Rose Nicolson

by Andrew Greig

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

'A tale I have for you.'

Embra, winter of 1574. Queen Mary has fled Scotland, to raise an army from the French. Her son and heir, Jamie is held under protection in Stirling Castle. John Knox is dead. The people are unmoored and lurching under the uncertain governance of this riven land. It's a deadly time for young student Will Fowler, short of stature, low of birth but mightily ambitious, to make his name.

Fowler has found himself where the scorch marks of the martyrs burned at the stake can be seen on every street, where differences in doctrine can prove fatal, where the feuds of great families pull innocents into their bloody realm. There he befriends the austere stick-wielding philosopher Tom Nicolson, son of a fishing family whose sister Rose, untutored, brilliant and exceedingly beautiful exhibits a free-thinking mind that can only bring danger upon her and her admirers.
The lowly students are adept at attracting the attentions of the rich and powerful, not least Walter Scott, brave and ruthless heir to Branxholm and Buccleuch, who is set on exploiting the civil wars to further his political and dynastic ambitions. His friendship and patronage will lead Will to the to the very centre of a conspiracy that will determine who will take Scotland's crown.

Rose Nicolson is a vivid, passionate and unforgettable novel of this most dramatic period of Scotland's history, told by a character whose rise mirrors the conflicts he narrates, the battles between faith and reason, love and friendship, self-interest and loyalty. It confirms Andrew Greig as one of the great contemporary writers of fiction.

Release date: August 5, 2021

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 464

Sample

Prologue

The Doo-Cot

We had become near-accustomed to the farting thud of small cannon, the prattle of musketry, the yelled orders and clashed steel, swirling about our city’s tenements. Then followed the clatter as a sortie of Queen’s Men from the Castle swept through the barricades, down the High Street to confront the King’s Men.

At the first explosions, my father would sigh, go down the winding stair to bar the entry to our close, then latch-key our nail-studded door. He would return to our refuge, solemnly count our heads, place the key on his work table, then go back to writing inventories and bills of sale. Mon Dieu! my mother might mutter, not breaking off from sorting haberdashery pledges.

That work room was most the solid and siccar in our house, its hidden heart. My father in a rare flight of fancy cried it The Doo-Cot. Not that we kept doves in it, but rather scrolls of contracts, receipts and undertakings. These roosted together within the wooden cubbyholes that lined three walls of the room, from knee-height to ceiling.

My father made them himself from ornate panelling ripped from Blackfriars following one of Preacher Knox’s inspirational sermons on Christ cleansing the Temple. Most of the ornamentation had been prised or slashed off the panels, but the occasional serpent, Tree of Life, sheaf of corn and mild ox remained, to my delight as a bairn. They became part of his filing system. You’ll find the Mar papers lying down next tae the Lamb, or, with relish, The Archbishop’s accounts are to the richt o the Gates o Hell.

Fragrant with ink, parchment and sealing wax, steeped in peat smoke in winter months, the Doo-Cot was my favoured place in our home. My mother cried it the Counting House. How their marriage, as the Reform gripped and even the most cautious took sides, is laid bare in that divergence!

For months now the Queen’s Men had held Embra Castle and the surrounding tenements of the upper part of the town, including our Anchor Close. The King’s Men, led by the Earl of Morton, held the Canongait, Holyrude and Leith. Our Queen Mary had fled, but might return with a French army. Her son and heir Jamie Saxt, said to be a poorly made bairn, was held ‘under protection’ in Stirling Castle, and who kenned what he wanted?

So the Lang Siege ground on with parleys, shootings, cannon thuds and clatter of hooves. When it was quiet, we nipped out for food supplies with the rest of the populace. Otherwise we shut ourselves in the house, retreated to the Doo-Cot and waited it out.

One dreich May morning, our lives changed. Unknown to us, Drury’s English troops – our gallant allies in the Reform (my father), or heretical enemies of the True Church (my mother) – had drawn a score of big cannon through the night up towards the Castle. When the familiar skirmishing started, we shut ourselves in the Doo-Cot. Around midday came a much louder BOOM, then a deep thud felt in the gut. Dust and plaster showered from the ceiling. The scrolls and papers shivered in their nests.

Silence, and a cold draught coming up the winding stairs and under the Doo-Cot door. My father hesitated, picked up the latch key. I’d best hae a look, he said, and was gone.

Our close door had been blown off its hinges. As my father stood baffled, someone fired from the mouth of the courtyard. Upstairs, we heard the bang and a cut-off cry.

We found him collapsed in our doorway. Mother and my big sister Clemmie dragged him within, the cook and I struggled to bar our door. He died on our entry slabs, looking puzzled as Drury’s big cannon started up outside. The smell of warm blood and stone dust burns in my nostrils yet, and sudden bangs still render me an affrichted boy.

 

My mother believed the Reformists had killed him. Neighbours said it was one of the Queen’s Men, during a counter-attack. Some claimed it was English forces. I knew only that my father was dead from the religious wars. The stain on the entry slab took weeks to scrub away. I still saw it in my mind’s eye, each time I left or entered our house.

When Drury’s troops poisoned the well, took the Forewarks defences and brought the big cannon closer, after twelve days of house-shaking bombardment the Queen’s Men surrendered the Castle and the Lang Siege was over. Their lives were guaranteed by the English leaders. But they were soon handed over to the King’s Men, and Kirkcaldy of Grange and his brother James were sentenced to be hanged at the Merkit Cross, just as Preacher Knox had prophesied.

My mother sobbed in the Counting House, not so much for the men as the death of her hopes. Grave-faced, our neighbours went out to witness the hanging. I followed on but lost them in the crowd. A man with burning eyes hoisted me high. Ye maun see this, laddie! Against my wishes, I saw them, fleetingly, from the back of the crowd, those blood-engorged faces turned golden masks as they spun towards the sun.

That marked the end of that phase of our uncivil war. Soon after, my elder sister Clemmie grew a sickness within her gut. I closeted myself in the Doo-Cot while her howl and retching diminished to cough and whimper, then a silence that echoed long through the house.

Those were hard times. They weakened and hardened us, as such times do. Our front door never closed rightly again.

Chapter 1

A Student Departs

I hear and feel it yet under my scrieving hand, the scrape and shudder of our door as I forced it open into the Embra dawn. I stood a long minute neither fully in nor fully out – a lifelong position with me, I suppose. The wind through the Castle Gait rugged at my cloak. It would be a rough passage.

I suppressed signing the Cross, gripped my pack and stepped out. A hard yank and the door grunted like my father’s last breath. Then I was out in the not-quite darkness, heading for Leith and whatever life would bring.

 

The watchman at the Canongait port stood forth and barred me with his lance, more from boredom than alarm. The odd scuffle, shooting and stabbing apart, old Embra had gone quiet as though taking a breather. In any case I was a stripling and likely unarmed.

‘Where mak ye and wha are yer people?’

I gave him back as boldly and well-spoken as I could. ‘I am William Fowler of Anchor Close, as well you ken. I am commencing to be a student at St Andrews.’

He spat in the mud. ‘Lazy bastards aa. What’s in yer pack?’

‘Bread and cheese for the voyage.’ I made no mention of the brandy flask lest he confiscate it. ‘Also paper and writing materials.’

‘Little good they’ll do ye.’

‘You might be right there, Master Morrison.’

He chuckled and lowered his lance. ‘Your faither was a good man, for a money-lender.’

‘He was an honest merchant who advanced credit against surety,’ I corrected him.

‘Your mither will be looking for anither.’

‘She has o’er much sense than to marry again.’

We looked at each other, John Morrison and I, in the mingled lights of dawn and watch-torch. ‘Sorry aboot yer big sister, Willie. She wis bonnie.’

My feet yearned to turn back home, though there was no place for me there. My mother and remaining sister Susannah shared women’s grief I could not take part in.

‘She was that.’

‘And your big brither John wis a fine, strapping lad.’

‘So I am often told.’

We stood, heads lowered in that chill wind. ‘Pass, wee man.’

With as much conviction as I could muster, I went through the port we cried World’s End.

‘Good luck to ye!’ he called. Then, more faintly, ‘Ye’ll be needing it.’

 

And so I left wind-tossed Edinburgh, that high-masted, tight-bound vessel of some three thousand families crammed within its walls, gaits and wynds, who all kenned or guessed each other’s business, where kindness was delivered with a rough tongue, where sweetness came wi salt, and justice and injustice alike came swiftly, at dagger point or rope’s end.

I see myself in the growing light, clutching my pack, passing the ailing Preacher’s house, sniffing the orchards and gardens of the Canongait in the morning air. Mid-September 1574, a fine, if challenging, time to be young. My mother would have been at a clandestine early Mass, or already in the Counting House. She did not see me off, whether out of indifference or too much feeling, I cannot know. The night before, she had passed me a packet of papers, receipts and pledges, to carry out business for her in St Andrews, and help pay my fees and lodging.

Within the bundle she had slipped a wee gold garnet-pointed Cross, enough to rouse Preacher Knox from his sick-bed. Seeing my hesitation, she held up her hand.

‘Please,’ she said, one of few times I remember her using the word. ‘Pour ton âme, mon petit. It will only grow in value.’

Such were my mother’s twin passions: finance and the True Church. I had accepted the crucifix, knowing it balanced by my father’s Reformed Bible – plain, severe, in the vernacular – uppermost in my trunk sent on ahead.

 

Full light and high tide at Leith. My future beckoned through of a thicket of swaying masts. I had never been to St Andrews, nor even sailed outwith the Firth of Forth. The world would never be so fresh and fair and queasy-making as when the Sonsie Quine sailed on the ebb that morning.

I stood on deck, clutching the foremast. At first exhilarated by the pitch and toss out on the estuary, as we tacked by Cramond Island I was beginning to feel distinctly off. A skinny boy with long red hair and white face abruptly emerged from a hatch. I had seen him on the quayside, flanked by two men who quickly took him below. Now he staggered to the starboard rail to eject his breakfast. Which set me off, and for a while we were companions in misfortune.

We got down to bile about the same time, and keeked across at each other.

For the first time I saw that strong beaky nose, his stubborn squared-off chin and blue-green eyes. He wiped drool from his pimply face and I realised that though taller, he was a year or two younger than me. Gentry was in his dress and bearing as he leaned closer.

‘Friend, a loan of your dirk,’ he muttered, sour-breathed.

How had he noticed it, pouched within my jerkin? His voice was low, hoarse, of the Western Borders.

‘The need is great,’ he said. I hesitated. His long-fingered hand grasped my sleeve. ‘I am asking nicely. Sois gentil.’

For a moment we looked each other in the eye. My free hand went automatically – my mother habitually commanded me in French – into my jerkin.

‘Quickly!’

I slipped the dagger from its pouch, then it was gone within his cloak. He turned back to the rail to vomit again just as his escort appeared, one on either side. The taller one stared hard at me, saw only a short boy of no account, then took my companion’s arm.

‘Best come below, Master – we don’t want you falling overboard!’

They led him away. As he turned to descend the ladder, he glanced up at me, nodded. That swift hard nod nailed his face to my memory.

 

The Sonsie Quine rolled into the lee of Inchcolm Island and the seas calmed somewhat. The Abbey, one of the oldest in the country, had been cleansed with all the others in the tumultuous year leading up to my birth. The stout church was roofless, and birds passed in and out the vacant windows. The cloister and chapter house appeared uninhabited but more or less intact. The stone was blackened around the windows of the scriptorium, which must have burned well.

Preacher Knox’s sermon at Burntisland in the autumn of 1559, against Idolatry and the distractions of Beauty, had had its customary effect. Anything of high value left in the Abbey would have gone to one of the Lords of the Congregation; the less fancy items to the lairds of Fife; the practical items of wood and dressed stone to the Burghs.

A couple of monks, wild and unshaven, emerged from a rough shelter by the shore and stared as our ship rolled by. By their tattered robes, they had once been Augustinians. They looked as feral as their few sheep, wild as their vegetable garden. The Reform had decreed that all monks and friars convert, or leave for whatever countries would have them. They might live on within the ruins, but hold no Masses, receive no income, have no books or novices, give no Sacrament. A merciful settlement, some said.

The mate told me that due to a bittie blaw, we would no longer be picking up timber in Limekilns, but instead crossing direct to Fife. We sailed out of the lee of Inchcolm, and the wind and swell rose to new extremes. I clung to the rail and the rigging as we tossed and plunged but I was sick no more. As we tacked further out into the Firth I surrendered myself to God’s Will.

I became aware of a new urgency. The captain was on deck, following the mate’s arm pointing out towards the Bass Rock. The sea had changed. The waters ahead were green, white, dark, leaden, all scurrying and shifting, strangely lit. Then the full storm hit us. The great trees of the masts bent and groaned. Our vessel slewed, leaned over so far the upper yards snagged in the running wave.

The mate screamed above the wind at the two hands as they struggled to further reef the sails. They lost control of the mainsail, which flew wide, smashed into the jib rigging and the boom cracked.

A hand thwacked my back. It was our captain – a Dutchman, my mother had said. A year earlier she had advanced him credit to buy a share in the Sonsie Quine, thus my free passage. His face was red with drink and weather, but he seemed sturdy and untroubled amid mayhem.

‘Help take the wheel!’ he shouted in my ear. ‘We need a man free.’

I gaped at him. I was practically a child.

‘On ye go! Hold on to me!’

I clung to his broad leather belt, felt his strong arm round my shoulder as we zig-zagged across the tilting deck and slammed into the wheel. A rope lashed me to the wheel-stem. The smaller steersman adjusted my fists round the spokes, then reeled away.

‘Watch me, laddie!’ the steersman at my side cried.

The captain and the hand had gone to fight with the rigging and straining sails. Tipping into a huge on-coming wave, the ship slewed over, water rushing across her decks, those spars caught in the passing wave strained and snapped. The whole boat groaned as though slain.

The steersman bared his teeth, gave a great cry and forced the juddering wheel over as I too heaved with all my strength. The wheel and its stem were shaking so hard I thought they would split. We forced again, the bow came round, our ship shook free of that devouring wave. Then we were down, down in the abyss, veering into the next roller.

We took it straight on, rose up and up. I could see over the white and black sea, all the way to the Berwick Law and those green fields we would never reach. My lofty resignation of minutes before was succeeded by black dread at being taken by the sea, sinking down into nothingness or worse. What if God were not a Protestant? What if He were? I was damned either way.

We spun the wheel as the bow dropped and we slid down off that great wave. A bawling in my lug. I looked at the steersman, his face streaming water, and he grinned his few yellowed fangs.

 

The Lord’s my shepherd, I shall not want!

He makes me down to lie!

 

We bawled it out together, the old Psalm in new language, ­vernacular and raw, as we rose up, plummeted and rose again. The wheel shook and strained against my hands, but it held.

At last the mainsail was saved and reefed, then we tacked hard over and sailed by the jib for St Serf’s castellated tower at Dysart. My heart was high, my head rang clear as a bell. I was drookit, clothes ruined, but have never felt so light and fearless as that afternoon we skidded and furrowed our way across the tumult.

Some would say that our cry was heard and answered from Above. That may be, though more devout men than I die each year in the unruly Forth. All I know is that we heard it, our hearts heard it and were made strong. That day I learned the power of sung words.

As the storm abated, the steersman turned to me, water and saliva still running from his beard. His eyes were huge and dark-shining. Perhaps he was a religious man and had just had the revelation he was justified.

‘Weel, yon wis fuckin rowdy,’ he said.

 

Captain Wandhaver passed his flask. I took a swig, gagged at its fire, swallowed and drank again. We were moored for the evening, off Dysart. I had gone below and changed into dry hose and breeches, but still could not get warm.

‘Some storms come sudden-like,’ he said. It sounded near-apology. ‘Your mother would have been put out if I’d lost her investment. You did well.’

I handed back the flask, feeling his words and the brandy burn down to my toes. That let me speak my mind. ‘Weren’t you feart?’

He looked back at me, that red-faced, rough, clever man. ‘Surely I was. Your mother is a forceful woman.’ He showed a good set of teeth in his round turnip head, then shrugged. ‘The sea is what it is, and I am used to it.’

‘So you are carrying valuables for her?’

‘I am carrying you.’ He paused. ‘And will return with further timbers from the Cathedral.’

We stood silent, amidships, in the half-light. A pale rent flared above the rounded paps of the distant Lomond hills.

‘I was sore afeart,’ I confessed. ‘The sea is so . . . deep.’

‘You have not the face for drowning, lad. I have never been wrong about such things.’

Captain Wandhaver was no plain dealer, but he said this so cas­ually, as if it were simple fact, that I did not think he was joking me. Though there were no reasonable grounds to believe him, his words have lodged in my brain these many years.

‘Hanging, mind you,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘That is another matter. I cannot say you’ll not hang.’

‘I’m o’er wee and unimportant to hang,’ I replied, basking in our manly badinage.

He grasped my shoulder with his mighty paw. ‘Master Fowler, you are too unimportant for the axe, and I wish you the good fortune to stay lowly. But any man may hang – aye, and some women too.’

Intrigued, part in jest, I enquired after my fellow-steersman, the one with the skelly eye, who had bellowed the mighty 23rd Psalm into the storm. Did he have the face for drowning?

The captain made no reply. He took another swig, stoppered the flask, and sombrely folded it away within his coat. The gesture reminded me.

‘That boy with the long red hair and the two men – who is he?’

His face and favour turned from me. ‘Never ye mind,’ he said, and stomped off to check the anchor ropes were sound.

Though the Sonsie Quine still kicked and rolled, I was able to eat below with the crew. It seemed I had passed beyond sea-sickness, and indeed it would never return. The red-haired boy and his escort did not reappear to eat with us, though I noted plates and glasses being taken from the galley to some for’ard cabin. The mate saw me watching and shook his salt-crusted head, so I returned my attention to beef and bread.

 

A sharp cry woke me in the dark. Through the planking I heard a muffled groan, a thump, then silence. The crewman bunked beside me did not stir. He was either asleep or made a good show of it. Across the way, another snored.

I listened in the rolling dark. Perhaps someone had tripped and banged their head? I lay on my bunk, listening through the slap and mutter of water through the hull. There might have soon been voices, but very low.

I lay awhile on my back. In pastures green he leadeth me, the quiet waters by. I saw again the view across the tumultuous sea to the green fields of the Lothians, felt uplifted out of abyss. Is that how Preacher Knox had felt as a French galley-slave when he gripped the oar, buoyed up in his faith, seeing far ahead and beyond? And what did he see in recent months, aided up into the pulpit by his young wife and the elders of the kirk of St Giles? Judging by his visage, what he saw ahead was not to his taste.

In my narrow bunk, safe for the moment, I rolled onto my side and sank deep down.

 

Grey light through my tiny window. Still uneasy and excited, I went early up on deck and so witnessed a flat-ended boat move away through the dawn, its course steady on St Serf’s tower. Two men in unfamiliar livery rowed, and at the stern, back turned, was the red-haired boy.

I cursed. To have given away my father’s dirk! It seemed a wretched start to this adventure. And yet the course of my life was set by that moment’s impulse.

Fair winds took us up the coast of Fife. The sun had some autumnal warmth in it, enough for me to sit for hours against a hatch-cover. I day-dreamed great deeds and achievements, sketched out a future, a degree, a lassie’s face turned my way.

And I thought about the boy, my comrade in vomiting, how deftly he had hidden away my father’s blade, and those noises in the night I might have dreamed but suspected I had not.

‘So we are sailing into Anster?’ I said to the mate as he passed. Our ship was heading straight on a squat church spire. ‘Not going on to St Andrews?’

He hunkered down. ‘First rule of sailing, laddie,’ he said. ‘Where yer pointing is seldom whaur yer bound.’ He furled the lead-line round his gnarled fist. ‘Five-knot ebb tide. Tonight I’ll be in a Kilrymont alehouse and ye’ll be in yer cosy college bed.’

 

Right enough, we passed a roofless priory at Crail, then rounded Fifeness well into the afternoon, standing off from the foaming skerries, then rode a backing wind by a high sandstone cliff, then for the first time I saw the spearing spires of the ruinous Cathedral of St Andrews, red-tipped in the late sun.

My trunk was carried off the ship. I waited for the red-haired boy’s escort but they never appeared. I asked Captain Wandhaver, ‘Are those two men not still on board?’

He turned his big, round head, gazed impassively on me.

‘They left the ship.’

‘Not with the boy. I saw him being rowed towards Dysart.’

‘They had left afore that.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I shook hands with the captain, said he had taken good care of my mother’s investment.

‘Gut. Keep your head down and mind the boom, lad. The wind in these parts changes with little warning. No doubt we’ll see you on the Sonsie Quine again.’ He slapped the mainmast as if it were an old friend. ‘She is well named, for she is both a queen and a lucky ship!’

 

I followed the cart carrying my trunk up the brae, through a corbelled eastern port and into the town. Soon enough, in a daze of novelty and fatigue, I sat on the sole chair in the monastic bareness of the chilly room – my bunk, as the porter cried it – under the eaves of the house off Merkitgait that was to be my home. The college was not in a fit state of repair to house me.

I got out my key but the padlock on my trunk opened of itself. I lifted the lid. On top of my clothes, next to my father’s Bible and my crossbow, lay the dirk.

Faint with relief, by the yellow light of a creusie lamp I inspected the note.

 

I thank you for the loan. In time I shall make good. B.

 

The paper was quality French. The writing was young and forceful, a cursive italic script, blot-free, its line level as a blue-black horizon. The magnificent initial was a ship in full sail, a veritable galleon of pennants, flourishes and trailing lines. My hand itched to copy.

The dagger’s blade seemed shinier and sharper than before. Not a spot of blood or gristle on it.

I sprawled on my hard pallet and stared at the ceiling. My father’s blade lay on my work table. The oil lamp flickered. The floor still rocked me from the voyage. I blush to write it now, but I was awe-struck at my own life as it sailed into the unknown.

Chapter 2

The Scorch Marks of the Martyrs

I woke feeling older. I had helped steer a two-master through an autumnal gale. I had perhaps given a red-haired boy the means of his liberation, though best not think on that too closely. I had exchanged worldly saws with Captain Wandhaver, and been assured I would not drown though I might hang.

I pouched the dagger and slipped it under my clothes in the dresser. Found a space behind the wainscot for the little crucifix. Stacked paper and writing materials on the scarred table: ruler, pen-knife, travelling ink, quills and calfskin-bound notebook. Elements of Fine Handwriting by Johann Bedansk, a parting gift from kindly Dominie McCall, now sat on the creusie-lamp ledge. My father’s vernacular Bible announced my religious soundness to any visitor.

I looked around. My bunk was as bunks are – ascetic, comfortless, ill-presented, draughty, damp, fit only for students and mice and numerous small things living in the rafters. But it was mine and I liked it well.

 

Miss Whitton, my landlady, looked me up, she looked me down. She shook her head.

‘They will be sending me babes in airms next,’ she said. ‘Will ye grow?’

‘If you feed me richt.’

‘You’ll get your gruel and bread in the morns. Cheese if I like the look of ye, which as yet I doubt. Meat weekly, herring on Fridays, salt cod Tuesday. Sweep the stair, put out yer ain unmentionables. I don’t hold wi wine nor strangers in this hoose.’

I soon learned Miss Whitton abided by Knox’s regulative principle on household and social matters: anything not explicitly sanctioned was forbidden. She was heavy-set, sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued. Her bosom rolled like the sea. She wore a black wool bunnet indoor and out, at all times and seasons. She complained of the wind from the east, the west, south, and particularly hated the north. Naething guid e’er cam frae the north! Drunken Hielanders! Papists!

‘And crazed Anabaptists,’ I suggested.

She glared at me suspiciously, slapped down the gruel. ‘You think I tak in students for my entertainment, laddie? Wi’oot pilgrims or monks, friars, Cathedral and benefices, this toun is broken. We’re skint, the University likewise.’

To call her crabbit would be uncharitable to crabs. ‘Do you have milk?’ I asked after my first spoonful. ‘Honey?’

‘Believe me, laddie, this is not the Promised Land.’

 

She was right about that. Walking into the wide Merkitgait, I was impressed and downcast in equal measure. Many of the houses were fine ashlar stone, windowed generously, corbelled, and a few even slated. Coats of arms of the gentry, the Council chambers, the grand Market Cross – there had been prosperity here.

But the market itself was poor and shoddy, the booths near-empty. The midden spilled out along the street. Folk looked half-starved. Some stared at the stranger, more averted their eyes. Even in that bitter climate, many went barefoot.

The air smelled of salt, fish guts and peat smoke. I passed the place of executions, by the Market Cross. A man pushing his cart of seaweed took one hand off the shaft to tap his bunnet in respect as he passed, but he did it discreetly, and two older men picking at the midden scowled and spat in his direction. Anyone over a certain age here had seen men die publicly and horribly. Some would have had a hand in those deaths.

I found the fousty shop in Merkitgait that sold scholars’ gowns. A new one hung darkly red in the window, trimmed with ermine, leather-cuffed. Not for me. I pawed through the old gowns, looking for the heaviest, for the wind was nipping. I lifted one to my nose, sniffed. Evidently its last owner had favoured pipe smoking over washing. Another was slick with fish oil, which I knew from my mother was the devil to get out of wool.

I found one that would do. It had been patched at the elbows, the collar was greasy, but the wool was weighty and sound.

‘I hear there are few scholars this year,’ I suggested to the owner waiting hungrily at my side.

He stared at me, torn between contempt and avarice. The latter won. ‘There are mony! Mony, young sir! Mair than ever!’

I looked around the deserted shop, the piles of gowns like crimson tattie-sacks. ‘So I see.’ I made him an offer on the gown. He recoiled as though struck, then came back with three times that. I shook my head, waited.

My father had been a mild, sociable man who liked to be liked, and he negotiated by conciliation. He had become a burgess of Embra because folk liked and trusted him as a merchant and sometime advancer of credit on surety. But I had also witnessed my mother in action, and she was hard as the setts that paved the High Street. Shopkeepers paled as she approached. Booths might as well have put up their shutters.

‘Ah weel.’ I shrugged. ‘I am told the other place is in Southgait. I bid you good day.’

He caught my arm at the door and came down by a third. I went up, a little. He dropped his price again. I shook my head. ‘That is half my fee for Martinmas Term. I need to eat.’

I thanked him for his time, said he had a fine large selection of gowns, and doubtless plenty new students would soon get out of their beds and beat a path to his door. This was, after all, their last day to matriculate.

His mouth twitched. ‘Yer no green as you look.’

‘Learning is one thing, sir, business another.’

He did not disagree. We looked at each other, each weighin. . .