Fate and Fortune (30 page)

Hew fell silent then, and became a little thoughtful, in a manner that suggested he no longer wished for company. Nicholas stood back to watch him make his way towards the house. He entered there alone, and barely spoke a word as the servant took his hat, but explored the walls and passages, the cool, familiar contours of the stone, and wall by wall took in the fabrics and the furniture, the turning of the stair, the scent of burning candles, the sweet array of flowers. And presently he came up to the library, where he began to search through Matthew’s books, methodically at first, and then with fierce intent, so that when his friend discovered him, he was buried deep in papers, wrenched out from the shelves and scattered round the room.

‘Dear God! Have you any idea how long it took to arrange those books? If you had told me what you wanted, we might have found it in the catalogue,’ Nicholas objected mildly.

Hew cried out, distraught, ‘There must be something more! I have to know!’

‘What would you know?’ Nicholas asked gently, kindly as he might address a child.

‘Did he plan it all the while?’ demanded Hew. ‘Was I made the puppet, of his last revenge?’

Nicholas was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘Giles thought that Richard brought his end upon himself. It was the sad disorder of a fevered conscience. He willed his own destruction, in his search for peace.’

‘Since he destroyed the manuscript, I can never know,’ Hew answered bleakly.

‘I will tell you what I think,’ Nicholas began. ‘Though I did not know your father well, or long, I knew him in the last months of his life, and helped him with his book. And though I do not like to say so to his son, it was the deadest, dullest sort of book that I have ever seen. If he wrote his secrets there, then rest assured, it was as safe a place to leave them as the grave. And yet, I am convinced, he never was aware of Richard’s guilt. Matthew was a kind and careful man, who looked after Corbie’s family out of pity, nothing more. If he felt regret, it was that he did not take on the case himself, and not because he was complicit in the crime. Your mother’s death and sister’s
sickness
turned him from a path that he well loved, and all his life he mourned its loss, and hoped to see his old ambitions realised in you. His book was an offering to a son, to persuade him to a course a father once had loved and lost. Yet in his heart, he knew that you were never meant for it. Trust me, for I saw him die, and he was not a man with something on his mind. Matthew was a good man, and he loved you well. You must be content with that.’

‘He died,’ Hew whispered wretchedly, ‘and I did not know him.’

‘And perhaps you never will,’ his friend allowed. ‘Yet we may judge a man as much by how he dies, as how he lives. And a good death, in part, is measured not by how we die, but by what we leave behind.’

Hew glanced wildly round the room. ‘Aye, then what is left? Books, land, a country house? What did he leave behind him, after all, of any worth?’

Nicholas said simply, ‘He left his children. He left you.’

On a bright windswept morning in the last week of June, Hew walked to St Andrews by the shore from Kinkell Braes. He stopped at the harbour to look at the boats, before climbing the kirk heugh north of the cathedral and turning into North Street, where he stopped at Giles Locke’s tower. He found his friend in his consulting room.

‘Just in time,’ beamed Giles. ‘I was just about to go back home for dinner. Will you join us?’

‘I have a letter in my pocket here from Laurence Dow,’ Giles remarked, as they turned into the Castlegait. They paused at the corner, looking at the cliffs, where the white gulls dipped and circled, carried on the wind. The doctor pursed his lips. ‘Fish day,’ he remembered sadly. ‘Nonetheless, we have a salmon.’

‘What news from your friend?’ asked Hew.

Giles brought out the letter and put on his spectacles. ‘He sends Meg a receipt for a water for the dropsy, made from nettle tops … the earl of Morton’s head is placed upon a spike outside the tolbooth where the corbies pick it clean …’

Hew shuddered. ‘I thank God I am not there to see it.’

‘
Amen
to that. So are the mighty fallen. Doctor Dow makes good report of Morton’s death. The earl confessed to foreknowledge, but not to the killing of Darnley. I dare say he had blood enough upon his hands; though it were not King Henry’s, yet the king’s undid him. So our pasts are wont to haunt us.’

‘Must we speak of this?’ objected Hew.

‘Ah, pardon, it was badly judged. Then this perhaps is not the time … but I will broach it anyway. I never had much judgement,’ Giles excused himself. ‘I made my report to the burgh council, on the
morbus
gallicus
, you know, and it was well received. Moreover, there have been few cases in the past four weeks. I dare to hope the sickness runs its course. Meanwhile, I have spoken of the role of visitor: I have been asked to take it on here in the town.’

‘That is excellent news!’

‘Which means I may conclude my studies on the grandgore, and apply myself to other, more suspicious deaths. I thought we could begin,’ Giles shot him a look, ‘with the sad case of Jess Reekie. Perhaps you will approve?’

‘I do indeed. Did you say we?’ inquired Hew.

‘That is the other part,’ admitted Giles. ‘I thought that with your knowledge of the law, you were well placed to join me. There is a vacancy at college for a reader in the law. I beg you to consider it, for you might meddle freely in its constitution yet have little obligation to the courts. You might even,’ he said dryly, ‘write a book on it.’

Hew snorted. ‘Meddle! Is that what I do?’

‘You scratch it like a sore,’ his friend affirmed, ‘that you cannot let alone, until you’ve rubbed it raw. In this position, you would have your liberty to catechise the law, and perhaps anon to mend it. Will you take it?’

‘In faith, I might,’ considered Hew. ‘I have a mind to settle. I begin to understand my heart, Giles. I have fled from it too long. And I have gained little from my travels; I have been tossed upon storms, stripped of my rank, buffeted, bloodied and bruised; I have loved and lost, not once, but twice, yet neither woman shared the comfort of her bed with me. I am well glad to be returned among my friends. As to the law, if I can make it speak for those like Jess, who have no voice, I will be well content.’

‘That is what I hoped,’ Giles smiled. ‘In truth you are too loose to travel safely on your own. You want good steady counsel and a wife.’

Hew snorted. ‘And a
wife
? You change your tune!’

‘Not at all,’ insisted Giles, a little piqued. ‘Our brush with William has convinced me that your father’s line must not die out. And since you make so little progress there, Meg and I are trying for a child.’

‘You do not say so, Giles!’ cried Hew. ‘Then your problems are resolved!’

‘Aye, God willing, or else are just begun,’ Giles grinned. ‘And, if I may say so, it is the direct result of that wholesome course of living you dismissed so scornfully.’

‘How so?’ queried Hew. ‘I thought the purpose of that course was to suppress the carnal appetites.’

‘Aye, so it was, at first,’ his friend admitted cheerfully. ‘It came about like this. You know that I embarked upon a course of healthful
exercise
, devised by several learned authors, chief of which was Guglielmo Gratarolo …’

‘Aye,’ said Hew facetiously, ‘you did it by the book.’

Giles gave a little cough. ‘Quite so. And you are aware I worked my way down through these exercises …’

‘To find they did conclude in carnal converse?’

‘Need you be so crude, Hew? Of course they did not. Or that is to say, that happily they did, though that was not the purpose there intended.’

‘Aye, then to the point?’

‘Peace, I come to it … Well, you know, I began with the golf …

‘For which you had no aptitude,’ Hew pointed out. Giles did not rise to this.

‘And then progressed to tennis,’ he continued thoughtfully. ‘Now that you are home, we might perhaps reconsider taking lessons at the caich? For I feel I may have something there that could be nurtured out …’

‘I think it not quite apposite,’ Hew retorted hurriedly, ‘to an expectant father.’

‘Oh! Think you not?’ Giles said, disappointed. ‘I had not heard that. Well, no matter then. I next progressed to the gymnastics, as you know, and yet had not the build for it …’

He paused, preparing his defence, while Hew declined to comment.

‘Well then, the next stage, as to more gentle exercise, was being rowed in boats,’ Giles went on.

‘And being rowed in boats,’ Hew put in feelingly, ‘I do
not
recommend.’

‘Aye, though you must allow your own experiences were singular. According to Gratarolo, being rowed in boats is exercise gentlest and easiest of all others. And yet I find it somewhat jolting to the belly, for such a man as has a hearty appetite.’

‘And you are such a man.’

‘I do confess it freely. Well then, this takes us to the last and gentlest exercise of all, most suited to the aged and infirm, that is healthsome to all parts, and injurious to none.’

‘I cannot think what that might be. I trust it is not swimming?’

‘Good God, man, no!’ Giles started, horrified. ‘But let me read the proper words of the author Gratarolo, here Englished for
convenience
by the gracious Thomas Newton …’

‘Giles, do get on with this,’ urged Hew.

‘In his directions for the health of magistrates and students … what was that? Quite so.’ Giles turned a little pinker as he reached his climax.

‘I have the passage here about, in my pocket, “…
fricasies and
rubbings
, soft and hard. For fricasies and rubbings nourisheth and comfort the whole body …” to which end he most poignantly instructs, “before thou arise out of thy bed, either to rub or else
make
some body else to rub
… thy back, breast and belly softly, and thy arms and legs hardily and strongly” … and so you catch his drift. Now Meg was most obliging in assisting with this exercise … wherefore you understand,’ Giles gave another cough, ‘I found my previous shyness was completely overcome. But you are laughing at me, Hew, I must protest!’

‘In truth,’ Hew said fondly, ‘I do not laugh at you, but at the joyful outcome of this tale. Dear Giles! I am so very glad.’

‘Well,’ his friend replied gruffly. ‘I allow, I felt well satisfied. And since I have no further use for these exertions, I shall lend the book to you. It may keep you out of trouble for a while.’

Shirley McKay was born in Tynemouth but now lives with her family in Fife. At the age of fifteen she won the Young Observer playwriting competition, her play being performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. She went on to study English and Linguistics at the University of St Andrews before attending Durham University for postgraduate study in Romantic and seventeenth-century prose. An early treatment for her first novel was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger. The book was published as
Hue & Cry
in 2009.