The Merchant's Mark

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘What about the man wi the axe?’ said a voice behind Sir Thomas before she had to answer this. The Provost turned sharply, and Mall came into Kate’s view, dry-eyed and pinched with grief, her sister beside her. ‘You never mentioned him,’ she went on, looking at Kate, ‘you never named the weapon that killed my Billy. Is he to get off wi it?’

  ‘Speak respectful to my leddy, you,’ said Babb over Kate’s shoulder.

  ‘What’s this? What’s this?’ demanded Sir Thomas.

  ‘It’s Billy’s sweetheart, Mall Anderson,’ said Kate. ‘Mall, did you not speak to the Provost before?’

  ‘I tried,’ she said, ‘but my uncle wouldny let me.’ She jerked her head towards Serjeant Anderson, who had just reappeared leading the assize from the inner room.

  ‘Oh, he wouldny?’ said Sir Thomas a little grimly. ‘What’s this about a man with an axe, lassie? Tell me quick.’

  ‘There was a m-man wi an axe at the back yett to our yard,’ said Mall, stumbling over her words, ‘I heard him talking to my Billy, and he threatened him to d-do what he wanted, to break into his maister’s house and steal for him, and it must ha been him that slew him, sir, and is he to get off free?’

  ‘It’s no right, maister,’ said her sister at her elbow.

  ‘Do you ken this man’s name, lassie?’ asked the Provost severely. Mall stared at him, and shook her head. ‘If we canny name him, we canny put him to the horn. Still I wish it had come out afore this, for someone in the room might ken him.’ He turned as the men of the assize were herded behind their rope again. ‘Aye, neighbours,’ he said, making for his chair on the dais. ‘Have you reached a verdict, then? And are you minded o the penalties for a false assize?’

  ‘At least they brought it in murder,’ said Alys, as Kate settled herself on her saddle.

  ‘That wasn’t enough for Mall,’ said Kate, who had seen the girl’s face as the verdict had been announced. ‘I think she feels if the weapon had been named, the man might somehow be taken for the killing.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Babb beside her, taking up Wallace’s reins. ‘She expects justice for a common wee thief, that got his own master put in prison unjustly?’

  ‘It’s different when it’s one of your own that’s affected,’ said Alys.

  Kate said nothing; she was thinking of the conversation she had just had with the prisoner, fetched down to the yard to speak with her while Alys snatched a quick word with a harassed Lady Stewart.

  ‘Andy tells me they questioned you about you being in my house,’ he had said in embarrassment. ‘Lady Kate, there’s no end to the trials you’re undergoing on my account.’

  ‘I’ll survive,’ she had said lightly. ‘It’s a different kind of trial, maister. Makes a change from wondering how to get up a stair. Mattha Hog tried the same questions, when I spoke to him this morning, but I dealt with him and all.’

  ‘Hog?’ he said, startled. ‘How so? What kind of a word?’

  ‘I sold him the tainted coals,’ she said. ‘From the coalhouse where Billy was killed.’

  ‘Andy was saying something about them. I never took it in. You bargained with Mattha Hog? What did you get off him?’

  She told him, and he gave her an admiring look.

  ‘That’s as much as I paid for the whole load, my lady. It’s not many can get the better of Mattha Hog.’

  ‘You’ve never heard my mother selling horseflesh, maister,’ said Kate, with her wry smile.

  Morison smiled in answer, and then bit his lip, and put his hand out to touch hers. ‘D’you know, I mind carrying you up our fore-stair in Hamilton one time.’

  ‘You’d not find it so easy now.’

  ‘And those days, Lady Kate,’ he said, and hesitated. She looked up, and met his blue gaze. ‘You used to call me by my name. My own name – my given name.’

  ‘So did you,’ she said after a moment. ‘We’re old friends, Augie.’

  ‘Aye, Kate. We are that.’

  ‘So we’ll hear less about what I’m undergoing on your account.’ He seemed about to reply, but Alys arrived beside them. ‘You’ll scarce know your bairns when you join us again,’ she went on. ‘We’ve clipped their hair short, the better to wash it, and we’ve been making wee gowns for them, that they can run about the yard in.’

  ‘There’s been precious little sewing done in the house this while,’ he said. ‘But I thought you were to send Andy up to me, for orders to take the bairns to Bothwell.’

  ‘You’d hardly have sent them to their uncle with the clothes they had in their kist,’ said Kate briskly. ‘We’d to get those gowns finished.’

  Morison’s mouth twitched in a reluctant smile.

  ‘They had the first ones on this morning,’ said Alys, ‘of blue linen, and they looked like two little flowers.’

  ‘Aye, they would,’ he said, and covered his eyes. Kate, in her turn, put a hand over his other one.

  ‘They’re well,’ she said. ‘They’re safe, and we’ve found a good nourice to them. You’ve no need to concern yourself about them for now, Augie.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said again. He lowered his hand and looked at her with that blue gaze. For a moment he seemed about to say more, but at length he managed only, ‘My thanks, Kate.’

  By the time the dinner was ready, both Kate and Alys felt some sense of achievement. With Babb and Jennet they had made a more thorough attack on the hall, swept, dusted and polished again, taken the hangings outside and beaten them with sticks and rehung them, and done the same for everything in the chamber where Kate and Babb had slept except the great bed. Kate had wiped and oiled the heap of neglected instruments and cleaned candlesticks, Mistress Thomson had beaten cushions, and polishing the stools, with a rag each and a pot of Ursel’s sweet-smelling beeswax and lavender polish, occupied the children spasmodically for most of the afternoon. However now the army of cleaners had reached the door of Maister Morison’s counting-house at the other end of the hall.

  Here they met a predictable obstacle.

  ‘That’s my da’s chamber,’ said Ysonde, lower lip stuck out, a smear of polish on her nose. ‘Not to go in there.’

  ‘Now, poppet,’ began Jennet.

  ‘What does your father keep there?’ asked Alys. ‘Is it all his order-books and counting-books?’

  Ysonde looked hard at her, and nodded. ‘And all his books with poetry in, no-to-touch-wi-sticky-fingers. Wynliane’s in a poetry book,’ she announced proudly, ‘and so’m I. But you’re not to go in.’ Beside her, Wynliane shook her head and her mouth framed a silent No.

  ‘We only want to sweep and dust,’ said Jennet.

  ‘There’s a good lassie, taking heed to what her da said,’ announced Nan. ‘You come wi me now, poppets, and we’ll see what there is for your dinner.’

  ‘No,’ said Ysonde. Wynliane shook her head again. Nan was just holding out her hand when there were hasty steps at the house door, and Andy’s nephew John appeared in the hall. Behind him Kate heard distant shouting, and the tuck of a drum, and then a fanfare.

  ‘Here’s a great procession coming down the High Street!’ John said in excitement. ‘There’s horses, and trumpets, and folk in velvet and satin, and fancy livery. Come and watch!’

  ‘My!’ said Nan. ‘A procession! I’ve not seen a good Glasgow procession in years. We don’t get them the same in Dumbarton,’ she confided. ‘Will you come and help me watch the procession?’

  ‘No,’ said Ysonde.

  Kate, seated on a newly brushed tapestry backstool, reached for her crutches and said, ‘We’ll all go and watch the procession. Every one of us.’

  John, hovering in the doorway, took in the situation and added his mite: ‘They’re saying it’s the King. Come and see!’

  By the time they reached the gate the outriders had already passed, drum and trumpet briefly silent. They were followed by what seemed like an endless, clattering, richly dressed cavalcade, silks and velvets glowing in the afternoon sunshine, jewels glinting on hats and gowns, the
horses draped in dyed leather and turkey-work. The inhabitants of Glasgow, drawn by the fanfares, watched and commented, dogs and small boys ran alongside in excitement. The outriders raised their instruments and put up another resonant blast, but from further up the street over the noise Kate could hear cheering and shouts of, ‘Guid bless the King! Jamie Stewart! Guid save the King’s grace!’

  The trumpeters had reached the Tolbooth and were blowing another fanfare as the King drew abreast of Morison’s Yard. Kate, who had seen the late King and had also, as a little girl, been presented to Margaret of Denmark, had no difficulty in recognizing the young man at the centre of the group, and Alys, used to the comings and goings through the town, identified some of the others for her.

  ‘That’s the Archbishop, you can see his ring, and that’s my lord of Angus –’

  ‘I ken him.’

  ‘Those two are Boyds, I think, are they your cousins?’

  ‘Sandy and Archie, that’s right.’

  ‘That is my lord Hume, and there is Maister Forman.’ Alys paused to curtsy as the King drew level, and the men around them pulled off hats and bonnets and flourished them in the air. Ysonde clapped her hands in excitement on Andy’s shoulders, and even Wynliane, held up in Babb’s arms, smiled and waved.

  ‘I think,’ Alys continued, ‘that may be the Abbot of Cambuskenneth. And Kate, could that be my lord Treasurer? With that badge it must be, surely!’

  ‘Aye,’ said Kate, looking at the blue-jowled, smiling man with the eight-pointed cross on his cloak. ‘I think it must be.’

  The procession clattered onwards, and was greeted further down the street by another blast of the trumpets. The outriders had rounded the Mercat Cross and were working their way back up the High Street. The denizens of the lower town were to get two opportunities to hail their King and his government.

  By the time the King had passed the gates the second time, Kate had had enough. The day had begun early, she had had two broken nights in succession and a third in a strange bed, and she was extremely tired.

  ‘Time for dinner,’ she said.

  ‘I want to see!’ objected Ysonde.

  ‘Let her see the last of it,’ said Andy tolerantly.

  ‘What’s going on up-by?’ asked Babb, staring up the street past the child in her arms. ‘They’ve stopped by the Greyfriars Vennel.’

  ‘Someone’s spoke to the King, I think,’ said one of the men.

  Babb narrowed her eyes, peering over the heads. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s that Mall Anderson again.’

  ‘What’s she up to?’ demanded Andy.

  ‘Stepped into the procession and caught hold of the King’s stirrup,’ reported Babb.

  As the riders round the King halted, those behind them caught up and also halted in a trampling, disorderly crowd. Someone’s horse backed in a circle and onlookers shouted as an apprentice narrowly avoided being stepped on. Other voices, from up the street, were commenting adversely on the delay. Beside Morison’s Yard a rat-faced cleric on a piebald horse said sourly, ‘What’s holding us up now?’

  ‘Some lassie wanting justice,’ pronounced a rider from nearer the King. A name was called. ‘Here, William, you’re wanted.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said the rat-faced man. ‘No doubt of that. All the tiresome tasks for William Dunbar. Gie me room, there.’ He spurred his horse forward through the crowd, with some difficulty, and by the time the procession set off again Mall was perched on his saddlebow.

  ‘Well!’ said Babb.

  ‘My, the effrontery!’ said Ursel at Kate’s elbow. ‘And what will it gain her?’

  ‘Trouble,’ said Andy.

  ‘After this morning,’ said Kate, ‘she likely thinks it’s her only hope of justice.’

  ‘She’s in it as deep as he was,’ objected Andy.

  ‘She may not realize that,’ said Alys. ‘Now, I believe it is dinnertime. Then we may do a little more cleaning, and after that surely the water will be hot enough.’

  Kate turned herself, to go back into the yard. Beside her Babb straightened up from setting Wynliane on the ground, and met her mistress’s eye.

  ‘It may no be for Mall Anderson,’ she said grimly, ‘but there’s trouble in that for somebody, my leddy, or I’m Kate Bairdie’s coo.’

  Chapter Ten

  This attack was rather more professional.

  They were making good speed round the flank of the Pentlands, with Edinburgh town under its pall of coal-smoke on their left, the castle at one end and Arthur’s Seat outlined against the hills of Fife at the other. In the fields below them, the hay had been cut, and in places was still being turned; here and there was a field of wheat, sheared and stooked and waiting to be carried home, and everywhere the barley stood golden and rustling in the August afternoon like the grain they had seen by Linlithgow.

  Gil was ruminating on what they had learned so far, but at his side, Maistre Pierre rode watchful, and the Hospitaller sergeant brought up the rear with his hand on the hilt of his sword. Socrates was ranging on either side of the track again, alarming the rabbits.

  ‘I’ve kin in Edinburgh,’ remarked Luke. ‘My sister’s man has a cousin that’s a journeyman saddler on the High Street. Or so he claims,’ he added darkly.

  ‘There’s a mony saddlers,’ began Rob. His voice cut off, and he choked.

  Johan shouted, and Gil turned in the saddle to see his man clutching at his throat, bright blood spurting between his fingers.

  ‘Rob!’ he exclaimed, and made out the cold blue end of a crossbow quarrel in the midst of the blood. He kneed his horse about, looking for the source of the bolt. Luke had already drawn his whinger, and Tam was reaching left-handed for his cudgel, staring at his colleague with a bemused expression.

  ‘Da!’ said Johan. He was pointing with his sword to the hillside above where a flock of sheep scattered bleating. A big man in black was leaping down across the rough grass, his long-hafted axe whirling in a double loop before him, and after him one, two, three other men rose from the ditch where they had hidden and rushed downwards, long swords gleaming in the light over their heads.

  The party on the road had just time to group, the three trained swordsmen to the fore with Johan in the centre, Luke behind them with the two injured men, before the axeman reached them. His rush had carried him well in front of his fellows, but this did not seem to deter him. Gil knotted his reins on the saddlebow and drew his own sword and dagger. Well aware both of what such a weapon could do if it made contact and of the fact that this very knowledge was the axeman’s greatest strength, he tried to ignore the bubbling, choking sounds Rob was making, and concentrate on the feel of his sword in his hand and the likelihood of controlling this horse in a pitched fight. He had to admit it was not good.

  As Socrates reached them and took up position snarling under the belly of Gil’s horse, the axeman leapt on to the earth dyke at the side of the road, checked his rush, and grinned at them past the blue steel axehead. It was longer and wider than his flat big-featured face, the hooked point at the back of the blade the same shape as the scrap of beard on his chin.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he taunted, and growled back at the dog. ‘Are ye up for it? Who’s first? Or will ye just lay down yir weapons the now and gie us yir packs? Grrh!’

  ‘Vot does he say?’ asked Johan. Maistre Pierre beyond him, watching the axeman, translated absently into a mixture of French and High Dutch, and the sergeant shook his head.

  ‘Vy ve should do zis?’ he asked.

  ‘Because there’s four of us,’ said the big man, grinning again, ‘and only three of you can fight. Because Maidie here,’ he kissed the axeblade, ‘says ye should.’ The three swordsmen jumped on to the dyke beside him. ‘Because we’re coming to get yez!’ he shouted, and sprang forward at Johan, who deflected the swing of the axe with a sweeping blow of his long blade, following it by a kick to the man’s shoulder. He slid away from it, and Gil had time to think, He has fought mounted men before, and then h
e was dealing with two swordsmen at once, his horse squealing as a parried stroke caught it a glancing blow on the shoulder. Below it Socrates leapt growling for the nearest man’s thigh.

  It was all very hectic for several minutes. The man on Gil’s left was hampered by the dog, and by his own crossbow slung on his back. He was further discouraged by a boot and a backhanded dagger-blow, and Luke contrived to urge his horse forward and strike him down, leaving Gil to manage his own horse and parry the attack on his right. This man was good, and had also fought mounted men before, but Socrates was now slashing with sharp teeth at his thighs and codpiece. Moreover, the grizzled warrior who had taught Gil and his brothers swordplay had been at least as good, and Gil had not wasted his free time when he was in France. Standing in the stirrups as his mount trampled screaming in circles, he blocked the swordsman’s attack, aware on the edge of vision of Johan’s horse reared on its haunches and punching with iron-shod hooves at the axeman while its rider’s sword beat the axe aside. More blacksmithing noises beyond them suggested that the mason was well engaged.

  Then, as Gil seized his chance and disarmed his opponent in a move old Drew would have approved of, the axe flew sideways, its haft split in two, and with an agonized cry the axeman fell, first to his knees and then, when Johan’s sword descended on his helm, into the dust and gravel of the track.

  ‘Run, Baldy!’ shouted Maistre Pierre’s opponent, leapt away from his attack and set off downhill in the general direction of Edinburgh. Gil’s opponent, leaving his weapon in the dust, dived between Gil’s horse and Luke’s and over the dyke, and followed him. Socrates soared after them and set off in pursuit. As Gil whistled furiously for his dog the mason turned his horse as if to join the chase, looked at his companions, looked again at the fleeing men, reined back and sheathed his sword.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ he said. ‘They are persistent.’

  ‘But alvays run avay,’ said Johan. He had already dismounted, and now kicked the axeman accurately in the fork, nodded approvingly when there was no reaction, and knelt beside Rob, who had fallen from his horse some time since. Tam, unable to kneel, was standing over him, holding his bonnet with its St Christopher medal, tears running down his face.