The Counterfeit Madam

by Pat McIntosh

  There was a click as the latch rose. Boyd exhaled, pushed gently, and the door moved under his hand. Not barred then, thought Gil, as the hinges creaked. They stood frozen on the threshold, listening for any movement within. Nothing stirred, and at length Boyd took the lantern from Gil and stepped inside the house. Gil followed, and pushed the door to behind the dog.

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Aught out o place.’ The lantern’s narrow beam moved slowly round the place. One small room, a workbench at one end, a hearth at the other. The light glinted on a rack of tools, raising a glow from blades of chisel and gouge, casting darkness beyond a mell on the bench, its head as big as Gil’s two fists. Two kists, a rack with papers, a table and two stools, another rack of shelves with kitchen stuff on them, a ladder in the corner leading to a dark loft. The place smelled of damp, of cold ashes, of something else. Socrates left Gil’s side and padded round, sniffing in corners, his paws rasping on the beaten earth floor. The lantern, in Boyd’s hand, moved towards the workbench, the light skimming over a clutter of wood shavings, several gouges, two small-bladed knives. The hearth, when Gil stepped over to it, was cold, though the two crocks washed out and set to drip beside it still had damp patches beneath them. He frowned. Something did not quite fit there.

  ‘Where’s the work-piece?’ he asked quietly. They were both using the voice a little above a whisper, the pitch least likely to disturb the sleeping neighbours. The light swung across the bench, round the room, dipped to the floor.

  ‘Here.’ Boyd stooped and came up with a piece of wood, set it among the shavings, held the lantern close. A figure emerged from the cross-lit surface like a corpse out of water, St Paul with book and sword, six inches high.

  ‘He’s been interrupted,’ Gil said. ‘A craftsman doesny leave his work like that, he makes all tidy and stows his tools. And yet he’s had time to wash the crocks, and not so long since at that.’

  ‘So where is he?’ wondered Boyd. He was inspecting the bench, and now bent to peer under it, the light showing a shelf with baskets ranged along it. ‘What have we here? Aye, different work, a couple wax medallions, an alabaster waiting to be mended.’ He was pulling the baskets towards him one by one, peering into each. ‘No metalwork. Where does he do his metalwork?’

  ‘He doesny,’ said Gil. ‘He’s a carver, a maker of figures and pictures.’

  ‘He does engraving. I’ve seen him. I’d wager it was him made the dies for the coiners. I hoped there might be something in the house to prove it.’ The other man straightened up, and the beam of light flitted round the room again, the shadows dancing away from it. Outside, a child wailed, an adult spoke, and Boyd snapped the shutter of the lantern closed. Darkness choked the little house, and they waited, listening, while the dog snuffled at something. Both mother and child spoke again. Gil, ears at the stretch, breathing quietly, realized that muffled in darkness as he was his other senses were heightened; he was aware of Boyd moving away from the bench, of air stirring past his face, of the smells of damp earth and new timber, ashes and cold meat. Socrates’ strong claws scraped at wood. The child had fallen silent; the strapping of a bed creaked. Sweet St Giles, he thought, you might as well live on the Tolbooth steps.

  The lantern opened again, startlingly bright after the thick darkness, and showed Socrates, his nose pressed intently at the lid of one of the kists. Gil, wishing he had a light himself, moved past his dog to the second kist, while Boyd turned his attention to the papers in the rack.

  ‘Contracts,’ he said after a moment. ‘A St Francis for the Greyfriars, a Philip and James for St Thomas’s. He’s doing well enow.’

  ‘Clothes in here,’ said Gil. He dug cautiously among the folded garments. ‘Couple of medals, a purse wi a few coins. No metalworking tools that I can feel.’

  ‘See us the coins,’ requested Boyd. Gil obediently drew the purse out, and his companion took it to the workbench and tipped the contents out into the beam of the lantern. Gil moved to the other kist, elbowed Socrates out of the way and lifted the lid. ‘Two, no, three false ones,’ Boyd reported. Gil grunted, peering at what lay inside, something light and dark in patches which filled the kist to its top –

  The lid fell with a bang as he recoiled with a shudder, fell over Socrates, and went down, taking one of the stools with him.

  ‘You great juffler—’ began Boyd. Outside, the child wailed again, and someone shouted. ‘Quick, bar the door, they’ll be out like a spilled byke—’

  Gil scrambled to his feet and collected himself, pulling his doublet straight, patting his apologetic dog. Boyd was making for the door, but he put out a hand and seized the other man’s arm.

  ‘A moment,’ he said, and drew a slightly shaky breath. ‘I think I’ve found Dod Muir.’

  ‘What?’

  There were loud voices in the house across the toft. Someone shouted about a light.

  ‘In the kist. He’s cold, and softened. I found his face.’ He wiped the other hand on his hose, trying to eliminate the feeling of the clammy flesh. ‘Let’s have some light on him.’

  The body in the kist was folded up, knees on chest, head tilted sideways. The face was pale in the thin light, the features flattened by the lid of the chest. The eyes stared at them pleadingly. Socrates inserted his long nose under Gil’s elbow and sniffed curiously at the dead man’s ear, and Boyd said with reluctance,

  ‘Aye, it’s Muir right enough. How did he die, I wonder?’

  ‘I can smell blood,’ said Gil, ‘though it’s not fresh.’

  ‘Dhia!’ said a voice above them in horror.

  The lantern jerked convulsively, but Socrates looked upwards, ears pricked. Gil followed the dog’s gaze. At the top of the ladder, against the darkness of the loft, a dark-browed face stared back at them, appalled.

  ‘Christ aid!’ said Boyd. ‘Who the devil are you?’

  ‘Dod!’ shouted someone outside, and there was a hammering at the door. Socrates scrambled to his feet, head down, growling. ‘Is that you, man? What’s befallen ye? Are ye scaithed?’

  ‘Euan Campbell,’ said Gil with resignation. ‘Come down out o there.’

  ‘It iss mysel, no my brother,’ said the man in the loft. ‘I will just be putting my boots on, maybe.’

  ‘Who’s in there?’ demanded the voice outside.

  ‘Niall, an tu a tha’ann?’ A woman’s voice, shrill with anxiety. The child was screaming now. Sandy Boyd calmly handed Gil the lantern and drew his cloak about him in an elaborate gesture. Suddenly, Madam Xanthe was back, simpering in the dimness.

  ‘I’ll let you deal wi’t, seeing you found him,’ she said archly.

  ‘My gratitude,’ said Gil with feeling, ‘knows no bounds.’ He opened another shutter on the lantern. The hammering on the door was growing more urgent, and Socrates was growling insistently. ‘Neil! Get down here, man!’

  ‘You were just wanting somewhere to sleep,’ repeated Otterburn. He stared at Neil Campbell, his expression baffled. Gil sympathized; conversation with the Campbell brothers often left him feeling the same way. ‘So why did you pick Dod Muir’s loft?’

  ‘My cousin was saying he was from home.’

  ‘Your cousin being,’ Otterburn referred to his notes, ‘Noll Campbell the whitesmith. Christ on a handcart, I think the whole of Scotland must be kin to the folk on this toft. And how did he ken the man Muir was from home?’

  ‘But he was not from home,’ the gallowglass pointed out earnestly.

  ‘What,’ said Otterburn with thinning patience, ‘made your kinsman think Muir was from home?’

  ‘Well, he was never seeing him all day. And nor was the women.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Otterburn, gazing at Campbell in the candlelight. ‘What are you doing here anyway? Why are you in Glasgow the now?’

  ‘Visiting my cousin,’ said Campbell, innocence shining in his face.

  ‘So why were you not lodged wi him?’ Gil asked.

  When he had opened the door of Dod Muir’
s house, Saunders the pewterer, clad in shirt and boots, had almost fallen into the chamber clutching one of his bigger mells. Behind him his wife held her plaid about her over her shift, a lantern in her free hand, her gaze going past Gil into the dark corners, to Neil Campbell on the ladder.

  ‘You!’ said Saunders. ‘What are you at here? What have ye done wi Dod?’

  ‘The man Muir is dead,’ said the gallowglass, as the whitesmith appeared out of the rainy darkness.

  Saunders’ wife screamed, and crossed herself. The whitesmith pushed past her into the house, staring round in the leaping shadows.

  ‘What are you about?’ demanded Saunders, raising the mell. ‘Seize the man, Noll, we’ve got him red hand!’

  ‘He’s been slain and hidden here,’ said Gil, ‘I’d say yesterday some time.’

  Both householders began shouting, ably assisted by Saunders’ wife. The resulting broil had attracted the attention of the Watch; during it, somehow, Madam Xanthe slipped out and away without being noticed.

  The Watch, five stalwart indwellers of the burgh in a mixed set of ill-fitting armour, had been deeply dismayed to find they had a murder on their hands.

  ‘Is it Dod Muir right enough?’ said their leader, peering into the kist in the lantern-light. ‘His face is all sideyways, it’s no that like him.’ He felt respectfully at the folded corpse, and shook his head. ‘Whoever it is, he’s caulder than charity, and he’s stiff and softened again, he’s been gone a while.’

  ‘Who else would it be?’ said his neighbour scornfully, hitching at a breastplate which Gil estimated had been made forty years since for a thinner man. ‘Hid here in the man’s own kist, in his own house?’

  ‘It might be someone he’s slew himsel,’ said one of the other watchmen.

  ‘You need,’ said Gil, exerting authority, ‘to send to the Castle. Get them to wake the Provost, and fetch a couple of his men back wi you.’

  ‘Wake the Provost?’ repeated the leader doubtfully.

  ‘Aye, and take up this nosy—’ began Saunders. Gil stared him down, but his wife said shrilly,

  ‘Ach, indeed, nothing but trouble, he is, always poking round here, uncovering what he ought not, high time he was taken up and locked away!’ She fell silent as her brother hissed something threatening in Ersche, and Gil said to the leader of the Watch,

  ‘It’s none of your duty to deal wi murder, man. Send one of your lads to the Castle, tell them there’s been a murder, bid them come and take over from you here.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right there,’ agreed the man, grasping at this idea with relief. ‘Wee Rab, away up to the Castle, d’ye hear? And the rest o us will just stay here,’ he said, with more courage now he knew the task was limited, ‘mak sure nobody moves aught they shouldny.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ said one of his henchmen. ‘It’s out the rain, and all. But how did ye come to discover him, hid away like this?’

  ‘I’ll ask the questions, Tam Bowster,’ said the leader. ‘How did ye find him, then?’

  ‘The dog led me to him,’ said Gil, having anticipated this question. The men looked askance at Socrates, who was now sitting politely at Gil’s side, his teeth gleaming in the light. The child was still screaming in the near house; Saunders sent his wife away with a mutter and a jerk of the head, and Noll Campbell the whitesmith said,

  ‘For one that claims to be our landlord, maister, you do a rare lot o spying and creeping about. What was bringing you in here, that the dog could sniff out a death? Did you ken he was there to be found?’

  ‘When did you last see him?’ Gil countered.

  ‘I’ll ask the questions,’ said the leader of the Watch. ‘When was deceased last seen, then? Was he at his work the day?’

  ‘He couldny ha been,’ objected the man in the antique breastplate, ‘he’s been deid since yestreen by the look o him.’

  ‘I’d an encounter wi him yesterday morning,’ said Gil rather wryly. ‘I’ve been looking for a word wi him ever since.’

  ‘And you!’ said the watchman to Neil Campbell, not waiting for an answer from the householders. ‘What are you doing here? You’re a stranger, are ye no? Was it you slew the man and hid him in his own kist?’

  ‘I never knew the man was there,’ protested Neil.

  He said the same now to the Provost. Otterburn snorted.

  ‘Answer Maister Cunningham,’ he ordered. ‘Why were ye no lodged wi your cousin? What made him bed ye down in Muir’s house?’

  ‘I was sleeping there before,’ said the gallowglass. Otterburn snorted again, and set his tablets down with a bang on the table.

  ‘Take him away, Andro,’ he ordered. ‘Shut him away wi the rest o them, we’ll get a right word wi them all the morn’s morn. And yoursel, Maister Cunningham,’ he added as his man-at-arms removed the startled Campbell, ‘what’s all this about, anyway? Respected burgess like yoursel, creeping about the back-lands in the night? Don’t think I haveny noticed what ye were about.’

  ‘I found Dod Muir,’ Gil pointed out, aware that his face was burning. Otterburn glared at him. ‘I was in pursuit of a matter concerning Dame Isabella’s death,’ he continued.

  ‘And did you find it?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. Otterburn grunted, and pushed his chair back with a scraping noise, very loud in the quiet tower.

  ‘Get away hame to yir bed,’ he said, ‘and be back here betimes, if you would, Maister Cunningham.’ It was not a request. ‘I’ll want a good word wi you and all afore the old dame’s quest, and I’ll want you wi me when we get a look at Dod Muir. He’ll keep in his box till daylight.’

  ‘Very well,’ Gil said, rising when the older man did.

  ‘And next time you’re taken up by the Watch,’ said Otterburn, ‘I’ll have you arrested same as the lave o them.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘I’m right flattered,’ said Lowrie, ‘that Maister Gil trusts me to keep you safe, but I thought bringing a couple of our lads along as well might be wiser.’

  Alys gave him an enigmatic smile, and pressed her horse to a faster walk. She had left Gil still asleep. He had returned some time before dawn, rousing her long enough to give her a confusing account of Sandy Boyd, Archbishop Blacader and a body in a kist, before they had both become distracted; when she woke again at the more usual time and slid out of his embrace he hardly stirred.

  It had taken her an hour to organize horses and escort for this outing, while contriving to give both Catherine and Ealasaidh the impression that she was acting on Gil’s instructions. She hoped one of them would wake him in time for the quest on Dame Isabella; meanwhile she preferred to leave Glasgow behind as soon as possible.

  ‘I was certain you would know the road out to Strathblane,’ she said. ‘I have never ridden that way.’

  ‘Where are we headed, anyways, mem?’ asked Luke suspiciously from her other side. ‘It’s a bonnie day for a ride, but there’s work to do. The maister wasny best pleased at your message.’

  ‘Strathblane? Is that to Balgrochan?’ asked one of Lowrie’s men hopefully. ‘Willie Logan that’s grieve there’s got a generous hand wi the ale-jug. Good ale his wife brews and all.’

  ‘That and Ballencleroch,’ said Alys. Luke frowned, and Canon Cunningham’s groom Tam turned in his saddle and looked hard at her.

  ‘Is that these two feus the row was about?’ he asked. ‘When yon auld wife was at our house, that asked the maister—’ He broke off what he was about to say.

  ‘I think so,’ said Alys.

  ‘Asked him had he had his bowels open, did she?’ said the other of Lowrie’s men, and guffawed. ‘She’d ha asked the Pope himsel the same question, I can tell you, good riddance to her!’

  ‘Sim,’ said Lowrie repressively, and the man ducked his head and muttered an apology. ‘Mistress Alys, it’s twelve mile. Are you ready for such a ride, and the ride back and all? And the dog,’ he added, as Socrates loped back from his inspection of a milestone.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said confid
ently, assessing the state of the road. ‘Shall we canter?’

  The first part of the journey passed quickly enough. As Luke had said, it was a good day for a ride, dry and fine for April, though with enough cloud moving on the brisk wind to prevent the horses overheating. The road from Glasgow to Stirling went by Cadder and Kirkintilloch, small towns which Alys had heard of but never seen, each with its group of thatched cottages scattered round a little stone church. At Kirkintilloch they paused to admire the vestiges of the wall built by the Romans to keep the savages out, and to let the horses drink and rest briefly. Lowrie, claiming to be thirsty, procured ale for all of them to drink, standing on the grass beside one of the cottages, while the hens clucked round the horses’ hooves and several children gathered to stare at them. Alys relaxed in her saddle and looked at the traffic on the road. One or two people went by on foot, dusty to the waist, bound on who knew what errand. Wagons grumbled past in twos and threes, pulled by oxen or small sturdy ponies, shifting the merchandise of Scotland. Barrels of wine, barrels of fish, barrels of dry goods from the ports of the Low Countries, moving around the kingdom –

  ‘That’s a soil-cart coming,’ said Lowrie. ‘Drink up, lads. Are you about finished, mistress? We’d best be on the road afore that passes us.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Alys, handing her beaker down to him. ‘Thank you, Maister Lowrie, I was glad of that. Do we continue on this road?’

  ‘We turn off in a mile or so.’ Lowrie mounted, checked that all the men were in the saddle, and urged his horse into the roadway. The soil-cart was already making its presence felt; in this wind direction they would be aware of it until they left the road, but if they got behind it they would be aware of it for a lot longer. Alys had seen the soil-carts rumbling out of Glasgow, their unsavoury contents dripping in the mud behind them, and splashing on the legs of people and horses who followed. And attracting the burgh dogs to roll in the residue, she realized, and looked round hastily for Socrates, who grinned at her from under the belly of Luke’s horse.