A Pig of Cold Poison

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘Not yet,’ Gil said. ‘If that’s the case, it’s something a good apothecary could brew up for himself, is it, rather than something that has to be imported from the Low Countries?’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ said Renfrew, ‘aye.’

  ‘Is Anthony Bothwell a good enough apothecary to do that kind of thing?’

  ‘I suppose he might be,’ admitted Renfrew with reluctance.

  ‘What about his sister?’

  ‘Oh, never. Women are all very well for carrying out the wee tasks,’ he elucidated, ‘concocting sweetmeats, compounding an ointment or reducing an infusion, all my lassies can deal wi sic matters, though times they overdo it,’ he added bitingly. ‘But the great tasks are men’s work. Women hasny the application, you see, on account of their natures are more cold and moist than ours, it means you canny rely on them.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gil, comparing this assertion with what he knew of the women in his life. It did not seem to match. ‘So you think this must be something Bothwell himself distilled.’

  ‘It could be,’ said Renfrew, ‘and that’s as close as I’ll say. We’ll ken more when Wat has done proving it.’

  ‘If Bothwell’s that good an apothecary,’ said Gil casually, ‘why did you not like the match for Agnes?’

  Renfrew’s colour rose again.

  ‘That’s no concern of yours!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll wed my lassies where I choose!’

  ‘Just the same I’d ha thought,’ Gil persevered, trying to keep the same casual tone, ‘that since you’ve wedded Eleanor to one apothecary you might ha chosen another for Agnes.’

  ‘I can do far better than that for her,’ said Renfrew angrily. ‘She’s a bonnie wee thing, and she’ll have a good tocher, and once I let it be known –’

  ‘So why not Bothwell?’ Gil asked. ‘He’s a hard worker, he’s built up the business from nothing in a couple of years.’ He and his sister, he qualified in his mind, and I hope she’ll forgive me for ignoring her contribution. ‘I’d have thought he’d seem like a good husband for any girl, until this happened yesterday.’

  ‘Aye, well, it’s as well I’d no thought of consenting to either of her choices,’ said Renfrew triumphantly, ‘or she’d be betrothed to either a pysoner or a corp by now.’

  Rounding the corner of the Tolbooth, Gil encountered Eleanor Renfrew, a maidservant behind her. She was a plain young woman, with the same big blue eyes as her sister in a sour face both pinched and puffy with pregnancy. She was warmly clad against the sharp wind, the hood of her heavy cloak drawn over her everyday linen headdress and a plaid over all concealing her size. She did not seem to have been to market, since she had no basket or packages with her, and the servant was yawning.

  ‘Good day, mistress,’ he said, raising his hat. She curtsied, and would have moved on, but he said, ‘I was by your father’s house just now. There’s still no word of your good-mother.’

  ‘Likely no,’ she said. ‘It’s no going well.’

  ‘Might I have a word, mistress?’ he asked. ‘We could get a seat in St Mary’s Kirk –’

  ‘Our Lady love you, no!’ she said. ‘I’ve spent all morning there on my knees asking aid for Meg, my back’s like toothache, and I’m about out of my head wi boredom. I was just on my way home, for I can tell my beads there as well as in St Mary’s, so you might as well come along.’

  Wondering what use such grudging prayers would be, he turned to accompany her, and was surprised to be led into a wynd just above the Tolbooth.

  ‘I thought you’d have stayed under your father’s roof,’ he said. ‘There’s certainly room in that house.’

  ‘Syme wished to have his own place.’ She raised the latch on the door of a small narrow house, and stepped inside. ‘Buttered ale, Maidie, and then we might as well get on wi the supper. Hae a seat, maister.’

  She looked about her with evident pleasure, shedding cloak and plaid to hang behind the door. The chamber was sparsely furnished, but the few pieces were good, and there were embroidered hangings at the windows to keep the draughts out. A door at the back led into the kitchen, where Maidie was now rattling crocks, and a stair in the corner suggested at least one upper chamber. Syme must be doing well out of the business to cover the rent here, Gil thought, surrendering his own plaid.

  ‘What was it you wished to say?’she asked, sitting down by the brazier and poking at it with a piece of kindling.

  ‘Yesterday, at my sister’s house,’ he said. ‘Would you tell me what you saw?’

  ‘What I saw?’ she repeated, startled. ‘A bad business, that. I hope Lady Kate’s none the worse of it today. As for what I saw, maister, why, the same as a’body else. Nanty Bothwell gave Danny Gibson something that slew him, with all the guests looking on.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Gil agreed. ‘Did you know the flask he had?’

  She shrugged. ‘They’re all over Glasgow. One of a batch my father had from Middelburgh and sold on to the other potyngars.’

  ‘No way to tell whose it was?’

  She laughed sourly. ‘Ask at my brother Nicol, why don’t you. He’ll likely have a name for it.’ Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘Daftheid that he is, he has names for everything about him. He’s no so bad as he was, when he was a boy you had to call his platter Barnabas and his eating-knife Maister Lute or he would eat nothing. It would surprise me not at all if he had a name for the very flask and told you where it had been afore Nanty Bothwell showed it to the company.’

  ‘Now I think of it,’ Gil said slowly, ‘when we were at school he had names for both inkhorn and penknife. And yesterday he was very sure it was the wrong flask.’

  ‘I think we’d all jaloused that by the time he spoke.’

  ‘Have you had a word with your sister since then? How has she taken it?’

  ‘Ill, I’d say,’ she turned to accept the steaming jug from the maidservant, ‘but I’ve never spoken wi her. She slammed away into her own chamber as soon as we got Meg up the stairs, and then I was packed off out the house.’ He nodded; it would be bad luck, he knew, for a woman carrying a child to be under the same roof as another in labour.

  ‘Did she seem badly affected?’

  ‘She was gey quiet, which is no like her. I’d have said she’d had a shock,’ agreed Mistress Renfrew, ‘but then so had the rest of us. It’ll not suit her, to have one of her admirers hanged for poisoning the other,’ she added.

  ‘Has she favoured either of them over the other?’ Gil asked carefully, leaning forward to take a beaker from her. The buttered ale was not as hot as he would have liked, but well spiced.

  ‘I’d not have said so. But I’ve not spoken to her of them more than once or twice. I’m not round the house as much now I’ve my own place to see to,’ she looked round her again with satisfaction, ‘and she’s not like to confide in me anyway.’ She saw Gil’s raised eyebrows. ‘We don’t get on, maister. There’s none of us gets on, save for Meg, poor girl.’

  Gil, whose siblings had squabbled and then made up on a daily basis throughout his childhood, concealed his thoughts on this.

  ‘So you’d not know which she would have preferred,’ he prompted.

  ‘Neither of them, like I said. No point in preferring either one anyway, she likes keeping them hanging round her heels, but she kens fine the old man will have a match for her soon.’

  Does she? Gil wondered. And does she accept the idea?

  ‘Who will he choose?’ he asked.

  ‘You don’t think he’d tell us? I’ll say this for Syme, he listens to what I have to say. My faither never minded me in his life, and for all Agnes can get anything she wants out of him – did you see that gown she had on yesterday? – she’ll not dare cross him either.’

  He drank some of the buttered ale, and changed the subject. ‘Do you think it was a deliberate poisoning?’

  ‘How would I –’ She stopped. ‘No,’ she said at length, ‘I’d say not. Nanty Bothwell’s a decent man, and he’s got sense enough to see that wou
ld never work. What good to get rid of your rival if you’re clapped in the Tolbooth in chains?’

  ‘Or by anyone else?’

  ‘Not likely, surely? Danny Gibson was a decent fellow too by all I’ve heard. Agnes wouldny harm her two lapdogs, and none of the rest of us …’ Her voice trailed off; she thought for a brief space, then looked at him with what seemed to be genuine reluctance. ‘The only thing I can think – Robert’s one for malicious tricks. He sent Meg a pair of gloves at her birthday, all in secret so the old man took it they were from,’ she bit her lip, ‘from someone she knew. He blued her ee, she’d to keep the house for a week till it faded. Then Robert boasted of it to Syme, and denied it when Syme told the old man, which led to – But I don’t see how he could ha done this. It must ha been a mischance of some sort.’

  ‘If it was a mischance, where might the poison have come from?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve never a notion. Do they ken what it is yet?’

  ‘One of the plant infusions, we think.’

  ‘Our Lady save us, that’s little help.’ She pulled a face. ‘What’s more, sir, any of us, any woman in Glasgow that’s got a stillroom, could make up such a thing if we knew what to infuse. There’s some skill in the work, but more in knowing what to put to it, and to get something that acted so quick I’d say you’d need to look for someone well up in the craft.’

  ‘You’re better up in the craft yourself than your father gave me to think,’ he said deliberately.

  She snorted. ‘Him! He’ll not admit the women in the house do the most of the work. It’s Grace makes half the face-creams and that, as well as his drops for his heart, and me that makes the other half, and Agnes and me that makes the sweetmeats. Syme’s a good worker, and knows the trade,’ she added approvingly, ‘which he should, having been my faither’s journeyman, but all our Robert ever does is stand about looking useless and eat the sweetmeats.’

  ‘And your brother Nicol?’

  ‘What use a daftheid like him? If I’d my way I’d send him away again, wi his moonstruck ideas, and keep Grace wi us for the sake of the business.’

  ‘What ideas are those?’

  ‘Och.’ She paused to think, looking at her empty beaker. ‘He’d give the old man willowbark tea for his heart, and such nonsense. All stuff he’s got from some foreigner he met in Middelburgh. As for what he thinks about the circulation of the blood, you’d need to hear it.’ She set the beaker back on the tray beside the jug. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to ask, sir, for I’ll need to get on wi the supper.’

  ‘How do you think it happened?’

  She looked blank for a moment. ‘You saw how it happened as well. Oh, d’you mean how it got into the flask? I’ve never a notion, like I said already. There’s aye potions and pysons lying about an apothecary’s shop, maister, but my faither has us all trained well, we’d label sic a thing.’

  ‘What, a label reading “poison”?’

  ‘Little use that for the servants,’ she observed. ‘No, it’s a big black cross, well inked in, stuck or tied or drawn on the cover-paper. So if it was something from our house, it ought to ha been labelled.’

  ‘And has your family any enemies?’ he asked, digesting this.

  ‘Enemies? No more than most of the burgess houses of Glasgow, sir. Success breeds envy. No, this was apothecary work, maister, and the apothecaries mostly gets on well enough.’ She rose. ‘Now, the kale willny chop itself, and Maidie’s got enough to do. Where did I leave your plaid?’

  Chapter Five

  ‘It seems very silly,’ said Alys, avoiding two men with a barrel slung on a pole between them, ‘to take you away from the house just to accompany me a few doors down the street.’

  ‘Never you fret, mem,’ said Jennet happily, looking about her. ‘The work’ll get done anyway, we were about finished in the kitchen, and it’s not right you should go about on your own now you’re a wedded lady. Is that no that Mall Hamilton that used to work for Lady Kate’s man?’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Alys, pausing before the apothecary’s door. ‘She dwells just off the High Street, I recall. Do you want to come in with me, Jennet, or would you sooner have an hour’s liberty?’

  ‘Och, I’ll come in and get a word wi them in the kitchen here, and then I’ll be handy for when you take your leave.’

  Alys nodded, and pushed open the door. A string of little bells slung on the inside jingled cheerfully as she stepped into the shop. It was a light place, with a big window to the street rather ostentatiously closed by glass both above and below. Behind the counter, to one side of the door, James Syme was weighing rice into folded papers, surrounded by boxes and bags which all stood open to assist the birth upstairs. Jennet had followed her in and stood inspecting the merchandise critically while she enquired after the Renfrew women.

  ‘My good-mother’s groaning still,’ said Syme, shaking his head sadly. He was a handsome man rather younger than Gil, with waving golden hair and a pink skin, but had a way of speaking as if he was imparting a valuable secret, even if he discussed the weather, which Alys always found irritating. ‘I fear it’s not going well, that’s a full day and a night since she was taken wi’t and the bairn not come home yet.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Alys with a surge of sympathy. She had never attended a birth, even with Mère Isabelle in Paris, but all she had ever heard – ‘If there’s anything I can do?’

  ‘We’re doing all we can think of,’ said Syme, slightly offended. ‘If you think you know anything new, you’re welcome to suggest it. Maybe you’d like a word wi some of them?’ He glanced at the linen-swathed jug she carried, then turned away to open the door into the house. A ragged, pain-filled scream reached them, and Syme grimaced. ‘You’ll can find your way by ear, I’ve no doubt.’

  Alys knew the house slightly, and knew that most of the ground floor was given over to the shop and various storerooms and workrooms. Leaving Jennet to make her own way out to the kitchen, she went quietly up to the floor above, sparing a thought for the difficulty of getting Meg up the stairs yesterday. Stepping into the hall from the stair she checked, startled to find the two youngest members of the household locked in a furious, whispered argument, so intent on their hostility they did not notice her.

  ‘– nothing to do wi me, and none of your business either, Robert Renfrew!’ hissed Agnes. ‘So just keep your nose out where it doesny belong, and leave me alone!’

  ‘You’ve got rid of one of your two lapdogs,’ retorted Robert, ‘you’ll no get rid of me so easy, you sleekit wee jade!’

  ‘I never! It was nothing to do wi –’

  ‘Where’d he get that flask, then? They’re saying it’s no one of his own –’

  Another of those screams issued from the door at the far end of the hall, and Agnes flinched. Robert looked up.

  ‘What’s she girning for?’ he said contemptuously. ‘You’d think she was deein, the noise she makes.’

  ‘She’s screaming because it hurts,’ said Agnes fiercely. ‘Get away to a keeking-glass and burst your plooks if you canny be helpful, and keep out of my business, you kale-wirm!’

  Robert turned, aiming a skilful kick at his sister’s shins as he did, and caught sight of Alys in the door from the stair.

  ‘Oh, Mistress Cunningham,’ he said, and bowed politely. ‘Come to wait for news? My good-mother’s in yonder, as you can tell.’

  Alys acknowledged this and moved forward, saying only, ‘How are you, Agnes? That was a bad day yesterday.’

  ‘It was,’ agreed Agnes, tears springing to her eyes. ‘It was – I canny believe it yet.’

  ‘Strange, that, seeing you planned it,’ said her brother.

  ‘I never! It was nothing to do wi me!’ Agnes sprang forward like a whirlwind, there was a ringing slap and she was gone, her feet sounding on the stairs to the floor above, leaving her brother staring and nursing his reddening cheek. The spots Agnes had mentioned stood out white against the rising colour. Alys curtsied and t
urned away hastily.

  At the further end of the hall there was a pair of chambers one beyond the other. The outer one was bustling with women heating water over the fire, warming linen, passing an ale-cup round from a small barrel decorated with ribbons and a green garland. A close-stool behind a screen made its presence known. Mistress Hamilton was nearest the door, already flushed with the heat and the strong ale, specially brewed for the event. She greeted Alys with pleasure.

  ‘Have you come to wait for news, lassie?’ she asked. ‘It’s not going well.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Her mammy’s in a right state of worry for her, and Mally Bowen’s been sent for.’

  ‘I’d have thought she’d be here from the start,’ said Alys.

  ‘It was Eppie Campbell they’d engaged,’ explained Mistress Hamilton, ‘for that she’s a friend of Meg’s. But Eppie wished Mally sent for a couple hours since. They’re saying the bairn’s maybe the wrong way round, poor lassie. Here comes Marion Baillie, that’s her minnie, the now.’

  Mistress Baillie emerged from the inner room, followed by another of those screams, at which the woman stopped, biting her lips, and put a hand out to steady herself on the court-cupboard she was passing. Alys flinched in sympathy and moved forward, nodding to Nancy Sproull and then to Grace Gordon, and curtsied to the older woman.

  ‘I’m Alys Mason,’ she explained, ‘from a few doors up. I brought this.’ She held out the little jug she carried. ‘It’s hot water with honey and aquavit and a sprig of thyme.’

  ‘She drinks any more, she’ll driddle the bairn out,’ remarked Nancy Sproull. ‘Grace was just giving her something and all.’