It stood with its sagging stone gable facing the street, at the top of one of the long narrow tofts north of the Castle walls and just within the Stablegreen port. Tumbledown thatch lowered over the doorway, a similar building stood just beyond it, and a straggling line of sheds and shacks further along the path must include the lodging Billy Baird had shared with Peg. Beyond the fence at the far end of the toft was a stretch of common ground, and then the foot of the gardens of Vicars’ Alley, where the songmen of St Mungo’s dwelt. There was a sound of women weeping, and two gloomy men standing outside the house. ‘Is this it?’ said Lowrie doubtfully. ‘The sign says it is,’ Gil answered. The younger man looked at the weather-worn board hanging crookedly over the door; just recognisably it depicted a trindle, one of the long candles matched to the donor’s height and coiled into a spiral which were pledged to one saint or another in return for favours granted. ‘They aye make me think of dog-turds,’ he remarked, following his superior along the path.
