The Stolen Voice (6 page)

The shoemaker Muthill was a square, dark-haired man, who wore a pair of brassbound spectacles fastened on with a green cord round his head. The heavy hinged frames perched over the bridge of his nose gave him a strange predatory look, like a crow. He peered at Gil through them, listening to his cautious introduction, then removed them and rubbed at the marks they had left on his nose.

‘Aye,’ he said.

Since this was not a wholly adequate response, Gil waited. After a moment the soutar rose from his last, set down his needles and reel of waxed thread, and put his head out at the open window beside him. ‘Walter! Wal
terr!
’ he shouted, then sat down without looking at his visitor, replaced the spectacles and took up his work again.

Gil continued to wait. In a few moments, the sound of running feet heralded a much younger man, very like the soutar in appearance though without the spectacles.

‘Is it my maister?’ he demanded as he burst into the shop. Seeing Gil he stopped abruptly, and his shoulders sagged. ‘No,’ he answered himself, and then warily, ducking his head in a rudimentary bow, ‘You haveny brought news of him, have you?’

‘No,’ said Gil. ‘I’m trying to find out what might have happened to him. Can you help?’

The brothers looked at one another, and the soutar nodded.

‘You help the man, Walter,’ he directed.

‘Can I see his chamber,’ Gil asked, ‘or is it let again?’

‘Oh, aye, it’s let,’ said Walter with a resentful look at his brother. ‘
He
’d no see it lie beyond the month.’

‘He’s out,’ said the soutar, biting his thread with notched teeth. ‘No harm in looking, if you don’t go poking about. Show the man, Walter.’

Walter obediently led Gil into the flagged passage which led from street to yard, and along to the next door. This he opened cautiously, peered round it, then flung it wide and stood back for Gil to look. The chamber within was much the size of the workshop, furnished with a low bed, a kist, a bench and table and a couple of stools. Its present occupant’s plaid was flung over the bed, some worn liturgical garments were heaped on the bench, and there was music, a pen-case and some ruled sheets of paper on the table.

‘It’s let to another quireman,’ Gil said. The boy looked at him in amazement.

‘Aye, it is,’ he agreed. ‘How did you ken that?’

‘Tell me what you saw when you came in here the morning your maister vanished,’ Gil prompted. ‘Was it like this?’

‘No, no, it was quite different,’ said Walter earnestly, ‘for my maister’s gear was all here, and none of Maister Allan’s.’

Careful questioning got Gil a clearer description. The bed had not been slept in, for Walter’s brother had checked and it was cold. The two wee pictures, which were right bonnie things, had gone, and so had Maister Rattray’s two books, that lived on that shelf there. Walter’s wages were set on the table, on a piece of paper with his name writ on it clear so he could read it, and beside them was Maister Rattray’s own key to the front door.

‘And there was no smell of burning nor sulphur,’ added Walter, ‘for all it was the Deil himsel carried him off.’

‘Why do you say that, Walter?’ Gil asked, looking at him curiously.

‘Is that you at that nonsense again?’ demanded Walter’s brother loudly from his shop. ‘Pay him no mind, maister, he’s been on about that since ever Rattray gaed off, for all we’ve had half the Chapter in telling him it was no sic a thing.’

‘Where does the window of this chamber look on?’ Gil asked.

‘Out in the yard.’ Walter closed the chamber door and led him to the end of the passage, where another door revealed a small yard, with two ramshackle sheds and several tubs of daisies. A gate in the fence seemed to lead out on to the cattle track. ‘Maister Allan grows these flowers. They’re bonnie, aren’t they?’

‘Why do you say it was the Deil carried your maister away?’ Gil asked again. The young man glanced over his shoulder, and moved further into the yard.

‘Acos I saw him mysel,’ he said earnestly. ‘That’s how I’m certain.’

‘You saw him?’ Gil also moved away from the door, out of earshot of the soutar. ‘When was that, Walter? What did you see?’

Walter’s face split in a gratified smile, and he crossed himself energetically.

‘It was just two days afore my maister was taen away,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘I came by wi his supper, which our Mirren sends from our own table, I mean she aye sent it, and cam in by the back gate here, and my maister was looking out at his window –’

‘In March?’ said Gil, surprised.

‘Aye, in March, and he was talking to the Deil that was standing here in the yard.’ He pointed to a spot under the window. ‘Just there, he was stood.’

‘What time was it?’ Walter looked blank. ‘Was it dark?’

‘Aye, just getting dark, I seen the first star as I came by the wynd and wished on it,’ said Walter, nodding, ‘and then I came in at the yett and seen the Deil.’

‘And what did he look like?’ asked Gil with care.

‘No bigger than a bairn, for he didny come up to the window-sole,’ said Walter, his voice hushed again, ‘and he had great wings like leather all down his back, and a big hat on to hide his horns, and he’d a great deep voice like a big man’s.’

‘What was he saying?’

The young man licked his lips.

‘I heard him threaten that he’d come for him on St Patrick’s Eve, and that good singers was needed in Hell, and then I ran away, for I was feart, maister,’ he confessed, and crossed himself. ‘And I canny rid mysel of the thought of my maister, that was aye good to me and left me my wages at the last, burning in flames and tormented by imps wi great pincers, all acos he’s got a bonnie voice.’

‘Was there snow on the ground,’ Gil asked, ‘or was it muddy? Did he leave any tracks?’

Walter shook his head.

‘He must have flew away,’ he said, ‘on his great wings. There was no sign that any of us saw.’

‘I thought as much!’ said the soutar angrily in the doorway. ‘Is that you annoying the man wi your tales, Walter Muthill? Pay him no mind, maister, and I’ll thank you no to encourage him, for he’s naught but a daft laddie.’

‘He must have seen something,’ Gil said. ‘Did you come to look, maister?’

‘I did not,’ said the soutar, pulling off his brass spectacles again, ‘for I’d my boots off, and no notion to go tramping round the cow-wynd in the dark. When this bawheid cam in crying out that he’d seen the Deil in our yard my wife made him go round by the street, for Maister Rattray paid us good rent to get his supper brought him, as well as the chamber, and he never saw any sign by the front way, and his maister tellt him the Deil had never been here.’

‘Aye, but he’d have to say that,’ muttered Walter. Gil put one foot on the edge of a tub of daisies and leaned forward, meeting the young man’s eyes.

‘Walter, you said your maister’s pictures had been taken as well?’ Walter nodded. ‘What were they, can you tell me?’

‘One was the angel’s salutation,’ Walter raised one hand in the conventional pose of Gabriel in an Annunciation, ‘and the other was St John Baptist baptising Our Lord, wi the water all up round his waist, paintit on a wee board.’

‘So one showed Our Lady and the other showed Our Lord.’ Walter nodded. ‘Do you really think the Deil could carry away somebody wi those images in his pack?’ Is that a syllogism? he wondered. Something is defective in the logic, but this laddie won’t notice.

‘You see?’ said the soutar triumphantly. ‘I tellt you it was nonsense.’

‘You mean he’s no in Hell?’ Walter stared at Gil, a huge relieved grin spreading across his face. ‘Oh, thanks be to Our Lady! She must ha saved him! Oh, wait till I tell our Mirren.’

Gil exchanged a glance with the soutar, and decided to leave well alone.

‘Afore you do that, Walter,’ he said, ‘had Maister Rattray taken all his gear wi him?’ The young man shook his head, still grinning. ‘Can you tell me where the rest is? What happened to it?’

‘It’s a’ packed up and lying in the corner o my shop,’ said the soutar, turning to go back in. ‘You can tak a look if you want.’

Rattray’s discarded gear was not copious. Emptying the canvas sack on to the floor, Gil turned over the contents and identified a shirt, a pair of worn hose, one ancient house-shoe, some mismatched table-linen. There was a platter and wooden bowl but no beaker, several spoons of wood or horn, a couple of blackened cooking-crocks which had rubbed soot on everything round them, and two worn blankets padding the bundle.

‘He had very little,’ he commented, comparing this collection with the well-appointed houses of his friends among the songmen at Glasgow.

‘He’s took the best wi him,’ said Walter eagerly. He had cheered up enormously with Gil’s reassurance, and was almost bouncing beside the heap of goods. ‘See,’ he went on, ‘he had a new blanket, and other four sarks besides that one that was in the wash, and some linen besides, and four bonnie wee metal cups and a wooden one, and a pair o good boots my brither made to him –’

‘Boots,’ repeated Gil.

‘Stout sewn boots, oxhide wi a double boar’s-hide sole,’ itemized the soutar.

‘Aye, and the great socks to go in them that our Mirren knittet,’ contributed Walter. ‘My good-sister’s a fearsome knitter,’ he informed Gil. ‘I’m right glad my maister had a pair of her socks wi him. That’ll keep his feet warm.’

‘He’s set off on a journey, hasn’t he, maister?’ said the older Muthill. Gil sat back on his heels and nodded.

‘I’d say so,’ he agreed. ‘A long journey, at that. I wonder where he’s gone?’

*    *    *

The Bishop was absent from his Cathedral at present, but being on official business Gil had been able to claim lodging for himself and his escort at the Palace. Strolling back across the precinct, he considered what he had learned so far. It hardly seemed to lead him anywhere, other than to more witnesses. The Drummond boy might have confided in his friend, or the fellow Kilgour might know something useful, Rattray appeared to have left willingly for a long journey, and that was the sum of it. Perhaps Canon Drummond could help him, he thought doubtfully, and wondered why he was putting off speaking to the Canon. Was it the fact that, a month after being told his brother had reappeared, Andrew Drummond had still neither visited nor written to his family? Or was it the slight wariness of sub-Dean Belchis’s reference to the man?

He glanced at the sky. Most of Dunblane would be sitting down to its dinner shortly, and then the quireman and his fellows would be singing Vespers. Best to go and see what was to be had from the Palace buttery, and consider what to do next.

‘No, you don’t want to talk to Andrew Drummond,’ said John Kilgour. ‘Even if he wasny –’

‘We never do, if we can avoid it,’ said one of the other quiremen. ‘He doesny like singers. Mind the way he got across John Rat, all last winter? All because John got before him in the procession at Candlemas.’

‘No, he really hates singers,’ agreed another voice.

‘Why’s that, then?’ asked Gil innocently, and reached for the nearest jug of ale.

He had heard Vespers in the Cathedral, standing in the nave while the familiar chants floated through the choir-screen, and then had made himself known to one or two of the choir as they left the vestry. As he had hoped, a friend of Habbie Sim of Glasgow was welcome, the more so when he stopped by the Tower tavern on the way back to Kilgour’s lodging and paid for enough ale for most of the choir for the evening.

‘You’ll mind it better than me, Jockie,’ said Kilgour’s neighbour. ‘You were at the sang-schule wi him, were you no?’

‘I was, Adam,’ agreed Kilgour. He was a balding, fairish man in his forties, with a light, breathy speaking voice, though when he had joined in the snatches of chant in the street his deep tones had astonished Gil. ‘I was. It was a bad business.’

‘What happened?’ Gil asked.

‘He was never much liked, save by the adults,’ said Kilgour, with what seemed to be reluctance, ‘but he’d a good voice, maybe the best mean, the best alto, I ever heard in my life, pure and clear wi a compass to astonish you, so a course he sang in the Play of the Resurrection. In the nave at Pace-tide, you ken.’

Gil nodded. He knew the kind of thing Kilgour meant, more of a dramatized service than a play as such. The Resurrection would mean at the least three women’s parts, two or three disciples, perhaps an angel, and Christ. Not all the parts would be for boys’ voices.

‘Who did he sing?’ he prompted.

‘Judas,’ said Kilgour. ‘A big part, and the second year he’d sung it.’

‘But the rope slipped,’ said someone else. Gil looked from one face to another in dismay.

‘What, you mean he was hanged in earnest? But he’s –’

‘No, no,’ said the man called Adam. ‘No that bad. But he fell off the stool, and his throat was hurt bad wi the rope.’

‘How did it happen?’ Gil asked. ‘Was anyone to blame, or was it an accident?’

‘My brother aye said he’d seen a cord,’ remarked someone in the corner. ‘But he never jaloused who had pulled on it. To upset the stool, you ken,’ he expanded. Gil nodded, taking this in. ‘He said the enquiry was something fierce, but nobody ever owned up nor clyped, the more so as the mannie that was to fix the rope – one of the cathedral servants, you ken – dee’d not long after.’

‘What happened to him?’ asked his neighbour. The narrator shook his head.

‘My brother never said. I think it was some kind o accident round the building. Fell off the window walk, or the like.’

‘And nobody admitted to causing Andrew’s accident,’ said Gil, digesting this.

‘Andrew was never well liked,’ said Kilgour.

‘Why not?’ Gil asked.

‘Boys can take a dislike to someone,’ said Adam. ‘Often enough there’s no accounting for it.’

‘The way my brother tellt me,’ protested the man in the corner, ‘there was plenty reasons to dislike Andrew. The football, for one.’

‘I’d forgot that,’ said Kilgour. Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘A sorry thing that was, too. One of the fellows had a football, a rare good one, for a yuletide gift. We’d several games wi it, and the boy it belonged to thought he was in Heaven, for everyone would be his friend, you ken.’ Gil nodded, recalling the muddy prints on the wall of Cossar’s manse. ‘Then one day at the noon break it was found under his bench flat as a bannock, knifed beyond mending.’