The Stolen Voice (15 page)

At the sound of his voice, several dogs broke out in a fanfare of barking, quite near. Gil looked round, startled to realize how close they were to the Doigs’ yard.

‘Is there a reward?’ asked the man, ignoring this. Cornton raised his arm to him, but he said hardily, ‘The bellman said there was a reward. I found it, I should get the reward for it.’

‘We’ll ask at the Bishop’s steward,’ Gil said. ‘Now show me where it was lying.’

‘Just by that stick there.’ Rob nodded at a stick driven into the earth nearby. ‘I marked it, like the maister tellt me.’

They were near the boundary with the dye yard next door; it was marked by a fence perhaps four feet high, of tightly woven wattle hurdles rather than planks like that at the front of the yard. The ground was well trampled here, with small likelihood of picking out any footprints. The marker stake was midway between the fence and the tanpit where the bubbles were rising.

‘It might have been thrown over the fence from the dye yard,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But if so, why not cast further, and aim for the pit itself? It would never be found if it went in there.’

‘Maybe no,’ agreed Rob, ‘but maybe aye. I’m thinking one o these oxhides is on the turn, maister, there’s ower many bubbles and they stink something rotten. We’ll ha to fetch them up, and yir badge might ha come up along wi them. Maybe the ither’s in there yet,’ he added, brightening slightly.

‘They do stink,’ agreed Cornton, sniffing. ‘I don’t like the smell of that. We ought to fetch them up afore the whole lot turns.’

‘No reason why you shouldn’t get on and deal with it,’ said Gil, pacing along the fence. ‘I’ll keep out of your way.’ He bent to peer behind some stained planks which were propped against the fence, but found nothing significant. ‘Is there a gate this end of the yard, maister?’

‘Fetch Simon and the laddies,’ said Cornton to his man, ‘bid them bring the long poles and all. A gate, Maister Cunningham?’ He turned to fix Gil with a sharp stare. ‘No, there’s only the one way in unless you sclim the fence. Which I’m aware bad laddies do from time to time,’ he added, ‘though I’d say we’ve had no damage or mischief in the yard since Hunt-the-Gowk time. Are you thinking someone’s been in here? I took it, like you, the badge had been thrown from over the fence.’

‘It could have been,’ agreed Gil cautiously. ‘Does your neighbour lock up at night too?’

‘He does.’

Gil looked about them. The yard was perhaps twenty good paces across, although much longer, and from where he stood the fencing appeared sound all round; the structure of woven hurdles lashed to hazelwood stakes beside him turned the corner to extend across the narrow end of the property, then changed to sturdy planks at the opposite side. The path to the Blackfriars must be on the other side of the planks, but his view of it was cut off by a small open shed containing another tall rack of skins. Just over the fence beside him a complex system of cords and poles in the dyer’s yard supported bright webs of cloth and hanks of thread. The dyer’s plot was shorter than the tan-yard, and in the angle of the two – yes, that was Doig’s yard, just next to him though it was near ten minutes’ walk by the track. As he stood frowning, working out the twists and turns, Mistress Doig emerged from the house and shouted at the dogs. Silence fell, she glared over the fence at them, and Cornton said:

‘They’re neighbours I could do without, you’ll see.’ Gil grunted, and leaned over the stakes nearest him to look into the dyer’s property. The ground there was as well trampled as that in the tanyard, and the grass and dandelions at the base of the fence showed nothing untoward.

‘If it was two weeks since,’ said Cornton, echoing his thoughts, ‘there’ll be little trace left by now.’

‘How would bad laddies get in here without someone seeing and hunting them out?’

‘Same as I said, over the fence. There’s plenty hideyholes once you’re in the yard. I’m aye feart one will get hissel drowned,’ Cornton confessed, ‘that’s why we’ve as many planks on the tanpits, it doesny need that many to hold it all down.’

Looking along the fence, scanning the woven withies and the vegetation at their feet, Gil was half aware of the men returning, carrying the poles Cornton had ordered and rolling two rumbling half-barrels. The apprentices set to work with buckets, baling out the liquid in the pit and slopping it into the tubs with much splashing, despite the remonstrations of their seniors, who meanwhile dragged the netted stones off the planks and began to raise them. More bubbles rose and broke at this, and the other journeyman, downwind, fell back with an exclamation of disgust.

‘Maister, that’s foul! What’s come to they hides? I never smelled anything like it at this stage!’

‘Eeugh!’ agreed the middle-sized apprentice dramatically. A lively youngster, Gil thought, bending to look at a black mark on the fence. It sprouted legs and hurried off into the hollow of the weaving as he approached: one of those finger-long beetles that only seemed to appear at this time of year.

‘Call yoursels tanners?’ said their master jeeringly. ‘My, you’re delicate the day, the lot of you –’ He broke off and coughed, and then said with more sympathy, ‘Aye, well, I’ll admit that’s strong. Away and fetch a cloth to your nose, any of you, if you wish.’

Nobody took up this permission. Gil crossed the short end of the yard, scanning the hurdles, which were firmly laced to the upright stobs from the other side, none of them sagging as he would have expected if they had been recently climbed. The fence was obviously the neighbour’s responsibility here; the plot was a small one, with a sagging house surrounded by a quantity of short lengths of wood and little heaps of shavings, but there was no sign of the occupier or of anything which might be related to the St Eloi badge. He moved on to the corner by the track where wattle gave way to planks, finding some surprising things in the tufts of grass and willow-herb but still no trace of any recent illicit entry to the tanner’s policies. Wondering how a single horn spoon came to be wedged under one plank, the leg of a wooden horse under another, he looked back round his shoulder and found he could see only the apprentices moving to and fro with their buckets, his view cut off by the same drying-shed. Judging by the directions Cornton was issuing, the journeymen had begun the task of raising the stacked hides one at a time, brushing the oak-bark chips between them off into the surrounding liquor as they went.

He leaned over the fence, but found the track as uninformative as the dyer’s yard had been. At least, he corrected himself, it tells me nobody entered the yard this way. No marks on the fencing, no trampled patch at the foot of the planks, no sign of any recent attempt to climb in. Could he be sure
recent
included the whole of the last two weeks? he wondered.

There was a horrified yell from the tanpit. The dogs began to bark in answer as he jerked upright and round, staring. There was another yell, but he was already running.

‘What is it, man?’ demanded Cornton’s voice as he rounded the shed. ‘What gart ye skirl like that? Simon?’

Simon was clinging to his long pole as if he was drowning, his face a mask of horror as he stared into the pit. Rob and the older journeyman were gaping at him, but the boy Ally was on his knees by one of the half-barrels, trawling through its contents with his bucket.

‘I seen it,’ he said in excitement, ‘I seen something go in here.’

‘It was a ratton drowned in the pit,’ said the older man. ‘No need for –’

‘It was a hand,’ said Simon, his voice shrill. ‘It – a hand, I tell you!’

‘Aye, and there’s the other one,’ said his master grimly, hauling another layer of partly cured hide towards their feet. ‘Look yonder, under the surface. Hand, arm –’

‘You mean it’s a whole corp?’ said Ally, round-eyed.

‘Is he all in there? Watch, or he’ll come apart!’ said Rob. ‘Who is it, anyway? St Peter’s bones, how he stinks. How long’s he been down there?’

‘I think we can guess who,’ said Gil. Cornton caught his eye across the pit, and nodded. ‘And if so, then we know how long. Is that the head?’

‘Aye, it is.’ Rob reached in with his long pole and prodded the floating mat of hair. It swirled and clung to the hook on the end of the pole, and the head rolled slackly in the water and fell back again. ‘He’s face down, I’d say.’

‘Andro?’ said a voice from among the forest of bright hangings over the fence. ‘Is all well? What was that great skelloch about?’ A lanky fair-haired man emerged between two strips of indigo linen, and set multicoloured hands on the fence. ‘St Nicholas’ balls, man, what a stink! What have you found there?’

‘Aye, we’re all sound, William, and glad of your concern,’ said Cornton. ‘It’s naught but something unlookedfor in this pit of cowhides.’

‘What would that be, then?’ asked William hopefully. ‘Is it a drowned pig, or what?’

‘It’s a deid man!’ burst out Ally. ‘He’s all drowned in the tanpit and turned to leather!’

‘I’m no certain yet,’ said Cornton, and clapped a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘William, would you do me a kindness?’

‘Anything, anything!’ said William avidly, stretching his neck. ‘Can we help you lift him, whatever you’ve found?’

‘No, no, we’ve enough hands here. If you’d send one of your lads for the constable, we can get on wi this task.’

‘For the constable? What need of him, for a drowned pig? Is the laddie right, and it’s a man, then? Who could it be?’

‘We’ll maybe ken what it is,’ said Cornton firmly, ‘by the time he gets here. I’d be right glad of the favour, William.’

The dyer retreated, with reluctance. Cornton glared at his back as it vanished between the linen webs, but said only, ‘There’s no saying he drowned here, Ally, you ill-schooled laddie, and no saying who it is yet.’

‘But it’s a man rather than a woman,’ Gil said, ‘by the length of the hair. Now we have to work out how to get him out.’

‘A bonny task for a hot August day,’ said the elder journeyman, ‘wi all his fingers dropping off him.’

‘Will he no be half-tanned?’ suggested Ally. The other two apprentices seemed to have vanished. ‘I’d a thought he’d hold together, no fall apart.’

‘Aye, but the bark’s only lying one side o his hide,’ said his master. ‘There’s still all the flesh and the fat within –’ He stopped, and aimed an angry cuff at the boy, who ducked expertly. ‘What am I saying? You don’t tan a Christian soul, you heathen laddie. Maister Cunningham, what do we do here? This is beyond my experience.’

Beyond mine, too, thought Gil. Aloud he said, ‘You’ll need to get all the hides off him, for a start. Then maybe we can get him on to a hurdle or the like, and lift him out of there.’

‘Or send to Archie McNab the joiner and see if he’s a coffin by him,’ suggested Rob. ‘Simon, man, are you well?’

Simon shook his head. He was still clinging to the pole, and had turned an unpleasant green colour.

‘It was the way it beckoned,’ he said faintly, ‘like it was calling me. The hand. When it went into the tub, ye ken. It seemed like it was calling me.’

‘It’s here,’ said Ally with some pride. ‘I fished it back out.’ He peered into his bucket and swirled the dark brown liquid it held. ‘See, it’s in here under the tan.’

Even with Gil lending a hand under Cornton’s decisive directions, it was a good hour before they got the corpse out of the pit. There had been only two cowhides remaining on top of it, but the need to remove these with care slowed matters down, and the state of the corpse itself made getting it on to a hurdle a ticklish business, even though the woollen garments held the thing together to a great extent. In the end they lifted it complete with the part-cured hide beneath it, and transferred the lot to the waiting hurdle, with the interested advice of most of the workers in the dyer’s yard, who hung over the fence slightly to one side to avoid the direct breeze.

‘And where’s wee Malky?’ asked his master in quiet concern. ‘He’ll ha bad dreams if he sets an eye on this.’

‘I left him in the counting-house, maister,’ said the oldest apprentice, who had rejoined the working party in time to help with the final move. ‘He’d had a sair fright.’

‘I think we’ll all ha bad dreams,’ muttered Rob. ‘I’ll never get the stink of him out my nostrils, I can tell you.’

‘Och, no, it’s worse a burning,’ said the elder man, whose name seemed to be Bartol. ‘The stink o that lasts you for weeks.’

‘Where’s your respect?’ demanded Cornton. ‘We’ll ha less of that talk in the presence of Death.’ He crossed himself, said formally to the corpse, ‘May Christ Jesus and all His saints receive you into Paradise, Maister Stirling,’ then turned to Gil and said, ‘I’m near certain it’s him, the clothes is right, but I’ll need a look at his face afore I swear to it.’

‘What I’m wondering,’ said Rob, staring gloomily at the hurdle, ‘is how he got into that pit o cowhides. He never tucked hissel up like that, let alone putting the stones back on the planks, I’d say.’

‘No, he never.’ Cornton looked at his stricken journeyman, who had refused to leave but was still leaning greenly against the fence, unable to help with the grisly work. ‘Simon, lad, away down the yard and bring me back a bucket of clean water and a cloth, if you will.’

‘I’ll go!’ Ally sprang to his feet.

‘Simon will go. You break me a stalk off that grass. No, one of the stout ones.’ Cornton watched his man out of sight. ‘Maister Cunningham, see this.’ He took the grass-stem from Ally, bent and and used it to part the corpse’s wet hair, lifting the locks aside until the nape of the neck was exposed. ‘Look here. He never died by accident.’

‘Is he hunting wee louses?’ enquired one of the watchers at the fence.

‘There’ll be nothing running by now, surely,’ offered another. ‘They’ll all be drowned in the tan for certain.’

‘I never thought it,’ said Gil slowly, staring at the crossbow bolt lodged in the base of James Stirling’s skull. ‘But that makes it certain. And he wasny drowned in the tan,’ he added, ‘for he’d be dead when he went in. That would slay him on the instant.’ And what of the hat he was wearing? he wondered. Were the two badges removed because they were damaged? Not by the shot, surely, the bolt would have struck below the brim. But why not throw the hat in with him? Why take it away at all?