The Counterfeit Madam

Chapter Twelve

Sir Richie was astonished by their story. He was already out at the corner of his little church, staring up the glen, and when the little procession came in sight he vanished, to reappear shortly round the kirkyard wall, stole about his neck, a little box clasped carefully in one hand. Bearing this he made his way down to cross the burn by the plank bridge Alys had used, and came hurrying towards them.

‘Who’s hurt? Is there time to shrive them?’ he demanded as soon as he came within earshot. ‘Who is it? You’re all hale — who is it?’

Leaving Lowrie to direct his men and keep an eye on young Berthold, Alys came forward to explain. He listened attentively, crossing himself, then inspected the two dead men, flinching away from the burnt face of the boy’s father, exclaiming over and over.

‘And these were the demons? So they were flesh and blood after all! Bring them within the kirkyard at least. Were they Christian souls?’

‘I think it,’ said Alys. ‘The boy has a set of beads, I think he was praying for his father. Or perhaps for himself,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘Bring them in, then, bring them in. But what can we do, maister? If they’ve been murdered as you say, we should raise the hue and cry, but there’s never a soul to hear it in the Clachan, and none wi the authority to command the pursuit neither.’

‘Kirkintilloch would be the nearest,’ agreed Lowrie, lending a hand to steady one of the hurdles as Sim and Frank made their way down towards the burn. ‘Who would take charge in the usual way?’

Socrates’ ears pricked, and he growled. Alys turned her head, trying to hear over Sir Richie’s rambling answer. Was that more horses? Voices? She moved a little upstream and jumped across the burn, leaving the bridge to the bearers, then hurried up the rough grassy bank and, bending low, picked her way along the kirkyard wall with the dog at her heel. At the corner she paused, listening. Yes, there were voices, they had been heard, there was shouting about Someone’s down yonder by the burn. She moved forward to peer cautiously round the corner of the wall, and found herself almost nose to nose with Philip Sempill.

She sprang back quickly enough to take her beyond the reach of his aborted sword-thrust, and said, over the dog’s snarling,

‘Maister Sempill! What-?’

‘Mistress Mason!’ He lowered his whinger, gaping at her as she grasped Socrates’ collar. ‘Of all the people to meet here! What are you doing?’

‘Catching demons,’ she said, and indicated the procession behind her. ‘We have found silver miners in the glen, which I am quite certain your kinsman did not know of, and two of them are dead.’

‘Dead!’ he repeated, staring. ‘Who — who are they? How did you come to-’

‘Philip?’ John Sempill appeared behind his kinsman. ‘Who the deil are you speaking to? You?’ he said incredulously. ‘Deil’s bollocks, woman, can you no keep out of what doesny concern you? You’re worse than that man o yours.’

‘Good day to you, sir,’ she said, tightening her grip on the dog’s collar, and dropped him a curtsy. ‘I hope you left Lady Magdalen well?’

‘And who’s yonder?’ he demanded, ignoring this. ‘Philip, what’s going on here? Is that that fool o a priest down there and all?’

‘Mistress Mason says they have found two dead men in the glen,’ said Philip, with care. ‘They were mining silver. Is that not amazing?’

‘What do you-’ His cousin stared at him, pale blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Oh,’ he said after a moment. ‘Aye, that’s amazing. Right enough. Who’s dead? I mean, who are they? Is there just the two? Who killed them, anyways? What are you doing here? And him!’ he added, as Lowrie approached up the bank.

‘There’s one still living,’ said Alys.

‘Lowrie Livingstone, is that you poking about on my land where you’re no wanted? Was it you killed these two? Why?’

‘It was not,’ said Lowrie levelly, ‘and I don’t see why you assume it was. And it’s no your land, Muirend, it’s either my faither’s or Dame Isabella’s.’

‘It’s my land,’ Sempill began, and bit the words off as his cousin kicked him on the ankle. Lowrie gave him a small tight smile and stepped round him, guiding the men with the two hurdles up towards the kirkyard gate, the boy Berthold keeping somehow on the further side of the group.

Inside the little church, the boy made straight for the small bright figure of the Virgin and dropped on his knees before her, and Sir Richie, much reassured by this, directed the bearers where to set the hurdles down and began doing what was required for the dead. Alys took time for a brief word with St Machan in his brown robes, but she had trouble concentrating. Yesterday John Sempill had said there was trouble in Strathblane, and today here he was, presumably to deal with it. But had he already taken some action? He must have known the miners were there; did he also know about their deaths? Had Berthold recognized him just now?

Emerging from the building she found the two sets of servants eyeing each other warily from different corners of the kirkyard, and a stiff, chilly discussion going on across a table-tomb near the east end.

‘It’s still part o the heriot,’ Lowrie was saying as she approached. ‘My faither has the original disposition, it was never Thomas’s to alienate, let alone Dame Isabella’s.’

‘She was very clear about it,’ Philip Sempill observed.

‘Maidie’s no going to be pleased,’ said his cousin grimly. ‘I don’t know why you had to come meddling out here. Or you!’ he added to Alys, with hostility. ‘Who is it that’s dead, anyway? Who did kill them, if it wasny you? Was it that ill-conditioned laddie that’s in there the now?’

‘The laddie was away hunting for the pot,’ said Lowrie, ‘came back while we were debating what had happened, and he seems right grieved by the deaths.’ Sempill snorted in disbelief. ‘My man Frank, that’s a good huntsman, found the traces of four men in the clearing, three of them wi footwear they never got hereabouts, the other wi a narrower heel than any of us. If we can get this laddie somewhere there’s a speaker o High Dutch we can learn more from him.’

Sempill snorted again, and gave the younger man a hard stare, but Alys thought the words good huntsman had their effect. No landowner was likely to argue with an experienced huntsman’s reading of the ground.

‘And where was all this siller they’ve been winning?’ he demanded. ‘Stacked waiting to be carried off, I suppose!’

‘There was no sign of it,’ said Alys. ‘Perhaps someone had collected it quite recently.’

He grunted, scowling at her.

‘You’d know all about that, I suppose,’ he said, ‘creeping about Glasgow asking questions. You and Gil Cunningham, you’re well matched.’

‘Why, thank you sir,’ she said, and dropped him another curtsy.

‘What brought you out here?’ asked Philip Sempill. ‘You came here for a purpose, it’s well out the way for a casual ride for pleasure.’

‘Unless you were here for pleasure,’ said his cousin, with an unpleasant grin. Alys found her face burning, but Lowrie said calmly,

‘Maister Cunningham asked my escort here for madam his wife, since I ken the road.’

‘Aye, but why?’

She had foreseen this question.

‘I came to see the two properties out here,’ she offered, hoping she did not sound glib, ‘because of the confusion over what my good-sister was to have. After all, Dame Isabella’s will is yet to be found, one of these might yet go to Tib, and we thought it wiser to-’

‘In other words, you were poking that long nose into what doesny concern you,’ said Sempill. ‘Life ’ud be a lot easier if you and your man wereny aye nosing about. Philip, I want a word.’

He flung away across the kirkyard, and Philip, with a resigned look, followed him. Alys turned to Lowrie.

‘What do you wish to do now?’ he asked her. ‘There’s the boy Berthold to think of, and two men to bury, and the murder to cry forth. It all needs seen to. What would Maister Gil do?’

‘He’d do what’s right,’ she said without hesitating.

‘Aye, he would,’ Lowrie agreed. ‘The trouble is to discern what’s right here.’

She bit her lip. ‘I had it in mind to take that boy to my father. He speaks High Dutch, he has been in Cologne and places like that, and he can question him kindly.’ Lowrie smiled, and nodded. ‘As to burying the men, that’s for Sir Richie to think on in the first place. If he’ll not have them, we have to think again, but he’s our first road.’

‘I agree,’ said Lowrie. ‘But the murder. It’s remarkable how those two,’ he glanced at the Sempill cousins, whose word was becoming an argument, ‘turned up so prompt after it.’

‘It is,’ Alys agreed slowly.

‘How do you read this, anyway, mistress? What’s afoot? If it was Sempill sent someone to kill those men, then he kent they were there and what they were at. So why kill them?’

‘And who did he send?’ She stared up at the trees beyond the kirkyard wall. ‘I think, though I’ve no proof yet, the silver from here is the silver being coined in Glasgow.’

‘It’s more economical to believe that,’ said Lowrie, watching her, ‘than that there’s another silver mine within reach. The stuff’s scarce enough, Christ kens.’

‘But at whose behest? Dame Isabella, or Sempill, or Lady Magdalen? What will your father do about it, maister?’

‘Report it to the Crown. I’d not think Lady Magdalen would act against the Crown, either. I reckon more like it was the old dame who caused the coin to be struck, seeing it was her making use of it.’

‘Was it?’

‘I thought it was,’ he said after a moment, ‘but I’m no so certain now.’

‘No, I think you are right,’ she agreed, ‘though I also think we have no proof yet. What is John Sempill coming to say to us?’

‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ began Sempill when he was still several graves away. ‘You,’ he nodded at Lowrie, ‘and Philip can go and see what’s all this about narrow heels. You can take your good huntsman wi you, and one o our lads and all, and you’ll be quick about it, for I want to get home for supper.’

‘But Mistress Mason-’ Lowrie began.

‘I’m sure I’ll be safe in Sempill of Muirend’s keeping,’ Alys said sweetly. Sempill of Muirend scowled at her, but Lowrie bowed, and said politely to Philip,

‘My pleasure, then.’

‘And I’ll go and take a look at these dead men, and see what I think they dee’d from,’ Sempill went on with emphasis, ‘and get a word wi the priest about getting them in the ground. You can come too if you must, I suppose,’ he added disagreeably to Alys. ‘And there’s never a word o use trying to talk to that boy, either, he’s got no more Scots than your dog there.’

Possibly less, thought Alys, considering the number of words Socrates understands, but how do you know that? She paused to speak to her own men about watering the horses and allowing them to graze a little, and followed Sempill into the little church.

Sir Richie, having dealt with the matter of conditional absolution and said a charitable Mass for the dead, was much more willing to talk to his visitors now. Exclaiming over the flesh-and-blood nature of the demons, thanking Sempill repeatedly for returning to take care of the problem, he displayed the corpses and their wounds as if he had discovered them himself, shooing Socrates away.

‘Terrible injuries, terrible,’ he said as he uncovered the older Berthold’s burns. ‘Only see how dreadful! Get away, away wi you!’

Alys stepped back from Sempill’s unmoved consideration of the sight, snapping her fingers to call the dog, and looked at the younger Berthold. He had turned from his intent conversation with the Virgin, and was watching anxiously. What must it be like, she wondered, to be trapped in a strange country, where you spoke none of the language, and you had just lost your kinsfolk. She moved quietly to his side and put a hand on his arm, making him jump.

‘Berthold,’ she said gently. He touched his brow to her, and bobbed a shy bow. She drew him to the stone bench at the wall-foot, and launched again into the mixture of language and gesture which she had used before. With difficulty, she established that he was fourteen, that his hunting had taken him further up onto the hills, that he had seen nobody, or perhaps that nobody had seen him. He seemed dubious about that. She raised questioning eyebrows, and he mimed someone peering from cover, watching something. She nodded understanding and looked cautiously over one shoulder and then the other, and he said, ‘Ja, ja, ich fühlt’ überwacht,’ and shivered. He pointed at the two dead men, and turned his face away.

Was it the man with the narrow heels, she wondered. And had he been watching as she picked her way up the burn? If the dog had not been with her — She put a hand on the rough hairy head at her elbow and shivered as Berthold had done.

She was about to assemble another question when the church door was flung wide and Luke tumbled in.

‘Mistress, are you here? Here’s Maister Livingstone coming back, and all them wi him, and he’s got someone prisoner, so he has!’

‘Prisoner?’ John Sempill swung round, staring. ‘What prisoner? What’s going on?’

‘I wouldny ken what prisoner, maister, but you can see for yoursel,’ Luke said, gesturing at the door. ‘You’ve only to look! They’re having a right time of it, Tam’s gone to gie them a hand.’

Alys was already hurrying out into the sunlight, shading her eyes to stare across the little burn. The party on the far bank was having some trouble, as Luke said, the figure in its midst writhing in the grasp of all four men. As she watched someone tired of the battle and clouted the struggling man across the head. It made little difference, but a second blow and then a third had more effect, and brought an approving grunt from John Sempill behind her, though Sir Richie protested faintly.

‘Aye, that’s the way to deal wi him,’ said Sempill. ‘Who is it, anyway? What were you no telling us, Mistress Mason? Have they found someone else at the mine?’

‘I’ve no more notion than you, sir,’ she said politely. The returning party hoisted their limp captive across the burn, and Lowrie, leaving Tam to take his share of the burden, hurried up the bank towards the kirkyard wall.

‘He was searching the place,’ he said, scrambling over the mossy stones. ‘Frank was in the lead, and took the huntsman’s approach, and saw him before he saw us, so we got him by surprise.’ He paused to acknowledge Socrates’ greeting.

‘Searching the place?’ repeated Sempill. ‘What was there to find?’

‘Little enough,’ said Lowrie, ‘though he obviously thought there was more.’ He nodded to the group now carrying the prisoner in on the easier path by the gate. ‘One thing, though. Frank reckons his heels fit the tracks he found, and the rest of us are agreed.’

‘So what does that tell you?’ demanded Sempill. ‘Are you saying this is who slew the two fellows in there?’

‘He was certainly at the mine earlier today,’ Alys amended. Sempill threw her a surly look and said to his cousin, approaching over the rough grass,

‘Better tie him up, Philip, in case he gets away. The priest might have some rope. If you’re all agreed he’s guilty we could string him up here, there’s plenty trees. I’ve not had a good hanging in months.’

‘Oh, surely no, he must have a trial, maister,’ protested Sir Richie. ‘We should see if the boy recognizes him, maybe, or question him, aye, we should question him!’

‘Who is he?’ Alys asked. The prisoner was dropped on the ground, where he bounced slightly, groaning. She seized the dog’s collar before he could investigate the newcomer. ‘Did you question him?’

‘He drew his dagger on us,’ said Frank, twisting to look at a gash in the side of his leather doublet. ‘Near enough got me, and he’s nicked Harry there’s ear.’ Harry, standing beside him in John Sempill’s livery, grinned selfconsciously and mopped at the dripping blood. ‘So no, mem, we didny take the time to question him ower much.’

‘I can see you wouldny,’ she said, looking down at the man. He seemed to be of more than middling height, aged perhaps twenty or twenty-five, with well-barbered dark hair. His jerkin was dark red broadcloth, his boots were good but very dusty. ‘We must search him. Had he taken anything from the miners’ shelter?’

‘No that I saw, he was just poking about,’ Frank said, ‘looking amongst their graith and the like.’ He bent to turn the prisoner onto his back, and the limp figure convulsed like a mantrap Alys had once seen, came up snarling, a knife in his hand from nowhere in a sweeping gesture which had Frank flung sideways and crying out.

It all seemed to happen very slowly next. Lowrie dived forward, shouting, Harry grabbed at the man’s wrist, which slipped from his grasp, Alys leapt away from the action wishing she had not put Gil’s dagger back in her purse, and caught her heel in a tussock of grass and went down. The same dark lightning movement seemed to happen above her, and she was dragged to her feet, painfully by one arm, and hauled against a panting chest. A hoarse voice spoke over her shoulder.

‘Keep aff me. Keep aff me or the lassie gets it. And if that dog comes here I’ll knife it and all.’

‘Down!’ she ordered, almost on a reflex, and relief swept over her as the dog obeyed, reluctantly, quivering with eagerness to attack.

There was a knife sharp against her ribs. A small part of her mind recognized that it must have found one of the gaps in the whalebone bodice of her riding-dress. There were not many.

‘My son, consider what you are doing!’ protested Sir Richie. Behind him Philip Sempill emerged from the church carrying a hank of rope, and stopped, staring in horror. His cousin looked grim. Lowrie was standing poised, hands twitching, trying to work out what to do, staring at her with almost exactly the same expression as Socrates. The hoarse voice spoke again next to her ear.

‘Just stay nice and quiet where you are, and I’ll walk her down to the horses.’

Yes, and what then? Her mind raced, the whalebone forgotten. This man would never let her go alive, he used a knife too readily. This had happened to her before, perhaps there was a sign written on her brow, Take this lassie hostage at knifepoint, but since that time Gil had taught her one or two tricks to use against a man with a knife.

‘Right, lassie. You be quiet, the way you’re doing, and I’ll no hurt ye. We’re going to take a wee walk, see? Nice and gentle, to see the bonnie horses.’

She collected herself as the pressure of his arm tried to turn her slightly, to move backwards down to the gate. She caught Lowrie’s eye, indicated her dangling right hand as well as she could without moving. His gaze dropped, and she counted off ostentatiously with her fingers. One. Two. Three.

She went limp, so that her entire weight fell on the arm which restrained her, then as her captor braced himself against the sudden burden she dug in her heels and thrust backward. They both went over and down, hard, and she heard the wind go out of the man.

She rolled frantically aside, seized the fallen knife, scrambled up out of the way of the rushing feet and the snarling.

‘Mistress!’ It was Lowrie at her elbow. ‘That was well done! You’re no hurt, are you?’

‘I’m hale.’ She found she was grinning in relief. ‘Gil taught me it.’

‘He has a good pupil.’ He gave her an admiring look, and returned to the fray. Socrates was poised on the man’s chest, snarling into his face, white teeth snapping, and as earlier today was reluctant to give up his catch. Trying to persuade herself it had been perfectly safe, that the blade at her breast would never have got through the whalebones, she went forward to congratulate the dog and haul him off, ignoring John Sempill’s muttered comments about taking a stick to the ill-nurtured brute.

The prisoner was reclaimed, without gentleness. Of course, thought Alys, observing the way even Lowrie, even Luke, went out of their way to handle him roughly; eight men stood by, watched me taken at knifepoint, watched me save myself. The dog’s reaction was exactly the same.

Stripped to his linen, his arms tied, held kneeling at the point of several whingers on the cobbles before the door of St Machan’s Kirk, the man was rather less impressive, but he still managed a snarl the equal of Socrates’ when John Sempill demanded his name.

‘You’re asking me, are you?’ was all the answer he got.

‘Aye, I’m asking. And what were you doing up the glen?’ Sempill nudged him under the ribs with the toe of his boot. ‘Back to strip the place o siller, were ye? No content wi slaying unarmed men about their lawful work, were ye? Can ye tell me good reason why I canny hang you for murder fro yon tree?’ Each question was marked by another nudge.

‘Lawful!’ The prisoner spat.

‘And what d’you mean by that?’ Another nudge from the boot, powerful enough to wind the man. ‘Show him the two corps, lads. And that worthless laddie, see if he kens him.’

Alys rose from the table-tomb where she had seated herself in the hope that her knees would stop trembling, intending to follow the group into the church. She was distracted by Lowrie, who was making an inventory in his tablets of the prisoner’s possessions.

‘Mistress Mason, look at this.’

‘What is it?’ She crossed to where he sat on the grass, and he held out the man’s purse.

‘I’ve just the now opened it, I was writing down his clothes and boots. Look what was in his spoirean.’

The purse was in fact a sturdy leather bag, almost a scrip, as big as her two hands and made to be slung from a belt. She took it, finding it heavy, lifted the flap, peered in. Something gleamed in the shadow within. Coin? Not loose, surely, it would fall to the bottom. She tilted the thing to see better, and blue velvet and gold braid caught the light.

‘Ah, mon Dieu!’ she said in amazement, and drew out a fat purse. A purse of blue velvet, trimmed with gold braid. ‘Where did he have this?’

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, mistress?’

‘There can hardly be two of the things,’ she said, her mind working. ‘It must be Dame Isabella’s, the one that is missing. But how did he — Unless he was the stranger, that morning!’

‘You mean she gave him it?’ Lowrie said. ‘But in that case, was it him killed her?’

‘Forveleth said,’ she recalled slowly, ‘the old dame said to her, Here’s that Campbell coming down the street and another wi him, and then she said, Hand me the blue purse out my kist and get out o here. So it would fit. But why did he kill her? Who is he?’ She knelt beside Lowrie, looking at his tablets without seeing them. ‘Who is involved in this anyway? Your man Attie, the other servants, I take it he’s none of those.’ He nodded agreement, a gleam of humour in his expression. ‘The folk from Clerk’s Land. Madam Xanthe and her girls. Forgive me,’ she said briefly as a wave of scarlet swept up his brow. ‘Useless to pretend such places don’t exist. What other names do we have?’

‘Dusty,’ said Lowrie suddenly. ‘The man Miller, the one the little girls saw.’

‘Of course, the one who dwells down the Gallowgate. Have you set eyes on him?’ He shook his head. ‘Nor has Gil. I can think of no others, apart from folk like yourself, or Maister Syme, or Kate’s lassies.’ She sat back on her heels and looked triumphantly at him. ‘Well, I think we have a surname and a by-name for this man, though we still do not know why he killed Dame Isabella.’

‘Sempill of Muirend will be disappointed,’ he said after a moment. ‘I think he’s looking forward to a hanging.’

By the time they rode back into Glasgow in the twilight, Alys was bone-weary.

Sempill of Muirend had indeed been disappointed. His reaction, in fact, put her in mind of small John denied a sweetmeat, involving as it did red-faced shouting, stamping and finally a prolonged sulk. She found herself wondering how Lady Magdalen dealt with these episodes: did she use one of the remedies which were so effective with a small boy? The adult was less easily distracted, could not be smacked and put to bed, and would not be reasoned with. Finally Philip Sempill took his cousin on one side and talked to him quietly and forcefully, then returned with a curt,

‘Get him on a horse, then.’

There was still some delay. Decisions had to be made, and Frank’s slashed arm to be bound up. Sir Richie was persuaded to allow the two dead miners to lie in St Machan’s overnight, arrangements made for their burial on Monday, for the boy Berthold to be present (‘My father will see to that,’ said Alys confidently) and for one of Sempill’s men to ride down Strathblane to spread the word that the demons were vanquished and proved to be no more than flesh and blood.

‘Though whether they’ll believe it,’ said Sir Richie dubiously, ‘I couldny say. They’re fond o a good story, see, and demons make a better tale than miners.’

The remaining horses were untied and led out to graze and find water before the ride back, and at Lowrie’s suggestion, several of the men went up the glen to dismantle the miners’ shelter and pack their belongings into the hides which had covered it, bringing them back to stow in St Machan’s safe from further pilfering.

‘It belongs to the boy,’ he said, ‘and if he gets away after all this, he’ll ha need of it.’

Alys, who had been hoping nobody else would recognize Berthold’s criminal status, said nothing and Berthold himself, shown the bundles as they were hoisted into the loft, merely nodded. He seemed to have retreated into a distant, silent place; Alys thought he was probably hungry, but she did not wish to mention it in front of Sir Richie, who could hardly feed all of them.

The prisoner himself, tethered to the great ring handle of the church door, watched all with a sour expression. He still denied everything, refused to account for his presence in the glen, and claimed he had never seen the two dead men before.

‘He touched them willingly enough,’ said Lowrie. ‘It might be true.’

‘Not everyone holds by the belief,’ Alys said.

‘Aye, but it’s more often scholars, folk that’s been to college, that accept that the dead are dead. This fellow looks far more like to believe they’ll sit up and accuse him, or bleed when he touches them, or the like.’

‘He reacted to the name,’ she said, snapping her fingers for the dog.

‘Maybe.’

Addressed as Miller from across the little church, the prisoner had frozen briefly, but made no other sign, and refused to answer when asked if that was his name, even when encouraged by Sempill’s boot and fist. Since the man was obviously a quick thinker, Alys was inclined to take this as proof; the others were less convinced. The blue velvet purse had elicited even less response, although John Sempill had exploded in righteous indignation when he understood what it was, and had to be restrained.

Finally, the prisoner tied on Alys’s horse, Alys herself put up behind Lowrie, the boy Berthold perched in front of Tam, they set off. They made a good pace down the valley, hoping to reach the better road before the light began to fade. John Sempill was still deep in his sulk, but Philip brought his horse alongside Lowrie’s and said,

‘Do we take him to the Tolbooth, or to the Castle?’

‘The Castle,’ said Alys promptly. ‘The Provost is more like to accept him without arguing. He has the better instruments of interrogation, too,’ she added, glancing at John Sempill’s hunched back. Philip followed her look, and grinned.

‘A good argument,’ he agreed. ‘Do you think we’ve found the man that killed Dame Isabella?’

‘He denies it,’ said Lowrie. ‘He denies knowing her.’

‘Otterburn will sort that,’ said Philip confidently.

‘I don’t see why else he would have the purse,’ said Alys. ‘We know,’ she paused, assembling an accurate statement, ‘we know that Dame Isabella saw two men from her window, one called Campbell and another, and asked for the blue purse and dismissed her waiting-woman. Now we have the purse, and a man she might not have known. It fits, but not inarguably, I suppose.’

‘He might have stolen it from someone else,’ Lowrie agreed, as Philip looked surprised. ‘Or been given it, or even had it from the miners before he killed them.’

‘I never thought of that,’ said Alys.

They pressed on, passing little knots of cattle being driven home for the night, sleepy herd-laddies trudging behind them. Socrates ignored their dogs with a lofty air. Alys clung to Lowrie’s waist and considered the day. It seemed to her to have been extremely successful; she had achieved what she set out to do in this country of strange adventures, and more besides. But where had the blue purse come from? Why would Miller, if he was Miller, kill Dame Isabella?

Where the Glazert met the Kelvin, turning towards Glasgow, Lowrie and Philip Sempill consulted briefly and ordered more speed. There was little more traffic than there had been in Strathblane. The carts had found their destination or settled down somewhere for the night; they passed a few groups of riders, occasional people on foot, most with curious looks for the cavalcade. Ten riders at a fast trot through the spring twilight, thought Alys, one of them stripped to his shirt, can hardly be an everyday sight. She clung tighter to Lowrie, her teeth rattling.

At the Stablegreen Port the guards had heard them coming, and were waiting to swing the heavy gate across the way behind them in the very last of the light. Lowrie called his thanks, but John Sempill suddenly roused himself to say,

‘Right, Livingstone, you can tell the Provost I’ll be at home if he wants me, and you two wi me,’ he flung over his shoulder at his two men. ‘Philip, what are you doing?’

‘I’m for the Castle,’ said his cousin. ‘They’ll be glad of the extra hands, I’d think, to get this fellow into custody.’

‘Aye, well, if you’d let me put him on a rope you’d ha no need to worry,’ retorted Sempill, and clattered off into the night towards Rottenrow, his men behind him. Lowrie watched him go, lit by the lanterns on successive house-corners, and said to Philip, ‘Likely we’ll deal better without him, but we might need his witness about the property and the silver mine.’

‘He might prefer not to give it,’ said Alys. Philip made no comment. ‘Luke, leave your horse with Tam and go on home, and you can tell them where we are.’

‘What, here on the Stablegreen?’ said Luke blankly, and she realized the boy was nearly asleep, and Berthold was completely comatose in Tam’s grasp.

‘We’ll be at the Castle,’ she said. ‘Go on now, and tell them in the kitchen to put some food aside for me.’

Andrew Otterburn, roused from a domestic evening by his own fireside, was at first startled to be presented with a half-naked prisoner, but when he grasped who the man might be he was delighted.

‘We’ll get someone to identify him,’ he said, as Miller was manhandled away across the courtyard, struggling as fiercely as he had done outside St Machan’s. ‘The trouble the Clerk’s Land folk have caused me the day, it’s no pain to me to get one o them out to put a name to this fellow. Walter, see to it, will you, and see these beasts baited. And find someone that speaks High Dutch and all, maybe speir at the College if there’s none o the men.’

‘Or send to my father,’ suggested Alys. Walter nodded and hurried off.

‘And who’s the laddie, anyway?’ asked the Provost.

‘It’s a long tale,’ said Lowrie. ‘May we sit down? And might we beg a bite to eat? The laddie’s likely fasting since this morning, and the rest of us, well, it’s long while since dinner.’

‘Aye, come up, come up to my chamber and we’ll see to it,’ said Otterburn, but Alys was not listening. Socrates had pricked his ears and rushed away across the courtyard. Light shifted under the arch of the gatehouse, hasty feet echoed, and a tall figure with a lantern emerged into the torchlight, paused to look about, and made straight for where she stood, the dog dancing round him. Gil had come for her.

Neither of them spoke. A quick smile, a searching look exchanged in the torchlight, and they turned to follow Otterburn, hands brushing lightly back to back. But suddenly she felt she could go on for as long again.

The tale took a while. Food appeared, bread and cold meat and the remains of an onion tart, with a huge jug of ale; she ate, the jug went round, and Lowrie embarked on a competent and precise account of what had passed that day. Otterburn listened well, she thought. He asked a few pertinent questions, called Frank in to explain his part. That was when she realized that she and Gil, Lowrie and Philip Sempill, were the only ones in the Provost’s chamber; the servants and the boy Berthold had been left in the antechamber.

‘Have the men something to eat?’ she asked, interrupting Frank’s account of the capture of their prisoner. A grin spread across his face.

‘Our Lady love you, mistress, aye, we have. Much what you have here,’ he nodded at the laden tray, ‘so long as that greedy Sim hasny finished it afore I’m done here.’

‘Get on wi your tale, then,’ said the Provost, ‘and you’ll catch up wi him the sooner.’

‘Aye well, it’s soon ended,’ admitted Frank, ‘for that’s about all. Save for the man getting loose again, and Mistress Mason here capturing him. And then-’

‘I did not!’ she protested. Gil leaned away to look down at her, concern in his face. Socrates, sprawled across their feet, raised his head, then went back to sleep. ‘It was all of you took and bound him.’

‘Aye, once you’d fell on him and winded him,’ said Frank admiringly. ‘A neat trick that, mistress, I’d like to ken who taught you it.’

‘The drop-dead trick,’ she explained to Gil. He nodded, and she saw she would not get to sleep tonight without giving him a complete tale.

‘Then we stripped the man Miller, while he was in his swound,’ said Lowrie, ‘and while Sempill of Muirend set to questioning him I made an inventory of his goods, and found this in his spoirean.’ He drew the blue velvet purse from the breast of his doublet, and leaned to set it on the desk before Otterburn. The Provost looked at it gloomily for a long moment.

‘Well, well,’ he said finally to Gil. ‘Here’s us searching Glasgow and the Gallowgate, putting a watch on the ports, crying the fellow at the Cross, and your lassie falls on him out the sky and fetches him home.’

Gil’s arm was round her again. ‘I’d expect no less.’

Otterburn looked at them both with the hint of a smile, but all he said was,

‘And John Sempill questioned him, did he? What did he learn fro the man?’

‘Little,’ said Lowrie. ‘He denies all, or answers nothing.’

‘It’s a great pity John isny here to tell us himself,’ observed Gil.

‘He went home,’ said Alys. ‘I thought,’ she said slowly, assembling her recollections, ‘I thought he knew the man. When he asked his name, the man said, You’re asking me? As if he was surprised. And even before that, Sempill was very determined to hang him out of hand. He was very angry when we insisted on bringing him here to justice.’

Otterburn’s gaze went from her to Gil, and then to Philip Sempill, while Lowrie said,

‘You could be right at that, mistress.’

Philip said nothing, but his face darkened in the candlelight under Otterburn’s steady stare. After a moment the Provost said, raising his voice a little,

‘Right, Walter, how’re you getting on wi those tasks I set you?’

His clerk stepped in from the antechamber, looking smug.

‘It’s the man Miller right enough, maister,’ he said, ‘named afore witnesses and writ down on oath. As for what he swore he’d do to the woman that named him, well, it’s as well her Scots isny that good.’

‘She understood what she swore to?’ said Gil sharply.

‘I’m no caring,’ said Otterburn over Walter’s assurances. ‘She’s sworn and that’s that. And the interpreter?’

The interpreter proved to be one of the men-at-arms, a sturdy fairish man introduced as Lappy, which surely must be a nickname. He claimed he had spent time at the wars in High Germany and learned some of the language. Alys had doubts about the man’s vocabulary, but Berthold, roused and brought through, understood the first questions put to him clearly enough. The boy seemed so stunned by the events of the day that he did not react with surprise, but nor did he answer. A spate of words tumbled out, clearly a question of his own, and another.

‘Haud on!’ said the interpreter. ‘I’m no that fast.’ He paused, putting the words into Scots. ‘He’s asking, maister, what o his faither and his uncle, when are they to be buried, will he can get to the burial? Is that right, they’re dead?’

‘Tell him,’ said Otterburn, before Alys could speak, ‘if he answers my questions, I’ll see about it. Then ask him again why he’s in Scotland and what they were doing.’

The boy’s eyes turned to Otterburn, then to Alys. He spoke to Lappy, sounding surprised.

‘He says, did the other man no tell you? It was him called them here, he thinks, and him that gave them orders.’

‘Other man,’ said Otterburn flatly. ‘Does he mean the man Miller? The prisoner?’

‘Nein, nein!’ said Berthold as Lappy translated. ‘Der böse Mann!’ He pulled an angry, sulky face.

‘John Sempill!’ said Alys and Lowrie together.

‘I’m feart he’s right,’ said Philip.