The Fourth Crow

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Very likely,’ he said. ‘But why should I tell you sic a thing? Supposing I ken the answers.’

  ‘What, you’d take delivery o a boatload wi no idea who handed it to you, nor who your principal might be?’

  ‘Aye, Tam,’ called the man in the next boat along the shore. ‘You right, man?’

  ‘I’m right, Dod,’ said Tam. He looked at Gil again, snorted, and set off to fetch another bale. The boy in the boat, enough like him to be a close relation, watched anxiously.

  ‘Or did he never tell you who the principal was?’ Gil prodded. ‘It was Barnabas the verger, wasn’t it, who brought the cart down in the night?’

  ‘If you’re that certain,’ Tam paused beside him, a box balanced on his sturdy shoulders, ‘why are you troubling to ask me?’

  ‘Was it Barnabas?’

  ‘Him that’s deid? Aye,’ said Tam reluctantly. ‘It was. He never tellt me his name, mind, but I asked a bit. I’ll no do business wi folk wi’out a name.’

  ‘And his principal?’

  The mariner snorted again, and trudged up the slope with his burden. Lowering it to the grass where Socrates waited, he straightened up and eyed Gil directly.

  ‘I’d got his name, I made shift to do wi’out his superior’s.’

  ‘So there was a superior? Did he never name him?’

  ‘He tried to tell me he was alone in it,’ said Tam, ‘but I kent better. It was someone at St Mungo’s, that was clear enough, he’d never ha got all that stuff away on his own.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘All that I took down the water and sellt for him.’

  ‘There was a lot, was there? How often did you take a boatload down?’

  Tam shrugged.

  ‘Every two-three nights? Aince or twice a week, mebbe.’

  ‘And what did you do with the proceeds?’

  ‘Och, I gied it back to him,’ said Tam with the air of a scrupulous man. ‘It was St Mungo’s goods, after a’, I’d never rob Holy Kirk.’

  Gil paused a moment at this utterance, but contrived to keep his face straight.

  ‘You never thought that Barnabas might be robbing Holy Kirk?’ he suggested.

  ‘What, and him one of the vergers?’ Tam stepped down the grassy slope and made for the boat again. ‘Is that all you were wanting fro me?’

  ‘What will you do,’ Gil asked deliberately, ‘with the coin you took in Dumbarton yesterday for the last lading? Barnabas is dead, as you said. When was he to come back with another cart-load? Is that when you should ha handed over the coin?’

  The mariner made a great play of getting another pack onto his shoulder, of plodding up the slope with it through the drizzle, of setting it down with care and lining it up beside the other bales. Socrates, growing bored, paced off along the shore to investigate another boat. Gil waited. Eventually the man straightened up and looked at him.

  ‘He’d ha brought me some more the night, most like.’

  ‘Where would you meet him?’

  Tam bent his head, scratching at the back of his neck, looking from side to side as he did so.

  ‘If you’ll bide,’ he said at last, very quietly, ‘till I shift this load, and the boy goes to advise Mistress Veitch her goods is come home, we can take a stroll on the Green.’

  Gil glanced at the sky. It was not much past Terce, he reckoned; Otterburn would be expecting him to report on the death in the pilgrim hostel, but this was more immediately useful. He nodded, whistled to Socrates, and sat down on the damp canvas-covered box.

  Once the boat was unloaded and the boy had returned, panting, from notifying Mistress Marion Veitch that a stack of goods had been brought upriver out of her husband’s Rose of Irvine and waited for her on the shore, Tam ordered the boy to watch them, jerked his head at Gil, and set off up the bank of the river, under the near arch of the bridge, towards the wide expanse of Glasgow Green.

  ‘If our luck’s in,’ he said conversationally, ‘the washer-women’ll be abroad. Aye good entertainment, they are.’

  ‘So where did you meet the fellow and his handcart?’ Gil asked. The mariner halted, looking about him.

  ‘Aye, you see,’ he said, pointing. ‘There’s the washerwomen, by the mill-burn. They’re a great draw.’

  He strolled in the other direction, away from the gathering of men round the three or four huge washtubs, in which the burgh’s professional washerwomen, skirts kilted high above bare muscular calves, tramped the wet linen clean and exchanged edged pleasantries with their audience. Gil followed him without comment, and eventually the man halted on the bank of the river, looking morosely down at the rippling water.

  ‘You canny sell goods in Dumbarton market,’ he said. ‘No if you’re no an indweller or pay yir fee at the gates.’ Gil, who was well aware of this, kept silence, and after a little Tam went on, ‘Course they’s nothing to prevent a couple o freens striking a bargain, and if the one o them’s an indweller and can sell the goods on, it’s nothin’ to do wi the other fellow.’ Gil continued to preserve silence, and the mariner prodded at the grass of the riverbank with his bare foot. ‘I’ve aye done it,’ he said. ‘Goods that willny shift in Glasgow, items they’re short in Dumbarton. Me and a couple o the lads has a good trade going. Ye ken?’

  Thus appealed to, Gil made an agreeing sound in his throat. Tam picked a dandelion out of the tussocky grass with his toes, and stared down at it.

  ‘I’m no saying I’ve done a thing that’s agin the law,’ he said defensively. ‘This chiel fetches up in Maggie Bell’s tavern, oh,’ he paused, reckoning, ‘after Candlemas, it would be. Wi a tale o a poke o meal he wants to shift, and having no licence to sell in the burgh he’d as soon it went elsewhere. So we came to an accommodation, and I dealt wi it for him, and when I gied him his share o the coin he said, how about another couple o pokes? And so it went on for a week or two or more, him bringing me the goods by night and then he’d be back a night or two later for the takings. And then,’ he paused, scowling at the small stook of dandelion leaves he had gathered, ‘and then around Lady Day he’d a barrel o apricocks. I thought it a strange thing for one o the vergers to get his hands on, but I took it into the boatie, and it was only the next morn when me and my freen in Dumbarton was prigging over the price that I seen the St Mungo’s seal on it.’

  ‘Did you challenge him on that?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Did I no! But it was no use, he’d a long tale about it was gien him by the Almoner hissel, I could ask him if I wanted.’

  ‘And did you?’ Gil prompted, wondering if Barnabas had thought of that by himself.

  ‘What do you think? Anyway, these last few weeks, it’s come to be more and more at a time. In fact my freen was saying last week, he’s no certain he can take any more, the merchants o Dumbarton are looking sideyways at him a’ready.’

  ‘Had you told Barnabas that?’

  ‘I did.’ Gil waited, not looking at the man. Socrates came whirling back at the gallop from wherever he had been, thrust his nose briefly under his master’s hand, and loped off again. Tam drew a deep breath, and let it out again. ‘Daft, I was,’ he admitted. ‘All I got then was a sweering, language like you’d never expect fro a servant o Holy Kirk, and tellt that I was in ower my ears already, and my freen in Dumbarton and all, and I could haud my wheesht and keep the trade going. Which is all very well for him to say,’ he added, ‘he’d no notion o trade, that was clear, when the market’s gone it’s gone and no point saying Keep it going.’

  Gil, who had heard rather differently from his successful merchant brother-in-law, said,

  ‘Convenient for you the fellow’s deid, I’d think.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Tam, ‘but you’ll no lay it at my door, freen, I was never near St Mungo’s the day he was slain, I was here about the shore all day or drinking at Maggie Bell’s place. Along wi your man,’ he finished pointedly.

  ‘So Euan has already told me,’ Gil accepted.

  ‘Pit doon the well, was he, that Barnaba
s? No a good way to go. Oh, throttled first, do you tell me? No that that’s any better.’

  ‘So how was Barnabas to collect the coin for the last load? What will you do now?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Tam, showing signs of discomfort. ‘I’m no right sure how best to proceed. I’ve been turning it ower in my head, see, all the way up fro Dumbarton. He’d ha come down the night, likely wi another two-three barrels, and I canny think whether to sit out and watch, and see if his principal comes instead or maybe sends another, or whether to go to my bed and hope he doesny, or go up St Mungo’s and hand this bit coin to the Almoner, or what.’

  ‘Where did you meet Barnabas? Did he bring his cart right down to the shore?’

  ‘No him.’ Tam waved a hand downriver, then retracted it. ‘No, you canny see fro here, the bridge is in the way. The far end o the shore where we haul up, there’s a great stand o trees and bushes and that. It’s the foot o St Thenew’s land.’ Gil nodded. ‘He’d hurl his cairtie down the track by St Thenew’s itsel, and pull it into the shadows there, so me and the laddie, or whoever I got to gie us a hand, had to carry what goods he brought down to the shore on our backs.’

  ‘So nobody else got a look at him,’ said Gil.

  ‘Aye. So what I’m thinking, I might sit about the brazier by the sail-shed, see if anybody cam down looking for me the night. But I’m wondering, this fellow that might be waiting in the shadows, how much does he maybe ken? How much does he think I ken?’

  Gil turned his head to look at the mariner. The hazel eyes met his, their expression troubled.

  ‘I’ve no wife, maister,’ he said, ‘but I’ve the laddie. My nevvy. I’d no want to leave him on his lone.’

  ‘The other fishermen?’ Gil suggested.

  ‘Maybe. I’m owed a few favours.’

  Gil considered the sky again. The drizzle had stopped, and the grey clouds were lightening; it was probably nearly Sext.

  ‘I ought to get away up to the Castle,’ he said. ‘Will you be about the shore the day?’ Tam nodded. ‘I’ll come and find you, or send by one of the Provost’s men. I think we could give this fellow more than he bargains for.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I’m perfectly well,’ said Alys. ‘No need to worry about me.’

  ‘It’s not like you,’ said Kate. ‘Will you have some of Ursel’s gingerbread?’

  ‘I’ll have some gingerbread, if I may, Mammy,’ said her younger stepdaughter hopefully.

  ‘You’ve had a piece already, Ysonde. Take the dish to your aunt.’

  Ysonde gave a dramatic sigh and tossed her head, but lifted the wooden platter and presented it to Alys with quite a creditable curtsy. Over the row of broken gold-brown pieces her penetrating glance met Alys’s, and she said significantly,

  ‘Dame, how does my gay goshawk?’

  Alys kept her face straight with difficulty; behind the child Kate made no such attempt, though she contrived not to laugh aloud. The older girl, Wynliane, was looking shocked.

  ‘Maister Lowrie? He is well, Ysonde. He is gone into Ayrshire today, on an errand for your uncle.’

  ‘Tell him his bonnie white doo was asking for him,’ said Ysonde with aplomb.

  ‘Seeing the rain’s stopped,’ Kate intervened, ‘you and Wynliane may take John and baby Edward out into the yard, if you’ll watch them carefully.’

  When the children had gone outside, along with their nurses and a still-offended Jennet, Kate turned to Alys, but was forestalled by Babb, who said eagerly,

  ‘Now what’s this happened up the town, mistress? A woman murdered, they’re saying, and in a chapel at that? What chapel is it?’

  ‘Was Gil called to it?’ Kate said, watching Alys’s expression.

  ‘We were both there. They sent round last night.’

  ‘Both of you? Did you go to support those lassies you were telling me about? It’s surely not one of them that’s killed?’

  Alys settled down to recount the events of the evening, along with what she and Gil had learned from the residents of the hostel and its various guests. Kate and the gigantic Babb listened attentively, both crossing themselves in shock from time to time as she unfolded the full extent of the sacrilege which had taken place.

  ‘There was word from the Dean already this morning,’ she said. ‘There is to be a special meeting of Chapter this afternoon, to which he seems to think Gil can bring the name of the killer already, so that they may anathematise him. Does it need the Archbishop for that, or could the Chapter do it in a body?’

  ‘What, wi bell, book and candle?’ said Kate. ‘D’you know, I have no idea. What a thing to happen here in Glasgow. You hear of it out among the wild Ersche, and a course there was the Bruce getting excommunicate by the Pope, for the same crime in Paisley Abbey, but that was two hundred year ago, not here and now!’

  ‘My granny tellt me about the Bruce,’ said Babb improbably. ‘Her granny’s granny was there and heard it, or maybe it was her granny, I canny mind, she’d heard all about it any road. They read the Pope’s letter out fro the high altar, and all cast down their candles and shut their books, so you could say he was excommunicate twice. Cursed him north and south and east and west, so it did, and sleeping and waking, eating and fasting and a’ things you could think of, and all Scotland wi him. Read in all the kirks, it was. No that we paid any mind,’ she added.

  ‘Terrifying,’ said Alys.

  ‘But who does Gil think . . . ?’ began Kate, and stopped. Alys shook her head.

  ‘No way to tell for now.’

  ‘Yes, it’s too soon.’ Kate reached for the jug. ‘Some more of this spiced ale? If the anathema goes ahead we can look for someone to dwine and sicken or drop dead, I suppose, but if they’ll have to summon Robert Blacader from Stirling or wherever the court is the now to issue it, it could all take a while.’

  ‘We could,’ said Alys noncommittally. ‘Myself, I doubt whether someone who would do such a thing would be affected by excommunication, but there is no knowing.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see.’ Kate looked round as the house door opened. ‘Andy? Is all well out in the yard?’

  ‘Oh, aye, mistress.’ Augie’s steward, small and bowlegged, ducked his head in a bow to both ladies, and gave Babb a friendly nod. ‘It was just I seen the wee laddie out there, so I thought Mistress Mason might be wi you. I tracked the cadger’s lodging for ye, mistress.’

  ‘That was very quick,’ said Alys admiringly. ‘I hope it was not a great trouble.’

  ‘No, no, was nae bother. Turns out he goes drinking when he’s in Glasgow in the same howff our Jamesie’s brother favours, up at the Wyndheid. So he stays up the Stablegreen, it seems, near the port, at the back o a horner’s shop. His wife’s cried,’ Andy paused, and rasped his chin thoughtfully, ‘Eppie, that was the name. Eppie Forrest. She’s like to be at home even if Billy isny.’

  One advantage of Jennet’s bad mood, Alys found, was that the girl accompanied her without comment. She had rather expected a stream of objections to her next excursion, since the Stablegreen was a very mixed area, but Jennet was still offended by having been left at home last night and merely followed her mistress one step behind all the way up the High Street, among the groups of gossiping women and shouting students, through the Wyndhead, across the Girth Burn and past the rose-brown sandstone walls of the Castle. The street led by St Serf’s almshouse, where aged voices upraised in chant suggested the residents were singing Nones, and St Catherine’s, where several priests were gathered outside the gate, talking in low shocked tones. Alys avoided these, and went on to where the houses became smaller, with workshops and weaving-sheds propped against them.

  Lowrie’s directions were quite clear, and led her to a small cottage set end-on to the street. Under the sagging thatch a small window pierced the rubble wall near the house corner, its shutters open, and voices and a smell of stewed kale and fried onions floated out; Jennet followed as she picked her way along the muddy path to the door and rattled a
t the tirling-pin, the voices stopped, and there was a hoarse yapping. After a moment the door opened on a sturdy man in a sleeveless doublet, with his wife, in a blue kirtle, visible behind him restraining a half-grown dog of very mixed race.

  ‘Will Johnson?’ Alys asked over the continued yapping. ‘I think our man spoke to your wife yesterday. Could I have a word? About something you heard?’

  ‘A word?’

  ‘And is that the dog you went to fetch? It’s a very healthy beast,’ she said diplomatically, unable to think of any other commendation.

  ‘Aye, and warranted good ratters on both sides.’ Johnson eyed her up and down, surveyed Jennet, and stood back civilly. ‘Will you come in, mistress?’

  ‘We’re just at our kale,’ said his wife. The dog barked again, and she clamped its muzzle shut with an expert hand. ‘Will you hae a bite to eat? Come and sit in at the fire, mistress, and your lassie wi you. Was it about what happened yestreen? For I spoke to your man, I tellt him all,’ she freed the dog, which hurried forward to check the intruders, and crossed herself, ‘Christ forgive her, poor woman, naeb’dy deserves to end like that, and in a chapel and all, what’s the world coming to? Sit in and eat, mistress.’

  Argument was futile. Seated by the hearth before a real chimney, in the man’s own chair, a bowl of kale and a lump of barley bread in front of her on a stool, the dog restrained from sniffing hopefully at the food, and Jennet beside her spooning at another generous bowlful, she allowed the couple to rehearse the events of the previous evening, offering corrections to their wilder flights of fancy but trying to give away nothing new.

  ‘She’s saying it was the Deil himsel,’ said Johnson drily, jerking his head at his wife, ‘but I’m thinking it wasny, they’d never a smell o sulphur or flames or the like. But who’d ha thought it, here on the Stablegreen?’

  ‘No, indeed,’ said Alys soothingly. ‘It is a very proper chapel, with figures of Our Lord and Our Lady and St Catherine, and a crucifix upon the altar, the Devil could never bear to enter such a place.’

  ‘But they’re saying the woman was struck down wi the crucifix itsel,’ said Mistress Templand, reluctant to abandon her theory.