The King's Corrodian (27 page)

Before Alys could arrange her thoughts to counter this argument Roileag shot out from under Mistress Buttergask’s chair growling, and a rattling at the house door proclaimed Tam, with Brother Michael and a basket of raw meat wrapped in rushes to keep the flies off. Several stray dogs were following them hopefully, but remained out of range of Brother Michael’s staff.

Their hostess set to, much flustered and accompanied by a shrill descant of yapping, to welcome the Franciscan, offer him refreshment, and discuss the weather, the state of the market, and possibly matters spiritual, all of which he ignored.

‘Let me see this oven,’ he said abruptly, ‘till I resolve whether it’s big enough.’ After a moment’s thought he added, ‘And the trivet. You’ve a trivet? Aye?’

‘Aye, there’s a trivet,’ said Tam tolerantly over the Franciscan’s shoulder, following Mistress Buttergask and her expostulations out to the kitchen. ‘I seen it mysel when we was here the other day. I tellt you afore we reached the flesher.’

Alys, about to follow on, found Jennet’s hand on her shoulder and the beaker of hot spiced ale thrust into her hand.

‘Drink it up, mem,’ said the girl, ‘and take one o her wee cakes and all. Saints alone ken when we’ll get a bite to eat if he’s to get started now. I ken it’s no very good manners, but it’s common sense.’

Alys had to admit the truth of this. She accepted both, and bit into the sweet cake as she pursued Mistress Buttergask’s exclamations across the other front room of the house and into a commodious kitchen, whitewashed clean and with ample storage and racks for hanging herbs, cheeses, and what looked like most of a salted pig in neat joints. There was a wide fireplace, the fire carefully banked while the maids were out; there was a big iron cooking-pot beside it which must be the source of a very savoury smell, and next to that a small charcoal range, presently unlit. This last caused her a pang of envy and the resolve to instal one this spring in their own kitchen at home.

‘Never noticed any smell o burning the day,’ Brother Michael was saying, ‘and the crocks washed clean, they tellt me.’

‘Them that survived,’ muttered Tam, and flinched as Jennet kicked his ankle.

The oven was built in by the fireplace, where it would lose the heat more slowly, and was as handsome as Tam and Jennet had reported to her, with a solid well-fitting wooden door which Mistress Buttergask was now demonstrating.

‘You just need to fasten it tight wi the paste,’ she said, ‘and there’s never a draught gets in to spoil the bread. I had the best builder in Perth to make it, there’s no an oven in the road like it.’

Brother Michael grunted, and turned to survey the rest of the chamber, nodded briefly to Alys and propped his staff against a convenient press.

‘It’s your trial, lassie,’ he said. ‘Y’have a protocol?’

‘But brother,’ said Mistress Buttergask more urgently. He turned to look at her. ‘Is it safe, brother? No the oven, it’s – at least aye, it’s the oven, but it’s the—’ As he frowned, and turned away again, making nothing of this, she burst out, ‘You’re no like to conjure the Deil in my kitchen, are you? Or Mahoun or Termagant or any spirits like that?’

‘Mistress, I’d never do a thing like that in another woman’s kitchen,’ said Alys, ‘or my own either.’ She took the older woman’s hand. ‘We made a trial o this in the Greyfriars’ kitchen yesterday, and there was no conjuring anything, no words or cantrips or signs made, these two will tell you.’ She indicated Tam and Jennet, who made haste to agree with her. ‘I’m sure Brother Michael will ask a blessing on the work afore we begin, won’t you, brother?’

‘Mm?’ He looked up from peering into a bowl of dried lavender on a shelf. ‘Oh – aye. Better get on.’

‘A blessing, brother,’ she prompted him.

‘Oh.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling, adopted a pose of prayer, and pronounced resonantly, ‘
Benedictionem velit, habet benedictionem, per Dominum nostrum, Amen
.’ As Mistress Buttergask crossed herself with a devout
Amen
, and Alys bit her lip to prevent herself from giggling, he took off his heavy scrip and began to unload the contents onto the table in the middle of the kitchen. As yesterday morning, a bundle of rags, several candle-ends, two small trivets emerged, along with a poke of flour and a small flat dish. Mercifully he had left the mixing-bowl behind. Mistress Buttergask was inclined to take umbrage at the presence of the flour.

‘As if I wouldny have flour in the house, that you’re as welcome to. There was no need to carry that all the way from the Greyfriars!’ she protested as Alys, retrieving her sacking apron from the basket Jennet had carried, began to pin it to her person.

‘Mistress?’ The kitchen door had opened, and the two young maids stood there, the one in front staring open-mouthed, the other on tiptoe to peer over her shoulder. Roileag bustled across the floor to greet them, dancing on her hind legs and yipping in excitement. ‘Mistress? What’s ado? Who’s all these folk in our kitchen?’

‘Jennet,’ said Alys hastily, but Tam was already at the door, edging the girls out. They went reluctantly, hardly listening to his promises of explanations, trying to see more of what was happening. The dog scurried out along with them, and as the door closed Jennet asked Mistress Buttergask for a bowl, and Alys unfolded the bundle of rags, seeking a suitable piece of cloth to use for a wrapping.

Brother Michael stood back, making an occasional note on a worn set of tablets, scrutinising her work in silence. Mistress Buttergask, on the other hand, kept up a spate of questions and wondering remarks, which Jennet answered as best she might while Alys swaddled the lump of meat. It was a piece of fat mutton on the bone, with a good layer of lard under the skin, just as she had instructed Tam to ask for. She said as much to Brother Michael and he wrote that down as well, without comment.

‘Here’s your paste, mem,’ said Jennet as she finished.

‘And you’ll put that in the cold oven?’ said Mistress Buttergask in amazement. ‘What’ll that do? Will you say a prayer over it? You tellt me there would be no cantrips,’ she said suspiciously.

‘I’ll put a candle to it, only,’ said Alys, looking around her. ‘May we use your trivet, mistress? The great one there?’

‘A candle? To set fire to a piece o mutton that size? Surely no, lassie!’

Brother Michael stirred.

‘Use mine,’ he said. ‘The two o them. One each end.’

‘Not the great one?’

‘More support,’ he said. He laid aside his tablets, lifted the small flat dish and one of the candle-ends, and bending to the banked fire lit the candle and set about securing it to the dish with drips of wax. Alys arranged the bundle of meat across the two trivets, inside the cavern of the oven, and slid the candle into position under the meat so that the flame just licked at the layers of cloth. Brother Michael lifted the door and set it into its aperture, and watched while she sealed its edges with the paste Jennet had kneaded up.

‘Now we wait,’ he said. Elsewhere in the house, the dog began barking furiously.

‘How long?’ asked Mistress Buttergask. ‘How long will it take? When will we ken if it’s worked?’

‘An hour?’ he said. ‘You saw, mistress. Nothing else in the oven, only the flesh and the candle.’

‘Oh, yes, I saw,’ she agreed. ‘I still canny understand what you’re about, mind.’

The kitchen door opened to admit Tam, with one of the maidservants pushing past him.

‘There’s a—’ he began, but the girl went to Mistress Buttergask, saying, ‘If you please, mem, it’s the maister back! He’s just dismounting afore the door this moment! The wee dog kent he was there, the clever thing.’

‘Rattray!’ her mistress exclaimed, her face lighting up, and then, transparently, ‘Oh! Oh, I’ll need to tell him – explain all this.’ She bustled out, leaving the maidservant to look sidelong at the sealed oven, the items still lying on the table.

‘Is that all you need to do magic wi?’ she asked boldly. ‘A bowl and a poke o flour and some candle-ends? Maybe I could set mysel up for a necromancer and get rich wi making gold.’

‘No magic, lassie,’ said Brother Michael repressively. ‘Making a trial o something, is all.’

‘He said,’ she jerked her head at Tam, ‘you were seeing how the man got carried off wi the Deil, just ower the wall there.’

‘He never got carried off,’ said Jennet.

‘Aye, he did! My mistress saw him.’

Out in the other room Roileag was barking hysterically, men’s voices could be heard, booted feet stamped, Mistress Buttergask embarked on an explanation over which someone said, ‘Sorry I’ve been as long, Bessie. I’ve been at Montrose trying to sort this will. What’s that you’re saying? Necromancy? In our kitchen? Bessie, you fool! What are you about?’

Three swift, heavy footsteps brought a big man to the kitchen doorway, dark-haired and unshaven, still booted and bundled in furs, Roileag leaping about his knees. He stared fiercely round the chamber. His gaze lighting on Brother Michael, he said forcefully, ‘What are you at, persuading Mistress Buttergask to take part in your filthy practices? We’ll ha none o that in this house! Be off, or I’ll fetch the Bishop to ye!’

Brother Michael, taken aback, gulped like a carp in a pond and produced no coherent words. Alys summoned all she had learned from her mother-in-law and stepped forward, and Jennet and Tam both straightened up, their attitude watchful.

‘Good day to you, sir,’ she said, and curtsied. ‘You must be Sir Silvester Rattray.’

‘Aye, I am,’ he said, staring at her. He was older than she had thought at first, perhaps as much as sixty, but confident and vigorous. ‘And who the Devil are you?’

‘Oh, Rattray, I’m just telling you,’ protested Mistress Buttergask. ‘That’s Mistress Mason, that’s wedded on Blacader’s quaestor, and looking into the man we saw carried away in the night, only he wasny, for he left his foot behind.’

‘Bessie,’ he said, and she fell silent. ‘Mistress?’ he added to Alys.

‘Alys Mason,’ she confirmed. He nodded acknowledgement of this. ‘We’re trying to establish how the man could have burned to ashes—’

‘All save his foot,’ supplied Mistress Buttergask.

‘And Mistress Buttergask has kindly let us have the use o the oven here. There’s been no necromancy, no conjuring of spirits, nothing like that at all.’

‘Aye, so you say, but what’s this—’ he bit off the word, ‘doing here?’

‘Brother Michael has been overseeing the trials. I do assure you, sir, there’s been no ill-doing here.’

He stared at her, and then round the kitchen, noting the same things the maidservant had seen. Roileag, who had been pawing impatiently at his boots, chose the moment to start yapping again, and he snatched the little beast up and muzzled it with one big hand.

‘Aye, well,’ he said, still suspicious. ‘We’ll hear more o this. Just let me shift my gear and get a wash. Is there water hot, Bess?’

There was a flurry of activity, involving Mistress Buttergask and her maidservants and one of Rattray’s men; Alys took refuge in the corner by the oven, and found Brother Michael beside her, clutching his staff in a casual manner which did not deceive. She became aware that the oven was giving off a significant heat, and a faint hissing crackle like a hot frying pan, and turned to look at the sealed door.

‘
Nihil dice
,’ said the friar quietly.

Washed, shaved and combed, clad in a clean shirt and hose and the doublet which had been hanging in the bedchamber, Sir Silvester Rattray presented a much more polished aspect to the world. Seated by the brazier in the solar, with a platter of bread and meat and a jug of ale on a small table before him, he considered Alys and finally said, ‘Mason. It’s no a name I’ve heard.’

‘My father is French,’ said Alys. Mistress Buttergask, across the room, looked up from her needlework at this, her blue eyes widening.

Rattray pushed Roileag away from his chair with a slippered foot and went on, ‘Aye, well. But I have heard o your man. The Bishop had a bit to say o him a year or so back. So he’s back in Perth, is he?’ Alys nodded. ‘What’s he found, concerning the man Pollock? I ken the Bishop and Prior Boyd were well exercised about the fellow, and the Treasury and all, as one o theirs.’

‘No a great deal,’ said Alys cautiously. ‘He’s been held back by the other deaths, a novice called Rattray and the friar Thomas Wilson.’

‘Rattray?’ he repeated sharply. ‘Jockie was saying when he shaved me, they’ve had more trouble ower the wall, but he never named names. What was the laddie baptised? Andrew!’ He looked at Mistress Buttergask. ‘Here I’ve been scouring Montrose for the boy, and he’s lying dead ower the wall from you.’

‘You’re seeking him?’ Alys said. ‘What for, sir?’

‘Money. Never mind that the now, what about Pollock? What’s Maister Cunningham found, then?’

‘No a great deal, as I said. The man was in the habit o extortion, he sent money to the Yorkist party abroad, he was little liked.’

‘No a great deal? I’d no want to be the one he discovered a lot concerning! So what’s all this to do wi our kitchen? Aye, I ken, Bess,’ he added as she began to speak, ‘but I’ll ha Mistress Mason’s tale to it and all.’

Alys explained, yet again, what they had found in Pollock’s house, what had led her to think of experimenting, what the trial presently in the oven was intended to demonstrate. He heard her out, frowning, chewing on the food, asking a couple of sensible questions. When she had finished he paused to take a long pull at the jug of ale, ignoring Mistress Buttergask’s further assurances, and finally said, ‘And when should it come out the oven? When will you ken what’s come o’t?’

‘We should let the oven cool,’ Alys said unwarily. He shot her a look, but did not comment. ‘Perhaps another half an hour?’

‘Then tell me what’s this about Andrew Rattray. Did you say there was two deaths?’

‘Two deaths,’ she agreed, ‘and one man stabbed.’

Beginning with their arrival, she summarised the wider events of the last few days, while he fed the scraps of his meal to the dog, which begged importunately for every mouthful and produced its squeaky growl if he did not hand it over fast enough. Sir Silvester was paying more attention to the tale than appeared, for when it was ended he said, ‘There must be some link. If one o them had run stark wood he’d never trouble to call a secret meeting, he’d simply run about stabbing folk openly. Or so you’d think,’ he added, ‘though I’m aware you canny tell what a madman will do.’