by Pat McIntosh
The house was quiet when she stepped inside, and it took her some moments to realise that the neighbours were indeed present, as many as a dozen people sitting around on stools, on a settle, on the side of the wide bed, some murmuring over their beads, some silent. In the centre of the room, on a board balanced across two more stools, a very young man was laid out, shrouded and draped in a mended blanket by way of a pall. On the floor beside the board two little girls sat, sniffling.
‘Madam,’ said a voice, and she realised that an older girl was approaching, curtsying awkwardly. ‘Forgive us, mem, it’s no—’
‘Chrissie, away and sit down.’ This must be Chrissie’s father, stepping in front of the girl, drawing off his bonnet civilly enough. Alys put a hand out to him.
‘I’m right sorry for your loss,’ she said. ‘Our Lady see him safe from Purgatory. I’m— that was my man that was at the house yestreen. I came to see if I could help.’
‘Help?’ said the father. ‘What way could you help? My boy’s deid.’
‘Now, Eck,’ said Burns in a tone of rebuke.
‘My husband’s seeking the man that set the fire and killed Davie,’ Alys said. ‘The Irishman. I hoped Danny or the other lads might ha seen something that would help him.’
He stared at her, his expression not entirely friendly. After a moment he turned, jerked his head at one of the seated figures, and said gruffly, ‘Danny. Away out and talk to the leddy.’
‘And maybe,’ Alys added softly, putting the little bundle of coin on one of the shelves near the door, ‘this would help tide you over till there’s more work.’
Danny, out in the daylight, eyed her in puzzlement.
‘I tellt your man all I kent,’ he said hoarsely. ‘And Hamilton the Depute and all.’
‘I might have some other questions,’ she said. He was a sturdy young man, slow-moving but apparently rather quicker of thought, with a broad open face and a thatch of mouse-brown hair. ‘Tell me, did Somerville ever have any gunpowder at the house?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head blankly. ‘What way would he have gunpowder? They’s no guns at the house, nor yet cannons nor the like.’
‘And how long had the Irishman been at the house?’
‘Two-three days,’ he said. ‘I tellt them that.’
With a little coaxing, he decided that the man had arrived on Saturday, that his horse had been fresh enow, it had likely not been rid far that day. He had never heard the Irishman’s name nor heard him speak, it was just that the house servants called him that. Nor had he seen the man leave, but his beast wasny in the stables when they got the horses out from the fire.
‘And when the steward left after supper,’ Alys said, nodding approval of this conclusion, ‘who carried the baby?’
‘Oh, that was Tammas Lockhart,’ Danny said confidently, barely noticing the change of subject. ‘In a kinna sling about his breast.’
‘And threatened its mammy not to speak,’ she proposed. He took a breath as if to deny it, and doubled over coughing. Alys thumped him firmly on the back, and eventually the spasm passed.
‘Aye,’ he said, wiping sooty phlegm off his chin. ‘Aye, he said that. Or he’d put a knife in its wame. That’s no right,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘They tellt us no to say aught about it, no to mention it, pain o losing our places, but.’ He paused, catching his breath again. ‘Seems to me I’ve lost my place any road. And Doddie’s right, it’s no a right thing to talk like that to a lassie wi a new bairn.’ He drew another difficult breath.
‘You must stop speaking,’ said Alys. ‘Go back in and sit down. This will pass after a few days, but until then you must take care. It’s the smoke,’ she said reassuringly. ‘It does that when it gets into your chest, so you need to cough up the soot.’
The young man went willingly, replacing his blue bonnet as he went, and sat down limply just inside the house door. Alys looked round, and found Martin Burns the clerk at her shoulder.
‘Is any here herbwise?’ she asked him. ‘I’d brew up the elixir I know of, if I could put my hand on the ingredients.’
Maggie Inglis, it seemed, was herbwise, so far as any was in the place.
‘That’s Will Allen’s wife, ye ken,’ said Burns. ‘This house ower yonder.’ He gestured to another tiny cottage set in a well-tended garden, with a fence of woven hazel and more low partitions of sticks and woven rushes, to protect the plants from the searing winds.
‘Doddie’s mother,’ said Alys, calling up the surname from Gil’s account of the night. He stopped to stare at her, hand on the gate.
‘Aye, it is, mistress. A good laddie,’ he confided, ‘but a wee bit saft. Ye ken?’
Mistress Inglis met them at her house door, still pinning on her kurtch, curtsying at the same time, clearly in a state she would herself have called all of a flither.
‘Mistress!’ she said, smiling uncertainly at Alys. ‘Was ye wanting a word wi us?’
‘With yoursel, mistress. I hoped you might have sage and thyme,’ said Alys. ‘Maister Burns here tells me you are herbwise. And pepper as well, maybe?’ Celery seed would be too much to hope for, she was thinking.
‘I’ve no a lot o pepper,’ said Mistress Inglis doubtfully. ‘But I’ve the others growing fresh in the yard here, you can see for yoursel.’
‘And honey?’ Alys said hopefully.
‘Oh, aye, I’ve that.’
This house, like the others, had one chamber only, but held two box beds and a truckle bed slid under one of them, and not only stools and a settle but a great chair as well. This was offered to Alys, but she refused it, and set about explaining the elixir she wished to concoct. Her hostess heard her out, listening intently in the light from the open door.
‘I’ve never brewed that one,’ she admitted, ‘but I’ve heard o all those as sovereign for coughs and chest troubles. It’s well worth it, mem, if it helps the laddies, for all five that came home – poor Davie,’ she said, dabbing at her eyes, ‘all the five has terrible coughs. I’ll send the bairn round, see if any o the neighbours has pepper.’
Stepping to the door, she summoned one of the children in the street, and sent him out again with brief instructions, then began to denude her herb-plot of thyme and sage, stripping the leaves into her apron with swift movements. Alys, left inside the house, looked about her and found a young man of much the same age as Danny sitting quietly in a corner.
‘Doddie?’ she said. He straightened up with a start.
‘Aye, mistress?’
She considered, briefly, what she knew already. Best not to make the young man talk too much, after Danny’s coughing fit. She did not wish to be accused of making all the Cleuch servants worse.
‘Can you tell me, who else has visited the house lately?’ she asked. ‘I know of Madur of Eastshiel, and the Irishman. Have there been other guests to the house? Other folk that came to speak with Somerville?’
‘To the house?’ he asked wonderingly. ‘I’m no an inside man, I wouldny ken about that.’
‘But you hear things,’ she said. ‘You’ve the horses to stable, you meet the other servants that ride with the guests. Who else has been to call?’
‘I wouldny ken who comes visiting Somerville’s other houses,’ he said, his voice troubled.
‘Of course not, if you were never there.’
‘There was Maister Hamilton the Depute,’ he offered.
‘When was he there?’
‘Just yestreen, mistress.’
‘Very good,’ she said, restraining her impatience. ‘That’s very good.’
‘And there was the lassie that had a bairn, and the auld wife wi her. And the wee bairn.’ She could hear in his voice that he was smiling. ‘It was a bonnie wee bairn, even if it wasny all in clean linen.’
‘All bairns are bonnie,’ she agreed, the familiar knot of envy twisting in her stomach. ‘Was there anyone else, can you mind?’
‘I mind,’ he said after a moment. ‘There was someone last week. More
than a week syne.’
‘What’s this about a bairn, Doddie Allen?’ demanded his mother from the doorway. ‘There never was a lassie wi a bairn up at The Cleuch! You’re telling stories!’
‘No, I’m no!’ he said indignantly, and began to cough. ‘She was there!’ he added through the paroxysms. ‘She was!’
‘Have you a drink of water for him, mistress? It will help,’ said Alys, still restraining impatience.
‘There,’ said Mistress Allen, her hands full of her bundled apron. ‘The tub by the door, mem, if you would, and a beaker beside it.’
She fetched water to the young man, and stood over him while he sipped at it, his chest still convulsing. When the coughing stopped, she closed his hand round the beaker. ‘Bide quiet till you can speak,’ she said, ‘and then tell me who came to the house last week.’
‘And no more o your stories, my lad,’ said his mother roundly.
‘There was a bairn up at the house,’ said Alys. ‘He’s not making it up. I need to find the lassie that bore it.’
‘Never!’ said Mistress Allen, staring at her. ‘Who was it? What bairn? Who’s the faither?’
‘Let me give you a hand with this elixir,’ said Alys, ‘and I’ll tell you, while Doddie gets his breath back.’
By the time the boy could speak, the two women had the herbs chopped and packed into a pipkin and set by the fire, and the child from outside had returned with a handful of peppercorns in a twist of linen cloth from his Auntie Jess, saying she wanted the bit cloth back and the return of the peppercorns when his mammy got the chance.
Mistress Allen, still amazed by what Alys had told her, rewarded the boy with an oatcake and green cheese and went back to speculating on what had made Somerville steal away a respectable lassie, and why. Alys had begun to grind the pepper in Mistress Allen’s little mortar when Doddie finally set down the wooden beaker. ‘Mistress? ‘he said tentatively. ‘I minded who it was, right enough.’
‘Tell me, then?’ she said hopefully. His mother drew breath for more exhortations to tell the truth, and Alys reached out to put a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘Who was it?’
‘Jackie Somerville cried him Maister Vary.’
Chapter Nine
‘I don’t see why you just let him get away,’ said Lady Egidia.
‘Mother, I’d little choice,’ said Gil. ‘I’ve no authority over Doig, and he’s a bonnie fighter forbye, and you canny keep Sandy in one place any more than the smoke from the fire.’ And that was a badly chosen word, he realised, as the image of the smouldering house at The Cleuch rose in his mind’s eye. ‘What did you tell me about Michael and young Crombie?’
‘They’ve gone seeking the Depute,’ said his mother, passing the platter of sliced mutton. ‘I think Crombie hopes he’ll send an armed band and a warrant of some sort to let them search all Somerville’s houses.’
‘Right.’ Gil laid a slice of meat on the wedge of bread he had just buttered, and bit into the result, considering this. ‘And Alys is gone to Lanark.’
He had reached home some time after Prime, with Steenie leading the weary chestnut. There had been a great bustle of interest in the beast when they rode into the stableyard, but Gil had left this behind and slipped into the house to encounter his mother and his wife, report briefly, wash and fall into bed. Now, too near noon and with a few hours’ sleep behind him, he was seated in the solar, consuming a quantity of food and small ale and describing his night’s work in more detail.
‘You should call on Mistress Somerville,’ said his mother. He pulled a face, but nodded acknowledgement of this. ‘I’ve no idea whether she’s had word of what Alys found, that it seemed as if the girl was brought to bed in a cave like someone in a romance. We sent no word last night. Alys wasny right certain, and we thought it better to wait till there was definite news.’ Gil nodded again in agreement. ‘I wonder if she kent what her brother was at?’ she added.
‘What I wonder,’ he said, swallowing the mouthful he was chewing, ‘is where Somerville got all the coin he’s been spending.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You described him as aye short of money, but he’s lately built that great house that’s just gone up in smoke, Michael reckons him for a showy dresser, either he or Madur had that bonnie chestnut we brought in this morning—’
‘Indeed!’ agreed his mother. ‘How did you come by him, Gil? Such a handsome beast! And such bone about him, such proud bearing.’
‘He’s killed a man,’ Gil warned, ‘or at the least, trampled him after he was dead.’ He explained, briefly. ‘Steenie managed to gentle him, so he may get over it, but he’d had a bad fright, poor brute.’
‘It’s a chestnut,’ said Lady Egidia, as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did, Gil thought, recalling an overbred chestnut his father had once owned.
‘I’ve no notion who he belongs to. You’ll likely need to hand him back.’
‘Aye, but until then there’s two of the mares at least . . .’ Her voice trailed off. He grinned, and helped himself to more bread and meat.
‘I still have to track down Audrey and Mistress Lithgo,’ he said, adding a spoonful of pickled turnips to the assemblage. ‘Unless Michael and Crombie find them first. I need to locate Somerville’s steward, I need to find this Irishman, I need to go into Lanark and report to Lockhart and to Brosie Vary, who must be near out of his mind by now. I wonder if Mistress Somerville’s men found the tinkers? Doig said they only left Lanark Muir on Sunday, they should ha been easy enough to find. You’re right, I should call there, speak to the men as well as herself.’
‘But why have you no found her, maister?’ demanded Mistress Somerville. ‘If you ken who’s got her held fast, why have you no led an armed band to free her out their grasp? And who is it’s got her anyway? Is it no the tinkers?’
‘It seems,’ said Gil cautiously, ‘as if it’s your brother Robert was holding her.’
She stared at him, her eyes growing round with shock and the high colour ebbing from her padded cheeks. She was more plainly attired today, but had assumed the pleated barbe and draped veil to receive him, and against the white linen her face had turned a yellowish grey.
‘My – my brother Robert?’ she repeated. The maidservant at her side shook her head.
‘Surely no, mem,’ she said. ‘He’s mistaken, for certain.’
‘Aye.’ Mistress Somerville swallowed. ‘Aye, you must be mistaken. What would— why would Robert do that? Her own uncle? You’re mistaken, maister, and it’s no kind in you to – to persist in it, now when he’s deid, burnt up in his own house!’ She sat back on the upholstered daybed, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and glared at him from behind the fine linen folds. Socrates rose from his seat at Gil’s side and went to nudge her hand with his long nose, but she pushed him away. Offended, he resumed his place.
‘I think,’ said Gil, still choosing his words with care, ‘he stole her away to use her as a bargaining token, to persuade Vary to do something to his advantage.’
‘Vary!’ she snorted contemptuously. ‘He aye acts to his own advantage. I tell you, I’ll no forgive him for concealing it from me that my lassie was lost!’
‘To your brother’s advantage,’ Gil said patiently. ‘It seems as Robert Somerville was involved in something that would have made him money, but he needed Vary to persuade the Burgh Council to agree to it.’
‘Money?’ she said sharply. ‘Robert never had money. It aye ran through his fingers like sand.’
‘He’d built a handsome house up at The Cleuch,’ Gil observed. ‘Do you ken where he got the coin for that, mistress?’
‘I’d heard he was building,’ she said, staring at him. ‘They said it was a right palace, fit to be at Linlithgow, but I took it that was just country folk talking.’
‘A hall and two wings, of two storeys and the attics,’ Gil said. ‘The timber alone must ha cost a pretty sum, no to mention carting it across the hills from Leith.’
‘Ha!’ she said bitterly. ‘Never
tellt me a word o that. Last I seen him, it would be,’ she paused to reckon on her fingers, ‘Candlemas likely, he never said a word o that.’ She stared at Gil again, obviously thinking hard.
‘So he never mentioned guns to you?’
‘Guns?’ she said in astonishment. ‘What would he ha anything to do wi guns for? Nasty things they are, kill you as soon as look at you.’
‘Maybe he’s found coal or the like,’ suggested the maidservant helpfully, ‘like the Douglas ower at Cauldhope.’
‘The whole county would ken if he’d found coal,’ said her mistress. ‘Where would our Robert get money from, that he’d keep it a secret?’
‘Embra?’ offered the woman. ‘Commendator Noll, or whatever his name is?’
‘Och, you’re a fool, Christian,’ said Mistress Somerville. ‘Where would he get money at Edinburgh, tell me that?’
‘It seems,’ said Gil, ‘as if he was in some kind of a bond wi Madur of Eastshiel and Ballantyne the burgh clerk in Lanark.’
‘Ah-huh!’ she said, as if he had confirmed something for her. ‘That would be it. My good-brother o Eastshiel has aye had sticky fingers, he’d cheat Our Lady hersel if he’d the chance.’ Gil preserved his countenance carefully, reflecting that though the Cunninghams had backed the wrong side at Sauchieburn he had no relations, even by marriage, who deserved such an encomium. ‘Ask at him,’ Mistress Somerville was saying. ‘Ask at Madur o Eastshiel what he’s been about wi my brother Robert.’
‘We can’t,’ said Gil. ‘He died up at The Cleuch last night and all. And Ballantyne was killed yesterday.’
‘Christ aid us all!’ said the maidservant, crossing herself energetically. ‘You’d think the English was invading, the way folks keeps getting killed.’
‘Have you any idea what they might have been about?’ asked Gil, and decided against explaining that it was probably either Somerville or Madur who had killed Ballantyne. ‘It might help us to track down where they have Mistress Madur hidden away.’