The Fourth Crow

by Pat McIntosh

  Gil had to agree. As well as the stains from her death, which had not transferred themselves to the outer garment, the dead woman’s shift was torn and dirty, marked with sweat under the arms, and rubbed blue from a woad-dyed gown at the neckband and seams; it had probably not been washed in several months. He could not imagine any of the women he knew wearing such a garment, other than in the direst need.

  ‘She herself is no less ill used,’ observed Maistre Pierre. Reaching past Gil he pulled the neckband of the shift down to display a dark bruise and several scars on the thin back. ‘Her life has not been kind.’

  ‘Now do you see?’ demanded Meggot of Dame Ellen. She eased the gown away from the hunched shoulders, down over the rigid arm. The older woman stared at the bruises thus exposed, her expression grim. ‘I’ve never a notion who it is, but it’s no more my mistress than the Queen of Elfland.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘She what?’ said Canon James Henderson, Sub-Dean of St Mungo’s Cathedral. He stared at Gil over a laden table; he had been interrupted breaking his fast on smoked fish, white bread and new milk, with a dish of quince marmalade and another of raisins set by his elbow. ‘How can she be so sure? If the face is unrecognisable—’

  ‘A course she’s sure o’t, if she’s going by the shift,’ said the plump maidservant at his elbow. ‘There’s no a woman in Scotland wouldny ken her own linen from another’s. I’d pick your shirts out anywhere.’

  ‘Be silent, woman,’ ordered Canon Henderson. He broke off another piece of bread and buttered it with irritable, jerky movements. ‘I don’t like the way you keep turning up corpses – female corpses, at that – on St Mungo’s land, Gil. We’ll ha no more of them, if you don’t mind.’

  Gil preserved a careful silence in the face of this injustice; there had been one other female corpse, two years since in rather different circumstances.

  ‘But what’s come to the lassie that was there?’ entreated the maidservant. ‘Surely St Mungo never carried her away to Paradise?’

  ‘Will you be quiet?’ demanded her master. ‘Where has that woman gone, Gil? What’s her name again, Annie Gibb. I could see this nonsense wi the Cross far enough, it never does them any good, and now see what’s come of it!’

  ‘I’ll set up a search,’ said Gil. ‘I need to let the Provost hear of this, since we’ll have to have an inquest on the dead woman, try to find a name for her, find out how she came to be at the Cross. Will I borrow some men from him, or will we use Cathedral servants to search?’

  ‘To search?’ Canon Henderson frowned. ‘What kind o a search did you have in mind? Rattling at doors, or looking under bushes, or searching outbuildings?’

  ‘All three, I’d say.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right, I suppose. She could be anywhere in Glasgow, and dead or alive come to that. Better see what the Provost can do, our men haveny the same powers outside St Mungo’s land.’ A child wailed, elsewhere in the house, and the Canon glanced at the maidservant and gestured at the door. ‘Away and deal wi that bairn, Kirsty, and see if you canny keep it quieter.’

  ‘Takes after his faither,’ retorted Kirsty with a toss of her head, but left the room with reluctance.

  ‘Tell me it again,’ said the Canon. ‘Annie Gibb was bound to the cross wi a new rope, and it’s been untied and tied again, you say.’ Gil nodded. ‘So someone freed her, and throttled this woman to put in her place.’ He crossed himself. ‘Wickedness! What would make anyone act that way? And her friends never saw a thing?’

  ‘Not till they came to untie her in the morning,’ agreed Gil. ‘It makes little sense. We’ve two problems, I think. Who is the corpse, and how did she die and come to be bound to the cross, and where is Annie Gibb and who freed her?’

  ‘That’s more than two,’ Henderson said fretfully. He took a draught of milk, emerging from the beaker with a white moustache. ‘Well, you sort it out, Gil. If you need folk to help you, likely some o the songmen would be glad o a change of duties. Sim and Craigie are already involved, you can ask them. And the vergers are aye useful men in a stushie, the younger ones at least, though I hope it’ll no come to that.’

  ‘So do I,’ agreed Gil.

  ‘Away and speak to the Provost. He’ll need to hear about it all, I suppose.’

  ‘I was looking for you to call by,’ said Maister Andrew Otterburn, depute Provost of Glasgow, waving at a stool beside his desk. Gil raised an eyebrow. ‘Aye, I’ve heard about it. Andro brought the word in earlier. Did you ever?’

  ‘Extraordinary business.’ Gil sat down. Socrates sprawled at his feet, grinning up at Otterburn.

  ‘Tell me about it, then. What have you discerned?’

  ‘Very little. The women have the corp stripped now. She’s much of an age with their kinswoman, thin as a lath, has probably borne at least one child so Dame Ellen says. How do they tell that?’

  Otterburn glanced at him, but said only, ‘Likely some women’s knowledge. Ask at your wife, I should.’

  Perhaps not, thought Gil.

  ‘We’ve no idea yet what killed her, unless the beating,’ he went on, ‘let alone who she is or how she came to be there. As for where Mistress Annie Gibb might have got to, that’s anyone’s guess. St Mungo’s isny best pleased about the matter.’

  ‘I’ll wager.’ Otterburn glanced out of the window at the cathedral towers, visible above the warm sandstone outer wall of the castle. He was a lanky man in his forties with a long gloomy face and a wry sense of humour; he was not fully appreciated in the burgh, but Gil had found him easier to work with than his predecessor. ‘Let Walter have a description of the corp—’ His clerk looked up from the end of the desk and nodded, his pen pausing in its eternal squeaking progress. ‘He’ll get her cried round the town, see if anyone’s missed her. Now tell me what you’ve found, maister, and what you’re doing about it.’

  Gil obeyed, summarising the little information they had gathered so far.

  ‘I’ve yet to speak wi the rest of Mistress Gibb’s family or friends,’ he ended. ‘I thought you’d as soon hear about it now rather than later. Young Lowrie’s talked wi the servants, but all he’s learned so far confirms what the family says. They all arrived together, they seem to ha stayed within the hostel walls, other than Mistress Shaw’s two young kinsmen and two fellows that were sent out on an errand for the doctor and were back within the half-hour, until Mistress Gibb was led out wi the whole household, save Sir Edward and his man, to go to St Mungo’s for confession. I’ll set Lowrie to track down the bystanders from this morning and find out if they know anything, and my man Euan’s away to talk the vergers into searching St Mungo’s, but I’m not hopeful.’

  ‘Aye.’ Otterburn turned the sand-pot on his desk, frowning at it. ‘So the one we have was beaten till she’s beyond recognising, and slain some way we don’t know yet. Could the beating ha killed her?’

  ‘It might,’ said Gil cautiously. ‘Pierre found no trace of a head injury, but we won’t know for sure till she softens. There’s no sign she was stabbed or the like.’

  Otterburn grunted.

  ‘And then she was throttled, but no till after she was dead, and then she was tied to the Cross. Why? It makes no sense! And where’s the other one got to?’

  ‘I’d say she was tied to the Cross first, and then throttled,’ said Gil. ‘The hair at the back of her neck was caught under the cord, but the rest hung free. And at some point the sacking gown Annie Gibb was wearing was put on her.’

  ‘Is it the same one?’

  ‘I need to check wi St Mungo’s.’

  ‘So is Mistress Gibb running about Glasgow in her shift? She’ll be easy enough recognised if that’s so. How mad is she? Is she a danger?’

  ‘Her friends say not. She seems to be melancholy rather than wood-wild. And she may well be in her shift, I got her maidservant to check and her clothes are all in the pilgrim lodging where the lassie put them last night, naught missing.’

  Otterburn grunted again.

 
; ‘Give Walter her description and all. We’ll get the two o them cried through the town and see what that turns up, and you can ask at Andro for any help you need. The men should enjoy searching for a stinking lady in her shift. Have you any more to tell me?’

  ‘Not yet,’ admitted Gil, ‘but I’ve another question.’ He drew from his purse the coil of cord, and laid it on the Provost’s desk. ‘This is what was used to throttle the dead woman. The Shaw servants never saw it afore, so far as they can tell. Can we learn aught from it, do you think?’

  ‘Cord’s just cord, surely,’ said Otterburn, lifting a honey-pale loop. ‘This doesny look anything out of the ordinar.’

  ‘A barrel’s just a barrel,’ countered Gil, ‘but I once learned a lot about one barrel by speaking to its maker. Most craftsmen can make their own cordage if they’re put to it, but this looks like a specialist’s work. Do we have any spinners of twine and cord in the burgh?’

  ‘Walter?’

  ‘You might ask at Matt Dickson the rope-drawer, maister,’ suggested the clerk. ‘It’s mostly heavier stuff he turns out, so I believe, but he’d likely ken where that came from.’ He assessed Gil’s blank expression. ‘Away out the Thenewgate, almost at Partick. A great long shed o a place, been burned down two-three times. You canny miss it.’

  Like most major offices around a great cathedral church, that of Almoner to St Mungo’s was a sinecure, a post whose holder was not expected to take more than a perfunctory interest in its duties. These were carried out by the Sub-Almoner, a depressed individual who inhabited a cramped, sour-smelling chamber up a stair in the northwest tower, surrounded by piles of neatly folded clothing and blankets. When Gil found him there, Sir Alan Jamieson was just dismissing the last of his morning’s supplicants, a surprisingly well-nourished boy of eight or nine.

  ‘No, no, wee Leckie’s fit enough,’ he said when Gil commented. ‘He’s the laddie that’s paid of the burgh to lead old Jeanie Thomson, that’s been blind these ten year. He was fetching another head-rail to her, to keep her decent, seeing her last one blew away when her neighbour laid it out to dry.’ He pulled a face. ‘That’s their tale, any road. I just hope they got its worth at the rag market. What can I do for you, Gil? I take it this isny a call on my duties?’

  ‘Maybe no directly,’ admitted Gil. He set the bundle he carried on the table beside the almoner’s great ledger. ‘You’ll have heard what happened at St Mungo’s Cross, then, Alan?’

  Sir Alan crossed himself.

  ‘Aye, poor lady, her servant came up to the vestry just as we were about to sing Matins. She’s free o her troubles now, right enough, but no in the way she—’ He paused as Gil shook his head. ‘What d’you mean, no?’

  ‘There’s more happened than that,’ Gil said. ‘The lass that was found dead at the Cross this morning wasny the same one that was bound there last night.’ Jamieson gaped at him. ‘She was wearing this,’ he nodded at the bundle, ‘and I’d like to hear if you reckon it’s the same gown you gave out yesterday, or another. It was me cut the inkles,’ he added hastily as the almoner reached for the folds of sacking. ‘I’ll pay for the repairs.’

  ‘Aye, you did,’ said Sir Alan, inspecting the ragged ends of the tapes. ‘Made a thorough job of it, and all.’ He shook out the light brown folds. ‘Let me see now, where’s the—Aye, this is the gown I lent out to Mistress Gibb’s kinsfolk yesterday afternoon. There’s the mark.’ He pointed to a row of neat red stitches just inside the neckline. ‘Six red lines for gown number six. There’s a dozen,’ he enlarged, ‘but we’ve never needed that many, even when thon band of penitents cam here two summers ago, hoping to flagellate theirsels the length o the High Street. Canon Henderson soon put a stop to that, I can tell you.’

  ‘He did that,’ agreed Gil, recalling the occasion with faint amusement. It had provided his uncle with food for shocked discussion for days. The parade of the High Street had been reduced, in short order, to a procession round the Upper Town and a vigil by the patron saint’s tomb in the crypt; the weather had been unkind, and the fiddler the group had brought with them had refused to risk his instrument in the pouring rain, so the singing had been doleful indeed. When last heard of the group of penitent pilgrims had been riding out of Glasgow, back to wherever they came from (Arbroath, was it?) quarrelling bitterly about whose idea it had been in the first place. ‘So you’d swear to this being the same gown?’

  ‘Let me mak certain.’ Jamieson clipped his spectacles onto his nose and drew the great ledger towards him. ‘A plaid to Hoastin Harry, a woad-dyed gown to Maggie Bent, aye, aye, here we are. Penitential gown number six, to the kin o Annie Gibb.’ He turned the great book about so that Gil could read the entry. ‘Clear enough, I’d say, and I’ll just mark it returned.’ Drawing the book towards him, he reached for his pen.

  ‘Clear enough,’ Gil agreed. ‘Thanks for this, Alan.’ He dug in his purse for a couple of coins. ‘Will that cover the repairs? Is it just clothing and blankets you give out here? I’d thought you’d some provisions to supply the poor and all.’

  ‘Oh, I do, I do.’ Jamieson shook sand on the new entry and wiped his pen on the blotched rag at his elbow. ‘Such as there is the now.’

  ‘What, are donations running low? I’ll tell my wife.’

  ‘No, no, donations is no bad, though we can aye do wi more. The poor we ha aye wi us, after all. No,’ Jamieson straightened up on his stool, shaking his head, ‘it’s hard to keep hold o the stuff the now. It’s all stored next the dry goods for the Vicars’ hall, round the north side o the kirk, and there’s as much vanishing from both dry stores, the last six month or so, it’s a right worry.’

  ‘Theft, you mean? How secure is the store?’

  ‘Secure enough, I’d ha said, till now. Aye, it’s theft. There’s aye the odd cup o dried pease or handful o meal goes astray, but this is a half-sack at a time just walking off when naeb’dy’s watching.’ The Sub-Almoner pulled a long face. ‘You don’t see folk at their best in this post, Gil, you’ll believe me, but to my mind that takes the bell, thieving from the poor. I’ve got the vergers warned to look out for it, but it wouldny surprise me if they were in the game and all.’

  ‘I’d not heard of that,’ Gil confessed. ‘You’ve changed the locks, I take it.’

  ‘Oh, aye, and a new padlock at my own expense. That walked off and all, I’d to get a second.’

  Thinking it was little wonder that the Sub-Almoner was usually afflicted with melancholy, Gil took his leave of the man and returned to St Catherine’s, where the nameless corpse was now laid out in the little chapel under Annie Gibb’s own shroud, with Sir Simon murmuring in the shadowed chancel. Drawing back the linen he studied the dead woman with care, counting the scars and bruises on her thin body, considering the rough skin of her hands and feet and the broken nails. Meggot had washed these as thoroughly as the rest, and had cleaned under the nails with the point of a knife, extracting dirt and blood and fragments of skin.

  ‘She’s marked him, whoever he was,’ she had said darkly. ‘And I’d say,’ she twitched her nose fastidiously, ‘she’s lain wi him or wi some man at least, no long afore she was slain. But there’s no sign she was forced, maister, that I can see from here, even wi all these bruises.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Dame Ellen, ‘though we’ll maybe make certain o’t when she softens and I can get a wee look at her—’ She bit off the next words. Curiously, the term which Gil’s unruly mind supplied was French, and not one which Alys used.

  Examining the nail-scrapings, he had concluded that there was nothing more to learn there; he had hoped for some clue to the woman’s identity, or at least her trade or profession, but the dirt appeared to be grease from cooking, something nearly all women came into daily contact with.

  Now, contemplating her battered body, he reflected that the violence it revealed was also something many women met daily. Who was it? he asked her silently. Who bloodied your mouth and blacked your eyes? Was he your husband, your father, a client?
Does he know where his last beating has put you?

  ‘So what happened, maister?’

  Sir Simon had left his prayers again. Gil blinked at him, collecting his thoughts.

  ‘It’s none so easy to read,’ he admitted.

  ‘Poor lass,’ said the Master, bending to peer into the corpse’s downturned face, ‘she’s had her troubles, but she’s free o them now. Who must you speak wi next? Your laddie’s away to ask round about if anyone heard anything, and the good-brother, Lockhart, he’s away over to St Mungo’s to complain of their lack of care, but if you’re wanting any of the women I’ll fetch them out.’

  ‘Aye, if they’re fit to talk to.’

  ‘I’ll get the lassies out to you, they’re a wee thing calmer now.’

  If Annie Gibb’s sisters-in-law were calmer now, Gil was glad he had not attempted to speak to them earlier. Led out into the sunshine they proved to be rather younger than Annie or the dead woman, perhaps fifteen and seventeen, two sturdy girls neither pretty nor plain but something between, with curling brown hair and eyes swollen with weeping. The older one had the hiccups, which provoked increasingly hysterical giggles in the other girl. Their names, it seemed, were Nicholas and Ursula, and like Dame Ellen they had watched from a distance while Annie was bound to the Cross and then had left her.

  ‘She protested, I think,’ said Gil, sitting down on the opposite bench. The sisters looked at one another, and one nodded.

  ‘She never wanted it,’ said the other. ‘She wanted just to be left alone.’

  ‘But it wasny right, living the way she did,’ said her sister, and hiccuped. Blushing, she covered her mouth, and said behind her hand, ‘No company, and never meeting anybody, and we couldny be with her that often, we’d duties about the house.’