Free The Stolen Voice by Pat McIntosh

still grinning. ‘Can you tell me where the rest is? What happened to it?’
    ‘It’s a’ packed up and lying in the corner o my shop,’ said the soutar, turning to go back in. ‘You can tak a look if you want.’
    Rattray’s discarded gear was not copious. Emptying the canvas sack on to the floor, Gil turned over the contents and identified a shirt, a pair of worn hose, one ancient house-shoe, some mismatched table-linen. There was a platter and wooden bowl but no beaker, several spoons of wood or horn, a couple of blackened cooking-crocks which had rubbed soot on everything round them, and two worn blankets padding the bundle.
    ‘He had very little,’ he commented, comparing this collection with the well-appointed houses of his friends among the songmen at Glasgow.
    ‘He’s took the best wi him,’ said Walter eagerly. He had cheered up enormously with Gil’s reassurance, and was almost bouncing beside the heap of goods. ‘See,’ he went on, ‘he had a new blanket, and other four sarks besides that one that was in the wash, and some linen besides, and four bonnie wee metal cups and a wooden one, and a pair o good boots my brither made to him –’
    ‘Boots,’ repeated Gil.
    ‘Stout sewn boots, oxhide wi a double boar’s-hide sole,’ itemized the soutar.
    ‘Aye, and the great socks to go in them that our Mirren knittet,’ contributed Walter. ‘My good-sister’s a fearsome knitter,’ he informed Gil. ‘I’m right glad my maister had a pair of her socks wi him. That’ll keep his feet warm.’
    ‘He’s set off on a journey, hasn’t he, maister?’ said the older Muthill. Gil sat back on his heels and nodded.
    ‘I’d say so,’ he agreed. ‘A long journey, at that. I wonder where he’s gone?’
    *    *    *
    The Bishop was absent from his Cathedral at present, but being on official business Gil had been able to claim lodging for himself and his escort at the Palace. Strolling back across the precinct, he considered what he had learned so far. It hardly seemed to lead him anywhere, other than to more witnesses. The Drummond boy might have confided in his friend, or the fellow Kilgour might know something useful, Rattray appeared to have left willingly for a long journey, and that was the sum of it. Perhaps Canon Drummond could help him, he thought doubtfully, and wondered why he was putting off speaking to the Canon. Was it the fact that, a month after being told his brother had reappeared, Andrew Drummond had still neither visited nor written to his family? Or was it the slight wariness of sub-Dean Belchis’s reference to the man?
    He glanced at the sky. Most of Dunblane would be sitting down to its dinner shortly, and then the quireman and his fellows would be singing Vespers. Best to go and see what was to be had from the Palace buttery, and consider what to do next.
     
    ‘No, you don’t want to talk to Andrew Drummond,’ said John Kilgour. ‘Even if he wasny –’
    ‘We never do, if we can avoid it,’ said one of the other quiremen. ‘He doesny like singers. Mind the way he got across John Rat, all last winter? All because John got before him in the procession at Candlemas.’
    ‘No, he really hates singers,’ agreed another voice.
    ‘Why’s that, then?’ asked Gil innocently, and reached for the nearest jug of ale.
    He had heard Vespers in the Cathedral, standing in the nave while the familiar chants floated through the choir-screen, and then had made himself known to one or two of the choir as they left the vestry. As he had hoped, a friend of Habbie Sim of Glasgow was welcome, the more so when he stopped by the Tower tavern on the way back to Kilgour’s lodging and paid for enough ale for most of the choir for the evening.
    ‘You’ll mind it better than me, Jockie,’ said Kilgour’s neighbour. ‘You were at the sang-schule wi him, were you no?’
    ‘I was, Adam,’ agreed Kilgour. He was a balding, fairish man in his forties, with a light, breathy speaking voice,