The Stolen Voice

by Pat McIntosh

  Leaving the man shuffling papers, Gil paused in the yard, where Peter was gossiping with the journeymen by the cart, and took the time to bargain for some of the white kidskins, which were indeed unusually soft and fine and would make excellent gloves for Alys. The apprentice Martin folded the leathers and tied them with a length of cord, and said with interest:

  ‘Is that right, what your man says, maister, that that priest has vanished away?’

  ‘I’m trying to find him,’ said Gil.

  ‘What priest is it?’ asked the youngest apprentice, a small lad in an out-at-elbows doublet and wrinkled hose, still prodding glumly at the stinking vat. They had put the fire out beneath it, but the smell seemed even more powerful.

  ‘How d’you mean, what priest?’ said the third one.

  ‘Well, there was two,’ said the smaller boy.

  ‘There was just the one, Malky,’ said Martin kindly. ‘Him wi the badges on his hat. He cam in here and spoke wi the maister, as he’s done before.’

  ‘There was two,’ said Malky. ‘I saw them on the bank when I went home to my supper.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Gil. ‘Who was the other one?’

  ‘Och, the other one,’ said Malky vaguely. ‘Him that brought the bairns to the maister’s house. Wi the hair, you ken.’ He gestured, describing fluffy hair below a hat.

  ‘When was that?’ Gil asked.

  ‘When I went home to my supper,’ the boy repeated. ‘After the badge one was here. So which one is it that’s vanished away, maister?’

  ‘The badge one,’ said Gil.

  ‘I thought so,’ said Malky. ‘See, he left his hat. My, he’s passed on a many pilgrimages to collect those badges. I wonder what he’s doing penance for, and him a priest too?’

  Across the yard, Maister Cornton checked in the doorway of the counting-house, met Gil’s eye for a moment, and deliberately stepped out of sight. And just in time, thought Gil as Malky looked over his shoulder for his master.

  ‘Left his hat?’

  ‘I found it,’ said Malky, nodding.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Gil invited.

  Reading between the awkward statements, he ascertained that Malky, going home for his supper on the twenty-fifth of July, had spied the man in the hat with many badges and the man with the fluffy hair, walking together near the Blackfriars wall. Curious to know what priests discussed at their leisure, he had slipped up behind them.

  ‘But they were talking sermons,’ he said in disappointment.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘What else would priests talk of, you gowk?’

  ‘Many things,’ said Gil. ‘What made you think it was sermons, Malky?’

  ‘Well, it was all about forgiving,’ explained the boy. ‘And maybe confession, and all long words like that.’

  Gil nodded. ‘And then what did you do?’

  ‘Gaed hame to my supper, for it was late. Later than today, maybe.’

  ‘And what about the hat?’

  Malky had found it lying on the bank the next morning, damp with dew but undamaged, when he came by on his way to the yard.

  ‘I brought it in here,’ he said. ‘I thought when the man cam back to see my maister I could gie it back to him.’

  Looking at the innocent expression, Gil reserved judgement. It might well be true.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  It was in the boy’s kist in the long shed. He ran off to fetch it, and Martin said anxiously, ‘He’ll get himsel took up for theft, maister, if he goes on like that. Will you warn him, maybe?’

  ‘He’s daft,’ said the third apprentice. ‘Keeping it that way. Now I’d ha sellt it, and got money for ale.’

  ‘And that is theft, Ally Johnston,’ said Martin roundly. The boy Malky came back, bearing the hat. It was a fairly ordinary round bonnet with a flat top and a brim which turned up all the way round, of wine-coloured felt as Wat the steward had said, rendered unusual by the many badges pinned or stitched to the brim, silver and pewter, each one different.

  ‘See, it’s no hurt, maister,’ he said in triumph. ‘I took good care of it.’ He thrust it at Gil. ‘Would you maybe take it, maister, if the man’s no coming back to our yard? You could give it back to him?’

  ‘I’ll take it, Malky,’ agreed Gil, ‘and thank you for looking after it so carefully.’ He glanced over the boy’s head to where the tanner had emerged from the counting-house again. ‘Now if your maister will give you leave, I want you to show me where you found it.’

  Out on the track that ran by the Ditch he looked about him again. There were two tanyards cheek by jowl, with a skinner to one side of them and a dyer to the other. A path led off between the two in the general direction of the barking dogs. Cornton’s was the smaller in extent, but seemed to specialize in the luxury end of the trade, with the stacks of small hides dyed in bright colours which he had already admired arranged on pallets and carts where the passer-by could see them over the shoulder-high fence of stout planks.

  Malky led him past the other tanyard and the skinner, to pick up a well-trodden path which worked its way westward along the outer bank of the Ditch. The Black-friars’ wall stood high and forbidding, perhaps a hundred paces to the right, and on the open ground between path and wall the evening sunshine was bright on yellow broom and wildflowers.

  ‘They were walking about and talking there,’ said Malky, gesturing, ‘the two men. I like to go home this way,’ he confided, ‘acos there’s all wee birds in the broom. I like wee birds, see, maister, my granda that’s a forester taught me all their names. Last week there was two gowdspinks eating the thistles there, all red and yellow, right bonnie they were.’

  ‘Can you remember anything the men said?’ Gil asked, looking at the thistles rather than the boy. There were no goldfinches today, though many small birds chirped and whirred in the bushes. Malky paused a moment in thought.

  ‘No really,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Just what I said, about forgiving. One of them said, Even Judas was forgiven,’ he recalled, brightening. ‘How would he know that, maister? I thought Judas was burning in Hell. And the other one said, Aye, but he hangit himsel.’ The intonation said, Rather than hanging someone else.

  ‘Which one said that?’ Gil asked, trying hard to sound casual.

  ‘The one that brought the bairns to my maister’s house. He’s got a voice like a corncrake in the long grass, so he has.’

  That was clear enough, though whether Drummond had referred to himself, to Stirling, or to some other he would have to work out later. He coaxed the boy a little, but could extract no more information; finally he said, ‘And where did you find the man’s hat? Can you mind that?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Malky assured him, ‘for there was a throstle’s nest just near it. Come and I’ll show you.’

  The place he picked out was further along the bank, where a clump of hazel and ash provided shade. The grass was well trampled, and a young couple in intent conversation within the grove turned to stare at them when Malky stopped.

  ‘It was yonder,’ he said firmly, ‘just lying on the grass there, like if it had been dropped. I wondered at it,’ he confided, ‘for a priest doesny like to go bareheaded for the sun burning his shaved bit, does he?’

  Gil, with a sudden recollection of Andrew Drummond’s servant putting his master’s hat back on his head, nodded at this and cast about, looking at the ground. There was no likelihood of picking up any tracks here after two weeks, the path was too well used and the pair of lovers under the trees were hardly the first to choose this spot. The bank of the Ditch, a few yards away, showed no useful sign at all. He stood looking at the dark water sliding past, the weeds waving in the current and the ducks paddling about under the other bank where the gardens of the biggest properties on the Northgate came down to the water. The occupiers of those must be questioned, anyone else using the path must be asked if they saw the two priests –

  ‘It’s getting near my supper,’ said Malky diffidently.
>
  ‘It is,’ he agreed, glancing at the sky. The sun was round beyond the west. It must be close to Vespers now, little point in disturbing the Blackfriars who would also be about to sit down to their frugal supper and then go to sing the Office. Moreover it had been a long day. Giving the boy a coin, he dismissed him, and after establishing that the couple lurking in the shadows had not been there at any time when two priests were walking on the path, something which they seemed to think deserved congratulation, he turned towards the Red Brig and the Bishop’s house.

  ‘Found on the path?’ repeated Bishop Brown, staring.

  At his elbow his elderly chaplain bleated in distress. He had a long gentle face and straggling white hair, and wore a felt cap with a rolled brim which somehow suggested the curving horns of the small sheep Gil had seen on the ride down from Balquhidder. His voice reinforced the impression.

  ‘Is it truly Jaikie’s hat?’ he asked, peering short-sightedly at it and crossing himself. ‘Our Lady save us! Why would he leave his hat on the path?’

  ‘Aye, it’s Jaikie’s own hat.’ The Bishop pushed Jerome’s enquiring muzzle down and turned the hat round, fingering the sequence of silver images. ‘Indeed, I mind when he bought the half of these badges. I’ve joked wi him about the things many a time.’

  ‘And so have we all, my lord,’ agreed the chaplain. ‘But why would he leave his hat? He’d miss it, surely.’

  Ignoring this, Bishop Brown set the hat on his desk and wiped at his eyes. The dog scrambled up to lick his chin, and he patted the creature. ‘Maister Cunningham, what’s come to the poor fellow? It looks bad, I’m fearing me.’

  ‘It looks bad,’ Gil agreed. ‘I suppose he could have gone into the Town Ditch, though I don’t see why that should have happened. The path where the boy found the hat is yards from the waterside. He could have met with some other misadventure, I suppose, but why he –’ He stopped, reluctant to express his thoughts at this stage.

  ‘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.