Free Hue and Cry by Shirley McKay Page B

to Hew. At daybreak he sent Paul upon a fat grey mare to deliver it to Kenly Green. Hew set off at once, leaving Paul behind to eat his breakfast. He waited only to collect and saddle up his horse.
    ‘Will you take him back, then?’ asked the groom.
    ‘Thank you, no, I mean to keep him.’
    ‘Sir,’ the groom lowered his voice, ‘that horse has had a hard life, though he’s sleek and healthy now. Sometimes, when a horse has been ill used it makes him stupid. Yon’s a useless horse. It can’t be helped.’
    ‘Might not kindness mend him?’ Hew said softly.
    ‘No, sir. Take him back.’
    ‘Nonetheless . . .’ Hew slipped the halter over his arm and led the horse out of the yard. He did not wish to mount in front of the groom. The stable lad stared after him.
    ‘Why’d he buy the shit horse?’ he wondered aloud.
    ‘Whisht,’ the groom told him sternly. ‘He’s your master’s son.’
    ‘But why would he keep it?’ persisted the boy.
    The groom shrugged. ‘Soft in the head,’ he conceded, ‘doubtless due to being schooled in France.’
    * * *
    ‘Nicholas is charged with sodomie and slaughter,’ Doctor Locke said tersely. He splashed his face with a jug of cold water and spat out the dregs. Hew stared at him in disbelief. ‘It’s madness, Giles. I lived with him for four years at St Leonard’s. We shared a bed. If he lusted after boys, I would have known.’
    They were standing in the turret, where they were not overlooked. Still Giles had fastened and bolted the door. Hew had left Dun Scottis in the street below. He found a boy to hold him, for payment of two shillings and another kept on promise. The first lad he approached had refused. ‘Shit Scottis? Not likely!’ did not augur well. But the next boy, though small, had proved willing, and Hew had accepted his offer, with more pressing things on his mind.
    Giles was explaining: ‘I only report what I heard. The coroner was here this morning to set out the case against him, though he is still too sick to be disturbed. He is supposed to have been in love with Alexander Strachan, and to have killed him in the throes of their unnatural converse.’
    ‘
That
is very likely,’ Hew said dryly. ‘What about the dyer?
    ‘He had wind of their love and was blackmailing Colp. Don’t scowl at me so. I only report what I heard.’
    ‘Is there evidence of this?’ demanded Hew.
    Giles inclined his head. ‘A regent, Robert Black, found incriminating letters in the room he shared with Nicholas.’
    ‘I saw Nicholas take letters,’ Hew admitted reluctantly, ‘from the boy’s room in the Strachan house. He hid them in his clothes.’
    The doctor sighed. ‘It’s possible that they will drop the charge of sodomie, since neither Gilchrist nor the boy’s father is anxious to have it come out. The murders are a different matter.’
    ‘It was Nicholas who found Alexander’s body. But what about the dyer?’ Hew persisted.
    ‘He was drowned in a vat of his own dye. An unpleasant death,’ Giles observed. ‘The lye had stripped away his lungs, like vitriol. Nicholas was found beside him, overcome by fumes. And that is all I know.’
    ‘I should never have left him,’ Hew whispered. ‘This is my fault.’
    Giles regarded him curiously. ‘I cannot see how it was
your
fault,’ he reasoned. ‘But come in and see him. He may be awake.’
    He opened a door on the straight side of the tower room. Hew had not noticed it before.
    ‘It’s really just a closet,’ Giles explained. ‘You may find the air a little stale. Cover your mouth, if you will.’
    On a low pallet mattress Nicholas stirred, wrapped in a damp linen sheet. It smelled like a shroud. He seemed to dream in conversations, shifting and endless, for as he slept he grumbled, frowned and sighed. Hew watched the doctor place a cooling hand upon his pulse.
    ‘He’s coming round. It’s time to draw a little more blood. If you wouldn’t mind holding him up?’
    He flicked open the case of the