The Nicholas Feast Read online

  ‘A lament,’ said Maister Coventry. ‘Did you catch what he said to the woman?’

  ‘I don’t speak Ersche,’ said Gil, and Nick shook his head.

  ‘He said, There is death in the hall.’

  ‘It’s the thunder,’ said Nick decidedly, but Gil felt a shiver run down his back. The slow, weighty tune wound to its end, and after urgent representations by the Steward the woman rose to her feet and began to recite one of the gloomier portions of the history of Wallace. The Steward, shaking his head, approached Nick.

  ‘Maister Kennedy,’ he said, bowing, ‘the Dean wishes to offer some reward to the players after the harper is finished. I am to direct you to assemble them at that time.’

  Nick pulled a face, but replied politely enough. John Shaw went off to harass the students with the spiced wine, and Maister Coventry said, ‘Do you need a collie-dog? Are they all here?’

  ‘Mostly.’ Nick got to his feet. ‘Richie, Henry, Michael, there’s Walter – who’s missing?’

  ‘William,’ said Gil, who had been watching the cast drifting in.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Nick after a moment. ‘He’ll be sulking in the privy after his costume got torn. Well, I’m not going to look for him. He’ll turn up at the last moment like a clipped plack, he always does when there’s something in it for him.’

  ‘I’ll send John Hucheson,’ offered Maister Coventry.

  ‘I wouldn’t offend John by asking him.’ Nick looked around, catching the eye of several of the cast. ‘William can look out for himself.’

  Wallace eventually reached the end of a chapter, and the harper’s sister sat down, to some applause. The Dean raised his hand, and the Steward, standing to one side, summoned the players in ringing tones. As Maister Kennedy and his group progressed formally up the length of the hall, Gil found Ealasaidh McIan at his side.

  ‘Himself wishes me to warn you,’ she said without preamble. ‘There is death in this place, and more than death. He felt it as soon as we came here.’

  ‘More than death?’ Gil questioned involuntarily.

  ‘Strangling and secrecy,’ she said. ‘Many secrets.’

  ‘Is it someone in this hall?’ asked Patrick Coventry at her other side.

  She turned to look down at him, shaking her head. ‘I am not the one with the sight. You must be asking himself that.’

  ‘Where is William?’ said the Dean loudly. ‘He must be sought for.’

  With the words the harper rose, blank eyes wide, his instrument clasped in one arm, and flung the other hand high with an exclamation in Gaelic that set the brass strings ringing. The Steward and the Dean, arrested in movement, stared at him, as did nearly everyone else in the hall, but his sister hurried to his side. Maister Coventry stepped forward and together they shepherded the tall figure to the side of the hall, answering him in Gaelic as they went. Gil dragged a bench forward and the harper was thrust on to it, his sister scolding him in a hissing whisper.

  ‘Where is Maister Cunningham?’ he asked, putting out his free hand in its furred velvet sleeve.

  ‘I am here,’ said Gil, alarmed, and grasped the hand. This man was a professional musician and habitually more dignified than the Archbishop. What had shaken him to this extent? He was speaking in Gaelic again, urgent jerky sentences.

  ‘The one the Dean asks for,’ Patrick Coventry translated softly, ‘is in the dark, behind an iron lock, and he is no longer living.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘What does he say?’ demanded Dean Elphinstone from the dais. There was a sudden buzz of sound as those nearest, who had heard, informed those who had not.

  ‘Haivers!’ said the boy who had played Knowledge. ‘Not our William!’

  ‘Speak Latin, Walter,’ said the Principal automatically.

  ‘Quid est Latinus pro haivers?’ muttered Walter.

  ‘How can he ken that?’ the Dean pursued in Scots. ‘Maister Harper, what gars ye –’

  ‘I am a harper,’ said Angus McIan. ‘It is given to me.’

  ‘Aye, well, so was old Rory MacDuff a harper when I was a bairn,’ said the Dean, ‘and he didny take these strunts.’

  ‘Best you look for the one who is missing,’ said Ealasaidh urgently to Gil. ‘Himself will not be right till the daylight reaches the dead man.’

  ‘It came to him,’ said Gil to a nodding Maister Coventry, ‘when the Dean asked where was William. Moreover the Dean has already said –’

  ‘Maister Kennedy,’ said the Dean, cutting across the rising noise in the hall. ‘Rehearse to us the names of those who took part in this play, edifying and entertaining us with well-turned verse and golden precept.’ He looked, Gil thought, as if the balanced phrases tasted sour.

  Nick, stumbling slightly over the Latin forms of the surnames, listed his cast and the roles they had performed, deprecating the play and commending the players who had learned their parts, identifying William last as Fortune and the dragon Idleness. From time to time he glanced at the door, as if he expected the missing boy to appear round it at any moment. The Dean replied in another elaborate speech, promising each of the cast by name some academic exemption or dispensation as a reward for hard work. At the end of the dais, David Gray scribbled notes, prodding at the wax in his tablet with jerky movements. Gil, watching him, thought he looked dazed, and wondered how accurate the final list would be.

  The boy who had played Collegia was pushed forward, and in bleating Latin produced a short but formal acknowledgement of the favours granted in return for this poor entertainment, so ably supervised by their well-loved teacher Maister Kennedy.

  ‘And now William Irvine is to be sought for. His reward will be granted when he is present.’

  ‘Now, Dean?’ said Nick.

  ‘Now. I wish to speak to him.’

  The well-loved teacher clapped his hands at the cast.

  ‘Find William, then!’ he said. ‘Hurry! You know the kind of places to look.’

  Gil disengaged his hand from the harper’s with a quiet word, and went forward to join Nick as the students made for the door. On the dais, the senior members of the Faculty were watching in varying degrees of disapproval; around the hall, now that the harper had stopped providing entertainment, the sweetmeats and spiced wine were circulating again.

  ‘If he is not in his chamber,’ said Patrick Coventry at Nick’s other elbow, ‘nor in the library, then are there likely spots to search or do we comb the entire college?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maister Kennedy, following the group of students. ‘It’s one of the things I dislike about him,’ he added, pausing on the steps outside. ‘He crops up everywhere, like columbine-weed, whether he has any business to be there or not. Henry, Walter!’ he called. ‘Go and check William’s chamber. Andrew and Ralph, see if the library is unlocked and if so whether he is there. Ninian, Lowrie, Michael –’

  ‘I thought we’d search the Inner Close, Maister Kennedy,’ said the yellow-haired tenor, a lanky youth just beginning to broaden at the shoulders, ‘and see if he’s troubling the kitchens as well.’

  ‘Very good, Lowrie. You do that. Robert Montgomery, Richie Shaw, you search the Inner Close as well.’

  ‘Please, Maister Kennedy.’ The treble from the singing group put his hand up, snapping his fingers like a schoolboy. ‘What will David and me do?’

  ‘You and your brother may run to the Arthurlie building,’ said Maister Coventry promptly, ‘and ask anyone you meet there whether William Irvine has been seen.’

  ‘And come back and report to me here,’ said Nick as the boys scattered across the wet flagstones.

  Gil made his way down the steps. Patrick Coventry followed him, saying thoughtfully, ‘Why the kitchens?’

  ‘I wondered that,’ said Gil. ‘I noticed those three come back together after the rain started, and one of them is lacking his belt.’

  He headed for the vaulted tunnel which led between the silent Law lecture-rooms and into the inner courtyard, Maister Coventry behind him.
As they emerged into the daylight, shouting erupted in the kitchens at the far side of the courtyard. Gil, hitching up cope and cassock, quickened his pace, and sprang up the kitchen stair in time to meet the tenor and his two friends, retreating backwards from a gaunt woman enveloped in a sacking apron.

  ‘And stay out of my kitchen!’ she ordered shrilly, with a threatening sweep of her ladle.

  ‘I’m sorry, Agnes,’ said one of the boys, the fineboned mousy-haired one. ‘We didny mean to annoy you –’

  ‘Annoy me, he says! Three great louts under my feet asking daft questions – get out of my way, and don’t let me set eyes on you this week!’

  ‘Agnes Dickson,’ said Gil from behind the students. One of them turned to look at him, and the cook paused open-mouthed. ‘I knew you were still cook here as soon as I saw the Almayne pottage,’ Gil pursued, with perfect truth. ‘I’ve tasted nothing like it since I left the college.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Mistress Dickson, less shrill but still hostile. ‘Is this lot anything to do with you? Getting in my way when I’m short-handed, with the rest of the college still to feed, and half the dishes up in the Fore Hall. They should know better by their age.’

  ‘Senior bachelors are always a trial,’ said Gil sympathetically. ‘We’ve lost one –’

  ‘He’s a junior,’ said the mousy-haired boy quickly.

  ‘Have you seen William Irvine, Agnes?’

  ‘I have not, the saints be praised. I can’t be doing with that laddie, aye on my back about the cost of this and that and who’s getting extra food at the buttery door. Away and look for him elsewhere. And you, Gil Cunningham, come back when I’m less taigled and tell me if your minnie likes your marriage.’

  She brandished the ladle again, and the three senior bachelors slid past Gil and thudded down the stairs. Gil took off his bonnet and bowed, but Mistress Dickson was already retreating into her kitchen where someone demanded to know if he had pounded these roots enough. Gil descended to the courtyard, where the tenor and the mousy-haired boy were making exaggerated gestures of relief.

  ‘Thank you, maister,’ said the third student, a stocky fellow with a round red face. ‘Agnes can be a bit –’

  ‘She can indeed,’ Gil said. Beyond Maister Coventry, Richie the Scholar and the Montgomery boy appeared from one stair and disappeared into another, like rabbits in a warren.

  ‘Did the harper no say William was behind a lock?’ asked Lowrie the tenor. ‘Why don’t we check the cellars while we’re here?’

  Gil met Patrick Coventry’s blue glance.

  ‘But have we a key?’

  ‘I have one,’ said Maister Coventry. The three students had already plunged into the vaulted passage behind the kitchen stair, and were trying doors.

  ‘Not in the wellhouse. Look in the feed store, Michael.’

  ‘William? You there? No, not a sign.’

  ‘Not in the feed store. What about the limehouse?’

  ‘The door’s open. Didn’t we – shouldn’t it be barred?’

  ‘St Eloi’s hammer, it’s dark in here. He’s no here.’

  ‘He’s no here?’ repeated the tenor, on a rising note of incredulity.

  ‘Don’t think so. Fiend hae these sacks –’

  ‘Don’t lick your fingers, you fool! Try that corner.’

  ‘No, he’s no here.’

  ‘Should we look in the coalhouse?’

  ‘Aye, try the coalhouse.’

  ‘But we left him –’

  ‘Wheesht, you gormless –’

  ‘The coalhouse is locked.’

  ‘Isn’t it always locked?’

  ‘No in the daytime. The kitchen needs in to get coals for the dinner.’

  ‘It’s locked now. William? You there?’

  ‘Stand back, please.’

  Maister Coventry, after some ferreting under his brocade cope, had produced a large key. As two more students came running across the courtyard he fitted it into the coalhouse lock and turned it. The door swung outwards, boxing the three senior bachelors into the dark passage beyond it.

  ‘He’s no in the library,’ said someone behind Gil, ‘and John Hucheson says he’s no been there, and Walter says his chamber door’s locked.’

  ‘Speak Latin, Ralph,’ said Maister Coventry, ‘and stand back out of the light. William?’ He peered into the coalhouse. ‘William?’

  ‘What is it? Have we found him?’ said someone else from the courtyard.

  Gil, looking over Maister Coventry’s head, shaded his eyes against the light from the courtyard, and suddenly turned to the students at the mouth of the passage.

  ‘Go and tell Maister Kennedy to come here,’ he ordered, ‘and bring a good lantern.’

  ‘You gentlemen too,’ said Maister Coventry, closing the door over so that the group beyond it could emerge. ‘Go and send Maister Kennedy, and then wait in the Outer Close.’

  ‘Why?’ said Lowrie. ‘Is William there? But how did he get in there?’

  ‘Is he – is he hurt?’ asked the mousy-haired one. The stocky boy said nothing, but stared at the door as he edged past it into the courtyard, then suddenly broke into a run. His friends galloped after him, and they went into the tunnel to the outer courtyard in a tight knot. Gil watched them out of sight, then reached over Patrick Coventry’s head and opened the door again.

  ‘Is it William?’ asked the Second Regent.

  ‘I think it must be.’ Gil stepped forward, cautious in the dim light. ‘Ah, there is a window.’ He unbarred the shutters and turned to look at what lay at the foot of the heap of coal, nearest the window, furthest from the door.

  ‘Lord have mercy on us,’ said Maister Coventry. ‘Are you certain? It doesn’t look like –’

  Gil swallowed hard, suddenly regretting the Almayne pottage.

  ‘The clothes are William’s,’ he said, ‘and the build and the hair are William’s. He has been strangled, which is why he is unrecognizable. And look at this. Look what was used to strangle him.’

  He bent to close the bulging eyes so far as was possible. The effect, if anything, was worse. Averting his gaze, he lifted the end of the leather strap which lay across the shoulder of the blue gown.

  ‘This is someone’s belt,’ he said.

  ‘The poor boy,’ said Maister Coventry.

  ‘There’s worse,’ said Gil, still peering at the body. ‘Look – his hands are bound.’

  Producing a set of beads from his sleeve, Patrick Coventry bent his head and began the quick, familiar muttering of the prayers for the dead. Gil stepped past him and out of the coalhouse as the sound of hasty feet in the courtyard heralded Maister Kennedy.

  ‘Nick,’ he said.

  ‘Where is the boy? What’s come to him? Andrew and Ralph said –’

  ‘Nick, are you wearing any sort of belt?’

  His friend stared at him, his mobile brows twitching.

  ‘My belt? No, as a matter of fact, I’m not. No room for a purse under this, and no need for one over it, in these robes.’

  ‘Do you have one? Where is it?’

  ‘In my chamber. Do you need it? What’s happened, Gil?’

  ‘William’s dead,’ said Gil bluntly. ‘He’s been strangled, with someone’s belt, and his hands are tied with another one. Whoever makes enquiry into this will be very interested in belts.’

  Nick Kennedy looked from Gil, to Patrick Coventry still murmuring prayers, to the shadows in the coalhouse.

  ‘Christ aid,’ he said. ‘He will, won’t he. Let’s have a look.’

  Gil slipped past the Second Regent and into the dim space again, positioning himself carefully away from the window. Nick, following him, checked visibly at the sight of the distorted face and lolling tongue.

  ‘Christ aid,’ he said again. ‘You wereny mistaken about the strangling. Well,’ he said to the indifferent corpse, ‘I’ve threatened to throttle you myself often enough, but I suppose I’m sorry now someone’s done it. Poor laddie. Should we no move him, Gil
?’

  ‘William is certainly beyond aid,’ Gil pointed out. ‘There is little point in moving him, and I think we should notify the Dean and the Principal first. Moreover, this is clearly secret murder, and I know last time I viewed a body I could have done with seeing her where she died.’

  Nick looked from the corpse to the shadowy heaps of coal and stacked wood.

  ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Well, I’d better tell them. Will you bide here or come with me?’

  Gil, who had been giving some thought to exactly this question, said, ‘Would you say, Nick, we three have been within sight of one another the whole time, since the end of the play?’

  Both men stared at him. Maister Coventry’s lips still moved, but Maister Kennedy’s mouth had fallen open. After a moment he recovered it.

  ‘St Peter’s bones,’ he said, without inflection. ‘Someone did this, didn’t they? And I threatened to throttle him. I swear by the Rood, Gil, I’ve never been so glad in my life to have taken a driddle in company. We were maybe not all three in sight of one another, but none of us could have got here from the Arthurlie garden with time to do this and be back before the other two noticed he’d gone.’

  Gil nodded.

  ‘Maister Coventry,’ he said. The Second Regent raised his head. ‘I suggest you lock the door and let none past until the Dean and Maister Doby are here.’

  The small man nodded, without interrupting his prayers, and followed them out of the coalhouse. Locking the door carefully, he stationed himself in front of it and took up his beads again as Gil and Nick set off across the courtyard.

  The students who had formed the search party were at the foot of the stairs to the Fore Hall. The three senior bachelors were standing aside in a row, the stocky boy in the middle; two more were wrestling, some others kicking a stone about. As their seniors approached the games ceased.

  ‘Is it William, Maister Kennedy?’ said someone. ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘Why was he in the coalhouse?’ asked someone else.

  ‘It is William,’ said Nick. ‘Yes, he is hurt. He is hurt bad.’

  ‘Will he die, maister?’ asked one of the two Ross boys, seated wide-eyed by his brother on the bottom step.