The Lanimer Bride

by Pat McIntosh

  ‘I don’t know your burgh,’ Gil said, ‘but it seems to me in a place this size, two violent acts so close together are more like to be connected than not.’

  ‘Aye.’ Lockhart nodded, and paced back to sit down across the empty hearth from Gil. He contemplated the floorboards he had just traversed, and scratched at the rim of one pink ear. ‘Madam your wife,’ he said after a moment, ‘was asking earlier if there was aught due to come afore the Council that Vary might allow or gainsay.’

  ‘She was,’ Gil agreed, since some response seemed to be expected.

  ‘Mind, I’ve no knowledge o this mysel,’ the Provost pursued. Gil nodded. ‘But I’ll tell you this. Dod Ballantyne was hinting lately that he’d some thought o a way to make money, coin that would fall into the burgh coffers. I never jaloused what it might be, and to be honest,’ he admitted, ‘I never paid much mind. He’d ha told me himsel soon or late.’

  ‘A way to make money,’ Gil repeated. ‘Within the law?’

  ‘I’d ha thought so. He was a man o law himsel, though he never practised. Made his money in trade, afore he was the burgh custumar, and gey comfortable he was wi’t and all.’

  ‘What kind of hints was he putting out? Was it a matter of buying and selling, or a land deal, or a venture abroad? Were there others in it, do you think?’

  Lockhart thought about this.

  ‘I doubt he’d be acting his lone,’ he said. ‘He’d as many contacts, in Leith and Edinburgh and Ayr, I’d ha thought he’d go through one o them at the least.’

  Gil tapped his chin, mulling this over in his mind.

  ‘Vary has heard nothing,’ he said, ‘beyond an order to do someone’s bidding.’ He described the two sets of tablets with their blunt messages, and Lockhart looked grim.

  ‘Small wonder he’s feart for her,’ he said. ‘And her crying-time as close. She should never ha been abroad, poor lass.’

  ‘Is there any way,’ Gil said delicately, ‘I could get a look at Ballantyne’s papers? I suppose a lot will be confidential, burgh business or the like, but there might be something there that would—’

  ‘That would gie us a hint,’ Lockhart finished. ‘Aye, and better in some ways the Archbishop’s man seeking it than someone from within the burgh.’ He pondered a moment. ‘It’s a good thought, indeed. I’ll gie you a line for Dod’s steward, he’s a capable man and less like to be owerset than his mistress. Did you hear, they’d the sweep in, was why none o the household was aware o what passed.’

  ‘I saw the sweep,’ Gil said. ‘And his goose. D’you ken where his laddie dwells?’

  The steward, the same man who had answered the door to Gil earlier, had assumed more sober state. Earlier, he had appeared in the foreshot to contend with the constables, departed to break the news to his mistress, dealt competently with the bystanders, still in his soot with added bloodstains. Clad now in decent livery and bearing his wand of office, though with a smudge of soot still at the side of his nose, he greeted Gil civilly enough and considered the Provost’s request while about him in the hall servants shifted furniture, carried messages to and from the Nicholas Inn, beat wall hangings, and in one case bore a bolt of cloth, still in its canvas casing, down from an upper floor.

  ‘It’s the black velvet, Maister Anthony,’ said the woman carrying it, on a note of triumph. ‘She was right, it was in the wee chamber. Will I take it to Jaikie Wishart the now, or wait till we’ve found the silk to go wi’t?’

  ‘Take it now,’ said the steward with decision. ‘He can get on wi the cutting while we seek the other. She’ll want the gown for the quest, I’ll warrant.’ He turned back to Gil. ‘I think we can grant this, maister, though I’d as soon owersee the matter myself, if you’ll forgive me.’ Gil nodded. ‘But as you can see it’s no that convenient the now.’

  ‘I’d not want long,’ Gil said, wondering if this was in fact true. He saw the steward reach a similar conclusion.

  After a moment the man said, ‘I could spare Auld Henry, I suppose. He’s been up and down they stairs ever since— he could do wi a sit-down. You’ll no mind if he sits in a corner, rather than stand?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Gil.

  Auld Henry proved to be a wiry ancient with few teeth, who was delighted to have express permission to sit in company with one of the gentry. He unlocked the foreshot with the key Maister Anthony had provided, and led Gil through the little waiting room into Maister Ballantyne’s sanctuary, which had been no sanctuary at all.

  ‘And that’s where he dee’d,’ he pronounced cheerfully if indistinctly, looking at the damp patch on the floorboards where the bloodstains had already been scrubbed and sanded. ‘Aye, aye, we’ll no get the mark out, I doubt. And there’s his desk, maister. I believe I’m to make you free o’t.’

  ‘A moment, man,’ said Gil, looking in some dismay at the desk. ‘Who’s been here? Seems to me it’s been searched, and no wi civility.’

  ‘D’ye ken, maister, you’re right at that,’ declared Auld Henry, bending stiffly to pick up some of the papers on the floor. ‘Maybe ’twas the constables,’ he suggested. ‘They’s well enow for dealing wi a stushie in the mercat, but they’ve no notion o manners wi the gentry.’

  ‘No,’ said Gil, ‘unless they returned after your maister was borne away. I’ll bide here. You go and tell Maister Anthony what’s amiss.’

  Waiting for the steward, Gil stood without touching anything, considering what he could see. The writing-slope of the desk was tipped back, and the cavity under it had been ransacked; the shelves on the end had been emptied and the four or five ledgers he recalled seeing there were on the floor, two of them lying open on crumpled pages. He had a sudden image of someone shaking the volumes by their boards to free any papers tucked between the leaves, then dropping each to go on to the next. The papers in the rack of pigeonholes beyond the desk had been similarly handled. Someone used to dealing with records had searched the place for a particular document.

  The steward, arriving in haste, agreed with Gil.

  ‘We left all straight,’ he said. ‘Someone’s got in, and past that lock. In broad daylight, and all. St Peter’s bones, what’s the world coming to? And what were they seeking? Their lease?’

  ‘Someone wi a key,’ Gil said. ‘Take a look – there’s no sign it was forced, and no marks from a blade or the like. It’s a stout lock.’

  ‘You need a stout lock on a foreshot,’ said Maister Anthony, peering at the lock. ‘Nobody wi any sense would keep money out here, but they’s aye folk willing to take the chance. I’ve a key, naturally, but I’ve never had the time to come out here and harrow the place like this. I’ve all to see to within there. I’ve no notion who else might have one.’

  ‘Unless they went off wi Maister Ballantyne’s,’ Gil suggested. ‘What key did you use to lock up here when the constables left?’

  ‘My own.’ Maister Anthony touched the bunch that hung at his waist, dismay in his face. ‘Our Lady save us, I never thought to check. I took it his own was on his bunch, that’s on his belt where he keeps— he aye kept it.’

  ‘I’ll get a word wi the Provost when I’m done here,’ said Gil, ‘and find out if it’s on his belt now.’

  The steward drew a deep breath, nodded, and looked about him at the disorder of the chamber.

  ‘Well, maister, the only man that could tell you if aught’s missing, apart from my late maister, is his clerk, Steenie Gardner, that’s away to visit his family the day.’

  ‘And that’s his employment at an end,’ said Auld Henry from the corner, with some relish.

  ‘Will you still be wanting to go through the papers, maister?’

  ‘You never ken your fortune,’ said Gil. ‘Your housebreaker might no have been seeking the same matters I’d want.’ Maister Anthony gave him a sceptical look. ‘I’ll take the time, if you’ll allow it.’

  ‘Maister Anthony!’ Another maidservant appeared in the doorway, her arms full of purple velvet trimmed with black silk braid. ‘
Maister Anthony, what’ll I do wi the bere-cloth the now? Only it could do wi airing, there’s a couple wee moths been at it.’

  The steward departed, muttering distractedly, and Gil, trying to recall whether it classed as housebreaking if the felon had a key, bent to the first bundle of papers.

  By the time the Lanark bellman passed down the High Street, Gil had restored a seeming of order to the chamber, and established that there was nothing still in Maister Ballantyne’s desk which shed any light on his death. Auld Henry was drowsing on a stool against the wall, which left Gil free to study anything he found, but although the papers in the desk dealt with several ventures into sharp trading, nothing seemed enough to have made a bloody enemy for the trader. More than one docket in the familiar hand of Andrew Halyburton, Scots factor in the Low Countries, detailed barrels containing bolts of cloth, spices, raisins and the like, many annotated with the price the goods had fetched in Lanark and the satisfactory profit they had turned. A small bundle of papers wrapped in one of these appeared to deal with an order for slips of something; Gil frowned at this, trying to decide the nature of the merchandise. Fruit trees? Rose bushes? Samples of paper?

  ‘How big is your maister’s garden?’ he asked. The old man snorted, jerked awake, straightened himself.

  ‘Gairden?’ he repeated. ‘No that big. He’s biggit a storehouse on the most o the toft, just left a wee kaleyard down the end. Aye, aye, there’s the bellman,’ he added, as the first clangs resounded off the nearby buildings. ‘Are you for the quest, maister? The poor laddie, his mistress has slew him and run off, so they’re saying, and where she’s away to naeb’dy kens. Are ye about done here, maister?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Gil briskly to this assertion. The bellman strode past the foreshot, clashing his great bell and crying the quest on the death of Adam Baird, horribly murdered on the road. ‘The lass is near her groaning-time, she’s no like to run off now. She’s been lifted by someone, that’s for certain.’ He began closing down the desk, and looked about to see that matters were in order.

  ‘So where is she now?’ Auld Henry demanded. ‘Tell me that, maister. Where is she now?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Gil.

  The quest on Adam Baird was unsatisfactory. It was held before the Provost’s house, with the assize withdrawing into the cooler space of the hall for a refreshment while it deliberated. The conclusion it drew was the right one, so far as it went; when they all filed out again the spokesman pronounced that Adam Baird’s death was secret murder, by the same ill-conditioned folk as had lifted Mistress Madur and were holding her prisoner, and the Provost should hunt them down wi all speed, or at the very least learn their names and put them to the horn.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said the Provost testily, hitching up his mustard-coloured velvet. ‘If any o ye has ideas how I do that, I’d be glad to hear them.’

  However, Gil could see nobody in the crowd whom he wished to question. Most of those he recognised were Lanark burgesses; the young man was identified by two of his fellow-servants from Vary’s household, and a weeping girl who must be the sweetheart Mistress Somerville had mentioned was held back with difficulty. The conversation on either side of where he stood was divided between the case under consideration and the death of the burgh clerk. There seemed to be a widespread opinion that Maister Ballantyne had come by his deserts.

  Gil was considering what to do next when a deep voice by his elbow said, ‘Maister Cunningham. I should ha kent I’d find you in the midst o this.’

  He looked round, and down, and encountered a hostile dark stare level with his belt.

  ‘Maister Doig,’ he said. ‘I could say the same. Do you ken aught about the death of this laddie?’

  ‘I do not,’ said Doig grimly. ‘Neither who nor where.’

  ‘And what brings you into Lanarkshire again? I thought you’d shaken the county’s dust fro your feet when you left Glasgow.’

  ‘I get about,’ said Doig. ‘I get all ower.’ He leaned sideways to peer round a stout burgess at the Provost on his steps, dismissing the assize and thanking it for its deliberations. ‘If we slipped away now we’d get a seat in Juggling Nick’s afore the crowd comes in.’

  ‘True,’ said Gil, and turned to follow as Doig made use of his powerful arms and shoulders to apply leverage where nobody expected it, clearing a way for himself through the crowd.

  Bessie Dickson, keeper of the Nicholas Inn, a big muscular woman known and feared by drinkers of four parishes, hailed them sourly as the first of the rush, drew them a jug of ale and sent them out into the little garden at the back of the inn.

  ‘For this chamber will be filled elbow to elbow in the space of three Aves,’ she forecast, scowling at Doig, ‘and I’ll no be responsible if you get stepped on.’

  ‘Nor will I, mistress,’ said Doig, showing his teeth in a broad, humourless grin.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ she said, accepting Gil’s coin for the ale, and handed him two leather beakers.

  Seated on a bench in the shade, Gil poured ale into the beakers and raised his in a toast.

  ‘Your good health,’ he said. ‘I hope Mistress Doig is well?’

  ‘Herself? Aye, she’s well enow. Still at the dog breeding,’ Doig admitted. ‘We’d to leave Perth, but she’s got a good yard to keep them in at Dundee now, and the merchants’ wives o Dundee has taken to her wee spaniels.’

  ‘And you’re getting all ower,’ Gil said.

  ‘Aye,’ said Doig flatly. There was a pause, while he drank deeply of the ale and then considered what remained in his beaker. Gil sat quietly, and eventually the small man said, ‘The lass that’s missing.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Gil.

  ‘It’s the speak o the town.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I’m no delicat, you ken that,’ said Doig. ‘But stealing away a lassie in her condition’s what I don’t hold wi.’ Gil made an agreeing noise. ‘I’m no saying it’s her uncles has her, mind, but you should speir at them about it.’

  ‘What should I ask of them?’

  Doig shrugged his massive shoulders, and slid down off the bench.

  ‘Ask them if they ken where she might be,’ he said. ‘And keep on asking till you get an answer. Thanks for the drink.’

  ‘Do you ken who has her?’

  ‘If I did, I’d maybe tell you,’ Doig flung over his shoulder as he rolled towards the inn door. Gil let him go, and sat back, considering this. It was unlike Doig to volunteer information; he must be deeply offended by Mistress Madur’s situation. Which of her uncles did he mean, Gil wondered, and would Michael have learned anything if he had reached them today? And what was Doig’s connection to them?

  Before he finished the jug he was joined, first by Euan and then by the man he had sent up to the Burgh Muir, one of Henry’s henchmen, a huge fellow by the name of Tottie Tammas.

  ‘The man Doig’s been all about Lanark,’ said Euan triumphantly as he crossed the garden. ‘Indeed, maister, I was seeing him myself just the now, coming away from this very place! And he’s been seen speaking to all sorts, including the man that’s deid, the burgh clerk, though no the day,’ he added. ‘And they are saying there is a load of gunpowder on the roads of the county, though nobody seems to have seen it hissel, only to have heard of some other body that saw it.’

  ‘Gunpowder,’ Gil repeated. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Och, everyone had a different reason. One fellow was saying, that proves the King will go to war against the English once the harvest is in, for it must be him has sent for it. I am not so sure of that myself,’ Euan admitted.

  ‘Nor I, by St Giles. Did you learn how long Doig has been in Lanark?’ Gil asked. Euan looked at him, set down his drink, and began to count on his fingers.

  ‘He was first seen on Friday,’ he said finally, ‘or maybe it was Saturday. But mostly he’s been speaking wi strangers, folk in for the fair last week, they say. Been in here and all.’

  ‘I thought he must have
,’ said Gil, as Tottie Tammas approached them. ‘And you, Tammas? Did you have any luck?’

  ‘No what you’d call luck,’ said Tammas, sitting down uninvited on the other end of the bench. He raised his beaker to Gil. ‘Your good health, maister. You ken the Burgh Muir?’

  ‘I do,’ said Gil, ‘though no closely.’

  ‘Aye, well.’ Tammas took a deep draught of his ale and emerged licking his upper lip. ‘You’ll ken how it goes up and down, then. There’s no place to owersee the hale o’t. I’d say it’s all as it should be, grazing here, a wee plantation there, the burgh herd and the geese and all where they should be, but there was an odd thing.’

  ‘Odd how?’ Gil prompted, as the man took another draught.

  ‘There was someb’dy,’ he wiped at his upper lip, ‘someb’dy out on the muir taking care I didny see him.’

  ‘How do you ken he was there, then?’ asked Euan.

  ‘I got a wee glimp o him now-and-now. Was a fellow in a blue doublet, wi the sleeves off it and his sark sleeves rowed up. Never got a look at his hair, much less his face. If it had been raining, I’d ha understood him keeping his head down, but a day like this, ye’d think he’d ha gied me a wave, maybe come ower to pass the time wi me, acted freendly-like. No pretending I wasny there the way he did.’

  ‘Maybe it was this fellow wi the cartload of gunpowder,’ said Euan, and grinned at his own joke.

  ‘No sign of the lads from Kettlands?’ Gil asked. ‘Did you see where the tinkers had camped?’

  ‘Oh, aye, I seen that. Fires all ower, the gorse hacked down for their horses, broken crocks left where they’d hurt a beast’s feet, you could see their spot easy. Never saw the Kettlands men, but.’ He tilted his beaker to get the last drops. ‘By here, I needed that. Thirsty work, tramping the Burgh Muir in this.’

  Taking the hint, Gil dug out a coin and sent him to fetch another jug of ale.

  Euan said, ‘I suppose the Kettlands men would ha ridden on to track the tinkers by then.’

  ‘Likely,’ said Gil. This case seemed to consist of nothing but dead ends; no matter which way they turned he could find no hint of where Audrey Madur might be. The nearest to gossip he had heard was Doig’s hint just now; there were many other opinions about her fate but nobody with information to substantiate them.