‘It seems very silly,’ said Alys, avoiding two men with a barrel slung on a pole between them, ‘to take you away from the house just to accompany me a few doors down the street.’
‘Never you fret, mem,’ said Jennet happily, looking about her. ‘The work’ll get done anyway, we were about finished in the kitchen, and it’s not right you should go about on your own now you’re a wedded lady. Is that no that Mall Hamilton that used to work for Lady Kate’s man?’
‘Very likely,’ said Alys, pausing before the apothecary’s door. ‘She dwells just off the High Street, I recall. Do you want to come in with me, Jennet, or would you sooner have an hour’s liberty?’
‘Och, I’ll come in and get a word wi them in the kitchen here, and then I’ll be handy for when you take your leave.’
Alys nodded, and pushed open the door. A string of little bells slung on the inside jingled cheerfully as she stepped into the shop. It was a light place, with a big window to the street rather ostentatiously closed by glass both above and below. Behind the counter, to one side of the door, James Syme was weighing rice into folded papers, surrounded by boxes and bags which all stood open to assist the birth upstairs. Jennet had followed her in and stood inspecting the merchandise critically while she enquired after the Renfrew women.
‘My good-mother’s groaning still,’ said Syme, shaking his head sadly. He was a handsome man rather younger than Gil, with waving golden hair and a pink skin, but had a way of speaking as if he was imparting a valuable secret, even if he discussed the weather, which Alys always found irritating. ‘I fear it’s not going well, that’s a full day and a night since she was taken wi’t and the bairn not come home yet.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Alys with a surge of sympathy. She had never attended a birth, even with Mère Isabelle in Paris, but all she had ever heard — ‘If there’s anything I can do?’
‘We’re doing all we can think of,’ said Syme, slightly offended. ‘If you think you know anything new, you’re welcome to suggest it. Maybe you’d like a word wi some of them?’ He glanced at the linen-swathed jug she carried, then turned away to open the door into the house. A ragged, pain-filled scream reached them, and Syme grimaced. ‘You’ll can find your way by ear, I’ve no doubt.’
Alys knew the house slightly, and knew that most of the ground floor was given over to the shop and various storerooms and workrooms. Leaving Jennet to make her own way out to the kitchen, she went quietly up to the floor above, sparing a thought for the difficulty of getting Meg up the stairs yesterday. Stepping into the hall from the stair she checked, startled to find the two youngest members of the household locked in a furious, whispered argument, so intent on their hostility they did not notice her.
‘- nothing to do wi me, and none of your business either, Robert Renfrew!’ hissed Agnes. ‘So just keep your nose out where it doesny belong, and leave me alone!’
‘You’ve got rid of one of your two lapdogs,’ retorted Robert, ‘you’ll no get rid of me so easy, you sleekit wee jade!’
‘I never! It was nothing to do wi — ’
‘Where’d he get that flask, then? They’re saying it’s no one of his own — ’
Another of those screams issued from the door at the far end of the hall, and Agnes flinched. Robert looked up.
‘What’s she girning for?’ he said contemptuously. ‘You’d think she was deein, the noise she makes.’
‘She’s screaming because it hurts,’ said Agnes fiercely. ‘Get away to a keeking-glass and burst your plooks if you canny be helpful, and keep out of my business, you kale-wirm!’
Robert turned, aiming a skilful kick at his sister’s shins as he did, and caught sight of Alys in the door from the stair.
‘Oh, Mistress Cunningham,’ he said, and bowed politely. ‘Come to wait for news? My good-mother’s in yonder, as you can tell.’
Alys acknowledged this and moved forward, saying only, ‘How are you, Agnes? That was a bad day yesterday.’
‘It was,’ agreed Agnes, tears springing to her eyes. ‘It was — I canny believe it yet.’
‘Strange, that, seeing you planned it,’ said her brother.
‘I never! It was nothing to do wi me!’ Agnes sprang forward like a whirlwind, there was a ringing slap and she was gone, her feet sounding on the stairs to the floor above, leaving her brother staring and nursing his reddening cheek. The spots Agnes had mentioned stood out white against the rising colour. Alys curtsied and turned away hastily.
At the further end of the hall there was a pair of chambers one beyond the other. The outer one was bustling with women heating water over the fire, warming linen, passing an ale-cup round from a small barrel decorated with ribbons and a green garland. A close-stool behind a screen made its presence known. Mistress Hamilton was nearest the door, already flushed with the heat and the strong ale, specially brewed for the event. She greeted Alys with pleasure.
‘Have you come to wait for news, lassie?’ she asked. ‘It’s not going well.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Her mammy’s in a right state of worry for her, and Mally Bowen’s been sent for.’
‘I’d have thought she’d be here from the start,’ said Alys.
‘It was Eppie Campbell they’d engaged,’ explained Mistress Hamilton, ‘for that she’s a friend of Meg’s. But Eppie wished Mally sent for a couple hours since. They’re saying the bairn’s maybe the wrong way round, poor lassie. Here comes Marion Baillie, that’s her minnie, the now.’
Mistress Baillie emerged from the inner room, followed by another of those screams, at which the woman stopped, biting her lips, and put a hand out to steady herself on the court-cupboard she was passing. Alys flinched in sympathy and moved forward, nodding to Nancy Sproull and then to Grace Gordon, and curtsied to the older woman.
‘I’m Alys Mason,’ she explained, ‘from a few doors up. I brought this.’ She held out the little jug she carried. ‘It’s hot water with honey and aquavit and a sprig of thyme.’
‘She drinks any more, she’ll driddle the bairn out,’ remarked Nancy Sproull. ‘Grace was just giving her something and all.’
‘It might put some strength into her,’ Alys said. ‘How is she?’
‘That’s a good receipt.’ Mally Bowen materialized beside them. ‘She’s right weary since I turned the babe. I’ll try her wi some of that the now.’ She took the jug and retreated to the inner room. Mistress Baillie shook her head, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘That’s kind, lass,’ she said. ‘Oh, my poor lassie. It’s no — it’s never — ’
‘It’s hard for you to watch,’ said Alys, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Can I do anything?’
‘I don’t know what’s to do for her. She’s — we’ve got her lying down for now, she’s that weary, and it’s no dropping as it should, even though they turned the bairn — we’ll have her back in the chair shortly, but — ’ The incoherent speech broke off, and Mistress Baillie drew a deep breath and looked at her intently. ‘Did you say you were Alys Mason?’ Alys nodded. ‘Were you no at that gathering yesterday?’ She nodded again, and the other woman looked about them at the bustling room, then put a hand on Alys’s shoulder. ‘Come out here if you will, lass, till I get a word.’
Out in the hall Robert Renfrew was still standing about, but left ostentatiously when he saw them. Ignoring him, Mistress Baillie towed Alys to one of the window spaces and said with quiet urgency, ‘Were you present at these mummers? Can you tell me what happened? Grace told me a bit, but she’ll never say aught that reflects on Renfrew and I can make no sense of Eleanor’s version, and that Agnes has barely left her chamber since they came back here. And Agnes Hamilton’s a good soul, but — ’
‘Yes, I was there — is it worrying her?’ But surely, thought Alys, the — the pressures of bringing a baby to birth should overcome all else. Maybe not.
‘I think that’s what’s eating at her,’ agreed Mistress Baillie, and rubbed at her eyes again. ‘She canny give her whole mind to the task, she canny let go and let the bairn come. She’s fighting everything we do.’ She was a plump, attractive woman, not much past forty and still with most of her teeth, but her face was haggard with worry and lack of sleep, and her mouth worked as Alys looked at her. ‘Tell me what happened, lassie, will you?’
Obediently, Alys recounted the tale of the afternoon, of the substitute flask and how the first any of them had realized that something was wrong was when the champion fell the second time. The other woman listened closely, and shook her head.
‘I see it,’ she said. ‘My lassie was feart it was — ’ She stopped and looked at Alys. ‘She never did a thing wrong,’ she said fiercely. Alys nodded. ‘But she favoured Tammas Bowster, and her faither would take Renfrew for her, no matter that he’s older than I am, and her heart’s no been in the match.’
‘That is hard,’ said Alys. ‘But surely now she has the baby —?’ At least she has the baby, said a little voice in her mind. My father liked my choice, but I have no baby yet.
‘Aye, and it’s Renfrew’s bairn, no doubt of that, whatever he said to her when she was first howding. But Tammas was there yesterday, I take it, with the other mummers?’
‘He was,’ agreed Alys.
‘I think my Meg’s feart it was Renfrew tried to pyson Tammas Bowster and slew this Gibson by mischance.’
Alys stared at her, aware that her mouth was dropping open. Recovering it, she said, ‘No, indeed, it could not have been, for nobody told Maister Renfrew about the mummers until he arrived at the house. He was not best pleased, my good-sister said, but there was little he could do about it by then.’
‘Was it not the flask Renfrew aye carries on him that pysont the man?’ asked Mistress Baillie doubtfully.
‘No,’ said Alys firmly, ‘for my husband saw him drink from that himself, while the mummers were acting the play. It was another flask.’
‘Would you tell her?’ Mistress Baillie seized Alys’s hands in a painful grip. ‘Lassie, would you tell her that? It might — she might let go if she hears it, she can stop fretting and think of the bairn instead.’
‘Yes, if you think it proper for me to be in the same chamber,’ Alys said diffidently. ‘I’m not — I’ve no — ’
‘Oh, never mind that! Anything that will help my lassie,’ said Mistress Baillie. She set off towards the door, then checked as another ragged scream tore at their ears. ‘Oh, my poor Meg!’ she exclaimed, tears starting to her eyes. ‘Oh, how can I bear it?’
‘She’s more to bear than you have, Marion,’ said Maister Renfrew, coming into the hall from the stair. ‘How is she? Is she making any progress?’
‘None,’ said Mistress Baillie bluntly. ‘We’ve tried all the receipts you sent up, all the charms, all the prayers. She’s bound up in the birthing-girdle from St Thenew’s, she’s got a knife under her pillow, the jasper-stone, Lady Kate’s snakestone, that strange thing Caterin Campbell sent round, she calls it Our Lady’s sea-nut — none of them’s done her any good. If you’d unlocked your workroom when I first asked you this would never ha come about.’
‘Superstitious nonsense — and that room stays locked now, the way things vanish. It’s coming to it, when I’ve to lock my workroom against my own household.’
‘And if you’d listened to me about her dates,’ persisted Mistress Baillie, unheeding, ‘she wouldny have been at Morison’s yesterday getting frightened into this state.’
Her tone was biting; a lesser man would have quailed, but Maister Renfrew merely said, ‘Well, it’s the lot of women. Can Grace do nothing?’
‘Grace gave her some of Nicol’s drops, but it’s no done much good,’ said Mistress Baillie. Behind Renfrew a maidservant entered the hall and padded past them. ‘It takes one who’s been through it to support a lass, especially her first time.’
‘Here, Isa,’ said Renfrew, ignoring this. ‘What are you about here, woman? There’s no word yet, there’s no call for you to be up here! Away back to the kitchen.’
‘I’m here to empty the close-stool,’ said the woman, ‘since it willny empty itsel, as any woman could work out.’ She bobbed without respect, and went on into the crowded room.
Her master stared after her in exasperation, and Mistress Baillie said, ‘Oh, get away to your prayers, man, for it’s about all you can do for Meg now. You and your pine nuts!’
Renfrew bridled at this, but said sharply, ‘We’ve got prayers being said for her at the Greyfriars, and Eleanor’s along at St Mary’s on her knees, seeing she can hardly come about the house till the bairn comes home, the way she is. So if you’ll no have me in the chamber — ’
‘It’s Mally Bowen won’t have you in the chamber, you ken that as well as I do,’ said Mistress Baillie. ‘So you might as well get along to St Mary’s yoursel, maister.’
She turned towards the door, then stood aside to let Grace Gordon emerge.
‘Grace!’ said Renfrew curtly. ‘I’ve been seeking you.’
‘I was away for another dose of the drops,’ Grace said quietly.
‘One dose is enough. She’s no needing more. Come wi me the now.’
Alys, following Mistress Baillie, caught sight of Grace’s expression. What was it? she wondered. Resignation, apprehension, fear? She slipped past the other girl and into the hot, busy room, where the ale-cup was going round again. Mistress Hamilton was embroidering an account of a cousin’s recent delivery; Alys, who had heard parts of the tale before, moved on quickly, but Nancy Sproull caught her arm, peering up at her with those dark-fringed grey eyes not entirely focused.
‘Alys,’ she said solemnly. ‘Alys, you’re a sensible lassie and a good Christian soul and all.’
‘I try to be.’
Mistress Sproull pulled her down to breathe ale at her. ‘Would you do me a favour, lass? Would you call by our house and get a word wi our Nell?’
‘With Nell?’ Alys repeated in surprise.
Nell’s mother nodded, still with that juridical solemnity. ‘She’s right grieved by yesterday’s trouble,’ she divulged in a hoarse whisper. ‘She’ll not stop weeping. See if you can talk some sense into her, lassie?’
‘I’ll try,’ promised Alys, disengaging herself with some trouble.
In the birthing chamber it was slightly less hot, and quieter between Meg’s bitter pangs. She was laid on her side on a truckle-bed, clad only in a sweat-damp shift, her hair loose and clinging to her swollen face. Bound round her, under her sagging breasts, was the birthing-girdle, a strip of parchment cut to the height of Our Lady and inscribed with grateful prayers, and charms of one kind or another were strapped to her arm or her bare thigh.
‘Mammy, make it stop,’ she moaned as Alys entered. ‘I don’t want a bairn, take it away!’
Mally Bowen, wife of Serjeant Anderson, the burgh layer-out and most experienced midwife, had both hands and one ear applied to her belly, and her mother was already bending over whispering to her. Mother and daughter turned to look at Alys with identical expressions of hope.
‘Here, what’s this?’ said Mistress Bowen, straightening up. ‘There’s no room for you in here, my lass, you’ve none of your own — ’
‘She’s got a word for Meg,’ said Mistress Baillie, ‘that willny wait, Mally.’ The two exchanged a significant glance, and Mistress Bowen stepped away from the bed to join a younger woman by the shaded window. Both were wrapped in linen aprons, stained with blood and — and other fluids, thought Alys. She was astonished by how alarming she found it to be here. Is it because I have no role, no responsibility? she wondered. Or is it another reason?
‘Alys?’ said Meg weakly, reaching out a hand to her. She drew close, and knelt down in obedience to the hand. ‘Is that right, what my mammy says? Did you see —?’
‘My husband saw,’ said Alys, trying to sound reassuring. ‘He saw your man drink from his own flask, while we all watched the mummers. So it was never your man’s flask that Nanty Bothwell had in his scrip. It was nothing to do with him what happened.’ And if the logic of that is not rigorous, she thought, this girl would never see it at the best of times and right now she’s incapable of thinking it out.
‘O-oh!’ Meg let her head fall back on the pillow, tears starting to her eyes. ‘Oh, thanks be to Our Lady!’ Her mother wiped at her brow with a damp cloth, making soothing noises. ‘I should never ha doubted — ’
She caught her breath, and clapped both hands to her belly.
‘Oh, aye,’ said Mistress Bowen, bustling forward from the window with her colleague. Alys stepped hastily back from the bed, and found herself elbowed against the wall. ‘That’s more like it, then.’
‘It’s no the same as it was,’ said Meg weakly. ‘It was — it was — ’
‘Aye, it’s no the same.’ Mistress Bowen turned back the folds of the linen garment which Alys now realized was not a shift but a man’s shirt, and groped expertly between the massive, blue-veined thighs. ‘That’s a clever lass. No long now.’ She paused as another of the spasms seized her patient, and as it eased she said over her shoulder, ‘I think we’ll have her in the chair now, Eppie.’
Alys, caught between the bed and the window, watched in alarm as the three women raised Meg and transferred her to the birthing-chair, where she lay limply, thighs spread, her head thrown back on her mother’s breast, while the two midwives inspected her privities. This was not how one had ever imagined — it was not how the birth of the Virgin or of St Nicholas was shown — they could never depict a saint in such an extremity, she realized. The priests would never believe it. And Kate has done this, been through this, she thought, horrified, and yet she loves her baby.
Although Mistress Bowen had said it would not be long, it seemed to Alys that she stood trapped by the window for a hundred years while Meg laboured through the last stages of bringing her child to birth. She was aware of a stirring at the door to the outer chamber, of voices and exclamations as well as of Meg’s increasing cries of pain, the encouraging words of the two midwives, the reassuring murmurs from Mistress Baillie, but her attention was entirely on Meg, on this dreadful process of bringing a child into the world. She seemed to be reduced to a single point of attention, without hands or feet or body, only a pair of eyes and a mind which tried but was unable to reject what it was seeing.
Finally — finally — Meg screamed in what seemed like a death-agony, the two women on their knees exclaimed together, there was a flurry of movement, a sudden thin high wail. The entire world and everything in it seemed to pause for a moment, and then all the women in the other chamber sighed at once. Meg exclaimed joyfully, her weakness forgotten:
‘Oh, let me see! Let me see! Is it a boy or a lassie?’
‘It’s a bonnie wee lassie, and the image o her daddy,’ said Eppie exultantly, and raised the baby up to its mother’s reaching arms, the cord trailing. ‘Gie her your titty, Mammy, till she kens you.’ Over Meg’s shoulder her eye fell on Alys, and her expression changed. ‘Here, my lass, have you been here the whole time?’
Alys nodded dumbly. Mother and grandmother were already crooning over the scarlet, sticky, crumpled creature in Meg’s arms, counting its toes and calling it Wee Marion and Bonnie wee lass while it nuzzled for Meg’s dark nipple. Mistress Bowen, with a glance at her colleague, got stiffly to her feet and came round the end of the truckle-bed.
‘I’ll say this for Frankie Renfrew, he makes bonnie bairns. Come away, pet, it’s a hard thing to witness your first time,’ she said. ‘You should never ha been here.’ She put out a bloodstained, reeking hand to offer support, then withdrew it as Alys recoiled, shuddering. ‘Aye, away out and get some of the groaning-ale, lassie, that should settle your wame.’
‘Bide there,’ said Grace Gordon, ‘till I find you something to restore the spirits.’
‘I never thought of it being so — so — ’ Alys subsided on to the bench Grace had indicated. ‘Should you not — there is the father to be told — ’
‘I’ll let Eppie do that,’ said Grace, ‘seeing it’s the howdie’s right. And the gossip-ale was going like a fair without my aid, and will go better still now the bairn’s at the breast.’
She had found Alys adrift in the house on legs which did not seem to belong to her, and taking one look in her face had steered her to her own bedchamber. The room was full of kists, most of them ranged in the space under the bed, and, despite the array of expensive clothing of good wool and fine brocade which hung on pegs round the walls and behind the door, smelled not of moth-herbs but, unaccountably, of apples. Now Grace opened a further door and vanished into a small light closet, where Alys could hear her moving things. Glass clinked, pottery tapped. After a moment she emerged with a cloth, which she used to dab at Alys’s hands and wrists. The familiar, comforting scent of lavender water rose from it.
‘D’you want to talk about it?’ Grace asked. ‘I take it you witnessed the birth?’ Alys nodded wearily. ‘Aye, there’s good reason they shut us out. Did Mally turn the bairn, then?’
‘I suppose. She said she did. Do you not wish to join the rest of — ’
‘No, I’m well enough here.’ The cloth moved on to Alys’s temples and brow. ‘Just sit quiet. You’re no howding yoursel?’
She shut her eyes, but managed to shake her head under the gentle attentions.
‘How long since you were wedded?’
‘Nearly a year.’
‘Time enough.’
‘And you?’ Think about something else. Make conversation as one was always taught. Good manners are earthly salvation, as Mère Isabelle once said, though Catherine would not agree.
‘The same. Nicol and I were wedded last Yule in Middelburgh, and came home here in May.’ Her lips tightened briefly.
‘And a — a sad homecoming for you, I think,’ said Alys, pulling her thoughts together. ‘You haven’t — you aren’t —?’
‘No.’
Change the subject, thought Alys.
‘How did Nicol think, to find his father wed again?’
Grace shook her head, smiling wryly. ‘No best pleased, I think, the more so that the letter must ha gone astray and we’d never heard of the marriage, though he’d heard of ours. Nicol and Frankie don’t get on, you’ll ha jaloused, and that was just another coal on the fire. Mind you he’s no quarrel wi Meg herself, poor creature.’
She put the cloth in Alys’s hand and rose to fetch a pottery cup from the closet, stirring it as she crossed the chamber. ‘Drink this, my dear. It should help a bittie. And never fear, you’ve had a fright the now but they aye say it’s a different matter when it’s your own.’
Alys shuddered at the thought. There, it was back in her mind again. She drank obediently from the cup, though her teeth rattled on the rim, and tried to concentrate on what was in it. Honey, and rose water, and — Not myrrh, but something resiny. What could it be?
‘You know apothecary work?’ she asked.
‘I do. That was how Nicol and I met,’ Grace admitted.
‘That must have been a help when you came here. Another pair of hands is always an asset.’ Particularly when they don’t have to be paid, she thought.
‘Aye, when they don’t need a wage,’ agreed Grace, echoing her thought. ‘I’ve found a place here. I do the most of the stillroom work, now Eleanor has her own house to run. Frankie likes to carry a good line in stillroom wares, for them that’s too lazy or busy or unskilled to make their own.’
‘Lavender water,’ said Alys. ‘Quince lozenges.’
‘Aye, those were my quince lozenges the bairnies were handing round yesterday, that I made from a barrel of quinces we got last month. A good shipment, the most of them were fit for use.’ The other girl hesitated, and Alys recognized what was coming next. ‘That was a terrible thing that happened. Your man acted well, getting the wee lassies out of the chamber afore they knew what was going on. He’s a good man.’
‘He’s the best in the world,’ she said firmly, and smiled a little with stiff lips at the thought of Gil.
Grace laughed, but it was sympathetic. ‘My! But has he learned aught about how it happened? Was it Nanty Bothwell’s doing indeed, or — ’
‘He’s still trying to find out.’ Conversation, conversation. ‘I think Agnes has taken it badly, poor girl. To have one of your sweethearts accused of poisoning the other — ’
‘I’ve no notion how she’s taken it,’ said Grace. ‘She’s not left her chamber since we got Meg to bed, and she’ll speak to nobody.’
‘To nobody at all? I saw her earlier, arguing with her brother in the hall.’
‘Did you so? We sent food up, but she’s not eaten it, and the servant-lass that’s been her bedfellow since Eleanor wedded says she never uttered a word. Even Nell Wilkie couldny get in to speak wi her. I suppose Frankie must ha been thinking about Meg, or he’d have dragged her out by now, but as it is she’s been let alone. She must be coming round a bit.’
‘She must surely be in great distress. Maister Renfrew seems certain it was deliberate poisoning, but everyone else who knows the young man thinks it was an accident.’
‘I’ve little acquaintance wi him,’ said Grace. ‘Or his sister.’
‘She seems a good woman, and very fond of her brother.’
‘No guarantee he’s innocent.’
‘Agnes spoke to the one man yesterday, and not to the other, and it was the one she slighted that died. That was unfair.’ Where are my manners? she thought in faint puzzlement, but it seemed as if she was floating high in the air, above such considerations.
‘Did she so?’ Grace turned her head to look at her. ‘How did she manage that? Oh, when Meg would have her fetch her own herb-cushion, I suppose. So privilie caught he the prettie wench.’
‘Yes, that was it, so the mummers told us. Would she not talk to her sister just now?’
‘To Eleanor?’ Grace laughed shortly. ‘They don’t speak unless they have to.’ She met Alys’s eye, and smiled rather bitterly. ‘It’s a warlike house, this one. What is it Holy Writ says? A house divided against itself?’
‘How so? Is it some great quarrel among them? Their mother’s will, or something?’
‘Nothing so likely,’ said Grace. ‘They just don’t get on. I never believed Nicol when he tried to tell me, no till we came here to Glasgow and I saw the truth of it myself.’
Alys contemplated this idea.
‘I have no brothers or sisters,’ she admitted, ‘but Gil had seven, and I think he is good friends enough with those that live. He’s very close to two of his sisters. Does Nicol —?’
‘Nicol and Robert were at one another’s throats within an hour of our entering the house. Agnes spent that whole day flyting at him, making fun of his every word — he’s his own way of — he doesny aye …’ She paused, seeking for words.
‘I’ve noticed,’ said Alys, and suddenly found herself choking back a laugh at the thought of Nicol’s way of saying things.
‘Eleanor was easy-osy at first, but now she’s defied him to come near her, in case he afflicts her bairn. And since he’d come home without permission, Frankie wasny well pleased. There was a thundering argument over the supper, all about his inheritance, and who was or was not a partner in the business. In fact, it was only Meg that made us welcome,’ Grace recalled.
‘It must be strange to have a good-mother younger than yourself,’ observed Alys, thinking of her own mother-in-law, elegant, powerful and terrifyingly perceptive. Meg Mathieson would never be any of those, but she was still Grace’s mother-in-law. The idea was very funny. ‘Do you get on wi her?’
‘Oddly enough, we all do,’ agreed Grace. ‘She’s a sweet-natured lassie, when — ’ A quick glance at Alys’s face. ‘When she’s in her own self.’
‘Grace?’
Nicol Renfrew was standing in the doorway, looking slightly puzzled to find Alys there. His wife rose and went to meet him, her hands out. He returned her kiss, saying, ‘What’s eating at the old man? And did you hear we’ve a new sister? Meg’s finally dropped her bairn.’
Alys shut her eyes at the words, but had to open them again, because the image of Meg screaming in the birthing-chair was lurking behind her eyelids.
‘I heard,’ Grace said. ‘Are you pleased?’
He shrugged. ‘Well enough, I suppose. It doesny touch me. What’s eating at Frankie? He was in a rare rage about apples down there, and about you never consulting him, and then ranting at Robert. Eppie Campbell had to tell him the news twice afore he heard her.’
‘We’ve spoken of it,’Grace said. ‘Never worry. I brought a second barrel of apples up here this morning, and filled all the boxes we had wi apple-cheese, and he’s concerned it willny all sell afore it goes off.’
Nicol giggled in that strange way. Alys found herself laughing aloud in sympathy, and he cast her a glance, but said to his wife, ‘Why would you do that, lass? Just to annoy him?’
‘I don’t annoy your father if I can help it, Nicol, you know it,’ she said, with a sudden intensity. ‘I wanted to work wi apples the day, nothing more than that. Are you well, my loon?’
‘I’m well enough,’ he said indifferently. ‘That’s Gil Cunningham’s wife, is it no?’ He nodded to Alys, and smiled slyly. ‘I know what you’ve given her.’
‘Only a speck,’ said Grace.
‘And why are the two of you in here talking, anyway? You should be at the gossip-ale getting drunk wi the rest of them. The hall’s full of drunken women.’ He giggled again.
Grace patted his cheek. ‘That’s your answer,’ she said. ‘We’d no wish to get drunk, Alys and me, so we’re in here talking instead.’
Alys watched them. The cloud on which she appeared to be floating was descending slowly, and she was thinking more clearly. Apart from her own, the only marriage she had observed at close quarters was Kate’s. Both were love matches; she thought this one was not, though it was evident the two were fond of one another, and she wondered what Grace had brought to the marriage. Perhaps her skill, if it was that great.
‘You never talk to me,’ said Nicol discontentedly. ‘You talk to Frankie, and Meg, and all them. I wish you’d talk to me instead.’
‘I’ll aye talk to you, my loon,’ said Grace, turning to look intently at his face. ‘Sit down now and talk wi the two of us. Do you need some of your drops?’
‘No, for I’m going out. I’ve a message to you from the old man. He bade me tell you,’ he ticked them off on his fingers, ‘the shop’s about out of lavender water, he wants more brought down, and where was the small glass gourd, oh, and his drops is getting low. Here’s Blue Benet.’ He handed her another of those painted flasks, studied his hands, and giggled. ‘Aye, that’s the lot. Now I’m away out.’
‘Will you be back for supper?’
‘Aye, likely. I’m going to tell Tammas Bowster that Meg’s brought home her bairn.’
He slouched out of the room, and Grace watched him go, tight-lipped. After a moment she sighed, and smiled, and said, ‘He’s a kind man, my Nicol, whatever else. Did you ken his mother?’
‘No, for she died long before we came to Glasgow. Maybe Agnes Hamilton knew her,’ Alys suggested. ‘Is it you makes up Maister Renfrew’s drops? I saw him taking some yesterday. And Nicol has some as well.’ She heard herself giggling as Nicol had done. ‘Drop, drop, drop, everyone has drops. Do you make his too? Does Robert have drops?’ She closed her mouth firmly, alarmed by the words which were falling out of it. Dropping out of it. What is wrong with me? she wondered. Where are my manners flown to?
‘No,’ said Grace quietly. ‘It’s his father makes those up.’ She came to sit down, gave Alys another of those sharp, assessing looks, and nodded. ‘Aye, you’ll do. Do you want to sleep a bit? Put your feet up on the bench.’
‘No, I don’t want to sleep.’ It seemed like a very bad idea. There might be dreams waiting. ‘I’d rather talk,’ she said hopefully. ‘Tell me how you met Nicol. Did you love him when you were wedded?’ That’s better, said the watchful voice in her head. You can ask any woman that kind of question.
‘I favoured him,’ said Grace, smiling slightly. ‘He’s well learned, and mostly civil, and the — the man that taught us both would have us wed.’
‘Was that in Middelburgh? Will you go back there?’
Grace sighed. ‘I’d like to. We’d friends there, and elsewhere in the Low Countries.’
‘Then why not go?’
‘Frankie won’t hear of it. Now we’re here, he says, we can stay and take a hand in the business. Which doesny please the rest of them.’
‘Why not? I’d have thought they’d like the extra help.’
‘Aye, but there’s the extra outgoings.’ The other girl sighed again. ‘And the questions it raises about Nicol’s place here.’
‘Surely he is the eldest son?’
‘Aye, and Frankie sent him into the Low Countries to learn his trade,’ Grace said rather bitterly. ‘But now he’s learned it, Frankie won’t hear what he says. All he does is cry him down a fool. I’d say he’s decided Syme and wee brother Robert can be bent to his purpose better than Nicol ever could. So Nicol’s to stay here and do nothing, while his father takes me for — ’ She bit that off.
‘Why did you come back to Scotland?’ Alys asked.
Grace gave her a rueful look. ‘You’re full of questions the day, aren’t you no? Well, I suppose that’s my doing, and you’ll mind little enough of it the morn.’
‘I like to know things,’ said Alys happily. She had come down from her cloud now, but was feeling pleasantly relaxed, though some of her thoughts did not seem to be in her control. ‘So why did you come back, if Nicol dislikes his father so much?’
‘I’m not right sure,’ said the other girl. She rose and went to the window, looking out of the glazed upper portion over the bleak garden and fiddling with the turn-button on the shutter below it. ‘Time we gathered the last of the autumn simples,’ she noted. ‘I suppose Nicol was determined, and I’d a notion to see where he grew up. But all we’ve done in coming here is make Frankie the more resolved that Nicol’s to have no part in the business, or the proceeds, and nothing like his share of the property in the old man’s will.’
‘He has his rights,’ said Alys, ‘but that’s unkind. It’s a father’s duty to see his children established in the world.’
‘Aye, well, he says he’s already done more than Nicol deserves.’ Grace left the window, and looked down at Alys, the grey eyes considering her carefully. ‘I should start another batch of his drops. It takes a day or two while the virtues combine.’
‘Maister Renfrew’s drops? I saw him take them,’ Alys said again. ‘They worked right well, and quickly at that. Is it his heartbeat that troubles him, or the threat of an apoplexy?’
‘Excess of choler, properly, together wi he’s no a young man though he will behave as if he’s twenty. I think I have all the simples here to put to them.’
‘Then I should get away and leave you to your work.’ Alys rose, finding her legs more certain than they had been. ‘I’m right grateful for your help, Grace.’
‘Och, never mention it,’ said Grace. ‘Are you fit to go home alone yet? Aye, I think you are. Had you a lassie wi you? I’ll call her.’
‘N-no,’ said Alys, with sudden decision. ‘Jennet’s in the kitchen here. Send and tell her, if you would, I’ve stepped next door to see my good-sister, so she may go home in her own time. Kate will want to hear the news of — ’ She swallowed. It was all still there in her head, waiting to pounce. ‘News of Meg.’