Across the yard, Maister Cornton checked in the doorway of the counting-house, met Gil’s eye for a moment, and deliberately stepped out of sight. And just in time, thought Gil as Malky looked over his shoulder for his master.
‘Left his hat?’
‘I found it,’ said Malky, nodding.
‘Tell me about it,’ Gil invited.
Reading between the awkward statements, he ascertained that Malky, going home for his supper on the twenty-fifth of July, had spied the man in the hat with many badges and the man with the fluffy hair, walking together near the Blackfriars wall. Curious to know what priests discussed at their leisure, he had slipped up behind them.
‘But they were talking sermons,’ he said in disappointment.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘What else would priests talk of, you gowk?’
‘Many things,’ said Gil. ‘What made you think it was sermons, Malky?’
‘Well, it was all about forgiving,’ explained the boy. ‘And maybe confession, and all long words like that.’
Gil nodded. ‘And then what did you do?’
‘Gaed hame to my supper, for it was late. Later than today, maybe.’
‘And what about the hat?’
Malky had found it lying on the bank the next morning, damp with dew but undamaged, when he came by on his way to the yard.
‘I brought it in here,’ he said. ‘I thought when the man cam back to see my maister I could gie it back to him.’
Looking at the innocent expression, Gil reserved judgement. It might well be true.
‘Where is it?’ he asked.
It was in the boy’s kist in the long shed. He ran off to fetch it, and Martin said anxiously, ‘He’ll get himsel took up for theft, maister, if he goes on like that. Will you warn him, maybe?’
‘He’s daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘Keeping it that way. Now I’d ha sellt it, and got money for ale.’
‘And that is theft, Ally Johnston,’ said Martin roundly. The boy Malky came back, bearing the hat. It was a fairly ordinary round bonnet with a flat top and a brim which turned up all the way round, of wine-coloured felt as Wat the steward had said, rendered unusual by the many badges pinned or stitched to the brim, silver and pewter, each one different.
‘See, it’s no hurt, maister,’ he said in triumph. ‘I took good care of it.’ He thrust it at Gil. ‘Would you maybe take it, maister, if the man’s no coming back to our yard? You could give it back to him?’
‘I’ll take it, Malky,’ agreed Gil, ‘and thank you for looking after it so carefully.’ He glanced over the boy’s head to where the tanner had emerged from the counting-house again. ‘Now if your maister will give you leave, I want you to show me where you found it.’
Out on the track that ran by the Ditch he looked about him again. There were two tanyards cheek by jowl, with a skinner to one side of them and a dyer to the other. A path led off between the two in the general direction of the barking dogs. Cornton’s was the smaller in extent, but seemed to specialize in the luxury end of the trade, with the stacks of small hides dyed in bright colours which he had already admired arranged on pallets and carts where the passer-by could see them over the shoulder-high fence of stout planks.
Malky led him past the other tanyard and the skinner, to pick up a well-trodden path which worked its way westward along the outer bank of the Ditch. The Black-friars’ wall stood high and forbidding, perhaps a hundred paces to the right, and on the open ground between path and wall the evening sunshine was bright on yellow broom and wildflowers.
‘They were walking about and talking there,’ said Malky, gesturing, ‘the two men. I like to go home this way,’ he confided, ‘acos there’s all wee birds in the broom. I like wee birds, see, maister, my granda that’s a forester taught me all their names. Last week there was two gowdspinks eating the thistles there, all red and yellow, right bonnie they were.’
‘Can you remember anything the men said?’ Gil asked, looking at the thistles rather than the boy. There were no goldfinches today, though many small birds chirped and whirred in the bushes. Malky paused a moment in thought.
‘No really,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Just what I said, about forgiving. One of them said, Even Judas was forgiven,’ he recalled, brightening. ‘How would he know that, maister? I thought Judas was burning in Hell. And the other one said, Aye, but he hangit himsel.’ The intonation said, Rather than hanging someone else.
‘Which one said that?’ Gil asked, trying hard to sound casual.
‘The one that brought the bairns to my maister’s house. He’s got a voice like a corncrake in the long grass, so he has.’
That was clear enough, though whether Drummond had referred to himself, to Stirling, or to some other he would have to work out later. He coaxed the boy a little, but could extract no more information; finally he said, ‘And where did you find the man’s hat? Can you mind that?’
‘Oh, aye,’ Malky assured him, ‘for there was a throstle’s nest just near it. Come and I’ll show you.’
The place he picked out was further along the bank, where a clump of hazel and ash provided shade. The grass was well trampled, and a young couple in intent conversation within the grove turned to stare at them when Malky stopped.
‘It was yonder,’ he said firmly, ‘just lying on the grass there, like if it had been dropped. I wondered at it,’ he confided, ‘for a priest doesny like to go bareheaded for the sun burning his shaved bit, does he?’
Gil, with a sudden recollection of Andrew Drummond’s servant putting his master’s hat back on his head, nodded at this and cast about, looking at the ground. There was no likelihood of picking up any tracks here after two weeks, the path was too well used and the pair of lovers under the trees were hardly the first to choose this spot. The bank of the Ditch, a few yards away, showed no useful sign at all. He stood looking at the dark water sliding past, the weeds waving in the current and the ducks paddling about under the other bank where the gardens of the biggest properties on the Northgate came down to the water. The occupiers of those must be questioned, anyone else using the path must be asked if they saw the two priests -
‘It’s getting near my supper,’ said Malky diffidently.
‘It is,’ he agreed, glancing at the sky. The sun was round beyond the west. It must be close to Vespers now, little point in disturbing the Blackfriars who would also be about to sit down to their frugal supper and then go to sing the Office. Moreover it had been a long day. Giving the boy a coin, he dismissed him, and after establishing that the couple lurking in the shadows had not been there at any time when two priests were walking on the path, something which they seemed to think deserved congratulation, he turned towards the Red Brig and the Bishop’s house.
‘Found on the path?’ repeated Bishop Brown, staring.
At his elbow his elderly chaplain bleated in distress. He had a long gentle face and straggling white hair, and wore a felt cap with a rolled brim which somehow suggested the curving horns of the small sheep Gil had seen on the ride down from Balquhidder. His voice reinforced the impression.
‘Is it truly Jaikie’s hat?’ he asked, peering short-sightedly at it and crossing himself. ‘Our Lady save us! Why would he leave his hat on the path?’
‘Aye, it’s Jaikie’s own hat.’ The Bishop pushed Jerome’s enquiring muzzle down and turned the hat round, fingering the sequence of silver images. ‘Indeed, I mind when he bought the half of these badges. I’ve joked wi him about the things many a time.’
‘And so have we all, my lord,’ agreed the chaplain. ‘But why would he leave his hat? He’d miss it, surely.’
Ignoring this, Bishop Brown set the hat on his desk and wiped at his eyes. The dog scrambled up to lick his chin, and he patted the creature. ‘Maister Cunningham, what’s come to the poor fellow? It looks bad, I’m fearing me.’
‘It looks bad,’ Gil agreed. ‘I suppose he could have gone into the Town Ditch, though I don’t see why that should have happened. The path where the boy found the hat is yards from the waterside. He could have met with some other misadventure, I suppose, but why he — ’ He stopped, reluctant to express his thoughts at this stage.