‘Into the Ditch?’ repeated Rob Gregor the chaplain. ‘Fallen in? Oh, our blessed Lady preserve him! You think he’s — And I packed up his gear and never thought,’ he said in distress.
‘The houses opposite,’ said the Bishop with decision. Gil nodded, recognizing how a good-humoured man like this could become a bishop. ‘We’ll have Wat send in the morning to ask did they see or hear aught that day, and put a couple fellows wi boats on the Ditch, to drag that stretch. Maybe get the Blackfriars to send their lay brothers out and cover the meadow-land, in case he’s lying under a gorse bush. Do you think the laddie was telling you the truth?’
‘I think so,’ Gil said. ‘He’s guileless, I’d say, and the tanner called him a good laddie.’
‘I’ll get a word wi him myself, just the same. I should have taken this into my own hands days ago,’ said Brown fretfully, stroking his dog’s ears. ‘Here’s you turned up all this in just an hour or two, and my men got nowhere in two weeks. If we’d just known of his interests by the port!’
‘I think it might not have saved him,’ said Gil deliberately. ‘I think he may have been dead by the time he was missed.’
‘Aye, but where is he?’ demanded the Bishop, over another distressed bleat from his chaplain. ‘What came to him? What did Andrew Drummond want wi him?’ He lifted the hat again, and turned it in his hands. Jerome sniffed at it with interest. ‘If this could tell us, eh, Maister Cunningham?’
Gil answered something conventional, but Brown was not listening. He had tilted the hat to the evening light from the window and was studying it intently, counting and telling off the images.
‘Had Jaikie rearranged his badges lately, Rob?’ he asked.
‘No, no, my lord,’ the chaplain shook his head. ‘He was quite particular in that. They’d each their own place, he’d spend an hour putting them back if ever the bonnet had to be brushed. And the time the seagull blessed him, d’you recall, sir — ’
‘What have you seen, sir?’ Gil asked.
‘They’ve been moved lately,’ said the Bishop. ‘Look at this.’ He held the item where both Gil and the chaplain could see it, and pointed. ‘There’s been one there. You can see the mark where the felt held its colour, and the holes for the pin, and there’s another there, and another — ’
‘There is,’ agreed Gil, annoyed with himself. ‘You’ve a sharp eye, sir.’ He bent closer, looking at the traces Brown had identified, and picked at the turned-up brim to look behind it. ‘I’d say that’s been done very recently. The colour hasn’t faded any further. It looks as if one has gone, maybe two, and the rest that are pinned not sewn have been moved about to hide the gap.’ He pulled a face. ‘I could be wrong about the boy Malky, I suppose, but I’d not have said he’d interfered with the hat. Did Stirling ever mention losing one?’
‘No, no, never!’ protested the chaplain.
‘No that I heard him,’ said the Bishop, looking hard at Gil. ‘Do you think it has some bearing on his disappearance?’
‘It might,’ said Gil, ‘but it’s a thing untoward in any case. Can you tell which are missing, my lord?’
‘Let me see.’ The Bishop turned the object again. ‘Ninian, Kentigern, Andrew, Giles. There’s Tain, there’s Haddington, Dunblane, Elgin … All the Scots ones are here. It must be one of the foreign ones, and those I’m less sure of. Rob, see if you can tell us what’s gone.’ He suddenly thrust the hat at Rob Gregor and covered his eyes with one stubby-fingered hand. ‘Ah, my poor Jaikie! What came to you, then?’
‘I can’t right say,’ said Maister Gregor, peering closely at the badges. ‘There’s St William of Perth from Rochester, that he visited that time we were at London, and there’s St Cuthbert a course, and,’ he turned the hat round, ‘there’s St Paul from the great kirk at London, and the sepulchre of the Kings from Cologne, yes, yes,’ he murmured, ‘they’re all there, but there’s one, no two missing. What ones is it, now? Our Lady of — no, no, there she is.’ He looked up at Gil, with an anxious expression. ‘I canny call them to mind, maister. Let me think on it, and tell them over again, whiles I pray for my poor friend. Ah, Our Lady save him, to think he’s maybe been dead all this time!’
Having had a word with his own men and made certain that they were securely lodged alongside the Bishop’s men-at-arms, and that Peter had returned with the packet of white kidskins, Gil found a bench in a quiet corner in the garden and sat down with a platter of bread and cold meats which Wat the steward had found for him. It had been a very long day, starting in the early August dawn with a forty-mile ride, and he was tired, but the facts and speculations he had collected were dancing round in his head and he needed to put them in order.
The songmen from St John’s Kirk he felt he could dismiss. It looked as if they had departed willingly, and quite possible that they had left Scotland, taking ship from the harbour which he could almost see from where he sat. There were plenty of places in the Low Countries or even further afield where good singers would be welcomed; certainly in Paris the accuracy and purity of tone of Scots and particularly of Ersche voices had been much admired. It might even be that the Precentor at St John’s Kirk was right and someone was building himself a choir of Scots singers, but there was probably no way to find out from here.
Which left the question of what had happened to James Stirling. He stretched his legs out, regretting the absence of Socrates who would have had his chin on his knee by now, and missing Alys and her quick understanding and penetrating insight. Was it this evening she was invited to the harvest celebration in Glenbuckie, or was it tomorrow?
Stirling, he told himself firmly, James Stirling had gone to speak to Andrew Drummond, had been seen speaking to him. He had not returned to his post after the conversation, and his hat had been found the next morning, its badges apparently interfered with. That much was solid fact. What were the possibilities?
He might have gone into the Ditch, but it seemed unlikely. There were no traces. We can try dragging the channel, he thought, but I suspect we’ll raise nothing that way.
The man might have made a sudden decision to follow the two songmen, wherever they had gone, but what would make someone with such a congenial post do such a thing? Could it have been something in the conversation with Drummond? I need to speak to Drummond again, though I doubt if I’ll get any more out of him. That tantalizing snatch of conversation the boy heard was no real help; did it refer to Drummond’s long-distant accident, or to his guilt about his mistress’s death, or to something else? Even Judas was forgiven. -Aye, but he hangit himself. Who had hanged, or killed, or betrayed another, in the present case?
And the question of the missing badge. Someone had removed it from the hat, or found it missing, and taken some pains to hide its absence. A thief, surely, would have taken all the badges and the hat as well. Why remove one badge only? Perhaps someone shared Stirling’s devotion to whichever saint or shrine it represented. He wondered if the chaplain would identify the badge. Let’s not pin our hopes on that either, he thought, and grimaced at the inadvertent pun.
What else? There was the matter of where Stirling was in the two hours between leaving the tanyard and being seen talking to Andrew Drummond. He might have been waiting at the Blackfriars for Drummond, of course, I can ask them that when I call there, he thought. And we could send a few of the Bishop’s men to ask at the various yards and dwellings between the bridge and the Blackfriars, perhaps pick up the trail.
And there is the dog-breeder, he recalled, and recognized the unease which was nagging at him. When he had encountered Mistress Doig more than a year since, it had been her husband who claimed to be the dog-breeder, but his chief occupation seemed to be gathering and selling information. The pair had left Glasgow hurriedly on the same day as Gil had last seen Robert Montgomery, for reasons which were part of the same set of difficult circumstances. He could visualize William Doig now, a squat figure like a chess-piece, no taller than an ell-stick, with powerful arms and shoulders and an ability to conceal his thoughts which a man of law might envy. Could Doig be mixed up in this? Could he have spirited Stirling away on behalf of some other who needed the information he possessed? I’ll speak to Mistress Doig myself, first thing tomorrow, he decided.