The Fourth Crow

by Pat McIntosh

  Born and brought up in Lanarkshire, PAT MCINTOSH lived and worked in Glasgow before settling on Scotland’s west coast, where she lives with her husband and three cats.

  Also by Pat McIntosh

  The Harper’s Quine

  The Nicholas Feast

  The Merchant’s Mark

  St Mungo’s Robin

  The Rough Collier

  The Stolen Voice

  A Pig of Cold Poison

  The Counterfeit Madam

  The Fourth Crow

  Pat McIntosh

  Constable • London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  First US edition published by SohoConstable,

  an imprint of Soho Press, 2012

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  www.sohopress.com

  Copyright © Pat McIntosh, 2012

  The right of Pat McIntosh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data is available from the British Library

  Source ISBN: 978-1-78033-163-8 (hardback)

  eISBN: 978-1-78033-165-2 (ebook)

  Soho eISBN: 978-1-61695-159-7

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  US ISBN: 978-1-61695-158-0

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

  This one is for my brother.

  Ever since it became a kingdom, Scotland has had two native languages, Gaelic (which in the fifteenth century was called Ersche) and Scots, both of which you will find used in the Gil Cunningham books. I have translated the Gaelic where needful, and those who have trouble with the Scots could consult the online Dictionary of the Scots Language, to be found at http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/

  Chapter One

  She was quite certainly dead.

  Without realising it, he had taken a great leap backwards, away from that hideous face where it lay at the edge of the shadows. Now he stood as if his feet had taken root, staring at the moonlit horror. A great trembling overtook him.

  Nothing else seemed to move in the night. A cloud slid over the moon, shrouding all in darkness, and then passed, and with the returning light it was as if she raised her head a little to look at him. With a muffled yelp of terror he turned and fled, down the hill, towards safety.

  ‘There’s someone bound to St Mungo’s Cross,’ observed Gil Cunningham’s new assistant as they rode back into Glasgow through the August evening, rounding the high red sandstone walls of the Archbishop’s castle.

  ‘Now what would anyone be doing that for?’ wondered Euan Campbell, from behind them. ‘Surely somebody would set them free?’

  Gil turned in the saddle to look at his two very dissimilar henchmen. Lowrie Livingstone, aged nineteen, recent graduate of the University here in Glasgow, was fair and good-looking, with an easy cultured charm which would stand him in good stead in any occupation, particularly that of notary in which Gil had contracted to train him, although just now, with his face, his broad straw hat and the narrow sleeves of his blue woollen gown powdered with reddish dust from the roads, he looked nearly as disreputable as the gallowglass at his back. Euan on the other hand, dark haired and black browed with the crooked Campbell mouth in a long narrow face, simply looked what he was: a man who hired his sword arm for a living.

  They had all three spent the August day out in Strathblane, attempting to straighten out the ownership of two portions of land on the flanks of the Campsie hills. It had been a pleasant day for the task, warm and serene, with birdsong in the thickets and a clear view out over the Clyde valley and down into Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire, but talking to witnesses, many of whom spoke Ersche rather than Scots and required Euan’s unreliable help as a translator to make their statements, had proved wearisome, and he was glad to be nearing home.

  Young Maister Livingstone had observed correctly: away to their left, just inside the low wall of the kirkyard, Gil could see the tall stone cross which stood by the Girth Burn, the most important of the several crosses which marked the boundaries of the sanctuary area. There was certainly someone bound to the massive upright, writhing and shrieking and securely roped, surrounded by a crowd of grinning spectators. Small boys ran in and out, throwing handfuls of water from the burn at the prisoner and anyone else who was not quick enough to get out of the way.

  ‘They bringis mad men on fuit and horss,’ he quoted, ‘and bindis them to Sanct Mungos Corss. Did you never see it before?’

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Lowrie. ‘No, I never saw it, but I heard of it a few times. How often does it happen?’

  ‘Maybe once in a quarter, perhaps more often in the summer months. You’d not leave even a dog outside without shelter over a winter’s night, after all. It’s a great entertainment for the multitude, you can see that.’

  ‘And does it cure them, to be spending a night tied to the cross like that?’ asked Euan, staring at the crowd. ‘More like to send them even further mad, I would be thinking.’

  ‘I’ve never heard.’ Gil heeled his horse onward. ‘The dinner will be waiting.’

  ‘I wonder who he is.’ Lowrie followed his master past the kirkyard gates and into the vennel which led to the Drygate. ‘Poor devil. Likely Madame Catherine will know.’

  ‘Indeed it is likely,’ agreed Euan. ‘Madame Catherine is knowing everything, and her not having a word of Scots, neither.’

  Seated over a late dinner in the house called the Mermaiden, Gil reflected on the recent changes in his circumstances. In the last few months he had acquired a house of his own, a household, an assistant, and, more particularly, the means to support all these. He felt slightly dizzy with the speed at which it had all happened, and he was not looking forward to the next quarter’s bills, but he relished the feeling it gave him to look down the long board from his chair at its head. On his right, his young wife Alys showed her pleasure in his return from a day’s journey into Stirlingshire; on his left, Alys’s aged duenna Catherine consumed sops-in-wine with toothless dignity; at his feet his wolfhound Socrates lay hoping for crusts and crumbs. Beyond Catherine, Lowrie was just reaching for the ale-jug, Euan had returned from stabling the horses and was addressing his supper with eagerness, and further down the table the maidservants who had followed Alys one by one from her father’s house, Jennet, Kittock, Annis, and his small ward’s nurse Nancy, were chattering companionably. We need to find a serving-man or two, he reflected; I need a body-servant, and Euan is not my first choice for the task. Or even my second.

  ‘Mais non,’ Catherine was saying in French, ‘I had not heard of another poor soul at the Cross.’

  ‘They were saying at Vespers at St Nicholas’ it’s a lassie,’ offered Jennet, overhearing Lowrie’s question. ‘Out of Ayrshire, so I heard, maister, though I never got her name.’

  ‘A lassie!�
� said Alys. ‘Oh, poor soul indeed. I wonder if she knows where she is? Does anyone watch, Gil, while someone is tied up like that? It must be terrifying, to be exposed the whole night alone.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he admitted.

  ‘Likely St Mungo himsel oversees all, mem, seeing it’s his cross,’ suggested Jennet. ‘I’ve aye heard it’s the custom just to tie up the poor madman and go off to St Nicholas’ chapel for the night, his friends I mean, to keep out the night air.’

  Alys’s father, the French master-mason, paying a late call after the supper was cleared, agreed in part with this.

  ‘I had to chase both my laddies away from her,’ he said with disapproval. ‘Her friends were present, but they kept apart from the crowd once she was bound. Surely they would have done better to wait until it grew dark and the town was quiet before they put her there. She is quite young, no more than five-and-twenty, too young for such treatment.’

  ‘Did you speak to them?’ Alys asked. ‘Who is she? What form does her madness take?’

  ‘She is an Ayrshire lady named Annie Gibb,’ said her father, accepting the glass of wine which Lowrie handed to him. They had repaired to the solar at the back of the house; the sun had struck the two windows of the little chamber for most of the day, and it was still pleasantly warm. Maistre Pierre stretched his feet out comfortably and added, ‘Her servants would say little more, not even what part of Ayrshire she is come from, but I should say she is melancholy-mad. Much of her raving was of how she wished to be let die.’

  ‘Ah, poor soul,’ said Alys, as she had done before.

  ‘Gibb,’ said Gil reflectively. ‘Likely from Kyle, then, at least by origin. Well, no doubt we’ll hear in the morning. And how does our good-mother, Pierre?’

  ‘Ah.’ Maistre Pierre looked sideways at his daughter, and Gil braced himself inwardly. Another of the changes of the last few months was about to confront them. Two women could never agree under one roof, that was widely known; it looked as if Alys and her new stepmother would never agree in one burgh. He should not have asked the question, and yet civility required that he did.

  They had first met Angus MacIain the harper and his sister Ealasaidh two years since, when the harper’s mistress, the mother of his son, had been murdered in the building site at the side of the Cathedral. By the time her killer was uncovered Gil and Alys were betrothed and the baby was Gil’s ward, but it was only this spring that Pierre and Ealasaidh had come to an understanding. It was now two months since their marriage, and it did not seem to Gil as if Alys was any closer to accepting the idea than she had been when it was first mentioned.

  ‘Élise,’ said his father-in-law now, ‘wished me to ask you where is the linen for the great bed?’

  ‘I left it where it has always been kept,’ said Alys without expression, ‘in the kist at the bed-foot. I touched nothing in your chamber.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre uncomfortably. ‘The kist with the brass lock, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, that kist. Is it not there? Has madame mère moved it? Or mislaid the key? Perhaps one of your new servants has taken it.’

  Lowrie, the ready colour sweeping up over his neck, turned away and began to riffle through a stack of music on the windowsill beside him. Following his cue, Gil opened the lid of the monocords and tapped at the first few keys of the little instrument. Maistre Pierre ignored the spidery notes.

  ‘Ma mie, she is mistress of my house now,’ he said sternly in French. A mistake, thought Gil.

  ‘Then she may run it herself,’ said Alys, still without expression, ‘without referring to me.’

  ‘What, after you removed all the maidservants who know where everything is?’

  ‘I took only Jennet and Nancy, Father,’ Alys said. ‘The other women left of their own accord.’

  This was unanswerably true, Gil knew. Kittock was still complaining about what ‘the new mistress’ had ordered done in her kitchen.

  ‘Shall we have some music?’ he suggested. Alys set aside her handwork and rose.

  ‘You may have as much as you please,’ she said. ‘I have matters to see to. Good night, Father.’

  She bent her head for his blessing, which he delivered reluctantly. As the door closed behind her Gil said,

  ‘Have you managed to find servants yet?’

  ‘Élise has hired a crowd of women. They all speak Ersche,’ said Maistre Pierre glumly. ‘I thought Alys would have been more generous. She should be obedient to her new mother.’

  Gil kept silent. He liked and admired the harper’s sister, a handsome strong-minded woman who had not had an easy life, but his perception had been that it was Ealasaidh who was ungenerous; she could never have run a household before, let alone one as large as that his father-in-law kept, and Alys had offered advice. It had been refused, without gratitude.

  ‘Well, no doubt she will come round,’ said Maistre Pierre after a pause, though it was not clear which contender he referred to. ‘Do you tell me this woman at the Girth Cross is from Kyle? From the middle part of Ayrshire?’

  ‘It’s where the surname comes from,’ Gil agreed in relief. Lowrie turned back towards them, holding several sheets of music.

  ‘Ockeghem?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘There is a family named Gibb who own a quarry,’ said the mason, ‘beyond a place called Cumnock. Good blond freestone, a valuable resource. I wonder are they her kin? Yes, why not Ockeghem,’ he went on, before Gil could answer, ‘though I must not stay too late.’

  Having seen his father-in-law off the premises an hour later into the quiet August evening, Gil locked the front door and paused to admire the incised and painted mermaiden now on the inside of the heavy planks. Even with the door reversed so that this well-known symbol of sexual licence was not shown to the street, they still had the occasional caller who had not heard that the bawdy-house was closed. He grinned, put the sturdy bar in place and set off through the house, checking shutters and hearths as he went. The dog paced after him, his claws clicking on the wide boards. Here on the ground floor, as well as the little solar beside the back door there was the lower hall where they had eaten their supper, with another three smaller chambers opening from it. In one, a narrow stair led up, eventually, to the great bedchamber, a resource which Gil had not so far made use of. In the next, Catherine was probably still at her devotions, which he knew were extended; in the third, Annis and Kittock were already snoring. Kittock had wished to sleep in the kitchen as she had always done, but the kitchen here was a separate building, and Alys had preferred that all the household were under the one roof at night. He had supported her in that.

  Climbing the principal newel stair he checked the shutters in his own spacious closet, then paused again to survey the wide upper hall. Its painted walls were lively, the allegorical figures in their flowery alcoves bright even in the fading light. Despite the previous tenant’s occupation, only one of the images required to be concealed by the plate-cupboard, which was fortunate, he reflected, given that they did not have many other large pieces of furniture yet.

  He went on up the main stair. At the top, the dog nudged one door open and clicked away into the shadows. Behind the other door, along the short enfilade of chambers above the painted hall, Lowrie spoke sharply and Euan answered. Following the dog, Gil stepped quietly past the sleeping child in his cradle and the shut-bed where Jennet and Nancy still murmured together, and went into his own bedchamber. The house was settled for the night.

  Alys was also at her prayers, the candlelight gleaming on her hair where it fell in sheets across the shoulders of her bedgown, her head bent intently over the prayer-book which had been a marriage-gift from her father. She did not look up, even when Socrates nudged her hands with his long nose.

  Sighing inwardly, Gil said his own prayers and readied himself for bed, reckoning up the tasks of the morrow. Two contracts to draw up for different tradesmen of the upper town, one set of sasine papers to compose for Lowrie to write, a report to compile fo
r his master the Archbishop of Glasgow. A quiet day, he thought with some relief.

  He woke from a dream of thunder and falling rocks, to realise that the noise was a knocking at the house door. The dog was barking, away below stairs.

  ‘The back door!’ said Alys, as he tugged open the curtain at the side of their box bed. ‘Who— Is it light yet? The servants are not stirring.’

  ‘Barely.’ He had scrambled into his shirt, and now flung open the shutters on the window which overlooked the yard and the approach to the back door. To his left, the dawn was turning rosy over the Dow Hill. To his right, at the other end of the house, Euan was already leaning out into the chilly morning, bare chested, black hair tousled. Socrates was still barking.

  ‘Who’s knocking?’ Gil called.

  ‘It iss one of the clerks from St Mungo’s,’ offered Euan, drowning the first answer from the ground. ‘I think it iss Maister Sim.’

  ‘Who is it?’ he repeated. ‘Quiet!’ he shouted at the dog.

  ‘Gil, is that you? You’re wanted up at the Cross!’ A figure stepped away from the door far enough to see and be seen from up here. One of the songmen from the Cathedral, as Euan had said, one of his occasional partners at Tarocco or at tennis.

  ‘Habbie!’ he said in some surprise. ‘What’s amiss? Bide there, man. I’ll come down.’

  ‘Never you worry, Maister Gil,’ said Euan cheerily. ‘I’ll be letting him in, just let me be finding my shirt.’

  ‘Maister Sim?’ said Alys as Gil drew his head in. ‘Is someone dead?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he answered, knotting the cord of his drawers. ‘But at this hour it must be something urgent.’

  Maister Sim agreed with this assessment.

  ‘Oh, aye, she’s dead,’ he said, pacing up and down the lower hall, Socrates watching him suspiciously from the cold hearth. ‘A dreadful sight, and all. We’ve managed to keep them from moving her, but you’ll need to come now, Gil, afore it gets any busier at the Cross.’