The Fourth Crow

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘What ails Sir Edward?’ Gil asked.

  Sir Simon made another long face. He was a tall, angular, lantern-jawed individual with a thick ring of white woolly hair round his tonsure, a sharp and tolerant eye for human failings, and a sardonic smile which was notably absent just now.

  ‘Trouble in his water, or the like,’ he divulged. ‘Times it pains him right bad, poor soul. How he managed the journey I couldny say. Sawney’s got the truth o’t, you’ve only to look at the man to see he’s near his end.’ He considered Gil a moment longer across his cluttered chamber. ‘Were you wanting anything more?’

  ‘I’ll need a word wi Sir Edward, if I can,’ Gil confirmed. ‘And wi the good-sisters, and the servants as well, if I’m to find whoever did this and see him brought to justice. Or her,’ he added. ‘I’d say one woman could strangle another if she was bound fast the way Annie Gibb was, though the beating she had before that might be another matter.’

  ‘You wouldny think,’ said Sir Simon without much hope, ‘it was some passing ill-doer, someone wi a grudge at madwomen, or the like? Or the prentice-laddies? They had one o their games last night, could some o them— She hadny,’ he said in alarm, ‘she hadny been forced, had she?’

  ‘No sign of that. Her skirts were bound all about her knees. As for someone wi a grudge, I’d say whoever did it knew what he was doing. It was very deliberate.’

  ‘You mean,’ said the other man after a short pause, ‘I’ve maybe got a murderer under this roof?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Gil baldly.

  ‘Then I’d best get to my prayers,’ said Sir Simon, ‘for him and for the rest of us.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘I count it a merciful release,’ pronounced John Lockhart of Kypeside.

  Do you, indeed, thought Gil. And I wonder if Annie Gibb would agree?

  ‘She’s prayed for her death these three year,’ continued Lockhart, as if he had heard Gil’s thoughts. ‘Or so my wife tells me.’

  ‘And your wife is?’ Gil prompted.

  A request to speak to the family of the dead woman had brought this man out of the guest hall in a protective rush; he was a plump, self-important fellow about Gil’s age, with the fair, wind-reddened skin of a man who farmed his own land somewhere around the headwaters of the Avon.

  ‘Mistress Mariota Shaw,’ Lockhart announced. ‘The eldest daughter. We were wedded the same year her brother died, God rest him.’

  ‘Is your wife of the party?’

  ‘Oh, no, no.’ Lockhart smiled tolerantly. ‘She could hardly bring the bairn, after all.’

  ‘So who did come to Glasgow? Will you sit down and tell me about it?’

  There was the sound of weeping in the women’s hall. They were in the inner courtyard of the hostel, a cobbled space lined with tubs of flowers, with several benches placed so that weary pilgrims could enjoy the sunshine when there was any. Today, early though it was, there was not only sunshine but plenty of warmth; Gil had no real need of his plaid. Alys had grown flowers in tubs like these in the courtyard of her father’s house, away down the High Street. He wondered suddenly whether Ealasaidh would keep them growing, and whether Alys would set more flowers round the House of the Mermaiden next spring.

  Lockhart had settled himself on the bench, booted feet stretched out before him.

  ‘Well, there’s Sir Edward himself,’ he expounded, ‘and my wife’s sisters, that’s Nicholas and Ursula. Two very bonny lassies,’ he admitted, ‘and I believe they’re well taught to hold a household, but I had the better bargain. My wife’s a sensible lass. There was Annie, poor girl, and me myself, and a course there was the doctor. Doctor Januar. He’s attending my good-father, you understand.’

  ‘Doctor Januar,’ Gil repeated. ‘Aye, Sir Simon mentioned him. I never heard there was a doctor out in Avondale. Is he a Scot? Where did he study?’

  ‘You’d need to ask him that yoursel,’ said Lockhart, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘I’ve no understanding o such matters. Seems to me he’s a foreigner o some kind, but I’ve never heard either way.’

  Gil nodded, setting this aside for later consideration.

  ‘That’s six of you so far,’ he prompted. ‘Any more?’

  ‘Poor Annie, a course, no I mentioned her, did I no,’ Lockhart sighed, and crossed himself. ‘Who’d ha thought we brought her to her death, maister! What a thing to happen, dreadful. I had my doubts about leaving her bound the whole night, but Sir Edward was set on it, and see, I was right, it was too much for her. And then there’s Dame Ellen, who’s Sir Edward’s sister and has an eye to the lassies. That would be the whole of us that’s lodged here, though a course there was Dame Ellen’s two young kinsmen and all, that left us here. A great procession it was, what wi Sir Edward in a horse-litter and the rest of us on horseback, and poor Annie raving.’

  ‘And servants?’

  ‘Well, naturally.’ The other man paused to reckon on his fingers. ‘Five all told, one woman and four men. Oh, and the man that serves Dame Ellen’s kinsmen, a decent fellow, went off wi them a course. And then the grooms for the horses.’

  ‘No steward? Nobody to see all as it should be?’

  ‘I suppose you’d say the doctor was acting as steward,’ said Lockhart, a little reluctantly. ‘For certain it was him ordered all when we halted for the night.’

  ‘A useful fellow,’ said Gil.

  ‘Aye, you could say that.’

  ‘Whose idea was it to bring Annie here?’

  ‘You’d have to ask some of the household that. I wasny party to the decision, since it was haying-time, I was over at Kypeside. Likely Dame Ellen will tell you.’ Lockhart turned to look at Gil, frowning. ‘Why are you asking these questions? What’s the Archbishop’s questioner to say to the matter, any road? The lassie’s dead instead o cured, what need o a hantle o questions?’

  ‘Have you looked at her?’ Gil asked. Lockhart shook his head, and Gil rose. ‘Come and see her. Was she bonnie?’

  ‘No latterly,’ said Lockhart, following him through the passage into the outer courtyard, his voice echoing momentarily under the vault. ‘I mind when I first set eyes on her, when I first courted Mariota, she was right bonnie, wi blue eyes and hair like ripe corn. She still wore it bride-like, ye ken, wedded so young as she was. And then Arthur died, poor fellow, and she’d lost the bairn, and she made her vow, and after that, well!’

  ‘I can imagine it,’ said Gil, pulling off his hat as he stepped into the little chapel of the hostel. ‘She’s far from bonnie now, poor soul. Did the men not tell you? She never died of her own accord, or of being bound to the cross, she’s been beaten, and then she was throttled. By someone else.’

  Lockhart, hat in hand, looked sharply from Gil to the linen-draped mound on the bier before the chancel arch. Of course, a pilgrim hostel would likely have regular need of a bier, Gil thought irrelevantly, as the other man moved forward and drew the cloth away. The candles at the corpse’s head flickered with the movement, and at the sight which met him Lockhart rocked back on his heels, almost winded by shock.

  ‘Deil’s bollocks, man! Sawney tellt us, but I took it for a serving-lad’s supersaltin. Her own mammy wouldny ken her.’ He drew a deep breath, steadied himself and contemplated the battered, swollen face, the red and purple bruising and the caked blood, then made the sign of the cross over it and pulled the linen up. Passing a hand across his own face, and surreptitiously wiping his eyes as he did so, he turned to Gil and said resolutely, ‘Maister, nobody deserves sic a death, least of all Annie Gibb. She never did anyone any harm, she was a dutiful daughter and a faithful wife afore she ran mad, she was a good Christian lassie.’ He gestured at the figure of the saint next to the altar. ‘St Catherine be my witness, if there’s aught I can do to help you track down whoever did this, I’ll do it.’

  ‘Well spoken, my son,’ said Sir Simon Elder, emerging from the shadows of the little chancel. ‘Where does he start, Maister Cunningham?’

  Back out in the sunshine, Lockhart wa
s less immediately helpful than Gil had hoped.

  ‘I suppose it was the doctor arranged it, like all else,’ he said. ‘We rode into Glasgow yesterday, two hours or so after noon, and after we’d dined here and I’d fetched the penitent’s gown and a new rope from St Mungo’s, the women had Annie into her sackcloth and the whole household save Sir Edward over to the High Kirk afore Vespers, to hear a Mass and be confessed—’

  ‘Annie was able to confess?’ Gil queried. ‘She knew what she was saying?’

  ‘Oh, aye, indeed. She was rational enough, save for wishing to dee, she spent the most of her time at her prayers. She’s— She was aye a good Christian. And then once she was confessed and the ashes put on her brow, and the rope was blessed, the doctor and her two men took her over to the cross and bound her there, and we left her.’

  ‘And none of you had an eye to her, apart from the servants,’ said Gil.

  ‘No,’ said Lockhart rather sharply. ‘Do you think we don’t regret it?’

  Gil paused for a moment in acknowledgement of this, then said,

  ‘She must have had property of her own. Who inherits it? How would it be left?’

  ‘I’ve no knowledge of how her fortune lies,’ Lockhart admitted. ‘It never concerned Mariota, or so I thought, so I never asked. She was James Gibb’s heiress, his only surviving bairn, though I believe there were others that never made it out their cradles. She brought Arthur a good stretch o land in Ayrshire at their marriage, and more when her father died, but as to how it was left to her or what happens to it now, I never heard.’

  ‘What about her mother’s land?’ It seemed a reasonable guess that Gibb would have wedded land himself, which Annie would have inherited, but Lockhart shook his head.

  ‘I’ve no knowledge o that either. Her mother’s long dead. She wasny a Kyle lady I think, though I don’t recall her name.’

  ‘Why did your good-father not find a second marriage for her? I’d have thought an heiress like that would be easy enough to place.’

  Another shake of the head.

  ‘Sir Edward’s— He’s aye been right fond of her, as if she was his own lassie. He’d not see her forced to marry against her will. Besides,’ Lockhart added realistically, ‘who’d wish to take a lassie that spends her days mourning her first husband, even with the land to sweeten the bargain?’

  ‘I think Sir Edward’s nearing his own end,’ Gil said delicately. ‘Have you any knowledge of how he’ll arrange his affairs? He has the three daughters, I think? Was Arthur the only son?’

  ‘Aye, the lassies are co-heirs.’ Lockhart looked embarrassed. ‘I’m no certain, you’ll understand,’ he went on after a moment, ‘and he’ll need to change it all now, a course, but at one time he was speaking as if he’d divide all equally among the four lassies, Annie and his own three. That is,’ he qualified, ‘my wife would get as much as to bring her portion equal wi what the other lassies would get.’

  ‘And how did his own daughters feel about that?’

  ‘They were pleased enough, I’d ha said. They’ve all been like sisters since ever Arthur was wedded to Annie, they seemed happy enough to share wi her.’

  ‘And the rest of his will? Has he much to leave beyond the heritable land? Bequests to his other kin or to Holy Kirk?’

  ‘You’d need to ask him that yoursel,’ said Lockhart, ‘or else his man of law. I’ve little knowledge of what he decided, and that at third hand.’

  ‘And he is?’

  ‘Maister William Dykes,’ said Lockhart promptly, ‘to be found next St Nicholas’ Kirk in Lanark.’

  ‘The arrangement would have left Annie a wealthy woman,’ Gil observed, making a note of that, ‘what with her own portion.’

  ‘Aye, and the conjunct land from her marriage.’ Lockhart turned to look at Gil in dismay. ‘What, you think that might be behind it? That someone slew her to prevent her inheriting her fourth part?’ He swallowed. ‘But there’s none of us— I was agreeable, and so I tellt Sir Edward at the time, and it was long afore the younger lassies was betrothed, it was written into their contracts that way. And to beat her like that and all! I took it it was some madman,’ he swallowed and grimaced at his own words, ‘some fellow wi a grudge at St Mungo, or the like. Surely never one of her family, maister!’

  ‘I concur with that predicate,’ said a serious voice in Latin. Gil twisted to look, and found a short, richly dressed man just emerging from the men’s hall.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘It is,’ said the other in Scots, moving forward from the doorway. ‘Could you keep your voices down, or go elsewhere? Sir Edward’s sore afflicted.’

  ‘You could close the shutters,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘You must be the doctor,’ said Gil, rising. The newcomer bowed.

  ‘Chrysostomus Ianuarius, of Ghent and Salerno,’ he said, returning to Latin. ‘Do I address the Archbishop’s quaestor?’

  ‘If you’re to patter away in the Latin tongue,’ said Lockhart, finally getting to his feet, ‘I’m away. I’ll be about if you’re wanting any more from me, maister,’ he added to Gil, and strode off towards the gate which led out to the stables.

  Gil let him go, and studied Chrysostom Januar with some interest as the man straightened up from his formal bow. He was a striking figure, robed in a bag-sleeved gown of crimson and yellow silk brocade which would surely draw Habbie Sim deep into the sin of covetousness if he set eyes on it; worn over this, in faintly academic fashion, was a black cloth hood with a deep, tight shoulder-cape, its lining of squirrel showing to advantage where it was folded down about his ears. A fat purse and an astrologer’s vademecum hung from a green leather belt shod with silver. The brim of the bright blue velvet bonnet which he had just clapped back onto a head of dark, luxuriant curls was pinned up with an enamel brooch, and under it, Gil realised with some embarrassment, the man’s equally bright blue eyes were studying him.

  ‘You’ll ken me again, maister,’ he said in faint amusement. His Scots was rapid and accented, with the harsh consonants of the Low Countries.

  ‘More than likely,’ agreed Gil in Latin. ‘I ask your pardon. I had not expected to find a doctor of Ghent and Salerno in Glasgow, much less in Avondale. How did you fetch up there?’

  A faint grimace crossed the doctor’s face.

  ‘The wheel of fortune turns,’ he said sententiously ‘Magister, I do not think this death can be ascribed to one of the family.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘My patient is unable to leave his bed,’ replied the doctor carefully, ‘the man who has just left us was asleep at the other end of the hall within my sight throughout my vigil, and the women likewise shared a chamber in the other hall. I saw this when I was called to administer a calming draught to the two girls. None of the family left the place in the night.’

  But what about the servants, Gil wondered. And what about these two kinsmen of Dame Ellen’s?

  ‘And Annie herself,’ he said. ‘She too was your patient? She was in a poor case. Sorewe and siche and drery mod Bindeth me so faste. The melancholy was of long standing, by what I’m told.’

  ‘In part.’ The doctor turned and strolled away across the courtyard after Lockhart, inviting Gil to accompany him with a jerk of the head. ‘I had hardly begun to treat her.’

  ‘What would your treatment have been?’

  ‘Not this, at any rate. I advised most strongly against it.’ Doctor Januar considered briefly. ‘Company, music, good wine – as good as one might obtain in Ayrshire, at any rate – a diet both dry and warming, all of these. Confession, in order to obtain release from her ridiculous vow as soon as she began to wish it, and someone to talk to about her dead husband.’

  ‘What good would that do?’ Gil asked, surprised. ‘I’d have thought it would make her the more melancholy.’

  ‘It would encourage weeping,’ pronounced the doctor, ‘and thus the release of the moist humours which promote the state, and besides it would aff
irm that she has cause to mourn. Certain of the family have not been—’ He cut off the sentence and fell silent.

  ‘And Sir Edward?’ Gil asked after a moment. ‘What can you tell me of his illness?’

  Doctor Januar glanced at the guest hall, shook his head, and turned to pace across the further side of the courtyard, well out of his patient’s hearing.

  ‘A tumour of the bladder primarily,’ he said quietly, ‘with secondary afflictions in the bowel and lung. He is aware of it, otherwise I would not divulge so much. He is in great pain, which I am managing, from day to day at first and now from hour to hour. I expect to bury him here in Glasgow.’

  ‘Why did you move him, so near his end?’

  ‘He was determined. It would have hastened the end, I think, to gainsay him.’

  ‘So it was his idea to bring his good-daughter to St Mungo?’

  The doctor contemplated this question for a moment, without interrupting his measured pace.

  ‘I think,’ he said eventually, ‘it may have been Dame Ellen who suggested it to him first. However, she is a clever woman, and led her brother to believe it was his idea.’

  ‘How did she do that?’ Gil asked, amused.

  ‘Oh, by crying it down at every turn. It is how she deals with him.’

  ‘Tell me about Annie’s life in his household. Was she well regarded?’

  ‘Why do you ask me?’ asked Doctor Januar, looking up at Gil. ‘Why not her sisters?’

  ‘You are the observant outsider. Are they truly sisters? Lockhart certainly seemed to think they were all very fond.’

  ‘Lockhart does not live with the family.’

  ‘And you do, I think.’ This was not answered. ‘Did she have her own apartment? Her own servants?’