The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘The husband could have killed her quick, there in the trees, before the rest came out of Compline,’ Maistre Pierre offered, ‘and come back later to move her out of sight.’

  ‘Why would he need to move her?’

  ‘The man-at-arms knew where he was to meet her. He needed to cover his tracks.’

  Gil considered this. ‘No, I don’t think so. Sempill is capable of it, but you saw the body. She lay where she was killed. Who else?’

  ‘This wild woman with the difficult name?’

  ‘Euphemia Campbell, you mean?’

  ‘No, no, the other. The harper’s sister. How is it pronounced - Yalissy?’

  ‘Ealasaidh,’ Gil corrected. ‘I think it is the Ersche for Elizabeth.’

  ‘You amaze me. Could she have killed her? Followed her up the hill and knifed her for jealousy where she could put the blame on the husband? She seems like a woman out of tragedy - Iphigenie, perhaps, or some such. Or could it have been the harper, indeed?’ .

  ‘The harper is blind.’

  ‘But he was her lover. Who better to get close, his hand round her waist, the knife in his. sleeve, a kiss to distract her and the thing is done. If he thought she was returning to her husband?’

  ‘These are wild suggestions,’ Gil said slowly, ‘and yet we are dealing with secret murder here, the reasons may be as wild as any of these. Euphemia Campbell suggested that Bess had taken other lovers, and that one of those might have killed her, but that seems to me to add unnecessary complication to the matter.’

  ‘It lacks unity of action, for sure; said the mason, peering into his wine-cup. ‘Did she have other lovers?’

  ‘I have no corroboration. I hardly liked to ask the harper today,’ admitted Gil. ‘And it seems to me that a woman illused by her husband would be slow to trust other men.’

  ‘There is another to consider,’ said Alys from the doorway. Her father looked up and smiled at the sight of her.

  ‘How is the boy?’ he asked. She came forward to sit beside him, straight-backed and elegant in the faded gown.

  ‘Still in a swound, but I think his breathing is easier. Kittock reports that an hour or so since he gave a great sigh, and said something she didn’t catch, and from that time he has ceased that snoring. It is a good sign.’

  ‘God be praised,’ said her father.

  ‘Amen. But we must consider, father, whether Davie might not be the person you and Maister Cunningham are seeking.’

  Both men looked at her, Gil in some surprise.

  ‘The boy would not hurt a fly,’ said her father. ‘He’s a great soft lump,’ he added in Scots.

  ‘But suppose his girl finally said no to him and went off home,’ she offered. ‘There is Mistress Stewart standing in the haw-bushes, he makes a - an improper suggestion, as I suppose all men do at times, and she is angry with him. Then the argument grows heated and he kills her and runs away and is struck down - No,’ she finished. ‘It doesn’t work.’

  ‘It does not account for her presence in the Fergus Aisle,’ Gil said, ‘but you are perfectly right, we must consider everyone who had the opportunity. Even your father. Even me.’

  ‘Why would you kill her, father?’ she said, turning to look at him. He looked at her quizzically and shrugged, declining to join in. ‘In fact you were at Compline in the Greyfriars’ church with Catherine and me and half the household, so we may all stand surety for one another. And you, Maister Cunningham?’

  ‘Oh, I went out for a breath of air during Compline, and she took me for a priest and wished to make confession, at which I grew angry and knifed her,’ Gil said, and pulled a face. ‘It isn’t funny.’

  ‘Would it anger you, if one took you for a priest?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

  ‘But I thought one must be a priest, to be a lawyer.’

  ‘It isn’t essential,’ Gil said carefully, ‘but I have no money to live on. To get a living, I must have a benefice. To be presented to a benefice, I must be ordained. My uncle has been generosity itself, but he is not a young man, and his own benefices will die with him.’

  ‘So you must be a priest.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  The familiar chill struck him. When it had passed, he said, ‘I will be ordained acolyte in July, at the Feast of the Translation of St Mungo. I’ll take major orders, either deacon or priest, at Ember-tide in Advent, and my uncle has a benefice in mind for me. Then I can say Masses formy father and my brothers. It will be good,’ he said firmly, ‘not to have to rely on my uncle. He has fed, clothed and taught me these two years and more, and never complained. At least, not about that,’ he added.

  ‘And then you can practise law in the Consistory Court? Is there no other way you may practise law?’

  ‘Alys, you ask too many questions,’ said the mason.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said immediately. ‘I am interested.’

  ‘I am not offended; said Gil. ‘Yes, there are other ways, but I need the benefice. It always comes back to that - I must have something to live on.’

  ‘Let us have some music,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘to cleanse the thoughts and revive the spirits.’ He turned a bright eye on his daughter. ‘Alys, will you play for us, ma mie?’

  ‘Perhaps Maister Cunningham would play?’ said Alys, turning to a corner of the room. From under a pile of papers, two more books and a table-carpet of worn silk she extracted a long narrow box, which she set on the table.

  ‘Monocords!’ said Gil as she opened the lid. ‘I haven’t seen a set of those since I came home. No, no, I am far too rusty to play, but I will sing later. Play us something first.’

  She was tapping the keys, listening to the tone of the small sweet sounds they produced. Her father handed her a little tuning-key from his desk and she made one or two adjustments, then settled herself at the keyboard and began to play the same May ballad that the harper and his two women had performed at the Cross on May Day. Gil, watching the movement of her slender hands on the dark keys, heard the point at which she recollected this; the music checked for a moment, and she bent her head further, her hair curtaining her face and hiding the delicate, prominent nose.

  ‘What about something French?’ he suggested as soon as she finished the verse. ‘Binchois? Dufay?’

  ‘Machaut,’ said Maistre Pierre firmly. Alys nodded, and took up a song Gil remembered well. He joined in with the words, and father and daughter followed, high voice and low voice, carolling unrequited love with abandon.

  ‘That was good,’ said Alys as the song ended. ‘You were adrift in the second verse, father. The third part makes a difference.’

  ‘Let us sing it again,’ said the mason.

  They sang it again, and followed it with others: more by Machaut, an Italian song whose words Gil did not know, two Flemish ballads.

  ‘And this one,’ said Alys. ‘It’s very new. Have you heard it, Maister Cunningham? D’amour je suis desheritee …’

  I am dispossessed by love, and do not know who to appeal to. Alas, I have lost my love, I am alone, he has left me …

  ‘The setting is beautiful,’ said Gil. Alys smiled quickly at him, and went on singing.

  … to run after an affected woman who slanders me without ceasing. Alas, I am forgotten, wherefore I am delivered to death.

  ‘Always death!’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘At least let us be cheerful about it.’ He raised his wine-cup in one large hand. ‘What do they sing in the ale-houses here? Drink up, drink up, you’re deid a long time.’

  ‘You’re deid a long time, without ale or wine.’ Gil joined in the round. Alys picked up the third entrance effortlessly, and they sang it several times round until the mason brought it to a close and drained his cup.

  ‘I think we finish there. Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we must bury Bess Stewart, poor soul, and find out the girl Davie was really with. We must search the kirkyard again, though by now I have little hope of finding the weapon. If it was there, it h
as been found by some burgess and taken home as a trophy. Half the town came to see what was afoot this afternoon.’

  ‘I will set the maids to ask about the girl,’ Alys said, closing up the little keyboard. ‘hey can enquire at the well, and at the market. Some lass in the town must know.’

  ‘I wish to question that gallowglass further,’ said Gil. ‘The only Ersche speaker I know of is the harper’s sister, and I hesitate to ask her to interpret -‘

  ‘I should think she would relish the task,’ observed Alys.

  He smiled at that. ‘You may be right. And I must speak further with Ealasaidh herself and with the harper.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘the day is over. Maister Cunningham, we go to hear Compline at Greyfriars. Will you come with us?’

  The Franciscans’ church was full of a low muttering, as the people of the High Street said evening prayers before one saint’s altar or another. One of the friars was completing a Mass; Alys slipped away to leave money for candles to St Clare, and returned to stand quietly between Gil and. her father as the brothers processed in through the nave and into the choir.

  Gil, used to St Mungo’s, found the small scale of the Office very moving. Kentigern’s foundation was a cathedral church, able to furnish a good choir and handsome vestments for the Opus Dei, the work of God which was praising Him seven times daily. The Franciscans were a small community, though someone had built them a large church, and the half-dozen voices chanting the psalms in unison beyond the brightly painted screen seemed much closer to his own prayers than the more elaborate settings favoured by Maister Paniter. I will lay me down in peace and take my rest; for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety.

  Beside him Alys drew a sharp breath. He looked down at her. Light glinted on the delicate high bridge of her nose. Her eyes were shut and her lips moved rapidly as the friars worked their way through the second of the Compline psalms. For when thou art angry all our days are gone…So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts with wisdom. Tears leaked from Alys’s closed eyelids, catching the candlelight, and Gil thought with a shiver of Bess Stewart lying in the mortuary chapel by the gatehouse, still in the clothes in which she had died, with candles at her head and feet.

  For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.

  The Office ended, the congregation drifted out into the rain. Alys had composed herself, but was still subdued. Gil found it very unsatisfactory to say a formal goodnight at the end of the wynd and watch her go home beside her father, followed down the darkening street by two of the men and several maids. He stood until the household was out of sight and then turned for home.

  It had been a most extraordinary day. Almost nothing was as it had been when he got up this morning. He was free of his books, at least for a little while, until he had solved the challenge, the puzzle, with which he was faced. He had a new friend in the mason, whose company would be worth seeking out. His mind swooped away from the suspicion that the mason’s company was the more attractive because it promised the company of Alys as well.

  Yesterday, the prospect of winning a few groats from the songmen had been something to look forward to.

  Past the firmly shut door of the University, beyond the stone houses of the wealthier merchants, at the point called the Bell o’ the Brae where the High Street steepened sharply into a slope too great for a horse-drawn vehicle, the Watch was attempting to clear an ale-house. Gil, his thoughts interrupted by the shouting, crossed the muddy street to go by on the other side. Several customers were already sitting in the gutter abusing the officers of the law. As Gil passed, two more hurtled out to sprawl in the mud, and within the lighted doorway women’s voices were raised in fierce complaint. One was probably the ale-wife, husky and stentorian, but among the others Gil caught a familiar note.

  He paused to listen, then strode on hurriedly. He did not feel equal to dealing with Ealasaidh Mclan, fighting drunk and expelled from a tavern.

  His uncle was reading by the fire in the hall when he came in, his wire spectacles falling down his nose.

  ‘Ah, Gilbert,’ he said, setting down his book. ‘What news?’

  ‘We have made some progress,’ Gil said cautiously. His uncle indicated the stool opposite. Sitting down, Gil summarized the results of his day. Canon Cunningham listened carefully, tapping on his book with the spectacles, and asking the occasional question.

  ‘That’s a by-ordinary lassie of the mason’s,’ he said when the account was finished.

  ‘I never met a lass like her,’ Gil confessed.

  The Official was silent for a while, still tapping his book. Finally he said, switching to the Latin he used when considering matters of the law, ‘The man-at-arms. The dead woman’s plaid and purse. Whatever girl was with the injured boy.’

  ‘I agree, sir.’

  ‘One more thing. Did Maggie not say there was a child?’

  ‘Yes indeed there is, I saw it. Born last Michaelmas, it seems.’

  ‘And when did Mistress Stewart leave her husband’s house?’

  ‘Before St Martin’s of the previous - Ah!’ Gil stared at his uncle. ‘Within the twelvemonth, indeed. I think Sempill cannot know of it.’

  ‘Or he does not know it is his legitimate heir.’

  ‘I am reluctant to tell him. What he would do to a child he needs but knows is not his own I dare not think.’

  ‘Keep your own counsel, Gilbert,’ said his uncle approv-

  ingly. ‘Now, what difference will the child make to the disposal of the land? Can you tell me that, hm?’

  Trust the old man to turn it into a tutorial, Gil thought. Obediently he marshalled the facts in his head and numbered them off as he spoke.

  ‘Imprimis, property the deceased held in her own right, as it might be from her father’s will, should go to the child rather than to her kin, unless she has made a will. And even then,’ he elaborated in response to his uncle’s eyebrow, ‘if she has left the property out of her kin, perhaps to the harper, they could challenge it, on their own behalf or the child’s.’

  ‘And moveables?’

  ‘Secundus, the paraphernal matter, that is her own clothes and jewellery and such items as her spinningwheel - I hardly think she was carrying a spinning-wheel about Scotland - these are the child’s, unless there is a will, but anything Sempill can show he gave her in marriagegifts returns to him. And, tertius, joint property held with her husband also returns to him, to dispose of as he sees fit. Unless,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘it transpires that he killed her.’

  ‘Unless,’ his uncle corrected, ‘it can be proven that he killed her. In which case it reverts to the original donor, whether his kin or hers. Very good, Gilbert.’

  ‘I’ve been well taught,’ Gil pointed out.

  Canon Cunningham acknowledged the compliment with a quick glance, and pursued thoughtfully, ‘And what uncle is it that might leave John Sempill money, I wonder? Not his father’s half-brother Philip, for sure, anything he had would go to his own son, and that’s little enough by what I remember. And the Walkinshaws keep their property to themselves.’ He paused, lost in speculation, then noticed Gil stifling a yawn, and raised a hand to offer his customary blessing. ‘Get you to your bed, Gilbert. It’s ower late.’

  Gil’s narrow panelled room, just under the roof, was stiflingly hot. Whichever prebend of Cadzow had built the house had not lacked either pretension or money, and even here in the attics the upper part of the window was glazed. Gil picked his way across the room in the dim light and flung open the wooden shutters of the lower half, reasoning that the night air was unlikely to do him any more harm now than half an hour since. One would not sleep in it, of course.

  Returning to his narrow bed he lit the candle and sat down, hearing the strapping creak, and lifted his commonplace book down from its place on the shelf, between his Chaucer and a battered Aristotle. He turned the leaves slowly. Each poem brought back v
ividly the circumstances in which he had copied it. Several pieces by William Dunbar, an unpleasant little man but a good makar, copied from his own writing when he had been in Glasgow with the Archbishop. Two songs by Machaut, dictated by Wat Kerr in an inn near St Severin. Ah, here it was. The Kingis Quair, made be the King of Scots, or so Wattie had insisted, when Gil had transcribed it one long afternoon in a thunderstorm from a copy owned by … owned by … was it Dugald Campbell of Glenorchy? No matter. He skimmed the rime-royal stanzas, his eye falling on remembered phrases. For which sudden abate, anon astart The blood of all my body to my heart. Yes, it was like that, the effect of the sight of her against the light in the doorway of her father’s house, the blood ebbing and then rushing back so that his heart thumped uncontrollably.

  Quite ridiculous. I am to be a priest, he thought.

  And here were the descriptions, as if this long-dead king had seen Alys Mason in his dream. He read on, picking out the cramped lines with satisfaction, until the candle began to flicker.

  It was, he realized, very late. He rose, returned the book to its place, and went to the window to close the shutters.

  He leaned out first, breathing in the scent of the gardens after the rain. The sky was clearing, and the bulk of the Campsie hills showed against the stars to the north. Late though it was, there were lights in the Sempill house, one where he could see a table with cards and several pairs of hands, and above that and to one side, nearly on a level with him, a room where someone came and went slowly.

  It was only when she paused and began to comb her wealth of golden hair that he realized that Euphemia Campbell was undressing before a mirror.

  He watched, fascinated, the movement of little white hands and dainty arms, the tilt of the slender neck, the fall of the rippling gold locks as she turned her head before the mirror. How many candles was she burning?, he wondered. There was certainly one to one side, and another beyond the mirror, to judge by the way the white shift was outlined, and maybe more. Little surprise that Sempill was short of money.