‘I came to bring her sugar,’ she grew a little more confident. ‘I heard of her loss.’
‘I thank you for your kindness, but my mother will not see you.’ He wondered why she had not come earlier; nor had she come when his father died. ‘She’s distracted, barely speaks.’ He softened unexpectedly, ‘The bairns will like the sugar, though. I’ll tell her that you called.’
‘Well then, where’s your sister?’ she said desperately.
‘She’s run wild. I know not where she goes, without her dad to hold her here. Sometimes she’ll be gone for days. My mother does not care.’
‘Wee Jennie? She’s a good girl.’
A wilful child. She remembered the disturbance in the kirk, the stubborn features streaked with tears.
‘She used to be. Now when the weans come greetin, she’s nowhere to be found.’
‘She wants a mother,’ Agnes thought, and felt a prick of pity. ‘I might help,’ she pleaded.
‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘I’ve work to do. But you may try my mother if you will. And if you mak her mind her bairns, I’ll be obliged to you.’
Agnes could not stop the shivering. It was cold from the water, she knew, and a dark and giddy sickness that had crept upon her. It was fear. She did not want to see the dyer’s wife. Yet she made herself go on. She stepped into the house and called out brightly, gulping down the bile, ‘Why Janet, it is Agnes, Agnes Ford has come to call on you. You’ll get up from your bed and sit with me?’
A child was crying listlessly. Agnes found the infant, Jennie’s smallest sister, sitting in a box beside the fire. She scooped her up into her arms and felt her scrabble damply at her breast. Resolutely, she pulled up a stool and settled herself upon it, with the infant on her lap. She opened the paper of sugar, and scraped off a piece with her fingertips. The child sucked greedily.
‘Janet,’ Agnes called again, ‘you maun nurse your bairn, she’s wet and famished. Here, it’s Agnes, brought you sugar loaf. Come, see.’
‘My bairn is dead.’ The curtains parted slowly.
Agnes saw the thin face streaked with dirt, for all its cares still curious. She felt a coldness grip her bowel. But brightly she said, ‘Aye, and I am sorry for it. But you have other bairns. Wee Bessie, is it, damp, she wants her mammie too.’
‘Why have you come?’ Janet stared at her. She pulled herself up to her knees to peer through the curtain. The drapes framed her face like a shroud.
‘I have heard you are unwell, and you do not come to kirk. You have no husband now, and as your friend, I come to help you.’
‘He died a while back,’ Janet said reasonably, ‘and I had his bairn, and that too has died. What of it, though? Why would you come?’
Agnes shifted in her chair. Why would she? It was easy, after all, to stay away. She swallowed nervously. ‘To comfort your loss. I hear your daughter’s gone.’
‘Jennie? She’ll be back. For all the use she is.’
‘Well,’ Agnes pointed out, ‘she might mind the weans.’
‘Aye, once she would. She’s like her brother James and thinks herself too grand. For all they’re dyer’s bairns. They’ll die like their da, with his filth on their hands.’
Agnes shivered. ‘Janet, I am sorry for your loss. But I need to talk to you about your man.’
The child became restless again, paddling like a cat against her breast. She twisted her face towards Agnes and attempted a wail. Janet repeated, ‘My husband is dead.’
Agnes set the infant down and gave her the sugar-loaf paper. She clutched it with fat fists and tried to cram the whole into her mouth. Her eyes upon the bairn, Agnes said carefully, ‘He was not a good man. He did hurt to me before he died.’
Janet stiffened. ‘What hurt?’
‘He defiled me,’ said Agnes, barely audible. Janet gave a sigh, and for a moment Agnes thought she almost smiled. When at last she spoke, she seemed resigned to the point of indifference.
‘You say it. It cannot be proved.’
It was as if she had expected something else. Some deeper, some more penetrating hurt. As if the hurt to Agnes irked her, or was of little consequence. ‘What could be deeper?’, Agnes wondered. She persisted, trembling.
‘He had the dyes grained in his hands, that when he took me, left a stain upon my throat and on my breast, and round my wrists a bracelet, bruised in ink. Those are proofs.’
Janet pulled back the curtains completely and looked at her close. She looked at her wrist.
‘I see no such stain,’ she said scornfully.
‘Tis long since rubbed away. I scrubbed it raw. And yet I think you recognise the mark, and here, on my shift, it has not washed clean.’
Janet considered this in silence. Presently she said, ‘A smudge on a smock. A blot on a sleeve. Who would believe this?’
Agnes kept her eyes upon the child, intent in cramming in the loaf and paper lengthways in its mouth. Its cheeks were blotched and sticky.
She said softly, ‘You would, I think.’
‘Believe your slanders? Why?’
Agnes looked at her now. ‘Because you know what sort of man your husband was.’
Janet had turned very pale, ‘And if I do,’ she whispered, ‘why should you ask it? My husband is dead.’
‘He left me with child.’
‘Ah,’ laughed Janet mirthlessly. ‘I lost my child.’
‘And I would lose mine. Forgive me, I have no wish to hurt you. But your husband has done me great wrong. He has forced himself upon me and I bear his child. I have tried to be rid of it. The woman Meg Cullan, who helped you with Henry, gave me seed to bring forth the courses, yet the courses do not flow. I dare not ask for more. In despair, I have tried to shift it with rough work and starving.’
‘That must come hard,’ said Janet, without irony. She showed a little interest. ‘But you have a husband. Might the child be his?’
‘There is the horror of it, for my husband will not deal with me. The child cannot be his.’
‘Well, tis plain enough, if you can’t shift the bairn then pass it as your husband’s. Make him lie with you.’
‘How, when he cannot?’
‘How should I know? Deal with him then as you dealt with my husband,’ Janet said tartly.
‘He dealt with me, as you must know, most cruelly. You cannot think I had encouraged it!’
‘Well,’ Janet softened, ‘I know him well enough to know he would not need encouragement. God knows, I know you well enough, mistress, to know you would not soil yourself to be a dyer’s whore. Aye, you were defylit right enough. And what has it cost you to come here, and sit among the foulness of the hearth, to ruin a dead man’s sons?’
‘Janet, don’t. I have not come to quarrel with you. I want nothing from your sons.’
‘Aye? But you want to spread scandals about their dead father?’
‘Believe me, I do not. I’d die for shame if it were known.’
‘For shame?’ Janet laughed aloud. ‘What do you want?’
Agnes looked down, evading the question. ‘Did he not tell you?’ she whispered.
Janet snorted. ‘What, that he had you?’ Then she sensed a real distress and softened. ‘Whisht, lassie, tell me what happened.’
The tale was still raw, and Agnes had not meant to tell it. Somehow, it spilled out. The infant turned her solemn face towards her as she spoke.
‘He came on a Sunday, after kirk. He said he was employed by the session to inspect illicit working on the Sabbath day. He had gone round all the taverns while the readers read the lecture and had turned the drinkers out of doors. Now, he said, he was to go to all the booths and workshops and make sure that none were doing business on the Sabbath. He knew my man had gone to market, yet he made no exceptions, he must see the looms.’
‘Aye, tis very like him to do that,’ Janet commented.
‘I protested that the shop was locked and empty. Yet he would not be deflected till I fetched the keys and let him in. Well, he looked around.
And then, he professed himself satisfied. And then he professed himself not satisfied. He said that I had sinned and he must take my penance; he called me whore, and filthie names, he said, he knew things.’
‘Aye,’ said Janet bitterly, ‘I know the things he said.’
Agnes stopped dead. ‘You know them?’
‘I know the names,’ conceded Janet. ‘Aye, tis true, he knew things, dug them out, and he imagined others. He groped around in filth; his mind was like the mire; he saw filth everywhere.’
‘Did he say things about me?’
‘The things were in his mind. Imagined sins. He saw them everywhere. You and your husband, you thought you were better than we were. Nay, do not deny it. He wanted to prove you were worse.’
‘He made no accusations,’ Agnes had recovered her composure, ‘because he had no proofs. Aye, well, you must know that he took me by force. I did not encourage him. It was the day that Alexander died.’
She had returned the conversation to the place where she had wanted it, and Janet frowned a little. ‘Aye? Then what of that?’
‘And in the face of that, it did not seem important. Then your husband drowned.’
Janet said cautiously. ‘What is it that you say?’
‘That the deaths are linked.’
‘How, linked?’ Now Janet listened intently.
Agnes said clearly. ‘It was the tutor killed the boy, and then your husband. I have sworn a statement to the first, and am witness to the second. Yet I dare not speak it at the court. It is for that, that I have come.’
‘How were you a witness to the second?’ Janet wondered. ‘Were you at my house?’
Agnes shook her head. ‘I know why your man was killed. Your husband told me, in his taunts, I kept a filthie house, and that my nephew had been used badly by his tutor. He meant to blackmail Master Colp. Did he not tell you?’
‘He told me nothing,’ Janet answered.
‘Then I am undone. For I hoped you might swear to it. I do not want to give this evidence in court. I swore the statement for our brother Gilbert’s sake, who lost his son. But if I am examined in the court, then I must tell about my converse with your husband, and I would not speak my shame for all the world.’
Janet whispered hoarsely, ‘Aye, I understand.’
‘I had hoped that your husband might have confided these suspicions to you.’
‘And if he had?’
‘And if he had, then you might swear to them in court. Your swearing would complete the case, and prove the murders without question, and I should not need to speak. Your children would not know their father’s shame. You might say, perhaps, that George suspected Colp his lewdness with the boy, and was minded to denounce him to the kirk. You need not speak of blackmail.’
Janet considered this awhile. At length she answered carefully. ‘I have suffered the loss of a husband and child.’
‘And I am sorry for it.’
‘Aye. And in my loss, I have forgotten things I now remember. I remember, for instance, that my husband did confide to me his knowledge of your tutor’s inward yearnings, on the very night before he died. His meaning was concealed. I did not understand it. Now I understand, I see the meaning clearly. He did hint at such depravity. And I can swear to it.’
‘God be thanked,’ cried Agnes, ‘then my shame shall not be made public.’
Janet asked her practically, ‘But what about the child?’
‘Surely you were right,’ said Agnes absently, ‘I’ll bind Archie to it, bewitch him and bed him. He will have his son.’
‘George’s son,’ Janet reminded her stiffly.
‘Hush, now. Don’t say so. You’ll swear to it, Janet? George suspected the tutor?’
‘Aye, for my children, I’ll swear.’
It was a small enough lie, Agnes reasoned. And a small lie where the truths amassed so pitiless and dark might hardly matter after all, a grain of sand remaining on the spotless sheets. In her belly she felt grumbling, like a thankless child.
Jennie came home singing. She had combed her hair and washed her face, and rubbed her cheeks with chalk to make them white like the fine lasses did. Among the painters’ colours she had found a pot of red. She put it to her lips like blood, and pinched her cheeks. And there were other colours too, blues and yellow ochres, and a little pot of gold. She longed for them. She wore them to the harbour where the sailors were. At first she was afraid of them, with their loose flowing shirts and tall pointed hats. They brought a sour-like smell of rope and sweat, oil and liquor on the breath. And they had laughed at her. And some had called things after her, in crude and foreign tongues, and she had pretended to cry. At first, she thought it had not worked, then one had called her back. And he had made a lap for her, inside his sailor’s sark. She would not mind the smell, for it was like the lye, and she grew used to it. She had buried her head in his shoulder to dampen it. And he had stroked her hair. He soothed and petted her, and chased away the men who called her names. He smiled a broken smile, and bade her not to cry, in his strange broken tongue. He had given her a ring. It had a jewel in it, round and red like a sugarplum. She tied it on a ribbon round her neck. It was too big to wear upon her finger. And she sang for him. As she washed her face clean in the burn she felt it glint against her throat. It was almost dark when she returned. And then her mother wrenched the ruby from her throat, and stole her song.
‘Where did you get this? Thief!’
‘I did not steal it, though!’ she cried indignantly.
‘Whore!’
She would not cry. Not when her mother pulled her hair and slapped her face, and called her wicked names; and when she told the filthie things about her da she did not cry, but put her fingers in her ears and would not hear.
‘Your belovit father! Shall I tell you what he was? What it was he did? You think you’re better than the rest! You’re just as bad. Your father had a stain upon his conscience, deeper ay than any on his hand. You think you can be free of that? For he was a whoremonger and you are a whore. Go where’er you will, you’ll always be the dyer’s child!’
She began to understand, confronted by the angry figure huddled on the hearth, that she had never had a mother, dropping as she did into the line of infants born and swaddled, given suck and pushed away. She would not listen to the words. And the last wicked lie that her mother had told had proved it beyond doubt. She had no mother now. She was alone.
The Dyer’s Child
Dipping his quill in his inkwell, Giles Locke paused and looked around the room. The scene was touchingly domestic. In a low voice, Meg was explaining to Paul how to make a wash of myrrh and comfrey crushed in claret wine. Nicholas sat reading by the fire, a blanket round his knees, and in the pot a mutton rack bubbled with rosemary, garlic and prune. He felt, for a moment, as if he had family, and smiled at himself. Meg caught his eye. ‘Do we disturb you?’
‘Not at all. Though I confess, I find the savour of the pot a touch distracting. What is it that you put with it?’
‘A little fruit and herbs. It will be ready soon. If you can encourage him to take some meat,’ she looked hopefully at Nicholas, ‘it may restore his strength. Whatever is that?’
They were disturbed by a knocking, loud enough to shake the shutters down below. Giles cursed. ‘Go to the window, Paul. If it’s Robert Black’s boys again, tell them you have all their names, and will make them known to him. Have they nothing else to do?’
‘It is their play hour,’ Nicholas said softly. Since he seldom spoke, the others turned towards him in surprise. But Paul was agitated. ‘It’s the master of St Leonard’s, with the coroner. Should I let them in?’
‘Ah. So soon?’ Giles set down his pen. I hoped we might have had a little longer. Well, we may do what we can. You must of course admit them, Paul. I wonder, Meg, if you could help Nicholas into his bed, and keep him quiet there. I will try to put them off their purpose for a while. If I cannot . . .’
‘I understand.’
&nb
sp; ‘Gentlemen,’ Giles rose to greet them, ‘I fear you have had a wasted journey. Master Colp is not yet well enough to leave.’
Gilchrist smiled unpleasantly, nudging the coroner. ‘So I do believe.’
‘Then I am at a loss as to the purpose of your visit. I beg you, keep your voices low.’
The coroner looked uncomfortable. He stepped forward unhappily, prompted by Gilchrist, clearing his throat. ‘You are Doctor Giles Locke of the Auld College?’
‘Certainly, yes.’
‘There are complaints against you, for the mutilation of a corpus, and for its desecration, and concealment of that corpus from those who have the right to its disposal, and the keeping of a body from the grave.’
‘I see,’ Giles said, astonished. ‘Where then, may I ask, is this desecrated corpus you suppose me to have kept?’
‘I am authorised to search your rooms until we find it.’
‘That may take some time. May I ask whose corpse it is?’
‘It is the corpus of Nicholas Colp, who falling ill became entrusted to your care a month ago, and was reported dead by Master Gilchrist.’
‘Then all becomes clear. Paul?’ The servant turned a little pale. ‘Enlighten us. Is Master Colp deceased?’
‘No, sir.’ Paul was solemn. ‘Yon’s his blanket, there. When the gentlemen came knocking, he was sitting by the fire. He left his book.’
‘Lego ergo sum,’ concluded Giles facetiously. ‘The logic is skewed, but nonetheless accurate. He was sitting there, and here is his book, and now he has gone to his bed.’
‘This is an outrage!’ cried Gilchrist. ‘This is the man,’ he pointed to Paul, ‘who gave the report of the death and dissections.’
‘Did you, Paul?’ Giles inquired calmly. ‘That was careless of you. I am afraid my servant has been suffering from delusions,’ he explained to the coroner. ‘He came upon the patient in a very weak and debilitated condition, bound and bloodied from the lockjaw, which twists a man’s carcass more cruelly than the rack. Faced with such horrors, he convinced himself that evil had been done. However, I have taken him for bleeding, and in consequence, he finds his addled humours much restored. He now understands his mistake.’
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