken earlier to the Precentor of St John’s Kirk, a long-faced gloomy man, and learned a lot, some of it relevant.
‘Brothers,’ John Kinnoull the Precentor had said. ‘James and Sanders Moncrieff. One tenor, one bass. Probably my best bass, was Sanders, and you ken what it’s like finding a tenor of any sort nowadays.’
‘The fellow who left Dunblane in February sings high tenor,’ said Gil.
‘Someone’s building himself a choir, then,’ said Kinnoull. ‘You mark my words, maister, he’ll fetch away another mean-tone next to take the second line.’ It was not easy to tell whether he was serious.
‘Did they take anything with them?’ Gil had asked.
Kinnoull, his pink, lugubrious face thoughtful, said, ‘Well, now, it’s hard to say. By the time the baxter thought to let us ken at the kirk here, their door had likely been standing open all day and neither man to be seen.’
‘So everything portable had gone,’ Gil suggested.
‘Well, I wouldny say that,’ admitted Kinnoull. ‘But there’s no knowing what they took wi them and what was taken after they left.’
‘Linen, cooking gear, blankets?’ Gil asked, recalling what Rattray had removed from Dunblane. ‘Their boots? Music?’
‘Oh, aye, music indeed,’ said Kinnoull in indignation. ‘That was two great bundles of music gone, never to be seen again, and all to be copied fresh afore St John’s Day if we were to do justice to the feast.’
It had been difficult to keep the man to the point, but Gil had finally gathered the impression that the brothers Moncrieff had left in good order, much as James Rattray had done, probably by night and taking their portable property with them. After considering the various feasts of May, Kinnoull had given him a date, but seemed to have no more information.
Now, Peter said helpfully, ‘Allan Baxter would be in the bakehouse from a couple hours afore dawn, that time of year, and he never heard them go out, so they say. Likely they left just at slack tide.’
‘What, you think they went by water?’
Peter shrugged. ‘It’s the likeliest way to travel out of Perth, maister. No saying where they went beyond Taymouth, a course, but unless they went by Glasgow a ship’s the most likely.’