A Pig of Cold Poison

Chapter Eleven

Nicol, surprisingly, was acting the part of his father’s elder son with some aplomb. Robert’s body was already washed and shrouded, laid out on a black-draped trestle in the same room where he had died, with a branch of candles either side of his head. When Gil and his father-in-law were shown in, by a sniffling maidservant, an older woman, Nicol welcomed them and handed each a brimming glass.

‘To drink to his memory,’ he said.

‘Usquebae,’ said Maistre Pierre, accepting his glass with reluctance, and went forward to commiserate with Maister Renfrew who was standing bleakly at the foot of the bier, surrounded by his friends of the burgh council. Gil stayed beside Nicol.

‘I think maybe your father would rather not speak to me just now,’ he said.

‘More than likely,’ agreed Nicol, and paused to greet another guest. ‘Christ aid us, we’re a bigger draw than the sheep wi two heads at St Mungo’s Fair. You’re no drinking your aquavit.’

‘No.’ Gil set the glass down untouched beside the others. ‘Nicol, there’s a couple things I’d like to ask you.’

‘Is there, now?’ Nicol looked at him sideways. ‘But will I like to answer them, man?’

‘You won’t know that till I ask you,’ Gil pointed out.

‘That’s a true word,’ agreed Nicol, seeming much struck by the argument. ‘Well, ask away.’ He glanced over at the group by the bier. ‘They’ll no hear us.’

‘The poison,’ Gil said, keeping his voice low.

‘No idea,’ said Nicol promptly.

‘No idea of what? Of what it is, or where it came from?’

‘Neither.’ Nicol looked past him as the door opened, and another member of the council entered with his face solemnly arranged. ‘Maister Walkinshaw, it’s right good of you. Aye, a sad loss to my faither. Hae a glass in the lad’s memory, will you? Aye, he’s yonder, looking the picture of health, save that he’s deid.’

‘Syme thought you might know what it was,’ Gil said, as Clement Walkinshaw sailed past him, wearing a fortune in black velvet and sipping usquebae.

Nicol gave him a sharp look. ‘Did he, now?’

‘On account of your studies abroad,’ Gil persisted. ‘He thought your Saracen master might have met such a thing.’

‘Oh,’ said Nicol vaguely. He appeared to give it some thought, but shook his head. ‘No, I canny mind that he mentioned it to me.’

‘If you think of anything,’ said Gil, ‘I’d be pleased to know of it.’

‘You’d be amazed at what I think of, times,’ said Nicol with a happy smile. Gil eyed him with a feeling of bafflement. He seemed about to go off into one of his strange moods again, and there was still a question for him.

‘Where were you the most of the day?’ he asked, in fading hopes of an answer.

Nicol giggled. ‘I was away a journey,’ he claimed, as he had done earlier. ‘Sic dreams as I had. You should try it yourself sometime.’

‘Try what?’ Was this connected with Syme’s cryptic remark?

‘Your wee wife kens.’ Another giggle, a sly sideways look. ‘Though I think it never took her as far,’ Nicol added, on consideration.

‘Right.’ He could ask Alys later, then. ‘How is your good-mother? How has she taken this?’

‘None too well,’ Nicol admitted, sobering. ‘Poor lass, it’s a shock to her, and her new delivered. She’d a liking for Agnes and Robert both, for all the business wi the gloves, being a gentle soul hersel and no too far from them in age. Her mammy tells me she keeps saying how she canny believe it.’

‘Could I get a word with her, do you suppose?’

‘Wi Meg?’ Nicol looked surprised. ‘What way would you — aye, very likely. Isa,’ he said to the maidservant, as she opened the door to admit another mourner, ‘see if my minnie would gie Maister Cunningham a word, will you, lass?’

Gil was aware that it was unusual for a man not related to her to visit a new mother this soon after the birth, but nearly half an hour later, the time it must have taken to spread the embroidered counterpane and pillow-bere, dress the cradle and get the new mother back into her bed attired in the blue satin wrapper with the gold cords, he found himself offering mingled congratulations and condolences to Meg and her mother.

‘Aye, it’s a sair business,’ sighed Mistress Baillie, patting her daughter’s shoulder. ‘It was dreadful to hear the word that Robert was dead, and then when they came up to take Agnes away — ’

‘Don’t, Mammy,’ said Meg. She was propped on several pillows, the cover on the topmost embroidered with bees as big as Gil’s thumb; in the candlelight she looked weary.

‘And to think she might have found the stuff here in the house,’ pursued Mistress Baillie. ‘I was never skilled in stillroom work, maister, and nor’s my lass here, and I was never so glad of it as now. To be connected wi such a — ’

‘Mammy, please!’

‘But I hear you’ve a daughter,’ Gil prompted. This got him identical proud smiles, and Mistress Baillie rose and went to peer into the cradle, shielding the candle with her hand. He followed, and having been well brought up dutifully admired the crumpled red creature inside, claimed it resembled its grandmother, tucked a silver coin into one of the little hands with its exquisite fingernails, and eventually led the conversation round to the morning’s visitors. They were quite happy to list all the gossips who had called to admire wee Marion, and too much of the conversation which had gone on over the cradle; it became obvious that Agnes had not shown her face, though Grace had been there for part of the morning.

‘And Mistress Eleanor?’ he asked.

‘She was here yestreen,’ Mistress Baillie assured him. ‘As soon as my lass was fit to be seen, Eleanor was here, wasn’t she? And right pleased at her wee sister, too. She’s in hopes that the two bairns will play thegither when they’re older.’

‘For all that hers will be wee Marion’s niece or nephew,’ said Meg, half laughing. ‘I was glad to see her, too. And then when she came up to me the day — ’ Ready tears started to her eyes, and she turned her face away from the light.

‘Hard to say which of them was the more grieved,’ confided Mistress Baillie to Gil. ‘Weeping in each other’s arms, they were, I’d to fetch Grace to dose them both. And such news as Grace brought — saying the poor laddie left his goods to wee Marion with his dying breath — I tell you, maister, I wept myself.’

Gil nodded. ‘I heard him too,’ he said, ‘if ever you need a witness.’

‘Oh, it’ll not come to that,’ said Mistress Baillie. ‘And you’ve had a wee sleep since then, haven’t you, my lass? So you’ll be ready when the bairn wakes for her supper. You’ve her to think on now, you need to put your own cares aside or you’ll turn your milk.’

‘And I should go and let you rest,’ said Gil, rising. ‘I’m right grateful for your time, both of you — all three of you,’ he corrected, glancing at the cradle.

Meg laughed again, wiping her tears. ‘Maybe next time you see her Marion might have her eyes open,’ she offered.

‘Interesting,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Very,’ said Gil. ‘The women of the household have reacted quite differently from the men.’

He held his lantern down to see the roadway, and turned for home. His father-in-law fell into step beside him, his own lantern bobbing at his side.

‘The father presents a convincing image of grief,’ he observed, ‘but I should say his first emotion was anger.’

‘With whom?’

The lantern swung wildly as Maistre Pierre spread his hands and shrugged. ‘That was not clear. Fortune, Almighty God, the boy himself perhaps.’

‘His daughter?’ Gil stepped aside to let a group of cheerful journeymen pass.

‘Yes, certainly, it seems by the way the man is speaking that he believes both her and the maidservant to be guilty. He did not defend her, you understand, when Maister Wilkie remarked on ingratitude.’

‘Poor devil,’ said Gil. He turned in at their own pend, but paused, listening, while their shadows jumped on the walls and the roof-beams which supported the floor of Gil’s own closet overhead. ‘Was that —?’

‘Someone called your name.’ Maistre Pierre was still out in the street, peering uphill. ‘It is two people, I think. Hello? Who calls?’

‘Peter.’ A man’s voice. ‘It’s me — Adam Forrest.’

‘Is Maister Cunningham there?’ Mistress Bothwell sounded out of breath. ‘I thought I saw him.’

This time she was persuaded into the house, Adam watchful at her side, both trying to explain their errand. Lighting more candles in the hall, Maistre Pierre said soothingly, ‘Yes, yes, I can hear something has come to mind, but one of you must tell us, rather than both at once. Will you have some wine? Ale, a drop of aquavit against the cold?’

‘We’ve but now eaten,’ said Adam. ‘Christian, it’s your tale. You make it clear.’

She nodded, and sat down at Gil’s gesture, pushing her plaid back from her shoulders.

‘It came to me of a sudden,’ she said. ‘You’re still looking to know what the poison was that — that — ’ She bit her lip, and Gil nodded in sympathy. ‘Nanty and I have kin in Edinburgh, maister, a cousin of our faither’s that’s a potyngar in the Canongate. We don’t get on, but kin is kin, and it came to me that Ninian Bothwell might answer your question, seeing we’ve about exhausted the resource of Glasgow.’ She glanced at Adam, and they exchanged rueful smiles.

‘The man himself, or another of the craft in Edinburgh,’ Adam expanded.

‘A good thought,’ Gil said. ‘Do you have his direction? We could send — ’

‘I’ve done better than that.’ She unbuttoned the tight old-fashioned cuff of her gown, and drew from her sleeve a folded paper. ‘I’ve writ him a letter, begging his aid for kin’s sake and putting a descriptio of the substance to him, with Wat and Adam’s help. And its effects as well,’ she added. ‘It’s took us the most of the evening.’

‘Indeed, a good thought,’ said Alys, coming forward from the stairs. Gil looked at her carefully; she seemed to have been crying, but avoided his eye. Instead she embraced Mistress Bothwell and nodded to Adam, saying, ‘How will you send it?’

‘That’s why I was right glad to see you turn in at the door here,’ said Mistress Bothwell earnestly. ‘We could hire a man to take it, but I wondered if maybe you’d have a likely fellow about you that we could trust better with such an errand.’

‘Two days at least, to get to Edinburgh and back this time of year,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘And the wait for a reply.’

‘I cannot spare Luke or Thomas so long,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘We must get on while the weather holds. Would your uncle lend Tam again?’

‘He might, but I think the Provost would send it for us, as an official errand, which would be faster. I can ask him in the morning, first thing.’

Mistress Bothwell sighed in relief. ‘I hoped you’d say aye to it.’ She held the letter out. ‘My thanks on this, maister.’

‘If it helps the case,’ Gil said, checking that the direction was clear and the seal secure. ‘I take it you’ve got no further in proving the stuff, Adam?’

‘We’ve a list this long of what it isny,’ said Adam, grimacing. ‘It’s held us back in the work of the shop, no that that’s a consideration when Nanty’s life’s at stake, but the two of us has thought of little else for the last few days, and Barbara as well.’

‘It was Barbara encouraged me to write the letter,’ said Mistress Bothwell. ‘She’s a good woman.’ Beside her, Alys murmured agreement.

‘Were you at Frankie’s the now?’ Adam asked. ‘How are they all? We’d heard nothing of their trouble till Christian came up the road at suppertime. Wat and I will have to call in the morning to condole.’

‘Frankie is much shaken, as you would expect,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘We were just saying as we came home that he seems to believe his daughter guilty.’

‘So likely would the half of Glasgow,’ said Mistress Bothwell grimly.

‘And Nicol?’

Maistre Pierre grimaced. ‘I had a word with him, after you left the room,’ he said to Gil. ‘He was not sober, I should say. I asked him what he would do now, would he take up his brother’s place in the business, and he said, on the contrary, he was the more determined to go back to Middelburgh.’

‘It might just be his imagining,’ Gil said. ‘I asked him where he was all day, and he talked about a journey again, though his wife said he was abed.’

‘Ah.’ Adam Forrest exchanged a glance with Mistress Bothwell. ‘He must be still taking the stuff.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ she said.

‘Taking what?’ Gil questioned.

Adam looked disapproving. ‘Hemp. At least, a dose made from — it’s an intoxicant, a relaxant, it calms the system but confuses the mind, it prompts strange dreams.’

‘It’s right good for a vicious horse,’ supplied Mistress Bothwell. ‘I suppose the beasts willny be troubled by dreams.’

‘My mother’s groom puts hemp seeds in horse tonic,’ Gil recalled. ‘Now I think of it, there were folk that used it when I was in Paris. They would burn it and drink the smoke. One fellow swore it was better than wine for easing the mind of troubles. But I thought the hemp we grow here doesn’t have the same properties.’

‘No, potyngar’s hemp has to be imported,’ Adam said. ‘It comes from Araby, in the long run. And there’s some even stronger stuff, not the leaf but a resin of some sort, I think they call charas, we’ve had the dried leaf in the shop but never that. I’ve heard it’s put up in wee leather bags, and you make a drink of it or burn it.’

‘Oh!’ said Alys suddenly, and then, ‘Could that be what his drops are?’

‘Very like,’ agreed Adam, sounding struck by the idea.

‘He said I should ask you about it,’ Gil said to Alys, and she blushed darkly in the candlelight. ‘He’s by far calmer than when we were boys. Do you remember him at school, Adam? Who could have prescribed it to him, would you think? ‘

‘His father, most likely,’ suggested Adam. ‘I’d say it might help with his twitching and his odd ways, so if Frankie got his hands on some of the stuff, he might try if it worked.’ He pulled a face. ‘But it looks to me as if Nicol uses far more than he needs.’

‘Always the danger, with such a drug,’ observed Mistress Bothwell. She drew her plaid up over her shoulders again. ‘I must get home, Adam. There’s as much to be done in the morning, and food to take in for my brother and all. Will you get that letter away, do you think, maister?’

‘I’ll speak to Sir Thomas first thing,’ said Gil.

Having seen the callers across the yard, Maistre Pierre extinguished his lantern and began barring the door, saying, ‘So have you had a profitable evening, ma mie? And how is John? What was this about a strange woman who fetched Mistress Grace?’

‘No,’ said Alys. ‘Catherine wished to talk to me. John is well, and sound asleep in his own cradle, and Nancy is recovering from her fright, poor girl, and will keep a closer eye on him from now on. As for who fetched Grace, I think we may never know. There was no such woman in the house, or on the High Street, today. Kate thinks it was Ealasaidh’s fetch.’

‘I think it more than likely,’ said Gil. ‘I have heard of such things. Ealasaidh herself may know nothing of the matter when we speak to her next.’

‘Do you tell me?’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘Extraordinary! But then, she is an extraordinary woman,’ he added thoughtfully.

‘I don’t know,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘I take my eye off the burgh for a day and what happens? Another pysoning, Frankie Renfrew’s lassie in the Tolbooth, John Anderson saying he’s done your work for you — ’

‘Is he now?’ said Gil politely, suppressing fury. Sir Thomas blew his nose and dabbed at the organ cautiously with his handkerchief.

‘So tell me the tale yoursel, Gilbert, till I understand what’s going on.’

Gil summarized the events surrounding Robert Ren-frew’s death, as carefully as he might. Sir Thomas listened, blowing his nose from time to time and fidgeting with the papers before him. His clerk, Walter, sat at the end of the end of the table, his pen squeaking as he copied something into a great book.

‘No that clear,’ said Sir Thomas when Gil had finished. He shook his head. ‘No that clear. The lassie was heard to say she’d get him for something, and she rejoiced when he was dead. What a way for a Christian lassie to behave! Frankie’s a worthy member of the council, but I’d no wed any of his bairns to any I cared for. But that doesny say she gave her brother the pyson. As for taking up the maidservant, only because the lassie accused her, I’m no convinced. What do you say, Gil?’

‘I’d say Agnes was the likeliest, but it’s all very circumstantial,’ agreed Gil. ‘It’s the poison still worries me. It seems the girl’s chamber was searched, and no sign found either of poison or of her working with the sweetmeats. If it was the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, which nobody in Glasgow seems to recognize, then where did it come from?’

Sir Thomas dabbed at his scarlet nose.

‘Maybe this letter I’ve sent away for you will get us some result. Or maybe all the potyngars in Glasgow are in it thegither,’ he suggested gloomily. ‘Did John Anderson question the rest of the household? Did he search the shop and the house, or only the lassie’s chamber?’ He read the answer in Gil’s face, and grunted. ‘And how does it connect wi the other death, other than it was the same stuff that slew both?’

‘Have you questioned Nanty Bothwell yet?’

‘I have not. That’s for the day, St Thomas help me. Standing in a cold cell, watching Andro wi the pilliwinks and thinking what to ask next, it’s like to bring on a lung-fever. Confound this rheum!’

‘I’ve an idea about that,’ Gil offered.

Nanty Bothwell was sitting on the bench in his damp cell, staring blankly at the chain which led from his ankle-iron to a hasp in the wall. He looked up when the captain of the guard unlocked the door, and got to his feet.

‘Provost,’ he said, with a nervous bob of a bow which made the chain clink. ‘Maister Cunningham. What — can you tell me how’s my sister?’

‘Well enough,’ said Gil, ‘considering she’s worried sick for her brother.’

‘Never mind that,’ said Sir Thomas, and blew his nose again. ‘We’ve taken up your accomplice now, Nanty Bothwell — ’

‘Accomplice?’ he said sharply. ‘What accomplice?’

‘- for she’s used the the same pyson to slay Robert Renfrew, which is — ’

‘What?’

‘Robert was poisoned yesterday,’ said Gil, ‘by what seems like the same stuff that killed Danny Gibson, hidden in a marchpane cherry.’

‘In a marchpane cherry?’

‘Clearly Agnes Renfrew’s work,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘and the Serjeant very properly — ’

‘Or the girl Jess Dickson,’ Gil put in.

‘Jess Dickson? Who’s she? It canny be Agnes. How’d you make out it was Agnes?’

‘It’s certainly someone skilled in potyngary work,’ Gil said, ‘and Agnes had the chance to do it and to use the same poison as before.’

‘But she’d no — she never knew — she’d no idea — ’ Bothwell bit off his words.

‘No idea?’ Gil repeated. ‘No idea what it was?’

‘If she’d no idea, how come she used it on her brother?’ demanded the Provost. ‘Where did she get it, anyway? Did you supply it to her?’

‘No! No, I — ’

‘Either you gave it to her,’ Gil said, ‘or she gave it to you. One or the other, Nanty.’

‘Maybe we both got it from the same place,’ Bothwell offered desperately.

The Provost pounced. ‘And where was that, then? The lassie Dickson?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘You don’t know? You don’t remember how you got something that fatal?’ Sir Thomas blew his nose, with some diminution of his authority, and declared, ‘If there’s someone running about Glasgow purveying pyson that slays a man in minutes, I want to find him and stop him. Or her,’ he added scrupulously. ‘So out with it, my lad, who gave you that flask and the stuff in it, or did you brew it up and supply it to Agnes Renfrew for the slaying of her brother? Was that your aim all along?’

‘I think Agnes brewed it and gave it to him,’ said Gil. ‘Is that right, Nanty?’

‘No! I told you, she’d no idea!’

‘The lassie’s made a fool of him as well as her brother,’ said Sir Thomas.

‘No, she — she never — ’ Bothwell swallowed, looking from one to the other in the grey light. ‘It wasny like that. We never — ’

‘Never what?’ prompted Gil.

‘We neither of us knew what was in the flask. It was just something she found.’

‘Found where? Let’s have the story, my lad,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘And be quick about it, so I can get out of here. It’s ower cold for a man wi the rheum.’

Bothwell sighed. ‘We’d no conspiracy,’ he said, ‘I swear it. Only I forgot the flask I should ha carried, wi the stuff that smokes when you draw the stopper, and when I saw Agnes in the yard, on her way back to her own house, I asked her if she’d fetch me one of the wee painted ones from her father’s workroom. She brought me that one, but she never said where it was from, only that her father had locked his workroom. We — we thought it was almond milk, it looked — it smelled — when Danny fell down, I’ll never forget — ’ He stared at Gil. ‘I’ll swear it’s the truth on anything you mention, maister. Agnes never knew it was pyson when she gave it to me.’

‘Why not tell us this earlier?’ Gil asked.

‘He’s only just now made it up,’ said Sir Thomas.

‘No, it’s the truth,’ said Bothwell earnestly. ‘I never — I didny want to bring the lassie into trouble.’

‘Hah!’ said Sir Thomas explosively. ‘She’s done that for herself, wi none of your help.’

‘I canny believe it,’ said Bothwell. ‘Why would she do that? Surely it’s been this lassie Jess, or another of the family — or some kind of an accident, maybe? Or that Grace? She’s a wise woman.’

‘Too wise to go about poisoning her brother-in-law,’ Gil said.

‘Hah!’ said Sir Thomas again. ‘I’m away back to my fireside. I’ll leave you to it, Gil. Andro! Here and let me out!’

As the key turned in the lock again behind the Provost Gil said, ‘Is that the plain tale? And the whole one?’

‘Aye.’

Gil waited, unmoving. After a long moment the other man turned his head away.

‘I canny believe it,’ he said again. ‘She’s such a bonnie wee thing, wi such taking ways. How would she — and why? What way would she kill her own brother?’ Another pause. ‘And do you — I canny — do you suppose she kent fine all along what it was? That she kent what she’d got in that flask?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. ‘What do you think?’

‘I canny believe it of her,’ said Bothwell, shaking his head. ‘And yet — ’ He laughed, without humour. ‘Chrissie would say she tellt me. We’d words a few times, about my looking towards that family.’

‘What did Agnes say when she brought you the flask?’ Gil asked.

‘I don’t recall right.’ Bothwell thought for a moment. ‘We were on the stair up from the kitchen, and she handed me the thing and said, her father had locked his workroom, she’d to take what she could get. I smelled at it, just at the flask, I never unstopped it, you ken, and I said, What is it, and she says, It looks like almond milk. Which I thought nothing of at the time, but it came to me sometime yesterday, who keeps almond milk lying about in a wee flask? The kitchen has it in a bowl or a jug, no in a tottie wee flask.’ He held up fingers and thumb to show the measure of the object. ‘Then I wondered if maybe she’d put it up especial to bring me.’

‘If she put it up for you, she knew what it was,’ said Gil, ‘or else she was very neat about it, for it seems even a drop on her skin would have killed her like Danny Gibson. She didn’t say?’

‘We’d no more conversation.’ Bothwell sighed. ‘Tammas Bowster came up the stair and was on to me for upsetting Danny and the company just then, what would it do to the play, and Agnes says, I’ve saved your play, and off she went up the stair to her minnie wi the cushion.’ He looked anxiously at Gil in the dim light. ‘Has she no tellt you about it?’

‘She denied any connection with it,’ Gil said. ‘She’s not been questioned yet since the Serjeant took her up. She might change her tune once Sir Thomas gets to work on her.’

Bothwell winced at the thought, but said helplessly, ‘I still canny believe it. It’s all tapsalteerie in my head, Maister Cunningham. And Danny’s dead, and now young Robert, though there’s no many will shed a tear for him. I keep hoping I’ll wake up.’

Sir Thomas, huddled over his brazier again, sniffed gloomily and agreed with Gil.

‘If he’s telling us the truth, which is aye the question,’ he qualified, ‘then the lassie never knew what she’d gied him on Hallowe’en, that was Thursday. But having seen it was lethal she knew to go back to get some more on Friday to use it on Saturday, so there must ha been more of it. The question is, where? Is it somewhere in the house?’

‘It’s the place to start, at least,’ Gil said. ‘Otherwise it’s search the whole of Glasgow, wi the entire Gallowgate bringing us flasks of one shape or another for the reward. And what about Agnes and the maidservant? Has either girl anything useful to say?’

‘They’re both swearing they’ve nothing to do with it. I’ve no palate for a long stand down in the questioning-chamber,’ said Sir Thomas, sniffing again. ‘It’s gey cold down there, even wi the fire to heat the pincers, but I’d as soon have the quest on Robert Renfrew the morn as well as Danny Gibson, get them both out the way.’

‘It’s a bit — ’ began Gil, but the Provost dabbed his nose and went on, ignoring him:

‘Seems to me whichever lassie’s guilty, she’ll talk faster if we have the evidence to show her, so I’ll have you and Andro go and search the Renfrew house yoursels, Gil, and make a thorough job of it. And maybe question the rest of the household while you’re about it. If John Anderson can do your work, you can do his,’ he added sourly.

‘You might as well have gone home for your dinner, for all the good that’s done you,’ said Grace Gordon with quiet sympathy.

‘It had to be done, just the same,’ said Gil, setting a stool for her. She sat down and looked up at him, folding her hands in her lap.

‘Aye, I see that,’ she agreed, ‘and though Frankie may not say it I will: it was good of you to make so much effort no to distress Meg. You were doing fine up till the man wanted to see into the cradle.’

Gil grimaced. Young Mistress Mathieson had accepted his careful explanation of the need to search her chamber, and risen from her bed willingly enough, to sit clasping her swaddled infant with her mother on guard at her side. It was only when Andro had begun poking in the embroidered coverings of the cradle that she had grasped the reality of their intent.

‘I think what owerset her was that you might suspect her of hiding such a nasty thing among her bairn’s bedding,’ added Grace. ‘Will you not sit down, sir? It’s a long way up to see your face, I’ll get a kink in my neck.’

‘Is she calmer now?’ Gil asked. He sat down facing her, and drew his tablets from his sleeve.

‘Aye, she was asleep when I looked in on her. Now, what is it you’re to ask us all? Am I the first?’

‘I’ve spoken to Maister Renfrew.’ Gil paused, assembling his thoughts. ‘We’ve gone through the house,’ he said, and she nodded, with a wry smile, ‘and found nothing that tells us aught about how Agnes came by the poison, either on Thursday or later. Can you shed any light on the question?’

‘What, you think I’ve been handing poisons out to the half of Glasgow?’ She met his eye, an ironic amusement gleaming in her expression. ‘I’ve no notion how Agnes got her hands on the stuff, maister. Do you know what it is yet?’

‘I do not. Have you no idea yourself?’

‘I’ve no suggestions to make, maister. It’s in none of Frankie’s books.’

‘Could it be something she brewed herself? Her father says not, but I think he underestimates her.’

‘I think he does and all.’ She considered the question. ‘She could have done, but if she had, you’d not find a trace of her working. Jess might have something to tell you about that, if you’re present when the Provost questions her, poor lass.’

Gil nodded, thinking of what Alys had reported yesterday. ‘If Agnes did make the stuff up, does she have anywhere particular she might hide it?’

‘I’d not know if she did,’ Grace pointed out. She pulled the corners of her mouth down in a rueful grimace. ‘The likeliest to know where she hid her secrets was her brother Robert, aye spying on her and the rest of the household. Yet another reason for her to have poisoned him, if it was her that did it.’

‘No love lost between them, then.’

‘Not atween any of them,’ she assured him. ‘I never knew sic a family. I’ll be glad to take Nicol away from them and back to Middelburgh.’

‘What, are you leaving Glasgow? Is Nicol not to stay and take a part in the business?’ Gil asked innocently, although Maister Renfrew had already expressed himself forcefully on this subject.

Grace shook her head. ‘It doesny seem like it. They’ll never agree, him and his father, and Frankie has sic an opinion of Nicol I’d not want him to stay in the same house.’ She studied Gil carefully with those light grey eyes. ‘You were boys wi him, maister, I’ve no doubt you’ll understand me when I say Nicol’s no daftheid, he’s a clever man and a good one, but he needs to be among folk who think well of him, if he’s to do well himself. If he’s abused and made a fool of, he gets — he gets foolish.’

Gil thought of Nicol Renfrew as a boy, and nodded.

‘He’s calmer by far than he was,’ he observed. ‘Is it something he’s taking, or is he just grown out of his trouble?’

She opened her mouth to answer, checked, and finally said, ‘Both, maybe. He has drops to take, that our maister in Middelburgh ordered for him, and Frankie makes up now. They help him greatly, but I think when I met him he was already better by far than he’d been, by what Eleanor and Agnes has told me.’

‘So he had taken a dose yesterday, had he?’

‘Yes,’ she said. Another check, and then she continued, ‘So he slept the entire day. He was newly wakened when I went up and told him his brother was deid.’

‘Could he have poisoned Robert, do you think? Or supplied Agnes with the poison?’

Her eyes sharpened on his. After a moment she said, ‘It would be not at all like the man I know. He and Robert got on well enough, at least,’ she corrected herself, ‘Nicol did no more than laugh at Robert’s ways. The craft is for healing, not for harm, maister, and Nicol holds that as strongly as any. As for Agnes asking him for it, she’d as soon ask the man in the moon, I’d have thought.’

‘Anyone else in the household?’ he asked, without much hope.

She considered the question, but shook her head. ‘None is more like than another, and some less.’ She smiled wryly. ‘The girl Jess, or Meg and her minnie, for instance. Unless you think Meg poisoned the laddie in the expectation he’d leave his goods to wee Marion.’ She closed her eyes, and her mouth twisted again. ‘Poor laddie, I can hear him saying it yet.’

‘Had he much to leave?’ Gil asked.

‘At that age? They spend it as soon as make it. We’ll likely sell his clothes on, and Meg can save the coin for the bairn along wi his prayer-book and his Sunday beads. If it comes to more than a few merks I’ll be much surprised. Did you not search his kist?’

‘Andro did that. He reports there was no pig of poison hidden among the laddie’s clean drawers.’ Only some grubby woodcuts, enough to make Andro’s eyes pop but nothing to what Gil had encountered in Paris. Those, he suspected, were now in Andro’s doublet, and unlikely to reach the Provost’s desk.

Grace seemed to relax faintly. He considered her position again, the hands folded on her lap, her shoulders back, her head in its Sunday wrappings of velvet and linen poised on her elegant neck. She had not moved her hands since she sat down. He had thought he saw simply her native stillness and calm, but now it seemed as if she was on the defensive. In defence of what, he wondered, or of whom? Was she relieved to hear there was nothing there, or to hear that Andro had missed something she knew was hidden? Or did she know about the woodcuts? Surely not, he thought, and briefly considered Alys’s probable reaction to such things. It was unlikely to be the most predictable one, but — He shook his head, and realized that he was becoming distracted from the point at issue, which was the questioning of Grace Gordon.

‘You’re tired, man,’ she said. ‘Have you eaten? Frankie refused to have you at the table, but I bade the kitchen — ’

‘My thanks for that. They gave us bread and cheese and ale,’ he said. ‘Mistress Grace, it’s gey strange to me that Agnes — or anyone else — ’ he added scrupulously, ‘could have contrived these poisoned sweetmeats without being seen at work.’

She considered this point.

‘If it was on Friday,’ she said slowly, ‘or yesterday morn, the lassie kept her chamber the whole time. I spoke to her through the door a couple of times, but she’d have no company, nor be any help about the house. Whether Jess saw anything, you could ask her, but the thing is Agnes’s chamber is the inmost of that set so unless anyone entered to speak wi her she’d have privacy for whatever she wished to do.’

Gil nodded. He had now discovered that Agnes’s chamber was reached through Maister Renfrew’s own bedchamber, a very proper way to lodge a daughter.

‘And you’ve no idea where the stuff came from,’ he said, without much hope.

She shook her head. ‘I canny help you there, maister.’ She tilted her head, and a corner of her black velvet veil slid back across the shoulder of her gown. In its shadow there was a fresh love-bite, dark against the white skin of her neck. ‘Is that it? Are you done wi me?’

‘For now.’

She rose, shaking out her grey silk skirts, and paused to ask with concern, ‘How’s your wee laddie? Did he sleep it off?’

‘He’s well.’ Gil had risen likewise. ‘Chattering away and eating his porridge when I saw him. We’re grateful to you for ever.’ She shook her head, making light of the matter. ‘When will you leave?’

‘Not for a day or two yet. There’s still things to see to wi Frankie.’

‘As soon as that?’

‘Aye, or sooner,’ said Nicol. ‘If it was for me to say I’d be down the river on this tide, but Grace wants to take her gear back wi her, and she’s still in hopes we can get Frankie to agree …’ He paused, and giggled. ‘You’ve no need to hear all the business of the family.’

‘I need to hear enough of it to determine how Robert died,’ Gil said.

Nicol looked at him in faint surprise.

‘He died of taking poison in a marchpane cherry,’ he said. ‘You were there, man, you saw more than I did.’

‘I need to find out how the cherry came to be poisoned.’

‘Why? It’s done, and Agnes taken up for it.’ He giggled again. ‘She’ll not poison anyone else now, that’s certain.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ Gil asked. ‘Where did she get the poison?’

Nicol shrugged. ‘Out of an apple, for all I ken. Or the Deil himsel popped up in the shop and offered it to her. Maybe Frankie’s trying to rid himsel of all my minnie’s bairns, and I need to watch mysel.’

Gil stared at him. This was one interpretation he had not thought of. After a moment he set the idea aside to think on later, and said, ‘How will you live, if you go back to the Low Countries?’

‘Set up as potyngars,’ Nicol said promptly. ‘It’s what we do, both Grace and me, and we know all kind of ways to get supplies you never heard of. I might,’ he added, considering the matter, ‘come to an agreement wi Wat Forrest to send some of it on. I should think he’d be glad of it. A good source of materia medica’s worth a second income, so it is.’

‘So your father won’t have you back in the business?’ Gil said cautiously.

‘He’d sooner have wee Marion.’ Nicol considered this too. ‘Much sooner,’ he added, grinning. ‘And if you’re wondering, he says I’m to have no more share out of it either, I had my portion when I went overseas, and he’s had his will drawn up and signed and sealed declaring as much. So I’d be daft even to dream of poisoning Frankie, for all it’s a bonnie thought.’

‘You’re not daft, Nicol,’ said Gil firmly. ‘So what is it Grace is hoping to persuade your father to?’

Nicol shrugged again. ‘She’s got the notion he might let us have a bit more coin. I don’t see it mysel, unless as a payment to go away and no come back, but you never know.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Gil said, though privately he agreed with Nicol. Maister Renfrew had presented a slightly different view of the situation when he interviewed him earlier.

‘That daftheid!’ he had said explosively. ‘He’s after me to let him into the partnership, he’s wanting an allowance off the business, he’s — ’ He ended with a snarling sound.

‘You won’t consider it even now?’ Gil had asked. ‘I’d have thought you’d want one of your sons in the business.’

‘Hah!’ said Renfrew. ‘And my boy not buried yet!’