by Pat McIntosh
‘It’s a note of all the dole offered,’ Gilchrist turned the book so that Gil could see the pages, ‘the provisions made use of, who ate what and where it was served up. Here’s Canon Drummond, see, two messes of food, one manchet loaf and two of maslin, ale and clean water, brought here to the guest hall from the kitchens, and the woman’s portion carried forth on a platter from here.’
‘You’re meticulous.’ Gil studied the orderly columns. ‘You even record the amount of the broken meats?’
‘We’re the stewards of what’s given over to us for charity,’ Gilchrist pointed out. ‘It’s no more than our duty to make certain it’s used well. The broken meats goes for feeding the poor at the gates the next day, and since the poor never get any less in number, Brother Almoner needs to have an idea how much broth he’ll need to make up the amount.’
Gil nodded, a finger on the date he wanted.
‘Did Drummond’s company leave in ones and twos?’
‘No that I recall,’ said Gilchrist, staring. ‘Why d’you ask?’
‘They’ve eaten well, though not inordinately.’ Gil paused, calculating. ‘Two messes of food served to six people, there would be enough left most days to feed another two mouths at least. Yes, here on the twenty-fourth you’ve noted exactly that. But on the twenty-fifth, you served up one mess of food only, and there was still some left over.’
‘I see what you’re saying,’ said Gilchrist, tilting his head. ‘Salmon in wine with onions and mustard, and they’ve barely picked at it.’ He lifted the corner of the page and peered at the verso. ‘Ah – here we are. Drummond left the next day. I recall that one of his men went ahead to order up the fresh horses and that, so he’d have been away before supper on the twenty-fifth.’
‘That’s only one down.’
‘Aye, but Canon Drummond ate his supper at the Bishop’s table that day.’
It was Gil’s turn to stare.
‘Did he so? The Bishop never told me that.’
‘Well, so Drummond’s man told my sub-Cellarer,’ qualified Gilchrist. ‘I know he came back late, for he’d to make quite a noise to waken Brother Porter and we all heard him as we came from Compline.’
‘Was he alone? When did he go out?’
The Cellarer shook his head.
‘Sometime after Nones. It would have been when we were all at our studies, I suppose. Brother Porter might remember – or James my Sub-Cellarer. Certainly he was on his own when he returned, for his man had to be woken to see him to bed.’
Gil looked at the columns of neat writing. If Drummond had eaten with Bishop Brown, it altered matters a lot, but if he had, why had he not taken his man with him? If he had not, then why had he said he was doing so? Was it the delusion of a man in the grip of melancholy? No, surely, his servant had said it was after they returned to Dunblane, after the second letter came from Balquhidder, that the melancholy settled on him. But could it have been starting already?
‘How was Canon Drummond in himself?’ he asked. ‘Did you have any words with him while he was here?’ Gilchrist raised his eyebrows. ‘The man had just lost his mistress,’ Gil expanded. ‘I wondered how he seemed to be taking it.’
‘So his servants told us,’ agreed the Cellarer. ‘I wondered at it, a bittie, for you’d never have thought it from his demeanour. Serious, yes, as befits a clerk, but not inordinately so, and not – not irrational, I’d have said.’
* * *
‘He did not,’ said Wat Currie. ‘We’d ha tellt you if he had done, Maister Cunningham. My lord’s reputation’s well known – he would never invite a churchman to his table who’d openly kept a mistress, particularly when it was a Perth lassie. Different if he’d already set her aside, or if we’d had to deal wi him on Holy Kirk’s business, a course.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ said Gil. ‘I wonder where he went? The Blackfriars’ sub-Cellarer said he went out about five of the clock, and his servant came back later saying the Canon would dine with Bishop Brown. He returned after Compline. Where has he been? And unattended at that.’ He glanced at the steward. ‘That reminds me, Peter thought Maister Stirling was unattended the day he vanished away. Is that right?’
‘Well, there’s none under this roof admitted to being wi him,’ said Wat. ‘More to the point, we’ve not found where he went. No sign of him on the Ditchlands by the Black-friars, no sign in the Ditch, and the households opposite saw nothing.’
‘He was seen,’ said Gil, suddenly recalling Mistress Doig’s statement. ‘In the last of the sunlight, making for the Red Brig as if he was coming back into Perth.’
‘Was he, now?’ said Wat, frowning. ‘After nine that would be. He’d a been gey late for his supper by then.’ He smacked a fist into the other palm. ‘Where has he got to? St Peter’s bones, how can a man just disappear like that, unattended or no?’
Easier than you’d believe, thought Gil. Aloud he said, ‘Did he go drinking? Did he have friends in the town? Maybe the alehouses along the Skinnergate could tell us something. And where do you suppose Canon Drummond ate his dinner, if it wasn’t here?’
‘No a notion.’ Wat pulled at his lower lip, scowling. ‘I’d say it wasny on the Skinnergate, for the Blackfriars likes to drink there when they’re in the town, they’re aye in one alehouse or another.’ He thought a little further. ‘If he went to a friend, we’ve little chance of finding out, but I suppose he could ha been wi a woman. Why d’you want to know?’
‘He’s still the last person we know of that spoke to James Stirling,’ Gil said. ‘If I know where he was, I might find where Stirling was.’
‘Aye.’ Wat reached for his tablets. ‘I’ll send the men out again after they’ve had their noon bite. They can ask at the taverns, and maybe at the various kirks in the place, supposing he was wi a colleague after all. And maybe we could get the crier to it and all. For the both of them. He’s already crying those two badges off Jaikie’s hat, and Rob Chaplain and I’ve been turning away folk wi lead St Jameses all morning.’
Fortified by a slab of bread and cold meat and a handful of raisins, Gil went back out across the Red Brig. Some enquiry took him to Duncan Niven’s house by the dyer’s yard; it proved to be a neat timber cottage down a vennel, where hens picked around the midden and a stout woman in a crisp white headdress and huge dye-splashed linen apron was sweeping the flagstones before the door. She glanced up at him curiously and bobbed a curtsy as he came down the vennel.
‘Good day, mistress,’ he said, raising his hat. ‘I’m seeking Duncan Niven’s house.’
‘And you’ve found it, sir,’ she said civilly, taking a closer look at him under well-groomed eyebrows. ‘What can we do for you, then? Was it a lodging you was wanting?’
‘No, I’m suited, thanks, but I’m hoping to find someone that did lodge here. A Mistress Ross, from Dunblane.’
Her intent look persisted. ‘What might you be wanting wi her?’ she asked, propping the broom against the house wall.
‘I’ve some questions for her, about Canon Drummond that brought her here.’
He waited, while a sequence of expressions chased across her face: surprise, interest, irritation at the mention of the Canon. Finally, confirming his growing suspicions, she said, ‘Well, ask away, maister. I’m Kate Ross, that was waiting-woman to Nan Chalmers, Christ assoil her. You’re lucky to find me – I’ve stayed on here, where I’m suited and Mistress Niven too, to lend a wee hand wi the house for a while, but I’ll go the morn’s morn to a new situation.’ She lifted the besom, and turned to the house door. ‘Will you come within, sir, and take a seat, and we can talk in comfort.’
Seated by the house door, her apron discarded to reveal a good gown of checked wool, she served him Mistress Niven’s ale and answered his questions. It quickly became clear that she needed to talk, as several years’ observation of Drummond’s treatment of her mistress spilled over and swamped him in a wash of rising resentment. He listened carefully, trying to retain as much as possible to share with Alys later;
he was aware that she was much better at this sort of conversation than he was. Nevertheless, with two married sisters and five years’ practice at law, he had some grasp of the reality of human relationships. That shared by Andrew Drummond and his mistress had not been uniformly sweet, but he suspected it had not been as sour as Mistress Ross conveyed.
‘He would have no singing in the house,’ she was saying. ‘Not even a servant lassie singing at her work. It’s a strange thing, maister, how you never notice them singing until you’ve to prevent them doing it.’
‘No music at all?’ said Gil.
‘Oh, he’d to hear my mistress harping whenever he visited. Right fond of listening to the harp, he was. I’ve no notion where it went, either, that harp,’ she added, frowning. ‘By rights it should ha gone to wee Annie. But he’d have never a note of singing. She aye said it was the cost o her good life, but I’m no so certain it was a good life.’
‘Tell me more about Canon Drummond,’ he invited.
She snorted. ‘Canon, he calls himsel! No much of a priest, that one. Forbye his having my mistress in his keeping, and getting three bairns on her, may Our Lady receive her into grace,’ she paused to dab her eyes with the long ends of the fine linen kerchief on her head, ‘he was well acquaint wi the rest o the seven sins.’ Gil cocked an eyebrow at her across his empty beaker, and she wiped her eyes again and elaborated. ‘I never kent such a man for envying his fellow mortals. All his conversation was how this or that one about the Cathedral had been honoured above him, or the vote had gone against him at Chapter, or Bishop Chisholm had snubbed him. My poor mistress had her work to do keeping him sweet-tempered, and times it defeated even her to turn his thoughts to a Christian frame of mind.’
‘Lust, envy, pride,’ said Gil, counting off the sins she had identified.
‘Anger,’ she agreed, nodding so that the damp ends of her kerchief swung. ‘If he disliked aught you’d done or thought he’d been disobeyed he’d go all quiet, wi a voice like ice down your back, and nothing for it but to undo what had angered him and apologize.’
‘That’s four out of the seven,’ said Gil.
‘Aye, and him a priest.’ She shook her head. ‘And the way he treats those bairns – see, wee James would make a bonnie singer if he’s ever taught right, and the lassie, Annie, would aye sing at her play the way a bairn will, and if he heard them he’d call them afore him in a rage and though he’d never lay a finger on them, just talk at them wi that same voice like ice, they were both feart of his temper. I saw the laddie wet himsel one time his father was chastising him.’
Gil frowned, trying to reconcile this image of Andrew Drummond with the others he had received. It did not seem to fit.
‘When I saw him in Dunblane the other day –’ he began.
‘And that’s another thing,’ Mistress Ross pursued. ‘He brought the bairns here, would have me accompany them, then paid me off, and he’s away back to Dunblane and left me here. He never asked if it would suit me to be set down in Perth wi no employment, nor gave me the gown and velvet headdress my mistress left me in her will.’
Could this be the crux of her resentment? Gil wondered.
‘He seems to have slipped into a great melancholy since he was here in Perth,’ he continued. ‘Is that like him, would you say?’
She gazed at him, arrested for a moment, then leaned forward and poured more ale for both of them while she thought about this.
‘I’d never ha said so,’ she pronounced. ‘I’d ha thought it more like him to fly in one of those quiet rages and take it out on those round him. But there’s no saying how a man will react to a great loss, and when all’s said he was right fond o my mistress, however ill he treated her. None of your great romantic passions like in the ballads,’ she qualified, ‘but you’d only to see him smile at her, and the way he wept the night she –’ She broke off, and turned her head away. It was clear she had loved her mistress too.
‘Did he speak to you before he left the Blackfriars?’ Gil asked.
‘Aye, he was here that evening. He came to let me know he’d be away and leaving me here, and that they’d cease to carry my food here after that night’s supper.’ She faced him again, a sour smile on her lips. ‘We’d plainer fare to eat after that, I can tell you, maister. The friars keep a high diet, poverty or no poverty. And Jennet – Mistress Niven – swears they went off wi two of her good dishes instead of their own when they collected the last ones.’
‘What time would that be, that the Canon was here that evening?’
‘About the time Niven came home from the dyer’s yard,’ she said promptly, ‘for he passed him in the vennel there.’
‘And what time would that be?’ he persisted. She paused to consider.
‘Niven was late that evening,’ she said at length. ‘Jennet was home afore him, on account of wishing to see to his supper and her tasks was finished. She works at the dyeyard and all,’ she explained. ‘She was in at maybe her usual time, and she’d got the stewpot on the fire and simmering, for the Canon made mention of how good the smell was. She was right gratified, till he turned round and gave me my place wi no notice.’
‘So that was an hour or so after she got home?’ Gil hazarded, with a glance at the peat fire in the centre of the room.
‘Aye, likely,’ she agreed, in a tone which left him disinclined to rely on the fact. ‘What’s your interest in Drummond, maister? What’s it to you when I last set eyes on him?’
‘I’m tracking this man that’s missing,’ he explained, ‘the Bishop’s secretary, and it seems as if Canon Drummond was the last to speak wi him. He was alone when he came here?’
‘Oh, aye.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘Maybe that would account for his mood, if he spoke to a man that’s disappeared.’ Gil made an encouraging noise, and she gave him a reluctant glance. ‘I’ve no liking for clypes, maister, but –’ She closed her mouth tightly, stared at the two pewter dishes on the plate-cupboard for a moment, then began again. ‘There was one of the songmen at Dunblane that just up and vanished one day a month or so back, they’ve never got to the bottom of it and folk were saying it was the Deil flew off wi him, though why – I’d spoken wi the man mysel a time or two, and one of my cousins is in Bishop Chisholm’s household and knew him to be a decent body, you’d never take him for a man the Deil would – though they tell us any of us is wicked sinner enough –’ She broke off this muddled utterance and drew a breath. ‘The Canon was right satisfied about it.’
‘Satisfied?’ Gil repeated, puzzled.
‘Oh, aye. As if he’d had a nice wee gift. All lit up and gratified he was, out at our house the next day, telling my mistress all the tale, which she’d heard already for I’d spoke to the soutar’s wife that cooked his food to the songman, the very day it happened. Vanished, he said to her, and none kens where he’s gone, and that’s one singer the less in Dunblane. A judgement on him, he said, but when my mistress wished to hear more he would have her harp for him instead.’
‘A judgement on him?’
‘That’s what he said. And why I’m minded o this, maister, is he was in much the same mood when he cam here to turn me off. Lit up, as if he’d been gied some great benefit, or seen someone else cast down, I thought, but if another man had vanished – was he a singer?’
‘No, he was the Bishop’s secretary, though he was a singer when he was young, and knew Canon Drummond then as well. But this was before the man vanished away, for he was seen down by the Ditch later that evening,’ said Gil. ‘I suppose it might have been something they said when they were speaking together.’
‘Maybe the Canon got the better of an argument wi him,’ she agreed, accepting this. ‘That would please him and all.’
‘And that was the last time you saw Canon Drummond?’
‘Well, it’s the last I spoke wi him,’ she qualified, ‘and no loss to me that is, save for my mistress’s gown and velvet headdress.’
‘Do you mean you saw him again?’
‘Where was he?’ Gil asked hopefully. ‘Was anyone with him?’
‘Just in the Skinnergate, away at the far end. He’d be going into the town to his supper, likely. If you’ve met him, sir, you’ll ken he’s a big man, easy to be seen in a crowd. I just caught a glimp of him among all the heads, but I thought maybe he’d wee James wi him, the way he was looking down and talking as he went, though it was ower late for the laddie to be out. And then when we cam out the tavern and across the brig again, there he was ahead of us on the path his lone. I mind it well for Jennet said, You’ll not get away from the man! and we all laughed.’
It had been a good evening in the tavern, Gil decided.
‘Was he coming or going on the path?’ he asked.
‘He was just taking the road back to Blackfriars. I suppose he’d new come from the town, or maybe been a walk along by the waterside. It’s a pleasant walk of an evening, there’s aye one or two folk on the path.’
‘And that was late on?’
‘Oh, aye. The sun was not long down – we was near the last out through the gate afore they barred it. There was light enough in the sky to go by, it was a clear night, and no mistaking the man given I’d been ten year in my mis-tress’s household. The way his hair looks when he needs barbered, you’d ken him a mile off.’
Gil looked reflectively into his beaker. Misreading his intent, Mistress Ross leaned forward to pour more ale.
‘Did you see any others on the path?’ he asked. ‘Or coming into the town across the Red Brig?’
She thought briefly, but shook her head. ‘There’s aye one or two folks stirring, it’s no like Dunblane. I wouldny mind one evening better than another, sir.’
