Hew took his arm. ‘We both will go,’ he told him firmly. ‘And you can tell me on the way.’
‘The thing is,’ Nicholas said miserably as they went by the cathedral, ‘that yesterday I told them he was too young to start here next term. It was no fault of his.’
A haar from the sea had masked the frail sunshine. It clutched at Hew’s chest. Nicholas looked chilled to the bone.
‘Tell it plainly,’ prompted Hew, ‘and from the start.’
‘There is not much to tell. I have been tutoring a young boy, Alexander Strachan. His father is a merchant from Perth, very rich, and a friend of our principal Gilchrist. His mother is dead. The boy has been staying with his uncle Archie Strachan who is a weaver in the town. The uncle’s a bit of a bully.’
Hew gave an exclamation. ‘I met him! Yesterday, on Mercatgait, I’m sure of it! In fact, now I think on it, I may have seen you there!’
‘Really?’ Nicholas looked taken aback. ‘Well, if you have met him you will understand the sort of man he is. I have been teaching his nephew now for several weeks, because Gilchrist has promised him a place at the college, although he has no Latin, not to speak of. The boy is willing enough, but he is too young and badly schooled to matriculate this year. And yesterday, I told his uncle so. I told him that the boy was not to blame. Nonetheless, I think that he may have chastised him, and now we see the consequence. The lad has run away. Look, here we are at the house. That is Agnes Ford, Archie Strachan’s wife.’
Hew sensed a rawness in the woman at the door. Her cheeks were blotched pink as if recently scrubbed. She spoke with a false note of brightness. ‘Master Colp, I’m so glad you could come . . . and you have brought a friend.’
‘Master Cullan from the college,’ Nicholas said briefly.
Agnes smiled mechanically at Hew. ‘Come into the house.’
‘Has the boy not returned?’ Nicholas asked anxiously. He hung back, reluctant to enter. Hew could understand why. Dull in the distance they heard her man grumble, voice rumbling dangerously into a roar. Agnes smiled again, that same deceptive brightness, masking features strained and worn. ‘Whisht, Archie!’ she called out, ‘for we have company. Tibbie will see to the broth.’
‘He only wants his dinner,’ she excused him, as if he were the bad-tempered boggle in an ancient nursery tale. Hew suppressed a smile.
‘No, he’s not come home,’ she replied to Nicholas. ‘And I confess, I’m fearful. I have never known him stay away so long.’
‘How long?’ interjected Hew.
Agnes flushed a little. ‘We have not seen him since last night. You see, Archie went to market down at Crail a little after five this morning, and I thought he had taken Alexander with him, so the boy was not missed until Archie’s return. And then it turned out . . .’ she paused to glance at Nicholas.
‘Aye?’ Hew persisted.
‘Well, sir, it turned out, that after Master Colp had come to hear his lesson – that was yesterday, at six – his uncle reprimanded him for failing at his task.’
Nicholas hunched his shoulders, ‘That was not what I said,’ he protested.
‘Nonetheless, Archie had words with him,’ Agnes said apologetically. ‘We have not seen him since.’
‘Did your husband beat him?’ Nicholas demanded. Hew heard him murmuring under his breath, ‘Mea culpa, mihi ignosce; for I did not know, forgive me.’
Agnes gazed at him curiously for a moment before she replied. ‘You should know, Master Colp, that my husband does blame you. Don’t take it ill. You see, sir,’ she appealed to Hew, ‘Archie’s had a skinful at the market, and he’s not himself. And Alexander left some letters. They’re addressed to Master Colp.’
‘Letters,’ Nicholas echoed dully. ‘Have you read them?’
‘Archie said we weren’t to open them, since they’re addressed to you. Besides, they were in Latin,’ Agnes added more convincingly. ‘We left them in his room.’
Archie Strachan sat in his shirt tails, moodily poking the fire. A great pot of fragrant liquid bubbled on the hearth where his daughter Tibbie was setting out a cloth. She did not look up as they entered but began meekly to ladle pottage into bowls.
‘Master Colp has come,’ Agnes spoke out brightly, ‘and a scholar from the college come to help him. This is Master Cullan.’
Hew was grateful for the borrowed gown. The weaver scarcely glanced at him.
‘Ye bided your time, did ye no’?’ he snarled at Nicholas. ‘Did ye bring the bugger back?’
Strachan swayed dangerously as he rose to his feet, and Hew realised he was far too drunk to suffer rational argument. It was Agnes, surprisingly firm, who answered for them.
‘Master Colp doesn’t know where Alexander’s gone any more than we do, Archie. Yet he has been good enough to come and help us look for him. Aye, and brought his friend. Now we’re away upstairs. You drink your broth.’
She shivered as she spoke, clutching at her shawl. Hew could see Agnes was afraid of something. It was not her husband, slumping in his broth. Archie was a bully, to be sure, and Hew suspected he saw bruises darkening at her wrists. Still, he thought, it was not that, for Agnes could contain him; that much was apparent in the way she spoke to him. She allowed her husband the mere semblance of control. So there was something else, some new threat to the world she ordered and endured. Not her nephew, surely? Boys his age played truant all the time. Doubtless he’d come home again, none the worse for wear. But Agnes knit her fingers, plucking at her gown, as if she feared her whole world might unravel.
The loft room was airless, rank with candle fat, and Hew hung back a little in the shadow of the door. Agnes set the candle down and watched as Nicholas began to look around. The cot was well furnished with grey woollen blankets and surprisingly fresh linen sheets. Someone looked after the boy. At the bottom of the bed stood an ironbound chest, and to its side a writing table, stool and straight-backed chair. The ledge above the bed held a water pot and a pair of pewter candlesticks. The writing table had been neatly set out for the lesson. A grammar book, the Ars minor of Donatus, sat next to inkhorn, pens and pocket knife, a tidy sheaf of papers and a lump of sealing wax. On top lay a slim bundle of what looked like letters; still tied with ribbon, though no longer sealed. Nicholas slit the ribbons with the penknife and glanced quickly down at the opening page. Frowning slightly, he turned towards Agnes: ‘There’s nothing here, mistress. Simply some verses he was turning into Latin for me.’ He glanced across at Hew. ‘It seems he has been working rather harder than his uncle gave him credit for. But don’t you think it’s odd he didn’t take his knife with him, if he meant to run away? Did his father give him money, do you know?’
He hardly seemed to notice what he was doing as he slipped the packet of letters into the folds of his clothes.
Agnes was nodding. ‘He looks after him well. It irritates Archie. He never felt that he deserved . . .’
Her words trailed away as Nicholas went on, ‘I wonder if he took his cloak?’
Nicholas looked pale and grey in his shirt. He appeared to be shaking, from sickness or fear. ‘Are you ill?’ Hew asked again. But Nicholas seemed not to hear.
‘May I look in the kist?’ Without waiting for an answer, Nicholas lifted the lid of the dark oak chest where Alexander kept his clothes. Carefully he lifted out the contents and laid them one by one on the bed. Alexander had been well provided for with saffron yellow shirts, new and freshly dyed, dark velvet doublets and good leather shoes, a blue winter bonnet, caps and gloves and a length of blanket plaid. His cloak, a dark-green mantle cloth, had fallen on the floor. It lay crumpled by the bed, the only thing disturbed in the neatness of the room. Hew picked it up.
‘Was this his?’
Agnes nodded. ‘But he likes to go about without it, as boys will. I don’t think he has much else.’
Nicholas had lifted out a little bundle from the bottom of the chest and placed it on the cot, where together they looked over the contents. It was a poignant coll
ection: a couple of pieces of oddly shaped driftwood, childishly fashioned to form a crude boat, a handful of pebbles, smooth from the sea, a carved wooden whistle and a tiny painted horse, together with a purse of gold and silver coin. Nicholas picked this up and weighed it in his palm. It was a while before he spoke.
‘He has not run away,’ he concluded bleakly. ‘Here are all his things. It almost looks as if . . .’ He closed his eyes and whispered, ‘Let it not be that.’
Archibald Strachan, revived by his supper of barley and potherbs, sipped a cleansing cup of red wine as he stirred the embers of the fire. ‘Mark my words, Colp, he’ll have run away to sea. We won’t be seeing him again. I’ll have word sent to my brother in Perth and you can explain to Gilbert why you chose to be so hard on him that he’d rather be a cabin boy than pass into the university.’
‘Hush, Archie,’ Agnes interjected. ‘No, you know he wasn’t hard on him. And we’ve no reason to think he’s gone to sea. You know he likes to walk upon the sands. No doubt he has forgot the time, and will be back by dark.’
‘Did you beat him, sir?’ cried Nicholas. Hew heard his voice rise hysterically high. He put out his hand to steady him. It was fear, no doubt. The castle cliffs were treacherous. A boy had fallen to his death in their first year at St Andrews. Hew had watched the parents arrive at the college to take home their dead son, just five weeks into the new term.
‘Words, we had words, sir,’ the weaver said smoothly. ‘My brother wants him to do well, but for some reason bade me never raise a hand to him. It was you, sir, that did break his heart, and telt him that he would not make a scholar, and ye would not have him at your university.’
‘I said none of that,’ Nicholas protested, ‘only at thirteen, he is still too young.’
‘It’s all the same,’ the weaver said morosely, ‘for the lad has gone.’
Before Nicholas could answer, the apprentice boy Tom came running in from the workshop below, stammering out to his mistress, ‘I cannot find that bolt of cloth we finished yesterday, the sea-blue wool. I wondered had you moved it? Will you help me look?’
‘Oh Tom, do not fuss,’ Agnes scolded. ‘I swear I can’t help you. I have not been down to the shop.’
‘Please, mistress,’ the boy whispered wretchedly. He glanced fearfully at Strachan. ‘For if I cannot find it . . .’
‘What can’t ye find?’ Strachan purred dangerously.
‘Whisht,’ Agnes softened. ‘Whisht, let us look.’ She reached for the lamp. ‘Help us, will you, gentlemen? It will be dark below. She held out her hands to Hew, as if in supplication, holding out the light. Both of you, bring candles.’
Agnes looked pale. Hew took up the lamp and followed her, with Nicholas behind. It seemed the place unnerved her. No doubt there were rats. Together, they searched the back of the shop. Tom kept house effectively. The finished bolts of cloth were neatly racked or folded, the combs and cards were stacked against the walls. It seemed to Hew unlikely that anything here could go astray. The place was all too carefully ordered. Each bolt, each carded nap and scrap of thread, pretentiously fluffed and plumped, was held to account. Nonetheless he made a show of looking around him. There was little enough to see. In the rushlight the struts of the loom cast branching shadows on the walls. Like childhood puppetry, they made him ill at ease and fearful. He thought they sketched a plough, a tree, a gallows, then a gate. But there was nothing. Spindles, puppets, fire and shadows. Noise from the street and rooms above came dulled to him in the darkness. Archie Strachan maybe ranged his chair across the floor and called to Tibbie for a stoup of wine to fill his cup, or Alexander’s footsteps crossed the cobblestones, coming home at last.
He became aware of Agnes by his side clutching her shawl around her shoulders. Did she feel it too, the sudden aching chill that gripped his bowels? She let her hand rest on his arm, as if to draw strength in the darkness. Then came her voice, unexpectedly clear: ‘I haven’t touched anything in here, Tom. Are you sure that’s where you left it?’
‘Aye.’ The boy looked sullenly at her. ‘Mebbe Alexander took it. They’re both gone, aren’t they?’
‘What would Alexander want with it?’
‘What’s that over there at the back?’ Nicholas had picked up a lamp. He motioned towards a dark outline in the shadows against the far wall.
‘The closet? It pulls down into a bed,’ answered Agnes. ‘Tom lies there for warmth in the winter months. In summer he prefers to sleep beneath the counter.’
‘I’ve my workday clothes in there, sir, nothing more,’ Tom put in defensively. But Nicholas had made his way to the back of the room. He held up the light to the cupboard, and in its glare the others glimpsed a fragment of grey-blue cloth between the doors. Nicholas spoke bleakly, ‘The doors are fast, Thomas, help me.’ Together they tugged until the closet flew open, and out tumbled a bundle of soft sea-blue wool. Tom flushed, beginning to stammer, but Nicholas interrupted, ‘No, Tom, mistress, go back.’
Nicholas’ voice was low and cold. He had caught the bolt in his arms as it fell. He seemed to fall back with the weight of it, and now he moved very slowly and wearily. He laid the cloth on the ground and knelt stiffly down in front of it. He had placed the lamp beside him on the floor, and Hew, standing a little behind him, saw blood leach from his thigh as he began to open out the cloth. The plaid appeared mottled in the lamplight and at first Hew did not understand the layers unfolding. He saw but did not comprehend the strangeness of the patterning, a circle of bright flame above the drab storm-blue. He saw Nicholas unfold and gather in his arms a boy with ashen skin and flame-red hair. He saw him hold him there and touch his face, and stare down uncomprehending at his own hand bright with blood. And as Nicholas stared he let the boy’s head drop so that Hew saw the splinter of bone, a ragged streak of pink beneath the hair.
Rites and Wrongs
After Alexander’s death St Leonard’s College closed its doors and Hew did not see Nicholas again for several days. Even Giles was unable to penetrate, for the college had closed in on itself, pulling in its horns like a snail inside a shell. Gilchrist responded to all whiff of scandal by holding his breath and turning his back to the world. Hew was called to the courtroom to make his report, where he established himself as a credible witness. The coroner advised him to remain in St Andrews until Gilbert Strachan had arrived and their statements could be sworn. It was clear he had no explanation for the crime. The murder of a child that had survived the storms of infancy was rare and cruel.
And so Hew was left without purpose, to renew his old acquaintance with the town. He walked the empty cloisters of the college to the once-familiar peal of Katherine’s bell, and wandered through the vennels and the lanes. In search of solitude, he did not frequent the streets. He found himself exploring long-forgotten paths, across the windswept golf links to the Eden estuary, or on the cliff tops of the Swallowgait, gazing out to sea. He traced the course of the Kinness Burn down to the harbour and to the east sands, and wandered through the caves beneath the castle rock. Where the sea was wild, he took solace in the waves. When he grew tired, he read in Giles Locke’s tower. In the evenings they drank claret and discussed philosophy. Once he stopped to watch the fishermen unloading their catch, until a dead fish tumbling from the nets brought the boy to mind so vividly he vomited, a thin spray that soaked his boots and caused the fisherman to stare and curse at him. Ashamed, he did not mention it to Giles. He climbed towards the castle, high upon the cliffs, and saw the fortress open and unfold its inner life. A clutch of boats were beached on the foreshore, and he watched a small procession turning through the gate that barred it from the sea. In the sunlight it displayed its workings like the glinting gears inside a clock; crates and kegs and vats of wine went winding up the steps, while sentries marked the process from the tower. The death of a boy, like a trough in the sand, made no impression here. He turned into the grounds of the cathedral. Already its walls had begun to decay, and the vaults of the pilgrims were quarried fo
r stone. The hopeless courage of their ancient histories could not make sense of that small death, or overwhelm its poignancy for Hew. Centuries of magnitude and loss, antiquity itself, could not displace the image of the bruised and broken boy. Agnes, when she understood at last, had been inconsolable. Whatever she had feared most, in her worst imaginings, it had not been that. In the shrieking of the seabirds in the bay he heard her cry. Nothing in the vast and onward rush of tide threw back into perspective that one small and circling grief.
On the third day, Hew sensed a sea change. Returning to the harbour, he discovered that the ships were in, and his trunk and saddlebags were waiting in the customs house. The quayside thronged with merchants, all the noise and business of an international port, and he saw a channel open to the world, lost and found again amidst the dust and sunshine. The return of his possessions restored his sense of purpose. He felt a sudden longing to go home. He took the saddlebags to Giles Locke’s turret room, where he changed into black satin peascod and hose, embroidered with fine silver thread. Thus fortified, he set off to the marketplace to purchase a flagon of whisky for Giles. He drank a stoup of watered ale and downed a rather dubious pie, receiving little change for his gold crown. Then he called in at the Mercatgait stables to arrange the carriage of his trunk. He felt recklessly light and refreshed.
‘Do you know of a merchant will change my French coin?’ he enquired of the man.
The ostler looked interested. ‘How much do you have?’
‘About three hundred livres, in crowns. Nothing small.’
‘Ah, then that’s the trouble,’ said the ostler sympathetically. ‘That much is hard to change. Now here at the inn, all currency is sound to us – your French ecus, your Dutch, your English even’ – he spat superstitiously into the straw – ‘all is sterling here. But still I could not change so large a sum.’
‘Are Scots pounds worth so little now?’
Hue and Cry Page 3
