Sitting on his folded plaid on a damp bank on the Dow Hill, the dog ranging happily in the rough grass, Gil surveyed the burgh laid out before him in the afternoon light and considered three deaths.
Small birds scolded among the bushes as Socrates invaded their territory. Sounds drifted up from the town on the brisk wind, voices and hammering, the clack of the several mills downstream, a steady rasping from the sawpit at the foot of Andrew Hamilton’s toft. Up to his right, the blond bulk of St Mungo’s loomed against the grey sky, its narrow spire and lopsided towers familiar as a friend’s face. The big houses of the Chanonry stood round it, their gardens sprawling down to the mill-burn dotted with autumn-leaved fruit trees and plots of dark green kale. A tumble of smaller cottages on the High Street led down the steep portion known as the Bell o’ the Brae, their long narrow tofts built up with workshops and storage sheds. The university was easily picked out by its swarming students in their blue gowns, with what seemed to be a noisy game of football taking place on the Paradise Yard. Next to that, the Blackfriars’ austere narrow kirk stood among the conventual buildings, and was succeeded, directly in front of him, by more big houses where the successful lived. He picked out Pierre’s house, and Morison’s Yard, and the Renfrew house next to it, the source of his present problems.
He cast his mind back over the past few days. The first death, the mummer’s poisoning, he was fairly certain was an accident. The way both Bothwell and Agnes Renfrew had reacted made that clear. But who had the lethal little flask been intended for, if not for Danny Gibson? And where had Agnes found it? He’d locked his workroom, she had said, I had to take what I could find. Where would she look if her father’s workroom was unavailable, and all the servants in the kitchen? He or the man Andro had searched the rest of the house; they had both found similar painted flasks, but the content of each was identifiable, though some they had had to refer to the helpful Syme or to Grace Gordon.
That flask, the one which Nicol called Allan Leaf, had gone to the Forrest brothers and so far as he knew was still in their possession. So Agnes must have found a further supply of the stuff, to concoct the sweetmeats which had killed her brother. Where? Or had she first located a larger quantity, and helped herself to what she needed each time? If the stuff killed on contact with the skin, she must either have been very lucky the first time or have known already what it was. And where was it stored?
That was the point they kept coming back to. What was the stuff, where did it come from, who knew about it? Presumably one person in the house did. Was that person still in the house? Still in the world? Could it have been Robert who brewed the poison, only to fall victim to it at his sister’s hands? Could it have been Frankie’s work?
And if Renfrew’s death was not natural, how had it happened? He considered the scene in the stripped bedchamber this morning. Grace’s motive seemed to be a good one, of sparing the young widow the distress of dealing with the task herself, but in doing so she had made a clean sweep of everything which might have indicated whether the man had died peacefully of a heart attack or not. You would hardly have known he had slept in that chamber, he reflected.
Below him, across the Molendinar, a figure in the garden of the Renfrew house was grappling with what seemed to be a barrel, twirling it on one end down the rough path towards the back gate. He watched, half attending. The chimney of the washhouse in the same garden was smoking briskly; the November wash must still be under way. Up and down the bank of the mill-burn other households seemed to have completed their wash, and linen was being spread out on dykes and hedges, bushes and greens, in the hope that this wind would continue. Likely the Renfrew household had been late starting, in the circumstances.
If Renfrew’s death was not natural, who could be responsible? The figure with the barrel — was it Nicol? — had deposited the thing by the gate and was returning to the house. What about those two, he wondered, Nicol and Grace? Why had they come home? Why had they stayed so long when they were unwelcome? No, more logical to ask why Renfrew had made them stay so long when they were unwelcome. A man of contradictions, the apothecary, a man who wished to control everyone round him. Nicol would return to the Low Countries, presumably make a living there, his quiet, beautiful wife with him. They had planned to leave already, as he had told the Provost, why would they have to poison Frankie in order to get away?
Mistress Mathieson and her mother claimed not to have stillroom skills. Faced with something labelled as poison, one would hardly need stillroom skills to make use of it, but this stuff was dangerous, and an untrained person using it would put himself at serious risk. Or herself, he corrected, as the Provost had done. Would Renfrew have taken a wife who knew nothing about the work in the shop? Perhaps he planned to train her, he answered himself.
Who else was left? The servants, and Syme and his wife. The maidservants did not seem to him to be strong contenders, though of course they had access to all parts of the house while they were working, and whichever one it was who had come to tell Grace her master had not risen might have had the chance to remove whatever evidence had been left before the rest of the household reached the chamber.
Across the burn, down in the Renfrew garden, Nicol appeared from the house with a box. It seemed to be heavy; when one of the women emerged from the washhouse to speak to him he lowered it to the ground. Gil watched idly as the two held some kind of discussion. Nicol’s manner never related closely to his words, but the woman appeared to be telling him something she relished knowing. Then he spoke, and she seemed to take offence, swung round and hurried back into the washhouse. Nicol lifted the box, carried it to the gate and set it on top of the barrel. Then he let himself out of the garden, crossed the Molendinar by the nearest footbridge, and set off purposefully up on to the hill.
Who else? Yes, Syme and his wife. Always about the house, well able to leave a trap for Renfrew, both well placed to gain a great deal from the two deaths in the family. Both with the necessary knowledge. Either must be a good actor if guilty, he considered, recalling Eleanor’s response to her brother’s death. It did not seem to have occurred to either that the other might be guilty; perhaps they were in conspiracy. He thought about that for a moment, trying to imagine how one would discuss such a subject, broach the idea in the marriage-bed perhaps.
‘I thought that was you, Gil Cunningham!’
He looked up, startled, to find Nicol Renfrew standing in front of him, face lit by that aimless grin.
‘Did you, then?’ he returned. Socrates loped over to inspect the newcomer.
‘Aye, from yonder in our garden.’ Nicol sat down beside him, without benefit of plaid or padding, and reached to scratch behind the dog’s ears. Socrates accepted the attention, then wandered off again, nose down in the brown tussocks. ‘Here, this grass is damp. And I wanted a word, so I cam up to find you.’
‘Did you so?’
‘Aye, and here I am.’ Having found him, Nicol did not seem to be in a hurry to get the word. He fidgeted with his hands and feet for a space, while Gil sat silent. Eventually he observed, ‘We’re packing. Grace and me. It’s surprising how much you collect thegither in six month or so.’
‘Did you bring much with you when you came home?’
Nicol turned his head to look direct at him. ‘Never say that, man. This is no my home. We’re going home now.’ He grinned again. ‘Eleanor’ll no have me under the same roof, and it has to be her and Jimmy dwelling in the house now, to keep Meg safe till she can wed Tammas Bowster.’ He paused. ‘Christ aid, I never tellt Tammas Frankie’s deid.’
‘He’ll know by now,’ Gil observed. ‘I think the word is all over the town.’
‘Aye, but better to hear it from a friend.’
‘Why should you and Grace not stay in the house?’
‘Because it has to be Eleanor and Jimmy.’ Nicol struck his hands together. ‘Strange to think Frankie sent me overseas to be rid of me, and here’s me done better than he ever imagined, and here’s him shrouded for burying.’
‘How well have you done?’ Gil asked.
‘Well, I’ve wedded Grace,’ Nicol pointed out, ‘that Frankie never valued as he ought, and we’ve a partner in the Low Countries is waiting for us to come home and get on wi the business.’
‘Have you now?’ Even less reason for Nicol to poison his father, Gil thought.
‘I have that. I’m a wealthy man, Gil Cunningham.’
‘My congratulations,’ Gil returned. There was another pause.
‘That Isa,’ said Nicol after a time. ‘She wanted a word wi me the now. Said she had to tell me something.’
Gil made a questioning noise.
‘She said the old man had a woman wi him in his bed last night.’ Gil turned to stare at him. ‘Aye, you may well gawp. How would she ken that, I asked her, seeing she slept in the kitchen where it’s warm. His sheets, says she, my nose tellt me as soon as I surveyed the sheets. So what woman was it? I asked her. Neither Elspet nor me, she says, nor Jess for she joined us in the kitchen, and Babtie was wi the mistress all night. Fetched someone in off the streets, I’ll wager he did, she says. So I bid her be silent. I wouldny mind if word of that got round Glasgow, it’s no skin off my porridge, but if Eleanor heard her say sic a thing she’d be out on her arse and no waiting for the term of her hire. And Eleanor would take the hysterics again, which isny good for her bairn.’ He looked at Gil, eyebrows raised. ‘So what d’you make of that tale, eh?’
‘There was no other sign,’ said Gil slowly. ‘Maister Syme detected nothing.’
‘Nor did I,’ admitted Nicol, ‘but then I never passed the sheets under review. Frankie’s maidenhead was never my concern.’
Gil thought about this.
‘You were first to leave the house, when you went to fetch Syme,’ he said. Nicol nodded. ‘Was everything locked as usual?’
‘Oh, aye. Just the way Frankie fastened all down at night.’
‘So if your father fetched a woman in, he must have risen to let her out again, and returned to his bed. It might account for his heart giving out,’ Gil added.
‘Aye, it might that,’ agreed Nicol with enthusiasm.
‘But Mistress Mathieson and her mother and Babtie,’ Gil said, thinking it out, ‘were all in the chamber off the hall, one stair up, and awake much of the night they told me.’ Nicol nodded again. ‘Your father was in his bedchamber, on the floor above. Surely they’d have heard — voices, movement, anything — ’ Nicol grinned at that. ‘And what about you and Mistress Grace? Did you hear nothing?’
‘I’d hear nothing,’ Nicol said cheerfully, ‘seeing I slept like a log all night, and Grace beside me. And if the bairn was screaming, which I never heard neither, perhaps they’d not hear the houghmagandie over their heads.’
Perhaps not. Gil considered this.
‘Had he done the like before?’ he asked.
‘How would I ken? Though I can tell you, if he did and Mistress Baillie learned of it,’ Nicol grinned again, ‘she’d have cut him into collops and served him for supper.’
‘I’d agree there.’
They both looked out over the town for a space, Gil turning this new evidence over in his mind. If Isa was right, and the stains she had found were fresh, and resulted from -
‘I did ask her,’ said Nicol suddenly, ‘if she was sure he’d had a woman wi him, if he’d no just, seeing he was without Meg — ’ He mimed crudely. ‘No, she said, she’s washed the family’s sheets for twenty year, she kens the difference, there was two in that bed. I never knew you could tell that much from the wash, did you, Gil?’
‘No,’ he said, wondering which of the maidservants in Pierre’s house knew the details of his own marriage.
‘I’ll not have you send the bellman round asking for her,’ Nicol pursued. ‘Same as I said to Isa, I’m no troubled myself but Eleanor wouldny care for it and Meg likewise, never mind it would sound right daft. The woman that was wi Frankie Renfrew the night he died, speak wi his family. The reward is, we’ll get the Serjeant to you. No, I think we’d get no applicants.’
‘You’re probably right.’ Gil shook his head. ‘I can ask about if you like, Nicol, see if I can find her, though to tell truth it’s not a trade where I’ve contacts — ’
‘I’m glad to hear it, man,’ said Nicol, grinning again. Socrates appeared, and flung himself down at Gil’s feet, his expression matching Nicol’s. ‘No, I think we leave it, for I canny see either how we learn more without discredit to the family.’
But that isn’t justice, thought Gil.
‘Alys might know,’ he said. ‘Or Mally Bowen. She must know likely names.’
‘But would she keep the Serjeant out of it? Leave it, Gil. I tellt you for cause I’d not want you to think I left Glasgow without telling you all I knew, but I think there’s no more to be said on it.’ Nicol got to his feet, rubbing the seat of his hose, and produced that annoying giggle again. ‘I’m soaking wet. If Grace has packed all my hose I’ll need to borrow some of wee Marion’s tailclouts.’
Alys, kneeling at the prie-dieu which had once been her mother’s, was having difficulty with her devotions.
Gil and her father had gone out after supper, once again, to offer sympathy at the Renfrew house, and she had retired to the bedchamber, intending to take prayerful stock of the past few days. She had offered all her usual petitions, and those which were appropriate for the apothecary’s family, living or deceased. She had tried to put her own swirling fears and horrors into some sort of order, to offer them to Our Lady and St Catherine in the hope of lightening the burden or clearing her mind. Neither saint had helped. Instead she found herself thinking through her successive encounters with the Renfrew household, with the servants and Meg’s mother as well as the family, Gil’s latest piece of information tumbling among the words and images which succeeded one another in her head without order. Perhaps that was what she was supposed to think about?
Sighing, she cleared her mind and began from the start, from her first encounter with Eleanor and then Grace in Kate’s new great chamber, the smell of paint and new wood about them. Carefully, as Mère Isabelle had taught her, she offered each person up, surrounding the image in her head with light, with the love of God even if not her own. It took time, and concentration. With her attention successively on each individual, she was faintly aware that the words and images, the odd facts were falling together in the background, that things glimpsed or half-spoken were beginning to shed light on one another or fit together to make another image. She persevered in her task, though the outline of that image began to frighten her. By the time she finished she was trembling. But she also knew what she must do, and that frightened her even more.
She rose from the little prayer-desk, stretched stiffened limbs and hugged herself, trying to still the trembling, thinking about how to proceed, wondering how her kind, civilized, considerate husband would react to what she was about to do. It was one thing to act independently of him, another entirely to act against his duty to his master the Archbishop. She had never seen him really angry, though her father had. Socrates came to her, pushed his nose under her elbow, waved his tail. She uncurled her arms and patted him, wondering how he would react if Gil struck her.
He would return soon. She moved into the outer chamber, where she lifted her plaid from its nail by the door and lit a lantern from the candle. The dog pricked his ears hopefully.
‘Stay, Socrates,’ she said, and extinguished the light.
‘It’s right kind in you,’ said Grace Gordon, folding a fine linen shift. The candle flickered in the draught as the fabric swayed in her grasp. ‘But you can see I’m a wee thing taigled here, Alys.’
‘Can I help?’ she offered.
Grace shook her head. ‘I’m about done. I’ve been packing for most of a week,’ she admitted.
‘When did you book the passage?’
‘As soon as Gerrit sent word he’d reached Dumbarton. Then he’d to loose his cargo and find another, but it seems that’s mostly on board now. He’ll wait till Wednesday for us, no longer.’ Grace considered the box she was filling, lifted a pair of shoes and crammed them into a corner. ‘I’m sorry to leave, in some ways. Meg is a dear soul, and I could learn to love Eleanor, I think, but she and me would never come to terms wi Nicol in the way, and my duty’s to him.’
‘Where are they both?’ Alys asked.
‘Meg and her mammy are below, with the bairn.’ Grace gestured in the direction of the birthing-chamber. ‘Eleanor went to lie down awhile. I hope she’ll bear up, for her own bairn’s sake.’
‘But you lost yours,’ said Alys. Grace looked up sharply at the words, her light gaze focusing on Alys’s face. ‘That must be a grief.’
‘It is.’ The other girl looked down at her packing, and pushed a bundle of stockings in at random.
‘A great pity you’ve not taken again.’
‘D’ye ken, if that’s all you came for, Alys, I’d as soon you left, and let me get on.’
‘No,’ said Alys. ‘I came to make sure you get away. I think you should leave Glasgow as soon as you can. Before the funeral, if it’s possible.’
The stare was needle-sharp this time. ‘Why? Why me?’
‘You and Nicol both.’
‘How so? Why would it be so important? What’s it to you, anyway?’
‘I think you need to know,’ said Alys gently, ‘that the Provost has learned what poison it was killed Danny Gibson and Robert.’
There was a small pause. ‘Has he now? And what would it be?’
‘Some kin of the Bothwells, an apothecary in Edinburgh,’ Alys said, watching her carefully, ‘has said it sounds to him like something brewed up from apple pips. The appearance and the action, he says, are very close.’
‘Is that right?’
‘And Gil will put everything together sooner or later.’
A wry smile. ‘So how come you’re so much faster than your man to come to conclusions?’
Alys shook her head. ‘I had all the facts, I just needed to put them in the right order. He may have to guess some of it.’
‘But suppose your conclusions are wrong, you’ve no got the facts in the right order?’
‘Grace, when I mentioned apples, you looked at your workroom door.’
Grace was silent, while she folded a woollen kirtle and smoothed it into the box.
‘Why are you doing this, Alys?’ she asked at length.
‘You saved John’s life.’
That got her a hard look.
‘The craft’s for healing, no for killing,’ the other girl repeated firmly. ‘I did nothing more than my duty to them that taught me.’
Alys bit back the reply that rose to her lips, and said, ‘You acted quickly, you knew what must be done, you reassured us. John’s family and Kate’s as well owe you a debt for ever. This is part of it, Grace.’
Another wry smile.
‘I value it,’ said Grace. ‘Well, my quine, you’ve paid your debt. You should get home, afore your man leaves here and finds out what you’re at.’
‘He’s just left,’ said Nicol in the doorway. ‘What’s his wee wife here for?’
Grace looked round, her face suddenly vulnerable, and went to her husband. He took her hands in his, but stared blankly at Alys over her shoulder.
‘What’s she want?’ he asked again, and then switched to something Alys thought must be Low Dutch, a strange hard language full of gutturals and half-familiar words. Grace answered him, he asked a question, she spoke at more length, urgently. His expression remained blank but his lanky body seemed to tense as he listened to her. Finally he mustered one of his happy grins.
‘Aye, thanks indeed, mistress,’ he said. ‘But Grace is right, she’s aye right, you need to get away now. Put up your plaid and I’ll see you to your door.’
‘I’d be grateful,’ she admitted, rising. She was unused to being out in the burgh alone quite this late, and it had surprised her how the shadows had seemed to threaten her footsteps. ‘I had a lantern.’
Grace put out her arms. ‘Our dance is done, sister adew. My thanks, lassie,’ she said. ‘I’ll pray for you.’
‘And I for you,’ said Alys. ‘God speed the journey.’
They embraced, and Nicol said impatiently, ‘Come away, come away now, for we’ve other things to see to and all.’
Her head hurt. For what felt like years that was all she was aware of; then gradually she recognized that the world seemed to be rocking, and water slopped coldly quite close to her. There was a smell of fish, and it was dark, but the principal thing was still the headache.
Somebody groaned. After more years somebody else spoke, a voice she did not know. It seemed to be angry. Not Gil, but Gil was going to be angry -
Her head was really painful. She had not had a headache like this for a long time. She tried to put her hand up to her brow, but it would not move, because her wrists seemed to be fastened together. She tugged at the fastening, and groaned again.
Fresh air reached her face as her plaid was turned back. A gentle hand touched her cheek.
‘Que passe?’ she asked.
‘Lie still,’ said someone in horrible French.
‘My head hurts,’ she said.
‘Yes. He hit you hard.’
‘Hit me …?’
She opened her eyes. It was still nearly as dark as it was behind her eyelids, but after a moment she recognized a sky of black clouds, stars sailing between them. Water splashed again. A dark shape came closer to her, and she flinched.
‘And forbye,’ said the angry voice in Scots, more distantly, ‘that’s another groat ye’re owing me, for we never contracted for more than the two o ye and yir goods, let alone if all yir baggage sinks the Cuthbert afore we reach Dumbarton- keep baling, mannie!’
‘You’ll get your extra,’ said another voice. She knew it. It had promised to see her to her door, and then — and then -
‘He hit me,’ she said.
‘He did,’ agreed Grace in that badly accented French. ‘He should never have done it. I’m truly sorry, my dear, after what you did for us.’
‘Where are we?’
‘Beyond Erskine, I think.’
‘Erskine?’ she repeated. ‘What — where — are you taking me to — ’ She tried to rise, to sit up, to raise her head enough to see what was happening. A boat. They must be in a boat. That had been the boatman demanding money. Where were they taking her? Why was she here?
‘Haud still!’ ordered the Scots voice. ‘We’ve no more than a handspan o freeboard, we’ll ship half the Clyde if ye stot about like that!’
‘Rest easy,’ said Grace.
‘Let me sit up!’
Grace bent to assist her, heaved her to a sitting position. Her head stabbed pain and the world swam round her, but when it steadied she was aware of the banks of the river sliding past her, bushes and reeds briefly lit by the lantern at the mast while the water chuckled and sparkled inches from her shoulder. Little birds stirred, fluttered, called alarm as the light passed their roosting-places. Somewhere a fox barked.
She seemed to be sitting on tarred canvas, and her feet were in water in the bottom of the boat. Before her the lantern-light glowed dark rust on the sail and outlined shapes below it, the baggage, the boatman at the tiller, a moving form which must be Nicol scooping water back into the river. She raised her bound hands to her brow, pressing the cords against her face.
‘Why?’ she asked simply.
‘You’re our insurance,’ said Nicol. His accent was as bad as Grace’s; she suddenly recognized Burgundian French.
‘Hein?’
‘He thinks he can bargain with your man,’ Grace said. ‘Use you as a token to pay for our safe passage.’
‘But he — ’ She swallowed. ‘He need not have known until after you had left Glasgow. I’d have said nothing.’
‘Keep baling, maister,’ ordered the boatman. ‘Cuthbert’s no accustomed to carrying boxes, she’s better wi fish, and it makes her uneasy. Keep baling.’
Grace bent forward so her head was close to Alys’s.
‘Can you swim?’ she ask quietly.
‘No.’
‘If I free you, you’ll not try to get away? You could sit here on the bench at my side and be more comfortable.’
Bench? she wondered, and groped for the right word. Thwart, was it? Grace’s French was like her own Scots, a second language, much used but not completely familiar. Concentrate on the situation, she told herself wearily.
‘Where could I go?’ she returned. Grace laughed faintly, produced her penknife and sawed through the cords at Alys’s wrists. She flexed her fingers painfully, and accepted help to move on to the thwart with Grace, her head stabbing pain as she moved. The other girl opened huge wings which turned out to be a heavy cloak, and drew Alys to her side under it.
‘The wind bites right through your plaid,’ she said. ‘It takes this boiled wool to keep it off. How is your head? How do you feel?’
‘Confused.’ Alys sat still, glad of the warmth but uncertain of the close contact. Through the headache she said, ‘I still don’t understand — what gain is it to bring me away like this? Surely it can only fetch Gil after me faster than ever?’
‘You’re our insurance,’ said Nicol again. ‘Even if he reaches Dumbarton before we sail, he’ll let us go rather than see harm come to you, I’d say.’
She swallowed hard. What had Gil said about this man? What was the condition called? Akrasia, that was it, Impotens sui, the state of not having power over oneself, of being unpredictable, without moral judgement. What did he threaten?
‘Nicol, you won’t harm her,’ said Grace. Was that anxiety in her tone?
‘You don’t know that,’ said Nicol, giggling. ‘And nor does Gil Cunningham.’ He bent to his task again, and water splashed over the side. The river did seem to be sliding past very close to the topmost plank of the boat; there was a surprising amount of baggage piled in the midst of the little craft, and beyond it the boatman was now doing something mysterious with a rope. The sail flapped, their speed checked in the water, something swung. Water slopped and Nicol’s activities with the baler redoubled, the sail filled again and the chorus of creaks began a different tune. Child of a western seaport, she understood enough about small boats to know that the wind was not completely favourable, that the set of the sail must be altered to make the most of it. They must have negotiated one of the bends in the river. On the Renfrewshire shore an owl screeched, and another answered.
‘I wouldn’t have told Gil,’ she said quietly. ‘And I don’t think he knew about the apple-cheese or your workroom. It would take him a little time to come to the right answer. But now — your house is the second place he’ll look for me when he finds I’m not at home, and Isa knew I’d been there. He’ll pursue us to Dumbarton with all the speed he can make.’
‘Isa also saw you leave,’ said Grace, equally quietly. ‘I don’t know what my husband intends.’ She sighed. ‘Such a fright I had when he bore you in at the back gate. Then we had to fasten you on to the handcart, all among the luggage, and then we had the argument with this fisherman. I regret this. I really regret this.’
‘What does your husband fear Gil will do?’ she asked. Her hands seemed to be trembling again.
‘Prevent us leaving. Take either of us up for Frankie’s death.’
‘Either of you?’
Grace’s face turned towards her, a pale blurred oval in the lantern-light. Incongruously, there was a laugh in her voice. ‘Either of us. And whichever he takes for it, he’d be wrong.’
Alys digested this.
‘It was his heart, then?’ she said.
‘It was.’
‘You’re very sure.’
‘I witnessed it.’
‘You were there when he died. In his chamber, in the midnight.’
‘He’d summoned me there.’
It was one thing, she discovered, to suspect something so dreadful, but quite another to have it confirmed. Appalled, Alys put a hand out, groped for Grace’s, gripped it. The clasp was returned. ‘How long?’ she asked. ‘How long had he been — been — imposing himself — ’
‘Five month. Any time he saw the opportunity. Any time his son was out of it with the drops, which seemed to happen more often lately. Sometimes in our own bed, wi Nicol drugged at my side.’
Please God and Christ and Our Lady and all the saints, she begged, send that Nicol could not hear their voices, above the increased creaking of the boat, the splash of the baling. And blessed Mary, forgive me that I complained of my own barrenness, when this was happening almost next door.
‘What a blessing you have not conceived while you were in Glasgow.’
Another faint, bitter laugh. ‘I made sure of that. And he never suspected.’
‘He wished to — to replace the one you lost himself?’
‘My God, you’re fast. Yes, that was what he told me, time and time again. He’d make sure his heir was a Renfrew born. But that wasn’t the worst of it.’
Alys made a small questioning noise, but the answer struck her almost at the same moment.
‘The tisane,’ she whispered. ‘The night you came home.’ Grace’s hand tightened on hers, and she felt the movement as the other girl nodded. ‘Ah, what wickedness! No wonder you — ’
‘Planned to poison him.’ The words were almost inaudible.
The sail flapped. Cuthbert checked, lurched, rushed onward. Water gurgled very near her waist. Away to her left, on the Dunbartonshire shore, there were hoofbeats, several horses. A sliver of moon had risen, and slid out of the clouds occasionally.
‘He’d sweetened it with sugar,’ Grace said suddenly, softly, ‘and put galangal and cloves and all sorts to it, to disguise the taste. If it hadny been for that I’d have recognized what he was about. I’ll never be able to face cloves again.’
‘I can see that.’ Alys put her other arm about Grace under the cloak. They leaned together, sharing warmth. ‘And then Agnes found the stuff you had prepared.’
‘I thought I’d hidden it. She’s always been one for prying and spying, though not as bad as her brother.’ She checked. ‘I always forget that my husband is her brother too. Not as bad as her brother Robert. She took the first batch I made, not knowing it for what it was I suppose, and gave it to the man Bothwell. I replaced it the next day.’
‘The apple-cheese — ’
‘Yes. She must have borrowed what she needed, just the day after. I thought the flask had been moved, I thought I’d made more than there was left in it, but the past few days have been such a turmoil I wasn’t certain. Then the boy — Robert — died, and I knew I was right.’
‘Where was the flask when Gil searched the house?’
‘In my purse, while I hoped the stopper was fast.’
‘Where are we the now?’ demanded Nicol suddenly from beyond the piled-up baggage.
‘Kilpatrick’s yonder,’ said the boatman. ‘And Bowling ayont it. We’ll be at Dumbarton in a hauf an hour or so, and you’ll can gie me the extra two groats afore I set you ashore.’
‘One groat,’ said Nicol.
‘Aye, well, that was afore you mentioned insurance,’ said the boatman. ‘Did you never think to ask if I spoke the French tongue? There’s most mariners can manage a few words. I canny afford to insure my boatie, but I can get extra off you if you’re taking me into danger, my lad. Two groats it is, or I’ll not set you ashore.’
‘We’re no wanting to go ashore anyway,’ said Nicol cheerfully. ‘We’re bound aboard the Dutchman that’s lying off Dumbarton, Sankt Nikolaas.’
‘Wherever I set you,’ repeated the boatman doggedly, ‘that’s another two groats.’
‘D’you reckon?’ said Nicol.
There was a sudden movement aft of the pile of luggage. The boat rocked, Alys exclaimed in fright, the boatman cried out. There was a huge splash, and the boat lurched and sped on, lighter in the water. Someone shouted.
‘Nicol!’ exclaimed Grace, leaning forward as if she would rise. She recollected herself in time, and Nicol said lazily:
‘Never fear, lass, I’m here.’
‘Hi! Come about there!’ floated after them, and more splashing. Nicol laughed.
‘I’m no sailor,’ he said, but hardly loud enough for the man to hear. ‘I canny turn your wee boat.’
‘Nicol!’ said Grace on a note of panic. ‘Fit deein, loon? What — what have you done?’ she corrected herself in Scots.
‘He’ll no drown,’ said Nicol. ‘It’s chest deep, no more. He can walk to Bowling.’
‘But how do we — Nicol, we canny sail this boatie! How do we steer it? We’ll run aground, we’ll sink — ’
The splashing and shouting was diminishing beyond him. Alys, rigid with fright, stared as Nicol, faintly outlined by the lantern, settled himself at the stern of the boat.
‘It’s the tiller steers it,’ he remarked. The boat lurched, the sail flapped, and was corrected. ‘Aye, like that. And what wi the tide still running downriver, we’ll likely no go aground afore we can see the Sankt Nikolaas. And how’s our wee token doing,’ he asked suddenly, ‘our safe pass out o Scotland?’
‘She’s well enough,’ said Grace. Alys could feel the effort it took for her to sound so calm. ‘Nicol, how do we go aboard? We’ll never — we canny — ’
‘Ach, Gerrit will send a boat to bring us in,’ said Nicol easily. Akrasia, thought Alys, still staring at him, and began to recognize a real chance that she might not see Gil again.
The boatman had said it was half an hour to Dumbarton. It might have been a year, by the number of prayers Alys contrived to cram into the time. She sat tensely in the bow, not daring to draw out her beads, dredging her mind for all the travellers’ supplications she could recall. Grace had scrambled over the baggage and was baling as Nicol had been, though there seemed to be less water coming aboard now. The lantern at the masthead flickered, but the river had widened, there were no banks or bushes to show up in the tiny light, only an endless running of water and the occasional ripple of a sandbank. Nicol failed to run them aground; the sliver of moon slid in and out of the clouds.
Blessed St Christopher, pray for us, she thought, send that we may not drown. Was that a voice across the water? She tilted her head to listen, and a seabird called, was answered, set up a whole flight of high anxious peep-peep-peepings which soared above their heads in the darkness. What had disturbed them?
That was certainly a voice. It seemed to be behind them. Who else could be out on the river in the midnight like this? Long after midnight, her rational mind answered. Sunrise was after seven o’clock just now, there was no sign of the dawn, but surely it must be getting on for Prime. Please God let the dawn come soon, I don’t wish to drown in the dark — like the boatman, maybe. Did he find his way ashore?
‘There’s a light yonder,’ said Grace. She twisted to look, and saw one, two, a handful of lights, some higher than others. Some of them rocked gently, and one low down was fixed and seemed bigger, as if it was a lit window rather than a lantern like the one at their mast. Beside it, behind it, a huge black bulk loomed against the stars: Dumbarton’s great cloven rock, which guarded the Clyde.
‘It’s all the vessels in the roads off Dumbarton,’ said Nicol happily, ‘each one wi a star at its top. And yonder, I’d say, the baker getting the oven hot for the day’s bread. The folk o Dumbarton’ll no go hungry.’ He shifted the tiller experimentally, and the boat rocked. ‘I’m no wanting the sail now, I think.’
‘He said low tide was about four of the clock,’ said Grace doubtfully. ‘Will we not run aground at low tide? We’ll need the sail to take us to where the vessels are. We canny — we canny just go ashore and ask for aid. What if the boatman’s reached the town ahead of us?’
What if he never came ashore? thought Alys.
‘We’re no going ashore,’ Nicol said sweepingly. ‘We’ll find Gerrit, never fret, lass, and catch the day’s tide. At morn, when it is daylight, we’ll do us into the wild flood.’ Floris and Blanchflour again, Alys recognized. Nicol laid a hand on one of the ropes beside him, and tugged at it. The sail shifted, spilled wind, the boat danced a little sideways.
‘You’ll have us aground,’ said Grace on a high note. Alys realized the other girl was as frightened as she was. And beyond Nicol, was that a movement in the darkness? A flicker of light, something catching the starlight or the exiguous moon, a splash of oars? She stared into the night, heart hammering, half-certain she had imagined it. Could it be Gil?
Nicol suddenly tipped his head back and let out a great halloo which rebounded off the Rock and echoed across the river. There was a huge flapping and screaming, and Alys cried out in fear, cowering down in the boat, until she saw that it was a flock of seabirds startled by the noise, lifting up off the water. As the birds vanished into the night a spark flared under the nearest of the riding-lights, and a surly voice demanded who called, in almost unintelligible Scots.
‘Cherche le Sankt Nikolaas,’ Nicol shouted.
‘Pas ici!’ retorted the surly voice. The light was extinguished.
‘That’s no very friendly,’ said Nicol reproachfully. He must have tugged at the rope again, for the sail cracked, spilled wind, and the boat slipped sideways once more. There was a rasping from under the bottom, then a shuddering jolt and they stopped moving.
‘We’re aground!’ said Grace.
‘It wasny meant to do that,’ said Nicol, and giggled. He put his head back and hallooed again, the sound echoing round them from the Rock.
‘Tais-toi!’ roared the near vessel. ‘Faut dormir!’
‘Gerrit!’ yelled Nicol.
Behind him, two boats appeared in the circle of their lantern. Alys stared as they slid closer, the men in them reaching for Cuthbert’s strakes. Grace turned her head and screamed, pointing, but one of the boats bumped alongside where there was still water under the stern, and two men scrambled over into a sudden fierce tangle with Nicol, and when Grace would have struck one over the head with the baler a third man seized her wrist.
Terrified, despising herself, Alys slid down into the bottom of the boat again, and was taken by surprise when a man climbed in over the prow, standing heavily on her wrist as he went. She managed not to cry out, and he trampled aft over the luggage to join in the fight. Waiting for the sea to come in and swamp everything, waiting to drown, Alys realized that Cuthbert no longer rocked on the water, must be well aground, that there must be sand or -
With the thought itself she had uncurled and was over the side, hauling wet skirts up out of her way, her feet in inches of lapping water, the sand under them firm enough to walk on. She looked about, located the light of the baker’s window, crossed herself, seized her skirts again and set off away from the struggle.
There were other voices, other boats out on the water. Oars splashed rhythmically, lights showed and were concealed. She waded on, hoping that the water was not really deeper, hoping the sandbank ran to the shore or at least that no deep channel cut her off, hoping they had not noticed she was gone -
‘Gerrit! Par là! Attrape-elle!’
She stumbled in a hollow in the sand, righted herself, waded further. The water was certainly deeper, and oars — no, feet, a bigger body than hers splashing through the shallows, came after her. She threw a glance over her shoulders, but could make out only bobbing lights in the dark. The baker’s window seemed to be no nearer, and the sounds behind her were approaching fast -
She screamed as a hand fell on her shoulder, and another grabbed her arm in a punishing grip. A huge shape loomed over her, smelling of ships and stale spirits.
‘Waar komms du, ma fille?’ asked a deep cheerful voice. ‘Dies ist niet goed. Par-là ist Tod. Live is dis way. Votr’ mari ist hier.’