‘Need your servant stay?’ĭoctor Locke considered this. A caudle, Paul! What ails you, sir, that you consult so far from home? Are there surgeons none across the Tay?’ But my servant here will pour you something hot. ‘Sit closer to the fire,’ surrendered Giles at last. The cheeks below their blush were blotched and scabbed. ‘A little fever, aye, a chill about my bones. Giles conceded the advantage with reluctance, while the patient gave a deprecating cough. Open-armed, a gossip chair, well plumped and padded with pillows, placed precisely to capture the last of the light, the full of the warmth of the fire. The stranger had rallied sufficiently, noticed Doctor Locke with sinking heart, to settle in the doctor’s favourite chair. You come across the water, in this season, sir? And I see you have an ague. ‘For pity, though,’ the signs were inauspicious, for the man was on his knees, ‘I have come across the Tay in hope of seeing you.’ ‘I pray you leave your name upon the morrow,’ said the doctor brightly, hope in the ascendant, ‘I have business out of town, and do not consult today.’ ‘Professor Locke,’ the stranger whispered. His cheeks were flushed, and though he stood trembling, Giles hazarded the cause was not the cold. A man perhaps of thirty-five, dressed for the cold and the fashion, a little tight and pinched about the face. For Paul had admitted the stranger and the doctor had observed at once, despite himself, that the man looked sick at heart. I have him here, withal.’īut the protest came too late. ‘I did not think, sir, you would leave him in the cold. Bid him call again tomorrow, if he must.’ He’s sick, for sure, and draggle damp wi’ snow.’ In the midst of this melancholic self-diagnosis – wet and windy, he decided, with a surfeit of black bile – he perceived his servant urging at the door, ‘Do you not hear me, professor? There’s someone here would speak with you.’ For how could a man be sanguine, in this raging wind and cold, without the proper comfort of good meat? In retrospect he thought he would prefer to eat his candle, and for all the light it gave, he might as well. The oiled clumps of seaflesh, tasting of fish, had marked its lowest ebb. The doctor’s belly lurched in recollection. Yesterday, in an attempt to cheer his palate, the servant had roasted a herring gull over the fire. Only Meg could lighten endless days of fish and coax a hint of sweetness from the rankest kale. Five weeks into Lent, and bleak as winter still. A single gull swept from the wall of the castle, circled once and dipped into the salt waves out of sight. From his house on the Castlegait, the physician Giles Locke looked out upon the white-rimmed cliffs, gloomily rubbing his beard. The wind dropping back, as though tired of its game, allowed the snow to settle on the buiths and stalls, where shopkeepers hurried to withdraw their wares, brushing the flakes from the sills. In St Andrews, it began to snow, soft at first, insistent, blowing white upon the market place. Some with a cutting stroke, they nimbly send Some over Lyne, to honour and great place They bandie men like balls, from wall to wall: I doe conceive, I doe not much misse-say.Īll manner chance, are Rackets, wherewithall Where Fate and Fortune daily meet to play, IF in my weake conceit (for selfe disport) He was kind enough to read through parts of the chapter entitled ‘A Game of Chases’ and advise on its complexities. And convinces the juries rather too easily in my opinion.Grateful thanks to Lance St John Butler, who, like Hew, is both a scholar and a player of the game of caich. As indicated above, the criminal part is less interesting as the main investigator unfolds the complicated plot without much of a hint. The book reminds me to some extent of the early Susanna Gregory’s books in that it also involves scholars, teaching well-off students with limited intellectual abilities, while bright but poorer students have to work for the college to make up for their lack of funds. Which could end up with the death penalty, as in thousands of cases. While the style is not always at its best and the crime aspects are somewhat thin, I find the description of the Scottish society of the time (1570’s) fascinating (and hopefully accurate), especially the absolute dominion of the local Church (Kirk) on every aspect of life and the helplessness of women always under the threat of witchcraft accusations. It stayed on a to-read pile by my bed until a few weeks ago when I started reading it and got more and more engrossed in the story. While visiting the Blackwell’s bookstore by the University of Edinburgh last June, I spotted this historical whodunit in the local interest section.
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