The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  Alys, rising, embraced her, and turned to lift her plaid. Gil said suddenly, ‘Ealasaidh, what like was her plaid? Bess’s plaid that is lost? You said she was wearing it when she went out.’

  ‘Her plaid?’ Ealasaidh stared at him. ‘Aye, indeed, her plaid. It is like mine, only that I had more of the green thread when I wove it, so the sett is four threads green and eight of black, not two and ten. She said she never had a plaid like it. I wove it when I was a girl in my mother’s house.’

  ‘So where is it, then?’ Gil wondered.

  ‘The same place as her cross, likely,’ Ealasaidh said fiercely. ‘And both in John Sempill’s hands, I have no doubt. Go you and ask him, since he would not answer me.’

  She lifted the basin and the clothes and stalked out of the chapel, passing one of the brothers without apparently noticing him. He came forward, offered a blessing to Alys and to Gil when they bent the knee to him, and settled himself at the head of the shrouded corpse with his beads over his hands. Gil, after one glance at Alys’s face, put a hand under her elbow and steered her out into the courtyard.

  ‘I would give a great deal that you had not seen that,’ he said.

  She shook her head, biting her lip, and gestured helplessly with her free hand. Gil clasped it too, and in a moment she said, ‘She had survived so much, and now she is taken from those who love her and the child who needs her.’ She looked up at him in distress. ‘What did she think of, when the knife went in?’

  ‘She may not have known it,’ Gil said. ‘It was a narrow blade, one could see that, and she may not have felt it., He fell silent. Then he added, ‘She had mended the kirtle.’

  Her hand tightened in his, and suddenly they were embracing, a warm exchange of comfort from the closeness of another. After a moment she drew back gently, and Gil let her go, aware of the scent of rosemary from her hair.

  ‘Will you come back to the lodgings with me,’ said Ealasaidh beside them. ‘There were things you wished to ask himself.’

  ‘May I come too, to see the baby?’ Alys asked. ‘he maids will be a while at the market, I have time.’

  They went back out on to the High Street and down the hill, past Alys’s house, to where the market was setting up in the open space around the Cross. Those traders lucky enough, or prosperous enough, to have shops which faced on to the market were laying out their wares on the front counter. The centre space was already in good order, with traders from other streets setting out bales of dyed cloth, hanks of tow for spinning, cheeses, leather goods. On the margins, others were arranging trestles or barrows, with much argument about position and encroachment. The serjeant, waiting with the drummer on the Tolbooth steps to declare the market open, favoured Gil with a stately bow as they passed.

  They turned into the Thenawgait, encountering a pair of baker’s men hurrying to their master’s stall with a board of warm loaves, and followed the new-bread smell back down the Fishergait. Past the bakehouse, the painted pelican still hung crooked, and the children were playing on the midden as if they were never called in.

  This time, as they stepped out of the stair-tower, a drowsy greeting came from the shut-bed in the outer room. Ealasaidh strode on, ignoring it, and into the room beyond.

  For a moment, following her, Gil thought the place empty. A great clarsach was now visible at the far wall, two smaller ones in the corner beyond. The Flemish harp still hung by the cold chimney, and below it the harper sat erect and motionless in his great chair, the determined mouth slack, hands knotted together so that the knuckles showed white in the dim light.

  ‘Aenghus,’ said his sister. He did not answer. She closed the door, crossed the room to fling open the shutters, and turned to stare intently at him. Alys slipped to the further door.

  ‘You see,’ said Ealasaidh to Gil. ‘He has never moved since the mourners left last night.’

  ‘Nancy is not here,’ said Alys in the other doorway. ‘Nor the baby.’

  Ealasaidh, with a sharp exclamation, strode past her. The room was clearly empty but for Alys, but Ealasaidh peered into the shut-bed and felt the blankets in the wicker cradle next to it. Then she turned on her heel, meeting Alys’s eye briefly, and came back into the outer room.

  ‘Aenghus!’ she said loudly. ‘Where is the bairn? Where are Nancy and the bairn?’

  She began to repeat the question in her own language, but the harper turned his head to face her voice.

  ‘Gone,’ he said. She stiffened, but he went on harshly, ‘They are all gone. Bess, and Ealasaidh, and my son. The bairn wept sore for his mammy. The lassie took him to her own mother.’

  ‘When? When was this?’

  ‘All gone,’ he said again.

  ‘Aenghus.’ She spoke intensely in her own language. After a moment, one hand came up and grasped her wrist.

  Gil, still watching, said, ‘When did he eat last?’

  ‘The dear knows. He would not eat yesterday, only the usquebae. Aenghus -‘

  ‘I will get the fire going; said Alys in practical tones. ‘Maister Cunningham, can you fetch in some food? The market should be open by now.’

  He did not need to go as far as the market. By the time he returned, with two fresh loaves from the baker across the Fishergait, a quarter of a cheese from the man’s back shop, and a jug of ale, the harper was combed and tidied and wearing a leather jerkin over his saffron shirt. Ealasaidh was clattering pots in the inner room, and as Gil set down his purchases she bore in a steaming dish of sowans.

  ‘Eat that, mac Iain,’ she said, putting dish and spoon in her brother’s hands. He began obediently to sup the porridge-like mess, and she carried off the loaves and cheese. ‘Here is the lawyer to learn about Bess.’

  ‘Where is the demoiselle Alys?’ Gil asked.

  The white eyes turned to him. ‘She has gone too. They are all gone.’

  ‘Ealasaidh is come back,’ said Ealasaidh firmly. ‘Stop your wandering and speak sense to the man of law.’ She gestured helplessly with her gully-knife at Gil, and went on cutting wedges off a loaf. ‘The lassie went home, I think. She slipped away once the fire was hot.’

  ‘Tell me about Bess,’ said Gil gently. ‘How old was she? Who was her first husband? What happened to him?’

  ‘She was the bonniest thing that ever stepped through my life,’ said the harper, setting down his spoon in the half-eaten sowans. His fingers clenched and unclenched on the rim of the dish.

  ‘She was quiet,’ said Ealasaidh, ‘and kind, and sensible. A woman to take her turn at the cooking and do it well, for all she owned a house in Rothesay.’

  ‘She was a good woman,’ said the harper. ‘It was always a great wonder to me,’ he said distantly, suddenly becoming rational, ‘that she came away with me, for she was devout, and honest, and lawful. And as my sister says, she owned a house and land, and yet she crossed Scotland with us, laughing when she fell in the mud, and said she was happy with us, for that we loved her.’

  ‘And in especial after the bairn came,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘It was a great joy to her that she had given himself a son.’

  She was, it seemed, five- or six-and-twenty. Her first husband had been a Bute man, and had died of plague leaving her a very young widow with a respectable tierce and a couple of properties outright. Neither the harper nor his sister knew his name.

  ‘He was kind to her,’ said the harper. ‘She told me that once. Not like the second one.’

  ‘She lost the tierce, of course, when she took Sempill,’ Ealasaidh observed, ‘but there was jewels and such, and two plots in Rothesay, and a bit of land at Ettrick that was her dower.’

  ‘What happened to them?’ Gil asked, more at home with this kind of enquiry.

  ‘She still had the land,’ Ealasaidh said. ‘She said time and again, if she could get to Rothesay to sign a paper, we would have money.’

  ‘I wonder where the deeds are,’ said Gil.

  ‘Maybe in her box,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘But we will not have the key. I have never seen
it opened.’

  The box itself, when dragged from under the shut-bed, was sturdy enough, but the lock was no challenge to Gil’s dagger. He said so.

  ‘Then if it will help you, open it,’ said the harper.

  ‘You are certain that you wish me to open it?’ said Gil formally. The harper, recognizing his intention, bowed his head regally.

  ‘I am certain; he agreed. Gil brought out his dagger, and was turning the box so that light fell on the lock when the harper put out a hand.

  Wait,’ he said, head tilted, listening. Ealasaidh looked from him to the window, then rose to go and look down into the yard.

  ‘Campbell,’ she said. Her brother asked a question. ‘Eoghan Campbell, the same as brought the word to Bess the other night. There is Morag nic Lachlann getting a crack with him across the way, he will be here in a moment.’

  Gil sheathed his dagger.

  ‘Let us put this out the way, then,’ he said. ‘Euan Campbell? You are certain it is Euan and not Neil? And that Euan brought the word to Bess?’

  ‘How would f not know him?’ said Ealasaidh, as she had before, stooping to help Gil drag the box into a corner. ‘My mother was wisewoman at their birth, for all they were Campbells.’ She stacked a folded plaid, two German flutes and a bundle of music rapidly on top of the box. ‘Not that she would have withheld aid if their father had been the devil himself,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘Wisdom and a gift is both to be shared,’ said the harper. He rose as feet crossed the outer room. ‘Ah, Mhic Chaileann …’

  The man in the doorway was, to Gil’s eye, the same man he had questioned yesterday. He watched the formal exchange of Gaelic, trying to gauge the mind of each contestant. The gallowglass was pleased with himself about something, and also dismayed by Gil’s presence, though he hid it well. The harper, his great grief overlaid by his greater dignity, was harder to read; beside him Ealasaidh had a tight rein on her anger. She said suddenly,

  ‘We will be speaking Scots, in courtesy to Maister Cunningham. What brings Eoghan Campbell to this door?’

  Gil, startled to find she remembered his name, almost missed the man’s slight recoil.

  ‘It iss a word from Maister Sempill,’ he said cautiously. ‘It iss to say that he is in grief at the death of his wife, and iss wishing her things back for a remembrance. That is the word from Maister Sempill.’

  Ealasaidh appeared to be silenced by rage. Mclan inclined his head.

  ‘I hear Maister Sempill’s word,’ he said formally. ‘I will consider of my answer.’

  ‘Euan Campbell,’ said Gil. The dark-browed face turned to him. ‘Did you bring a message to Bess Stewart from Maister Sempill on May Day evening?’

  ‘Of course he did!’ hissed Ealasaidh.

  ‘Let him answer for himself,’ said Gil. ‘There is not only a man of law here, there is a harper. He will speak the truth, will you not, Euan?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the gallowglass, in some discomfort.

  ‘Then answer me,’ said Gil.

  The man took a deep breath. ‘I did so,’ he admitted.

  ‘What was the message?’

  ‘That she should be meeting him outside the south door of St Mungo’s after Compline, in a matter of money. Her money.’

  Gil considered the man for a moment. Out in the yard a child wailed and was hushed, and the harper turned his head to listen.

  ‘Did you speak the message in Scots?’ Gil asked. ‘Or in Ersche?’

  Something unreadable crossed the narrow face.

  ‘Of course he was speaking Gaelic at her!’ said Ealasaidh impatiently. ‘She had the two tongues as well as any in the land, what else would he be speaking?’

  ‘Is that right?’ Gil said. The man nodded. ‘Tell us what you said to her. Say it again in Ersche - in Gaelic.’

  Euan’s eyes shifted, from Gil, to the harper standing isolated in darkness, to Ealasaidh’s vengeful countenance. After a pause, he spoke. Ealasaidh listened, snapped a question, listened to the answer. There was a short, acrimonious discussion, which ended when Ealasaidh turned to Gil.

  ‘The word he is bringing from Sempill is just as he is saying,’ she reported. ‘But she asked him how she could trust John Sempill, and he, fool and Campbell that he is, promised to protect her while she spoke with Sempill and see her back here.’

  Gil, unable to assess this, said to give himself time, ‘Why did Maister Sempill think it was your brother who took the message?’

  ‘He is never telling us apart,’ said the gallowglass.

  ‘They were forever playing at being the one or the other,’ said Ealasaidh in disgust. “There is only me and Mairead their sister can tell them apart now, and she is married to a decent man and living in Inveraray.’

  ‘And I,’ said the harper. ‘It was this one came with the message on Monday. I know the voice.’

  ‘Sorrow is on me,’ said the gallowglass, ‘that ever I crossed your door on such an errand.’

  They went off into Ersche again, a rapid exchange between Ealasaidh and Campbell. Gil, watching, felt the man was still hiding something. The harper suddenly spoke, a few quick words which silenced the other two, and turning to Gil he said, ‘Maister Cunningham, have you more-to ask?’

  ‘I have,’ said Gil.

  ‘Then ask it, so Eoghan Campbell can go about his lord’s business.’

  Gil, thanking him as one would a colleague, found himself exchanging bows with a blind man.

  ‘Euan,’ he said, ‘tell me how Mistress Stewart went up the High Street on May Day evening.’

  ‘Chust like any other,’ said the man blankly.

  ‘Did she follow you, or walk beside you? Did you talk? Was she apprehensive? Was she worried about meeting her husband,’ he amended. ‘You may answer me in Gaelic.’

  Ealasaidh said something sharp, and Euan spoke briefly, shrugging.

  ‘He says,’ she translated, ‘that Bess walked up the street beside him, talking in the Gaelic about the weather, and about where he was coming from, and she did not seem low in her courage at all in any way.’

  The harper made a small sound in his throat. Ealasaidh flicked a glance at him, and added, ‘What else do you wish to ask, Maister Cunningham?’

  ‘When you got to St Mungo’s,’ said Gil, ‘what then?’

  The gallowglass had left Bess Stewart in the clump of hawthorns and gone into the kirk to report to his lord. She had been standing, quite composed, with her plaid over her head. He had never seen her .again.

  ‘Was there anyone else in the kirkyard?’ Gil asked. The sly grin predicted the answer he got.

  ‘Therewass two youngsters, away to the burn from where she was, sitting in the grass, though I am thinking they would shortly be lying in it.’

  ‘What were they wearing?’ asked Gil hopefully.

  ‘Oh, I would not be knowing that. The light was going. Chust clothes like any others. The boy’s hose was stript.’

  ‘Just now,’ said Gil, ‘before you came up this stair, what did the neighbour across the way tell you?’

  ‘Oh, nothing at all,’ said the gallowglass airily, but Gil had not missed the flicker of self-satisfaction.

  ‘It took a long while to say nothing,’ he observed. Ealasaidh said something sharp. She got a sulky answer, then a defiant one; she glanced threateningly at the small harp, and there was an immediate reaction.

  ‘Mistress nic Lachlann and I were chust passing the time of day, and I was asking her would himself be at home chust now, and she was telling me who would be in the house.’

  ‘And who did she tell you would be in the house?’ Gil prompted.

  `Himself, and herself,’ said the man, nodding, ‘and a visitor, which I am thinking would be Maister Cunningham.’

  ‘And what more did she tell you?’

  ‘Oh, nothing of any importance. Nothing at all, at all.’

  Gil moved over to look out of the window.

  ‘So you promised to protect Mistress Stewart; he said, hi
s back to the man, ‘and to see her safe home. Why, then, did you not search for her after the service?’

  ‘I thought she was gone home without speaking to the maister.’ There was what seemed like genuine feeling in the voice. ‘He was in the kirk, under my eye, from when I left her in the trees till he went out again and found she wass not there. I thought that was protection enough!’ he burst out. ‘I did not know -‘ He broke off. Gil turned, to look into patches of green dazzle.

  ‘What did you not know?’ he asked. Ealasaidh had to repeat the question; she got a reluctant, muttered answer, which she translated baldly:

  ‘That he would use witchcraft.’

  ‘Do you think it witchcraft, Maister Cunningham?’ asked the harper.

  ‘I don’t believe in witchcraft,’ said Gil apologetically. ‘Do you?’

  ‘What do you call the power of a harper?’

  ‘Ah, that is different. Anyway, he had no evidence,’ Gil said, watching the gallowglass cross the yard. ‘Supposition is not sufficient. I do not think that John Sempill killed her, though I do not yet know who did. What worries me is how much he learned from your neighbour. Where is the bairn?’

  ‘If Nancy took him to her mother’s,’ said Ealasaidh, he is up the next stair.’

  ‘I thought as much.’ Gil turned away from the window. ‘Euan has just gone up that stair. Ealasaidh -‘

  The door was swinging behind her. When Gil caught up, she was just wading into a very promising argument three turns up the next stair, where Euan was holding his ground with difficulty against two kerchiefed women.

  ‘No, I will not tell you where she’s gone. I don’t know who you are, but my Nancy’s none of your business, and less of your master’s. Be off with you before I call the serjeant on you, pestering decent women -‘

  ‘The bairn-‘s -‘

  ‘The bairn’s none of hers, and everyone in this pend knows that.’

  ‘I never said -‘

  ‘Bel!’ said Ealasaidh. ‘This one iss from Bess’s man!’