by Pat McIntosh
‘I think so,’ said Gil.
‘That’s what matters. And I’ve heard she’s a rare housewife, which is more to the point.’
‘She runs her father’s household, which is a large one, and does it well, from all I’ve seen. Maggie, I must wash. Can you spare William to fetch more water?’
‘I can,’ she said doubtfully, looking at the kitchen-boy, who was hunkered down by the window staring vacantly at the gallowglass. ‘Tam’s faster, but he’s still down at the harper’s. It takes William a long time, and I’ll need him soon, to turn the spit for tomorrow’s dinner.’
‘I can be turning the spit,’ offered Neil Campbell.
‘There’s water hot,’ said Maggie, accepting this. ‘Get you in the scullery, Maister Gil, and shift that beard, in case the lassie comes up the hill with her father before Vespers. A three days growth is no way to commend yourself to a lass before you’re handfasted. You can fling that sark out here when you’re done and I’ll put it to soak. And then I’ll have a dish of eggs ready for you.’
To be fed, washed, shaved, combed and clad in clean linen simply accentuated the strange feeling of lightness Gil still felt. Kissing Maggie, who told him sharply to save that for his own lass, and clapping the startled gallowglass on the shoulder where he sat turning the spit, he sprang up the stairs to the hall and checked by his uncle’s oratory. On impulse he slipped behind the curtain, remembering the last time he had knelt here. Just as on that occasion, he found the words would not come, but this time only a boundless gratitude, which he offered up until he felt it turn to gold as if in sunlight and float away from him.
He knelt for a while longer, feeling the unseeable sunlight almost tangible behind his closed eyelids. When it faded he rose, signing himself, and went on up, crossing the solar to his uncle’s chamber.
‘Ah, Gilbert,’ said his uncle. ‘What is this about a lassie with toothache?’
‘The lass we were to find in Dumbarton,’ Gil answered. ‘The same lass we missed in the Gorbals. When we got to her house today we found her screaming with a rotten tooth, and Matt drew it for her. Did you know Matt could draw teeth, sir?’
‘I did not. Likely it’s a thing he learned away at the wars in Germany. He has already asked for a day off tomorrow to go to Dumbarton.’
‘I suppose he wants to see how she does.’
‘No doubt. And you, Gilbert? How do you do? This proposition of Maister Mason’s likes you, does it?’
‘I can think of nothing I would like better,’ said Gil, as he had to the mason, ‘and almost nothing of which I am less worthy.’
‘Well, well.’ His uncle looked down at his book, unseeing, for a moment. ‘I had hoped to deacon for your first Mass, Gilbert, but do you know I find I would rather say a wedding Mass for you and christen your first bairn.’ Gil murmured something. ‘There are too few of your father’s name left. Aye, I think you will do better out in the world, providing we can find you something to live on.’
‘That is what worries me,’ said Gil. ‘However well Pierre dowers the lass, I cannot live on her money. I’m a Cunningham, after all.’
His uncle shot him a sharp glance, and nodded.
‘You are a Cunningham,’ he agreed. ‘The lands out by Lanark are lost to us, I think, but there is property here in the burgh that does near as well, I can let you have in conjunct fee. The rents are all in coin, of course. As for income, I have one or two ideas. Let me ask about, Gilbert.’
‘May I know what they are?’ Gil asked politely. ‘You could say they concern me, sir.’
He got another sharp glance, and the corner of David Cunningham’s mouth quirked.
‘You could say so. Let me see. It is possible that Robert Blacader will consent to your employment here in the Consistory as we had planned, though you are in minor Orders only. You could hang out a sign and practise as a notary in the burgh, though I cannot see you growing rich at that.’
‘Nor I,’ agreed Gil, thinking of Alexander Stewart’s house with the tumbling children by the peat fire.
‘Since as Maister Mason’s son-in-law you will get your burgess ticket almost as a wedding-gift, you might find a post as one of the burgh procurators.’
‘What, and speak for poor devils taken up for theft?’
‘Or speak on the burgh’s behalf in the same case,’ his uncle concurred. ‘I have friends, and some influence, Gilbert. Let me continue asking about.’
‘I should be grateful, sir. I am grateful,’ said Gil, still aware of the unseen sunlight, ‘for everything you have done for me-these-past years.’
‘Well, well,’ said his uncle again. ‘You’re a good boy, Gilbert. Your father would have been proud of you.’ He closed his book, and opened it again at random. ‘Now, tell me about your hunting in Rothesay. What did you raise? Sit down, for mercy’s sake, and tell me about it.’
Gil, hooking a stool towards him with his foot, sat down and gave a concise account of the interviews with the lawyer, Mariota Stewart and the gallowglass. His uncle heard him attentively, asking the occasional question.
‘And the lassie in Dumbarton,’ he said at the end. ‘What did you learn from her?’
‘I had no speech of her,’ Gil said, ‘but her mother reports that James Campbell of Glenstriven came looking for a word with her yesterday, with no success.’
‘Did he so?’
Uncle and nephew looked at one another consideringly.
‘John Sempill will be here shortly,’ said Canon Cunningham after a moment. ‘No way of knowing, of course, how many of his household will come with him.’
‘No,’ agreed Gil. ‘I wonder, sir, might we borrow a couple of the apparitors from the Consistory?’
‘They will have gone home by now,’ said his uncle, glancing at the window. ‘No, we must make do with Tam, I think. And perhaps Maister Mason will bring one of his fellows with him. I wonder will he bring the lassie, hm?’
‘I hope he may,’ said Gil, feeling his face stretch into a fatuous grin. The image of Alys rose before him, in her plain blue gown with her hair down her back. He dragged his mind back to the point at issue. ‘There will be. the harper’s sister, of course. I’d back her against an army.’
‘Ah, yes, the harper and his sister. What are we to agree for the bairn, who is the main point on the agenda?’
‘I have no idea what my principal will ask for.’
‘You must get a word with him as soon as he arrives.’ The Official rose, and Gil stood politely. ‘I wish to be sure the bairn will be reared fittingly, and his property decently overseen. If that is in jeopardy I will say so.’
‘Understood, sir.’ Gil followed his uncle from the room and down the stairs. ‘Do we meet here in the hall?’
‘Considering the numbers, I think we must.’
Shouting down the kitchen stair for Tam, Gil began to move benches. Shortly, despite his uncle’s directions and Tam’s inclination to ask about Alys rather than lift furniture, he had an impromptu court-room arranged, with the great chair behind a carpeted table, and the two benches set on either side. He was hunting through the house for more stools when he heard a knocking at the door, and Maggie’s heavy feet descending to answer it.
Gil contrived to reach the hall with his latest find just as the mason stepped in from the stair, followed by a complete stranger in a French hood and a black brocade gown, wearing a string of pearls which gleamed in the light from the windows.
Gil’s jaw dropped, and the mason advanced on the Official and spoke.
‘Good evening to you, Maister Cunningham. May I present to you my daughter Alys?’
When she moved forward, of course it was Alys. Straight-backed and elegant, she curtsied to Uncle David. If his feet were rooted to the floor just inside the hall door, how was it that by the time she straightened her knee and raised her head, he was at her elbow?
‘Well , well,’ said his uncle. ‘Here’s as bonnie a lass as there’s been in this house since it was built, I think.�
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The old man took Alys’s hands, embraced her, kissed her, as was an older relative’s right. Could this be jealousy, Gil wondered, barely aware of the nursemaid jiggling the baby at the mason’s back.
‘And here’s my nephew,’ said Uncle David.
She turned, and their eyes met. Her hand was in his.
‘Take her in the garden,’ said his uncle. ‘You have a quarter-hour.’
In the centre of the garden, in full view of the hall windows, the green mound was dry enough to sit on, but Gil took off his gown and spread it anyway, then handed Alys to the seat. Her silk brocade rustled as she sat down, and gave off a scent of cedarwood. He kept hold of her hand, and stood looking down at her. She looked up, a little shy, her face framed by the black velvet folds of the French hood.
‘You truly wish to marry me?’ Gil said at length. She looked down, blushing slightly, then up again to meet his eyes.
‘Truly,’ she said with that directness he admired so much. ‘And you? You truly wish to be married? Not to be a priest?’
‘You know the answer.’
The apologetic smile flashed.
‘I would still like to hear it.’
‘I wish to marry you,’ he said earnestly, ‘more than anything else I have ever had the opportunity to do. I have never felt like this about anybody before. I think I must have loved you from the moment you spoke to me on that stair by the Tolbooth.’
‘I too,’ she said. ‘From that moment.’
‘Alys,’ he said. He sat down, and somehow she was in his arms.
‘Gilbert.’
Her mouth, innocent and eager, tasted of honey under his.
When the mason interrupted them he swore they had had half an hour.
‘And Sempill is here, with his entire household, I believe,’ he said cheerfully, ‘becoming more thunderous by the breath, and the harper is sitting like King David on a trumeau ignoring everything while his sister mutters spells at his side.’
‘A merry meeting,’ Gil said. Alys was putting her hair back over her shoulders, so that it hung down her back below the velvet fall of her hood. He dragged his eyes from the sight, and said more attentively, ‘Sempill’s entire household, you say? Who is there?’
‘Sempill and his cousin, Campbell and his sister, the other gallowglass, the companion - why she has come I know not, unless as some sort of witness -‘
‘Right.’ Gil drew Alys to her feet. ‘Go with your father, sweetheart. I must get a word with Maggie first, then I will come up.’
Her hand lingered in his, and. he squeezed it before he let go, drawing a quick half smile in answer, but all she said was, ‘Is my hood still straight?’
‘Square and level,’ her father assured her. She took his arm and moved towards the house, her black silk skirts caught up in her other hand. Gil turned towards the archway to the kitchen-yard, where the mason’s man Luke was drinking ale with the Official’s Tam.
Maggie’s face fell when he entered the kitchen alone.
‘And am I no to get a sight of your bride?’ she demanded.
‘And she’s well worth seeing. You’ll have the care of her later this evening, Maggie,’ Gil promised, ‘for I think things may get a little fractious upstairs. For now, I have an errand for you. And you, Neil, I want you to stay here handy until I call you.’
The gallowglass, seated by the fire with a leather beaker of the good ale, merely grinned, but Maggie scowled and objected, ‘I’ve to take wine up for the company.’
‘I will do that. You get over the road and get Marriott Kennedy to help you search for that cross you never found.’
Her gaze sharpened on his face.
‘Uhuh,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘And if we find it?’
‘Bring it to me, quiet-like.’
‘I’ll do it,’ she said, and went to the outside door where her plaid hung on a nail.
‘Maggie, you’re a wonderful woman.’
Her face softened.
‘You’re a bad laddie,’ she said, and stumped out of the house.
Gil reached the hall with the great jug of claret wine and plate of jumbles just as John Sempill leapt to his feet snarling, ‘If he’s no to compear we’ll just have to manage without him. Oh, there you are! Where the devil have you been? Vespers must be near over by now.’
‘I was concerned with another matter,’ said Gil, setting wine and cakes down on the carpet on his uncle’s table. ‘Have some wine and come over to the window and instruct me. Maggie has gone out, sir. Will you pour, or shall I fetch Tam up?’
Sempill, a cup of good wine in his hand, seemed reluctant to come to the point. Gil simply stood, watching him, while he muttered half-sentences. At length he came out with, ‘Oh, to the devil with it! If he’ll let me name the bairn mine -‘
‘By “he” you mean the harper?’
‘Who else, gomerel? If he’ll let me name it mine, without disputing it, then I’ll settle Bess’s own lands on the brat immediately, and treat it as my sole heir unless I get another later.’
‘That seems a fair offer,’ said Gil. ‘Who gets the rents? What about your conjunct fee?’
‘That’s mine, for what good it does me,’ said Sempill quickly. ‘I suppose the bairn or its tutor gets the profit from the land, which willny keep a flea, I can tell you, so that’s between the harper and the nourice.’
‘You do not contemplate rearing the child yourself,’ said Gil expressionlessly.
‘I do not. You think I want another man’s get round my feet?’
Gil looked across the room at the assembled company. On one bench was Ealasaidh, dandling the swaddled baby, while Alys waved the coral for the small hands to grasp at and the harper and the mason sat on either side like heraldic supporters. As he looked, the mason broke out in a volley of sneezes. On the other bench, in a row, one Sempill and two Campbells drank the Official’s wine in a miasma of conflicting perfumes and discussed, apparently, the marriage of a cousin of Philip Sempill’s wife. Euphemia cast occasional covert glances at the rope of pearls which glimmered against Alys’s black Lyons brocade. In the background, Nancy on one side, Neil’s brother Euan and the stout Mistress Murray on the other, waited in silence. Canon Cunningham was sitting in his great chair, watching the infant, who was now grabbing at the fall of Alys’s hood.
‘Do you wish to stipulate who is to rear the child?’ Gil asked.
‘I’ll let the harper decide that,’ said John Sempill generously. ‘He’ll likely be more confident leaving it with someone else. Of course if it’s someone he chooses, he can settle the bills,’ he added.
‘That’s clear enough.’ Gil drank off the rest of his wine and gestured towards the makeshift court. ‘Is there anything else you wish to tell me? Shall we proceed?’
Sempill nodded, and walked heavily over to sit beside his mistress. She had decided to grace the occasion in tawny satin faced with citron-coloured velvet, which clashed with Sempill’s cherry doublet and gown and turned her brother’s green velvet sour. A large jewel of topazes and pearls dangled from a rope chain on her bosom, and more pearls edged her French hood. Finding Gil watching her, she favoured him with a brilliant smile, showing her little white teeth, and tucked her arm possessively through Sempill’s. Gil was reminded sharply of his dream. Well, Hughie is certainly gone now, he thought.
Gil took up position at the end of the bench, beside his client, and nodded to his uncle. He should, he realized, have been wearing a gown. The green cloth gown of a forespeaker, buttoned to the neck like his grandfather’s houppelande, would have been favourite, but failing that his decent black one, which he must have left in the garden, would have lent dignity. Too late now, he thought, hitching his thumbs in the armholes of his doublet. Perhaps I can imagine one. Or full armour, in which to slay dragons.
‘Friends,’ said David Cunningham, rapping on the table with his wine-cup. ‘We are met to consider a proposal made by John Sempill of Muirend, concerning a bairn born to his lawful wife w
hen she had been living with another man, namely Angus Mclan of Ardnamurchan, a harper -‘ Ealasaidh stirred and muttered something. ‘Who speaks for John Sempill?’
‘I speak for John Sempill.’ Gil bowed.
‘And who speaks for Angus Mclan?’
‘I am Aenghus mac Iain. I speak for mine own self.’ The harper rose, clasping his smallclarsach.
‘And I speak on behalf of the bairn. Is this the child? What is his name?’
Ealasaidh, rising, said clearly, ‘This is the boy that was born to Bess Stewart two days before Michaelmas last. His name is lain, that is John in the Scots tongue. Yonder is his nursemaid, who will confirm what I say.’
Nancy, scarlet-faced, muttered something which might have been confirmation.
‘Very well,’ said David Cunningham, ‘let us begin. What is John Sempill’s proposal for this bairn?’
Chapter Thirteen
‘John Sempill of Muirend proposes,’ said Gil, from where he stood by Sempill’s side, ‘to recognize the bairn as his heir. If he does so, he will settle its mother’s property on it -‘At his elbow, John Sempill glared defiantly and pointlessly at the harper. Beyond him, Euphemia suddenly turned to look at her brother, who did not look at her. ‘so that it may be supported by the income deriving. The bairn will be fostered with someone agreeable to Angus Mclan, and the said Angus will be responsible for any extra disbursements not covered by the income.’
‘Ah!’ said Ealasaidh. The harper made a hushing movement with the hand nearest her.
‘It is a good proposal,’ he said. ‘It is a fair proposal.’ Euphemia stirred again, and her brother’s elbow moved sharply. ‘There is things I would wish to have made clear. I may choose the fostering, but who chooses the tutor? Is it the same person? Does Maister Sempill wish to order the boy’s education, or shall we give that to his tutor? And how if Maister Sempill changes his mind, one way or the other? Is the boy to be wrenched from a familiar fosterhome to be reared by the man who cut off his mother’s ear?’ Euphemia giggled, and her brother’s elbow jerked again. ‘Is his foster-father to find himself unable to feed a growing child because-the- income has been diverted?’