The Fourth Crow

Chapter One

She was quite certainly dead.

Without realising it, he had taken a great leap backwards, away from that hideous face where it lay at the edge of the shadows. Now he stood as if his feet had taken root, staring at the moonlit horror. A great trembling overtook him.

Nothing else seemed to move in the night. A cloud slid over the moon, shrouding all in darkness, and then passed, and with the returning light it was as if she raised her head a little to look at him. With a muffled yelp of terror he turned and fled, down the hill, towards safety.

‘There’s someone bound to St Mungo’s Cross,’ observed Gil Cunningham’s new assistant as they rode back into Glasgow through the August evening, rounding the high red sandstone walls of the Archbishop’s castle.

‘Now what would anyone be doing that for?’ wondered Euan Campbell, from behind them. ‘Surely somebody would set them free?’

Gil turned in the saddle to look at his two very dissimilar henchmen. Lowrie Livingstone, aged nineteen, recent graduate of the University here in Glasgow, was fair and good-looking, with an easy cultured charm which would stand him in good stead in any occupation, particularly that of notary in which Gil had contracted to train him, although just now, with his face, his broad straw hat and the narrow sleeves of his blue woollen gown powdered with reddish dust from the roads, he looked nearly as disreputable as the gallowglass at his back. Euan on the other hand, dark haired and black browed with the crooked Campbell mouth in a long narrow face, simply looked what he was: a man who hired his sword arm for a living.

They had all three spent the August day out in Strathblane, attempting to straighten out the ownership of two portions of land on the flanks of the Campsie hills. It had been a pleasant day for the task, warm and serene, with birdsong in the thickets and a clear view out over the Clyde valley and down into Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire, but talking to witnesses, many of whom spoke Ersche rather than Scots and required Euan’s unreliable help as a translator to make their statements, had proved wearisome, and he was glad to be nearing home.

Young Maister Livingstone had observed correctly: away to their left, just inside the low wall of the kirkyard, Gil could see the tall stone cross which stood by the Girth Burn, the most important of the several crosses which marked the boundaries of the sanctuary area. There was certainly someone bound to the massive upright, writhing and shrieking and securely roped, surrounded by a crowd of grinning spectators. Small boys ran in and out, throwing handfuls of water from the burn at the prisoner and anyone else who was not quick enough to get out of the way.

‘They bringis mad men on fuit and horss,’ he quoted, ‘and bindis them to Sanct Mungos Corss. Did you never see it before?’

‘Oh, that!’ said Lowrie. ‘No, I never saw it, but I heard of it a few times. How often does it happen?’

‘Maybe once in a quarter, perhaps more often in the summer months. You’d not leave even a dog outside without shelter over a winter’s night, after all. It’s a great entertainment for the multitude, you can see that.’

‘And does it cure them, to be spending a night tied to the cross like that?’ asked Euan, staring at the crowd. ‘More like to send them even further mad, I would be thinking.’

‘I’ve never heard.’ Gil heeled his horse onward. ‘The dinner will be waiting.’

‘I wonder who he is.’ Lowrie followed his master past the kirkyard gates and into the vennel which led to the Drygate. ‘Poor devil. Likely Madame Catherine will know.’

‘Indeed it is likely,’ agreed Euan. ‘Madame Catherine is knowing everything, and her not having a word of Scots, neither.’

Seated over a late dinner in the house called the Mermaiden, Gil reflected on the recent changes in his circumstances. In the last few months he had acquired a house of his own, a household, an assistant, and, more particularly, the means to support all these. He felt slightly dizzy with the speed at which it had all happened, and he was not looking forward to the next quarter’s bills, but he relished the feeling it gave him to look down the long board from his chair at its head. On his right, his young wife Alys showed her pleasure in his return from a day’s journey into Stirlingshire; on his left, Alys’s aged duenna Catherine consumed sops-in-wine with toothless dignity; at his feet his wolfhound Socrates lay hoping for crusts and crumbs. Beyond Catherine, Lowrie was just reaching for the ale-jug, Euan had returned from stabling the horses and was addressing his supper with eagerness, and further down the table the maidservants who had followed Alys one by one from her father’s house, Jennet, Kittock, Annis, and his small ward’s nurse Nancy, were chattering companionably. We need to find a serving-man or two, he reflected; I need a body-servant, and Euan is not my first choice for the task. Or even my second.

‘Mais non,’ Catherine was saying in French, ‘I had not heard of another poor soul at the Cross.’

‘They were saying at Vespers at St Nicholas’ it’s a lassie,’ offered Jennet, overhearing Lowrie’s question. ‘Out of Ayrshire, so I heard, maister, though I never got her name.’

‘A lassie!’ said Alys. ‘Oh, poor soul indeed. I wonder if she knows where she is? Does anyone watch, Gil, while someone is tied up like that? It must be terrifying, to be exposed the whole night alone.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ he admitted.

‘Likely St Mungo himsel oversees all, mem, seeing it’s his cross,’ suggested Jennet. ‘I’ve aye heard it’s the custom just to tie up the poor madman and go off to St Nicholas’ chapel for the night, his friends I mean, to keep out the night air.’

Alys’s father, the French master-mason, paying a late call after the supper was cleared, agreed in part with this.

‘I had to chase both my laddies away from her,’ he said with disapproval. ‘Her friends were present, but they kept apart from the crowd once she was bound. Surely they would have done better to wait until it grew dark and the town was quiet before they put her there. She is quite young, no more than five-and-twenty, too young for such treatment.’

‘Did you speak to them?’ Alys asked. ‘Who is she? What form does her madness take?’

‘She is an Ayrshire lady named Annie Gibb,’ said her father, accepting the glass of wine which Lowrie handed to him. They had repaired to the solar at the back of the house; the sun had struck the two windows of the little chamber for most of the day, and it was still pleasantly warm. Maistre Pierre stretched his feet out comfortably and added, ‘Her servants would say little more, not even what part of Ayrshire she is come from, but I should say she is melancholy-mad. Much of her raving was of how she wished to be let die.’

‘Ah, poor soul,’ said Alys, as she had done before.

‘Gibb,’ said Gil reflectively. ‘Likely from Kyle, then, at least by origin. Well, no doubt we’ll hear in the morning. And how does our good-mother, Pierre?’

‘Ah.’ Maistre Pierre looked sideways at his daughter, and Gil braced himself inwardly. Another of the changes of the last few months was about to confront them. Two women could never agree under one roof, that was widely known; it looked as if Alys and her new stepmother would never agree in one burgh. He should not have asked the question, and yet civility required that he did.

They had first met Angus MacIain the harper and his sister Ealasaidh two years since, when the harper’s mistress, the mother of his son, had been murdered in the building site at the side of the Cathedral. By the time her killer was uncovered Gil and Alys were betrothed and the baby was Gil’s ward, but it was only this spring that Pierre and Ealasaidh had come to an understanding. It was now two months since their marriage, and it did not seem to Gil as if Alys was any closer to accepting the idea than she had been when it was first mentioned.

‘Élise,’ said his father-in-law now, ‘wished me to ask you where is the linen for the great bed?’

‘I left it where it has always been kept,’ said Alys without expression, ‘in the kist at the bed-foot. I touched nothing in your chamber.’

‘Ah,’ said Maistre Pierre uncomfortably. ‘The kist with the brass lock, you mean?’

‘Yes, that kist. Is it not there? Has madame mère moved it? Or mislaid the key? Perhaps one of your new servants has taken it.’

Lowrie, the ready colour sweeping up over his neck, turned away and began to riffle through a stack of music on the windowsill beside him. Following his cue, Gil opened the lid of the monocords and tapped at the first few keys of the little instrument. Maistre Pierre ignored the spidery notes.

‘Ma mie, she is mistress of my house now,’ he said sternly in French. A mistake, thought Gil.

‘Then she may run it herself,’ said Alys, still without expression, ‘without referring to me.’

‘What, after you removed all the maidservants who know where everything is?’

‘I took only Jennet and Nancy, Father,’ Alys said. ‘The other women left of their own accord.’

This was unanswerably true, Gil knew. Kittock was still complaining about what ‘the new mistress’ had ordered done in her kitchen.

‘Shall we have some music?’ he suggested. Alys set aside her handwork and rose.

‘You may have as much as you please,’ she said. ‘I have matters to see to. Good night, Father.’

She bent her head for his blessing, which he delivered reluctantly. As the door closed behind her Gil said,

‘Have you managed to find servants yet?’

‘Élise has hired a crowd of women. They all speak Ersche,’ said Maistre Pierre glumly. ‘I thought Alys would have been more generous. She should be obedient to her new mother.’

Gil kept silent. He liked and admired the harper’s sister, a handsome strong-minded woman who had not had an easy life, but his perception had been that it was Ealasaidh who was ungenerous; she could never have run a household before, let alone one as large as that his father-in-law kept, and Alys had offered advice. It had been refused, without gratitude.

‘Well, no doubt she will come round,’ said Maistre Pierre after a pause, though it was not clear which contender he referred to. ‘Do you tell me this woman at the Girth Cross is from Kyle? From the middle part of Ayrshire?’

‘It’s where the surname comes from,’ Gil agreed in relief. Lowrie turned back towards them, holding several sheets of music.

‘Ockeghem?’ he said hopefully.

‘There is a family named Gibb who own a quarry,’ said the mason, ‘beyond a place called Cumnock. Good blond freestone, a valuable resource. I wonder are they her kin? Yes, why not Ockeghem,’ he went on, before Gil could answer, ‘though I must not stay too late.’

Having seen his father-in-law off the premises an hour later into the quiet August evening, Gil locked the front door and paused to admire the incised and painted mermaiden now on the inside of the heavy planks. Even with the door reversed so that this well-known symbol of sexual licence was not shown to the street, they still had the occasional caller who had not heard that the bawdy-house was closed. He grinned, put the sturdy bar in place and set off through the house, checking shutters and hearths as he went. The dog paced after him, his claws clicking on the wide boards. Here on the ground floor, as well as the little solar beside the back door there was the lower hall where they had eaten their supper, with another three smaller chambers opening from it. In one, a narrow stair led up, eventually, to the great bedchamber, a resource which Gil had not so far made use of. In the next, Catherine was probably still at her devotions, which he knew were extended; in the third, Annis and Kittock were already snoring. Kittock had wished to sleep in the kitchen as she had always done, but the kitchen here was a separate building, and Alys had preferred that all the household were under the one roof at night. He had supported her in that.

Climbing the principal newel stair he checked the shutters in his own spacious closet, then paused again to survey the wide upper hall. Its painted walls were lively, the allegorical figures in their flowery alcoves bright even in the fading light. Despite the previous tenant’s occupation, only one of the images required to be concealed by the plate-cupboard, which was fortunate, he reflected, given that they did not have many other large pieces of furniture yet.

He went on up the main stair. At the top, the dog nudged one door open and clicked away into the shadows. Behind the other door, along the short enfilade of chambers above the painted hall, Lowrie spoke sharply and Euan answered. Following the dog, Gil stepped quietly past the sleeping child in his cradle and the shut-bed where Jennet and Nancy still murmured together, and went into his own bedchamber. The house was settled for the night.

Alys was also at her prayers, the candlelight gleaming on her hair where it fell in sheets across the shoulders of her bedgown, her head bent intently over the prayer-book which had been a marriage-gift from her father. She did not look up, even when Socrates nudged her hands with his long nose.

Sighing inwardly, Gil said his own prayers and readied himself for bed, reckoning up the tasks of the morrow. Two contracts to draw up for different tradesmen of the upper town, one set of sasine papers to compose for Lowrie to write, a report to compile for his master the Archbishop of Glasgow. A quiet day, he thought with some relief.

He woke from a dream of thunder and falling rocks, to realise that the noise was a knocking at the house door. The dog was barking, away below stairs.

‘The back door!’ said Alys, as he tugged open the curtain at the side of their box bed. ‘Who- Is it light yet? The servants are not stirring.’

‘Barely.’ He had scrambled into his shirt, and now flung open the shutters on the window which overlooked the yard and the approach to the back door. To his left, the dawn was turning rosy over the Dow Hill. To his right, at the other end of the house, Euan was already leaning out into the chilly morning, bare chested, black hair tousled. Socrates was still barking.

‘Who’s knocking?’ Gil called.

‘It iss one of the clerks from St Mungo’s,’ offered Euan, drowning the first answer from the ground. ‘I think it iss Maister Sim.’

‘Who is it?’ he repeated. ‘Quiet!’ he shouted at the dog.

‘Gil, is that you? You’re wanted up at the Cross!’ A figure stepped away from the door far enough to see and be seen from up here. One of the songmen from the Cathedral, as Euan had said, one of his occasional partners at Tarocco or at tennis.

‘Habbie!’ he said in some surprise. ‘What’s amiss? Bide there, man. I’ll come down.’

‘Never you worry, Maister Gil,’ said Euan cheerily. ‘I’ll be letting him in, just let me be finding my shirt.’

‘Maister Sim?’ said Alys as Gil drew his head in. ‘Is someone dead?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ he answered, knotting the cord of his drawers. ‘But at this hour it must be something urgent.’

Maister Sim agreed with this assessment.

‘Oh, aye, she’s dead,’ he said, pacing up and down the lower hall, Socrates watching him suspiciously from the cold hearth. ‘A dreadful sight, and all. We’ve managed to keep them from moving her, but you’ll need to come now, Gil, afore it gets any busier at the Cross.’

‘Let me get my boots,’ said Gil, stepping aside as Kittock emerged from the end chamber blinking and hooking up her gown across her broad bosom, her apron over one arm. ‘Would you cut me a bite of bread and cheese?’ he asked her. ‘I doubt I’ll be home afore the porridge is eaten up.’

‘What’s amiss, maister?’ she asked, shaking out the apron. ‘Is it the English at the gates? Will you be wanting your jack and helm? For I’m not right sure where we put them when we flitted you.’

‘I don’t know yet,’ he confessed. ‘Habbie? Who’s dead?’

‘It’s the woman that was at St Mungo’s Cross,’ began Habbie Sim.

Within the small chamber, Annis shrieked in alarm.

‘Christ amend us, is she got loose? Is she dangerous? Are we all to be murdered in our beds?’

‘No, no, you’re safe enough, lass,’ said Maister Sim, pausing to rub at his arms as if he was cold. ‘It’s the woman hersel- She’s dead. Someone’s slain her where she was bound.’

‘Our Lady save us all. Murdered, you mean, maister?’ said Kittock intelligently, over another shriek from Annis. She crossed herself, and muttered a prayer. ‘Right, Maister Gil, I’ll get a piece and cheese put up for you, and you be sure and eat it, now. Annis, you can stop that noise, hen. The poor soul will be led straight to Paradise by St Mungo himsel and Our Lady, I’ve no doubt.’ She set off towards the back door, followed by a reluctant Annis, just as loud footsteps on the main stair proclaimed the arrival of Euan, now decently clad and waving Gil’s boots.

‘Here’s your boots, maister, you’ll likely be wanting them,’ he said unnecessarily, ‘and Maister Lowrie’s on his way down, and Jennet’s getting the mistress up, and the wee fellow’s still sleeping, praise be to Our Lady, we’d not want him running about hearing all what Maister Sim has to tell us, would we now?’

‘Away out with Kittock,’ Gil ordered, accepting the boots, ‘and gie her a hand to get the fire going.’ He sat down on the nearest bench and kicked off his house shoes. ‘Go on, Habbie, tell me what’s amiss. Who found the woman? Is it certain it’s a violent death?’

‘Oh, aye, certain. It was two of her friends found her,’ said Maister Sim, as Lowrie slipped quietly into the room, fully dressed and booted. ‘Her servants, I suppose. They came out to get her afore the dawn, and here she was dead, which distressed them greatly a course, and they cam up to St Mungo’s to fetch someone. It was only when we found the cord about her neck they realised she hadny just up and died of her own accord. And when the light grew they recognised she’d been beaten and all, a dreadful sight, Gil. You need to see her.’

‘A cord?’ Gil repeated. ‘I see why you’ve come for me.’ He stood, tramping his heels down into the boots, and bent to fasten the straps which held the soft leather in place about his calves.

‘Aye. So will you come now, afore they shift her? I’ve heard you often enough about what’s to be learned from a corp afore it’s shifted.’

The light in the chamber was increasing, and the full glory of Maister Sim’s garb was visible. Always a showy dresser, he had risen this morning in a short gown of tawny velvet faced with gold-coloured silk, which contrasted nicely with a red cloth doublet and bright blue hose. Boots of a different red and a round green felt hat completed the outfit. Beside it, Gil’s habitual, well-worn black appeared quite drab. Used to this effect, Gil ignored it, lifted his plaid from the peg by the back door, nodded to Lowrie and snapped his fingers for the dog.

‘The hunt’s up,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. Tell me more as we go, Habbie. What did her friends do when they found her?’

‘Set up a hue and cry,’ said Maister Sim, following him out of the house. ‘One ran to St Nicholas’, another to St Mungo’s and found us just assembling for Prime. So Will Craigie and I went to see, since we could be spared, our parts are both doubled in this morning’s setting, and when we found the cord I came down to fetch you and he stayed to offer up the first prayers, which was only right in the circumstance.’

Gil nodded, pausing at the kitchen door to take the scrip Kittock had ready for him, and glad his friend could not see his expression. Most of the songmen were in minor orders at least, though possession of a good singing voice was the more important criterion. Maister Craigie was one of the few who were fully ordained, but his private life was not what one might hope for. He cheated at cards to Gil’s certain knowledge, there were other tales to the man’s discredit, and Gil’s uncle Canon Cunningham had admitted that the Chapter of St Mungo’s was occasionally exercised about his behaviour. Not who I would wish to offer prayers at my death, Gil thought, striding out onto the Drygate.

‘And who are her friends? Who’s she, indeed? I heard she was from Ayrshire.’

‘Well, you ken more than me, if that’s so,’ admitted his friend. ‘These were two of her servants, I think. They called her Annie, and said her sisters were in the guest-hall at St Catherine’s. Likely they’ve been tellt by now.’

There was a small crowd in the kirkyard near the tall stone cross, exclaiming in shock and amazement above a rich bass drone which became recognisable as the prayers for the dead. Gil made out William Craigie close by the Cross as its source, with two bareheaded men standing white faced and stricken next to him. One of the St Mungo’s vergers in his blue gown of office stood by radiating indignation; the rest of the dozen or so spectators seemed to be servants of the Upper Town and other early workers, attracted to the scene on their way past. He recognised the livery of St Nicholas’ hostel, but nobody from St Catherine’s seemed to be here yet.

‘Get all these names if you will,’ he said to Lowrie as they approached. ‘Likely the most of them have nothing to do with the matter, but you never ken.’

‘Will I be sending them all away, Maister Gil?’ offered Euan helpfully behind him.

‘No, you will not. Stand back and keep out of it,’ Gil ordered, and shouldered his way in next to the tall cross.

‘Maister Cunningham!’ said the verger as he reached it. ‘What are you going to do about this? She canny stay here, we canny have this! I told the woman we couldny take an eye to her, and now see what’s come o’t!’

Gil considered him for a moment.

‘A drop of compassion would be becoming to a servant of Holy Kirk, Barnabas,’ he observed. The man coloured up, but said defensively,

‘It willny do for St Mungo’s, and any road Canon Henderson’s no going to be pleased. We’re no wanting this kind o thing on our ground!’

Abandoning the matter, Gil moved round him to touch the body where it hung slumped and stiffened in its bonds.

‘She’s long gone, maister,’ said one of the men beside her. ‘But sic a way to go! Who’d ha done that to a poor mad lassie?’

The woman was quite certainly dead, there was no doubt about it. She had been bound to the Cross with a stout new hemp rope, no cheap item, which in happier circumstances would have been gifted to St Mungo’s altar by now, to be sold on later to pay for lights. It had been tied with care, though not particularly tightly, perhaps leaving her enough room to flex arms and legs to prevent cramp, and as a result she now leaned forward and sideways, her head bent. Unkempt mud-coloured hair was trapped under the cord which Maister Sim had mentioned where it crossed the nape of her neck, but more locks fell free, hanging below her waist, and obscured her face. She was clad in a penitential sacking gown, a surprisingly threadbare woollen plaid bundled over it, her bare feet visible below its bedraggled hem. There was a strong smell, not merely of stale urine as one might expect, but of a ripely unwashed body. He felt her hand and then her neck; the dead flesh was quite rigid. The dog nosed at the body, and turned to look up at his master’s face.

‘She’s deid, maister,’ said the man who had spoken before, while Maister Craigie switched from Requiem aeternam to Pater noster. ‘She’s cold and set, and I thought she was sleeping.’ He spoke quite calmly, but his hands shook.

‘Was it you found her?’ Gil asked, moving a hank of hair aside to look at the dangling ends of the cord. They seemed as new as the rope. Who would use a cord like that, he wondered, and for what?

‘Aye, it was. Rab and me.’ The man indicated his silent companion. ‘We was watching in St Nicholas’, over yonder, seeing St Mungo’s was locked for the night, and I keeked out every hour or so, cam across to the kirkyard wall wi a lantern to see that all was well, she spoke to me a couple o times and asked me to set her free, and I wish I had, maister, I wish I had. And then I cam down and it was, it seemed, it was all quiet, she’d ceased her raving and fell asleep, and there was the moonlight, and the laddies that were about had all went hame by midnight and- When we cam down to loose her afore dawn I still thought she’d fell asleep, I–I thought she was sleeping,’ he repeated, ‘till I spoke her name and she never stirred, and then I seen- I seen-’ He crossed himself, tears springing to his eyes. ‘It’s no just that she’s deid. Look at her face, maister, look what’s come to her! Who could ha done that?’

Gil lifted away the rest of the dangling hair, and flinched. Maister Craigie’s steady murmur checked at what was revealed, and flowed on with extra fervour. The woman had been beaten, and savagely. Blackened eyes, pulped nose, a swollen and purple cheek, torn mouth, were all caked in blood, which had run across her chin before it dried.

‘Sweet St Giles!’ he said. ‘I take it she never looked like that when you left her.’

‘We left her hale and healthy, maister, save she was mad,’ the man assured him. ‘Who could ha done this to her, bound as she was, the poor lassie?’

‘Nobody from St Mungo’s!’ said Barnabas indignantly.

‘And you heard nothing from where you were?’

‘Nothing, maister! And we were awake the whole night, so we were, the both of us. Surely she’d ha screamed if she was- Could she no ha cried out? We’d ha heard her, maister, we would that!’ The man swallowed hard. ‘Poor lass, she never wished- She bade us take her away as many times, she never felt it would do her good. I wish I’d listened. I wish I’d watched at her side.’

‘Have you been with her long?’ Lowrie asked, fetching up at Gil’s elbow, tucking his tablets back into his purse. Much of the crowd had evaporated rather than have its names written down, as Gil had hoped, and the remaining handful had retreated to a safe distance, Euan among them. He caught the words Blacader’s quaestor passing around.

‘I followed her fro her faither’s house,’ said the man. ‘And Rab here’s been wi her near as long. Maister, who could ha done this? She was under the saint’s protection, she’d never ha been a harm to anyone, we bound her only to prevent her running off. Why throttle a lassie that canny- And to treat her like that and all-’ He turned away, his hand going to his eyes. Lowrie patted him on the shoulder, and looked at Gil.

‘What do you see?’ Gil prompted, as Maister Craigie embarked on another round of the prayers for the dead. ‘Anything useful?’

‘Ground’s too dry, even this close to the burn,’ said Lowrie, ‘and there’s been too many feet around here in any case. No tracks to recognise. No marks on the gown or plaid, I’d think she hasny been stabbed at all, just beaten and strangled.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s like what they tell of the Inquisition, isn’t it, maister?’ He prowled around the high carved cross, tugged at the rope which bound the woman, peered at the hemp strands as Gil had already done. Socrates followed him, sniffing carefully where he looked. ‘These knots haveny been untied, have they?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. Socrates sat down at the feet of the more talkative servant, nudging his hand. The man stroked the soft ears, smiling crookedly at the dog, and Gil said to him, ‘Do you mind how she was bound last night? Would you say all was as you left her?’

The man looked at him, startled, then at the restraints which held the corpse upright. He appeared to count the loops which circled the skirts and torso, then stepped behind the cross to check the knots.

‘It looks like it,’ he agreed. ‘You can see, we put plenty good knots in it, Rab and me. She’d never ha got them undone, maister, we- We took good care o that.’

‘Well it was nobody from St Mungo’s,’ declared Barnabas officiously. ‘I tellt the woman, I tellt her plain, it’s naught to do wi us what happens down here at the Cross, there’s nobody to spare to have an eye to her. It was nobody from St Mungo’s untied they knots.’

‘Sawney,’ said Rab suddenly. He glanced beyond his colleague, beyond the cross, just as Gil became aware of a commotion approaching the kirkyard gates, of raised voices and women weeping.

‘Oh, Christ aid us all, it’s the lassies,’ said Sawney. ‘Maister, it’s her good-sisters, we’d best head them off, she isny a sight for young lassies, no till she’s laid out, if then.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Maister Sim, who had stood by silently until now. ‘Will, come wi me, I think the living need you.’

Maister Craigie, finishing the prayer he was reciting, crossed himself, looked round and nodded. Maister Sim was already hurrying towards the group of women. As the priest followed Gil said,

‘Barnabas, if you would fetch Euan a board or the like we can cut her down, afore it gets any busier here.’

‘A board?’ repeated Barnabas, as if he had never heard the word before. ‘Oh, no. The boards we’ve got are all accounted for, it’s more than my position’s worth to let them out my hands.’

‘There will be something there that would not be missed for an hour or two,’ said Euan. ‘Come and show me what you have.’

‘But where’ll we take her to, maister?’ asked Sawney helplessly. ‘I’ve no- I canny- Our maister’s no fit to direct me, and it’s no a matter to take to Dame Ellen.’

This was the first Gil had heard of a head of the household. He set the point aside for later and said, ‘If you’re lodged at St Catherine’s, we should take her there. They’ll put her in the chapel for now. I want to see her afore she’s laid out.’

‘Better to wait till she’s washed, maister,’ said Sawney, watching Euan making for the Cathedral, the protesting Barnabas beside him. Several of the spectators were following, possibly in the hope of learning more. ‘She’s pretty ripe. See, it’s been since her man dee’d,’ Sawney expanded. ‘What wi that and she’d lost the bairn he gave her, she fell into a great melancholy, poor lassie, and she vowed she’d live single all her days, and never wash, nor be combed, nor anything of the sort. Nothing her sisters said would budge her from it.’

‘Sweet St Giles!’ said Gil, but Lowrie was nodding.

‘I’ve heard of that. There was a woman away beyond Stirling did the same, so my mother once told me. It’s in a song, too. Sall neither coif come on my head, nor kaim come in my hair, Nor neither coal nor candlelight come in my bower mair,’ he quoted, and added thoughtfully, ‘doesn’t say anything about never washing.’

The group of women had been persuaded to retrace their steps, though one of them kept looking over her shoulder. The two songmen were going with them, gesturing past the rose-coloured sandstone walls of the castle in the direction of the pilgrim hostel.

‘Tell me about her,’ said Gil. ‘Who is she?’

She was, as Maistre Pierre had said, Annie Gibb, daughter and heiress of a gentleman of Kyle, one James Gibb of Tarbolton. Wedded at fourteen to Arthur, son of Sir Edward Shaw of Glenbuck, a bonnie lad a year younger than herself, she had lost a bairn at seventeen, by which time her husband was already racked by the coughing sickness which killed him a year later, shortly after her own father died.

‘So he never gave her another,’ said Sawney, ‘and here she was a widow at eighteen, poor lass, and by then she was over ears in love wi him, and fell into a great melancholy like I said. And given that Sir Edward’s got his death and all, he was hoping to see her cured so he could wed her safe afore he dees hissel, and not leave her a charge on his lassies or their husbands. There’s no other heir,’ he explained.

‘How old is she now?’ Gil asked.

‘Near one-and-twenty,’ said Sawney, ‘and her faither’s dead these two year and all,’ he repeated.

Gil looked at the corpse’s bent head and unkempt hair with pity. My deth I love, my life ich hate, he thought. Alys would be nineteen at midsummer; his youngest sister Tib, married a few months ago, had just turned twenty. This girl’s life had taken a very different turn from theirs, and now it was over, and violently. He could not imagine either his wife or his sister succumbing to such a melancholy, but he could see why it might happen.

‘Will we be cutting yon good rope?’ Euan had returned, some of his eager entourage behind him bearing a wattle hurdle. ‘It seems a shame, it does, though I would not be wishing to use it myself after this-’

Gil was not very familiar with the two pilgrim hostels of Glasgow, and had never been inside St Catherine’s, though he had encountered its Master once or twice in the course of his legal practice. The hostel, he discovered, was a series of timber-framed buildings off the Stablegreen, with its own small stone chapel in the outer courtyard and guest halls for male and female pilgrims flanking an inner one. In the Master’s modest dwelling Sir Simon Elder met Gil with concern.

‘They’re all in great distress,’ he said. ‘None o them making much sense, and small wonder. Did you ever hear the like, Maister Cunningham? I’ve broke it to Sir Edward, seeing his lassies were in a right state and Habbie and the other fellow had to get back to their duties.’

‘How did he take it? His man Sawney said he’s sick to death. I hope this won’t hasten his end.’

Sir Simon grimaced.

‘I’m not certain he took it in, to tell truth. Nodded and thanked me for bringing him word, but when I offered to pray wi him he said, No, he’d need time to it. Then his doctor put me out of the chamber, and then the lassies needed comforting.’

‘How big is the party?’

‘Oh, a good number. There’s Sir Edward himsel, poor soul, and his doctor, and his sister, and his own lassies and the husband of one of them, and this poor lass who’s in the chapel now, and all their servants. Fortunately, Sir Edward’s well able to make us a generous donation, or I’d have to be asking them to leave as soon as their three nights was up, no to mention all their beasts out-by in the stables, and I’d not like to do that in the circumstances. And we’re quiet the now, we’ll not get busy again till nearer the Assumption, we’ve a few days yet.’

‘What ails Sir Edward?’ Gil asked.

Sir Simon made another long face. He was a tall, angular, lantern-jawed individual with a thick ring of white woolly hair round his tonsure, a sharp and tolerant eye for human failings, and a sardonic smile which was notably absent just now.

‘Trouble in his water, or the like,’ he divulged. ‘Times it pains him right bad, poor soul. How he managed the journey I couldny say. Sawney’s got the truth o’t, you’ve only to look at the man to see he’s near his end.’ He considered Gil a moment longer across his cluttered chamber. ‘Were you wanting anything more?’

‘I’ll need a word wi Sir Edward, if I can,’ Gil confirmed. ‘And wi the good-sisters, and the servants as well, if I’m to find whoever did this and see him brought to justice. Or her,’ he added. ‘I’d say one woman could strangle another if she was bound fast the way Annie Gibb was, though the beating she had before that might be another matter.’

‘You wouldny think,’ said Sir Simon without much hope, ‘it was some passing ill-doer, someone wi a grudge at madwomen, or the like? Or the prentice-laddies? They had one o their games last night, could some o them- She hadny,’ he said in alarm, ‘she hadny been forced, had she?’

‘No sign of that. Her skirts were bound all about her knees. As for someone wi a grudge, I’d say whoever did it knew what he was doing. It was very deliberate.’

‘You mean,’ said the other man after a short pause, ‘I’ve maybe got a murderer under this roof?’

‘Aye,’ said Gil baldly.

‘Then I’d best get to my prayers,’ said Sir Simon, ‘for him and for the rest of us.’