by Pat McIntosh
‘We found,’ said Gil carefully, ‘a man’s head. Short dark hair, one ear pierced, odd coloured een. Oh, and the remains of a blued ee.’ He touched his cheekbone. ‘He’d been headed, and the head put in a barrel of brine along wi a bag of coin and jewels from the old King’s hoard.’
Balthasar bent his head and crossed himself.
‘It sounds like,’ he said. ‘The blued ee sounds like our Nelkin. Ah, weel, I feart as much. When the laddie –’
‘What laddie?’ asked Gil.
‘Oh, just – just one o his kin.’
‘Nicol Riddoch, would that be, the cooper’s boy?’ guessed Gil. Balthasar’s head came up sharply. ‘What kin is he to you?’
‘None o mine. His stepmother’s some kind o kin by marriage to Nelkin’s brother.’ The musician crossed himself again. ‘Would you excuse me, maisters? I’ll need to break it –’
‘I could do with a word with Nicol Riddoch,’ said Gil. ‘What did he say? I take it he didn’t see your kinsman killed, but did he bring the other bag of coin here?’
Balthasar stared at Gil in the failing light.
‘You ken the maist o it already, sir,’ he said. ‘Why are you asking me?’
‘I never heard what it was,’ said Nicol. ‘Just it was worth a good bit.’
He stood uneasily before them, a spare youngster at the hands and feet stage, with a strong resemblance to his father the cooper. He had emerged reluctantly from the inner chamber of the house to which Balthasar had delivered them, and was taking some persuasion to fill in the gaps in Gil’s account of what had happened. Socrates, lying at Gil’s feet, watched him carefully.
‘It was part of the rent, you see,’ he added. ‘We owe his lordship duty of carriage, and he turned up two week since, said to my faither he was calling in the duty for the year.’
‘So you and Nelkin were set to fetch this great load of coin,’ Gil prompted, ‘and not told what you were carrying.’
‘Just the two of them!’ expostulated the householder, whose name seemed to be Robison. He had big scarred hands and a round, weatherbeaten face; Gil had lost his place in the reckoning but thought the man was a cousin of the late Nelkin’s sister-in-law. ‘Two men, to bring home a load like that.’
‘It does not seem enough,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, shifting on the bench beside Gil. The cushion slid with him, jolting Gil sideways.
‘Aye, but nobody else kent what it was neither,’ said Nicol. ‘Except maybe Nelkin.’
‘And you fetched it from one of Sinclair’s other properties by Stirling,’ Gil said.
The boy nodded. ‘Garden-Sinclair,’ he agreed. ‘It was well hid. The man that holds the place never kenned it was there neither, so Nelkin tellt me.’
‘But how did you carry it?’ demanded Robison.
‘In two bags on the old horse’s packsaddle, under that load o withies,’ said the boy. Robison sat back in his great chair, frowning.
‘And when you got to your father’s yard,’ said Gil, ‘thinking you were home and safe, you were attacked. Did you expect the gate to be open?’
‘No,’ admitted Nicol. ‘I was to sclim ower and unbar it,’ he grinned wryly. ‘I’ve done it a few times. But here it was open, standing just on the jar. So we pushed it open, and there was naught stirring, so in we went, thinking nothing of it, and we’d no more than got the first o the saddlebags off and put it in a barrel as Nelkin said he’d arranged wi his lordship, when these three men came at us, all quiet in a rush.’ He shivered. ‘I seen the axe, and the swords, and then Nelkin shouted to me to run, and I grabbed the reins and louped on the old horse wiout thinking, all on top o the withies, and ran for it, and I – and I –’ He swallowed. ‘Did you say he was heidit, maister?’
Gil nodded, and the boy crossed himself.
‘I feared it,’ he whispered. ‘When he never followed me here, I feared it. I should never ha left him.’
‘Just as well you did, laddie,’ said Robison. ‘You’d ha gone the same way, unarmed against a chiel wi a great axe.’
‘Aye, but . . .’ said the boy, and shook his head. ‘He was our good friend, and Jess’s kin. I should never ha left him.’
‘If he ordered you to run,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘and you obeyed, you did right.’
‘And then you came here?’ said Gil.
‘Turned up at first light,’ supplied Robison, ‘chapping the shutters there and gied us the fright o our lives. The auld horse just about foundered, half the withies snapped and hanging off the pack, and him half-dead wi fright. And nae wonder. What Nelkin was about, taking a laddie wi him on a duty like that –’
‘It was for the horse,’ said Nicol. ‘He wanted me to lead the horse. Old Pyot’ll do anything for me, so he will.’
‘Well,’ said Gil. ‘And you say you never kent what you were carrying?’
‘Well,’ said the boy, and looked at Robison.
‘No, he never,’ said the householder. ‘And no more do I.’
‘No till you looked once he got it here,’ suggested Gil.
‘I wouldny do such a thing!’
Socrates raised his head to look at the man, and Gil said deliberately, ‘Then you’re more of a fool than I took you for.’
Maistre Pierre’s eyebrows went up, and Robison bridled.
‘Well, maybe I took a wee look,’ he conceded.
‘And?’
‘More coin. All coin, it was, by the feel of it, in three great purses, all sealed,’ said Robison regretfully. ‘Two wi the Spitallers’ seal and one wi the old King’s.’
‘Ah!’ said Gil. He heard an echo at his side, and the bench-cushion shifted again. Not looking at his friend, he went on, ‘So where is it now?’
‘Now that I canny tell you, sir.’
‘Do you mean you don’t know?’ Gil asked. ‘Who took it? Why was it not put safe?’
‘I mean I canny tell you,’ repeated Robison.
‘You may tell me,’ said Maistre Pierre, and his big hands stirred on his knee. ‘As a fellow craftsman.’ That’s the second time today he has used that expression, Gil thought. What does he mean? ‘Are you working on the church, Maister Robison? I’ve heard there are two great pillars at its heart. A pity the builder is dead, for the complete building would have astonished the world.’
Robison stared at him, his scarred fingers also moving. The dog had sat up, and was looking intently at the shuttered window. Gil stroked his head.
‘Aye,’ said Robison. ‘I’m working on the roof, wi square and level and plumb, but I still canny tell you, sir, for I’m no the master in charge.’
‘Uncle,’ said the boy quietly. Robison turned to look at him. ‘Would his lordship –?’
‘He’s from home,’ said Gil.
‘He cam back an hour since,’ said Robison. ‘I saw him ride in off the Edinburgh road.’
‘He’s here,’ said Balthasar of Liège, stepping in at the door, Oliver Sinclair behind him.
‘Oh, indeed there’s more of it,’ said Sinclair. Seated in Robison’s great chair, large, fair and handsome in a big-sleeved gown of blue wool, he dominated the room. ‘I have the half-load the laddie here brought on Monday night, which I take to be the other half of the shipment that turned up in Glasgow in your barrel. It’s safe enough here. If you want it, you’ll have to convince me you’ve a right to it, Gil Cunningham.’
‘I’ve no right to any of it, sir,’ said Gil politely. ‘But we’ve a sergeant of the Hospitallers with us, looking for their portion, and I feel the treasury would like to see the late King’s hoard again.’
‘I’ve no doubt they would,’ said Sinclair, with irony. ‘And so would this fellow you brought in as prisoner. Who the deil is he? D’you think he’s a treasury man?’
‘Not a treasury man, no,’ said Gil. Sinclair’s eyebrows went up at the emphasis. ‘Have you asked him yourself?’
‘I have not. He’s got away. That fool Preston never chained him, and he struck down the guard and ran.’ Gil and Maistre
Pierre looked at one another in dismay. ‘But Will Knollys can whistle for the treasury portion. It’s safer in my care.’ He grinned at Gil. ‘And I’ll deny saying that, on oath.’
‘And there are our books,’ added Gil.
Sinclair’s expression changed, and the sapphires on his hat caught the light as he pushed it forward. ‘Oh, aye, those books. Quite a surprise, that was, when we unstitched the canvas just now and found Knowe well to Dye in black velvet, rather than a wee box of coin. D’ye ken what else is in the batch?’
‘I’ve got Halyburton’s docket,’ said Gil. ‘Have you unpacked any more?’
‘Not yet. If there’s anything good, I might make you an offer.’
‘Fair enough, but I want the Morte Darthur.’
Maistre Pierre stirred on the bench beside Gil. ‘This treasure. Some of it was, I take it,’ he said, picking his words with care, ‘a loan from the Hospitallers to the late King?’ An interesting assumption, thought Gil. ‘I think they want it back.’
‘Seems likely,’ agreed Sinclair.
‘I also think,’ continued the mason, ‘if it is hid in the obvious place, that we need to get it out before work begins in the morning.’
Sinclair gave him a sharp look, then nodded. ‘Also likely. I’d need proof the Order’s looking for it, of course.’
‘I think Johan can give you that,’ interposed Gil.
Sinclair looked round the room, and rose to his feet.
‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and find this Johan, will we? Where is he, in the Skelly Matt?’
The sky was still greenish to the west, but overhead it was dark, and the moon had not yet risen. The torches made little difference, and the shadows of the pinescented timber stacks around the church jumped distractingly.
‘We do better without,’ said Johan, tramping his out underfoot. ‘Now where?’
‘The roof,’ said Sinclair.
The Hospitaller looked upwards, into the web of poles. ‘You mean we go up the scaffolding?’
‘There’s a ladder in the lodge,’ said Robison, ‘and another within the kirk.’
Behind him the musician eyed the towering bulk of the building in its cloak of timbers, and turned away.
‘Which part of the roof?’ asked Maistre Pierre. ‘Above the vault?’
‘No,’ said Sinclair. He grinned, in the leaping light of the torch in Robison’s grasp. ‘I’ll tell you no more. It’s well protected. If you’re the craftsman I think you are, you’ll find it, and if you can find it, you can take the St Johns share. But mind, the rest’s to stay where it is, till it suits me to gie it ower.’
‘We’ll need lanterns,’ said Gil, ‘rather than torches.’
‘You come too?’ said Maistre Pierre doubtfully. ‘I cannot take two who are new to scaffolding.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ said Gil. ‘My brothers and I climbed every tree from Glassford to Carscallan.’
‘I also,’ said Johan.
Balthasar returned across the building site with three lanterns in his arms.
‘From the Skelly Matt,’ he said, distributing these. ‘Your dog’s fair creating, maister. Your man says he’s no sure how long he can hold him.’
‘Well,’ said Maistre Pierre, lighting the candle from his lantern at Robison’s torch. He fitted it back on to the spike and closed the trap. ‘Let us go, then, and solve this puzzle we are set.’
Chapter Eleven
The door of the church opened quietly when Gil lifted the latch. They stepped in, and it swung shut behind them with a boom which reverberated in what seemed like a vast, draughty space smelling of incense and pine resin. The floor was flagged; when Gil held his lantern up the vault of the aisle where they stood glowed in the dim light, but beyond the pillars the nave vanished upward into darkness, with a faint, distant hint of high scaffolding. How do the poles stay up there? wondered Gil.
‘Mon Dieu, the carving!’ exclaimed Maistre Pierre. He held his own lantern high and turned, staring up at the walls. Pillar, vault, arch and architrave, capital and springer were carved into elaborate designs in high relief which seemed to move as the light passed over them.
‘Here is a ladder,’ said Johan. Gil craned to see where he was pointing. At the top of the wall-pillar beside the door was a complex scene: the crucified Christ surrounded by many figures. There was something which might be a ladder at one side.
‘That is a Descent from the Cross,’ said the mason authoritatively from behind Gil. ‘It will not reveal where we must ascend. But I think you are right, my friend, we look at the carvings. One of these moral jewels will tell us what we need to know.’
‘How many weeks do we have?’ asked Gil, looking round. ‘There must be thousands.’
‘We start here,’ said the mason, ‘and keep looking.’
They moved slowly eastward, pausing to identify each of the carvings so far as possible. Some were obvious, versions of the familiar scenes to be found in any church; others were more enigmatic. There were angels enough to fill seven heavens, Gil thought, and Green Men to match them, but what was an elephant doing here?
‘Here is a Dance of Death,’ said Maistre Pierre, gazing upwards at an elaborately worked arch. ‘Very handsome drafting. Look how it fills the spaces.’
‘There Death takes a man with a spade,’ said Johan, pointing again. ‘Is the money perhaps buried beneath here?’
‘Sinclair said it was in the roof,’ said Gil.
Apart from their voices and footsteps, the church was quiet, but he found himself looking uneasily over his shoulder. Perhaps it was the eyes of all the Green Men, leering out of their foliage in the lantern-light, that made him feel threatened.
‘What ever does this signify?’ he asked, pausing before the Lady Altar. ‘A falling angel, bound with a rope?’
The rope, by this light, looked as if one could lift it and knot the ends.
‘I cannot say,’ said Maistre Pierre at his shoulder.
‘The pillars,’ said Johan. They turned round, to see him staring to right and left. ‘Are these the pillars? I have heard much of them.’
‘Ah, mon Dieu,’ said Maistre Pierre again. He moved forward as if drawn by a cord, and bent to the southern pillar, holding his lantern close to the ornament and muttering incoherently. ‘Dragons – and the vines – ah, the detail! This stone, it shapes like butter, it must be a dream to work!’
‘What’s that beyond the pillar?’ Gil asked. ‘Is it stairs?’
‘They go down, not up,’ said Johan.
‘Then so shall we,’ said the mason, dragging himself reluctantly away from the pillar. ‘Oh, and see, there is a sacrifice of Isaac on the capital. Now what is down here?’
The flight went down steeply, into darkness only slightly relieved by Maistre Pierre’s lantern. Gil found himself hesitating at the top of the stairs, his uneasy feeling increasing. He opened the horn window of his own lantern and held it up, looking about him, but its light went no more than a few feet.
‘You feel it too?’ said Johan beside him.
‘Come and look,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It is the drawing-loft.’
‘Loft?’ questioned Gil, setting foot on the stair. ‘Down here?’
‘How else should I call it?’
The chamber at the bottom of the stairs was at least half the size of the nave. It was much plainer, with only one or two carvings visible, and seemed to suffer from a lack of certainty about its purpose, since it boasted an altar with piscina and aumbry and also a fireplace. As Johan followed Gil off the awkward steps and into the chamber, the mason looked round from his intent scrutiny of the north wall.
‘See, it is the working drawings.’ He gestured at the curves and counter-curves scratched into the whitewashed surface. ‘That,’ he stabbed with one big forefinger, ‘is the profile for the east window tracery, I noticed it in particular. And here is the outline for that wall-pillar, the one that has the Descent on its capital.’
‘I’ll take your word
for it,’ said Gil. ‘What else is there?’
‘It is many drawings, one on top of another,’ observed Johan. Maistre Pierre, his nose inches from the wall, did not reply. Gil set off round the room, finding one or two more drawings which would have been better obliterated before the church was handed over, and paused in front of the two carvings by the altar.
‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre at last. ‘I see. It is a space at the foot of the vault.’
‘What is?’ Gil came over to look.
‘This sketch here.’ The forefinger stabbed again. ‘You see, here the vault, here the wall-head, and this is the string-course – the ornamental band along the wall-head. And here, in this other drawing, we have a space behind the string-course.’
‘Do we?’ said Gil, peering at the scratches. ‘I can’t read it, Pierre.’
‘I can,’ said Johan unexpectedly, ‘but where is it? There is a lot of that string-course. It goes right round the church, does it not?’
‘Now there I might be able to help,’ said Gil. He returned to the altar. ‘See this? The arms of the founder – old Sinclair, this lord’s father –’
‘The engrailed cross. Yes, it is everywhere up above,’ agreed Maistre Pierre. ‘But what is that heart doing there? That is Douglas, surely?’
‘That’s right. Sir William’s first wife was a Douglas lady, I believe. Aye, it’s a heart. Ubi thesaurus– Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,’ Gil quoted, and suddenly recalled the harper saying the same thing. Could this be what McIan meant, he wondered, rather than some cryptic observation about my marriage? ‘If we can find a heart up above too, maybe the treasure will be close by. I’ve seen none so far, but perhaps in the south aisle?’
‘It is worth the try,’ said Johan after a moment.
Maistre Pierre looked back at the scratches on the wall. ‘There is no other hint,’ he admitted, ‘and this one comes from St Matthew’s evangel. If we find no heart, we must seek all about the string-course. Assuming it is all within reach of the scaffolding.’
At the top of the stairs, the darkness receded unwillingly from their lanterns. Gil stretched his ears, wondering if he had heard something move elsewhere in the building, or imagined it. Maistre Pierre held the light to the window arch, and shook his head.
