Queen & Country (17 page)

‘I thought,' continued Giles, ‘to have the dozen pictures painted onto wood, and underneath the letters to be set in gold, in Latin as you see. To encourage the students to look to the morals, and take them to heart, I was thinking about a competition to turn the verses
into Scots, with a prize for the most pleasing, apt and pithy one. What do you think?'

‘I think it is an excellent idea. One word of advice,' said Hew, ‘do not include the one on nicknames for professors, for fear they knock us openly, and not behind our backs. What is apt and pithy often brings offence.'

‘I had foreseen that trap, and shall not fall for it. In seriousness, Hew, since you know the book, what pictures do you recommend?'

Hew considered this. ‘Your six vices, and virtues, will do well enough. But I should have thought, the most apt of all of them, was this one, on art assisting nature:
ars naturam adiuvans
. It is the most affecting lesson to your students of philosophy. And if what is wanted is a tribute to your own effect with Meg's, of helping to assuage the terror of the plague, nothing were more apt. See.'

He showed his friend the picture in the book, of Hermes, the winged messenger, sitting on a cube, to represent the arts, while Fortune, blindfold, rested on her sphere, the world she turned to chance. Behind them raged a storm at sea.

Ut sphaerae Fortuna, cubo sic insidet Hermes:
Artibus hic variis, casibus illa praeest.
Adversus vim Fortunae est ars facta: sed artis
Cum Fortuna mala est, saepe requirit opem.
Disce bonas artes igitur studiosa iuventus,
Quae certae secum commoda sortis habent
.

‘As Fortune rests on her sphere, so Hermes sits on his cube. He presides over the arts; she over the varied chances of life. Art was developed to counteract the effect of Fortune, but when Fortune is bad it often needs the assistance of Art. Therefore, studious youths, learn good arts, which bring with them the benefits of an outcome not subject to chance,' translated Hew.

‘That is perfect, and I thank you,' Giles exclaimed. ‘With a little tweak – Fortune may require a more modest form of dress, while
Hermes wants a cover, for his manly breast – this will be our centrepiece. I shall take it to the painter right away, so that he can make a start on it.'

‘Is the skull for him also?' asked Hew.

‘Indeed. It is a property, with which I mean to sit. The mark of my trade, and also, of course, of that ultimate end that must come to us all,
memento mori, dicat,'
answered Giles.

It brought to mind the porter's tribute at the gate, ‘So would he remain here, body and soul', and Hew could not help but ask, ‘It is not Bartie, is it?'

The doctor blinked at him. ‘Professor Groat? Bless my soul! You have a peculiar fondness for the grotesque, and very little grasp of the process of decay. Did you never see a corpse that was left out on a gibbet? This skull I should say is one hundred years old. Perhaps fifty, at least. I had it from – well, no matter where I had it; it is brought here for the painter, to put into his picture, as an ever present emblem of the permanence of death. I have no doubt that the provost will expose the work to scrutiny, and will want to know where his gift is spent. In truth, I have no time for it. It is difficult enough that the work is done in the middle of our most exacting term. The painter says it is the only time he has. It is not convenient. The ground that we lost when the college was closed, and the loss of poor Bartie and one of our regents, who left us last summer and was not replaced, leaves us sorely taxed to see our students through to their examination. Hew, there are two things I wanted to ask you. I notice you said, “For fear they knock
us
openly”. Confess, in your heart, you are one of us still. Will you come back, and help us awhile?'

‘Gladly,' said Hew, ‘if I can. First I must go and make peace with the king, and swear my allegiance at court. God willing then, I shall serve to your cause.'

Giles nodded. ‘When will you go?'

‘Once Frances is settled. Which may be some time.' Hew pushed that thought from his mind. ‘But you said there were two things. What was the second?'

Chapter 11

An Efficient Cause

The doctor's face darkened. ‘That is more difficult. You have heard that I stayed here during the peste. The college was evacuated, as you are aware. Yet I was not alone. There was one that remained with me – Bartie besides – who would not be deterred, for all my remonstrations, promises, and threats. And the truth is, what I faced then wrung me limp and dry. You will smile, I doubt, to look upon me, here, still as large as life, and in no way dwindled from my former self, but I am shrunken, Hew. I could not have endured that horror on my own.'

Nothing that he said there tempted Hew to smile. He saw how the plague had diminished Giles, ravaged him in spirit, if not in the flesh.

‘Someone washed and cooked for me, brought me to my bed, when I was exhausted, and where the path was pitiless, strengthened my resolve. And since he was your pupil too, I know you will remember him. His name is Roger Cunningham,' Giles said.

Roger. Richard's son. Hew had not forgotten what the boy had done. He could not come into that place without harking, and attending to it, however far he had let it slip back from his mind.
That was a wicked boy
, the tainted queen had said.

‘Richard's son, indeed,' Giles said. ‘The peste is borne by lice, battened on the blood of the dying and the dead. When the corpses are brought to the carts, the lice leave their bodies in waves, rising to the surface as the flesh grows cool. Meg sent camphor, rosemary, peppermint and sage, distilled into a water, repellent to the lice, to help to keep us safe. And Roger did not spare in coming to the sick. He went freely among the dying and the dead, assisting the clengars
who brought the bodies out. He caught the plague himself, yet did not die from it. And in the throes of that sickness, he confessed to me, and heartily repented, that he had conspired to trick, and hurt you, Hew.'

‘His brother, too,' Hew said.

The doctor stared at him. ‘Do you say you knew?'

‘I did not ken, at first. I knew that Roger blamed me for his father's death, and did not fault him then. I felt I owed a debt to him. That debt has been paid. By the time I understood the malice they had meant, the brothers had gone home. And, when they returned, I was gone myself.'

‘Please tell me, Roger had no hand in those events that took you from us. He said he wrote a letter, with intent to do you harm, but that he did not think his letter had effect. He did not tell me what was in it. But he is ashamed of it, bitterly ashamed.'

‘The letter that he wrote played no part in it,' said Hew. Events had swept him up, and Roger's infant fantasies had been incidental. ‘He was just a bairn. I think he was encouraged in it, by his brother James. Where is the brother now?'

Giles said, ‘That is a strange and sad tale. He left St Andrews back in 1584, after those Black Acts that moved against the presbyteries dashed his future hopes of coming to the Kirk. He could not, as he wished, pursue his studies at St Mary's, so he went abroad, to Geneva. There he became so fervent and fanatical, that even the strictest of the Calvinist professors found fault with his doctrine, and he was expelled. He travelled further north, and gathers round him acolytes most perverse and cruel, who do not conform to any Christian church. He has broken with his brother, and his mother too.'

‘Did Roger tell you that?' Hew asked. For he was not disposed to take this word on trust. The doctor shook his head. ‘I wrote to his mother, when he fell ill. Eleanor telt me. She was distraught. She lost her husband, as you know, in the most wretched circumstances. Now her eldest child. He wrote to her, vile words, of hateful accusation, calling her, her daughter too, a whore. I cannot help but
think, there is a madness there, passing from the father, that infects the son; this cannot be of comfort to her. Her one hope, her bright light, is Roger, who was once the cause of her dismay. For the progress he has made, his helping with the plague, she is proud of him. I did not have the heart to tell her, what he had confessed to me. Understand me Hew, I do not tell you this to move you to my will, but to acquaint you with the facts. I am well aware the boy has done you ill, and should be punished for it. If I had known, then, what he had done, with what evil intent he came to this college, I should have dismissed him at once. I took him in, when he was expelled from St Leonard's, at your own request. We both saw how he blossomed here and how he has a gift for natural philosophy. There can be no doubt – has never been a doubt – that he has the makings of a fine physician. Yet if he had no moral sense, that would be nothing worth, and I would cast him off, without a second glance. I cannot think that the confession that I heard, on what he believed to be his own deathbed, was not truly repentant. Nor could I discount that time he spent with me, attending to the sick, careless of the risk, the danger to his life. Therefore, I have kept him here, and he has understood whatever lies ahead for him must depend on you. He is one of those preparing to graduate this spring, if you will allow him to proceed to the examination.'

‘Then send him in to me,' Hew said, ‘and I will hear him speak. Whatever is the outcome, he will not depart unheard.'

Roger was a strange and uncouth boy. He had a fascination with the workings of the flesh, with the nature of things, both living and dead, that under Giles Locke had been nurtured, and nourished. His interests could be harnessed to the good, or put to evil ends. What purpose could there be in severing the influence that kept him straight and sound, to lease him out disconsolate and raging at the world? If God intended Roger to be saved, then Giles Locke was his instrument. For that reason, Hew was willing to forgive, though not prepared to trust.

He had left behind a boy of fourteen, slight as a child. The young man who stood before him in the doctor's chamber looked him in the eye, even overstepped him by an inch or two. He was slender still, the willowing of youth or withering of sickness; his gaze was cool and frank, yet when Hew looked back, and did not speak, Roger's eyes dropped low, a late show of humility. ‘I ask you to forgive the failings of a child, and if you will not, I submit to the correction that I have deserved.'

Hew said, ‘Tell me, what you think you did.' He was interested to hear how much the boy would own. For, as he discerned, he had not told the whole of it to Giles.

‘I wrote a letter, with intent to do you harm. The truth is that I blamed you for my father's death, though I know better now. They say I am like him, sir,' the boy replied. It was hard to know how much he cared or meant, for he had stripped all feeling from his tone.

‘You may be like him, or not, as you choose.'

Roger said, ‘I do not choose.' A statement that was bold in its ambivalence.

Hew responded with, ‘You and your brother contrived of the trick with the hawthorn, that neither of you could effect alone. And the purpose of it was to draw me in; you knew that such a riddle would be irresistible. So great a hatred you conceived, that you conspired to do me harm. Where is your brother now?'

There was no question in Hew's mind that the two had worked together; he was interested to know which was the moving mind. Roger, filled with rage and the passion of a child? Or the older, calmer brother, as a more malignant force?

‘I cannot tell you, sir. For, we do not speak. As far I have heard, he is still abroad, and stringent and fanatical in his beliefs. He distils a kind of hatred, fixed upon his God, and he has broken with my mother and myself, damning us to Hell for our affront to his faith.'

‘And what affront is that?'

‘For my mother, that she will not hide herself away, but does her best to live an honest, decent life, and to find hope for my sister; and
for myself,' Roger answered more simply, ‘that I do not believe in God.'

‘For the God that he courts,' supposed Hew.

‘In God, of any sort.'

A sharp glance up at Roger told Hew he was serious. Yet he did not believe it for the world. This cool young sapling still, filled with bluff and posturing, did his best to shock. If Giles Locke caught him at this play, Roger would repent of it. But he was not afraid to try his heresies on Hew. He was an intriguing, and exasperating boy.

‘Stuff. If you do not believe in God, what moved you to confess, when you almost died?'

Roger said, ‘Oh,
that
. That was Professor Locke. I kent that he believed in me, and thought that he should know what kind of man I was. What did ye think? I sought to save my soul? Are ye so sure, that I have one?'

‘You bicker like a bairn, and are not worth the trouble of a rational argument,' Hew dismissed this game. ‘The letter that ye wrote, did your brother think of that?'

Roger shook his head. ‘That was my idea. And I was sorry for it, after it was done. My comfort was in that it did not do you harm. It did not, did it, sir?' His pleading seemed to show a genuine remorse.

‘No harm to me, perhaps. But you cast a stain upon a woman's reputation, and caused suspicion in a husband, when his wife was blameless, and that is a transgression harder to forgive.'

Roger had sent his letter to the brother of the crownar. He had told Robert Wood that his wife Clare Buchanan
stirred the pot
with Hew. Robert saw at once it was a schoolboy's prank. But that did not affect his treatment of his wife, who had had to suffer for it.

The boy was startled then. For he had not known that Hew had found him out. And Hew was unkind enough to take a fleeting pleasure in it.

‘How did you ken?' Roger asked.

‘Andro Wood told me. He had the letter. It did not take a moment to guess it was you.'

‘Yet you did not tell him my name?' The boy was nervous now. And if he was afeart of Andrew Wood, his instincts were impeccable. ‘I don't know what to say,' he said, ‘but that I am sorry for the things I did.'