He was recalled to his whereabouts by a hesitant bleating. Looking round, he discovered that the evening was beginning to darken, and Maister Gregor was stooped beside him, trying to draw his attention.
‘Er — ’ he said again, more than ever like an old sheep. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Maister Cunningham. Maybe you’re deep in your thoughts?’
‘No, no,’ said Gil, rising politely. ‘Come and sit down, sir.’
‘I’ll not sit down, thank you,’ said Maister Gregor, waving the idea away as if it would sting him. ‘It’s a bit damp for my bones. But I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said again.
‘Was it something you wanted? Can I do something for you?’
‘Well, no,’ the chaplain peered at him in the fading light, ‘it’s just that I thought on what badges it was that’s gone from poor Jaikie’s hat.’
‘Badges? More than one?’ said Gil, and realized that the old man was murmuring one of the prayers for the dead. He waited, and Maister Gregor crossed himself and continued:
‘Aye, indeed, maister, it’s two badges.’
‘And what ones is it?’ said Gil encouragingly,
‘Well, one of them’s St Eloi’s horse from Noyon, unusual it is, and the other’s the only one that was from a female saint’s shrine. Save for Our Lady, and she’s aye a different matter,’ he added as an aside. ‘I mind joking him about it more than once. But the thing is I canny right mind her name.’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Gil in disappointment.
‘Aye, for it’s an unusual kind of name. I never heard of anybody given it.’ The old man leaned forward to peer into Gil’s face, and a bony hand came out to clasp his arm. ‘See, her shrine’s somewhere in the Low Countries, but she’s not a Flemish saint, she’s Irish.’
‘Irish?’ repeated Gil.
Maister Gregor nodded. ‘Irish, maister. An Irish princess, so Jaikie told me one time. She fled from Ireland with her confessor, and fetched up at this shrine in the Low Countries, where she heals madmen and women. I don’t recall the rest of the tale, though I think her father came into it somewhere, and I can’t call her name to mind, but I know she’s a healer of the mad.’
‘Right,’ said Gil. ‘Maister Gregor, thank you for telling me this.’
‘Is it any help?’ The sheep-like expression had returned. ‘I think it began with a D. Her name, I mean.’
‘It’s a help,’ said Gil. ‘It’s a lot of help, Maister Gregor.’ It means I can probably dismiss the problem, he was thinking. I don’t see how there can be any connection.
‘I’m glad,’ said the old man. ‘We want to know what’s come to him.’ He peered round in the dusk. ‘I’d best go indoors, maister. The night air’s no a good thing. Are you coming too?’
‘I am.’ Gil lifted the empty platter and turned towards the house. ‘I’m surprised I’m not being bitten here. You can’t sit out like this in Balquhidder.’
‘It’s the smoke,’ explained Maister Gregor. ‘They stay away from all the smoke.’
‘I think you packed away all Maister Stirling’s property,’ Gil said, gesturing for the old priest to go in front of him.
‘I did that,’ agreed Maister Gregor in a distressed bleat. ‘Never thinking but that he’d come back for it. Poor Jaikie!’
‘Was it all in good order? Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about it?’ Gil saw that for a foolish question as he spoke. This gentle old soul would hardly recognise trouble if it bit him on the hand.
‘No, no, nothing by-ordinar. Save for the crossbow.’ Maister Gregor stopped still and nodded, the movement dimly visible in the twilight. ‘Save for the crossbow.’
‘What was wrong with that?’
‘Oh, nothing wrong wi’t, it works well, I ascertained that, if you could but draw it. Only I never kent Jaikie had a bow, you see. He’d aye to borrow mine when we went out to the butts.’
Stifling his response to the image of Maister Gregor with a crossbow in his hands, Gil said, ‘You and Maister Stirling have been good friends, then, if you’d lend him your bow.’
‘Oh, yes, indeed. He’s a — he’s a good friend,’ said the old man earnestly. ‘There’s some finds his humour a bit sharp, but he’s aye a good laugh, and he’ll do you a good turn sooner than an ill.’ He chuckled. ‘Only the day afore he went off, he’d a good crack at Wat our steward, fair made me laugh. See, Wat had misplaced his tablets, and Jaikie found them at the back o a bench, fallen down behind the cushion. Oh, he said, if I kent where to take it, that would be worth a penny or two, wi all the tally o my lord’s household in it. Wat was no best pleased, but the rest o us laughed.’ He peered at Gil in the shadows. ‘Maybe you had to be there. But the other was better, wait till I tell you. The very day we last saw him, Wat was on about a new way o cooking mutton he’d got off Robert Elphinstone’s steward when we was last in Edinburgh, that he’d tried to teach my lord’s cook and the man couldny get the rights o’t, and Jaikie said, You should write it down, Wat, and sell it in the Low Countries. Wat was right put out.’
‘I think you and Maister Stirling had a disagreement, too,’ Gil said, with faint malice.
‘We did,’ said Maister Gregor sadly. ‘We’d a word in the morning. Sic a small matter, it was, to fall out over a misplaced shoe, and thanks be to Our Lady we were friends again by noon.’
‘A shoe?’
‘Aye, is it no daft? Jaikie was hunting it all through the chamber, and found it down my side o the bed, and would have it I’d kicked it there in the night. But as I said,’ offered the old man earnestly, ‘he’d as likely thrown it there hissel while he searched for it. So we got a bit sharp wi one another, and disturbed my lord, who wasny well pleased. But we shared a jug of ale wi the noon bite, and he’d that crack about Wat and the Low Countries, and all was just as usual again.’ He sighed, and crossed himself. ‘And now he’s dead, my poor friend, and him as much younger than me. What are we doing standing out here in the night air, Maister Cunningham? Come away in, afore you take a chill.’
Gil followed the old man along the path and helped him up a set of steps by the house door, running these things through his mind. Just before he set his hand on the latch, he said, ‘Where was the bow when you found it, then?’
‘In his kist,’ said Maister Gregor. ‘In his kist.’
Mistress Doig’s house and yard were in the midst of the northern suburb, their gateway further from the port than Gil had thought from the sound of the barking. Following the man Peter again past the low turf-walled houses and middens in the morning light, he avoided chickens, goats and a marauding pig and wondered what the Blackfriars thought of the addition to their neighbourhood. The continuous noise from the dogs must affect the singing of the Office. Then again, he reflected, the Blackfriars’ convent in Glasgow was right in the centre of the burgh, with full benefit of the sounds of market and traffic.
Mistress Doig herself was at work in the yard, sweeping out an empty pen. When they stepped in all the dogs began barking again, and she straightened up from her task with a swift glance at Peter’s livery, then turned from him to survey Gil with displeasure but no surprise. She was a gaunt raw-boned woman wrapped in a sacking apron, sleeves of gown and shift rolled well up above her elbows, the grubby ends of her white linen headdress knotted at the back of her neck. Some of the dogs began scrabbling at the fencing of their pens, eager to get at the visitor.