The Harper's Quine: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ said Bel. ‘See me the besom, sister. I’ll Where’s Nancy you, you great -‘

  Gil flattened himself against the wall as the gallowglass broke and ran, followed by shrieks of laughter, and loud and personal comments. As the sound of his feet diminished down the stairs the three women nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘So where is Nancy?’ he asked. The satisfaction vanished, and two hostile stares were turned on him. He was aware of sudden sympathy with Euan.

  ‘It iss the man of law from St Mungo’s,’ Ealasaidh explained. ‘Looking for proof it was Sempill killed her.’

  ‘Looking for proof of who killed her,’ Gil amended. She shrugged, and turned to the two women.

  ‘So where is Nancy? And the bairn?’

  ‘She went off this morning. Less than an hour since, it would be, wouldn’t it, sister?’

  ‘Who with?’ Gil said patiently. ‘Did she go alone?’

  ‘Oh, I never saw. We were no here, were we, Kate?’

  ‘We were out at the market,’ amplified Kate. ‘After Prime.’

  ‘We came back, and she was gone, and the bairn’s gear with her. Tail-clouts, horn spoon, coral -‘

  ‘And her plaid.’

  ‘Has she left no word?’ asked Gil. The two women turned kerchiefed heads to one another, then to him, wearing identical expressions of surprise.

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘She’s likely at her married sister’s. Isa has a bairn ages with your wee one.’

  ‘And where does her sister live?’ Gil persisted.

  ‘On the High Street. Isn’t it no, sister?’

  ‘In Watson’s Pend,’ agreed the other one. ‘Second stair. You’ll not miss it.’

  Ealasaidh turned on her heel and hurried down the stairs, her deerskin shoes making little sound on the stone. Gil, with a hasty word of thanks, followed her. In the yard she hesitated, glancing up at her own windows.

  ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I must know the bairn is safe. But to leave him yet again -‘

  ‘I will go,’ Gil offered, ‘and send you word when I have found the bairn.’

  She looked from his face to the windows and back. ‘What word? I cannot read Scots.’

  ‘I will send that I have found the harpstring,’ he said quietly.

  Her face lit up in that savage smile. ‘Mac Iain and I will wait your messenger,’ she said, and strode into the mouth of her own stair.

  The market was past its climax when Gil reached the corner of the Fishergait. Many stallholders were beginning to pack up by now, and the wives and maidservants of the burgh were beginning to turn for home with their purchases, but the bustle, the hopeful whine of the beggars, the cries of fishwives and pedlars, still spread out from the Mercat Cross.

  Gil made his way through the noisy scene with difficulty. Here and there a little group of giggling girls whispered and huddled. Beyond the Tolbooth he saw, quite clearly, both the gallowglass brothers, in deep and separate conversation with more young women. A little further on, James Campbell of Glenstriven, in a green velvet hat of identical cut to John Sempill’s cherry one, was laughing with another girl. Gil hurried on, avoiding all these as well as raucous attempts to sell him eggs, cheeses, ham, a clutch of goose eggs warranted to hatch, and a toebone of the infant St Catherine.

  ‘The infant St Catherine?’ he repeated, pausing despite himself. ‘What did she walk on when she was grown?’

  ‘Ah, your worship,’ said the pedlar, leering at him. ‘Who am I to say what the holy woman walked on? Sure, and if her feet touched the earth at all it was only to bless it.’

  ‘I should report you,’ said Gil. ‘Put that one away and find something more probable to cry, before the Consistory finds you.’

  ‘Yes, your honour,’ said the pedlar hastily. ‘Forgive me, father, I didn’t see you was a priest, father ..

  Gil moved on, his jaw tightening. Not yet, he thought, not yet.

  ‘Why, Maister Cunningham!’ said a voice at his elbow. He turned in sudden hope, and found himself looking into the sparkling, elfin countenance of Euphemia Campbell. ‘Good day to you, sir.’

  ‘Good day, madam,’ he returned, bowing. She curtsied in reply, her cramoisie velvet pooling on the damp flagstones. It was already marked at the hem. Her neck bent elegantly under the mass of folded linen, and a heavy waft of perfume reached him. ‘Exploring the market?’

  This close, he could see that she was older than one thought at first. The fine skin round her eyes was beginning to sag, and there were lines coming between the insignificant nose and the mouth which was now pouting prettily.

  ‘There’s not much to explore, is there? The apothecary can’t supply enough ambergris for my perfume - I have my own receipt, you know - so I came to look at the rest of the town. Where do Glasgow wives go for linen and velvets?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ he admitted.

  ‘Perhaps Antonio knows. Tonino?’ She smiled along her shoulder at the small dark man who stood watchfully at her side, his hand on the hilt of his sword, and spoke briefly in Italian. He shook his head, and she laughed. ‘No? Men never know. Mally can find out for me. Are you for the Upper Town, Maister Cunningham? Can you convoy me?’

  ‘As far as Greyfriars, gladly,’ he said perforce, offering his arm. Lady Euphemia laid her hand on it, the elegantly embroidered glove in contrast with the dusty black of his sleeve, and turned with him, the small man always at her other elbow.

  ‘You aren’t much like your brother, are you?’ What does she mean by that? Gil wondered, but she chattered on. ‘Greyfriars? Oh, of course, that poor woman’s to be buried this afternoon, isn’t she? John will be there. It’s only proper.’

  ‘I’m sure Sempill of Muirend will do what is right,’ said Gil, and was aware of sounding fatuous.

  ‘And have you come any nearer finding who killed her? Or who struck down the mason’s boy? What about his lass? It must be very difficult for you, with so little evidence.’

  ‘We are searching for evidence,’ he assured her.

  ‘I suppose if you find all her missing possessions it will help,’ she chattered. ‘The plaid, the purse, the harp key and - what was it? A cross? That the poor mad woman was screaming at the gates about last night. I thought at first it was the devil himself come to get us all!’

  As well you might, thought Gil, trying to suppress the image of her bare back by candlelight.

  ‘And John was furious.’ She giggled throatily. ‘Such a rage he was in. It took me the rest of the night to soothe him.’

  Gil, grasping her meaning, wondered if his ears were going red. He risked a glance at her and found her suddenly very like her brother, smirking at him sideways like a well-fed cat, the dimple very much in evidence. Beyond the piled-up linen of her headdress he met a burning stare from the small man.

  ‘How is the mad woman?’ she went on. ‘I heard you took her away - is she locked up? She certainly ought to be out of harm’s way. She needs to be tied to St Mungo’s Cross for the night, like one of Colqhoun’s servants at Luss. They brought him all the way in and tied him to the Cross. It cured him, too, at least he died, but he was sane when he died.’

  ‘She is safe enough,’ Gil began.

  ‘And the dogs barking like that. I thought I would die laughing when all the neighbours woke and started shouting too. I’m surprised the Watch didn’t come to see what the trouble was. I’m sure they could hear the noise in Inveraray.’

  ‘Nobody shouted for the Watch.’

  ‘I saw a lovely piece of black velvet when I was last in Rothesay. It was very dear, so I just left it, but I wish now I’d bought it, for there’s not a scrap fit to wear in Glasgow and I’ve nothing suitable to go to a burying in. If I can borrow a black mantle I’ll be there, but I don’t know. Antonio can bring me, or Euan. He ought to be there, dear knows - after all,’ Euphemia said, giggling again, ‘he promised to see her home.’

  ‘Maister Cunningham! Maister Cunningham!’


  Feet hurried in the muddy street. Gil halted, and looked back over his shoulder, to see Alys pattering towards them past a group of maidservants, her brown skirts hitched up out of the mud, neat ankles flashing.

  ‘Oh, Maister Cunningham, well met!’ she exclaimed as she reached his side, taking his outstretched hand, answering his smile. She looked beyond him and curtsied to Euphemia. ‘Forgive me, madame. I hope I don’t intrude. I am sent with a word from my father to Maister Cunningham.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Euphemia in execrable French. ‘We were merely discussing the markets of the burgh.’ Her eyes flicked over Alys’s linen gown. ‘I don’t imagine you can tell me where to buy cloth in Glasgow.’

  ‘Then you haven’t seen Maister Walkinshaw’s warehouse, madame?’ responded Alys politely. Two apprentices passed them, leather aprons covered in mud, rolling a barrel up the street.

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Euphemia. ‘But we are forgetting your errand. What did your father send you to say? Tell Maister Cunningham, and then you may go home safely.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Alys, ‘for my father sends to bid you to the house, sir.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Lady Euphemia, raising her finely plucked brows. ‘I am sure Maister Cunningham will have time for your father when he has convoyed me home.’

  ‘No, madam,’ said Gil in Scots, aware of a level of this conversation which he did not fully understand. ‘I undertook to see you as far as Greyfriars, and here we are.’ He nodded at the end of the wynd beside them.

  ‘What, are we here already?’ She looked round, startled. ‘And I was wanting to ask you -She glanced sideways at the group of maidservants, who were just passing them, and lowered her voice. Gil bent his head to hear her, uneasily conscious of how intimate it must look to the passers-by. ‘Have you found that girl? The one that was with the boy?’

  ‘We have,’ Gil said, ‘but -‘

  ‘And did she tell you anything?’ Glittering green eyes stared up at him, holding his gaze. ‘Surely she was able to help?’

  ‘We haven’t questioned her,’ said Gil, ‘because -‘

  ‘Oh, but you should have! You must see that! Didn’t you want to find out what she knew?’

  ‘We do,’ said Alys at Gil’s other side, ‘but she is the wrong lass. Forgive us, Lady Euphemia. I am sure Signor Antonio can see you safe home.’

  Euphemia stared from Gil’s face to Alys’s, apparently startled into silence. Gil seized the opportunity to disengage his wrist from her grasp. Stepping away, he bowed and strode off down the High Street with Alys hurrying at his side.

  ‘All is well,’ she said quietly. ‘You may come to the White Castle and eat with us.’

  ‘Shortly,’ he said. ‘I have an errand up the town once they are out of sight.’

  ‘They are still watching us,’ she said, with a covert glance over her shoulder, ‘but you have no errand. All is well. I have found the harpstring.’

  He checked, staring down at her, and she tugged him on by the hand which still clasped hers.

  ‘How? How did you know?’

  She let goof him and gathered up her skirts again.

  ‘Come and eat, and I will explain.’

  ‘There are others must be told.’

  ‘No, I have seen to all of it. Come and eat - there is just time before the burial. I asked the harper and his sister too, when I went back there, but they wished to be early at the kirk. He has his farewells to make.’

  ‘I am right glad you found me,’ he said, following her. ‘I can still smell that woman’s scent. It must have been on her glove.’ He sniffed at the wrist of his doublet. ‘Ugh - yes.’

  Alys turned in at the pend.

  ‘Where?’ she asked, pausing in the shadows. ‘Let me …?’ She bent her head to his offered wrist. ‘No, your nose must be keener than mine. I will give you some powdered herbs to rub on the cloth, if you like, to take the scent away. Mint and feverfew should mask it for you.’

  ‘That sounds like what Maggie uses against fleas,’ he observed, following her into-the-yard.

  ‘It is,’ she agreed, her smile flickering, ‘but it has other uses. Maister Cunningham, the child is here. He and his nurse both. The harper knows.’

  ‘So you didn’t come straight home.’

  ‘I went to speak to Nancy,’ she agreed, ‘and persuade her to bring the child here. She knew me by repute, at least - her sister is Wattle’s wife, and Luke is winching their cousin - so she was willing enough to accompany me.’ Her eyes danced. ‘It was exciting,’ she admitted. ‘We spied out of the window till the gallowglass was gone up the harper’s stair, and hurried across the yard with the bairn hidden in Nancy’s plaid. Then we cut round by the back lands, and across Greyfriars yard, and so down the High Street.’

  ‘And the harper?’

  ‘I went back after they were settled. You were not long left, it seems.’

  ‘This is a great relief,’ he said. ‘How did you - what made you -‘

  ‘I thought about it last night,’ she said, moving towards the house stair, ‘and it seemed to me a baby with two fathers and a murdered mother should be in a safe place until the thing is untangled.’

  ‘Alys, you have the wisdom of an heap of learned men,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘Come and eat, Maister Cunningham.’

  On the long board set up in the mason’s well-polished hall, there was cold cooked salmon, for which Alys apologized, and a sharp sauce, and an arranged sallet with marigold petals scattered over it. Further down the table the men had bannocks and cheese as well, but the maids had eaten earlier and were hard at work in the kitchen again. The mason, greeting Gil with enthusiasm, drew him to the seat at his right. He was in funeral black, a great black gown flung over the back of his chair, and wearing a selfsatisfied expression which he accounted for, as soon as he had said grace and seen everyone served, by saying,

  ‘Maister lawyer, I have something to show you in St Mungo’s yard. We go up there after the Mass.’

  Gil raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Not the weapon, no,’ Maistre Pierre continued with some regret. ‘I think we search no longer. It cannot be there. But something strange, which I think you must look at.’ He pushed salmon into his bannock with the point of his knife. ‘Alys, how does Davie?’

  ‘Still sleeping, father. Brother Andrew says the longer he sleeps the better. We cannot know until he wakes what sort of recovery he will make, but the good brother is optimistic.’

  ‘Hm,’ said the mason, chewing.

  ‘Nancy will help to watch him.’

  ‘Ah, yes. This baby. Why are we harbouring a baby?’

  ‘Because,’ said Alys patiently, ‘although the harper is its father, it was born less than a year after its mother left John Sempill. He could claim it as his own in law, and he says he needs an heir, you heard Maister Cunningham tell us last night.’

  ‘Can the law not count?’ asked Maistre Pierre curiously.

  ‘Stranger things have happened,’ said Gil.

  ‘And are we any closer to finding what girl it was with Davie, since it was not Bridie Miller?’

  ‘No word yet,’ said Alys, ‘but I sent the maids into the market this morning to learn what they could. It is too soon, I think, for word to have got back to us.’ She poured ale for Gil and for her father. ‘They tell me Bridie herself was there, making great play of how she has had a narrow escape. She should be here soon - Agnes promised to send two girls round to help. And they saw you, Maister Cunningham, and Lady Euphemia and her man. Who I think would do anything at all for his lady,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘The musician?’ said Gil, startled.

  ‘Oh, yes. That was how I managed to find you. Kittock said when she came in that Lady Euphemia had gone up the street with that wee Italian lutenist on one arm and you on the other, and looked like two weans being led to the school,’ she quoted, in excellent mimicry of Kittock’s broader Scots.

  ‘Alys,’ sai
d her father reprovingly. She blushed, and apologized. Gil, contemplating the remark, found it more comforting than offensive. He said so, earning a grateful smile from Alys.

  ‘And what did the Campbell woman say?’ asked the mason. ‘Anything to the purpose?’

  ‘God, what was she not saying? Her tongue’s hung in the middle, I swear it,’ said Gil intemperately. ‘Questions, questions, about how far we have got. John Sempill will be at the burial, and she may come if she can find anything to wear.’ Father and daughter made identical long faces, and he nodded. ‘Asking about Bridie Miller - you heard her, Alys - had we questioned her.’

  He frowned, trying to recall the flood of words.

  ‘I’m sure she said something I should note, but I can’t pick it out among all the nonsense.’

  ‘If you leave it, it will come to mind,’ said Alys sagely.

  ‘Speaking of the burial …’ said Maistre Pierre, and pushed his chair back.

  Chapter Six

  It was cool and dim in the Greyfriars’ church.

  In the side-chapel, candles flickered on the altar, their light leaping on the painted patterns on the walls, outlining cowl and rough woollen habit where the half-dozen friars stood waiting, catching the knots in Father Francis Govan’s girdle as the Superior stood bowing gravely to the mourners as they entered from the transept. It gleamed on the harper’s white hair combed down over his shoulders, on Ealasaidh beside him at the head of the bier, swordstraight, mouth clamped shut, and on the white tapes which bound the shroud about Bess Stewart’s knees and shoulders, so that she was reduced within her wrappings to the essence, neither male nor female, neither young nor old, but simply human.

  Gil, pacing solemnly in behind Maistre Pierre in an atmosphere of mint and feverfew, was taken aback by the number of people already present. Still more were making their way through the church.

  ‘Are all present?’ asked Father Francis at length. ‘May we begin?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ealasaidh.

  ‘No,’ said Gil in the same moment. ‘John Sempill. -‘

  Ealasaidh drew a sharp breath, and was checked by a small movement of her brother’s hand. Feet sounded in the transept, and Sempill of Muirend entered the chapel swathed in black velvet, a felt hat with a jet-encrusted brim perched on his head. He dragged this off, glared round, then tramped forward to genuflect, glanced once at the bier, and stood aside. As he stared grimly at the harper from under his dishevelled thatch of sandy hair, his cousin and James Campbell of Glenstriven, also draped in black, followed him in and took up position beside him. The two gallowglasses tramped in, crossed themselves, and took up position either side of the entry like a guard of honour. Sempill nodded and gestured to the Superior, who, waiting a few heartbeats longer, opened his book and began.