The Royal Burgh

by Veerapen, Steven

  ‘We have been asked,’ said Danforth, sighing, ‘to look in to the lady’s death, and to discover, if we can, the fellow who slew her.’

  ‘Asked, sir? By whom?’

  ‘By Provost Cochran,’ said Martin. ‘He … uh … esteems our connection with the Cardinal and our talents.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Danforth. ‘Tell me, Mr McTavish, were the gentlemen staying here last night Mr Furay and his man, Taylor?’

  A sudden noise made them all jump – the sound of beer mugs being slammed on a table in the private rooms behind the bar. ‘Will you keep your peace, hen?’ McTavish called out in his modified whisper. ‘You’ll disturb the Cardinal’s gentlemen.’

  ‘Well,’ said Martin. ‘Was Walter Furay here?’

  ‘Indeed, sir, indeed. It was he and his servant.’ McTavish held up his white hands in a gesture of defeat.

  ‘Why would the man stay here when his home is across the Hiegait? Was his late wife that much a shrew?’

  ‘I can’t say, sir, I don’t pry. A man’s business and his conduct with his wife are his own.’

  ‘His conduct with his wife?’ Danforth’s eyes turned sharp. ‘You think there was some trouble in relations between the Furays?’ McTavish said nothing, his beady eyes meeting Danforth’s without expression. There was something unsettling in the blank stare.

  ‘Did Mr Furay lodge here often?’ asked Martin, as though the thought had suddenly occurred.

  ‘He lodged here when it suited him.’ McTavish’s voice came so quietly that Danforth had to lean in to hear him.

  ‘How often was that?’

  ‘Oh, let me think … it would be in the book, I dare say, though I’d rather not fetch the book.’

  ‘It might help us,’ said Danforth.

  ‘Two nights out of the week? Perhaps three? It varied, sir. He would come here oftentimes, after perhaps some disagreement, and then not at all for a week or more. Or yet it may be that his business brought him home late, and he didn’t care to trouble or awaken Mistress Furay by it.’

  ‘That is a possibility. He did not speak of what business took him from his wife, or of any unhappiness that ever flared between them?’

  ‘Of course not, sir. Why should he tell me? I board guests, sir, I simply offer them a bed. I don’t ask questions, don’t pry. This isn’t the trade for it. Can you foresee, sir, how it might go if I requested the business of every ambassador or emissary who honours us with his presence when he attends on the great folk up in the castle?’

  ‘No. Perhaps not.’

  ‘Shall there be anything else?’

  ‘No.’ Danforth began to turn, then stopped. ‘Yes. Mr Furay – did he pay you?’

  ‘Mr Furay pays on credit, sir, as you’ll allow a burgess might.’

  ‘I see. And you say you heard this strange news this morning, sir?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Yet the husband has only now crossed the Hiegait to discover the truth of it.’

  ‘Mr Furay sleeps late.’ McTavish’s expression had hardened. ‘I did not like to wake the man with such fearful news. Would you?’

  ‘I suppose not. And I suppose he did not leave the inn at any point during the night?’

  ‘I can’t say, sir. Mistress Scott!’ This time the woman appeared from the back, glaring first at her husband and then his visitors. ‘Gentlemen here wishing to know if Mr Furay left the inn in the night. I can’t say as he did, as I’ve told them. Can you say otherwise?’

  ‘No,’ she scowled, before turning and shuffling back into what appeared to be her own private misery.

  ‘Thank you, Mr McTavish. You have been most helpful,’ said Danforth, drawing his eyes from the door through to the private quarters and back to his host.

  ‘My pleasure, sir. You mark me, though, the murderer will have flown abroad, or else clambered under some rock to hide.’ He bowed them out, resuming his infuriating humming. Some rock, thought Danforth. Like the great rock which stood guard over the whole burgh.

  ‘You treated that old fellow a wee bit lightly,’ said Martin when they were back out in the street.

  ‘Did I, Arnaud?’

  ‘Aye, I’d say so. I find it passing strange that Mr Furay slept across the Hiegait from his wife and yet didn’t learn of her death until now, when the whole burgh was shouting of it, and his even host aware of the news.’

  ‘It might yet be as he said. The married folk are unhappy and sleep apart; he profits by their disharmony; and he fears to wake the man with news of his wife’s murder. And Arnaud,’ he added, ‘I am mindful that your mother lives in this burgh. Until we discover for certain the cause and nature of these strange events, we should accuse no man of anything. It will only be to Mistress Geddes’ discredit.’

  Martin nodded gravely. They crossed the Hiegait to recover their horses. Here and there people stood gathered in little knots, occasionally casting glances up at the Furay house. Always, it seemed, people developed a fascination with murders and the places in which they occurred. Even if Mr McTavish remained tight-lipped, Furay and his wife’s apparent enmity would become public property, chewed over at the market cross and debated across every dining table in Stirling.

  ‘Speaking of my mother,’ said Martin, kicking idly at a bit of broken wood wedged in the mud, ‘I think that we should go home. We’ve missed dinner.’ Danforth’s stomach sounded an eager agreement.

  ‘Yes. Mistress Geddes shall have some answers and we shall have something to eat.’

  8

  Alison had held off dinner until their return. They ate again in the great hall, the servants present, though no one much inclined to speaking. Afterwards, Mistress Wilson left them with wine in the solar. The old woman had taken the news worse than her mistress and wept openly whilst she served them their refreshments and up until she left them.

  ‘What news?’ Danforth was pleasantly surprised by Alison’s restraint. She must have been burning to ask the question since they had arrived back from the burgh but had waited to do so until they were in the proper place for private discussion.

  ‘It’s true that your friend is dead, maman. Slain.’ Alison only nodded, before taking a drink and dabbing gingerly at her lips.

  ‘Yet the Provost has put his trust in us, Mistress Geddes. He allows that we might find a solution to this crime.’

  ‘Do you think that’s going to be likely? After all the hours that have passed, in a burgh of near to a thousand? I mean, can you do it, boys?’

  ‘I should say no, in the usual way of things,’ said Danforth, gazing down at the liquid in his own cup. ‘But this matter strikes me as most unusual. I think the woman must have been killed by one known to her, or else he could not have come to be in her home. Did she have any kin in the burgh?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But then again, I can’t really say she had any outside it. As I said, she always seemed to me to be alone in the world, friendless. No support.’

  ‘Her relations with her servants – were they good?’

  ‘She only kept one girl, and I think only during the day. The husband has a man, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Danforth. ‘That struck me as a strange thing. A woman such as she seemed the kind desirous of a great household. It is odd for wealthy persons to keep so few to serve them. It suggests that the gentleman of the household carries some secrets he does not wish widely known.’

  ‘Hold on, Simon,’ said Martin. ‘You only have the one woman in your house and had to have your arm twisted to take on a boy. I only keep a single steward. Are we hiding great secrets?’

  ‘We do not have wives.’ Danforth pouted. He fancied himself an exception to general rules. His was a solitary life, and he did not seek to present himself to the world as a wealthy host. ‘We have the Cardinal’s lower servants to attend us should we require it. The serving girl said Mistress Furay was good. Did she well treat her, mistress?’

  ‘I don’t know, to be honest,’ said Alison. ‘
I hardly ever saw them together. She’d visit me more than I ever visited her. She didn’t seem to want me in her house. But I think yes. She treated the girl well. She always wanted to be thought of as a good mistress. Kind, you know, like a great lady. She watched how I spoke with Wilson and the others. I don’t mean to sound … well, haughty, but I really think she wanted to learn from me, though the Lord knows I’m nothing great.’

  ‘I see.’ He hesitated. He knew it would be up to him to question Alison on a delicate issue – it was certain that her son would not wish to do it himself. ‘Mistress Geddes,’ he said, after a gulp, ‘I feel I must ask you if you can think of any gentleman who might have … have had some friendship with the late Mistress Furay. Perhaps some gentleman she would have preferred the world not to know of, and yet signalled to you by some privy means. A …’ He bit his cheeks, trying to find the right words.

  ‘What my modest friend wishes to know, maman,’ said Martin, ‘is if Madeleine Furay had a lover. If she was at it with some fellow in the burgh in secret.’ Danforth looked down again, but he nodded. Alison cast a solemn look at her son and his friend. Tears stood out in her eyes, but they didn’t flow.

  ‘If Madeleine had a lover, she never spoke to me of him. And that’s the kind of thing we women talk about. I admit that she didn’t seem to bear any great love for her husband – and for that I’m surely not going to fault her – but she never mentioned any other man in her life. No, if Madeleine had a secret lover, he dwelled in the shadows of her heart. Yet,’ she said, her brow furrowing, ‘any such fellow must’ve been in hell of a high estate, for if there’s one thing that lass loved it was glister. In faith, only a man of good stock or repute would have done for her.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ chanced Danforth, ‘some fellow from before her marriage. When did she come to the burgh?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alison, leaning forward in thought. Her gown whispered with the movement. ‘Walter Furay brought her as his wife around the time the old king lost his sons, if my memory doesn’t play me false, as it often does.’ Danforth counted backwards. Both of King James and Queen Marie’s sons had died on the same day, in 1541. Danforth could remember the date clearly, for the great tragedies of others always struck him to the heart. It was a strange kind of comfort to know that he was not the only one in the world to suffer loss, that he was not alone in grief.

  ‘And so before she arrived, she might have had some previous lover, perhaps in her youth. Do you know of any?’ Martin’s face turned speculative at Danforth’s suggestion. ‘Since,’ he added, a little uncomfortably, ‘these are things you ladies speak of.’

  ‘I can’t say anything of that, Mr Danforth. Madeleine was so full of stories, of strange tales, which grew arms and legs in the telling. I know nothing about her youth, save what she told me: that her family was wealthy, that royal blood flowed through her veins, that her mother had served the old queen.’

  ‘Margaret Tudor?’ The sister of Henry VIII had been Scotland’s queen until her death in 1541. She was reputed to have been an odd and inconstant woman herself. Following the death of her husband, the James IV, at Flodden, the lustful woman had even married the Earl of Angus: Archibald Douglas, who now bedevilled Cardinal Beaton. A shiver ran through Danforth. A political connection would be a great thrill, however unlikely. They had neither seen or heard of any man of high politics since their coming into the royal burgh. The Court, such as it was, had turned its back on Stirling castle whilst Arran commandeered Holyroodhouse and the dowager hid at Linlithgow.

  ‘I suppose.’ Alison fetched a sigh, and the tears began their journey down her face, following the delicate lines that grew from the corners of her eyes. ‘But to tell you the truth I don’t believe there was anything in it. I pretended to believe it all, though. You know, to make her happy.

  ‘There was an awfy melancholy in that poor woman, Mr Danforth, you wouldn’t believe. For all her furs and velvets, for all her love and worship of wealth, she was a just a child in a woman’s body. I felt like a mother to her again, a mother to a daughter, though she was nothing like my own. On market days, do you know what she’d purchase? Basketfuls of bootless rubbish – carved and painted baubles meant to amuse little children. She collected and displayed them like they were crystal. And then she’d stand with the children and laugh and laugh at jugglers, or acrobats, or whatever other cheap entertainments were out and about. All she ever spoke of was her own high standing, and of the burgh’s wealthy men and the nobility that dwelled up in the castle above. To tell the truth I think it was only for money that she married Walter Furay. A place to stay, maybe. Or she fell for his speeches about what a success he was. Listen, please tell me the truth. Did she suffer?’

  Danforth cast his eyes down, seeing only the prominent, staring green eyes and the livid line that crossed the dead woman’s windpipe. All death, he thought, was suffering and terror. None were welcomed into God’s mercy without it. ‘I think she went as peaceably as she might,’ he said. ‘There was no … no beating, no sharp blade to pierce her.’

  ‘Well, whatever sadness she had locked within her, I suppose she’s past it now. It’s a world to be out of, eh?’ Alison took another draught of her wine. She didn’t bother to wipe away her tears. ‘I guess,’ she said through them, ‘if my household and I don’t weep for her, there’s no one who will?’

  They gave over the afternoon and evening to lighter things. Martin was keen to have his mother smiling and merry again, and so invited her to entertain them with her lute. She played all of their favourite songs, and even condescended to let her son and then Danforth lead her in a few dance steps, for which she insisted she was too old. Though Danforth hated dancing, he consented to it for her sake, hoping it might make her feel young and carefree.

  The little candlelit solar rang out with laughter, much of it at Danforth’s expense, all of it good natured. For a while he could even stifle that nagging, cruel feeling that he was a tolerated, pitied interloper. Instead he was part of a family, cherished for himself: no English rebel fallen on hard times and reliant on pity, but a welcome addition to a house that had known loss and sought to be filled with laughter. The Scottish obsession with kith and kin suddenly made sense. Families in Danforth’s adoptive land were composed of anyone who found themselves welcomed into a household. An Englishman having fun in a dead Frenchman’s house in Scotland was thus as welcome as a long-lost son. That was worth laughter. Even if Danforth was welcomed back into the Cardinal’s active service, treated again as a valued and loved servant, he would not lose the Martin house as a second home, nor its folk as his kin.

  Afterwards they retired, Danforth to his warm bed up the flight of stone stairs worn smooth from generations of passing boots, Martin to his narrow cot in a corner of the same room.

  ‘I should like,’ called Danforth into the darkness, ‘to visit the Holy Rude in the morning.’

  ‘Very good. The place’ll bring back memories. I like to see how things change.’

  ‘Do you, Arnaud? Well, you’re a young fellow. Nothing very much can have changed since last you were there.’

  ‘The world’s ever changing, all the time. There’s something else I should like to do on the morrow.’ Danforth said nothing, waiting for him to continue. Taking the silence as his cue, Martin did. ‘It strikes me that Walter Furay, if the rift between him and his wife was deep, might have slept sometimes in the comfort of McTavish’s inn, and sometimes elsewhere.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘So … we might look into the lodging houses in the unhappier part of the burgh.’

  ‘The lower Hiegait? St Mary’s Wynd, perchance?’

  ‘There, or anywhere else that might be found.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Danforth, not wishing to commit himself further. ‘Goodnight to you, Mr Martin.’ He burrowed into the covers, screwing them up about his neck. It had turned cold again. Martin, he suspected, was grasping for another excuse to step into the path of John McKenzie. He slept little, feeling
that he spent as much time thinking as he did sleeping. The strange book swam about his mind, to be chased out by a brass coin, to be followed by Walter Furay’s narrow, ugly face. As always, he tried to file things neatly away, entertaining possibilities and rejecting others. Even the Provost, so happy to turn over the entire matter to them, seemed odd and suspicious. Such thoughts could impede the discovery of a killer as much as they might aid it.

  The fellow truly responsible for Madeleine Furay’s death, he knew, relied upon the suspicions of those charged with investigating it falling upon every man or woman they met. A common humanitas bound people together in doubting every man and woman that crossed their path after a murder. By such means the true culprit could create a great confusion, lurking in the shadows whilst Danforth and Martin scurried down empty wynds. He had to think clearly, to not allow his mind to be clouded or given to strange fancies. Eventually he must have slept.

  They breakfasted early in the morning, eating as much as they could. They didn’t know if they’d be back for dinner. They advised Alison not to hold it back for them. Although she was eager to go to the church and pray for Madeleine with them, her sneezing and streaming nose made them talk her out of it. It was easy sometimes to forget that Martin’s mother was a woman passed middle age. Little colds and fevers could hit her harder than hardier, younger people.

  Again they took the long road from the tower house into the burgh. Flocks of birds wheeled in unison above them as they rode, changing direction wildly and seemingly without cause. At the side of the road the bare trees stabbed their jagged limbs angrily at the sky. It had snowed again during the night, but lightly; only a small dusting lay upon the ground. The cold did not entirely disguise the reek of the Back Raw, whose fleshers were hard at work from dawn.

  The church lay beyond the head of the Hiegait, a low wall encircling it. Often known as the king’s church, it had long had the patronage of the Stewarts. Danforth supposed it ought now to be known as the queen’s church, lying below a dower property of Queen Marie in a kingdom belonging to her baby daughter. There was something gentle about the image. Though Scotland had lost its king, and England, for its heresies, still suffered the mad depredations of Henry VIII, the former seemed, if less secure, somehow to be uniquely blessed. Queen Marie and Queen Mary, thought Danforth, had in their names the ring of a heavenly blessing.