‘Maister, that’s foul! What’s come to they hides? I never smelled anything like it at this stage!’
‘Eeugh!’ agreed the middle-sized apprentice dramatically. A lively youngster, Gil thought, bending to look at a black mark on the fence. It sprouted legs and hurried off into the hollow of the weaving as he approached: one of those finger-long beetles that only seemed to appear at this time of year.
‘Call yoursels tanners?’ said their master jeeringly. ‘My, you’re delicate the day, the lot of you — ’ He broke off and coughed, and then said with more sympathy, ‘Aye, well, I’ll admit that’s strong. Away and fetch a cloth to your nose, any of you, if you wish.’
Nobody took up this permission. Gil crossed the short end of the yard, scanning the hurdles, which were firmly laced to the upright stobs from the other side, none of them sagging as he would have expected if they had been recently climbed. The fence was obviously the neighbour’s responsibility here; the plot was a small one, with a sagging house surrounded by a quantity of short lengths of wood and little heaps of shavings, but there was no sign of the occupier or of anything which might be related to the St Eloi badge. He moved on to the corner by the track where wattle gave way to planks, finding some surprising things in the tufts of grass and willow-herb but still no trace of any recent illicit entry to the tanner’s policies. Wondering how a single horn spoon came to be wedged under one plank, the leg of a wooden horse under another, he looked back round his shoulder and found he could see only the apprentices moving to and fro with their buckets, his view cut off by the same drying-shed. Judging by the directions Cornton was issuing, the journeymen had begun the task of raising the stacked hides one at a time, brushing the oak-bark chips between them off into the surrounding liquor as they went.
He leaned over the fence, but found the track as uninformative as the dyer’s yard had been. At least, he corrected himself, it tells me nobody entered the yard this way. No marks on the fencing, no trampled patch at the foot of the planks, no sign of any recent attempt to climb in. Could he be sure recent included the whole of the last two weeks? he wondered.
There was a horrified yell from the tanpit. The dogs began to bark in answer as he jerked upright and round, staring. There was another yell, but he was already running.
‘What is it, man?’ demanded Cornton’s voice as he rounded the shed. ‘What gart ye skirl like that? Simon?’
Simon was clinging to his long pole as if he was drowning, his face a mask of horror as he stared into the pit. Rob and the older journeyman were gaping at him, but the boy Ally was on his knees by one of the half-barrels, trawling through its contents with his bucket.
‘I seen it,’ he said in excitement, ‘I seen something go in here.’
‘It was a ratton drowned in the pit,’ said the older man. ‘No need for — ’
‘It was a hand,’ said Simon, his voice shrill. ‘It — a hand, I tell you!’
‘Aye, and there’s the other one,’ said his master grimly, hauling another layer of partly cured hide towards their feet. ‘Look yonder, under the surface. Hand, arm — ’
‘You mean it’s a whole corp?’ said Ally, round-eyed.
‘Is he all in there? Watch, or he’ll come apart!’ said Rob. ‘Who is it, anyway? St Peter’s bones, how he stinks. How long’s he been down there?’
‘I think we can guess who,’ said Gil. Cornton caught his eye across the pit, and nodded. ‘And if so, then we know how long. Is that the head?’
‘Aye, it is.’ Rob reached in with his long pole and prodded the floating mat of hair. It swirled and clung to the hook on the end of the pole, and the head rolled slackly in the water and fell back again. ‘He’s face down, I’d say.’
‘Andro?’ said a voice from among the forest of bright hangings over the fence. ‘Is all well? What was that great skelloch about?’ A lanky fair-haired man emerged between two strips of indigo linen, and set multicoloured hands on the fence. ‘St Nicholas’ balls, man, what a stink! What have you found there?’
‘Aye, we’re all sound, William, and glad of your concern,’ said Cornton. ‘It’s naught but something unlookedfor in this pit of cowhides.’
‘What would that be, then?’ asked William hopefully. ‘Is it a drowned pig, or what?’
‘It’s a deid man!’ burst out Ally. ‘He’s all drowned in the tanpit and turned to leather!’
‘I’m no certain yet,’ said Cornton, and clapped a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘William, would you do me a kindness?’
‘Anything, anything!’ said William avidly, stretching his neck. ‘Can we help you lift him, whatever you’ve found?’
‘No, no, we’ve enough hands here. If you’d send one of your lads for the constable, we can get on wi this task.’
‘For the constable? What need of him, for a drowned pig? Is the laddie right, and it’s a man, then? Who could it be?’
‘We’ll maybe ken what it is,’ said Cornton firmly, ‘by the time he gets here. I’d be right glad of the favour, William.’
The dyer retreated, with reluctance. Cornton glared at his back as it vanished between the linen webs, but said only, ‘There’s no saying he drowned here, Ally, you ill-schooled laddie, and no saying who it is yet.’
‘But it’s a man rather than a woman,’ Gil said, ‘by the length of the hair. Now we have to work out how to get him out.’
‘A bonny task for a hot August day,’ said the elder journeyman, ‘wi all his fingers dropping off him.’
‘Will he no be half-tanned?’ suggested Ally. The other two apprentices seemed to have vanished. ‘I’d a thought he’d hold together, no fall apart.’
‘Aye, but the bark’s only lying one side o his hide,’ said his master. ‘There’s still all the flesh and the fat within — ’ He stopped, and aimed an angry cuff at the boy, who ducked expertly. ‘What am I saying? You don’t tan a Christian soul, you heathen laddie. Maister Cunningham, what do we do here? This is beyond my experience.’
Beyond mine, too, thought Gil. Aloud he said, ‘You’ll need to get all the hides off him, for a start. Then maybe we can get him on to a hurdle or the like, and lift him out of there.’
‘Or send to Archie McNab the joiner and see if he’s a coffin by him,’ suggested Rob. ‘Simon, man, are you well?’
Simon shook his head. He was still clinging to the pole, and had turned an unpleasant green colour.
‘It was the way it beckoned,’ he said faintly, ‘like it was calling me. The hand. When it went into the tub, ye ken. It seemed like it was calling me.’
‘It’s here,’ said Ally with some pride. ‘I fished it back out.’ He peered into his bucket and swirled the dark brown liquid it held. ‘See, it’s in here under the tan.’
Even with Gil lending a hand under Cornton’s decisive directions, it was a good hour before they got the corpse out of the pit. There had been only two cowhides remaining on top of it, but the need to remove these with care slowed matters down, and the state of the corpse itself made getting it on to a hurdle a ticklish business, even though the woollen garments held the thing together to a great extent. In the end they lifted it complete with the part-cured hide beneath it, and transferred the lot to the waiting hurdle, with the interested advice of most of the workers in the dyer’s yard, who hung over the fence slightly to one side to avoid the direct breeze.
‘And where’s wee Malky?’ asked his master in quiet concern. ‘He’ll ha bad dreams if he sets an eye on this.’
‘I left him in the counting-house, maister,’ said the oldest apprentice, who had rejoined the working party in time to help with the final move. ‘He’d had a sair fright.’