The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  Euphemia turned her head and moved gracefully out of his sight. The square of light stood empty, while on the floor below the card-game continued, apparently at the stage of declaring points from the new hands dealt. Gil leaned on the sill a moment longer, then drew back into the room and reached for the shutters.

  Euphemia came back into view, but not alone. The man with her was still fully clothed, although she was enthusiastically attempting to remedy this, and he had already got her shift down over her shoulders.

  Gil stood, hand on the shutter, watching in astonishment. The man’s face was buried in her neck and his movements were driven by what could be presumed to be strong passion, but even at a distance and from this angle he felt sure it was not John Sempill. The fellow was not much taller than Euphemia, and his hair was dark in the candlelight and surely longer than Sempill’s sandy pelage.

  The woman spoke to him, apparently laughing, and he raised his head to answer her. Gil stared, frowning. The urgent manner might be put down to the circumstances but that dark, narrow face, black-browed in the candlelight, was certainly not Sempill’s. It was the little dark fellow who had been outside St Mungo’s, who had been in the procession which rode through the May Day dancing - dear God, was it only yesterday? - and who had not been present when he questioned the household today. The Italian musician. He suddenly recalled the expression he had seen on Euphemia’s face when the man was mentioned.

  Euphemia’s shift had fallen to her waist. Gil was conscious first of regret that she had her back to him and then of sudden disgust. Such behaviour could be excused in the mastiff down in the courtyard, but not in a human being.

  The two entangled figures moved out of sight, presumably in the direction of Euphemia’s bed. Thoughtfully, Gil closed the shutters and turned to his own.

  He spent longer than usual on his prayers, but nevertheless he found when he finally lay down that sleep was a long time claiming him. Images of women danced behind his eyelids, of Bess Stewart as she lay under the scaffolding in the half-built chapel, of Ealasaidh in her grief, of Euphemia just now in the candlelight wrestling the battle of love, and then of Alys weeping for a woman she had never met while the Franciscans chanted psalms in the shadows. He was disconcerted to find that, though he had spent a large part of the day in her company, and though he could remember the tears glittering under her lashes, his image of Alys was that of the princess in the poem, and he could not remember clearly what she really looked like.

  I am to be a priest, he thought again

  Exasperated, he turned over, hammered at his pillow, and began firmly to number the taverns on the rue Mouffetarde. In general it never failed him.

  He had reached the Boucher and was aware of sleep stealing over him when he was jolted wide awake by a thunderous banging. As he sat up the shouting started, a piercing voice which he recognized without difficulty, and then a monstrous barking which must be the mastiff Doucette. Cursing, Gil scrambled into hose and shoes, seized his gown and stumbled down the stairs as every dog in the upper town roused to answer its peer. Matt appeared blinking at the Official’s chamber door, carrying a candle, as Gil crossed the solar.

  ‘What’s to do? The maister’s asking.’

  ‘Ealasaidh,’ Gil said, hurrying on down.

  The moon, not yet at the quarter, gave a little light to the scene in the street. The gate to the courtyard of Sempill’s house across the way was shut and barred, but a tall shadowy figure was hammering on it with something hard, shouting in shrill and menacing Gaelic. Shutters were flung open along the street as first one householder, then another leaned out to shout at his dog or to abuse the desecrator of the peaceful night.

  Gil picked his way across to the scene of the offensive and caught at Ealasaidh’s arm. Above the sound of the dogs and her own screaming, he shouted, ‘Ealasaidh! Madam! They will not let you in!’

  She turned to stare at him, her eyes glittering in the moonlight, then returned to the attack, switching to Scots.

  ‘Thief! Murderer! What have ye done with her purse? Where is her plaid? Where is her cross? Give me back the plaid I wove!’

  ‘Ealasaidh,’ said Gil again, more quietly. ‘There is a better way.’

  She turned to look at him again.

  ‘What way is that?’ she asked, quite rationally, over the mastiff’s barking.

  ‘My way,’ he said persuasively. ‘The law will avenge Bess Stewart, madam, and I hope will find her property on the way. If not, then you may attack whoever you believe stole it.’

  ‘Hmf,’ she said. She reeked of eau-de-vie. Gil took her arm.

  ‘Will you come within,’ he asked politely, ‘and we may discuss this?’

  ‘That is fery civil of you,’ she said.

  For a moment Gil thought he had won; then, behind the gates, somebody swore at the mastiff, and somebody else demanded loudly, ‘ho the devil is that at this hour?’

  Ealasaidh whirled to the fray again, staggering slightly, and launched into a tirade in her own language. There was a series of thuds as the gate was unbarred, and it swung open to reveal John Sempill, not entirely sober himself, with his cousin and both of the gallowglasses. Torchlight gleamed on their drawn swords.

  ‘Oh, brave it is!’ exclaimed Ealasaidh. ‘Steel on an unarmed woman!’

  ‘Get away from my gate, you kitterel besom, you puggie jurrock!’ roared Sempill. ‘You stole my wife away out of my house! If she had never set eyes on you I would have an heir by now Away with you!’

  ‘It was not your house,’ said Ealasaidh shrilly. Several neighbours shouted abuse, but she raised her voice effortlessly above them. ‘It was her house, entirely, and well you know it. Many a time she said to me, how it was hers to dispose of as she pleased, and never a straw of it yours.’

  ‘I will not listen to nonsense at my own gate,’ bawled Sempill with stentorian dignity. ‘Get away from here and be at peace, partan-faced baird that you are!’

  There were shouts of agreement from up and down the street, but Ealasaidh had not finished.

  ‘And you would never have had an heir of her, the way you treated her! I have seen her back, I have seen what you -‘

  ‘Shut her mouth!’ said Sempill savagely to the nearest Campbell, snatching the torch from the man’s grasp. ‘Go on - what are you feart for?’

  ‘In front of a lawyer?’ said Gil, without expression, under Ealasaidh’s dreadful recital.

  Sempill turned on him. ‘You call yourself a man of law, Gil Cunningham? You let her stand there and slander me like that in front of the entire upper town -‘

  ‘Rax her a rug of the roast or she’ll rime ye, indeed,’ Gil said, in some amusement. Sempill snarled at him, and slammed the gate shut, so fast that if Gil had not dragged her backwards it would have struck Ealasaidh. The bar thudded into place as she reached her peroration.

  ‘And two husbands she may have had, ye countbitten braggart, but it took my brother to get a bairn on her she could carry to term, and him blind and a harper!’

  On the other side of the gate there was a momentary silence, then feet tramped away towards the house-door. The mastiff growled experimentally, then, when no rebuke came, began its full-throated barking again. Other dogs joined in, to the accompaniment of further shouting.

  Ealasaidh turned triumphantly to Gil.

  ‘That’s him tellt,’ she said.

  Chapter Five

  When Gil entered the kitchen, earlier than he would have liked, Ealasaidh was huddled by the kitchen fire with a bowl of porridge under her plaid, the kitchen-boy staring at her across the hearth. Maggie was mixing something in a great bowl at the table and talking at her, getting the occasional monosyllabic answer. Gil cut across this without ceremony.

  ‘Maggie, I have a task for you.’

  She eyed him, her big hands never ceasing their kneading.

  ‘Have you, now, Maister Gil?’ she said.

  ‘Have you any kin across the way?’

  ‘In Sempill’s hou
se, you mean? No what you’d call kin; she said thoughtfully. ‘My sister Bel’s good-sister has a laddie in the stable. I say laddie,’ she amended, ‘but he must be your age, by now. That’s as dose as it gets.’

  ‘Any friends?’

  ‘Aye, well, Marriott Kennedy in the kitchen’s good company from time to time. A rare talker, she is. Sooner gossip than see to the house.’

  ‘Would she need a hand, do you think,’ said Gil, ‘with the house being so full- of people?’

  ‘I’ve no doubt of it.’ Maggie finally paused in her work and straightened up, to look Gil in the eye. ‘What are ye at, Maister Gil? Do ye want me in their kitchen?’

  ‘I do, Maggie.’ Gil slipped an arm round her broad waist. ‘And in as much of the house as you can manage.’

  ‘And for what?’ She slapped affectionately at his hand, scattering flour. ‘To look for what’s lost, is that it? A green and black plaid, a cross, a purse?’

  Ealasaidh looked up, but made no comment.

  ‘Maggie,’ said Gil, kissing her cheek, ‘that’s why my uncle brought you to Glasgow, because you’re a canny woman, and not because you make the best porridge in Lanarkshire.’

  A dimple appeared in the cheek, but she pushed him away firmly, saying, ‘If I’ve to waste my time on your ploys I’ll need to set this to rise.’

  ‘Just keep your eyes open,’ Gil warned. ‘Don’t get yourself into any unpleasantness.’

  ‘I’m no dotit yet,’ said Maggie. ‘Get you away down the town with that poor soul, before the harper calls out the Watch.’

  Picking his way along Rottenrow beside a sullen Ealasaidh with her plaid drawn round her head against the early light, Gil said diffidently, ‘It seems likely that Bess Stewart was killed by someone she knew.’

  ‘I was telling you already,’ said Ealasaidh without looking at him, ‘it will have been the husband. Sempill. She went out to meet him.’

  ‘It could have been,’ agreed Gil, in an attempt to mollify her, ‘but I had him under my eye all through Compline.’ She snorted. ‘Is it possible Bess could have met someone else in St Mungo’s yard, that she would trust at close quarters?’

  ‘Who could she have known that well?’ said Ealasaidh, striding past the Girth Cross. ‘Here in Glasgow or when she was on the road, she had ourselves and the baby. Before that she was in Rothesay. There is nobody she knew in Rothesay that is in Glasgow just now, except the Campbells and Sempill.’

  ‘She never went out alone, or stayed in the Pelican Court without the rest of the household?’

  ‘No, she -‘ Ealasaidh stopped in her tracks. A hand shot out of the folds of the plaid and seized Gil’s arm in a brutal grip. ‘Are you suggesting,’ she hissed, ‘that Bess had another man?’

  ‘The suggestion was made to me,’ said Gil, realizing with dismay that her other hand had gone to the gullyknife at her belt. ‘I have to ask.’ He kept his voice level with an effort, trying not to envisage a knife-fight here in the street with this formidable woman. She stared at him from the shadows of the checked wool.

  ‘I can guess who suggested it,’ she said at length. ‘No, she never had the privacy, not while we lived in Glasgow. Besides, you only had to see her with Aenghus.’

  ‘I apologize for asking it,’ said Gil. She bowed her head with great stateliness, accepting this, then let go his arm and stalked on down the High Street.

  The upper town was still quiet, but below the Bell o’ the Brae the street grew busy, with people hurrying to their day’s work, schoolboys dragging their feet uphill towards the Grammar School, and the occasional student in his belted gown of blue or red, making his way from lodgings to an early lecture.

  At the end of the Franciscans’ wynd Ealasaidh halted, and put back her plaid to look at him.

  It is a great courtesy in you to convoy a poor singingwoman,’ she said, without apparent irony. ‘Do you leave me here, or will you come in? I must wash the dead and shroud her for burial, and there is things I wish to show you. I came by here after Vespers, to say goodnight to her.’

  ‘There are things I wish to see,’ said Gil, letting her precede him into the wynd. The wound that gave her her death, for one.’

  She nodded, and strode in under the stone gateway at the far end of the wynd.

  The Franciscans were singing Prime, the chant drifting clearly to meet them on the morning air. Ealasaidh disappeared into the gatehouse, and emerged after a moment bearing a basin of water and a pile of linen. Gil took the basin from her, and followed her as she stalked into the little chapel, where one of the friars still knelt. Ealasaidh nodded briefly to him as he rose and paced quietly out, then she twitched the sheet unceremoniously off the corpse and said,

  ‘As you said, her purse is not here. See, it hung at her belt beside the beads.’

  ‘And that was where she kept the harp key?’ Gil prompted. ‘How was it taken from the belt?’

  ‘No sign,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘It was nothing by-ordinary, just a leather purse hung on loops, easy enough to cut them. Little enough in it, too. We never carry much.’ She bent her head abruptly.

  After a moment Gil said, ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I told that good soul in your kitchen about it. Her one jewel. My brother gave her a gold cross on a chain, quite simple. Sweet to hold and comforting, like her, he said. That she always wore under her shift, and that also I miss.’

  ‘So perhaps it was robbery,’ said Gil. ‘Or made to look like it.’ He looked down at the still face. ‘After all, why would she go into that place with someone like to rob her?’

  The door creaked, and they both looked round. Alys stepped into the chapel, bent the knee in courtesy to the dead, and said simply, ‘I was coming in to say my prayers when I saw you. You will need help.’

  Ealasaidh’s face softened.

  ‘It is not right you should be here now,’ she said to Gil. ‘She was aye honest and decent, she would not have wished you to see her stripped.’

  ‘I represent justice,’ said Gil, and heard the words resonate in the vault. ‘I am here on her behalf.’

  ‘There are things we can learn from her,’ said Alys. ‘Maister Cunningham, have you looked all you wish at the gown? May we remove itT

  ‘I think so,’ said Gil. ‘Then I can look at it more closely.’

  Ealasaidh nodded and knelt by the corpse. Alys shed her plaid and knelt opposite her, working with gentle fingers at the side-laced bodice. After some unpleasant moments the swathe of red cloth was flung aside, to be followed by the brocade kirtle and its sleeves. Gil lifted these and retreated across the chapel, to Ealasaidh’s obvious relief.

  The clothing told him nothing new. There was blood dried in the back of both garments, some soaked in the brocade under-sleeve, but not as much as might be expected from a death-wound. The left side of the red gown, which had been uppermost, was slightly stiffened from the dew, and there was a small patch of mud on the elbow of the other sleeve. There were two careful mends in the kirtle, and fresh tapes had been stitched into the undersleeves. Gil thought of the sweet-faced woman he had seen at the Cross, and imagined her sitting, head bent, stitching by the window of their inmost room in the Pelican Court. It was suddenly unbearably poignant.

  • Taking up the shift he inspected it gingerly. It was soft and white with much laundering, trimmed with a little needlework at neck and cuffs. There was a large bloodstain on the back and sleeve, matching those on gown and kirtle, and sour-milk stains across the breast; apart from that it told him nothing. Wondering if he was simply looking for the wrong answers, he folded all three garments and set them in a neat pile.

  At the other side of the chapel, Alys had removed the French hood and was unpinning the cap which was under it so that Bess’s hair fell loose in two long braids. Gil lifted the headgear. The cap was of well-washed linen like the shift, threads pulled here and there by the pins which had secured it to the dark braids. The hood was a structure of wire, velvet and buckram, whic
h he studied with interest, having wondered more than once how such things were constructed. Two small starry shapes floated down from the black velvet as he turned it; lifting one on a fingertip he held it to the light and recognized a five-petalled flower of hawthorn, turning brown now.

  Ealasaidh was speaking.

  ‘Here is the wound that killed her, maister, and here is what I wanted to show you.’

  They had her half-shrouded, turned on to her face so that the final offence showed, a narrow blue-lipped gash between the ribs on the left side.

  ‘Such a little wound, to end a life,’ said Ealasaidh.

  But it was not the only offence committed against this woman. Red marks, some raised, some turning silver, patterned her back. Neat parallel lines decorated one buttock. And fat and red on her right shoulder-blade, carved with some care, were the letters I S.

  ‘John Sempill’s initials,’ said Gil, as the bile rose in his throat. ‘And she could still sing. Lord send me courage like hers.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Alys.

  Ealasaidh was silent, but the tears were dripping from her chin on to the linen shroud.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Gil. ‘Are there other scars? The jaw I have seen, but -‘

  ‘That and her ear,’ said Alys. ‘And these. No more.’

  Ealasaidh muttered something in her own language. Alys touched her hand in sympathy, and without further comment they completed the task of arraying Bess Stewart for burial, turning her head to show Gil the sliced earlobe and scarred jaw before they combed out her hair to hide it.

  ‘Will your brother wish to say farewell?’ Alys asked at length.

  Ealasaidh shook her head. ‘I do not know. He was strange, last night. He is saying he may never play again.’

  ‘Could he give it up like that?’

  ‘If he says he will, then he will. Thus far he has only said he may. Cover her face, but do not tie the cloth, I think.’ She helped Alys fold the linen over the still face, and got to her feet, lifting the basin and cloths. ‘These belong to Brother Porter. Lassie, I still do not know your name, but I thank you, as Bess would, for your charity to her.’