by Pat McIntosh
‘I take it Maister Hutchison has moved elsewhere while you’re working,’ he said.
‘He has.’ Maistre Pierre grinned. ‘He has moved his family in with his good-mother, so he is very anxious that I finish. I tell him, if he had waited until the spring, it would all have gone much faster. At least we get the founds dug for the new wing.’
Waiting for the mason to finish listening to his foreman’s complaints, Gil gravitated to the smithy near to Maggie Bell’s tavern, where the usual crowd of onlookers was watching the smith and his two assistants. There was something endlessly fascinating about the way the iron came out of the fire, cherry-red or yellow or even white, soft enough to change shape under the clanging hammers, growing darker and duller as it took its new form.
‘Gil Cunningham,’ said a voice over the fierce hiss of the cooling-water. He turned, and found Nicol Renfrew by his side, grinning aimlessly. ‘I saw you at the Cross. What are you doing over this side the river?’
‘Getting a drink at Maggie Bell’s, when my good-father finishes speaking to his men.’
‘I’ll join you. You ken that’s where Danny Gibson drank?’
‘I do,’ said Gil, looking curiously at the other man. ‘Who told you that?’
Nicol shrugged again. ‘Folk tells me a’ sorts of things. I never remember who said the half of them. Maybe I saw him myself, or maybe it was Tammas Bowster, poor fellow.’
Maistre Pierre emerged from the building site, took in the situation, and waved at the tavern. Gil turned towards the wooden sign with its painting of St Mungo’s bell, saying, ‘You know Bowster? Do you know any more of the mummers?’
‘I know Sanders Armstrong,’ offered Nicol, ‘that’s their Bessie. And I know Geordie Barton that plays the pipes. But I don’t know Willie Anderson, I don’t like him.’
‘Did you know they were going to be at Augie’s house yesterday?’ Gil asked curiously.
‘I did.’ Nicol giggled. ‘Tammas tellt me. But I never tellt the old man. Did you see his face when he knew? I thought he’d have an apoplexy.’
Gil ducked in at the low door of the alehouse, and made for the corner where Maistre Pierre was already established with a large jug of ale and three beakers. Nicol wandered across the crowded room behind him, nodding to one or two people and bowing to Mistress Bell herself where she stood threateningly beside the barrel of ale.
‘I like it here,’ he said as he sat down.
‘It makes a change,’ said Gil.
‘My faither never crosses the river,’ countered Nicol. ‘Do you ken my minnie has a wee lassie?’
‘A lassie?’ Gil repeated. ‘Are both well?’
‘Oh, aye, they’re fine.’
‘My congratulations to your father,’ said Maistre Pierre heartily. ‘He must be pleased?’
Nicol shrugged. ‘Likely. I never asked him. Mally Bowen said it looks like him, they tell me, so at least he can stop casting that up at poor Meg.’
‘Casting up what?’ asked Gil.
‘He reckons she played him false,’ said Nicol as if it was obvious, ‘the same as my mammy did. But now he kens he was wrong.’
‘Here’s good fortune to the bairn,’ said Gil, recovering his countenance, and raised his beaker. They all drank, and he went on, ‘Tell me something, Nicol. How did you know it was the wrong flask Nanty Bothwell had yesterday?’
Nicol shrugged. ‘It just was,’ he said again.
‘Which one was it, then?’ Nicol gave him a doubtful look. ‘I’ve heard you can tell between them. It’s the patterns, isn’t it?’ Gil prompted, aware of Maistre Pierre watching in puzzlement.
‘They’re all different,’ Nicol said at last. ‘Same as people. Nanty should ha had Billy Bucket, that stays in his scrip for the play. He’s made of pewter and holds the smoking brew. But he never had him, he had one of the crock ones instead. Allan Leaf, it was.’
‘And where does Allan Leaf usually stay?’ Gil asked. ‘Not in Nanty’s scrip, I take it.’
‘No, not at all,’ agreed Nicol. ‘He’s often in my faither’s purse, for he holds his drops that Grace makes up for him.’
‘Where did you see him last, before Nanty had him?’
Another shrug. ‘Might ha been in the workroom. There’s three of them, you see, that do the same task, and when one’s done he puts him to wait and gets another from the cabinet. I just gave Blue Benet to Grace to fill up for him.’
Was there a reason, Gil wondered, why these were all men’s names? Was Nicol’s world peopled entirely by male objects?
‘That is very clear,’ said Maistre Pierre, refilling their beakers, ‘but if the flask you call Allan Leaf was in the workroom, which I am sure your father said was locked, how did it come to be in young Bothwell’s scrip?’
‘He did say that, didn’t he?’ said Nicol, and giggled. ‘Perhaps he flew.’
‘What are the drops for?’ asked Maistre Pierre curiously.
‘His heart, mostly,’ said Nicol. ‘Likely it’s something the Saracen learned Grace in Middelburgh when we were there.’
‘A Saracen?’ said Maistre Pierre, his eyes lighting up. ‘You have spoken with a Saracen medical man? Doctor or surgeon?’
‘He trades in materia medica,’ said Nicol with that sudden return to rationality which kept disconcerting Gil, ‘and has knowledge you would never credit of what all his stock can do.’
‘Who was the poison intended for, do you think?’ Gil asked.
‘Well, never for Danny, the poor devil.’ Nicol looked round the tavern, nodding again to Mistress Bell at the tap. ‘He drank in here, you ken, and there’s not a soul in the room that you’d say was his enemy. A decent lad.’
‘So it seems,’ said Gil. ‘I don’t believe Nanty poisoned him for your sister’s sake either, so what was it all about? I can make no sense of it. Who was the poison for?’
‘Why, for my faither, a course,’ said Nicol, opening his eyes wide. ‘Who else?’
‘For your –’ Gil stared at him, then closed his mouth, swallowed and said, ‘Then who put it there? Whose doing might it have been? Robert?’
Nicol shrugged again in that irritating way.
‘Could ha been. Could ha been any of us,’ he said, and giggled. ‘Save maybe my minnie, poor lass, for though she’d likely have the will to do it she’d not have the skill.’
‘You are seriously suggesting,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘that one of your family has tried to poison your father?’
‘I’m never serious,’ said Nicol, and giggled again. ‘Well, no very often. I hate him, Grace hates him, Agnes hates him, Robert hates him, Eleanor hates him, Meg –’
‘Maister Syme?’ Gil prompted.
‘Jimmy? No, he’s all right. There’s none of us hates Jimmy, save maybe Eleanor since she has to live wi him.’
‘But does he dislike your father?’
‘No, why would he? He’s wedded him to Eleanor and made him a partner. Jimmy’s done well enough out of it all.’
‘Why do you hate your father?’ asked Maistre Pierre.
Nicol gave him a sideways look. ‘He’s no easy to love,’ he said, ‘save as Holy Writ instructs us. I’ll respect him, I’m grateful when he insists on it, but I hate him as well.’
‘Was he not pleased when you came home?’ asked Maistre Pierre.
‘No,’ said Nicol. After a moment he half laughed. ‘We came in just at suppertime, and met wi Meg, poor lass, and they sent for Eleanor and Jimmy, and we all sat down to supper. We’d barely set a knife to the meat when Frankie said, You needny think you’ve any more claim on the business. I’ll make Grace’s bairn my heir afore you, he said.’
‘A pleasant homecoming,’ said Maistre Pierre, pulling a face.
‘Give him his due,’ added Nicol after consideration, ‘he was civil enough to Grace, made her welcome, said that about her bairn, mixed her a cup of hippocras wi his own hands after he’d made one to Meg.’
He reached for the jug and poured more ale into all three be
akers.
‘But you say she hates him,’ said Maistre Pierre, puzzled. ‘Why should she hate him? She scarcely knows him.’
‘She’s seen what he did to me,’ said Nicol, as if it explained everything. Perhaps it did, Gil reflected, if Grace loved her husband.
‘I have always thought Maister Renfrew a good member of the burgh council,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘and a respectable burgess. He is well regarded in the burgh chamber.’
‘No guarantee of probity,’ Gil commented.
Nicol grinned at that. ‘A true saying,’ he said in Latin, ‘and worthy of all men to be believed. I saw your wife in our house, Gil Cunningham.’
‘She was to call there with some remedy for Mistress Mathieson,’ said Gil.
‘I wouldny know about that. She was talking to Grace. She’ll maybe learn more than she bargains for. Grace is a wise woman, and clever as well.’
‘So is Alys,’ said Gil.
‘Aye, they were cracking away. But you’ll need to have a care to your wee wife, Gil. She’d had a fright, I’d say.’
‘What makes you think so?’ said Maistre Pierre in concern.
Nicol shrugged. ‘Just by what Grace had given her. And the look of her. She wasny looking bonny.’
‘Did she say what was wrong?’
‘I never spoke wi her. What will you do about Allan Leaf and Billy Bucket? Will you tell the Provost? Only, I wouldny like to say all that afore the assize.’ He gave Gil a sideways, sheepish smile. ‘They would laugh. Folk do, when I tell them the names of things.’
‘I need to report to him,’ Gil said. ‘I’ll try to keep Allan Leaf out of it.’ And what was troubling Alys? he wondered apprehensively. Was it simply the fact of a near neigh-bour’s successful delivery, something which had reduced her to envious tears already this autumn, or had she uncovered some fact she would not wish to tell him? Either was possible, and the second would be easier to deal with.
‘But tell me,’ said Maistre Pierre curiously, ‘what would cause your father to believe your mother played him false? You are patently his son, you are all four like enough –’
‘I hope not,’ said Nicol, and giggled. ‘I’ve no wish to look like Frankie Renfrew, I can tell you, for he’s never been – well, enough for that. It’s an auld tale, maister, and forgot long afore you came into Glasgow I suppose. My mammy was Sibella Bairdie, and she was widowed already when she wedded Frankie. I was born eight month after he bedded her, and he cast it up the rest of her life.’
‘But you –’ Maistre Pierre stopped, looked carefully at the other, and shook his head. ‘If you do not wish to be told how you resemble him in the face, I will not say it, but consider only your hands. They are as like to Maister Renfrew’s as my daughter’s are to mine.’ He held his own big square paw out across the table. ‘You see, hers are the same shape, though smaller and finer made, and her fingernails grow like mine, each one. Study hers when you have the chance, and then study your own against – against Maister Renfrew’s.’
‘My hands.’ Nicol studied his, palm and back. ‘Well, well. Now Frankie’s hands I’d accept gladly, for he’s right defty, whatever his other faults.’ He looked at his hands again, right and left, rubbing at the nails with his thumbs, and then earnestly at Maistre Pierre. ‘You’ve given me a thing to think on, maister.’
‘I never heard the tale either,’ said Gil as they made their way back across the bridge. ‘I suppose as a boy I’d have no interest in such matters, and likely Renfrew kept it quiet enough at the time.’
‘Likely,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘But to raise a lad in the thought that he was some other man’s son, with evidence like that before him – my opinion of Renfrew is diminishing daily.’
‘You’ve given Nicol something to think about, as he said.’ They had left him with a fresh jug of ale at his elbow, considering his hands by Maggie Bell’s rushlights as if he had never seen them before.
Maistre Pierre shrugged. ‘Nevertheless, it can have nothing to do with Danny Gibson’s death. What did Mistress Bell have to say?’
‘Nothing new.’ Gil paused to peer over the parapet at the river muttering past the stonework of the great pillars. ‘She has a good memory. How long since we were there last? Eighteen month? Yes, it was May of last year, when we – just before you took on young John. She recalled my name, and asked after Nan Thomson’s daughter, who I think is wedded to some Dumbarton tradesman by now, so I have every hope that she’s right when she says Danny drank there regularly, never caused trouble and had no arguments with anyone. A likeable lad, she said, and would be sore missed.’
‘Well,’ said Maistre Pierre after a moment. ‘It had to be checked.’
‘It had to be checked. No, this that Nicol had to say about the flask is of more use. I think I have to stop procrastinating and beard his father in his workshop.’
‘Hmm.’ His companion leaned on the parapet beside him, considering the water below them. The Clyde was shallow here, running over sandbanks and around small islets, but occasional deeper pools showed dark brown in the yellowing late afternoon sunlight. Autumn-brown leaves from the trees further up the river bobbed on the current. After a moment Maistre Pierre said, ‘It was an accident.’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Who do you suppose is the intended target?’
‘The man himself, I’d have thought, as our friend said,’ said Gil, suddenly conscious that people were trudging past them up the slope of the bridge. ‘He’s the likeliest target in the house, I’d have said. Unless …’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless he prepared the stuff himself to deal with either his son or his wife.’
‘If they all dislike one another as much as the son suggests,’ said Maistre Pierre with distaste, ‘surely it could be intended by any one of the household for any other.’
‘The sister – the elder daughter – gave me the same impression,’ Gil said absently. ‘And she also made it clear any of them would be able to prepare the stuff. It was from her I got the idea our friend yonder might have recognized the flask, and she was right in that.’
‘Well.’ Maistre Pierre straightened up. ‘As you say. If the father is the target we must warn him, and if instead he is the poisoner, then by warning him we may save someone’s life. Let us do it now.’
They walked on in silence down the northward slope of the bridge and into the town, through the bustle of the Fishergate and Thenewgate preparing for darkness, shopkeepers bringing in goods which had been laid out for sale, a baker crying the last of his wares before the day’s end, an alewife overseeing the transfer of a large barrel from her brewhouse to the alehouse across the street. Two of the burgh’s ale-conners lurched past them after a good day’s work as they reached the Burgh Cross, and the Serjeant proceeded majestically down the Tolbooth stair. Gil hardly noticed them; he was considering the information he had, trying to construct a complete image from it. He felt there was still some vital piece missing, or perhaps more than one. It might help if he knew what the poison was; he wondered whether the Forrest brothers had learned anything useful.
‘Do you know what ails Alys?’ said Maistre Pierre suddenly.
‘What ails – no,’ said Gil, surfacing with difficulty. ‘That is, yes, in general,’ he amended, ‘though I don’t understand why it matters so much to her. Just now in particular it’s likely Meg Renfrew’s baby.’
‘I suppose. But our friend yonder thought she had had a fright.’
‘Yes,’ said Gil. ‘I am concerned. I’ll go home as soon as we’ve spoken to Maister Renfrew.’
‘I never thought you indifferent,’ said Alys’s father unconvincingly. ‘But so few things frighten her, I am puzzled.’
‘So am I,’ said Gil. He looked about him, and realized that they were before Renfrew’s door. ‘Sweet St Giles, the gossip-ale is skailing.’
It was indeed. The pend which led to the house door was full of hilarious women, clinging to one another and shrieking at some j
oke which Gil felt it was as well he had not heard. Two of them were supporting Agnes Hamilton, no easy task at the best of times, and calling for her servants to be sent for. Someone else, her headdress slipped forward over her face, was sitting on the doorstep alternately demanding lights and singing raucously about a hurcheon.
‘Meet we your maidens all in array, with silver pins and virgin lay,’ Gil said, with irony. He took a pace backwards, and exchanged a glance with the mason; as one they turned and made for the shop doorway.
Inside, James Syme and young Robert Renfrew started nervously at the jingling of the bells on the door, then relaxed as they saw two men entering. Robert stepped forward with an automatic smile, saying, ‘And how may I help you, sirs? We’ve apple-cheese the now, just new in. Were you wanting my faither?’ he went on, the smile diminishing as he recognized them. ‘Just he’s a wee bit taigled just now. Was it to offer good wishes for the bairn, or –?’
‘I can imagine he is,’ said Gil, ‘but I’d like a word just the same. We’ve learned a bit more about what happened yesterday, and I’d like his opinion of the matter.’
‘He’s in the house,’ Syme informed them as Robert returned to his position at the counter and helped himself to some sweetmeat from under the counter. ‘Maybe you’d have a seat till the passage is free?’ He inclined his head towards the other door, through which more shrieking laughter reached them. ‘It might be easier.’
‘Much easier,’ said Maistre Pierre.
‘We’ll wait,’ agreed Gil.
‘Robert, is there a seat for the gentry?’
‘Yonder,’ said Robert unhelpfully, pointing. Syme tightened his lips, but brought two stools forward and seated them politely.
‘A bad business, yesterday,’ he said. ‘Has Wat found what the poison might be? He’s never sent word here, if so.’
‘I’ve heard nothing either,’ Gil said. ‘Is your sister Agnes still shut in her chamber, Robert?’