Hue & Cry E-Book

Shirley McKay

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: The Hew Cullan Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 561

Beschreibung

1579, St Andrews. Hew Cullan, a young lawyer, returns home from studying in Paris. But it proves to be a cold homecoming as Hew's friend, university regent Nicholas Colp, is accused of murdering a thirteen-year-old boy. The boy was a private pupil of Nicholas, and salacious gossip backed up by incriminating letters have him judged, convicted, and heading for the hangman's noose. Investigating the crime, Hew uncovers a dark tale of duplicity and passion amidst a world of religious piety and the chilling austerity of university life. From a case that seems to be open and shut, a Pandora's Box of lies and corruption emerges.  Hue & Cry is the first in the must-read series of Hew Cullan Mysteries, for fans of thrilling historical fiction.

Leseprobe

Hue & Cry

This ebook edition published in 2011 byBirlinn LimitedWest Newington HouseNewington RoadEdinburghEH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

First published in 2009 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

Copyright © Shirley McKay 2009

The moral right of Shirley McKay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ebook ISBN: 978-0-85790-018-0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Historical note

Prologue

Hew

Nicholas

Rites and Wrongs

Dyeing

Kenly Green

Salvator

St Leonard’s

The Lye

Hamesucken

Anatomies

The Merchant’s House

The Angel

Holy Trinity

The Crying

Coming to Light

Loose Women

Bursaries

Controversies

Seeds

The Dyer’s Child

A Coffin Crust

Watching and Waking

Confessing

The Reckoning

A Blood-colour Coat

That Ye May Nocht Deny

A Guise Before the King

The Majestie’s Desire

Also Available

For Neil, always and only

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Caroline Knox and Lynn Curtis, who both provided invaluable editorial advice on early versions of the manuscript; to Caroline Oakley, for her careful and constructive reading; to Anita Joseph, for her shrewd and sympathetic editing; and to Neville Moir of Polygon, who caught a glimpse of sunshine in the haar.

Thanks also to Neil Rhodes, for advice (not always welcomed) and for his constant love and support; to Alice, for believing; and to Peter, for putting up with it, even though he wished I had a proper job.

And above all, to my agent John Beaton, without whose tireless guidance, patience and persistence, Hew Cullan and his friends would not have braved the world.

Historical note

In the year 1580, King James VI of Scotland turned fourteen. On his first royal progress he visited the town of St Andrews where he saw a play performed in the courtyard of the New Inn of the priory as part of the entertainments. The event was noted in the diary of James Melville, who left a record of his time at St Andrews University. This moment, snatched from history, underlies the fiction that is Hue and Cry. With the exception of King James and his retinue, the people in this book have had no previous lives.

Prologue

St Andrews, Scotland1579

In the privacy of that small room, blanched yellow in the candlelight, Nicholas spoke to the boy in his own tongue, no longer accusing but low and soft like a girl. It was a mistake perhaps, because Alexander’s eyes began to fill with tears. The kindness felt too clumsy and too intimate. He struggled to recover his authority.

‘We will talk more of this tomorrow. In the meantime, please try to apply yourself. Study your text for an hour or so more. We’ll go over the passage again.’

‘Won’t you just look at them?’ The boy spoke in Scots, so quietly that Nicholas took a moment to hear him. He did not look up as he spoke, but stared hopelessly down at the paper between his fumbling hands. Nicholas forced down the impulse to hurt him, to say something childishly spiteful in reply.

‘You would do better to spend more time with your books and less making verses, if you ever hope to matriculate. But yes, I will look at them when I return. Now read a little longer. And Alexander . . .’

Nicholas turned at the door, exasperation failing at the sight of the boy huddled miserably over his work in the guttering light, and spoke again, in Latin now, to mask the gentleness. ‘Alexander, take the blanket from the cot. The evenings are too chill to sit in your shirt. And remember to blow out the candle.’

The boy’s bright hair, he thought, was the only warmth in the sour and windowless room. It was a relief to escape down the narrow stair to the last of the late summer sun.

Hew

From the deck of the Dutch flieboat Zeedraak a young man looked out to shore. As the land unfurled before him like a map he began to feel less sick. For it was not the motion of the ship but the length of his absence that caused his soft belly to flutter and fall. The sight of the town reassured him. It looked as it had always done, fronted by the ramparts of its castle, etched on the horizon by the starkness of its rock. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the strip of land between the castle and the shore appeared to have diminished as it weathered the encroaching of the tide. And the cathedral, by the square-built tower and chapel of St Rule, had crumbled further into stone, allowing the sunlight to stream through its frame and illuminate the town that had grown up in its shade. Beyond, from east to west, were ranked the four main thoroughfares: the fair and leafy south street, with its colleges and kirk; the broad and bustling Mercatgait; the north street, with its college halls and chapel braced against the winds; the Swallowgait that opened on the Castlegait and cliffs, falling sheer into the water, sweeping west towards the links and eastwards to the harbour, where the shallow basin washed into the sea. These four streets converged on the cathedral, and with their rigs and gardens set the pattern of the town. Criss-crossed between them, from north to south, vennels, wynds and closes narrowed and made deep its inner life.

True to its name the flieboat had crossed the North Sea from Holland fiercely and swiftly and soon disgorged its contents in the sunlit bay. The young man, Hew Cullan, found little to detain him. Since he was no merchant he had nothing to declare. In fact he had nothing at all. He had travelled from France through Flanders to Campvere, where he was shown to one boat and his belongings inexplicably were thrown upon another bound for Leith. He had only a purse of French coin and the fine suit of French clothes he stood up in, which now seemed unfit for the drab Scottish soil. He felt a pleasing lightness as he scrambled from the boat, coming back as a stranger to find his old faith with the town.

St Andrews was constructed on parallel streets within and between which its business took place. He climbed from the harbour through the sea gate to the pends that opened out upon the south street. Behind him stood the old cathedral and the priory vaults and cloisters where the merchants thronged on fair days, to the right the grand houses, some in mid-construction, where they pawned their wealth. On his left – and here he paused – were the college and the chapel of St Leonard. This was where, as a boy of fourteen, he had first entered the university to begin the education that had taken him to France. For four years he had worked and dreamt behind these quiet walls. Since it was September now, the gates were closed. The term would not begin for several weeks, and the present crop of students had not yet arrived to straggle obediently from college to kirk, from lecture to links, snaking through the town.

A little further up the street he passed the Kirk of Holy Trinity, turning sharply at its corner to the Mercatgait. Here stood the tolbooth, house of law and commerce, the marketplace with its rows of shops and luckenbooths, the ancient well, the mercat cross and tron. The cross and the tron, where butter was weighed, hid a more sinister side. Hew shivered as he passed. It was a short step from the tolbooth to this place of persecution, to the pillories and whipping posts where the sins of the people were exposed to public shame. It was in part his horror of such things that had deflected his purpose in the study of the law. The closer he came to its practice the more acutely he considered its effects. Today he was relieved to find there were no jeering crowds, no victims to be vilified and branded in the street. The marketplace was empty. It was now past six o’clock and there was little passing trade.

Somewhere above him he heard a door close. A thin man dressed in scholar’s black hurried down a forestair and brushed past him, absently clutching his gown. Hew gave a wry smile. Once, and not so long ago, he had himself been so immersed, so preoccupied in study, he had failed to see the world. The stairway belonged to a shop, grander than most of those that flanked it and no doubt more recently built. Perhaps the scholar lodged above. Below was some sort of a workshop, at this late hour still open to the street. Intrigued, he looked inside.

The whitewashed walls were clean and the floor freshly swept. A row of new candles lit up the counter on which lay bolts of woollen cloth in varied natural shades of russet, ash and clay; blue-green and stiff grey Sunday plaids, lengths of woven leine flax and saffron-coloured shirtcloth. Behind lay rare imported wares on wooden shelves: slubbed silks and velvets, mohair, milk-white linens and Flanders lace in violet, primrose, straw and plunkett blue. And in the gloom beyond these riches were looms strung with yellow threads, skeins of dyed and undyed wool, a brace of spinsters’ stools, spindles, shuttles, fleeces, reels and pins. A solitary black-haired boy swept up the fallen threads.

‘Leave that the noo, Tom, and help load the cart!’ A squat, bearded man in scarlet hose bustled in from the back of the shop. His cloak was a soft tawny brown, napped like velvet, brooched and belted in mulberry silk. A gold-tasselled purse clinked from his sleeve. ‘We’ve an early start to market . . . ah, beg pardon, sir; I did not see you there.’

Hungrily, he gazed at Hew, who was trying to make a strategic retreat.

‘In point of fact we’re closed.’ He took in Hew’s clothes, the peascod coat and full round hose. ‘But if there’s something in the shop you care to see?’

‘No, not at all. Some other time.’

‘Oh, you are a Scot!’ Clearly this had proved a disappointment. But the merchant was quick to recover. ‘Though you’re evidently used to more outlandish fashions. French, I would hazard? You’re not from round here.’

‘Aye, I was once.’ Hew gave nothing away. He edged towards the door. ‘Since you’re closed, I will not keep you.’

The shopkeeper seemed torn between the wish to tempt his prey and his earlier concerns. The boy with the sweeping brush stood waiting patiently.

‘Well,’ he conceded, as Hew stepped outside, ‘you may call again on Monday. Or, sir, if you care to go to Crail, we are there all day tomorrow for the Sunday market. You see, we have very fine cloths.’

‘Thank you, I’ll think on it,’ Hew said politely.

‘I am not, you see,’ disconcertingly, the man had followed him into the street, ‘your common cottage woolman. In addition to the house and shop I have a sizeable flock on the outskirts of the town. My wife and daughter spin the wool for my looms and the looms themselves are seldom still. And my brother is a merchant, sir, a most ambitious man.’

At this point a young girl appeared, barefoot on the forestair, calling ‘Dadda! Mammie says she’s finished with the wools.’

She was prettily dressed in a pale greenish-grey, like rivulets of water from the burn. She tossed her curls appraisingly at Hew while her father adjusted the scope of his pride.

‘Ah, Isabel! My Tibbie! Bonny, is she not?’

But the woolman put his question to the wind, as Hew took the chance to escape. He hurried past the tron and out of sight. Moments later he was standing in the cookshop on the corner of the Fishergait and Castlegait, just as he remembered it.

‘It’s Saturday, so no hot meat. Will you leave your name?’

Hew found an old Scots merk at the bottom of his purse. ‘No, I’ll pay for it.’

His name still remained on the wall by the bar. He was reassured to find the system was unchanged: the same yellowed debts on thin scraps of paper, the same smell of onions and old gravy stains. Yet he preferred to stay a stranger for a while, allowing old sensations to come upon him slowly. He was not ready to go home. He ordered herrings fried in oatmeal and a stoup of ale, taking his cup out to sit in the courtyard, where half an empty barrel had been set out as a stool. Presently the girl came with a plate of buttered oatcakes. ‘We’re full tonight with sailors. Did you want a room?’

Hew shook his head. He had recognised some of the crew from the Zeedraak, whose raucous shanties spilled into the street.

‘And yet you’re not from here?’ the lass persisted.

‘I lived here once. I have been gone a while.’

‘You’ll see some changes, then.’

Behind her he could see the castle and the cliffs sweeping to the sands, the gulls dipping out of the last of the sunlight. Reluctantly he answered: ‘One or two.’

She sighed and gave him up. ‘I’ll fill your cup. We close at nine.’

At nine o’clock he crossed the street by the castle towards the east sands. It was too late to return to Kenly Green. Was this how he had planned it? The sky began to darken. He felt the first drops of rain. On the shore below he saw two huddled figures: a young man in a ragged gown hunched against the wind, a young lass dressed in green clutching at his arm. Some things did not change. He smiled. Turning into Swallowgait he hurried through the rain to St Salvator’s College.

St Salvator’s, oldest and grandest of the three university colleges, had already closed its doors upon the night. Hew found the north and west gates in darkness. At the main entrance beneath the bell tower of the old collegiate chapel someone had hung out a lantern, casting a grey light upon the wet cobblestones. Hew hammered on the great oak door until he heard the bolts shot back, a consummate grumbling and jangling of keys. He stepped back a little to allow the sullen lamplight to illuminate his face.

‘What do you want there? The college is closed.’

‘I’ve come to see your principal, Professor Giles Locke.’

‘Wha’s that then? The quacksalve?’ the man enquired rudely.

In recent years the privy council had imposed, or tried to impose, a series of reforms upon the university, the latest of which was the appointment of a professor of medicine as principal of St Salvator’s College. Clearly this had not been welcomed.

‘I know him as your provost,’ Hew persisted, frowning, ‘and a friend.’

The porter remained unimpressed. ‘What business ye have then is not with the college. I have not been told it, sir, nor warned I should admit a stranger. The man that you mention – I don’t say he’s here, mind – but if he were here then no doubt he’d have gone to his bed.’

‘It’s true, he’s not expecting me, but he will wish to see me. If you would send up my name . . .’

The porter faced him squarely, with an ominous retraction of the keys. ‘Aye for sure, in the morning. I’ll tell him you called.’

Behind him a door in the courtyard had opened and closed. A serving man approached them, balancing a tall jug in the one hand and a wide shallow basin draped in a cloth in the other. The porter blocked his path. ‘I hope you paid for that.’

‘Tis accounted for.’ The man winked cryptically at Hew. As he passed through the archway he shifted the bowl to the crook of his arm and tugged discreetly at his sleeve.

‘Did I hear you ask for the doctor?’ he murmured. ‘Pray, sir, are you sick?’

The porter took advantage of the diversion to slam shut the door and make fast the bolts, muttering as he withdrew. Hew groaned. It occurred to him, fleetingly, that perhaps he was sick. For certain he was out of sorts, a sinking in his stomach that no bleeding, probe or purging could restore. He would never have confessed it. As robustly as he could he shook his head.

‘No, not sick. I am an old friend of the doctor’s, lately come from France. We shared rooms there.’ To give credence he added, ‘in the Rue des Fosses.’

The servant looked him up and down as if he weighed the probabilities. At length he seemed convinced, for he shifted the basin back into his hand and nodded.

‘Aye, well, ye may follow me. His rooms are in the turret of the house across the wynd.’

West of the chapel, across Butt’s Wynd, stood the provost’s lodging house. It seemed fitting that the college did not house him in its cloisters but kept him at arm’s length. On the south side the chapel was flanked by two stone houses, each with a round turret tower. In the turret to the left Professor Locke was stationed. The servant led him to the door. ‘Ye’d best wait here.’

Hew waited a moment and then slipped up behind him, climbing the narrow staircase to the tower. He heard his friend’s familiar voice before he saw him, resonant and deep.

‘What have you found, Paul?’

‘A quart of new milk and a dish of green plums.’

Hew smiled to himself. His friend’s stomach sat close to his heart.

Then came a muffled exclamation and the servant’s voice rose sulkily. ‘The first fruit of the season from the priory garden. They’re ripe enough now, I’m sure of it, sir.’

There was no mistaking now the note of gloom. ‘Aye, roasted, perhaps, and baked into custards, or bottled, or jellied, or candied, or dried. Eaten raw and green, they’re sure to lead to colic, if not worse. I once did know a child . . . no matter, though,’ the doctor broke off kindly, ‘no doubt you did your best. I suppose there’s nothing else? No fish or cheese?’

‘Nothing,’ said the servant shortly. ‘Though there’s him!’

He jabbed with his finger back towards Hew, who stepped through the doorway, lapped like a ghost in the light from the fire.

Lying on the floor of Giles Locke’s tower, Hew felt at home for the first time since leaving France. Giles had dragged a feather mattress into the centre of the room, on which his friend lay sprawling, gazing at the walls. The room was filled with objects from the Rue des Fosses, no less familiar because they were strange: discoloured substances floating in jars (he always had avoided those), compasses, astrolabes, globes and nocturnals, pigs’ feet and goats’ teeth, the beak of a gull. Curious though they were these things were not collectibles but used and loved. Several of the books were marked with crumbs of toasted cheese. Most comforting of all was Giles himself, both broad and tall, perched upon his bedstead at the flat side of the wall, his warmth and generosity enough to fill a larger room than this. They had finished the milk. Hew, against all advice, had sampled the plums and Giles had unearthed a flagon of brandy, most of which had now been drunk.

‘The truth is,’ Hew said suddenly, ‘I could have gone home. Tis only four miles.’

‘But?’ Giles prodded helpfully.

‘But I did not want to face my father. That’s the truth.’

‘Is he such a tyrant, then?’

‘Tyrant, no. If he were, it would not be a problem, for then I could thwart him and he could be damned. If he stormed and raged it would be easy to defy him. It’s his disappointment that’s so hard to bear.’

‘Disappointment? Stuff and nonsense.’ Giles felt a flood of affection, fuelled by the brandy, towards his young friend. ‘Always been exemplary.’

‘Oh, aye,’ Hew laughed dryly. ‘Four years at St Andrews, passed with distinction. Six years abroad with no indiscretions – apart from the cook at the Auberge du Coq.’

‘Whose lapin à la moutarde was beyond compare,’ Giles recalled fondly. ‘That alone were enough to excuse it. So what’s to disappoint him, then?’

‘Only after ten years spent in study, I have learned one thing. I do not want to be the man my father was.’

‘Ah. And is he set on that?’

‘He was an advocate of some repute. At the height of his power he abandoned the courts and retired to the country. Then his ambitions were all turned towards me.’

‘How singular. But why?’

‘I was twelve years old and in the grammar school. I did not ask him, Giles. I have thought since it was perhaps to do with the queen, for he was of her camp and had hoped to be queen’s advocate. He saw the tide turn and disliked the change.’

‘And yet he sent you to St Leonard’s?’ Giles remarked. ‘For a man of his leanings, St Salvator’s would seem the more obvious choice.’

‘Twas politic. In his heart, he would rather I had come here to the Auld College; in his heart, he would rather I kept the old faith. Yet he had me schooled against it. My schoolmaster was a friend of George Buchanan and they both had more influence on my early education than my father did. I cannot blame him for that, for they were good men and I learned well from them. But I felt he sold my soul for something he did not believe in, and I have long resented it.’

‘Perhaps,’ Giles consoled him, ‘you misunderstood. You were just a boy. Why don’t you talk to him?’

Hew sighed. ‘I shall, of course, and of course I will not say these things. The truth is I still want to please him. But the deeper I go into it the less I like the law.’

His friend shook his head ‘This is humour, I think, and will pass. It pleased you well enough in Paris.’

‘I will admit I like to win, and I find myself ashamed of it. Because this game of wits is always at someone’s expense. Too often it ends at the end of the rope.’

‘If you lacked such scruples I’d be more concerned,’ said Giles. ‘You merely want detachment, which will come with age. Besides, from what I have seen of the law, most of it concerns itself with property and debt, and in capital offences there is little to be done for the defence.’

‘Aye, and there should be,’ Hew proclaimed fiercely. ‘No, I’m done with argument, and sickened to the stomach with the law. Dispute for its own sake no longer interests me. I have fallen out of love with my profession. And when I tell my father, it will break his heart.’

‘Well,’ said Giles judiciously, ‘you may put off the telling. I prescribe a drink.’

Hew refused another cup, and fell back upon the mattress looking at the ceiling. ‘What of your profession? Have you never had your doubts?’

‘There have been moments, certainly. At times the puke can pall. But I flatter myself I may do some good in the world. The one thing I do regret is accepting this post, for I have not been welcomed here. The professors have been courteously lukewarm.’

‘Perhaps it is your strange collections,’ Hew observed ironically. ‘Lights and livers sunk in pots.’

‘The specimens? What piffle! There are worse things at the fleshmarkets.’

‘Granted. But they don’t like change.’

‘That I can accept. But if the members of this college are suspicious, then the provost of St Leonard’s has been downright rude. He makes allusions constantly to leeches, quacks and sawbones, though of course he will protest that he does not refer to me.’

‘There has always been rivalry between the two colleges – who would win the golf, or the arrow at the butts – but I don’t recall it ever was so personal,’ reflected Hew. ‘Perhaps things will improve when term begins. I have a friend who is regent at St Leonard’s, a man called Nicholas Colp. We were students together. I should be sorry indeed if he were uncivil.’

Giles shook his head. ‘I have not met the regents yet. But I have heard of Colp as a clever and devout man.’

‘He is both. I cannot think he would subscribe to such rudeness. I must look him up and ask him how he goes on with the principal. Gilchrist, is it still? I do not know him well, for he came newly in my time. Nicholas and I were students under George Buchanan, who was a true friend. He left to take up post as tutor to the king.’

‘Ah!’ Giles interrupted, ‘There’s the real news! The king has had his thirteenth birthday and at last is to leave the confines of Stirling Castle and make his progress. Even now, as we speak, he comes into Edinburgh. And next year, in the spring, he is expected here.’

‘The king left his castle? That’s news indeed!’

‘You cannot imagine the stir it has caused. And that, coupled with the anxiety over the new appointments – quacksalves and the like – has helped to fuel the tension in the college. The town and the university both are in uproar. King James has not been seen since infancy.’

‘He has had a strange childhood,’ Hew observed.

‘And most of it behind closed doors. I am interested to see how he appears. Some say he is a cripple, suckled by a drunk, and that he cannot walk without support.’

‘Poor boy! Rumour has made him a monster.’

‘For certain. And also a wit. The story goes that he was last in public at the opening of the parliament, when he was five years old. He found a hole there in the tablecloth and all the while his lords were making speeches he explored it with his fingers. Then at length he asked, “What place is this?” “Why, sire,” said the lords, “this is the parliament.” To which the king answered, “Then there is a hole in this parliament!” Which the crowds did take for proof of his great wisdom.’

Hew laughed. ‘As well they might! You seem to know a good deal about him.’

‘Alas, I confess it. I have been charged to write his horoscope, for which I make a study of his early life. It is to be the college’s gift to him. St Leonard’s for their part are to put on a play, written by Nicholas Colp.’

‘Then you will have stiff competition.’ Hew looked across at the charts on the table. ‘Where is this horoscope? May I not see it?’

‘By no means,’ Giles winked at him. ‘Tis confidential to the king.’

‘A hint, then,’ Hew persisted, smiling. ‘Will he take the English crown?’

‘As to that old prediction,’ Giles said severely, ‘I could not possibly say. Besides, you know a horoscope does not foretell the future. I am a physician, not a necromancer. I can tell you merely whether he is prone to windy gout, or must beware the phases of the moon, or is disposed to toothache, or to jaundice or despair. In reality, of course, it will predict none of those things, but a long and healthy life, and go to great lengths in the proving that no illness shall befall him, because he is the king, you know, when all is said and done. The spheres themselves must shuffle to oblige him.’

‘Then, Giles, you are nothing but a fraud!’

‘Not at all,’ his friend replied seriously. ‘For hope is potent physic. An optimistic horoscope becomes its own effect.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘But no more of this now. I really must sleep. For if I don’t appear at prayers first thing on Sunday morning it will confirm their worst suspicions: I’m the devil’s man indeed. As for you, since no one knows you’re here there’s none to miss you. You may sleep the sleep of the righteous, and lie in as long as you please.’

Nicholas

Hew slept late into the morning. When at last he awoke he found himself alone, centred in the stillness of the tower. The light streaming in on motes of dust picked out the globe and astrolabe, the hourglass and the scales and measured out a world for him. He lay there for a while on his mattress, content to be still and remote at its heart, until the clamour of the kirk bell could no longer be ignored and the world outside began to reassert itself. The bell clock struck remorselessly. Eventually he gave in, threw open the high windows and looked out onto the street. A seagull strutting down below glanced up in contempt and plucked at the cobblestones, foraging for scraps. There was no one else in sight.

Giles had left butter and bread, and Hew took a book from the shelf to a small recess by the window where he ate his breakfast in the candour of the sun. Below the chapel doors swung open and St Salvator’s scholars emerged from their prayers, blinking owlishly. Crowds were turning into the north street. Hew heard laughter in the cloisters on the north side of the tower. The door below stairs seemed to open and close but Giles himself did not return. It was some time later when the servant Paul appeared with a message from his master and a slab of mutton pie.

‘Doctor Locke is detained at the New College; their principal is dying. Again.’

Hew suppressed a smile. It was the ‘again’ that had provoked it, for the servant’s face and voice gave nothing away. The New College of St Mary had begun to consolidate its interests in the teaching of theology. Its principal, Professor Lamb, professed himself so close to God that he had hovered at His door for twenty years. Still, perhaps it had come true at last, and his bluff had finally been called.

As if he read his mind the servant went on, frowning, ‘Doctor Locke has gone over there determined to cure him once and for all. It won’t go down well. So he says to you, sir, he may not be home before supper, and please to make use of his books and whatever. That’s if you’re minded to stay?’

The proper thing to do would have been to take his leave politely and walk the four miles to his father’s house at Kenly Green. It was a fair day, and warm, and he need not hire a horse. He would arrive before suppertime, and well before dark. Yet even as he thought this, he heard himself say, ‘I’ll stay another night here, if I may. I ought to go to church. Are there evening prayers still at St Leonard’s?’

The servant seemed surprised. ‘There is a service, sir. Master Gilchrist was made minister there last summer, and he has restored the old parish. Tis somewhat dreich, I doubt. Yon man at Holy Trinity puts on a better show.’

Hew laughed. ‘I’m sure he does. But St Leonard’s is my college and my parish kirk as well. I’ll hear the sermon there.’

He paused only to exchange his coat of mustard-coloured silk for a scholar’s gown he found hanging on a nail behind the door. Giles had asked him, after all, to make free with his things. His own clothes were too flamboyant. He preferred to break in quietly upon the past.

The college of St Leonard lay within the precincts of the old priory in the lee of the cathedral. As Hew approached the gate the chapel bell fell silent and the outer doors were closed. The congregation was already settled in the kirk. He found another doorway to the west, new since his last visit, open to a flight of wooden stairs. At the top he discovered a deep open loft, constructed to isolate the college from the commoners, and from this vantage point he had a clear view of both scholars and parishioners, and the minister himself, mounted on the stage. There were no seats on the bare earth below, but there were several benches for the scholars in the loft. Hew found a vacant one close to the door. A small clutch of scholars clustered in front. One or two had wives and children, in defiance of the rule. The masters, called regents, were responsible for the education and the moral welfare of their students through the four years of their course in philosophy and arts. Presiding over all, Hew recognised James Gilchrist, provost and principal master of St Leonard’s College and minister of St Leonard’s parish, theologian, scholar, and the scourge of Doctor Locke. He had embarked upon the lesson in a smooth, cultured voice that somehow still retained an undernote of peevishness, depressingly familiar from Hew’s undergraduate days.

But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

The minister stood straighter as he spoke the verse, and his fingers strayed unconsciously towards his beard. He was a man to whom appearances were everything, to his fellow men as much as to God. He wore his hair perfumed and curled. When he had first come to St Leonard’s it had caused quite a stir. The boy who had attended him each morning in his chamber reported that the master wore a strange contraption ‘like a mousetrap’ on his beard to keep the hairs neat while he slept. The beard was waxed black, cut sharp as a Spaniard’s. There had been nothing of the sort with George Buchanan.

Smiling to himself, Hew allowed his eyes to drift towards the regents in the front row, looking for his old friend Nicholas Colp. He found him sitting with his head bowed, sober and devout.

God knoweth your hearts, for that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

It was a sentiment that would appeal to Nicholas. Hew was leaning forward in the hope of catching his eye when the look on his friend’s face stopped him cold. Nicholas was not composed. He did not smile or purse his lips at what was sheer hypocrisy but showed his own heart starkly in his face, a clear and striking horror that Hew barely recognised. He felt for a moment that he had seen into the dark place of his soul. A moment later, watching Nicholas discreetly as he closed his eyes to pray, he realised he had made a mistake. It was not horror he had seen in his friend’s face, but something almost worse: Nicholas was weak from want of food. In prayer his face seemed crumpled like an old man’s in repose. His skin was pale as water, and his shirt fell loosely round him, for he wore no coat or gown. Nicholas was sick. And the sickness, whatever it was, went deeper than the gloss of mere appearances.

After the service Hew waited for his friend to emerge. Nicholas looked blank for a moment, and then his smile returned a touch of its old sweetness to his face. He welcomed Hew’s return. He spoke of past adventures and Hew’s travels overseas, the visit of the king and the play that he was writing, and a textbook that he hoped would suit the grammar school. Still Hew sensed a lingering discomfort. At last he dared to ask, ‘You are ill, I think?’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘I had a chill. It passed. I find I do not sleep so well these warm nights.’ He shifted a little, as though tired of standing.

‘What happened to your leg?’ Hew noticed blood on the hem of his shirt, an ominous blackness beginning to spread.

His friend laughed nervously. ‘A foolish, childish thing. You remember how we used to steal the apples from the priory garden? Well, last night I was given some by the gardener. I peeled one with my knife, as we always used to do, and the blade slipped, cutting deep. Retribution at last! I had thought that the bleeding had stopped.’

Hew stared at him. The priory apples blossomed late, and would not be ripe by Michaelmas. He was astonished at the plainness of the lie.

Nicholas looked down. ‘I ought to change my shirt.’

Several things went through Hew’s mind, but he did not know how to broach them. In their place he ventured, ‘Have you met my good friend Doctor Locke? He is the new provost at St Salvator’s, and a fine physician. If you are unwell, I recommend him strongly.’

‘I’m quite well, I assure you,’ Nicholas said stiffly.

‘Then I recommend him all the more.’

Nicholas relaxed into a smile. ‘As a friend of yours I would be glad to meet him. I have no need of physic.’

‘And no means of paying for it,’ Hew thought shrewdly, ‘yet we’ll find a way.’

‘All I know of Doctor Locke is that Gilchrist is afraid of him,’ Nicholas continued, with a hint of his old self, ‘and for that I am disposed to like him straight away.’

‘You there! Master Colp!’ They were interrupted by a college servant hurrying towards them. Hew shrank back a little, unwilling to be challenged as a stranger. But the man ignored him, calling out to Nicholas, ‘You’re wanted at the weaver’s house, aye, now sir, straight away sir, for the lad has run away.’

‘No, it is not possible.’ It was not an exclamation but a statement of despair. The weariness was palpable.

‘What is this about?’ Hew inquired gently.

It was some moments before Nicholas could answer him. He struggled to express himself.

‘It is a boy that I was teaching. They will say it is my fault.’

‘How could it be your fault?’

‘I will explain it. No,’ he shook his head, ‘I cannot explain it. Forgive me, I must go to them.’ As though the resolution were enough he did not move. ‘I’ll go to them.’

Hew took his arm. ‘We both will go,’ he told him firmly. ‘And you can tell me on the way.’

‘The thing is,’ Nicholas said miserably as they went by the cathedral, ‘that yesterday I told them he was too young to start here next term. It was no fault of his.’

A haar from the sea had masked the frail sunshine. It clutched at Hew’s chest. Nicholas looked chilled to the bone.

‘Tell it plainly,’ prompted Hew, ‘and from the start.’

‘There is not much to tell. I have been tutoring a young boy, Alexander Strachan. His father is a merchant from Perth, very rich, and a friend of our principal Gilchrist. His mother is dead. The boy has been staying with his uncle Archie Strachan who is a weaver in the town. The uncle’s a bit of a bully.’

Hew gave an exclamation. ‘I met him! Yesterday, on Mercatgait, I’m sure of it! In fact, now I think on it, I may have seen you there!’

‘Really?’ Nicholas looked taken aback. ‘Well, if you have met him you will understand the sort of man he is. I have been teaching his nephew now for several weeks, because Gilchrist has promised him a place at the college, although he has no Latin, not to speak of. The boy is willing enough, but he is too young and badly schooled to matriculate this year. And yesterday, I told his uncle so. I told him that the boy was not to blame. Nonetheless, I think that he may have chastised him, and now we see the consequence. The lad has run away. Look, here we are at the house. That is Agnes Ford, Archie Strachan’s wife.’

Hew sensed a rawness in the woman at the door. Her cheeks were blotched pink as if recently scrubbed. She spoke with a false note of brightness. ‘Master Colp, I’m so glad you could come . . . and you have brought a friend.’

‘Master Cullan from the college,’ Nicholas said briefly.

Agnes smiled mechanically at Hew. ‘Come into the house.’

‘Has the boy not returned?’ Nicholas asked anxiously. He hung back, reluctant to enter. Hew could understand why. Dull in the distance they heard her man grumble, voice rumbling dangerously into a roar. Agnes smiled again, that same deceptive brightness, masking features strained and worn. ‘Whisht, Archie!’ she called out, ‘for we have company. Tibbie will see to the broth.’

‘He only wants his dinner,’ she excused him, as if he were the bad-tempered boggle in an ancient nursery tale. Hew suppressed a smile.

‘No, he’s not come home,’ she replied to Nicholas. ‘And I confess, I’m fearful. I have never known him stay away so long.’

‘How long?’ interjected Hew.

Agnes flushed a little. ‘We have not seen him since last night. You see, Archie went to market down at Crail a little after five this morning, and I thought he had taken Alexander with him, so the boy was not missed until Archie’s return. And then it turned out . . .’ she paused to glance at Nicholas.

‘Aye?’ Hew persisted.

‘Well, sir, it turned out, that after Master Colp had come to hear his lesson – that was yesterday, at six – his uncle reprimanded him for failing at his task.’

Nicholas hunched his shoulders, ‘That was not what I said,’ he protested.

‘Nonetheless, Archie had words with him,’ Agnes said apologetically. ‘We have not seen him since.’

‘Did your husband beat him?’ Nicholas demanded. Hew heard him murmuring under his breath, ‘Mea culpa, mihi ignosce; for I did not know, forgive me.’

Agnes gazed at him curiously for a moment before she replied. ‘You should know, Master Colp, that my husband does blame you. Don’t take it ill. You see, sir,’ she appealed to Hew, ‘Archie’s had a skinful at the market, and he’s not himself. And Alexander left some letters. They’re addressed to Master Colp.’

‘Letters,’ Nicholas echoed dully. ‘Have you read them?’

‘Archie said we weren’t to open them, since they’re addressed to you. Besides, they were in Latin,’ Agnes added more convincingly. ‘We left them in his room.’

Archie Strachan sat in his shirt tails, moodily poking the fire. A great pot of fragrant liquid bubbled on the hearth where his daughter Tibbie was setting out a cloth. She did not look up as they entered but began meekly to ladle pottage into bowls.

‘Master Colp has come,’ Agnes spoke out brightly, ‘and a scholar from the college come to help him. This is Master Cullan.’

Hew was grateful for the borrowed gown. The weaver scarcely glanced at him.

‘Ye bided your time, did ye no’?’ he snarled at Nicholas. ‘Did ye bring the bugger back?’

Strachan swayed dangerously as he rose to his feet, and Hew realised he was far too drunk to suffer rational argument. It was Agnes, surprisingly firm, who answered for them.

‘Master Colp doesn’t know where Alexander’s gone any more than we do, Archie. Yet he has been good enough to come and help us look for him. Aye, and brought his friend. Now we’re away upstairs. You drink your broth.’

She shivered as she spoke, clutching at her shawl. Hew could see Agnes was afraid of something. It was not her husband, slumping in his broth. Archie was a bully, to be sure, and Hew suspected he saw bruises darkening at her wrists. Still, he thought, it was not that, for Agnes could contain him; that much was apparent in the way she spoke to him. She allowed her husband the mere semblance of control. So there was something else, some new threat to the world she ordered and endured. Not her nephew, surely? Boys his age played truant all the time. Doubtless he’d come home again, none the worse for wear. But Agnes knit her fingers, plucking at her gown, as if she feared her whole world might unravel.

The loft room was airless, rank with candle fat, and Hew hung back a little in the shadow of the door. Agnes set the candle down and watched as Nicholas began to look around. The cot was well furnished with grey woollen blankets and surprisingly fresh linen sheets. Someone looked after the boy. At the bottom of the bed stood an ironbound chest, and to its side a writing table, stool and straight-backed chair. The ledge above the bed held a water pot and a pair of pewter candlesticks. The writing table had been neatly set out for the lesson. A grammar book, the Ars minor of Donatus, sat next to inkhorn, pens and pocket knife, a tidy sheaf of papers and a lump of sealing wax. On top lay a slim bundle of what looked like letters; still tied with ribbon, though no longer sealed. Nicholas slit the ribbons with the penknife and glanced quickly down at the opening page. Frowning slightly, he turned towards Agnes: ‘There’s nothing here, mistress. Simply some verses he was turning into Latin for me.’ He glanced across at Hew. ‘It seems he has been working rather harder than his uncle gave him credit for. But don’t you think it’s odd he didn’t take his knife with him, if he meant to run away? Did his father give him money, do you know?’

He hardly seemed to notice what he was doing as he slipped the packet of letters into the folds of his clothes.

Agnes was nodding. ‘He looks after him well. It irritates Archie. He never felt that he deserved . . .’

Her words trailed away as Nicholas went on, ‘I wonder if he took his cloak?’

Nicholas looked pale and grey in his shirt. He appeared to be shaking, from sickness or fear. ‘Are you ill?’ Hew asked again. But Nicholas seemed not to hear.

‘May I look in the kist?’ Without waiting for an answer, Nicholas lifted the lid of the dark oak chest where Alexander kept his clothes. Carefully he lifted out the contents and laid them one by one on the bed. Alexander had been well provided for with saffron yellow shirts, new and freshly dyed, dark velvet doublets and good leather shoes, a blue winter bonnet, caps and gloves and a length of blanket plaid. His cloak, a dark-green mantle cloth, had fallen on the floor. It lay crumpled by the bed, the only thing disturbed in the neatness of the room. Hew picked it up.

‘Was this his?’

Agnes nodded. ‘But he likes to go about without it, as boys will. I don’t think he has much else.’

Nicholas had lifted out a little bundle from the bottom of the chest and placed it on the cot, where together they looked over the contents. It was a poignant collection: a couple of pieces of oddly shaped driftwood, childishly fashioned to form a crude boat, a handful of pebbles, smooth from the sea, a carved wooden whistle and a tiny painted horse, together with a purse of gold and silver coin. Nicholas picked this up and weighed it in his palm. It was a while before he spoke.

‘He has not run away,’ he concluded bleakly. ‘Here are all his things. It almost looks as if . . .’ He closed his eyes and whispered, ‘Let it not be that.’

Archibald Strachan, revived by his supper of barley and potherbs, sipped a cleansing cup of red wine as he stirred the embers of the fire. ‘Mark my words, Colp, he’ll have run away to sea. We won’t be seeing him again. I’ll have word sent to my brother in Perth and you can explain to Gilbert why you chose to be so hard on him that he’d rather be a cabin boy than pass into the university.’

‘Hush, Archie,’ Agnes interjected. ‘No, you know he wasn’t hard on him. And we’ve no reason to think he’s gone to sea. You know he likes to walk upon the sands. No doubt he has forgot the time, and will be back by dark.’

‘Did you beat him, sir?’ cried Nicholas. Hew heard his voice rise hysterically high. He put out his hand to steady him. It was fear, no doubt. The castle cliffs were treacherous. A boy had fallen to his death in their first year at St Andrews. Hew had watched the parents arrive at the college to take home their dead son, just five weeks into the new term.

‘Words, we had words, sir,’ the weaver said smoothly. ‘My brother wants him to do well, but for some reason bade me never raise a hand to him. It was you, sir, that did break his heart, and telt him that he would not make a scholar, and ye would not have him at your university.’

‘I said none of that,’ Nicholas protested, ‘only at thirteen, he is still too young.’

‘It’s all the same,’ the weaver said morosely, ‘for the lad has gone.’

Before Nicholas could answer, the apprentice boy Tom came running in from the workshop below, stammering out to his mistress, ‘I cannot find that bolt of cloth we finished yesterday, the sea-blue wool. I wondered had you moved it? Will you help me look?’

‘Oh Tom, do not fuss,’ Agnes scolded. ‘I swear I can’t help you. I have not been down to the shop.’

‘Please, mistress,’ the boy whispered wretchedly. He glanced fearfully at Strachan. ‘For if I cannot find it . . .’

‘What can’t ye find?’ Strachan purred dangerously.

‘Whisht,’ Agnes softened. ‘Whisht, let us look.’ She reached for the lamp. ‘Help us, will you, gentlemen? It will be dark below. She held out her hands to Hew, as if in supplication, holding out the light. Both of you, bring candles.’

Agnes looked pale. Hew took up the lamp and followed her, with Nicholas behind. It seemed the place unnerved her. No doubt there were rats. Together, they searched the back of the shop. Tom kept house effectively. The finished bolts of cloth were neatly racked or folded, the combs and cards were stacked against the walls. It seemed to Hew unlikely that anything here could go astray. The place was all too carefully ordered. Each bolt, each carded nap and scrap of thread, pretentiously fluffed and plumped, was held to account. Nonetheless he made a show of looking around him. There was little enough to see. In the rushlight the struts of the loom cast branching shadows on the walls. Like childhood puppetry, they made him ill at ease and fearful. He thought they sketched a plough, a tree, a gallows, then a gate. But there was nothing. Spindles, puppets, fire and shadows. Noise from the street and rooms above came dulled to him in the darkness. Archie Strachan maybe ranged his chair across the floor and called to Tibbie for a stoup of wine to fill his cup, or Alexander’s footsteps crossed the cobblestones, coming home at last.

He became aware of Agnes by his side clutching her shawl around her shoulders. Did she feel it too, the sudden aching chill that gripped his bowels? She let her hand rest on his arm, as if to draw strength in the darkness. Then came her voice, unexpectedly clear: ‘I haven’t touched anything in here, Tom. Are you sure that’s where you left it?’

‘Aye.’ The boy looked sullenly at her. ‘Mebbe Alexander took it. They’re both gone, aren’t they?’

‘What would Alexander want with it?’

‘What’s that over there at the back?’ Nicholas had picked up a lamp. He motioned towards a dark outline in the shadows against the far wall.

‘The closet? It pulls down into a bed,’ answered Agnes. ‘Tom lies there for warmth in the winter months. In summer he prefers to sleep beneath the counter.’

‘I’ve my workday clothes in there, sir, nothing more,’ Tom put in defensively. But Nicholas had made his way to the back of the room. He held up the light to the cupboard, and in its glare the others glimpsed a fragment of grey-blue cloth between the doors. Nicholas spoke bleakly, ‘The doors are fast, Thomas, help me.’ Together they tugged until the closet flew open, and out tumbled a bundle of soft sea-blue wool. Tom flushed, beginning to stammer, but Nicholas interrupted, ‘No, Tom, mistress, go back.’

Nicholas’ voice was low and cold. He had caught the bolt in his arms as it fell. He seemed to fall back with the weight of it, and now he moved very slowly and wearily. He laid the cloth on the ground and knelt stiffly down in front of it. He had placed the lamp beside him on the floor, and Hew, standing a little behind him, saw blood leach from his thigh as he began to open out the cloth. The plaid appeared mottled in the lamplight and at first Hew did not understand the layers unfolding. He saw but did not comprehend the strangeness of the patterning, a circle of bright flame above the drab storm-blue. He saw Nicholas unfold and gather in his arms a boy with ashen skin and flame-red hair. He saw him hold him there and touch his face, and stare down uncomprehending at his own hand bright with blood. And as Nicholas stared he let the boy’s head drop so that Hew saw the splinter of bone, a ragged streak of pink beneath the hair.

Rites and Wrongs

After Alexander’s death St Leonard’s College closed its doors and Hew did not see Nicholas again for several days. Even Giles was unable to penetrate, for the college had closed in on itself, pulling in its horns like a snail inside a shell. Gilchrist responded to all whiff of scandal by holding his breath and turning his back to the world. Hew was called to the courtroom to make his report, where he established himself as a credible witness. The coroner advised him to remain in St Andrews until Gilbert Strachan had arrived and their statements could be sworn. It was clear he had no explanation for the crime. The murder of a child that had survived the storms of infancy was rare and cruel.

And so Hew was left without purpose, to renew his old acquaintance with the town. He walked the empty cloisters of the college to the once-familiar peal of Katherine’s bell, and wandered through the vennels and the lanes. In search of solitude, he did not frequent the streets. He found himself exploring long-forgotten paths, across the windswept golf links to the Eden estuary, or on the cliff tops of the Swallowgait, gazing out to sea. He traced the course of the Kinness Burn down to the harbour and to the east sands, and wandered through the caves beneath the castle rock. Where the sea was wild, he took solace in the waves. When he grew tired, he read in Giles Locke’s tower. In the evenings they drank claret and discussed philosophy. Once he stopped to watch the fishermen unloading their catch, until a dead fish tumbling from the nets brought the boy to mind so vividly he vomited, a thin spray that soaked his boots and caused the fisherman to stare and curse at him. Ashamed, he did not mention it to Giles. He climbed towards the castle, high upon the cliffs, and saw the fortress open and unfold its inner life. A clutch of boats were beached on the foreshore, and he watched a small procession turning through the gate that barred it from the sea. In the sunlight it displayed its workings like the glinting gears inside a clock; crates and kegs and vats of wine went winding up the steps, while sentries marked the process from the tower. The death of a boy, like a trough in the sand, made no impression here. He turned into the grounds of the cathedral. Already its walls had begun to decay, and the vaults of the pilgrims were quarried for stone. The hopeless courage of their ancient histories could not make sense of that small death, or overwhelm its poignancy for Hew. Centuries of magnitude and loss, antiquity itself, could not displace the image of the bruised and broken boy. Agnes, when she understood at last, had been inconsolable. Whatever she had feared most, in her worst imaginings, it had not been that. In the shrieking of the seabirds in the bay he heard her cry. Nothing in the vast and onward rush of tide threw back into perspective that one small and circling grief.

On the third day, Hew sensed a sea change. Returning to the harbour, he discovered that the ships were in, and his trunk and saddlebags were waiting in the customs house. The quayside thronged with merchants, all the noise and business of an international port, and he saw a channel open to the world, lost and found again amidst the dust and sunshine. The return of his possessions restored his sense of purpose. He felt a sudden longing to go home. He took the saddlebags to Giles Locke’s turret room, where he changed into black satin peascod and hose, embroidered with fine silver thread. Thus fortified, he set off to the marketplace to purchase a flagon of whisky for Giles. He drank a stoup of watered ale and downed a rather dubious pie, receiving little change for his gold crown. Then he called in at the Mercatgait stables to arrange the carriage of his trunk. He felt recklessly light and refreshed.

‘Do you know of a merchant will change my French coin?’ he enquired of the man.

The ostler looked interested. ‘How much do you have?’

‘About three hundred livres, in crowns. Nothing small.’

‘Ah, then that’s the trouble,’ said the ostler sympathetically. ‘That much is hard to change. Now here at the inn, all currency is sound to us – your French ecus, your Dutch, your English even’ – he spat superstitiously into the straw – ‘all is sterling here. But still I could not change so large a sum.’

‘Are Scots pounds worth so little now?’

The ostler tutted. ‘Falling all the time. Still, your crowns are good.’

‘Except I can’t get change for them,’ Hew observed ruefully.

‘I see your point. But I’m afraid I cannot help you there. Unless . . .’

‘Aye, then, what?’ persisted Hew.

‘Unless of course, you want to buy a horse. Then I could do you a deal and throw in a purse of Scots coin on the side. A man that’s come from France will likely want a horse. It happens that I have one that I don’t know what to do with, for he is too rare and brave to put out to hire. I had him from a gentleman, in payment of a debt, and he was loath to part with him, and he is called Dun Scottis. The horse,’ he clarified, ‘and not the gentleman.’

‘What, Duns Scotus, like the schoolman?’ Hew smiled. ‘Then he must be a subtle and ingenious horse.’

‘Most subtle and ingenious indeed. A most prodigious horse. Come, sir, come and look at him. Do not say yay or nay until you’ve seen him, now.’