by Pat McIntosh
‘What’s happening?’ he asked. ‘Where is everybody? Is anyone hurt? Did Doig turn up?’
Michael was asking the same thing now.
‘It must ha been a dreadful thing to see, an entire tower falling. Did anyone get out? Do they ken how many are slain?’
‘If you’ll believe it,’ said Gil, ‘one man only. They were all down by the river getting the hay in afore the storm struck, the cooks and the kitchen-boys and all, and there was only the one corp found under the rubble. Even Doig turned up like a false coin, said he’d been talking to the tinkers, probably about who owed how much to whom.’
‘That’s a miracle,’ said Tib, crossing herself. ‘Thanks be to all the saints it was no worse. Who was it that died?’
‘They think it was this Irishman we’ve been tracking across Lanarkshire. Though what wi the explosion, and the building falling on him, he wasny that easy to name.’ Gil’s mouth tightened as he thought of what had been carried out of the ruins; the clothing was recognisable, but the flesh inside was so tattered that it was barely discerned to be a man; the fellow had been identified by the clothing and the great black beard, caked with dust and blood. Distinguishing such a thing as a knife-wound was not possible.
‘The Irishman?’ Michael repeated. ‘So he was in it wi Vary after all?’
‘It seems like it,’ agreed Gil. Michael sat down with his own glass, and they drank the baby’s health.
‘So what is the tale, then?’ Tib asked. ‘What was it Michael helped with, riding all across Lanarkshire in the hot weather?’
‘He helped us find Audrey Madur,’ said Alys. ‘You’ll have heard about her bairn?’
‘Aye, Beattie told me all about him, in between the pains. Lithgo Vary! Poor wee soul, he’ll get teased to ribbons at the school. But what was it happened? Tell me it all, Gil, I want to understand.’
‘I should like to understand better too,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘We learned little enough this morning.’
Gil managed not to catch Alys’s eye.
They had begun the day by riding into Lanark, where his mother had awarded herself the pleasure of calling on Madame Olympe Archibecque, as she had previously threatened. Despite the bruises which made the ride a penance, Gil was glad to have witnessed the event, from the moment the maidservant Agnes stared at them on the doorstep.
‘Good day, Agnes,’ he had said. ‘Is madame at home? I’ve brought my mother to call on her. Again,’ he added, on a nudge from Alys.
Below them, the maidservant in the Lightbodys’ kitchen leaned out, craning to see who was at the door.
‘Aye, she’s in, and she’s up and about,’ she called, ‘for I can hear her up there. The two o them’s been back and forrit all day, ye’d think they was packing!’
‘Come away in,’ said Agnes, her smile rather fixed. ‘Hae a seat, madam, why don’t ye? My lady’ll be wi ye in a wee bit.’
She stood back to allow them to enter, and placed the padded backstool for Lady Egidia, who sat down and looked expectantly at the door to the inner chamber. Agnes moved awkwardly about, offering well-water and fruit vinegar to drink, asking politely about their ride in from Carluke. There was some movement in the other chamber. Gil took it his cousin was not assuming Madame Olympe’s garments by himself, which was probably impossible, but was more likely stowing something he did not wish to leave lying about.
In quite a short time the inner door opened, and Madame stood revealed. Today she wore the sky-blue and tawny brocade garment in which Gil and Alys had first seen her in the marketplace; its wide sleeves and spreading train seemed to fill the doorway. Her headdress was equally imposing, a towering pile of wired and folded linen, and her face was elaborately painted. Lady Egidia rose slowly to her feet, her face almost expressionless; Gil could just detect a faint twitching of her mouth.
‘Ah, madame!’ protested the vision in the doorway in French. ‘Your promised visit! How you honour me, how I am unworthy of this distinction! But Agnes, where are the cakes? Where are the sweetmeats? Fruit of Paradise kind, upon a napkin white in colour?’
‘I was waiting for yoursel, madam,’ said Agnes in Scots, not quite rolling her eyes. ‘I’ll away out for them the now, will I?’
‘Not for our delectation, I beg you,’ protested Lady Egidia in equally fluent French. ‘We make a brief call only.’
Madame protested in turn; Agnes was despatched. They were all seated, the two redoubtable ladies eyeing one another, the one blandly, the other warily, Gil and Alys trying to conceal their amusement.
‘And had you an easy ride from your home?’ Madame enquired.
‘Trivial,’ pronounced Lady Egidia. ‘But you, madame, you were not yourself when last we called, and could not be at home to us. I trust matters are much improved now?’
‘Thank you, yes, I am quite restored to myself.’
‘Ça se voit, heureusement. I have a receipt for a good purge for such cases. I must let your woman, Agnes is it? — have a note of it.’
‘Ah, no, I am certain that will not be necessary, I find myself quite recovered. And your own health, madame?’
‘I keep well, I thank you. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance, in Mistress Somerville of Kettlands.’
‘Mistress Somerville!’ Madame threw up her large white hands. ‘A lady of the most informative. You will have heard that her daughter is restored to her family? And a fine son with her?’
‘I hope to call on the girl later,’ Lady Egidia admitted. ‘Might you accompany us?’
‘Alas, no, madame, I am spoken for. I must call on Maister Hamilton the Depute, for I believe he may have found something which I had mislaid. I must retrieve it before I leave Lanark,’ pronounced Madame Olympe, with a pointed glance at Alys, who gave her an enigmatic smile.
‘What a pity. I hope you regain your property, madame. Perhaps the Depute will have made good use of it meantime. But tell me, what is the French custom when there is a birth in the neighbourhood?’
Alarm flickered in Madame’s painted face.
‘Why, it—’ she began. ‘It varies, in different parts of—’
‘In Paris,’ observed Alys, ‘it was very much as here. All the gossips would call on the new mother, with small gifts of money or clothes, and admire the baby.’
‘Why yes!’ agreed Madame, with scarcely audible relief, as Agnes returned with a little basket of sweet cakes from the baker’s stall along the High Street. ‘Like that!’
They consumed the cakes, and a second round of fruit vinegar (Gil rather thought it was blackcurrant), along with some more barbed conversation. Finally, Lady Egidia rose to take her leave.
‘I am much gratified to have met you, madame,’ she announced. ‘One had described you to me as étonnant, but I should much rather say you are impressive.’
‘Impressionant,’ repeated Madame Olympe. Alys’s glance slid sideways to Gil.
‘Oui, impressionant. Et aussi plus fort et puissant.’ Lady Egidia put out her hands to take Madame’s, smiling into the painted eyes. ‘This meeting has much amused me. I shall remember it.’
‘And I, madame.’ Madame Olympe curtsied low, gave the elder lady a rapid and practised double kiss, swooped on Alys and did likewise, and advanced on Gil.
He reached out to take her hands, contriving to hold her off, and said cordially, ‘I’ve no doubt we’ll meet again, madame. Until then, good fortune.’
Agnes, at her mistress’s gesture, held the door open. Gil stepped out, waiting to offer Lady Egidia his arm. She paused on the doorstep, nodded to Agnes and said in quiet Scots, ‘Tell your mother I was asking for her.’
‘Aye, mem, I’ll do that,’ said Agnes, equally quietly, and bobbed a curtsy.
‘And then we called on Audrey,’ said Alys now. ‘They’re both doing well, and she and Maister Ambrose Vary are very happy together, though much shaken by Maister Gregory Vary’s actions.’ Her hand tightened in Gil’s, and he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. ‘I should think the bairn mus
t be twice the size of Gelis here.’
‘Ouch,’ said Tib without thinking, and shifted uneasily against her pillows.
‘How much did they tell you?’ Michael asked.
‘Little enough,’ said Gil. ‘It’s clear Brosie was nowhere near his brother’s schemes. About all he knew was what the Depute had let him know, and the Depute doesny have the whole of it, though he seems to have contrived somehow to get hold of a lot of papers relative to the matter.’
‘Strange, that,’ murmured Lady Egidia. ‘Come, Gil, begin at the beginning and let us have the whole tale. Michael should know what he has assisted in.’
‘I think Gregory Vary was in several plots,’ said Gil, thinking of his last sight of the man. Alys had told him that Robert Hamilton had been inclined to indignation at first, thinking he had been decoyed up to this end of Lanarkshire on a ruse, but once he grasped the whole of the matter, with the help of the papers which he retained firmly despite Sandy Boyd’s best efforts, he had taken and bound Vary, to hold him for the Assize at Edinburgh. ‘In the first place, it was Vary prompted the plan to abduct Mistress Madur, to his own ends, though I suspect her uncles joined him happily enough.’
‘But why?’ demanded Tib. ‘They never asked a ransom, did they? Was it for money, or to make Maister Ambrose do as he wished, or what?’
‘That, I think,’ Gil agreed. ‘Forbye, Gregory had the notion about growing timber on the Burgh Muir, which I rather think the burgh itsel will take over entire, to the benefit of the burgh coffers, if not to the folk who graze their beasts out there.’ He paused to reflect. ‘Somerville and Madur were in that plan as well. Indeed that and the abduction were two halves of the one scheme.’
‘Maister Ambrose would never have agreed to it,’ said Alys. Gil nodded agreement.
‘Then there was this half-brewed intention to kill the Duke o York, or whoever he is, when he comes to Scotland. Somerville and Madur have been in correspondence wi John Ramsay, the former Lord Bothwell, now resident in England, concerning more than one daft plan to owerset this king and put someone the Tudor likes in his place. I think that may be where the most of Somerville’s money came from, and the powder was part of the payment as well.’
‘Is that where the tinkers came into it?’ Michael asked doubtfully.
‘Aye, well, it’s my belief the tinkers carried letters and goods and gunpowder too, no matter what they said.’ Alys made a sound of agreement. ‘Their friends the Lees come across the Border from England, and Ramsay makes good use of them.’
‘Ramsay,’ repeated Tib.
‘One of the old king’s— er—’ began Michael, stopped, and looked at Lady Egidia in embarrassment.
‘Not so very er,’ she said in amusement. ‘The King liked him, and he was friends wi Buchan, but he was never more than passing bonnie, even as a young man. He’d not have won that much favour.’
‘Och, Michael,’ said Tib. ‘We all ken the old king was that way inclined, you’ve no need to be so mim about it.’ She looked down at the baby. ‘This wee one will be wanting fed soon, Gil. Let us have the rest o the tale, will you? So far that’s,’ she counted hastily on her fingers, ‘is it three separate plots the man was in. Is there more? What did the Irishman have to do wi it all?’
‘The guns,’ said Michael.
‘Aye, the guns,’ said Gil. ‘I suspect the Irishman was in the country along with the guns, bringing them in from Spain through Ireland, though he then got entangled in the other matters. It was certainly him slew Robert Somerville, and probably Jocelyn Madur and all, likely because it was all coming apart and he could see the rewards slipping away from him. By what Vary was saying, Gregory Vary I mean, O’Donnell was demanding payment for the guns immediately, which may have been part of his quarrel with Somerville and Madur, since I can imagine they’d be reluctant to give him anything.’
‘So there was a cartload o gunpowder right enough,’ said Michael, ‘and a cartload o guns as well.’
‘There was,’ Gil agreed. ‘And if they hadn’t carried off Audrey Madur and set us looking for her, the conspiracy might have succeeded.’
‘You think?’ said Alys.
‘Oh, no, dear,’ said his mother. ‘You and your cousin would have dealt with it.’
They rode home to Belstane in the cooler evening. The day of thunderstorms, all across Lanarkshire, had wrought less damage in these parts of the county, but had made way for a less oppressive weather, with light fluffy clouds in a deep blue sky and the occasional breeze to freshen the air.
‘And your cousin,’ remarked Lady Egidia in French, when Michael had turned back to the sprawling mess of the coalheugh, with promises to send word of how Tib and Gelis went on. ‘I take it the Treasury put him here to go into the matter.’
‘Something like that,’ agreed Gil.
‘Is he satisfied with the outcome?’
‘I think so.’ Gil considered the last glimpse he had had of Sandy Boyd, rather than Madame Olympe. He had been discussing possession of several bundles of papers with Robert Hamilton, arguing his case patiently and without noticeable success, but there had been about him an indefinable air of triumph, rather like Socrates after a successful hunt. At least the Irishman had not survived to spread his information around.
‘He needs a wife,’ said Lady Egidia reflectively.
‘You think?’ said Gil, startled.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alys. ‘But it would need to be no ordinary lady. I can think of nobody suitable.’
‘Nor I,’ agreed her mother-in-law. ‘I must pass my acquaintance under review. And their daughters.’
‘How would you promote the match?’ Gil challenged. ‘Sandy’s like smoke: he’s in your face and then he’s not there.’
‘There are ways,’ said Lady Egidia. ‘It may take a little time.’
Later, in their chamber, her eyes dancing, Alys said, ‘Should you write to your cousin to warn him of his marriage?’
‘How? He’s never there, as I told my mother,’ said Gil abstractedly. He was gazing at the window; its twisted horn panes showed light and shade and indistinct yellowed clouds, but he hardly saw them. His dream in the tinkers’ camp had come back to him, had been with him all day, the red-haired man lurking at the back of his mind in his many-coloured checked gown. Was it the same red-haired man of whom the tinkers spoke? They seemed to hold him in respect.
‘It’s a bonnie evening,’ he observed.
‘It is.’ Alys was beginning to unpin the cap she wore under her hat. He put out a hand to stop her, though he loved to see her honey-coloured hair fall loose.
‘We could go out and walk in the orchard,’ he said. Her gaze snapped to his, and her breath seemed to stop. Had she dreamed too, he wondered. ‘It’s a new moon, so it will be quite dark, quite private. We could take a blanket,’ he added airily, and smiled at her.
She went scarlet, then white, and drew a long quivering breath. Then she turned and gathered up the topmost blanket from their bed, folding it carefully.
‘It’s a bonnie evening,’ she said, as he had done. She stepped to his side and put her free hand in his.