Free Friend & Foe by Shirley McKay Page A

strengthened my resolve in asking for your help. I would see justice done.’
    ‘Aye? In what respect?’
    ‘Concerning Patrick Adamson.’
    ‘The archbishop, do you mean?’ Patrick Adamson was archbishop of St Andrews and chancellor of the university. He went by several names, Constance and Constantine among them. It was said he was son to a baxter, a trade of which Hew had had more than his fill.
    Melville jabbed his table knife into a piece of bread, spearing it with cheese. ‘The tulchan ,’ he corrected. ‘For as ye are aware, the bishops have no business in a true reformit kirk.’
    Tulchan was the Gaelic word used by the reformers for the straw-calf bishops, set before the milk-kine of the starveling church. The drip drip drip of milk was creamed off by the lords, while the bishops battened on the splashings from the pail. In Andrew Melville’s kirk, a bishop had no merit more than any other man. Time was when Patrick Adamson had sworn and preached the same, before the Regent Morton offered him the diocese. Then he had changed his tune.
    ‘As you know,’ Andrew went on, ‘I have been at the Assembly. The rumour from the town has left me sorely vexed, for it is said the king will not submit to Gowrie’s governance, nor rest content, for long.’
    ‘I have heard that,’ Hew agreed. He thought back to the last time he had seen the king, a fraught and frightened boy. They want to take my power from me . The boy had not been wrong. He had fallen captive to the earl of Gowrie, whose thrift and prudent government chimed well with Melville’s own. His favourites were dismissed, routed from the court, Arran under house arrest and Lennox fled to France. The king had sworn he was not forced or kept against his will, a hollow proclamation no one had believed.
    ‘His old friends are regrouped,’ Melville now confirmed. ‘Lennox is expected, any day, from France. This regiment will fall. Therefore the kirk is minded to act against the bishops, before they can appeal again to the king’s protection. The archbishop of Glasgow has already been indicted, and called before his brethren. Now the light of scrutiny has turned to Patrick Adamson. He was called to answer to a charge of lechery, of insult to the kirk, and abandoning his flock. He wrote a letter to me, saying he was caught up in his castle, suffering from a sickness that he called a fedity, and could not compear. And so at that Assembly I stood up and spoke for him; and his inquisition was put off until another time. Yet even as I pleaded for him, I felt sair ashamed that he should so disgrace us, our kirk and university. I loved him as a brother once, and knew him as a scholar and a righteous man.’
    ‘You took it for falset?’ interpreted Hew.
    ‘Had I taken it for falset, sir, then I should not have sworn to it,’ Melville countered sharply. ‘The truth is I do not know, and that were bad enough. He has kept here to his castle, and does not go abroad, but the reasons may be politick. The word is, he has sent away his surgeons and physicians, and swears he will have none of them, but seeks to cure his malady through dishonest means. Therefore, have I resolved to ask Professor Locke, to sound this sickness out.’
    ‘That,’ said Hew, ‘makes perfect sense.’
    ‘So I hope, sir,’ Andrew nodded, ‘Giles Locke is a fine physician. And his opinion, were it given, might be worthy of respect. But I ken full well that he is no defender of our cause. He maks his feelings felt, rather by abstention than by opposition. I do not fault him for it, for he is a civil and an honest man. But I think it likely that he willdecline the charge. I hoped you might persuade him to it, and come too, as witness, to see justice done.’
    Hew was roused by this. ‘Giles is my friend and brother,’ he defended, ‘I trust him with my life. And you may be assured that he will tell you . . .’ straight , he was about to say, but Giles’ diagnoses were the convoluted