Hew told his story. Yet he did not stay for Christian’s thanks. By the time she remembered him, and looked up from her dizzy tears of laughter, he was gone.
He walked alone awhile, too drained for company. At last, as it grew dark, he made his way to Richard’s house. He could see the lamplight flicker in the street, and hear the laughter of the children in the hall, yet still he longed for solitude. Richard, when he saw the shadow on Hew’s face, assumed the worst, and took him to his closet room, where he called for brandy. ‘What has happened now?’ he questioned gently.
Hew sunk in a gossip chair and closed his eyes. ‘I found the bairn,’ he whispered.
‘I understand. I am so very sorry.’
‘You do not understand. William is alive.’
‘Alive?’ Richard breathed, ‘God be thanked!’
‘He has witnessed horrors, though. He cannot speak.’
‘You can barely speak yourself,’ Richard said compassionately. ‘This has worn you out. Your tale can wait.’
Hew demurred, ‘I want to tell it.’
Richard heard him out. At last he said a little sceptically, ‘This man Marten Voet; you let him go? You did not warn the provost of Dalkeith?’
‘Aye, I let him go. For he was not a threat.’
‘I wonder you are sure of that,’ Richard answered quietly.
‘I believed him.’
‘You will forgive my saying, but I fear that that was rash. You did a grand thing in finding the boy, and returning him safe to his mother. Yet I am afraid you made a grave mistake when you let the card seller go. You are too green and soft, and too easily taken in by a tale. I fear that villain saw your weakness, and exploited it.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Hew asked him curiously. ‘Marten saved William’s life.’
‘Was that it, do you think?’ queried Richard. ‘Or was it that he could not bring himself to kill him? Marten Voet was in St Andrews when your fisher lass was raped and smothered. Now another lass is raped and murdered on the muir, and Marten Voet was there. You cannot count that mere coincidence.’
Hew was silent for a moment. Then he said. ‘That is a lawyer’s argument, based on presumption. Which you must allow, accounts for nothing.’
‘I allow it does not count for proof. But surely, it must be enough to have him held for questioning. I am afraid that you have let your pity for this man betray you into making a mistake. Well, it may not matter. I do not mean to alarm you. You have recovered the child, and Marten Voet doubtless is long gone. Let us hope he takes his chance to flee to England, and we hear no more of him.’
Hew hesitated. ‘Do you think I should go after him?’ he asked uncertainly.
‘Aye, perhaps; or else leave it. Hew, I do not know.’ Richard seemed perplexed, and a little agitated. ‘Why not send word in letters to the provosts of the towns that he is like to come to, warning them of him, as fugitive from justice? We shall put him to the horn; someone else will apprehend him.’
‘But we have no evidence,’ objected Hew.
‘The evidence is circumstantial. It might be enough. Consider, Hew; you are so keen for justice for these lasses. Will you wait for him to rape and kill again?’
‘I will send the letters,’ Hew agreed unhappily. ‘God help me, I forgot the fisher lass. And Marten Voet was there! I believed him, Richard!’
‘Your greenness does you credit, I confess. I will be almost sad to see it clouded by experience,’ Richard answered. ‘Nonetheless, you want to lose a little of that trust.’
‘As you say.’ Hew felt confused and upset. ‘I saw Sir David Preston,’ he remembered suddenly. ‘He bids you call on him, as soon as possible.’
Richard exclaimed. ‘Sir David! I forgot! I doubt these strange events have moved me too. I must go tomorrow, at first light.’
‘I thought that you had gone, the day that William disappeared.’
‘Was it that same day? But I suppose that it was. You are quite right,’ Richard mused. ‘I turned back, when it began to rain. And I had quite forgotten it! Did Preston tell you what the matter was?’
‘He was most close and secretive,’ remembered Hew.
‘Then I should go to him alone. No matter, I will go tomorrow, once my horse is rested. I suspect this is to do with Morton’s trial. Sir David’s father was a loyalist ally of the queen; Craigmillar was her second home. It is said that the plot to murder Henry Darnley was contrived in that house, and that the house itself was to be the setting for it, had not Darnley gone instead to Kirk o’Fields. The Prestons have a knack of turning with the tide, and are fiercely allied now to our young King James. There may be some secret Morton is apprised of, that David Preston fears will now come out. While I am gone, I shall make inquiries after Marten Voet. If he is on the road, he may be apprehended still. You should take some rest. Try not to worry. Let us pray that you did the right thing.’
Hew slept long and late. By the time that he awoke, Richard had already left for Craigmillar, and he found himself free for the day. He ate breakfast by the window looking on the land market. A low and bitter wind blew across the gallery, the sky above the tenements was gunshot grey, and the landscape, as ever, loomed cold. Even at this height, the huddle of the high town seemed oppressive, and Hew felt starved of light and air. He decided he would walk to Calton crags, to find a fresh perspective on the town. But as he made his way towards the netherbow, he saw his sister Meg. She was struggling, so it seemed, with a beggar in the street, for a woman dressed in ragged drabs stood clutching at her gown. Hew hurried to her side. As he began to remonstrate, Meg stilled him with a look. ‘This is Annie, Hew,’ she forewarned him quickly. ‘Have you met?’
‘I do not think that I have had that pleasure,’ Hew admitted gravely.
‘She is Alison’s mother.’
‘Oh, my dear God!’ Hew was appalled.
‘Alison goes home on Sundays,’ Meg explained. ‘And Annie came to ask why yesterday her daughter did not come.’
‘Dear God,’ Hew swore again, ‘Had no one told her?’
‘It seems, with William missing, it was overlooked. Annie does not walk well, and she does not go to kirk without her daughter’s help. Their parish is St Cuthbert’s, at the west side of the town. I understand they live near the west bow. Annie has struggled to come out today, to look for Alison.’
‘Mistress – Annie – I am so very sorry,’ Hew said bleakly.
The old woman looked at him blankly, through eyes so thickly clouded he could not tell if she could see.
‘Does she not understand?’ he whispered to Meg.
Meg nodded sadly. ‘It has been explained to her.’ She steadied her grip on the old lady’s arm. ‘I have given her a sleeping draught; it was one I had made up for Christian. Now we must help her home, before it takes effect.’
Hew took Annie’s arm upon the other side. ‘Did you have to poison her?’ he hissed.
‘She was so greatly exercised,’ Meg replied defensively, ‘we feared that it would do her harm. The draught will give her ease, but for a little while. Do not argue, Hew. Help me take her home.’
Annie’s lodgings were a small low chamber underneath a tinsmith’s shop, and chimed from dawn to dusk with the ringing of the hammermen. Meg helped the old lady into her bed. ‘She’s settled now,’ she mouthed above the din. ‘The tinsmith’s wife has promised she will sit with her awhile, until she wakes.’
‘Were there no other children?’ Hew found himself shouting, to make himself heard.
His sister shook her head. ‘Alison was a late and only child. A gift from God, as Annie said. Her husband has been dead for eighteen years.’
Escaping from the heat and noise, Meg asked Hew to walk her to the west port inn. She looked tired and strained, and Hew began to fear her weakness had returned. They were grateful to come landward, back into the countryside, away from the sick hurry and the clamour. ‘It is a little quieter,’ Meg reflected gratefully, as they passed the port. ‘There is somethi
ng I must tell you. Something Annie said.’
‘Aye, what was that?’ Hew answered warily.
‘Alison had met a man, and they were to marry.’
‘Aye, a man called Davie,’ he recalled. ‘Then Davie must be told about her death. Did Annie tell you where to find him?’
Meg shook her head. ‘She does not know. They never met. But she said he was a printer and a man of means. He sent Annie gifts – food and blankets, and a cooking pot, when her old one had a hole. Annie was delighted with the match.’
‘It is more likely that her daughter bought those things,’ reflected Hew, ‘knowing that her mother wanted them.’
‘Aye, but it was Davie, surely, who gave her the money. But he was a printer, Hew! She said this before Christian, and Phillip, and Walter, and none of them knew of a printer called Davie, much less of one with money to spare.’
‘What is it you are saying?’ Hew asked her slowly.
‘That Davie is your printer, Marten Voet. Do you not think it possible, that they are the same?’
‘I think it more than possible, that Annie is confused,’ objected Hew. ‘Her daughter worked for a printer, after all. It is quite likely Davie has another trade entirely.’
‘No, you are wrong, for there is more. Alison was much enamoured, Annie said. And Annie is a sad, simple soul, whose trust can be bought for a cooking pot or blanket, and yet she let it slip, that Alison was not quite well at ease. This printer wanted her to help him in his trade, by bringing him some things from Christian’s shop.’
‘What things?’
‘Annie does not know, or did not understand it. She said that it was waste and of little consequence. But Christian confirms that papers have gone missing.’
‘Aye, that’s true,’ admitted Hew, ‘the proofs of Catherine’s poems.’
‘Whatever Davie had, he wanted more, so Annie said. And Alison was not convinced. She confided in her mother that she feared to lose her place, if she went on to help him. But Annie said she would not want the place when she had a man to marry her. She advised her not to risk the wrath of a good man, by refusing him her help, that could do no hurt to Christian.’
‘That is poor enough advice, from a mother,’ criticised Hew.
‘It is advice, from a poor mother,’ Meg corrected sadly, ‘who saw in this the faint chance of prosperity, for her daughter and herself. The rub is that she advised Alison to give him what he wanted. Do you not think it possible, that Alison was killed for what she gave him?’
‘Even if she was,’ conceded Hew, ‘it does not place the blame on Marten Voet. Marten has no money for the like of cooking pots.’
‘Yet he was on the muir, and he found the little boy. And he is a printer, and a stranger to the town. Surely, that cannot be mere coincidence,’ persisted Meg.
‘I do not believe it,’ Hew declared. ‘For William went with Marten and he had no fear of him.’
‘You cannot tell,’ Meg said earnestly, ‘what William knows or fears. What horrors he has locked up in his heart, he has forgotten them. We have no way of knowing what they are. I hazard that he does not know himself.’
‘You think it possible that he has shut them out?’
‘I think it more than likely, Hew. Such horrors can distort our memories, and make them false, like dreams. We may believe on waking, or we may forget.’
‘I know that you are wrong,’ Hew asserted desperately. ‘Marten Voet is not the killer. He is of a class of men, like gypsies on the muir, who are used as scapegoats, for they have no place or purpose in this world. All his life he wanders, and is everywhere suspected. It does not make him guilty of a crime.’
‘It does not make him innocent,’ Meg countered gently.
They had arrived at the inn, where Meg began to faint. Hew caught her as she fell, and was relieved when Giles appeared. ‘All this has been too much for her,’ he scolded, lifting her to bed. ‘She is not strong.’
‘I am quite well,’ Meg murmured, coming round. ‘In truth, I do not like the town. The people live so close, and packed in layers, like a pie.’
Giles tsked. ‘Far too much excitement,’ he said sternly.
Hew took solace in the taproom, reluctant to return to town, and to the closed-in world that Meg described. He had drunk almost a pint of watered wine by the time that Giles returned.
‘Still here, Hew? Meg has gone to sleep. I will join you for a drink or two.’
‘Is she quite well?’ Hew asked anxiously.
‘For certain, only tired,’ Giles confirmed, with unusual conviction. ‘The last days have been taxing for us all. Doctor Dow has concluded his report on Alison. It is a sad affair.’
‘Do you think that is possible that the same man killed Alison that killed Jess Reekie?’ Hew blurted out.
‘Now why do you ask that, I wonder?’ pondered Giles, as he poured a cup of wine.
‘Meg thinks that Marten Voet is the printer Davie. And it seems likely it was Davie who killed Alison. Marten Voet was in St Andrews when the fisher lass was killed. Richard says both girls were raped and smothered,’ Hew explained his chain of thought.
‘Ah, did he say that?’ Giles answered thoughtfully. ‘Then he has been talking to my good friend Doctor Dow. On which point, we have found a difference of opinion. Nonetheless, there is a grain of truth in it. Do you wish for the convolute answer, or the straight one?’
‘Giles, you have never given a straight answer in your life,’ Hew said wryly, ‘so I do not imagine you mean to start now. I am prepared to be circumspect.’
‘I think, in this case, you require the answer that best suits your theory,’ Giles replied perceptively. ‘No matter, I shall give you both. And as you well observe, the straight answer is Doctor Dow’s, and the more intricate one, mine. Since Doctor Dow is the visitor here, his report has precedence. It is no surprise, though a little disappointing, that his account has already reached the notice of the courts.
‘Doctor Dow has concluded, in his post mortem, that Alison was raped and smothered – there were clear signs of sexual congress, and of compression to her face and throat – and that her corpse was savaged by the wild dogs on the muir. In which case, there are clear similarities with the corpus of Jess Reekie, who was smothered and raped, and left in another open space – it is the difference in the habitat that accounts for the apparent difference in the bodies. In this case, since Marten Voet was there, or very close, on both occasions, he becomes a suspect.’
‘That is what I feared,’ Hew admitted gloomily.
‘On the second account, which is the one I favour, it becomes less plausible,’ continued Giles, ‘that the crimes are connected. I am qualified to say this, even more, perhaps, than Doctor Dow, for I have seen both corpses and am not convinced they are alike. To be more precise, I do not concur with the report on Alison. I think we need to be a little circumspect.’
‘For once, that is something I’m willing to hear,’ owned Hew.
‘It is unlike you to insist on gory detail,’ Giles remarked. ‘You are wont to be meticulous.’
‘Do not quibble, Giles,’ Hew countered sharply. ‘Tell me your account, of how she died.’
‘Well, as you know, I do not like to be pinned down, absolutely. And I allow it possible, that Doctor’s Dow’s account, that she was smothered and then torn apart by dogs, can be forced upon the facts. But forcing on the facts is not my favoured manner of approaching things.’
‘Please, Giles, to the point.’
Giles would not be hurried, and he looked a little pained. ‘Well, if I were pressed, I should say that Alison died from her wounds. In short, she bled to death. There was a little too much blood, and too little time, to support the notion that the dogs had made a meal of her. I think the slashes to her body and the tearing at her throat were inflicted with a knife; the cuts were not the jagged marks of teeth but the slashings of a man who showed no care or skill. The compression to her face, when he tried to smother her, was not enough to kill
her.’
‘Then surely, he was mad?’ Hew exclaimed.
‘So it would appear,’ Giles nodded. ‘Such a frenzied attack implies complete loss of control. As to the rape, I would rather say that Alison showed signs of sexual congress. Clearly, she was not a maid. Yet there was a difference between her and Jess Reekie. There is no doubt that Jess was raped; the violence that the lass sustained, was concentrated, shall we say, upon the nether parts. As for Alison, she endured an attack of the most horrific violence, and had recently had intercourse, but I cannot find a link between the two. In conclusion, if you were to ask Doctor Dow whether the same man committed both crimes – allowing, of course, that he has not had access to Jess Reekie – he would tell you, probably. If you put the same question to me, I would answer you, probably not. Does that help?’
‘A little,’ Hew conceded, miserably. ‘Though the truth is, since that is what I did want to hear, I dare not fully trust it.’
‘You are hard on yourself,’ Giles said gently. ‘Even if you were mistaken in letting Marten go, you brought the bairn back safely. Is that not enough? What is the matter, Hew?’
‘It is the fear, that I was wrong. And I have a deeper fear, that makes no kind of sense,’ Hew answered desperately. ‘For I am more afraid of being right.’
Devil’s Advocate
Richard did not return home until late that evening, and, when he came, was quiet and distracted. At breakfast the next morning he instructed Hew to go to their chamber and wait for him there.
‘I have business with the college of justice, and may be some time. If a client comes, you may perhaps advise him. You are, I think, far enough advanced to do so alone.’
‘Is the business to do with Sir David Preston?’ inquired Hew.
‘What’s that …? No, it is a private matter,’ Richard answered absently, ‘that you may hear of presently. If there are no clients, then you may consider on what certain grounds a wife may claim oppression, for our current case. I have left some notes.’
Hew went alone to the chamber, and was obediently leafing though the case notes when he heard a commotion at the door, and Meg appeared, trailing William by the hand.
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