The Harper's Quine Read Online Free PDF Page B

certainly. Go you and tell whom you must, Maister
Cunningham. I will bide here, and by the time you return
my men will be come back from searching for Davie-boy
and we can put her on a hurdle.’
    A plump maidservant opened the door to Gil when he
reached the stone tower-house by the mill-burn.
    ‘Good day to you, Maister Cunningham,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is it the maister you’re wanting?’

    ‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘Can I get a word with him, Kirsty?’
    ‘Oh, aye. He’s just breaking his fast. Will you wait, or
interrupt him? Mind, he’s going out hawking in a wee
bit.’
    ‘I’d best see him now. I need a decision.’
    Agog, she led him up a wheel stair and into the subdean’s private closet, where James Henderson, red-faced
and richly clad, was consuming cold roast meat with bannocks and new milk in front of a tapestry of hunting
scenes.
    ‘Here’s Maister Cunningham for you,’ she proclaimed,
‘and it’ll no wait.’
    ‘St Mungo’s bones!’ exclaimed Canon Henderson. ‘What
ails ye, Gil? Will ye take bannocks and milk?’
    ‘No, I thank you,’ said Gil with regret. ‘I’ve come to
report a corpse in the Fergus Aisle. I found her just
now.,
    ‘A corp!’ said Kirsty. ‘Who is it? What’s come to her?
And at May-tide, too!’
    ‘A corpse,’ repeated Canon Henderson. ‘In the Archbishop’s new work? You mean a fresh corpse?’
    ‘Stabbed, last night, I would say, sir.’
    ‘Save us! I never heard anything last night,’ said
Kirsty.
    ‘Is she from the Chanonry? A dependant, a servant? Her
household must be notified.’
    ‘I think she’s one of the harper’s singers.’
    ‘Oh, a musician,’ said the sub-dean distastefully. ‘If she
belongs down the town then it’s hardly proper for her to
stay here. Maybe the Greyfriars -‘
    ‘I thought so too.’
    ‘And Gil …’ The sub-dean hesitated, staring at the
woven heron, caught in the moment of its death. He
tapped his teeth with a chewed fingernail. ‘How did she
die? Stabbed, you say? And on St Mungo’s land. I suppose
we have a duty to look for the man responsible, even if she
is a minstrel.’
    ‘We do,’ agreed Gil.

    ‘Aye, we do!’ said Kirsty. ‘Or we’ll none of us can sleep
easy, thinking we’ll get murdered in our beds.’
    ‘Be silent, woman!’ ordered Canon Henderson.
    ‘Well enough for you,’ retorted Kirsty. ‘It’s me that’s at
the side nearest the door!’
    ‘Is there anyone else I should report this to?’ Gil
asked.
    ‘No,’ said the sub-dean hastily. ‘Just get her moved.
Maybe the mason’s men can bear her to the Greyfriars. See
to it, Gil, will you? And as for finding the malefactor, you’d
be well placed to make a start. After all, you found her. I’ll
speak to your uncle - perhaps at Chapter.’
    Gil, seeing himself out to the sound of a blossoming
domestic quarrel, did not take the direct path to the building site, but cut across the slope of the kirkyard to the
stand of tall trees opposite the door of the lower church.
    He made his way through the trees, scuffing the bluebells aside with his feet, many thoughts jostling in his
head. It seemed he would be spending more time away
from his books. Surely it should not feel as if he had been
let off his leash. And when he finally became a priest,
scenes such as this morning’s would become part of his
existence, both the encounter with a recent corpse and the
slice of home life he had just witnessed. The corpse he
could cope with, he felt. One would usually have some
warning, and there were procedures to be gone through,
shriving, conditional absolution, prayers for the dead. One
would know what to do. But what could one do about the
other matter - the behaviour of what his uncle referred to,
with dry legal humour, as The concordance of debauched
canons. Nothing to do with Gratian’s classic text, of
course.
    He sniffed the green smell of the new leaves he was
trampling, and tried to