by Pat McIntosh
Flinching at the term, Renfrew led him into the house. Gil followed slowly, and was completely unsurprised to encounter Alys in the shadowy hall.
‘Gil,’ she said, coming to tuck her hand in his. ‘How terrible a thing for the family.’
She sounded very weary, but entirely herself. He kissed the high narrow bridge of her nose, feeling that the world had suddenly come straight round him.
‘Who have you spoken to?’ he asked quietly.
‘Agnes. She denies all. Nell Wilkie is with her now, but she may not stay long. I think she is quite dismayed by Agnes’s attitude.’
‘Do they know what has happened?’ He nodded towards the door of the chamber where the Serjeant could be heard questioning Grace.
‘Yes,’ she said baldly.
‘How did she take the news?’
She was silent a moment. ‘Agnes seemed pleased that her brother is dead. I was quite shocked. She said Serve him right, and would not pray for him, though Nell did. And then I asked her about the flask, and Nell reminded her of what she told her on the day, in Kate’s house I mean, about thinking it was her father’s drops for his heart. She denied all, laughed in Nell’s face, said she must be imagining things. We tried to show her that it would save Bothwell’s life if she came forward, but she said, Why should I get into trouble to save him? Poor Nell is quite distressed. She favours Bothwell herself.’
‘Unpleasant,’ said Gil, tightening his clasp on her hand. She returned the grip, and leaned her head against his arm for a moment. ‘Alys, I think you might look in at the kitchen.’
‘The kitchen? Why?’
Chapter Ten
‘I’m staying here no longer than I have to,’ declared the woman with the knife. ‘I’ll be away as soon as my term’s up. But I suppose there’s our supper to see to, even if they’re no wanting to eat in there the night.’ She rolled back the striped sleeves of her kirtle and bent to hack savagely at a turnip on the board before her, the little cubes flying from under her blade.
‘Indeed,’ said Alys, ‘Your mistress must eat, for her baby’s sake, but the rest of the household is in a great upset.’
‘No blame to you for that, either, Elspet,’ said Isa from her position by the charcoal range. ‘There’s none of us happy under this roof, even if we areny pysont.’
‘How so?’ said Alys innocently. ‘It’s a wealthy household, I’d have thought you’d be well suited here.’
She was seated by the hearth in the kitchen of the Renfrew house, a commodious limewashed structure across the cobbled yard from the back door, its nearest wall a sensible three paces from the house in case of fire. There was little bacon hung from the rafters so close to pig-killing time, but an array of well-scoured metal pans stood on a rack near the fire and the tin-glazed crocks on the shelf by the range glowed yellow in the shadows. She had been welcomed in and offered refreshment, plied with anxious questions, allowed to explain how Robert had died and that nobody else was in danger. She was guiltily aware that she was in another woman’s kitchen, gossiping with her servants, but the chance to ask questions was too valuable to pass up.
The two much younger girls in the corner, still pallid and tearstained despite her reassurances, shook their heads now at her comment and Elspet said, ‘Oh, there’s aye enough to eat, the mistress is well taught, for all she’s young, and runs a good house. But the maister’s an ill-tempered man and the young ones are no better, aye quarrelling and disputing, carping and criticizing. It’s no a happy house.’
‘Do they not agree well?’ Alys said. She bent to put her ale-cup on the flagstones beside her stool. ‘Brothers and sisters often argue, I believe,’ she added. ‘I have none.’
‘There’s squabbles,’ said Elspet, attacking another turnip, ‘and there’s the kind of thing we get in this house, and they’re no the same thing. And there’s what you heard, Isa, and all.’
‘There is,’ agreed Isa. She turned from the pot she was stirring and gestured with a dripping spoon. ‘Wi these ears I heard her. I’ll pay you for that, Robert, she says, if it’s the last thing I do. What way’s that for a decent lassie to talk to her brother?’
‘And she did,’ said Elspet. She scraped the heap of yellow cubes into a bowl beside her and reached across the table for a bunch of carrots. ‘Pay him, I mean. Or someone did.’
‘Surely no!’ protested one of the two in the corner. Her name was Babtie, Alys thought.
‘Oh, aye,’ said the other one darkly. ‘I’d put nothing past her.’ She bared her arm above the elbow, to show an array of many-coloured bruises. ‘See these? That’s from I lost a bunch of ribbons off her blue gown, that one’s from when I washed her hair last and got soap in her eye –’
‘There was the time Robert stole her billy-doo,’ said Elspet. ‘God send him rest,’ she added perfunctorily. ‘Aye, a billy-doo. From young Walkinshaw, it was.’ Alys, who had been pursued by Robert Walkinshaw before she met Gil, pulled a face. ‘Read it out afore the family at dinner, though she tried to stop him, and laughed when she swore she’d be even. And do you ken what she did, mem?’ Alys shook her head. ‘She cut the codpiece out of all his hose, every pair he had, and threw them in the pigsty. He’d to wear his faither’s for a week, and the maister doesny favour joined hose, being the age he is. You should ha heard what young Robert had to say about that.’
‘Aye, but,’ said Babtie. ‘That’s different. Putting pyson for someone, for your own brother, that’s no – that’s no …’ She paused, unable to find a word.
‘It cannot have been Agnes, surely,’ said Alys. ‘Could she do such a thing? Put poison in the sweetmeat so it would not be noticed?’
‘It’s Agnes and Eleanor makes those cherries,’ said Isa. ‘Eleanor’s hardly been round the house the last couple of days, except she’s been talking wi the mistress, so it won’t have been her. It would take our fine lassie no time at all to pyson one or two out of a box and put it where she’d know he’d get them.’
‘And where anyone else would –’ put in Babtie, shivering.
‘Like we did,’ agreed Isa grimly. ‘I’m away at the term too, Babtie, I’m no staying in a place where pysons is left lying about for anyone to lift by accident.’
‘But I believe her father keeps his workroom locked when he isn’t there,’ said Alys. ‘She would hardly work at such a thing under his eye. And how would she come by the poison?’
‘Made it up hersel, most like,’ said Elspet. ‘I’d put nothing past that one.’
Not if it must be distilled, thought Alys, that would certainly have been noticed.
‘She found some somewhere in the house on Hallowe’en,’ she observed, ‘for she fetched it next door to Nanty Bothwell. Did any of you see her that day?’
Heads were shaken, regretfully.
‘We were all in here,’ said Isa, ‘seeing they was all out, the mistress had said we could have a wee bit extra to wir dinner, and take the rest of the day. Then they come back early, and her groaning,’ she added darkly.
Don’t think about it –
‘She’d likely have it hid in her chamber,’ said the bruised girl. ‘She works in there often enough, likely she brewed it there and all. She’ll carry all she wants up there, and scold at me for disturbing her when I go in for something out my own scrip under the bed, and then there’s another tray of kickshawses drying by the window, and I’ve to sleep in there wi the smell of them driving me wild.’ She sniffled again, and rolled down her sleeve.
Isa gave her a hard look, and said, ‘If you’re feeling more like the thing, Jess, you can fetch me in a pail of water.’
‘But surely, she can’t have been working like that lately?’ Alys wondered.
‘Oh, aye,’ said Jess. ‘Just yesterday, she was.’ She got reluctantly to her feet. ‘After her wee sister was born, when I went to call her to see the bairn washed and wrapped, did I no get my head in my hands, only for opening the door. That’s likely when she was preparing what slew her brother.’
‘Never say it!’ said Isa, crossing herself. ‘And sitting in at the supper-table last night, making up to her daddy like a good daughter.’
That cannot be right, thought Alys. The timing is wrong, and she would hardly work a distillation in her own chamber.
‘But is that how they are all the time?’ she asked. ‘Such vindictiveness and ill feeling.’
‘Aye,’ said Babtie baldly.
Jess paused on her way across the kitchen and said, ‘It’s those two’s aye been the worst. Eleanor’s no as bad, and that Nicol,’ she giggled suddenly, ‘he’s aye a laugh, he’s no got the same temper as the rest.’
‘Och, you’re sweet on him,’ said Babtie.
‘You never heard him the night they came home, like I did,’ said Isa. ‘Him and his father, going at it like the Stewarts and the Douglases.’
‘The very night they came home?’ repeated Alys, making round eyes.
‘Aye. All seated round the supper-table, wi their baggage still lying in the hall, shouting about whether Nicol had any right to expect a place in the business, what his bairn could inherit – and the mistress half in tears, and Mistress Grace white as new milk, she was that tired wi the journey. And then she miscarried that same night, the poor soul.’
‘Oh, how sad,’ said Alys. That was what Kate told me, she thought. And how interesting that Grace gets her title when Eleanor does not.
‘She’s never taken again yet,’ said Elspet. ‘It’s a crying shame, that. She’s a good woman.’
‘Aye, but what sort a bairn would that Nicol get?’ objected Babtie.
‘You speak civil of your maister’s son,’ ordered Elspet.
‘But Mistress Grace being as wise hersel,’ said Isa, ‘you’d think it would even out, surely? And you’d think and all, she’d know of a pill or a ’lixir or the like would help her to what she wants. Or the maister, even, given the way he values her, he ought to know something would help. Aye asking her advice, he is.’
‘She is wise indeed,’ said Alys.
‘She couldny save Robert, just the same, Our Lady succour him,’ said Elspet, slicing white discs of carrot. ‘She was running up and down from her own chamber, wi almond milk and all what, but it never helped the laddie.’
‘She saved our John,’ said Alys, and crossed herself quickly at the thought of the morning’s disruption. ‘She knew exactly what to do for him.’
‘Oh, mem, I’d forgot that,’ said Isa, ‘what wi the rest of the day. How is your wee one? Did you ever find that Erschewoman? I tell you, I was working in the hall at the time, taking the dust off the panelling, to be handy for the door when the mistress’s gossips came calling, and the first I knew was Mistress Grace ran down the stair wi her apron full of crocks, and out the back way and down the garden. I never saw any Erschewoman or anyone else come through the hall.’
‘No,’ said Alys. ‘Nor did anyone. It’s – it’s very strange.’
‘Here, Isa, look yonder,’ said Elspet, on a warning note, looking out of the window into the yard.
Isa craned to see, and exclaimed in annoyance. ‘What’s that lassie up to? Is that one of John Anderson’s constables she’s daffing wi?’ She stepped quickly to the door. ‘Jess! Come in here now wi that water!’
Alys got to her feet. ‘He will wish to speak to you all,’ she said. ‘I should leave. Thank you for the ale –’
‘Speak to us?’ said Babtie on a rising squeak. ‘What for? We’ve never done anything!’
The three women still in the kitchen seemed almost to draw together, though they did not move. Jess’s wooden soles clopped on the cobbles and she appeared in the doorway, the burly blue-gowned form of one of the constables looming behind her.
‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s Isa that heard her say it!’
Back in the house, Alys paused in the hall. She could hear the Serjeant in the room where Robert had died, still asking questions; Gil was there too, putting in the occasional word. She curbed her wish to hurry to his side and considered what she might usefully do now. She had no wish to speak to Agnes again, though poor Nell must still be with her since it was beginning to grow dark and there was nobody to walk her home. Perhaps Meg could tell me something useful, she thought reluctantly.
‘What’s ado?’ asked Nicol Renfrew in the doorway from the stair. ‘The house is full of constables, all asking questions. Who’s that? Oh, it’s you. Gil Cunningham’s wee wife.’ He giggled sleepily, and slouched forward through the shadows. ‘How are you the day, mistress?’
‘Do you know your brother is dead?’ she asked directly.
‘Oh, aye, Grace told me. Are they all in there?’ He ambled towards the open door. Alys followed him. ‘And there’s the Serjeant. Are you come to arrest us all, Serjeant?’
Within the room, Serjeant Anderson was interrogating Maister Syme about whether marchpane cherries habitually lay about the shop. Give the man his due, Alys thought, he was asking the right kind of questions, perhaps because whatever conclusion he reached would offend Maister Renfrew, who was standing over the settle, his beads clenched in his hand, his colour ominously high. Gil was over by the wall, listening, though he met her eyes and smiled as she entered, and there was a Dominican priest talking to Eleanor; there was no sign of Grace.
‘Where have you been all day?’ Maister Renfrew demanded of Nicol. ‘Here’s Robert dead of pyson and none to lift a hand to prevent it –’
‘Pyson?’ said Nicol with interest. He looked at his brother’s body. ‘Better have him out of here, Faither, or he’ll set afore he’s washed.’
‘Is that all you’ve to say, you daftheid? Where have you been, anyway?’
‘I’ve been a wonderful journey.’ Nicol waved a hand in a wide gesture, and Serjeant Anderson swayed back to avoid being slapped. ‘Three times round the world, met Agnes in Rome and Grace in Constantinople, and that mad Italian in his strange new world, and then back across the Dow Hill. Is there aught to eat in the house? I’m famished.’
‘Can you make marchpane cherries?’ asked the Serjeant.
‘Me?’ Nicol giggled again. ‘No, I leave that to my wife. And the putting pyson in them.’ The Serjeant looked sharply at him. ‘Grace told me,’ he added. ‘A bad business, Faither, for the both of us, and for you, Jimmy, but we’ll no talk of it now wi so many present.’
The Serjeant grunted, and returned his attention to Maister Syme.
‘It’s a habit of the young man’s,’ Syme pronounced, with that air of sharing a secret, ‘I mean it’s aye been a habit, if a box of sweetmeats gets broken, he’d eat the dainties himself, rather than save the box and perhaps put two such together and sell one complete. I’ve mentioned it a time or two,’ he admitted, ‘but Robert never desisted.’
‘Aye,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Young men will aye have their cantrips.’ Syme’s offended expression suggested that he possessed none. ‘And who knew of this, maister?’
‘All his family,’ said Syme steadily, ‘but also anyone that came into the shop while Robert was there could observe him, and a few of those might have heard me mention it to him.’
‘Aye,’ said the Serjeant again. He looked round as his constables entered. ‘Well, lads?’
The one who had been in the kitchen nodded significantly. What had he learned? Alys wondered. Their superior acknowledged the nod and went back to Syme.
‘And who makes all these kickshawses?’ he asked.
‘My wife,’ said Syme, ‘her sister, her good-sister. All three of them’s right good at the fancy work –’
‘And does each one have her speciality? What do you make best, mistress?’
‘I made those marchpane cherries,’ admitted Eleanor wearily. ‘But I never put aught in them but dried cherries and marchpane. And as for harming my brother, I’d never – I’d never – Oh, he was the dearest wee boy!’ she burst out, tears springing to her eyes, and Father James patted her hand. ‘I canny believe it!’
‘Well, well,’ said the S
erjeant, with a certain rough sympathy. He turned to his men again, and Syme hurried across the room to his wife. Alys watched, wishing she was closer, as the constables conveyed some information to the Serjeant’s ear.
‘Right, lads,’ said Serjeant Anderson. ‘I think that’s all we need to know. Away and take her up, and you’ll no accept any marchpane cherries off her.’
‘Who?’demanded Eleanor as the two constables left the room. ‘Take who up?’ exclaimed her father at the same time. ‘Her? Who – not – not Grace?’
‘Your daughter Agnes,’ said the Serjeant with satisfaction. ‘She was heard to say she’d get back at her brother, and she’d the means and the chance to put the dainties where he’d find them.’
‘Agnes?’ said Nicol, interested. ‘I’d never have thought she’d do that. Senna in his porridge maybe, but no pyson. She must dislike him worse than I thought.’
‘Agnes?’ said Eleanor at the same moment, but not as if she disbelieved it. She looked up at her husband, and he put a hand on her shoulder.
‘No!’ said Renfrew. ‘No, Serjeant, no my wee lassie! You canny mean it!’
‘Oh, I do,’ said Serjeant Anderson. ‘And I’m wondering if she’s responsible for what came to Danny Gibson after all.’ He smiled kindly at Gil. ‘There you are, Maister Cunningham, two deaths sorted and the miscreant taken up, all in less than half an hour.’
What was that line in the play? Alys thought. I’ll rug you down in inches In less than half an hour. Gil returned the smile with the politeness which meant he was deeply annoyed.
‘Sir Thomas will be impressed,’ he said.
‘We should have some light in here,’ said Syme anxiously. He looked at Alys. ‘Could I trouble you to call for candles, mistress? It would –’
She nodded, and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her and wondering whether to go out to the kitchen for lights. Overhead, suddenly, there was screaming, exclamations, running feet, loud voices. The two constables seemed to be having some difficulty with their capture. In the same moment she realized that the two younger maidservants were by the door which led out to the kitchen, clinging together and staring at the ceiling.