Fire & Faith

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘That was good,’ insisted Martin. ‘Do you not think so, Mr Danforth?’

  ‘Hmph. There must be some cunning skill behind it.’ In truth, it had unsettled him. Blind men seeing things, feeling things. He looked at the girl who worked with the man. She was pretty, her face veiled. Criminals often worked in pairs, one to distract and the other to steal, or stab.

  As though reading his mind, the old man croaked, ‘ye see, folks, dinnae trust yer eyes alone. They deceive ye. I’ve been wi’oot mine for fifty year, and yet can see better for it. Whit’s before ye, that’s whit’s false.’

  The pair found their way to the burgh’s draper, on the corner of the High Street and Moss Street. Inside the wooden-fronted shop they found a harassed young apprentice, no older than sixteen.

  ‘Good gentlemen, I see by your clothes you are of quality, and wanting only for the better things.’ The boy had an affected, well-heeled-for-the-customers voice. ‘Come, come, please, regard: I have silks and linens. What are you after?’

  ‘I should like some shirt cloth,’ said Danforth. His current one was feeling looser than ever. His doublet too.

  ‘Good, good. You’ll be for some good linen, the best? And hose to match, I should think, you must have hose.’

  ‘Your cheapest woollen, thank you.’ The boy was not good enough an actor to hide his disappointment, nor to mask his delight when Martin spoke.

  ‘He’ll take that because you don’t have hair ones,’ smiled Martin. ‘I shall have enough linen for a shirt. Two shirts, in fact.’

  ‘Very good, very good, sirs. He appraised both, and made an unsuccessful attempt to deepen his voice. ‘For a good price, I can have your linens, and your,’ he said turning a sour look to Danforth, ‘cheap wool made into a shirt this night. If you pay me now. In coin, sir. No credit to strangers.’

  ‘And we shall collect them on the morrow?’

  ‘If you wish, sir. Are you here for the market?’

  ‘No,’ said Martin. ‘We lodge in the Oakshawside. Kennedy’s.’

  ‘I know where you are,’ said the apprentice. ‘I’m Jardine, son to the elder. I can have the tailor make them up, and run them to your lodgings tomorrow. If you pay me now. It will not be,’ he added, turning again to Danforth, ‘an extra cost. It is a ... gratuity.’ He laboured over the last word, his voice cracking.

  Danforth and Martin paid. ‘You’re very young, Mr Jardine, to be in service here alone on the market day,’ said Martin. Distracted by the money, Jardine added, ‘Aye, sir, yes. My father is away. He goes to the western ports, puts our cloths aboard ship to be sold across the seas. Foreign ports. Europe.’ Pride had come into the boy’s voice.

  ‘And we’ll have fresh shirts tomorrow?’

  ‘You shall, sir, no delay. Those who lodge in the Prior’s Croft and the Oakshawside never wait.’ He turned his back on them and busied himself locking the coins into his strongbox. They left him to it, leaving the shop and pushing past two women who were arguing over a bolt of royal blue wool. Their colourful insults turned the air bluer.

  Finding a vendor who was selling ale – which had to be gulped under his distrustful eye, and the battered wooden cups returned – and some chunks of roast meat, they settled down to watch the rest of the market unfold. ‘Ugh, what I’d give for a capon, a bloody great capon,’ said Martin, eyeing his food with distaste. ‘Swimming in a rich sauce.’

  A balladeer had taken up residence by a chicken coop, and he fought for attention. ‘Come all you constant lovers,’ he called, before launching into his first warbling tale of a woman who rejected her lover for his poverty.

  The crowd laughed at the tale, and Danforth clapped a hand to his knee. ‘Very true, lad,’ he called to the balladeer. ‘For more courtships hang on money than love.’

  ‘Have your humours improved, then, since yesterday, sir?’

  ‘They have, Martin. My conduct was poor.’ He paused to wipe his fingers. ‘I can say only that things have weighed heavily upon me of late. Being an Englishman is no easy thing when that tyrant to the south makes false claims on this kingdom. And this business with the verses, not knowing when they might again spring up–’

  ‘I’ve heard no whisper of them today.’

  ‘Nor I, and that is good.’

  ‘And you’re more at ease in your soul, sir; this pilgrimage providing relief?’

  ‘I think it is, yes. In faith, Martin, I have carried with me a burden since before my coming out of the old realm and into this.’

  ‘Mon ami, if you’ve some, I don’t know, some burden of conscience for abandoning your loyalty to England, you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Peace, no – it this unpleasant business of a young girl behaving wantonly and then running off, it cuts–’

  ‘Murder,’ screeched an excited voice. ‘Murder!’ It was taken up by others, some bellowing it, some questioning. The original rose to surmount them. ‘Foul practice o’ murder!’

  At that moment the clouds opened and a downpour began in earnest.

  6

  The rain began to disperse the market. The voice, which continued to cry ‘murder’, was found to belong to the boy employed by Mistress Caldwell – or, rather, never unemployed by her husband. Some townsmen took a grip of him, slapping at him until he stopped screaming. Danforth moved towards the furore, heedless of the rain. The balladeer fled, as did the younger ladies, mindful of their market day hoods and skirts. The young men of the town – and some who had come in from beyond it – followed them to shelter in doorways, hoping to make them swoon with beer-scented kisses. It was mainly the burgh elders who stayed to find out the news.

  ‘You boy, what is this? What murder?’ Dazed from a smack to the side of his head, he took a few seconds to focus on Danforth.

  ‘It’s yersel, master. Help – help! Someone’s done murder!’

  ‘Who has done it? What is it you speak of?’

  The boy seemed to realise that he was being held, and began to wriggle furiously. ‘Murder,’ he cried again, and Danforth began to sympathise with the man who had struck him.

  ‘Listen to me, you little fool,’ he said. ‘Cease your crying and tell us what has happened, else you’ll be thrown in the Tolbooth for a tale-telling knave.’ The boy swallowed and looked up with huge, frightened eyes. Spots of high colour sat on his prominent cheekbones.

  ‘I saw it, sir, wi’ ma own eyes.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘We rather gathered that,’ said Martin, and a few people chuckled.

  ‘Where? Who?’

  ‘Up the Moss.’ Danforth looked blankly at Martin, who shrugged.

  ‘The common, north of the burgh,’ explained one of the boy’s captors. ‘Beyond the woods and meadows there’s common land where anyone might gather peat and chestnuts and moss.’ The tattered old shoes on the boy’s feet were caked in mulch, dead leaves and moss.

  ‘We understand ...’ Danforth paused. ‘Boy, what is your name?’

  ‘Archie, sir.’

  ‘We understand, Archie. Tell us what you saw, that we might the sooner be out of this rain. Do not say murder.’

  ‘It’s the Brody lassie, sir. Done tae death, she wiz, and oan the bank o’ the river by the Moss. She’s been murdered, sir, smashed tae pieces. I’ve never seen such ... such.’ He cast around, trying to find the right word. ‘Barbarosity.’ He looked almost pleased that he had managed it.

  ‘Murdered,’ whispered Martin.

  ‘Pray do not you start,’ said Danforth. He looked up at the men holding Archie’s scrawny arms. ‘You men, you are burgesses?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then you know the baillies; who are they? They must be here somewhere, tending to the market.’

  ‘Pattison and Semple are the baillies of this great burgh. They’ll see this little rat questioned properly.’ The burgess laid emphasis on the final word, which came seasoned with roasted meat and the tang of ale. Danforth ignored it.

 
‘Where are they?’

  ‘We are they. Now if this wretch speaks true, sir, who are you?’

  ‘I am Mr Danforth and my colleague there is Mr Martin. We are secretaries to his Grace the Lord Cardinal, here on pilgrimage. We have no hand in this matter.’

  ‘You are right, sir, you don’t. Though it would have been right proper for you to inform us of your coming into the burgh. You know better than to lodge yourselves as strangers – and may count yourselves lucky we don’t fine your host for taking you in without our consent.’ His fellow grinned. ‘We shall go and see if this little slave is an honest rat, and if it be so, we shall know who has the guilt of it.’

  ‘Not he, nor us, surely,’ said Danforth. He was seldom surprised by the officialdom of burgesses and ballies, nor their suspicion of strangers. He still did not like it.

  ‘No, sir.’ They looked at each other, then threw the hapless Archie towards Danforth, who shook him off. The heavier, a red-nosed and thick-bearded brute – who announced himself to be Semple – then said, ‘Well, we’ll go to the Moss. And if there’s no corpse and my boots get ruined in the jest of it, that whelp will wish he lay smashed to pieces.’

  ‘Hold a moment, gentlemen,’ said Martin. ‘Was it yourselves wrote to Glasgow, begging the folk there to report if the girl was taken there?’

  ‘We beg Glasgow nothing. We conduct our own affairs.’

  The baillies marched off, heads down against the driving rain. They slid and lurched through the melting street. ‘What do we do with him?’ asked Martin, pointing at Archie.

  ‘Return him to Mistress Caldwell and ensure he does not leave, I suppose. Come, let us away before we are drowned.’

  As they half-dragged Archie, who threatened to begin wailing again, back up the High Street, Danforth caught sight of old Mistresses Clacher and Darroch, holding court amongst a crowd of ladies in drenched dresses. Each seemed eager to hear Paisley’s duumvirate masters of gossip. Clacher was soaked, a fine black shawl glinting with rainwater, but she appeared to be enjoying herself far too much to care. To Danforth she looked like one of the evangelical preachers he had sometimes seen in London, tending a flock of wild-eyed acolytes. He and Martin skirted the group, ignoring the pleas for news, and continued up the Oakshawside.

  Throwing the door wide, Danforth called for Mistress Caldwell. She appeared from her rooms, a jaunty ribbon laced through her cap, and her face fell.

  ‘Sirs, must you trail that in here?’ Danforth looked down at his sodden boots, before meeting Caldwell’s eyes and realising that she meant Archie.

  ‘Mistress,’ said Martin, ‘the boy has borne witness to a murder.’

  ‘What,’ she asked, her mouth falling open in shock as her eyes began to flame with interest. ‘It’s the Brody lassie, isn’t it? What is this, boy, from your mouth. Gentlemen, dump him by the fire.’

  A drab peat fire was burning, and they set Archie in one of the old chairs. He looked in to the flames. They danced in his hazel eyes. ‘The baillies beat me, mistress.’

  ‘No’ hard enough, I’ll wager, you imp. What’s this about murder?’

  ‘The Brody lassie,’ he said, his voice detached. ‘Deid.’

  ‘How, dead?’

  ‘Beaten. Broken. It wiz wickedly done.’

  ‘If you’re lyin’, if this is some jape that brings trouble and shame on this house–’

  ‘The baillies are searching the Moss to prove if he speaks true,’ said Danforth.

  ‘And what were you doin’ on the Moss,’ cried Mistress Caldwell, crossing the room and bending over Archie.

  ‘Ev’dy uses the Moss.’

  ‘Ev’dy?’ asked Danforth.

  ‘Everybody,’ said Martin, under his breath.

  ‘For fuel,’ Archie continued, ‘fur the fire.’

  ‘We’ve a surfeit of fuel, you wretched little liar. If you had some tryst there, or if you were hopin’ to steal fuel meant for this house and sell it – I’ll skelp your arse raw myself.’

  ‘Ah swear, mistress, Ah meant nothing dishonest. Am a pure honest Archie.’

  ‘I apologise for the wretch, gentlemen.’ She turned her attentions on them and patted the ribbon in her cap, her voice softening.

  ‘No need for apology,’ said Danforth, glad the awkward little scene was at an end. ‘Perhaps you could find the boy something to eat.’ She opened her mouth to object. ‘Just on this occasion, something small from your own stores. And then he might be sent to wherever it is that he dwells.’ She shuffled off, returning with the barest husk of mouldy bread. Archie gobbled it. The side of his face, thin-skinned, was starting to bruise.

  ‘The Brody girl,’ said Mistress Caldwell, addressing Danforth and Martin. ‘Run off, my foot. She’s been killed by some lover, hasn’t she?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Martin.

  ‘If she has been killed at all,’ said Danforth. ‘If this boy is no liar.’

  ‘Ah spoke truly,’ protested Archie, crumbs flying. ‘Truly Ah saw her, a’ smashed to bits, like ... like,’ he struggled, ‘a boiled apple, thrown doon a vennel.’

  ‘Lord have mercy,’ said Mistress Caldwell, crossing herself, ‘Let her be laid to rest quickly, then, poor lass.’

  ‘Soft, madam. The baillies shall have the truth of it,’ said Danforth. ‘You will attend to this little baggage?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Handle him gently, mistress,’ added Martin. He looked at Archie with a doleful smile.

  ‘You’re no’ leaving?’ she said. ‘You’re no’ going back into the rain?’

  ‘It cannot continue so heavily. Already I think I hear it slacken. I wish,’ said Danforth, ‘to find the truth of this.’

  ‘As do I,’ said Martin.

  ‘But ... but there may be a murderer abroad. I’m alone here, and this is no help.’ She jabbed a finger at Archie.

  ‘We shall be about the business with haste.’

  They departed, closing the door as Mistress Caldwell wrenched Archie out of her chair. The rain had slowed to a persistent drizzle. ‘If this weather stays as it is,’ said Martin, ‘we shall certainly be trapped in Paisley some time.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Danforth. ‘Yet I think I should tarry anyway, and find out what has truly become of your friend.’

  ‘My friend?’

  ‘This Brody chit who has exercised your mind these last days.’

  ‘Oh. You have changed your tune.’ Danforth did not reply. Privately, he felt that the note about disappearance, so close by the paper that was their business, was a sign. He had intended to come to Paisley anyway, and in his wisdom, the Lord had provided labour for him. He had been wrong to try and ignore it. God, it seemed, must have guided the hand which placed it where he would see it. But who, who did that hand belong to?

  The merriment of the market had moved indoors, and music could be heard over the roar of rushing water, drifting out from the windows in which lights blazed. The people appeared loath to put an end to their good cheer. It was odd, thought Danforth, how towns developed their natures. Rather than absorbing the sanctity of the nearby Abbey, Paisley seemed to have sought an independent identity by embracing revelry.

  The various shops, including the drapers, had brought in their wares; only the butcher and fishmonger had left their tables out. The only stragglers were a few drunks. Above them the sky had turned the strange grey-black favoured by November – the colour that marks both daylight and darkness, without conceding to either.

  For some time they waited, illuminated by the cold glow from the window of the tailor’s shop, asking news of people who hurried by. Eventually they struck lucky when a burgess passed them, the pin on his cloak proclaiming him a spice merchant.

  ‘What news, sir?’ In return, the pug-faced spice-man eyed them suspiciously.

  ‘It seems we have a murderer in the burgh. Who are you gentlemen?’ Danforth rolled his eyes, wondering if every conversation would follow the same course. Rather than respond, he produced his papers, showed
them to the burgess, and then snatched them back before the mizzling rain could spoil them.

  ‘My apologies, sir. Yet you understand my suspicion.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the burgess, his eyes bulging. ‘There’s murder here, oh, most rotten indeed.’

  ‘Who is it,’ asked Martin. ‘Is it this Brody girl who has been thought flown?’

  ‘It is, sir. Not that you’d know it to look upon her, even had you the stomach for it.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She lay upon the Moss, by the Nether Common. It seems she had been thrown in the Cart some days, like a bundle of waste.’ He crossed himself. ‘They say she was no better than she ought to have been, but I shan’t say nothing of that. There are none deserve a death so unkind. And to happen here, in these holy lands.’

  ‘Have they brought forth the corpse?’

  ‘The baillies have had some free men of the burgh carry it to the old tithe barn beyond the Tolbooth. It is used for keeping animals, sir, but then I doubt the lady shall mind. The smell shall not offend from there, sir.’

  ‘And where are the baillies? I should like to speak with them.’

  ‘You think the Cardinal will have an interest in the matter?’ he asked, trying his luck.

  ‘None. We do. The process of right justice always interests those who work for the Church and the king.’

  ‘I see. The baillies are gone to take in the murderer, that he might repent for his crimes before he is hanged for a beast.’

  ‘The murderer, you say? Whom?’

  ‘Her father, sir, Angus Brody. The old drunkard. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. This rain ...’ He bowed and scurried away.

  It was only a short time later that Pattison and Semple, macabre grins on their faces, came towards the Tolbooth, walking the bellowing Brody as easily as Danforth and Martin had carried Archie back to his own prison. Brody was deeply in his cups, and seemed unaware of what was happening; yet he walked with the determined gait of the practised drunk.