by Pat McIntosh
The mason turned the bonnet over. It was a working man’s headgear, a felted flat cap of woad-dyed wool with a deep striped band.
‘There is blood on the inside,’ said Gil, pointing. ‘He was wearing it when he was struck.’
Maistre Pierre turned the bonnet again. On the outside, corresponding to the patch of blood, was a rubbed place with scraps of bark and green stains. ‘With a great piece of wood,’ he agreed. He set the bonnet on the boy’s chest as the hurdle was borne past him. ‘Take him home, Wattie, and come back for the lady. Or if you pass any sensible men send them up to carry her away.’
As the two men plodded up the slope with their burden, Gil said thoughtfully, ‘The woman was stabbed, but the boy was struck over the head. Have there been two malefactors at large in the kirkyard last night?’
‘And the woman was robbed but the boy was not.’ The mason gathered his furred gown round him and strode up the slope in the wake of his men. ‘Come, maister lawyer, you and I can at least put her on a hurdle.’
As they rounded the angle of the Fergus Aisle they saw a small crowd hurrying eagerly towards them. Wattie’s idea of sensible men turned out to be anyone who had been passing when he reached the Great Cross, and it was with some difficulty that the hurdle with its sad burden was handed up the ramp on the inside of the scaffoldshrouded walls and down the outside, and set on its way. Several prentice-boys who should have been at work tried to climb in to see where the blood was, and a couple of the town’s licensed beggars appeared, offering to pray for the lady’s soul for ever in return for suitable alms. Once they realized that her kin had not been discovered they lost interest, but a knot of women followed at the rear of the procession, exclaiming and speculating.
Brother Porter at Greyfriars was compassionate.
‘Poor lass,’ he said, raising the fall of the hood to look at her face. ‘Aye, it’s the harper’s quine right enough. Father Francis is waiting for her in the mortuary chapel. She can he quiet there till they come for her. They’ve nowhere they can lay her out, they live in two rooms in a pend off the Fishergait.’
‘You know where they live?’ said Gil as the small cortege plodded past him, through the gateway and towards the chapel. ‘Someone needs to send to let them know.’
‘Bless you, son,’ said the porter, grinning wryly. ‘Half the town’s let them know by now. The man’s sister’ll be here any moment, I’ve no doubt, if not the harper himself.’
‘The other woman’s his sister, then?’ Gil said. ‘True enough, they’re alike. I’ll wait, if I may, brother. I must speak with her.’
‘Then I wait also,’ said Maistre Pierre. He drew a wellworn rosary from his sleeve and approached the chapel. Gil turned away to lean against the wall, thinking. The woman had clearly been dead for some hours, perhaps since yesterday evening. If she had reached St Mungo’s yard in daylight, she must have been about the place at the same time as he was himself. Alive or dead, he qualified. When he left the cathedral after Compline, was she already lying hidden under the scaffolding?
Over in the church, the rest of the little community of Franciscans were beginning to sing Prime. It felt much later.
As the Office was ending, the harper’s sister arrived in a rush, followed by a further straggle of onlookers. It was, as Gil had expected, the other singer, the tall woman in the checked kirtle, now wrapped in a huge black-and-green plaid. He straightened up and followed her to the little chapel, where she halted in the entrance, staring round; when her eye fell on the still figure on the hurdle a howl escaped her and she flung herself forward to kneel by the body, the plaid dropping to the tiled floor.
‘ohon, ohon! Ah, Bess!’ she wailed, unheeding of Father Francis still reciting prayers before the altar. Gil stepped forward to hush her, but two of the women in the crowd were before him, bending over her with sympathetic murmurs. She would not be stilled, continuing to lament in her own language. The porter hurried in and with some difficulty she was persuaded to leave the body and sit on a stool where she began to rock back and forth, hands over her face, with a high-pitched keening which made the hair on Gil’s neck stand up. The two women showed signs of joining in the noise.
The mason said to Gil under his breath, ‘Are these all her friends, that they mourn so loudly?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gil returned. ‘Er - ladies. Ladies,’ he repeated more loudly, without effect. ‘Madam!’ he shouted. ‘Be at peace, will you!’
She drew her hands from her face, still rocking, and showed him dry, angry eyes.
‘I am mourning my sister,’ she spat at him. ‘How can I be at peace?’
‘Listen to me,’ he said urgently, grasping her wrists. ‘Someone killed her, on St Mungo’s land.’
‘The more ill to St Mungo,’ she said, ignoring the shocked response of her companions. ‘Oh, Bess, as soon as I saw the gallowglass, ohon -‘
‘Gallowglass?’ repeated Gil. ‘When was this?’
‘Yesterday, after Vespers. Him and his brother, they rode through the dance at noon, and him after Vespers casting up at our door, meek as a seal-pup, with a word for Bess Stewart and no other.’
‘You knew him?’ said the mason.
‘And why would I not know him, Campbell that he is?’ She spat as if the name were poison. ‘So what must she do, just about Compline, once the bairn is asleep, but put her plaid round her and go out with him, though we would gainsay her, Aenghus and I.’
‘She took her plaid?’ said Gil. ‘You are sure of it?’
She stared at him.
‘But of course. She was a decent woman, and not singing, of course she wore her plaid.’
‘It was not with her when we found her,’ said Gil.
‘He has kept it, the thieving - Oh, and when she never came home to her bairn, I knew there was trouble, ohon, alas!’
‘I want to find out who did it,’ said Gil hastily. She stared at him, and then grinned, showing gapped teeth.
‘It will have been the husband,’ she said. ‘But if it is proof the gentleman wants, I will help. Then we can avenge her.’ One hand went to the black-hilted gully-knife at her belt.
‘Then tell me what you can about her,’ said Gil, sitting back on his heels. ‘Who was she? No, first, who are you?’
‘I?’ She drew herself up, and the two weepers beside her sat back as if to hear a good story at some fireside. ‘I am Ealasaidh nic lain of Ardnamurchan, daughter of one harper and sister of another, singer.’
The dead woman was, as Gil had assumed, Bess Stewart of Ettrick, wife of John Sempill of Muirend. The harper and his sister had met her in Rothesay in late autumn a year and a half since.
‘She was singing with me first,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘I was playing the lute and singing, and she was joining in the second part. That was in the Provost’s house one evening. Then a day or so later we played at another house, Aenghus and me both, and she was there, and she was singing with us.’
She paused, remembering.
‘French music it was,’ she said at length. ‘Binchois, and some other. And it seemed Aenghus must have had a word with her by his lone, for when we came away from Bute before St Martin’s tide she came with us. I was not happy about this, the gentleman will be seeing, for it is one thing a willing servant lass and another entirely a baron’s wife. So we went to Edinburgh for Yule, and spent a while in Fife, and when we were coming back into the west there was the bother the Sempills had about Paisley Cross, and she was already showing, so we thought the husband would not be pursuing her.’
‘Showing?’ queried Gil. She gestured expressively.
The child had been born at Michaelmas, and by then Bess had learned to sing a good few of the songs the harper played, and also to play a little on a smaller harp. As soon as she could leave the baby she had begun to help to earn her keep.
‘I never had a singing partner I was liking so well,’ said Ealasaidh, ‘nor never a sister like Bess. Sorrow is on me now and for ever, ohon, ohon …’
‘No doubt,’ she said, ‘but I would not stay with a man that used his knife on me, neither.’
‘His knife?’ repeated Gil.
‘Why d’you think they called her One-lug Bess?’ said one of the other women suddenly.
Ealasaidh turned on her. ‘Never in my hearing was anyone calling her that, Margaret Walker,’ she hissed, ‘and you will not do it again.’
‘Who’s to stop me?’ said the woman. Ealasaidh nic lain rose to her full height, gathering her checked skirts round her away from the contamination of Mistress Walker’s presence.
‘It is myself will stop you,’ she said wrathfully, ‘for you will not be over my doorsill again. And if the gentleman,’ she said, rounding on Gil, who had scrambled to his feet, ‘wishes to speak with me more, he may find me. We are staying at the sign of the Pelican, in the Fishergait. Anyone will be telling where the harper and his women - his sister are staying.’
She snatched her plaid from the woman beside her, jerked the door open and strode out into the courtyard. The two women got to their feet.
‘He cut her ear off,’ said one of them. ‘That’s where she got the scar.’
‘That’s why she was aye in that French hood,’ said the other. ‘Take a look under it.’
‘She told me once she’d more scars than that.’
‘I suppose that would be one advantage of the harper.’
Their eyes slid sideways at one another, and they nodded, and slipped out of the chapel after Ealasaidh. Gil, uncomfortably reminded of Euripides, turned back to the body, which someone had covered with a linen sheet. Father Francis had left, but two of the brothers were pattering prayers at the altar.
‘The chorus has gone,’ said Maistre Pierre at his side. ‘Maister Cunningham, I am wishing to ask at my home how is the boy Davie, and it is a long time since I broke my fast.’
‘I’m still fasting,’ said Gil frankly.
‘Then you will come with me and eat something and we talk. Yes?’
‘That would be very welcome,’ said Gil. He drew back the sheet and looked at Bess Stewart’s still face. She was lying as he had found her, and the scarred jaw was hidden. ‘She’ll soften by tonight or tomorrow, in this weather, and they can lay her out properly. We should look at her then.’
The mason marched him firmly from the chapel and down the High Street, nodding to acquaintances as he went, and in at the pend below the sign of the White Castle.
They came through the arched entry into a courtyard, bright with flowers in tubs. The house, like most of this part of the High Street, must be some fifty years old, but it was showing signs of modernization. The range to their right had a row of large new windows set into the roof, and a wooden penthouse ran round two sides of the yard. Gil had no time to look further; Maistre Pierre dragged him across the cobbles and up the fore-stair, in under the carved lintel, shouting loudly in French, ‘Catherine! Alys! I am here and I am hungry! Where are you?’
He drew Gil into a large hall, dim after the sunny courtyard, where plate gleamed in the shadows and the furniture smelled of beeswax.
‘Welcome to my house,’ he said, gesturing expansively, and threw the furred gown on to a windowseat. ‘Where are those women?’
‘I am here, father,’ said a remembered voice behind them. ‘No need to make so much noise, we were only in the store-rooms.’
Gil, turning, had just time to recognize the figure outlined in the doorway against the light, before the mason seized the girl, kissing her as soundly as if he had been away for days.
‘My daughter, maister! Alys, it is Maister Gilbert Cunningham,’ he said, pronouncing the name quite creditably, ‘of the Consistory Court. He and I have found a dead lady and a live boy this morning, and we need food.’
‘Yes, Luke has told me. I will bring food in a moment, father.’ She moved forward, held out both hands to Gil and leaned up to kiss him in greeting. A whisper reached his ear: ‘Please don’t tell!’
‘Enchanted to serve you, demoiselle,’ said Gil in ambiguous French, and returned the kiss with careful courtesy. ‘How is the boy?’
‘We are still washing him. When he is comfortable you may see him.’
‘Has he spoken? Where is his brother? Where is that food?’
‘The food is in the kitchen, father, and Catherine is supervising the girls who are all helping with Davie. No, he has not roused. His brother is with him. If you take our guest up to your closet I will bring you something to eat.’
Maistre Pierre’s closet, on the floor above, was panelled and painted, with a pot of flowers on the windowsill and cushions on the benches. A desk stood in one corner, with a jumble of papers on it; a lute lay on a bench, and there were four books on a shelf near the window.
‘Be seated,’ said the mason, indicating the big chair. Gil shook his head, and sat politely on a bench. ‘Well!’ said the mason explosively, dropping into the chair himself. ‘What a day, and it not yet past Terce!’
He looked consideringly at Gil, and seemed to come to some conclusion.
‘I am concerned in this,’ he said. ‘That is my boy who is injured, and the lady has come to grief in my chantier. Do you know who will pursue the matter?’
‘Not the burgh officers,’ Gil said. ‘I’ll speak to the serjeant out of courtesy, but he has no authority on St Mungo’s land. It will be someone from the Consistory Court, likely.’
‘One of the apparitors? I have the term right? The men who serve notice that one must be present on a certain day or be excommunicated.’
‘You have the term right. It might be.’ Gil rose as Alys entered with a tray of food. ‘I will report to the Official, as soon as I may, and he will make a decision,’ he added, setting a stool to act as table, irritated to find himself clumsy.
Unruffled, Alys poured ale for both men and handed a platter of oatmeal bannocks and another of barley bannocks with slices of meat in them. Her father took one of these, jumped to his feet and began to stride this way and that in the small room like a hunting-leopard Gil had once seen in its cage.
Alys sat down, gathering her skirts neatly about her, and watched him with an intent gaze. She was as taking as Gil remembered. She was clad today in a gown of faded blue which set off her young figure to advantage, and her hair was tied back with a ribbon, emphasizing the oval shape of her face with its pointed chin and high-bridged nose. Finer-boned and finer-featured than her father, she still resembled him strongly, although she must have inherited that remarkable nose from someone else.
As if aware of his scrutiny, she glanced up at him and smiled briefly, then turned back to her still-pacing father.
‘What do we know?’ the mason said. ‘This woman who sang with the harper was knifed, there in that confined space, in the Fergus Aisle, Alys, with a narrow blade.’
‘Luke told me that too,’ said Alys. ‘I find it extraordinary. Why was she there? A young man - someone Davie’s age - might go in out of curiosity, but a woman in her good clothes would need a sound reason to climb the scaffolding, even by the wheelbarrow ramp.’
‘A good point, ma mie,’ agreed her father. ‘It must have been someone she knew, someone she trusted, to enter the chantier with him.’
‘We know a little more,’ Gil said. There was not much blood, so he will not necessarily be marked.’
‘A negative.’
‘But useful. And we know that one of Sempill’s men-atarms fetched her sometime after Vespers. Indeed, I think I saw him come to Compline.’ He paused, thinking carefully. ‘I saw the whole party at Compline. One of the menat-arms was late, as I say, and one of Sempill’s friends arrived after him, but the rest were under my eye for the most part from the start of the service.’
‘Perhaps the man-at-arms - the gallowgl
ass,’ said Alys, bringing the word out triumphantly, ‘was the one who killed her. Or could the husband have stabbed her after he left the church?’ She rose to replenish their beakers.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Gil with regret. ‘He left just before me, and when I reached the door he was already returning from the clump of trees opposite.’
Alys set the jug down and stood considering him, absently twirling a lock of hair round one finger.
‘He came from the trees,’ she repeated. ‘Not from the Fergus-Aisle?’-
‘No,’ agreed Gil. ‘Besides, I think even Sempill of Muirend is not so rash as to summon a woman openly in order to kill her. No, and I do not know who had time to get into the Fergus Aisle and out of it again before I saw them all together. It’s an easy enough climb over the scaffolding, or up the ramp for the barrow and down again, but it takes a moment, and the scaffolding would creak. On a quiet evening like yesterday you would hear it in Rottenrow.’
‘Perhaps the person had not left,’ said Alys. ‘And what about Davie? Did the same person strike him down?’
‘I saw Davie,’ Gil said, reaching for another bannock. ‘He was in the kirkyard before Vespers, with a lass. I took her to be the same one I saw him with earlier at the dancing.’
‘I do not know who she is,’ said Alys, ‘but the men might. It is urgent that you find her, you realize, whoever is to track down the killer.’
‘It is,’ agreed Gil.
‘I must see the boy,’ said the mason impatiently, setting down his beaker. ‘Where have you put him?’
Across the courtyard, sacks and barrels had been hastily stacked in the shelter of the new penthouse. In the vaulted store-room thus cleared, worn tapestries hung round the walls for warmth, and a charcoal brazier gave off a choking scent of burning spices. Next to it the boy Davie lay on a cot, curled on his side with bandages across the crown of his head and supporting his slack jaw. A small woman veiled in black knelt at the bed’s foot, her rosary slipping through her intent fingers, her lips moving steadily. A stout maidservant sat at the head with her spindle, and a gangling youth with a strong resemblance to the injured boy rose to his feet as Alys put aside the hanging at the door.