The Counterfeit Madam

Chapter Seven

‘I’m no right certain I can do that, mem,’ said Jennet, pausing with the brush in her hand and Alys’s light brown riding-dress in the other. ‘I never met the lassie, how can I get talking wi her?’

‘The same way you talk to any other lass you meet at the pump or the market,’ Alys suggested. ‘You all bring home news daily, some of it must come from folk you’ve never spoken wi before.’ Jennet looked dubious, and applied herself to brushing the garment. After a moment Alys went on, ‘But if you’re not sure you can manage it, I’ll take one of the other lassies with me. Nancy, maybe, or perhaps Kittock would like to get out for a bit.’

‘Nancy!’ repeated Jennet. ‘She’s never let a word past her lips she doesny need to, the soul. She’d as soon find out what you want to ken as soar to the moon!’ She stopped, staring at her mistress, and began to laugh. ‘Aye, you’re a fly one. Very well, mem, I’ll try it. But no blame to me if it doesny work, right?’

‘Right,’ agreed Alys, ‘so you may help me into the blue broadcloth, and then we will go out to the Drygate.’

They set out shortly, Alys in the good blue broadcloth and her second-best Flemish hood, Jennet with a clean apron tied on over her striped kirtle, both of them wrapped in plaids against the chill drizzle and mounted on sturdy wooden pattens against the mud.

‘I wish May Da was past,’ complained Jennet, pulling her plaid over her head. ‘It’s no that cold for April, but the rain! We’ll all get washed away.’

Alys made no answer, thinking of the May Day two years since when she had first spoken to Gil. It did not seem so long — or else, she thought, we’ve known one another for ever. She set off up the High Street, nodding and smiling to acquaintances. There went Maister Hamilton their neighbour, large and imposing in his Deacon’s gown with the black velvet facings. How glad he must have been that Agnes his wife had seen him in it before she died. The two men with him did not seem to be his journeymen.

The wright and his two companions were still ahead of them when they turned into the Drygate. Alys was peering through the drizzle, trying to make out which pend they were making for, when Jennet broke off her account of something John had done to say,

‘Mistress, here’s the potyngar’s wife calling after you.’

She turned, startled, to see that they had just passed the shop where the Forrest brothers purveyed apothecary goods and other items to the Upper Town. Christian Bothwell, the new wife of the younger brother, was hurrying towards her, calling her name.

‘Mistress Mason! Alys! A moment, will you?’

‘Christian!’ She put out her hands. ‘How good to see you. Are you well?’

‘I’m well. And you, lassie?’ Christian stopped in front of her, a stocky woman in a new gown of tawny woollen, staring earnestly at her face, and took a firm grip of her hands. ‘Have you a moment? I’ve a thing to tell you, we think your man ought to hear of.’

Both brothers were in the shop, serving a very stout cleric whom Alys did not recognize, their manner confidential. All three paused as the women shed their pattens and went past them, and though Adam smiled at his wife he did not speak; only when Christian led the way through into the house and closed the door did the low voices start again.

‘In here,’ said Christian, and opened another door. ‘They’ll no hear us, or we them. He’s come all the way fro Paisley to consult,’ she divulged. ‘Little point, for he’ll not listen to the first advice any potyngar will give him.’

Seated by the window of the little parlour with its view of the Drygate, she put aside a tray of wizened roots which she had obviously been sorting, gave Alys another earnest look and said,

‘It’s maybe no connected, but we talked o this last night, and then the day-’ She paused, and visibly put her thoughts in order. ‘We’d a gathering yestreen, see, all the potyngars o Glasgow.’

Alys nodded. There were three apothecary businesses in the burgh: Syme in the High Street dealt with the luxury end of the trade, selling cosmetics and spices and exotic candies, this shop sold herbs and spices and medicaments, and a hair-dye which some of Canon Cunningham’s colleagues found very useful, and Christian’s brother Nanty Bothwell still ran the booth by the Tolbooth which served the lower town and the suburbs across the river. The three households were close, mainly as a result of the traumatic events six months since when James Syme had inherited his business.

‘And Jimmy was talking about how he’d sold a package of goods, yesterday morn,’ Christian went on, ‘to one of the servants of the woman that’s slain, away along the Drygate here.’

‘That is so,’ agreed Alys. ‘Our lad Luke told me he had spoken to Maister Syme of it, too.’

‘Aye, and the laddie thought there were two men about the errand,’ Christian said. They obviously discussed it thoroughly, thought Alys. ‘And being Jimmy, he gave us a list of all what was in the package,’ She looked away and enumerated on her fingers, ‘Root ginger, cloves, flowers of sulphur, senna-pods, rhubarb, and anise laxative. Aye, that’s right. And a wee bottle of Jimmy’s restorative for the hair, she’d a done better wi ours, it works far quicker and doesny smell as bad.’

‘Yes, but what-’ Alys began. Further into the house a child laughed: Wat, the older brother, and his wife had one child, who had survived the measles last winter. What was it like, she wondered fleetingly, to share a household, two women in a kitchen, two men overseeing the accounts?

‘Wait and I’ll tell you. My brother, when he heard that, he said, Was it wrapped in the ordinary white paper, or another sort? And Jimmy said, Aye, a new sort, we’ve just taen a delivery of paper and it’s more a kind o yellowy colour.’ This did not sound like Syme’s phrasing, but Alys made no comment. ‘And my brother, he said, So that’s where she had it. It seems there was some Ersche lassie trying to return just sic a package at his booth, wrapped in this kind o yellowy paper, wanting the money back.’

‘When? What did she look like?’ Alys asked. Christian shrugged.

‘Nanty wasny very plain about it. Nor he never said what she was like, other than being Ersche. Sometime the afternoon, I’d say. He turned her away,’ she added.

‘That is interesting,’ said Alys. ‘And useful. My thanks, Christian, and I will tell my husband when he-’

‘Aye, but there’s more,’ said Christian bluntly. ‘We talked o that, and wondered a bit, but what sent me out when I saw you passing,’ she nodded at the window, ‘was, we had another one in here the day wi the selfsame package, or else one gey like it.’

‘In here?’

‘Aye. Yellowish paper, folded the way Jimmy does, no the way my brother does, the contents being ginger, cloves, flower o sulphur, rhubarb, anise lax, senna, and a bottle o Jimmy’s hair restorative.’

‘Did you know her?’ Alys asked. ‘Was it the same lassie?’

‘It was no lassie, it was Barabal Campbell fro Clerk’s Land down the road here,’ Christian jerked a disparaging thumb eastward, ‘forty if she’s a day, borne six weans, and a digestion like a washhouse boiler, never a day’s trouble wi her belly says Adam though she’s been here afore wi women’s troubles. So we neither o us believed her tale about it being something she’d bought earlier and needed none of. We turned her away and all.’

‘From Clerk’s Land,’ said Alys thoughtfully. ‘That would fit well. My thanks, Christian, and I know Gil will be grateful for this.’

‘Is that the lassie that’s taken up for murder?’ asked Jennet with interest. ‘I wonder she never took it all back to Maister Syme, if she wanted rid o’t. Or threw it in the mill-burn.’

‘Aye, we wondered the same,’ agreed Christian, ‘but it was the man that purchased the goods, and the lassie trying to return it yesterday, so maybe he’d not told her which apothecary it was or that it was all on the slate and no paid for.’

‘Or not told her right,’ agreed Jennet.

‘And now the people at Clerk’s Land have it,’ said Alys. ‘Or did, this morning.’ And where was Gil, she wondered. He should know of this. Had he reached Clerk’s Land himself yet?

There was no sign of him as they passed the head of the toft. Alys paused in the drizzle, considering the muddy path past the pewterer’s house, and two children at the door ceased their squabbling to watch her. No other adults were visible, though loud angry male voices were audible from beyond the buildings, including Maister Hamilton in full cry. So that was where he was bound, she thought, and moved on.

Averting her eyes modestly from the mermaid on the door of the next house and wishing she could study it, she stepped up the fore-stair of the house beyond it and rattled at the pin. Behind her Jennet drew an apprehensive breath, and she said quietly,

‘Never fear, lass, it’s just to get talking wi the girl. Good day to you,’ she went on as the door opened, to reveal a maidservant as neat as any of her own. ‘Is Maister Fleming within? Or your mistress? I’d like to talk about some blankets.’

An hour later, striking the bargain with Maister Fleming for a dozen blankets of new wool, with a further half-dozen of half size for John’s planned trundle-bed, she felt that the afternoon was not wasted whatever Jennet had learned.

‘And a pleasure to do business wi a lady that kens her own mind,’ said Maister Fleming. ‘I aye say to my wife, if the customer kens what she wants, we can weave it to her. If she canny tell me, I canny tell my weavers. You’ve a note o all that, Jaik?’ he added to his apprentice, solemn at the tall desk with a pair of tablets in his hand.

‘Very true, maister,’ agreed Alys. ‘And I wanted the best, so I came to you.’ They smiled at one another, pleased with this exchange of compliments. ‘I’m sure you must supply the whole of the Upper Town,’ she went on, ‘though I think that was no customer of yours that died so strangely the other day.’

‘Oh! A dreadful business,’ declared Maister Fleming. He was a brisk, middling-sized, competent man, stripped to his doublet for the task of showing the samples to a customer; now he cracked the last one, folded it neatly with the apprentice who hurried to help, stowed it back on the rack, and lifted his short gown. ‘And comes closer to home than I’d care for,’ he admitted. ‘There’s one of my lassies, a good worker and a right promising weaver, has hardly thrown a pick these two days, for she’s taken it into her head it was some laddie she’s a notion to that slew the old woman. And I don’t have to tell you, mistress, if one lassie’s dowy, the rest’s sure to be infected. I hardly dare step into the weaving-shed the now.’

‘Oh!’ said Alys, unable to believe her good fortune. ‘Maister Fleming, is that by any chance a girl called Bess Wilkie?’

‘Aye, it is, that’s her name,’ he said, holding the door open for her.

‘If I might have a word wi her,’ she said hopefully, ‘I may be able to cheer her, and I think she might be able to tell me something useful as well.’ She saw his blank look. ‘My husband is investigating the death,’ she pointed out, ‘as the Archbishop’s quaestor.’

‘Oh, aye, I’d forgot that,’ he said, preceding her to the stairs. ‘Come away up to the hall, mistress, and we’ll send for the lass. No, I was thinking you’re ordering all this for your father’s household, I wasny thinking o your man at all.’

Alys forbore to comment, but followed the weaver up to the comfortable hall where Fleming’s wife Barbara Graham, whom she knew slightly, was instructing her two older daughters in needlework. Alys admired the wobbly seams and settled down to chat about the weather and the wool crop while Bess was sent for. When the girl appeared, Jennet arrived with her.

‘I thought maybe you’d want me soon, mem,’ she said, bobbing a curtsy from the door.

‘Aye, very like,’ said Mistress Graham, ‘and if you’ll can counsel this silly lassie to dry her eyes and get back to her work, I’ll want you too. Here, Bess, go over by the other window, speak to Mistress Mason and answer what she asks you like a good girl.’

‘I’ll try, mem,’ said Bess shyly. She was a pretty girl, with a quantity of fair curling hair and hazel eyes red with weeping. The sleeves of her shift and woollen kirtle were rolled up to show bare sturdy forearms, and scraps of thread clung to the folds of her skirt.

‘Tell my mistress what you were telling me the now,’ said Jennet encouragingly. ‘About the laddie at the back yett. Attie, did you cry him?’

‘Was it Attie indeed?’ said Alys, leading the way across the hall, out of earshot of the two little seamstresses.

‘It was, mem,’ said Jennet, ‘and she talked wi him till his fellow cam back for him.’

‘Let Bess tell me herself,’ said Alys, and Bess nodded.

‘That’s right, what she says, mem,’ she admitted. ‘I was talking to the laddie all the while his fellow was up the town, and then he cam back, and the two o them went away, and the next I heard was, the old dame at Canon Aiken’s was slain by one o her servants, and, and,’ she wiped at her eyes, ‘I’m fearing it was Attie, and he seemed like such a nice laddie.’

‘What was the other fellow called?’ Alys asked.

Bess paused, the new question steadying her a little.

‘Alan, I think. That’s what Attie called him.’

‘What was his errand, did you learn?’

Another pause. The girl clearly had not thought about these details before.

‘I think they said it was the ’pothecary on the High Street. That’s right,’ she said more confidently, ‘they’d a great list o messages from there, ginger and cloves and sulphur and that. Why they’d no gone to our own ’pothecary here on the Drygate they never said.’

‘What made you think it was Attie had killed their mistress?’ Alys asked gently. Bess bent her head, wiping at her eyes again, and Jennet said,

‘Och, that was what one o the other lassies tellt her. She was down the drying-shed, this other one, see, where the blankets go when they come back fro the fuller’s, right at the foot o the yard next the back gate.’ Alys nodded. It made sense for the damp fulled wool to stay where it came onto the property, rather than be carried up the slope to where it might make other items musty. ‘And she heard some folk arguing on the path, just through the wall, see, that were running away from their employ because their mistress was dead.’

‘I need to speak to that lassie myself,’ said Alys.

The second girl was a rather different proposition, something which was obvious as soon as Mistress Graham, hearing her name, announced that Alys would be very welcome to go out to the weaving-shed to speak to Ibbot. Called from her loom in the busy shed, the girl bounced over to the door, shaking back dark elf-locks and smirking at Bess in a way Alys disliked immediately.

‘Oh, aye, mem, I heard them,’ she averred. ‘Talking all kind o treason, they were, and plotting how to be rid of what they’d stole.’

‘What did you hear?’ Alys asked. ‘How many were they?’

‘Two,’ she said. ‘Oh, and a woman and all.’

‘And they spoke in Scots?’

‘What else would they speak?’ Ibbot retorted.

‘You be civil to my mistress,’ said Jennet at Alys’s elbow. ‘Tell her what they were saying, what you heard.’

‘I’m telling her, am I no? So there was two o them, and a woman, and they stopped just by the drying-shed, and I could hear as clear as day through the cracks in the planks, see, and they were arguing what they should do next. One said, Why are we running, and another said, The old witch is dead, or so she says, are you wanting the blame for it? Then he says, We must be rid o — something, and the other said, Aye and something else and all, I never learned what it was,’ she said with regret, ‘and the woman says, They’ll seek for us, where will we go?’

The nearest weaver rested her shuttle a moment and said,

‘She’s been on about that these two days, mem, never heed her.’

‘You keep out o this, Mamie Elliott!’ retorted Ibbot. ‘Just in cause you never heard anything like.’

‘Aye, well, she’s aye making trouble, mem,’ said the weaver, and kicked at the treadle of her loom. A heddle lifted, the threads parted, and she took up her work again.

‘Did you hear any names?’ Alys asked, before Ibbot could continue the argument.

‘Oh, aye, that’s how I kent it for her sweetheart,’ said Ibbot, jerking her thumb at Bess with an unpleasant air of triumph. ‘The woman had some heathen name, Ersche or the like I dare say, and one o the men was Alan, so who would the other ha been but his fellow that she was speaking to? Attie, or whatever she cried him.’

‘You never heard his name used?’ said Alys.

‘No, but who could it ha been else?’ repeated the girl.

‘You never keeked through the cracks?’ Jennet said in faint disbelief.

‘Aye, but they must ha heard me, for they went away,’ said Ibbot. ‘I got naught but a glimp of their backs. Blue velvet livery, they wore.’

‘So you heard,’ said Alys, ‘two men in blue velvet, one called Alan, and a woman with an Ersche name, running away because their mistress was dead, and speaking of how they must be rid of something.’

‘Two things. Maybe more. One o them said these and the other one said this and all. Likely they’d stole her purse or her jewel-box.’ Ibbot smirked again. What lay between the two girls, Alys wondered.

‘Is that all you heard?’ she asked. ‘Did they say where they were going?’

‘Oh, aye. Am I no telling you? For the one man said to the woman, Here, you take that back, and she said, Where to? and he said, The potyngar away down the High Street, and she said, Where will I get you after? Then they argued a bit more, and it fell out she was to get them somewhere they said was handy for the potyngar’s, and then the other man said, We need to be rid of these first, I’m no walking through the town in it, and then they went away.’

‘Ah,’ said Alys. ‘Thank you, Ibbot.’

‘So I’m right, am I no? Him that she’s a fancy to has slain his mistress and run off, and the Serjeant’s seeking him now?’

‘No,’ said Alys. ‘Attie is still wi Maister Livingstone, who trusts him.’ I won’t say just how well, she thought, anything to wipe that smirk off this girl’s face. ‘It must be two of the other men you heard.’

Ibbot snorted, tossed the black elf-locks like a refractory pony, and flounced away. Beside Alys, Bess put out a hand to grasp the doorpost and said faintly,

‘Oh, is that true, mem? Is he really safe?’

‘Aye it’s true!’ said Jennet stoutly. ‘If my mistress says it, you can be sure it’s right.’ She lent a sturdy arm as the other girl swayed, and helped her to the nearest weaver’s stool, hurriedly vacated, as work halted and whispers spread across the shed.

‘There, lass,’ said the woman whose seat she occupied, seizing a limp hand to chafe it with sympathy, ‘all’s well after all, you were right to be sure o him. You’ll see your laddie again, never doubt it.’

‘And what you’ve told me will help indeed,’ Alys said. ‘Thank you, Bess.’

‘More questions, is it?’ said Forveleth, staring through the shadows of the cell.

‘More questions,’ said Alys. ‘And some food. I think you may not have eaten today.’

‘That’s a true word.’ The woman laughed rather bitterly. ‘At least they fed me last night at the Castle. This great lump of a man would be sparing no food for his prisoners, I think.’

Alys made no reply, but drew the loaf and the meat pasty from her basket and set them on Forveleth’s folded plaid. She had pursued the woman from the Castle to the Tolbooth with some misgivings, knowing that the Serjeant would be far less likely to allow her to speak to the prisoner than either the Provost or his captain, and had hit on this as a means of access. To her surprise it had worked.

‘She’ll be wi us a day or two yet,’ the Serjeant had said, ‘I’m no wanting her to fade away afore she can be tried. Shout when you’re done, mistress. Oh, and you can tell your man,’ he added, ‘I’ve had no word o the other servants yet, but we’ll track them down, never fear.’

‘When you left the house on the Drygate,’ she said now, as Forveleth broke off a piece of the pasty, ‘where did the men go?’

‘Men?’

‘No, we’ll not play games.’ Alys sat down on the narrow plank bed, hoping her gown would not suffer too much. ‘Listen, Forveleth, the Serjeant reckons you are guilty in Dame Isabella’s death.’

‘So he is telling me. He would have me sign a paper about it, but I told him, no, I will sign nothing.’

‘Aye, very wise,’ put in Jennet from her post by the door. She was clearly dismayed by the condition of both the cell and its occupant, holding her skirts up away from the dirty straw on the floor and casting sympathetic glances at Forveleth’s bruises, which showed up even in the dim light. ‘Put your mark on nothing, that’s the way.’

‘So if you will tell me the truth,’ persisted Alys, ‘it will help you.’

‘Will it?’ Forveleth chewed cautiously, as if her mouth hurt.

‘You went out by the back gate,’ Alys said, ‘and along the path by the mill-burn. Two of the men were with you, I think Alan and Nicol. They are brothers, am I right?’

‘Yes, brothers, those two.’ The woman peered at Alys, then down at the pasty. ‘What did I do then? I’d maybe not remember,’ she said, and broke off another fragment.

‘You argued, on the path,’ said Alys. Forveleth looked up sharply, and made the horns against the evil eye. ‘One of them, Alan I think, gave you the package from the potyngar, that he still had on him, and told you to take it back.’

‘Aye, and the surly grollop wouldny — How do you know all this? Who’s been spying on me?’

‘What else did they want rid of? They were saying they had to be rid of something.’

‘It was someone listening. We thought there was someone listening!’

‘What was it they had to be rid of? Was it the livery? They could hardly go through the town in livery without being seen and recalled later.’

‘How would I be remembering?’

‘And then where did you go?’ Alys pressed. ‘You tried to take the package back to the potyngar, and had no fortune there. When did you go back to Clerk’s Land? Where were you in between the times?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’ Was that a note of relief? Her hand was still clenched in the ancient sign of protection.

‘Why Clerk’s Land, anyway? Is one of them your kin? Which is it, the woman Campbell?’

‘There is no Campbells that is my kin!’ she said sharply. ‘If you must know, it is Bethag nic Donuill, that is cousin to my brother’s wife, is married on the whitesmith, more’s the pity for her and all. So it was her I went to, and they let me in, but when the laddie came running to say there was the Provost’s men at the close-mouth they were quick as the wind to push me out the door.’

‘Did Alan and Nicol not go with you to Clerk’s Land? Where are they now, Forveleth? ‘

‘She’s maybe lost them,’ said Jennet. ‘Likely they went another way. Maybe they’re not wanting her wi them.’

Forveleth looked round at that, but did not answer.

‘The purse your mistress had in her jewel-kist,’ said Alys. ‘What was it like?’

‘Blue velvet and gold braid.’ There was puzzlement in her voice now, at the change of subject.

‘What was in it, do you know? Her body-servants would know that, surely?’ Jennet stirred at the doorway, but Forveleth accepted the idea.

‘Coin, I suppose. I never looked, but Annot said she did. It felt like coin in my hand.’

‘And you gave it to her, the last you saw her alive.’

‘That iss so.’ Suddenly the accent was marked.

‘Why did she ask you for it, do you think, at such a moment? Who had she seen coming down the Drygate?’

The prisoner exclaimed in Gaelic and scrambled backwards into the corner of her cell, making the horns again with one hand, crossing herself with the other.

‘How do you know all this?’ she repeated. ‘Where was you watching me?’

‘So who was it? Why would she give money to such a person?’ Alys leaned forward, to put a hand on Forveleth’s wrist, but the woman snatched her arm away. ‘Whoever it was, they may really have been the last to see her alive. Is it someone you need to protect, or is it a stranger? Why are you letting yourself be suspected?’ There was a silence, broken by Forveleth’s panting breath. ‘My dear, Alan and Nicol were both out about your mistress’s errands. Attie can speak for Alan at least. They were elsewhere when she died.’

‘Is it Alan she fancies?’ Jennet asked.

‘Mary mild protect me,’ burst out Forveleth, ‘you know too much!’

‘So tell me the rest,’ invited Alys.

Another panting silence. Then Forveleth gave an incoherent wail and buried her face in her hands. Jennet stepped away from the door and put a hand on her shoulder, saying,

‘There, now, you tell my mistress all, she’ll help you the best she can.’

‘Who came to her window?’ Alys asked.

‘It was a man Campbell, so she said,’ admitted Forveleth eventually, raising her head. ‘She said, 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.’

‘Which man Campbell?’ Alys asked. ‘The one from Clerk’s Land, or the one who was to come home soon, or another?’

‘I was never seeing him. I tried to look past her, over her shoulder, to see was it Bethag’s man or another, and she struck me away. But when I went to another part of the house, to overlook her window, all I was seeing was a stranger, and the back of him at that.’

‘Where was the stranger?’ Alys asked. ‘Was he at the window?’

She shook her head.

‘Walking out at the gate, he was, as if he’d been within on an errand.’

‘What did he look like? What way did he turn from the gate?’

‘He was turning up the hill,’ said Forveleth after a moment, gesturing with her left hand. ‘I never saw him, I told you that.’ Alys waited, watching her. ‘He was tall, I suppose. Wrapped in a great gown or cloak or the like. Just a — a black figure.’ She shivered, and crossed herself. ‘Like as if it was Death himself come for the old carline.’

Jennet, mouth open in amazement, crossed herself likewise.

‘I’m no surprised you ran off!’ she declared. ‘But you’d ha been better to stay and tell your maister what you seen?’

‘What, and be taken up for theft of the blue purse?’

‘If you had stayed where you were,’ said Alys, ‘and the purse could not be found in your possession, you would have been safe enough from that charge. As it is, there’s this matter of the leather bag of coin. Do you know anything about that at all? Did you know it was all false coin?’

Forveleth shook her head in the gloom.

‘The first I ever saw of it was when they showed it me afore the Provost. What have I to do wi false coin?’

‘What had your mistress to do wi false coin?’ countered Alys. No answer. ‘How did it get into your bundle, then?’

‘If it was in my bundle,’ said Forveleth sourly. She paused to think. ‘When I–I had the package from the-’

‘The package from the apothecary,’ said Alys helpfully.

‘Aye. I had my linen and my spare kirtle rowed in my good plaid, and I put the, the package in wi them when I,’ she swallowed, ‘went back to Clerk’s Land. It was not there when I saw my things laid out afore the Provost, and the bag o coin was, so they said. Whether it was them that put it there, or some other, I canny tell.’

The rain had stopped. Emerging blinking into the afternoon sun, Alys considered the length of the shadows and thought about what to do next.

‘Who else have we to question?’ Jennet asked at her elbow. ‘Is this what Maister Gil does all day and all? I’d like fine to get my living like that, just talking to folk. Only maybe no in a cell, the next one, mem?’

‘Not in a cell, no,’ said Alys. ‘We will go up the hill again and call on Lady Magdalen Boyd. I should have offered sympathy before now.’

She set a brisk enough pace up the High Street to silence Jennet, which gave her space to think. The death of Dame Isabella made little sense in any way, and the random inclusion of the counterfeit coins seemed to make even less sense. Finding the man, or men, who had spoken to Dame Isabella at her window might be the next step, but how do we do that? she wondered. Is there anyone on the Drygate who might have seen them? Who dwells opposite? Has Gil spoken to the neighbours? Where was Forveleth between speaking to Nanty Bothwell by the Tolbooth and escaping from Clerk’s Land? And where have the men gone to? Alan and Nicol, and the third one, what was his name?

‘Who was that, mem?’ asked Jennet. Alys paused and looked about her. They were near the top of the High Street, within sight of the high pink sandstone walls of the Castle, with smaller cottages on either side. A few people were moving about, and some of the boys from the grammar school on Rottenrow were just starting a battle with their book-bags for possession of the Girth Cross. She could see nobody she knew.

‘Who?’ she asked.

‘Was a man that looked as if he kent your face,’ said Jennet, staring at one of the low houses. ‘He dodged down the path yonder, atween that house and the next. Tall fellow wi a padded jack.’

‘Was he wearing a badge?’ She could think of nobody she knew who wore a padded jack about the burgh.

‘None that I saw. No, he’s away, I canny see him. Just it was odd the way he went off, as if he’d avoid us.’

‘Maybe you imagined it,’ said Alys, and walked on.

Magdalen Boyd was not what she had expected. Gil’s rather sparse description had conjured up a pale, chilly, spiritless creature, but she was greeted with warmth and her promise to pray for Dame Isabella was met with genuine gratitude.

‘And you’ve come all the way up here just to tell me that?’ marvelled Lady Magdalen. ‘That’s right kind in you, madam. Come away up and be seated in my chamber,’ she offered, ‘we’ll have a cup of ale and talk a wee while. Maybe you can tell me where your man’s at wi this business? He was here earlier, but he’d only questions, no information.’

‘It’s always like that at the beginning,’ Alys said, following her up a wheel stair into a light bedchamber. ‘If we’re kin by marriage, may we not name names between us?’

‘I’d like nothing better. But Alys,’ she waved her to a seat by the window, beyond a box bed with hangings of worn verdure tapestry, ‘has my kinsman learned nothing, wi all his questions?’

‘He asks questions,’ Alys said, ‘till he has all the answers. Then he fits the answers together, and that’s when he’s sure of who is the criminal.’

‘Criminal,’ repeated Lady Magdalen sadly. She drew up another backstool and sat down. ‘Aye, I’d like best to see whoever killed my godmother given time to repent, and amend his life, but I suppose the law must be involved.’

‘That is truly forbearing,’ said Alys.

‘Vengeance is to the Lord,’ said Lady Magdalen, ‘we must give place to wrath. So Maister Gil is still asking questions? How long does it take?’

‘Until it’s finished.’

A servant entered with ale and small cakes on a tray, and they paused to deal with this. When the man withdrew Lady Magdalen said,

‘Alys, I’m right glad you’re here, for I wished to say something to you.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘I’ll not speak ill of anyone, but it was others made the decision. I wouldny ha tried to conceal what we were offering to, to the bairn you care for. It’s maybe no a gift you’d want to accept, now you ken who the tenant is.’

‘I’m more concerned wi the tenants of the other toft,’ Alys admitted. ‘But tenants move on, Magdalen, you ken that, and the value of the land remains. Does the offer still stand, even though Dame Isabella is dead?’

‘It was nothing to do wi her,’ said Lady Magdalen in her gentle voice. ‘It’s my offer, wi my husband’s consent, and it still stands.’

‘I’m not certain of this, you’ll appreciate,’ said Alys, and the other woman nodded, ‘but I think my father and my husband are minded to accept it on the boy’s behalf. They’ll speak to you in good time, I’m sure of that.’

‘We’ll drink to a thanksome outcome o that,’ said Lady Magdalen, and they raised their beakers. ‘And then there’s the matter of your good-sister’s gift.’

‘So there is,’ said Alys, who had not forgotten this. ‘I wonder what will happen about that now?’

‘I hope my godmother made a will,’ admitted Lady Magdalen. ‘She’d planned that Lady Isobel would have the land out by Carluke, and I’d as soon see that happen, for I’d not wish to lose the land in Strathblane that she promised me. John sets great store by it and what wi the confusion over which piece was mine already he’s right owerset wi the matter.’

‘I expect he is,’ said Alys with sympathy, wondering just how the newly tamed Sempill would express this. A snatch of an alchemical treatise rose in her mind: Take a red man and a whyet woman and wede them together, and let them go to chambour. What sort of philosophers’ stone would these two beget? Had it already come into being, and begun to transmute Sempill? ‘Land is important, after all.’

‘Oh, aye, and this piece seems to have a great attraction for John. Indeed he’s away out there the now, him and his cousin, they rode out afore dinner. It brought John and my godmother together,’ she said, smiling sadly, ‘they were aye discussing what must be done wi one tenant or another.’

That did not make sense, Alys thought, though she kept her face sympathetic. Tenants had names, and so did their holdings; surely Dame Isabella must have been aware that they were talking of different parcels of land. Unless she nourished the confusion on purpose?

‘Did you know your godmother well?’ she asked. ‘I only met her the once. I thought she was a,’ she hesitated, seeking for the right word in Scots, ‘a lady of very strong mind, and very concerned for you and my good-sister.’

Lady Magdalen bent her head, dabbing at her eyes, and agreed.

‘She was aye concerned for those she felt needed her help,’ she said. ‘Lady Tib, and me, and Lowrie, she’d a plan in her head for Lowrie though the Livingstones disagreed, to get Maister Gil to take him on as assistant and train him up as notary.’ She bit her lip and half laughed. ‘There, I meant no to repeat that, I’m all tapsalteerie the day, Alys.’

‘I don’t think Gil needs an assistant,’ said Alys in some annoyance. ‘And he’s well able to choose his own when he does.’

‘There was to be a sum o money to help. I’ve made you cross, I’m right sorry.’ She sighed. ‘I never knew her till after my mother died, my brother wrote to tell her of it, seeing they’d been good friends at one time, and next thing we kent she’d arrived at the gate wi a match for me all ready, and after that she was aye there wi advice when she thought I needed it, though her and William never got on after we were wedded. My first man,’ she elucidated, ‘he was a Chalmers. Chalmers of Glenouthock.’ She sighed again. ‘It seemed a right good match, but — anyway, after my godmother and me were both widows she would have me come and stay wi her, seeing my brother was away about his own dealings, and she took right care of me, aye concerned for my health and my reputation. I’ll miss her sore.’

‘And then you were wedded to Sempill,’ said Alys. ‘Gil tells me you are happy with the match.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ The smile was genuine. ‘John’s as kind to me!’

‘And it pleased your brother?’

The smile remained, though it seemed to lose its light somewhat.

‘I’ve not seen my brother these six months. He came to see me wedded to John, but he’s been out o sight, I hope it’s no down to any misliking between the two o them.’

‘You’ve not heard from him? Does he know about — about-’

‘About this?’ Lady Magdalen looked down at her still-flat waist. ‘Likely no.’

‘And you’ve no idea where he is?’ Alys persisted, her mind working. The other woman shook her head, and reached for the ale-jug.

‘He’s got his own dealings,’ she said again. ‘Likely he’ll turn up.’ She turned her head sharply as a door banged and voices rose in the hall below them. ‘Is that John come home?’

‘Maidie?’

Lady Magdalen put out a restraining hand as Ays prepared to rise, and called,

‘I’m here, John. Here in my chamber.’

‘Maidie?’ The loud voice again, heavy feet on the stair. ‘No, Philip, I’ll no have him brought in on it, it’s my business and none o his! Maidie, are you here?’

‘I’m here,’ she said. His boots sounded on the landing and then on the broad pine floorboards as he entered the chamber, still hidden from them by the great bed, saying,

‘Here’s a bit trouble out yonder, and Philip wanting to get Gil Cunningham in-’ He stopped, staring at Alys. ‘-volved, of all the daft things,’ he finished.