Time and Tide (11 page)

Hew swallowed down his squeamishness. ‘I see it,' he confirmed.

‘This is a dead finger,' said Giles. ‘By which I do not mean it is a dead man's finger, but that the finger died before the man. Before that, it was swollen. The ring became too tight as the finger came distended. What then, was the cause?'

‘Could not the cause have been the ring itself?' argued Hew. ‘Because it was too tight, it cut the finger off?'

‘Your thoughts are once again, drawn to the living man. And that is only natural,' said Giles. ‘But concentrate on this. This was not the only finger blackened and distended, though it was the only one that bore a ring. Maude told us that his face was dark and blotted too.'

‘They took him for a Spaniard,' Hew recalled. ‘A black and swarthy creature, as the baxters said.'

‘Swollen, blotched and putrid,' Giles summed up. ‘So that the surgeon took him for long dead, which in a sense, he was. He suffered from a gangrene, of a dry pernicious kind.'

‘Sweet lord!' whispered Hew. ‘What was the cause?'

‘I cannot tell you that. And yet I do suppose it died out on the ship. Dearly, I would love to know what happened to the crew.'

‘Maude said,' Hew remarked, ‘that Jacob called to demons as he died.'

‘As I confess, that vexes me,' the doctor said, ‘For Maude is not a woman given to wild tales.'

‘That we must count as madness, or else something worse.'

‘What had you in mind?'

‘You said there was an occult glass,' said Hew, ‘wherein a man might see another man, an image not his own. And Maude said, he reported, he was
not himself
. Do you think it likely Jacob was bewitched?'

‘It is a possibility,' the doctor answered carefully. Plainly, he had thought of this, ‘That I do not discount. Though, I prefer to be pragmatical . . .'

‘You prefer to be equivocal,' interrupted Hew.

Giles went on regardless, impervious to the jibe. ‘. . . I count it
less than likely, though I cannot say for sure. When a man dies seeing demons, I am more inclined to ask, what he last had to eat and drink. Your theory is provocative. I had you for a doubter, of the occult arts.'

‘Though I do not fear their magic, I do not doubt its power to harm those that believe it,' answered Hew. ‘If I am cursed, and told that I must die, that it is my believing it that kills me in the end. And for that reason, we must keep all hint of witchcraft secret from the town.'

Doctor Locke agreed. ‘I shall make report, and send it to the coroner, that now is our new sheriff, Andrew Wood. Tis likely we shall hear from him, for he is most assiduous.'

‘Then he serves as contrast to our old one,' remarked Hew.

‘So it must be hoped. I met him only once, and cannot say I took to him. No matter, these are desperate times, and want a will of iron to make the measures straight. I have the feeling,' Giles reported gloomily, ‘that we shall know him well before this year is out. For now, I have a little pot, in which this scrap of finger may safely be disposed, and keep its secrets closed. I hear the morning lecture bell, and have not had my breakfast yet. Will you come and join me, in a buttered egg?'

‘Not for all the world,' said Hew emphatically.

They parted at the turret door, where Hew turned sharply back and through the college gates, George Buchanan's grammar in his hand. He caught the trail of students snaking to the hall.

‘Which one of you,' he called, ‘is George Buchanan?'

A thin and pale-faced stripling stepped up with a sigh. ‘I am George Buchanan, sir,' he answered wretchedly, as though the very question were a burden to be borne, which Hew supposed it was. The boy bore no resemblance to the scholar.

‘I have your
Rudimentia Grammatices
. Your sister left it for you,' Hew explained.

The student answered, ‘Oh!' and blushed a livid puce, from the purple of his thropple to the pink tips of his ears. A reprimand, Hew sensed, was preferable to this. In kindness, he should turn away, and
let the matter drop. Despite himself, he asked, ‘Is your sister your tutrix, then, George?'

The boy blinked in surprise. ‘Is she my what, sir?'

‘Are you her ward?' Hew glossed.

‘I have no tutor, sir, for I am come of age.'

‘Of course you are,' Hew countered quickly. ‘I only meant to ask, where is it that you live? Are you come here from her house?'

‘I come here from my father, sir. I do not bide with Clare. I stayed with her a night. Tis only that her house is somewhat close to here, my father's at Linlithgow, somewhat far away, and that is where I live – that is where I lived,' George corrected poignantly, ‘since now I must live here.'

Hew felt a prick of guilt.

‘Why do you ask it, sir? Have I done something wrong?'

The boys behind them nudged and winked.

Hew sighed, ‘Not at all.'

‘I will be late, sir, for the lecture, and the regent will be vexed.' George took the book and stuffed it in his breeks, with a furtive backward glance towards his waiting friends.

‘Your sister came in kindness. You need not feel ashamed,' admonished Hew.

George coloured once again. ‘I am not ashamed of Clare. But for it is a
bairn's
book,' he blurted out, in Scots.

‘It is a Latin grammar book, and it will serve you well. And God help him who laughs at it,' Hew threw out to the crowd, ‘and does not know his verbs. Now, what must you say to me?

‘Benigne, magister . . . domine . . . professor, sir,' George responded awkwardly.

‘Bene. Vive valeque,' Hew dismissed him with a nod. He watched him scuttle off, gaunt ghost of a child, following the rest into the lecture room. It had not been his intention to humiliate the boy. Why had he forced him to the inquisition? What matter, who his father was, or if he lived with Clare?
Clare Buchanan
, Hew reflected, trying out the name. Despite his twitch of conscience, he found it brought a smile.

Hew first met the sheriff late one afternoon, as he was packing up his saddlebags, preparing to return to Kenly Green. Meg and Matthew grew from strength to strength, and Giles was now restored to full command, though he retained a tendency to drift back to the Swallow Gait, at dull and quiet moments in the day. The coroner replied to Giles' letter, by bursting without warning into the turret tower, startling Hew to dropping all his books.

‘Andrew Wood, of Largo,' he announced abruptly, ‘looking for Giles Locke.'

Hew recovered quickly. ‘Sir Andrew Wood, the coroner and sheriff?'

‘One and the same.'

Hew rose to his feet to scrutinise his guest. Sir Andrew was appointed in the place of Michael Balfour. The Balfours had been sheriffs and coroners of Fife before the fall of Regent Morton, whose downfall had led to their disgrace. Hew had dealt with Michael in the past, and had found him weak and ineffectual. He had no preconceptions of the man's successor. As he stood before him, he seemed brusque and penetrating, severe in his expression and his dress. His eyes were clear and thoughtful, taking in the compass of the tower, and giving the impression that nothing small was missed. His clothes were cut from fine silk cloth, yet bore no jewel or ornament, sober as a clergyman's, with less resort to vanity. His beard and hair were dark and closely trimmed, with few white pepper flecks, to give away his age. His family fortune, Hew recalled, was built upon the back
of ships; he was the third in succession, though the fourth in generation, to Andrew Wood the admiral, scion of the sea, and master of the fleet to James the Third. Since the time of Morton's downfall, he had held the privy purse, as treasurer or comptroller within the royal court, a position which brought scant reward, for huge responsibility. The debts he had discharged in service to the king had brought him to the brink of ruin, and were rumoured to have cost him £7000. His offices in Fife, which he received in recompense, did little to relieve him of the burden of his loss. All this Hew kept in mind as he replied, ‘Giles Locke is at home, with his wife and child.'

Wood responded curtly. ‘You, sir, are Hew Cullan, and professor in the law, which is to the good, for I may have a use for you, and that may serve as well. I do not have the time to wait on Doctor Locke. He is, I'm told, much exercised, in this small matter of his child. Does it affect his judgement, do you think?'

‘Not one jot,' Hew answered, masking his surprise.

‘But then, you would say that. You are his brother, as I think,' suggested Andrew Wood.

‘He is married to my sister,' Hew agreed. ‘And yet to me, he is much more than that.'

‘Aye, then, fair enough. For I have sometimes thought,' conceded Andrew Wood, ‘to say
I love him like a brother
were a cunning form of wit, since brothers may be profligate, envious, or cruel.'

‘I have no brother to compare him,' answered Hew. ‘But if I were to have one, I should like it to be Giles.'

Sir Andrew sniffed. ‘You are not pious, as I hope? More than the proper, commonplace?'

‘I do not think so,' Hew demurred.

‘That is to the good. I do not want a pious man, for what I have in mind. For that might prove impediment,' Andrew Wood said thoughtfully.

This was his second mention of a use for Hew, and Hew felt some excitement at the prospect of a task. He realised, looking at
the books now spilling from his saddle bags, that he was wearying of life, from Kenly Green to college, and from college back to Kenly Green.

Sir Andrew seemed to read his mind, for his glance followed Hew's. ‘I see you pack your bag. Were you going on a journey?' he inquired.

‘Home to Kenly Green,' said Hew. ‘Now Giles resumes his place, I am not needed here.'

‘In truth,' Sir Andrew commented, ‘your aptitudes and interests have been wasted in the college, and tis high time they were put to better use. I have a proposition, that requires you to remain here for a while; therefore I suggest that you unpack your things.'

‘What proposition?' queried Hew.

‘You will hear it, in due course. You work with Doctor Locke, your brother and your friend, who also is our
visitor
, who makes report to us upon suspicious deaths. Then you must trust his judgement, I suppose?'

Hew assured him, ‘With my life.'

‘
With your life
,' Sir Andrew echoed him. Hew could not quite read his tone. Irony, perhaps, or frank intimidation? Or an echo, simply, to force the message home? The words had taken on peculiar significance. Hew did not regret them in the least. ‘I would trust him,' he repeated, ‘with my life.'

‘Aye,' said Andrew Wood, somewhat more dismissively, ‘but he is a physician, is he not? And that is what we do with our physicians;
we trust them with our lives
. I find it rather galling, I confess. We cannot have them charged with mis-selling us, like baxters, for promising to cure us, after we are dead. Your doctor keeps a strange collection,' he went on to observe. ‘What is in those jars?'

‘You do not wish to know,' Hew told him with a smile.

‘No?' Sir Andrew snatched the stopper from a jar, sniffing at the contents. He did not recoil, as Hew had expected, but remarked appraisingly, ‘Some sort of embalming spice.'

‘He makes it to his own receipt,' acknowledged Hew.

‘What does he with the entrails? Divinations?'

‘Giles is no magician.'

‘I am pleased to hear it.' Wood replaced the stopper and took up another jar. ‘Is this relic human?'

‘It is the finger of the shipwrecked Flemish sailor, who died at Benet's inn.'

Giles preserved his relics, almost lovingly, as Meg preserved the rosehips and the sloes at Kenly Green, bottled into jars and boiled in marmalades. The jar had been recorded in a ledger, with a clear note of the contents and the date.

‘Is it now? Then that is apposite,' the coroner approved. ‘For that is what I come to speak about.'

‘Better then to speak to Giles. For I am no mediciner,' protested Hew.

‘You are something else,' answered Andrew Wood. ‘I have had report of you, from John Lundie of Strathairlie, an old friend of your father. He tells me you are wilful, reckless, rash and bold. You do not listen to good reason, and you overstep your place. You interfere in business that does not concern you, where your conscience moves you, upon some fickle whim.'

‘That is . . . frank,' said Hew.

‘You do not contradict it,' Andrew Wood observed.

‘I do not pay an old man that discourtesy.'

Sir Andrew smiled. ‘He is in his dotage, you imply.'

‘That I leave to others, sir, to judge.'

‘As we shall, be sure of it. It may well prove to your credit, that you choose not to gainsay it, for what he counts as fault in you, sits well enough with me. Such flaws and indiscretions, as are faults of youth, are curbed with careful management,' Andrew Wood said thoughtfully. He left Hew in no doubt, that he meant to manage him. The coroner went on, ‘I heard you were a thorn in Michael Balfour's side. You sought the killer of a Largo fishing lass, when Balfour would have let the matter rest. I ask you, out of interest, was the case resolved?'

‘In a manner,' Hew confessed, ‘though not as I would wish. There was a boy – a fisher lad – that had some carnal knowledge of the lass, and though he was suspected of the crime, he could not be indicted, and the trail went cold.'

‘For want of proof?' asked Andrew Wood.

‘For want,' said Hew, ‘of witnesses. The fishermen kept close, and would not break their ranks, in giving up their own. In their own way, they settled it. The fisher lad was sent out in a boat, with Rab, the dead girl's father, and only Rab returned.'

‘A form of natural justice, then,' the coroner concluded.