The Counterfeit Madam

Chapter Fourteen

‘I’d not expected you so early,’ said Otterburn with faint irony. ‘How’s Mistress Mason the day?’

‘Weary.’ Gil grimaced.

He had not slept well, despite fatigue and the late night; conversations of the day had replayed themselves over and over in his head, while Alys breathed slowly beside him. This morning she was tired, stiff and cross, and dealing with a crisis in the kitchen. She had shown no interest in explaining to her father and Ealasaidh, who were agog to hear them, any of the details of her day in Strathblane. It had been left to Gil to convey the gist of her adventures and their results, with an account of the midnight interview with Sempill and Lady Magdalen. Ealasaidh had been first amused and then shocked, crying out in disapproval of Dame Isabella’s behaviour. Maistre Pierre had listened more carefully, taking particular note of one or two points, and then frowned at Gil.

‘Better this way,’ he said.

‘Och, yes, better indeed. But to be stirring trouble in the Isles!’ said Ealasaidh. ‘And her no kin to any of the folk there! That is simple badness, though I suppose,’ she added darkly, ‘it would be all you would expect of an immodest woman like that.’

Gil nodded.

‘I wish McIan was still here,’ he said. ‘He might make me understand how things are out to the West.’

‘No, no,’ said Ealasaidh seriously, ‘there is no understanding it, for as soon as it is settled, they are changing what they ask for.’

‘But do you think the old woman’s scheme will have had any success?’

‘No knowing at all,’ she said. ‘Money is not a thing they are using much, it might have made no difference at all.’

He had called briefly on his uncle, to give him the end of the tale, though he had skimmed over Alys’s Straunge Aduenture. Canon Cunningham’s reaction had been similar to Maistre Pierre’s.

‘We would certainly have had to question everyone in the matter,’ he agreed. ‘Better this way, without letting the light of day into everyone’s inmost thoughts. Indeed, Gilbert, almost one might say the old — dame had been executed ahead of her trial, it comes so convenient for the Crown.’

‘So one might,’ agreed Gil. His uncle shot him a sharp look.

‘As to this mad scheme of hers, to destabilize the Isles, I never heard of such a thing. Rank treason, at least in intent. I very much doubt whether it would have succeeded,’ he pronounced.

Now Otterburn was saying much the same thing.

‘No saying it would have worked. It’s a barter market out there, little enough coin changes hands.’

‘Aye, but the whole chain leaked,’ Gil said. ‘It was the coin getting away every time a purse moved that worried Blacader and the Treasury. It seems as if they kent it was going out to the Isles, but not where it was coming from, till we started digging here in Glasgow.’

‘Did they now?’ Otterburn was shuffling papers on his desk. ‘Aye, here we are. You might like a sight o my report, and then you can have a read at the man Miller’s deposition. Oh, and his Christian name, maister, you’ll never guess, I might as well tell you straight, is Hilary. What were his parents thinking on? No wonder he stuck wi his surname or his by-name! We got a confession off him for Dod Muir, seeing we had witnesses a plenty, and he’s admitted to the two miners wi a bit persuasion, well, one o them, he swears the other was an accident, but him and Noll Campbell both are determined neither of them slew Dame Isabella. How did ye get the blue velvet purse then, I asked him, and he says, She gied me it hersel. For all his hard work, he says. Can you credit it?’

Well, yes, I can, thought Gil, skimming Walter’s neatly scribed copy of the report to the Archbishop. It was a masterpiece of suppression and suggestion, and would fit neatly with his own; he was glad to see that Alys’s adventure and her part in the arrest of Miller was one of the items suppressed here too. Pride in her achievements was one thing, bringing these to the attention of senior churchmen was another. As for Dame Isabella, better to have her murdered by a passing counterfeiter than to put what really happened onto paper where anyone might read it.

‘And I’ve a couple o the lads down the Gallowgate now wi one o the clerks,’ Otterburn continued, ‘asking about among the neighbours to see if they can find out why they were all so feart for the man. We might clear up a couple more matters while we’re about it.’

‘So how many have you held, in the end?’ Gil asked.

‘It’s in there.’

‘What, no others? Miller, Saunders and Noll Campbell. You’ve let the women go? And the miners’ laddie?’

‘Oh, him!’ said Otterburn. ‘Aye, young Livingstone came by afore Sext, wi a tale of escorting the laddie out to see his kin put in the ground, so I released him into his hands, for there’s no reasonable charge I could bring against him. The deil kens what Livingstone will do wi him, but he’s no my problem any more. As for the women in the case! Sic a weeping and wailing as you never heard, and that bairn screaming and all, I bade them begone. Likely they were in the conspiracy and all, but it was their men did the work and broke the laws o Scotland.’

‘And the gallowglass?’

‘Could talk his way out o a locked kist,’ said Otterburn. ‘No, no, I’m happy wi what I’ve got, maister, and so will the justiciars be when the time comes. Save only that I’ve to hold them and feed them till then,’ he added gloomily, ‘but I might get that past wi the other expenses. Oh, that Ersche leear woman that was in the Tolbooth, I’ve sent to the Serjeant to set her free and all.’

Gil compressed his lips, reluctant to say what he was thinking. After a moment he said instead,

‘I see the House of the Mermaiden is empty again.’

‘Is that right?’ Otterburn’s close-set gaze was expressionless. ‘Walter did say he’d seen wagons loading at the door. I dare say their prices was too dear for Glasgow. Make someone a handsome dwelling, that would, save for the price of getting a new door put on.’

‘Easy enough to turn that one, hang it the other way. What about John Sempill?’

‘What about him? That wife o his, she minds you o an alabaster weeper on a tomb, but she’s fair got him muzzled. How does she do it? He was feart to answer our questions for what she’d think o him.’

‘Will you charge him, do you think?’

‘That’s a matter for the Crown,’ said Otterburn regretfully. ‘But I’ll tell you, whether they fine him or charge him wi treason, if the land the mine’s on really does belong to Livingstone o Craigannet, then by what his son was telling me when he fetched young Berthold away, Sempill’s got more to worry him than what his wife thinks about it. Archie Livingstone’s no one to let another man get credit for what’s his. I’d say the Stirling men of law will eat well this winter.’

Dissatisfied, but unable to work out why, Gil went out into the busy Sunday morning of the burgh. Families passed him coming from hearing Mass at St Mungo’s, apprentices, journeymen and maidservants were setting out to enjoy a day off, even the weather seemed on holiday with bright sunshine broken only by a few clouds. He drifted down the Drygate among the crowds, past the two silent tofts to Canon Aiken’s house.

Here he found Lowrie absent but the young man’s uncle present, with plenty to say and a jug of Malvoisie to say it over.

‘I tell you, I’m sorry I ever ordered a coffin for the auld carline,’ the older Livingstone admitted, filling Gil’s glass. ‘If I’d kent all she’s been at, she could ha gone into the ground in her shift for all I cared, never mind her shroud! But it’s ordered and paid for, so she might as well make use o’t. So it was your bonnie lass jaloused it was a mine out at Ballencleroch? My, she’s an accomplished one. Does she keep a good household and all?’

‘Oh, she does,’ said Gil, with a fleeting thought of this morning’s discordant breakfast. ‘A generous kitchen, and rarely a cross word.’

‘She’s no sisters, I suppose?’ said Livingstone hopefully. ‘No, the best ones never do. Some more o this wine, maister. And it seems it was the counterfeiter that slew Isabella when she put an end to the scheme? Aye, well, he’d have the eye and the hand to strike the nail home, I can believe it right enough, for all young Lowrie says the man’s denying it.’

‘He’ll hang for Dod Muir,’ said Gil as he had done before.

‘Fortunate for us, though,’ said Livingstone thoughtfully, ‘that he slew her when he did, for if the matter had got out and she’d gone to trial at the Justice Ayre, everyone round her would ha been drawn in, me and my brother questioned as to whether we’d kent what she was at and whether we’d benefited from the coin she was having struck. And me a past moneyer and all! I’d never ha lived it down.’

‘Fortunate indeed,’ agreed Gil, and took another sip of the wine.

‘And her household back here yestreen, all but that Marion or Forveleth or whatever she’s cried. I don’t know what to do wi them, they’ll follow her coffin all in black to make a decent show, but once she’s in the ground they’ll have to take what she’s left them and go. I’d send them to Lady Magdalen, but she’ll likely no be hiring new people for a while, by what you say. Quite the contrary, indeed.’

‘Indeed,’ Gil agreed. He set the glass down and leaned forward. ‘Maister Livingstone, I’ve another matter to consult you on.’

The hall of the White Castle was surprisingly crowded. It contained Lowrie, studiously conversing with Socrates, and Maistre Pierre speaking High Dutch with the boy Berthold; but it also contained the woman Forveleth, standing near the kitchen door in her stained and filthy clothing, her bundle at her feet, and Ealasaidh, tall and threatening in front of her. These two were hissing at one another in venomous Ersche while Alys attempted to reason with both in Scots. Gil took all this in, nodded to Lowrie, and went quietly to join Catherine where she sat at the hearth, her fingers busy at her eternal handwork while her black eyes flicked from one group to another.

‘Que passe, madame?’ he asked, sitting down beside her. She greeted him formally, and said, choosing her words carefully,

‘There is some objection to the presence of that woman in our kitchen.’

‘Objection?’ Gil was used to the level of charity exercised under Maistre Pierre’s roof. This did not appear to match it. ‘Why?’

‘I think she may have caused offence previously. It is hardly a guest’s place to order her out, but the matter ought to be resolved. Since our maistre will not intervene, it would be proper for you to do so.’

‘Do you think so?’

She nodded significantly. ‘Someone should support la jeune madame.’

Maistre Pierre was still as studiously intent on his conversation with Berthold as Lowrie was on his with the dog. Clearly, though he might not support Ealasaidh, he was not going to support his daughter. A sudden uneasy suspicion struck Gil, and he looked at Catherine in dismay. She nodded again.

‘She will need your help, maistre l’avocat.’

She certainly will, he thought, bracing himself. Catherine gave him an approving smile and returned her attention to the long trail of lace, or braid, or whatever it was, which hung from her twisted hands. He rose and crossed the room to join the argument.

It was easier than he had feared it might be to soothe matters for the moment. The Ersche argument ceased as he approached, both women looking warily at him.

‘Good day to you, Forveleth,’ he said casually. ‘The Provost told me he had ordered you set free. Have they fed you in the kitchen? Is that what brought you here?’

‘They would have fed me,’ said Forveleth resentfully, ‘but this one was ordering them to throw me in the street, and not listen to their mistress, though I said I had a word for her, and now she will not let me speak.’

‘I don’t know why she would do that,’ Gil said, raising his eyebrows at Ealasaidh. ‘It’s my wife runs this house, it’s her kitchen, she is well able to decide for herself who’ll be fed there and who she’ll speak to.’

‘This one is a fool and a false speaker,’ said Ealasaidh, her rich Scots vocabulary deserting her for the moment. ‘I was wishing only to protect the lassie from her, the way she would be taking advantage.’

‘I’m grateful for your consideration, I’ve told you that,’ said Alys, her exasperation well concealed, ‘but I can use my own judgement, you’ve no need to protect me.’

‘I meant for the best.’

‘I’m certain of that,’ agreed Gil, ‘but you’ve no need to concern yourself. Go down to the kitchen, Forveleth, and see if they can let you clean yourself up, and then maybe we can all dine soon.’ He looked hopefully at Alys. She smiled rather too brightly and said,

‘We’d all be glad to eat. Go and wash, Forveleth, as my husband says, and bid them come up to set the table if you would.’

‘And after dinner,’ Gil went on as the woman slipped away down the kitchen stair, ‘you and I and Lowrie will go down to visit Kate. Lowrie promised to tell the wee girls if there was news of the false coiners.’

‘Well, it was the younger one I promised,’ Lowrie said over dinner. ‘Ysonde, is that her name? A strong-minded lassie. She was very insistent I came back,’ he explained to Alys.

‘She would be,’ Alys said.

‘Now, this boy Berthold,’ said Maistre Pierre. He glanced at Ealasaidh, eating her dinner in a haughty silence, and went on, ‘He tells me he has no kin left in Germany, and no wish to go home for now. He seems a good laddie, though not of the cleverest, but I think he knows little about stone, for a miner’s son, and he is clumsy with his hands.’

‘So not a mason’s prentice, then,’ said Gil.

‘No. I did think of it, when you told me of the boy this morning, but he would not do. He may stay here till he learns enough Scots to get by,’ he offered, ‘but then you have to find him a position. He makes a good servant, perhaps. He likes horses. I help you to some of this mould, madame,’ he added to Ealasaidh, who accepted the gesture without speaking.

Gil glanced past Forveleth who was talking to Jennet, to Berthold seated at the foot of the board, apparently asking Luke for the names of one item after another on the table. Near them, on Nancy’s lap, John shouted the words after them.

‘A resilient laddie,’ he said. ‘He should do well wherever he settles.’

‘I’d thought much the same,’ said Lowrie. ‘But someone needs to have a care to him for now.’ He held out his wooden trencher for Maistre Pierre to transfer a slice of the kale mould with powdered ginger, and added reflectively, ‘He might teach me High Dutch. It’s clear to me it’s a good thing for a man to speak more tongues than his own.’

‘Cloth,’ said Luke at the foot of the table.

‘C-lof?’ essayed Berthold. ‘Coff!’ echoed John.

‘Quite so,’ said Gil.

Lady Kate’s stepdaughters were not at home. John and Lowrie were probably equally disappointed, Gil thought as he introduced Lowrie to Kate’s husband, but John was the more vociferous about it.

‘Onnyanny?’ he demanded. ‘Where Onnyanny?’

‘Hush, John,’ said Nancy without effect. ‘Don’t wake the wee baba.’

‘They’ve gone for a walk,’ Kate explained across Edward’s cradle. ‘They won’t be long. They’ve gone to put flowers on their own mammy’s grave,’ she added for Lowrie’s benefit. ‘It’s a pleasant walk on a fine day and Nan has kin in the Greyfriars yard as well.’

‘Come and sit down,’ Augie Morison invited, waving at the wide, sunny window space where Kate’s great chair was set, ‘and tell us the truth of what we’re hearing. There surely canny be a silver mine in the Gallowgate!’

‘It’s yersel, Mistress Alys, Maister Gil.’ Kate’s gigantic maidservant Babb appeared from the kitchen stair, a tray in her hands. ‘And what’s this I’m hearing?’ She hooked a stool into place with her ankle and set the tray on it, nodding at Lowrie who had leapt to help. Alys expertly distracted John, who had appeared at her knee reaching for the cakes, by breaking one in half and putting a portion in each little hand, then lifted the platter to put it out of the boy’s reach. Babb looked down at her. ‘Did I hear you might be flitting, mistress?’

‘What?’ said Kate, astonished.

‘Cake John. Two cake, John!’

‘Where will you go?’ Augie looked from Gil to Alys. ‘When did you think of it?’

‘This morning,’ said Gil. ‘No more than thought on, and we’ve never mentioned it aloud, have we, Alys?’

‘Oh,’ said Babb in disappointment. ‘Your Jennet was saying when I saw her at the Greyfriars, when I went to hear Mass, she thought you’d be out o there soon.’

‘I must have a word with Jennet,’ said Alys. ‘No, we have no plans to leave soon, only I have thought of a bigger house and our own household.’

‘Aye, you’d be well to,’ agreed Babb. ‘Your own roof, and that.’

‘Thank you, Babb,’ said Kate. ‘Hand the cakes and ale, and you can go back to talk to Ursel.’

‘Do I no get to hear all the news?’ Babb asked, offended. ‘I want to hear how Mistress Alys fought wi the man that slew that old woman in the Drygate!’

She listened better than some of their hearers had done, Gil thought, with a few exclamations and muttered words of praise, but no interruptions. Kate and her husband also heard their tale with attention, much amused by the midnight interview, but Kate grew more puzzled as the account lengthened.

‘Aye, you’re a warrior, lassie, right enough!’ said Babb at the end, taking her leave to convey the news all hot to the kitchen. It seemed to be a compliment. ‘What a tale, is it no, mem!’

‘What an adventure!’ said Augie. ‘So the mine’s in Strathblane, is it? You never think of such a thing in a place like that.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Kate.

‘Onnyanny!’ announced John, waving his toy horse. ‘Onnyanny have cake.’

Out across the yard the smaller leaf of the great gates swung open and the two little girls came through with their nurse.

‘He must have heard them, mem,’ said Nancy proudly. The girls tumbled into the house, stopped at the sight of the guests, made their curtsies when prompted by Nan. Ysonde sprang up from hers and launched herself in glee at Lowrie.

‘You came back!’ she said, while her sister went shyly to her father’s side. ‘You said you’d come to tell us about the dusty man. Is it all made right now? Is he in prison for making the false pennies?’

‘He is,’ agreed Lowrie. ‘He’s a very bad man, so he deserves to be put in prison.’

She leaned against his knee, ignoring John’s cries of ‘Have cake!’

‘Tell me! Tell Wynliane too,’ she added generously.

Under cover of the distribution of cakes and Lowrie’s restricted version of the tale, Kate said again,

‘It doesny make sense. Why would the man Miller kill Dame Isabella?’

‘No,’ agreed Gil. ‘But he was quick to kill at other times. The man Muir, the miners. He clearly has a reputation for violence.’

‘No, Gil,’ she said. ‘That’s a good story to send Blacader and to tell the justiciars, but what really happened?’

‘Kate’s right,’ said Augie. ‘What did he gain?’

‘What did he gain by killing Dod Muir?’ Gil countered.

‘That was in anger, surely,’ objected Kate. ‘Did you no tell us Dame Isabella was killed in cold blood, by someone who went in to her ready armed? Why would Miller plan to do that?’

‘Miller,’ said Alys thoughtfully, ‘never wore a plaid, in any of the accounts we have heard.’ She looked at Kate. ‘There was a sighting of someone leaving the courtyard of the house, wrapped in a great dark cloak or gown or the like,’ she quoted. ‘That’s hardly how I would describe Miller as I saw him either.’

‘So does either of you believe it?’ Kate demanded. Gil looked at her in exasperation.

‘It’s what I’ll report,’ he said firmly. ‘As for your question, consider who else she was a danger to if she’d carried on as she was.’

‘Sempill?’ Kate said. ‘He was our aunt Margaret’s stepson, I mind him from her wedding.’

‘I’ve dealt wi him,’ said Augie unexpectedly. ‘I’d not think it was him. If he saw a threat coming I’d be gey surprised, though he wouldny want the Treasury looking closely into his affairs.’

‘Which of us would?’ Gil said. Lowrie was now entertaining the little girls with riddles. I hope he’ll teach them nothing unseemly, he thought.

‘Sempill was elsewhere when she died,’ said Alys.

‘The Crown? Was she executed for her treason? Without a trial?’

‘I suspect she was executed to prevent her coming to trial,’ Gil said. ‘Everyone connected to her and her scheme would have been drawn in.’ As Otterburn said, as my uncle said. How close was he working with Blacader’s agent? Did everyone in Glasgow know about it but me?

‘Which reminds me,’ said Alys improbably. ‘I have seen the painted chamber in the bawdy-house.’

‘What?’ said Kate. ‘How did you — no, no, I won’t ask. What like are they? He wouldny tell me,’ she jerked her head at Gil. ‘Are they as naughty as they say?’

‘No, nothing like that. I thought they were bonnie,’ said Alys, ‘very well painted and cheerful subjects, love and the muses and springtime and the like. I can’t believe that Lady Magdalen wanted us to whitewash over them.’

Kate laughed.

‘Gil told me that. She was aye a serious one, very pious as a lassie, by what my mother once said o her.’ She stopped, looking from Alys to Gil. ‘Ah. Oh! Is that it? No, she wouldny want to come to the law’s attention if that’s the case, would she?’ Gil nodded. ‘But Otterburn gave her no grief?’

‘He seemed sympathetic,’ Gil said cautiously.

Augie was looking puzzled; he always had trouble with the allusive nature of Cunningham exchanges, and this one must not be brought out in the open. Kate could tell him later, Gil thought. Magdalen Boyd would be safe enough, so long as her religious beliefs stayed outside the scrutiny of the law. Lollards, who preached against Holy Kirk, who believed that the saints were no more than idols and ordinary people could speak direct to God, were harmless enough provided they kept themselves to themselves. But they all had an unfortunate tendency to make their ideas public when questioned, and that could only end in tears and torture, and probably in flames as well.

I would kill to protect those I love, he thought. But I hope I would be less detached about it than Sandy Boyd.

‘You could always come with me to see the house by daylight,’ Alys was saying. ‘Now it’s empty, I want a longer look.’

‘So you are thinking of moving?’ Kate allowed herself to be diverted from the other topic. ‘I thought you were comfortable enough here in the High Street.’

‘Gil is to take an assistant,’ Alys announced. ‘We will need more room, if we are to have our own household.’

‘An assistant? What, an apprentice? Who will it be?’

‘An apprentice quaestor,’ Gil said thoughtfully. ‘I hate to think what we’d put in the indentures. Promise to teach the aforesaid all the mysteries of the craft, as, inspecting bodies, detecting poisons, studying wounds.’

‘Asking impertinent questions,’ Kate supplied, laughing.

‘Nosing about,’ said Alys, obviously quoting somebody.

‘And all the other ways of clearing innocent names,’ said Augie with feeling. Kate sobered, and put out her hand to him, and Gil said,

‘No, merely an assistant, to help me with the work and to train as a notary forbye. It’s Lowrie here. That’s why I brought him down the now, to introduce him.’

Lowrie looked up, smiled, accepted their good wishes. Augie poured more ale, and they drank a toast to the future and the signing of the contract. John and his wooden horse had galloped off across the wide hall, but Wynliane and Ysonde watched with interest.

‘What’s it for?’ Ysonde asked Lowrie, tugging at his sleeve.

‘I’m to serve Maister Gil,’ he explained, ‘and learn to be a man of law.’

‘Is it a good potition?’

‘A good position? One of the best,’ he assured her seriously.

‘That’s good. Then when I’m old enough, you can marry me, and I can help to catch bad men too. Will we do that?’

Her parents and nurse exclaimed at her forwardness; Gil covered a grin and avoided Alys’s eye; but Lowrie, flying scarlet at the ears, sat down again and held out his hand.

‘If your parents permit, and you’re still of the same mind, when you are old enough I’ll wed you.’

She put her hand in his.

‘I won’t change my mind,’ she said. ‘So they’d better.’ She leaned against his knee and smiled at the company. ‘That’s all right, then.’