Ayrshire Murders

by E R Dillon

  “I don’t remember that,” he said. He was quite young when he lost his mother, which was why he was closer to his father, who raised him.

  “Ye were barely knee-high to a puppy at the time,” she said with a cackle. “Look at the size of ye now. I knew ye for a Shaw the moment I laid eyes upon ye.” She fastened a steady gaze on him. “Ye have the look of yer father about ye. He were as big as ye are, if not bigger, and as handsome, too.” Her eyes took on a faraway, unfocused look. “He took it hard when she died. I don’t know as I ever heard him laugh after that. She were a gentle woman who never spoke a cross word in all her days, God rest her.”

  Like father, like son, he reflected grimly, to grieve for a beloved mate long after death claimed her. It warmed his heart, though, to hear his mother spoken of with such fondness. “I never really got to know her,” he said. “Father rarely mentioned her.”

  “That’s because he missed her sorely,” she said. “I moved away several years ago and lost touch with him. Is he keeping well?”

  “He’s dead,” Kyle said, more harshly than he intended.

  She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said with sympathy. She tied off the thread and looked around for something sharp with which to cut it. “So, what did ye say brings ye here?”

  He drew his dirk and handed it to her hilt first. “You bought a phial of hemlock from John Logan,” he said. “He would not have sold it to you unless you needed it.”

  She took the dirk and cut the thread with the edge of the blade. “I’m a good age, as ye can see,” she said as she passed the weapon back to him. “I get to hurting at times for no reason. A drop or two of Master John’s tonic helps dull the pain.” She held the garment up to the light to inspect her work. “I reckon this will do it. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

  Kyle walked over to join her in examining the repaired spot. “It’s as fair a mend as I’ve ever seen,” he said. He was still leaning over the old woman’s shoulder when he heard someone with a light tread come into the room.

  “There ye are, Gram,” a familiar voice said. “Oh, I see ye have company.”

  His heart thudded in his chest as he turned to greet Joneta. His welcoming smile faltered at the sight of an infant suckling at her breast. His earlier assumption that the baby belonged to Joneta’s niece, Meg, was apparently erroneous.

  Joneta drew the loose flaps of her unlaced tunic over the exposed portion of her rounded breast to cover it, not out of shame, but for the sake of propriety.

  “I believe ye are already acquainted with my daughter-in-law,” Gram said to Kyle. “She’s come to stay with me for a spell, her and that new grandson of mine.”

  He felt more than a twinge of disappointment at discovering that Joneta was married. Of course, someone as lovely as she was would be, wouldn’t she?

  “Did you travel far to get here?” he said, only to make polite conversation.

  “Not really,” Joneta said.

  “Where did you come from, then?” he said.

  “Down the coast a ways,” Joneta said.

  It was the vagueness of her responses that aroused his interest. Was she being evasive on purpose, or was she in essence telling him that where she lived was none of his business? Before he could press her further, the baby started to cry, and she hastened from the room to tend to its needs.

  “Did ye get what ye came for?” Gram said, watching him closely.

  “I reckon I heard enough,” he said with a wistful glance at the doorway through which Joneta had departed. He bade goodbye to the old woman, who appeared relieved to see him go. He went out the front door into the sunshine beyond.

  He unhooked the gelding’s reins from the rusted nail and was about to climb into the saddle when a matronly woman at the house next door beckoned to him. He recalled seeing her at John’s shop not that long ago.

  He walked over to find out what she wanted, or more likely, what she wanted to tell him. In his experience, gossipy neighbors were always willing to impart what they knew of other people’s business.

  “Good morrow,” he said to her. “Mistress Campbell, isn’t it?”

  “How clever of ye to remember,” she said with smile. She crooked a finger for him to draw nearer, which he did. “Did ye come about the flogging?”

  “What flogging?” he said, baffled.

  Her round face grew serious. “Did ye not know Drew was flogged?”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said. “When did it happen?”

  “Monday afternoon. The Southrons dragged the boy out of the house.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Deforcement was what they told him.”

  “Obstruction of justice?”

  “Nay,” she said. “Resisting arrest, because he refused go quietly with them. They had to knock him on the head to take him away.” She clucked her tongue. “He came back with red stripes all over him, but it was little Meg I felt sorry for. I suspect that Southron had his way with her when she went to see him about freeing her husband.”

  “Who had his way with her?”

  “Captain Sweeney, of course.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?”

  “I saw that poor child’s face whenever she came back,” she said. “She looked terrible upset.” She pursed her lips and frowned in disapproval. “I know it’s an awful thing to say, but Drew was lucky to have such a pretty wife to plead for him. They only applied the lash to his back, instead of cutting off some fingers or a hand or even his ears.”

  Kyle pondered the likelihood of the young couple’s involvement in the murder of the two English soldiers. If what Mistress Campbell told him was true, both had good cause to kill them. It puzzled him, though, why either Drew or Meg would slit their victims’ throats after they were already dead. He waited in silence to hear what else she had to say.

  She shook her head, her countenance sad. “That household has had more than its share of misfortune,” she said. “Take that tragic business with Mistress Joneta. She might only be Meg’s aunt by marriage, but she’s still family.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She buried her husband not a month past, and her with a new baby.”

  “She’s a widow, then?” he said with repressed joy. What he heard next lessened the shame he felt at his elation over the man’s death.

  “Aye,” she said. “It seems he was involved in some way with the rebels, and the Southrons hanged him for it.”

  He noticed that she kept a close eye on him as she spoke, as though to see if he reacted in some particular fashion. Being the master of his face, he composed his countenance to reflect only that of polite interest.

  “Later that same night,” she said, “when Joneta heard how her husband died, she collapsed and gave birth on the spot. She’s been mourning the loss of her man ever since.”

  She leaned close enough for him to detect the smell of wood smoke on her long gray gown. “Another of that same family was killed here in town a few years ago,” she said, her tone confiding. “Raped and murdered, she was, or so the tale goes. The whole family moved up north shortly afterwards. I don’t think the old woman ever got over it. I heard she swore to find the man who did it, if it was the last thing she ever did. Those highland folk are like that, ye know. They never let a wrong get by them.”

  He could not picture Gram, ancient and doddering as she was, enticing either Sweeney or Archer to a clandestine rendezvous in order to kill them. Neither could he see her making her escape from a second-floor tavern window, nor walking to and from the shepherd’s hut in the middle of the night. Although what Mistress Campbell had related to him might contain a grain of truth, it was more than likely tittle-tattle. Still, he would make inquiries to get the facts.

  He thanked her for the information before he rode away on the gelding, glad to be gone from the presence of a nosy woman who meddled in other people’s lives to brighten her own dreary existence.

 
; ****

  He waited until nightfall before returning to Colina’s house. The waning moon barely shed enough light for him to find his way along the dark narrow streets. As he approached the stone wall surrounding the property, he kept an eye out for the porter. Yet when he rode through the open gates, no one stepped from the gatehouse to challenge him.

  A cool breeze rustled the leaves of the trees flanking the lane that led into the property. On reaching the first outbuilding, he dismounted in the shadows and tied the gelding to a nearby shrub. He glanced around as he crossed the open lawn to the front of the house. Not a creature stirred, not even a dog.

  When he raised his hand to knock, Colina, who must have been watching for him, suddenly opened the door.

  Her unbound hair hung like a curtain over the shoulders of her loose dressing gown, giving him the impression she was preparing to retire for the night. The hall behind her was dark, and she put a finger to her lips to warn him to silence.

  “What ye seek is in Neyll’s room,” she said. “His window looks out from the rear of the house over the porch.” Without any further explanation, she shut the door in his face.

  An oath of incredulity exploded from his lips. Did she expect him, a man of law, to break into the house to steal the tax roll from Neyll’s room? He turned on his heel and started back across the lawn.

  He was halfway to where the gelding was tied when he began to have second thoughts about leaving the document behind. Perhaps taking it was not such a bad idea after all. Otherwise, he might have to wait weeks or even months for its completion. If his luck held after he “borrowed” it, he might be able to copy the information he wanted and return the roll before it was missed.

  He turned around and headed for the back of the house to ascertain the difficulty of the task that lay before him.

  The rear of the dwelling emerged from the gloom like a huge white edifice. Neyll’s window, among others, was shuttered and dark. There was an outcrop of roof directly below it, which made access possible, but not necessarily easy.

  He glanced around to make sure he was alone before he shinnied up one of the porch columns. His boots found little purchase on the slick vertical post, and the noise he made heaving himself up onto the roof was enough draw the attention of every servant in the house. To his relief, no one came to investigate, since it would have been embarrassing for him to explain what he was doing on the roof.

  He crept along the wooden shingles to the window in question. When he tried to open the shutters, he discovered they were locked from the inside. He drew his dirk to jimmy the latch but paused at the sound of someone moving about the room.

  He looked between the slats of one of the shutters and saw Neyll inside lighting a lamp. He watched as the man sat at a desk to make a series of entries on a document, which he assumed was the tax roll. There was nothing for him to do but wait until Neyll withdrew from the room, at which time he could force the latch without being heard.

  He sat on the shingles with his back to the window and pulled his cloak around him against the cool night air. He leaned his head against the shutter to listen for any sound that would indicate Neyll was exiting the room.

  An hour later, judging by the position of the rising moon, he heard the scrape of boots on a wood floor coming from within. He turned around to peer between the slats, only to observe Neyll admitting into the room a visitor, whom he recognized as the grim-faced marshal from the garrison. He put his ear against the shutter to eavesdrop on their conversation, thinking that was what Colina meant for him to do, since she must have known he would be unable to enter the premises because of Neyll’s presence.

  He strained to hear, but the two men spoke in low tones. After a short while, the thread of light coming through the slats went dim and the voices in the room ceased.

  He waited for a long moment before putting his eye to the crack between the slats to make sure the room was empty.

  It was not.

  The two men lay in bed together, their clothing in a heap on the floor. Even in the subdued lighting, he could clearly see what they were doing.

  Chapter 13

  Kyle descended from the porch roof as quietly as he could manage, leaving Neyll and the rotund English marshal entwined in a passionate embrace. There were occasions during his service as a mercenary when sexual liaisons between males were spoken of in hushed tones. Yet in all those years, he never actually witnessed such an act with his own eyes.

  He walked as quickly as he could in the faint moonlight to where the gelding stood behind the farthest outbuilding, with a vision burned into his brain of the two naked men groping each other’s private parts. It would be a long time before he could look either man in the eye without conjuring up that unholy image.

  As he rode back to the garrison, his thoughts turned to Colina, who, in his opinion, was no fool. She undoubtedly suspected that her brother’s undue prosperity came from smuggling or some other semi-respectable enterprise, which, perhaps in her mind, explained how he could run such a large property on a clerk’s paltry wage.

  She might truly believe that her brother’s activities, although illegal, affected only prosperous merchants who likely indulged in similar illicit activities, and because of that, she declined to turn him over to the law. She obviously had no qualms, however, about exposing his sodomistic proclivities, which explained her fervent prayers at St. John’s, no doubt sent heavenward on behalf of her brother’s lost soul.

  Rather than risk catching another glimpse of Neyll and the marshal in flagrante delicto, Kyle decided to make use of the prior year’s tax roll, which was more readily accessible, to glean the information he needed.

  On entering the garrison, he stabled the gelding before going into the sheriff’s office to turn in for the night.

  ****

  Kyle woke early on Saturday. He put his leather scale armor on over his clothes before he stepped outside. The morning was clear and radiant, without a cloud in sight to mar the azure sky. He walked across the empty courtyard to the main hall, where English soldiers, armed and ready for a day’s work, hunched over their food and chatted among themselves.

  He spotted Upton on the far side of the hall sharing a table with Turnbull and Vinewood. He took a barley flatbread from the community wicker basket and poured ale from a pottery jug into a cracked clay mug before going over to join them.

  “Good morrow,” he said as he settled on the bench across from the three of them. “Turnbull, you are looking better than the last time I saw you. Are you now fit for duty?”

  “As fit as can be,” Turnbull said with a nod.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Kyle said. He bit off a chunk of leathery bread and gnawed on it for a moment. “There’s something I’d like for you to do,” he said to Upton. “Today, if possible.”

  Upton pushed aside his empty mug and propped his elbows on the table. “I’m at your service.”

  “I want you to ride out to Harefoot Law,” Kyle said, “to make inquiries as to Tullick’s whereabouts.” He related the events leading up to Tullick’s escape.

  “Might he be the one who shot the arrow at us in the woods the other day?” Upton said.

  Kyle took a sip from his mug. “I can’t say for sure,” he said. “However, he had good reason to want to keep us from snooping around where Abigail was killed.”

  “What makes you think the villagers will even talk to an English soldier?” Upton said.

  “They now know that Tullick murdered Abigail,” Kyle said. “They want him punished for it, so they might be more willing to cooperate with you. Take Turnbull and Vinewood along in case you do run across him.”

  Upton exchanged a glance and a nod with Vinewood and Turnbull. “We’ll ride out there this morning.”

  “I would take care of it myself, but I’m planning to head in the other direction,” Kyle said.

  “Where are you bound?”

  “For the port of Leith.”

  “I didn’t think the coun
t was well enough to travel.”

  “He isn’t. I’m going on my own.”

  “While you’re up there, you might want to take a look at the cargo manifests of outgoing vessels. I suspect you’ll find some interesting items listed on them.”

  “I see you’ve given the matter some thought.”

  “It’s the only logical port to use to ship stolen goods out of the country,” Upton said.

  Kyle frowned, aware that once again he had underestimated the young man. Just because Upton was English did not mean that he approved of his own countrymen’s harsh treatment of the Scottish folk in general, or that he endorsed the raids or the raiders in particular.

  “Tell no one where I am going, especially Sir Percy,” he said. “If he hears of it, he may send you to fetch me back before I can finish my business.”

  He ate the rest of his bread and washed it down with a swig of lukewarm ale. “I’ll see you in a fortnight, God willing,” he said, swinging his legs over the bench.

  Before he left the main hall, he picked up a couple of loaves and a chunk of cheese to take with him on his journey. He crossed the courtyard to the sheriff’s office, where he wrapped the food in a cloth and tucked it, along with a change of clothes, into his saddle roll. He filled a skin bottle with water from the well, after which he went to the stable to saddle the gelding.

  He secured his saddle roll behind the cantle and rode from the garrison. On the way out of town, he passed by John’s shop to talk to him about Colina. The front door was locked, and the mule and the battered leather saddle in the back were gone, so he continued on his way.

  ****

  The northeast road stretched out before him like a white thread through the open expanse of green fields and rolling grasslands. Trees were sparse and grew well back from the roadway. There were few houses along the way, and even fewer villages.

  Kyle rode without haste, enjoying the warm sunshine and the cooling breeze. Not a single cloud marred the blue sky above him. If the weather held, the journey to Leith should take no more than four days. He stuck to the main road, passing dog carts, ox-drawn wagons, and travelers on foot along the way.