The Merchant's Mark Read online

  There was a silence, and then a general shaking of heads.

  ‘Maybe he’s from the Low Countries,’ said Billy suddenly. ‘Aye, that’s a good thought. Wherever Tod’s shipment was from.’

  ‘Right,’ said the serjeant again. ‘Well, Maister Morison, if ye’ve a cloth handy we can wrap it in, Tammas here can carry it back to the Tolbooth –’ Gil was aware of a faint sigh from the constable – ‘and I’ll send to the Provost. I’ve no doubt he’ll tak an inquest the morn, find out if any in the burgh kens who he might be, then you can get the Greyfriars to bury him decent. One thing, Maister Morison, you’ll can save on the cost of the grave-digging.’

  ‘I’ll get a poke,’ said Andy.

  ‘There should be some at the back of the shed here,’ said Morison. Andy ferreted briefly in a corner behind one of the racks of timber, and drew a stout linen sack out from a bundle of folded cloths. ‘Don’t trouble to return it, serjeant.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Serjeant Anderson. He took the sack, turned towards the head, and turned back. ‘Just one wee favour, maisters, and you, Andy Paterson, Billy. Would you be good enough to touch him for me?’

  ‘Touch him?’ repeated Morison in horror. ‘Why? What for?’

  ‘So I can see you touch him,’ said the serjeant.

  ‘Andy dried him off,’ said Gil. He stepped forward and put his hand on the dark hair. It was beginning to curl, but felt slightly sticky under his fingers. Probably the salt, he reflected, and gave way to Maistre Pierre, who made a cross on the clammy forehead and muttered something.

  ‘Christ save you, whoever you are,’ said Andy, and touched one cheek. Billy, visibly gritting his teeth, clapped a hand on the curling crown and retreated, wiping his fingers on his jerkin. He looked round for his colleagues, found them all out in the yard, and followed them hastily.

  ‘Maister Morison?’

  ‘Must I?’ said Morison.

  Gil, seeing the serjeant’s eyes narrow, said, ‘Come, Augie, it’s not so bad. He can’t hurt you. Shut your eyes and I’ll put your hand on his hair.’

  ‘That’s worse,’ said Morison, shuddering, but when Gil took his elbow he allowed himself to be led forward, head averted, biting his lip. When his hand was set on the salt hair he shuddered again, but found the courage to grope about enough to sign the forehead as the mason had done. As he stepped back Gil saw tears glittering below his closed eyelids. What ails him? Gil wondered. He’s an educated man, he can hardly expect the dead to accuse him by a show of blood as the superstitious believe, so what is so fearsome here?

  ‘Well,’ said the serjeant, with a faint note of disappointment in his voice, ‘we’d best get this out of your way, maisters. Here, Tammas, put it in the sack. I suppose there’s nothing left in the barrel? No books? None of his gear?’

  ‘See for yourself, serjeant,’ said Andy, indicating the puncheon. Serjeant Anderson peered into its depths, and grunted.

  ‘Waste of good brine,’ he commented. ‘I suppose you’ll no want to use it again. Is that you ready, Tammas? We’ll away, then. I’ll send to let you know what time the inquest’s to be, Maister Morison. You’ll have to compear, you ken that, and all your men that’s in the barn yonder. And you, maisters.’

  ‘Serjeant,’ said Gil, ‘if I can trace Balthasar the lutenist, we’ll know it’s not him. Do you want to ask about the burgh if anyone knows where he might be, or will I do it?’

  ‘Oh, it’s no Balthasar,’ said the serjeant. ‘It’s some shore porter from the Low Countries as your man says, I’ll wager, got on the wrong side of a packer and got his head in his hands to play with. No, Maister Cunningham, I canny be aye running about asking questions. I’ve a burgh to watch and ward. If you want to take up your time that way, go right on and do it.’

  He set off, nodding to Morison as he passed him at the doorway. His constable trailed after him holding the sack at arm’s length. It was already dripping slightly. Andy bustled out and accompanied the two men to the gate, nodding and gesturing. Gil, watching, caught the words Weak stomach, and the serjeant’s Aye, that would explain it.

  ‘Is there truly nothing more in there?’ wondered the mason, still in the shed leaning over the barrel.

  ‘It’s no empty,’ said Andy, returning. ‘I’ve set Billy and them to go down the back and wash the carts, maister.’ He stepped up on to the platform and rocked the barrel so that the liquid swirled and splashed. They all heard something move against the inside of the staves. ‘Mind your feet.’

  Gil moved hastily out of the way as brine splashed on to the earth floor. Andy let most of it run off, then held up the lantern and reached into the bottom of the puncheon.

  ‘A scrip of some kind,’ he said. ‘By here, it’s heavy. Could it be his?’

  ‘Should we send after the serjeant?’ said Morison. ‘It may tell us who the man is.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked the mason.

  Andy set the bag down on the platform with a thump and swirled the dregs of brine again. ‘See for yourself, maisters.’

  ‘It isn’t a scrip,’ said Gil, dragging it closer. ‘It’s a saddlebag, and a well-made one. This has been good leather before it went in the brine. What is in it?’

  He turned the bag over to wrestle with the buckle, and frowned as he heard a faint chink and scrape of metal from inside it.

  ‘Coin?’ he said. Finally unfastening the buckle, he lifted back the flap and drew out a dripping canvas purse the size of the mason’s fist, and then another. Below them was a roll of sodden velvet. Maistre Pierre whistled.

  ‘Coin,’ he agreed. ‘How much?’

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘Near a thousand merks in each of those, I would guess,’ said Morison authoritatively, ‘depending what coin it’s in, of course. Forbye what’s in the roll of cloth.’

  Gil weighed the first purse in his hand. ‘As you said, Andy, this is heavy. If I had this weight in my saddlebag, I’d make sure there was the same again in the other, though I suppose it needn’t all be coin. Are you sure there’s no more in the barrel?’

  ‘We can take it out into the day,’ Andy said. ‘I’m certain.’

  ‘There are a few shavings of wood,’ said Maistre Pierre, exhibiting the pale soggy curls in the palm of his hand. Gil looked at him, then drew the lantern closer to the saddlebag and looked at the long strap which was intended to fasten it to the saddle.

  ‘This has been unbuckled, rather than cut,’ he said. ‘You can see where the leather has stretched with the weight of the coin in the bag.’

  ‘Does that tell us anything?’ said Morison blankly.

  Gil shrugged. ‘No urgency about the deed, I suppose.’

  ‘I still think it should go to the serjeant,’ protested Morison.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘but did our friend here steal this bag, or was the other stolen from him, and whose is the treasure?’

  ‘I can hazard a guess at that,’ said Gil. He unfolded the wet velvet with care. ‘Aye, as I thought. Look at these.’

  Pinned to the cloth, an array of elaborate goldsmith work gleamed in the lantern-light.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ said the mason. ‘What are these? Look at those rubies!’

  ‘The sapphires are better,’ said Morison, ‘at least by this light. St Peter’s bones, Gil, what have we got into here?’

  ‘My mother had a unicorn jewel like that,’ said Gil, touching one of them, ‘save that hers was enamel. It was her badge of service when she was in the Queen’s household. I reckon these are from the royal treasury.’

  ‘D’ye mean he’d robbed Edinburgh or Stirling Castle?’ said Andy.

  ‘No. It’s part of James Third’s missing treasure,’ said Morison with sudden confidence.

  ‘I think you’re right, Augie,’ said Gil. ‘And if it is, I think we should leave the serjeant out of it. This should go straight to the Provost.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Mind you, I thought James Third’s treasure had all been found,’ said Maister
Morison.

  ‘Not all,’ said Canon Cunningham.

  They were in the garden of the stone house in Rottenrow, where Gil and his companions had called on their way to the Archbishop’s castle. They had found the Official admiring a bed of brightly coloured pinks before he returned to his chamber above the Consistory Court, in the south-west tower of St Mungo’s. He had listened attentively to Gil’s account of the morning, ignoring the interruptions from Maistre Pierre and Augie Morison, and inspected the contents of the still-wet saddlebag with interest.

  ‘Robert Lyle spent most of two weeks carping on about it,’ he continued, ‘when the Lords of the Articles met in February there to approve the Treasurer’s accounts.’

  ‘Lord Lyle?’ said Maistre Pierre quickly. ‘He is one of the Auditors, no? And a friend to the old King, if I recall. One might suppose he had some idea of how much should still remain.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Canon Cunningham. ‘I think we all assumed he was simply attacking Treasurer Knollys, and that what was recoverable was now recovered, and any still at large was spent long since. In the end we issued orders to the Sheriffs to hold secret enquiries about it, only to silence him so he would audit the accounts. In the face of a sum of this size together with these jewels, which are certainly from the King’s own treasury, there can be no doubt that we were wrong and Robert was right.’

  ‘Knollys,’ said Maistre Pierre thoughtfully. ‘This is the man who is also Preceptor of the Knights of St John at Torphichen –’ he pronounced the name with some care – ‘although he has never been either cleric or knight, or been at Rhodes to be confirmed in the post.’

  ‘The same,’ agreed Canon Cunningham without expression. ‘He sits in Parliament as Lord St Johns. He is a most successful merchant.’

  Morison looked from one to the other, baffled by this exchange.

  ‘But why was all the money in a barrel with the head of an unknown man?’ he asked. ‘Where has it been these four years?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I do not think that poor soul had been in salt for so long, I would say no more than a few days, and nor has the coin, so the treasure must have been elsewhere in the meantime.’

  ‘Good questions,’ said David Cunningham. He clasped his hands behind his back under his rusty black gown, and paced away from them along the gravel path. Maister Morison, crushing a sprig of lavender between his fingers, watched him anxiously. Gil bent to rub the ears of the young hound Socrates, who had recovered from his initial paroxysms of welcome and was now sitting with his head firmly thrust against Gil’s knee.

  ‘Aye, good questions,’ repeated the Official, turning at the far end of his traverse. ‘However, since the head and the treasure both were found in the burgh, it becomes a burgh matter and it is out of my jurisdiction.’

  ‘No harm in speculating,’ Gil commented.

  His uncle threw him a sharp look, and continued, pacing back towards them, ‘If ye’d been a couple of hours sooner, the Provost could have sent it to Stirling with an armed escort. My lord of Angus was in Glasgow, with the Chancellor and Andrew Forman, lying at the castle overnight. They left before Terce. Something about reporting a gathering in Ayrshire.’

  ‘What, is Hugh Montgomery causing trouble?’ said Gil.

  ‘So it seems. Armed encounter at Irvine betwixt Cunninghams and Montgomerys.’

  ‘If the Montgomery will not listen to the Earl of Angus,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘he will surely listen to the King.’

  ‘I think that was Angus’s idea.’

  ‘But until it’s settled,’ said Gil uneasily, ‘I had better not go alone into Ayrshire. That’s awkward – I want to go to Kilmarnock.’

  ‘I would agree,’ said his uncle severely. ‘Forbye you will be required when the Provost takes an inquest into the matter. You may have an income now, Gilbert, but no need use it to pay the fines for non-compearance before the Archbishop’s justice.’

  ‘The inquest on the head is for this afternoon,’ said the mason. ‘The bellman was crying it as we came up the town just now.’

  The Official looked down at the bright majolica dish lying on the grass, in which the saddlebag still wept salt tears, and nudged it with one well-shod foot.

  ‘As for this,’ he said, ‘there may well be a reward for the finding. Maister Morison deserves some compensation.’

  ‘Aye, for our books,’ said Morison, reminded of his loss.

  ‘You could take an inventory,’ Canon Cunningham remarked, ‘and count the coin. No doubt Sir Thomas would find it helpful.’

  ‘I can do that, I suppose,’ said Morison reluctantly.

  ‘Come, come, maister,’ said the mason. ‘The money does not smell. We can count it together, and my son-in-law can write down the jewels.’ He lifted the majolica dish on to the bench and sat down beside it.

  ‘I must away back up to St Mungo’s,’ said David Cunningham with some regret. ‘I believe I have a case waiting, and two sets of witnesses. What poor Fleming will have done wi them by now I canny think.’ He raised his hand, blessed Gil in particular and the company in general, stooped to pat Socrates and strode away under the archway which led to the kitchen-yard and the gate to the street. Just on the other side of the archway he checked, and they heard him say, ‘Aye, Kate. And Alys. Gilbert’s in the garden, with a wee pickle treasure.’

  He strode on and out of sight, and Gil jumped to his feet, dislodging the dog, as the mason’s daughter came into the garden, a slender girl in a blue linen gown, her honey-coloured hair loose down her back. Her gaze found his immediately, and she smiled.

  ‘Treasure?’ She came to Gil’s outstretched arm, and curtsied to her father’s fellow burgess. ‘Good day, Maister Morison. What treasure is this?’

  Morison, standing to greet her, opened his mouth to reply, and looked beyond her to the archway. He stopped, staring open-mouthed. Gil turned his head, and saw only his sister Kate coming through the archway on her two crutches, her gigantic waiting-woman Babb at her back.

  ‘Kate,’ he said. ‘You remember Augie Morison?’

  ‘I do,’ she said, swinging forward, the crutches crunching on the gravel. ‘Good day, maister.’

  ‘Lady Kate,’ said Morison, stammering slightly. He hurried forward, holding his hand out, and suddenly realized it was full of coins. Turning to put them back in the majolica dish, he came forward again but was too late to assist her to a seat in the arbour by the wall.

  ‘I’ll do here, Babb,’ she said, settling her tawny wool skirts about her. ‘You go and sit with Maggie in the kitchen, I’ll send when I need you.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Babb grimly. ‘And don’t be too long about sending, my doo.’

  She propped the crutches against the wall, near to her mistress’s hand, and strode off, ducking under the archway. Morison cleared his throat and said, ‘I’m right sorry to see you like this, Lady Kate.’

  ‘Not as sorry as I am to be like it,’ said Kate.

  ‘I prayed for you yestreen.’

  Kate’s chin went up. ‘You never thought there’d be a miracle, did you?’ she said challengingly.

  ‘Une tête?’ said Alys from beside her father. ‘A head? In a barrel?’

  Gil grimaced. Kate looked from one to another of them, and then at the dish of coins on the bench, and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘It’s mine,’ said Morison awkwardly.

  ‘What, the head?’ said Kate, and he blushed.

  ‘Well, it’s not mine, it ought to ha been mine. The fill of the barrel, I mean.’ He took a deep breath and began again, with a more coherent explanation of the circumstances. The two girls heard him out, Alys sorting coins as she listened.

  ‘Why should you hand it to the Provost,’ asked Kate when he had finished, ‘and have him take the credit for finding it?’

  ‘He’s the Archbishop’s depute in the burgh,’ Gil pointed out. ‘It must all be done with due process.’

  ‘Hah!’ she said, but Alys looked up from a stack of coi
ns and said seriously:

  ‘And who is the dead man? He cannot be a shore-porter from the Low Countries, can he, Gil? The serjeant must be wrong.’

  ‘Well, he might, but I don’t see how he can have died there,’ Gil agreed. ‘Unless the King’s treasure has been out of the country and back again. We need to find out where Balthasar of Liège has gone.’

  ‘Oh, is that why you wish to go to Kilmarnock?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘To trace the musician? It is now three months ago he went there. He has surely moved on by now.’

  ‘The McIans will know,’ said Alys. ‘But I think they are in Stirling.’

  ‘The McIans?’ said Morison. ‘Is that that harper you were telling me about? And you’re tutor to his son, you said.’ Gil nodded. ‘Is he not here in Glasgow?’

  ‘He and his sister came by the house last week,’ said Alys, ‘to see the bairn, and to say they were leaving the burgh for a time. They have invitations to play at one house and another, and I am sure he said they would be in Stirling by now. You could ask for them there, Gil, at least.’

  ‘These jewels are bonnie,’ said Kate. Gil looked round, and discovered that Morison had unrolled the wet velvet on the arbour bench beside her. ‘Look at the goldsmith work. And is that a sapphire? What a colour it is!’

  Morison mumbled something. She looked sharply at him, and said as if recalling her manners, ‘I was sorry to hear of Agnes, maister. Two years past, isn’t it?’ He nodded, and opened his mouth, but she went on speaking. ‘And you’ve – two bairns, I heard. How old are they?’

  ‘Wynliane is near seven, and Ysonde is four,’ said their father.

  She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What are their names? Wynliane – Ysonde! Augie Morison, only you could have named two bairns like that.’

  ‘They’re bonnie names,’ he protested, reddening. ‘Out of the romances.’

  ‘Oh, I ken that. Greysteil and Sir Tristram. Well, if they hope for either to come and carry them off, they’ll grow old hoping,’ said Kate acidly. ‘There are no heroes left in Scotland, maister. If you’ve a set of tablets on you we can make a list of these jewels, while my good-sister counts the coin.’