Chapter Seven

‘I’m no that keen on your story,’ said Sir Thomas Stewart, Provost and Sheriff of Glasgow. He pushed aside his notes on Danny Gibson’s death, and blew his nose resonantly into a large linen handkerchief. ‘Confound this rheum, a man canny think straight wi his head full of ill humours. Tell me it all again, till I see how it will sit wi the assize.’

He huddled into his huge furred gown, tucking his hands up the sleeves. Gil obediently began again at the beginning, and recounted what he had learned so far. Sir Thomas listened attentively, blowing his nose from time to time, and shaking his head.

‘I’m still no convinced,’ he said at last, ‘and what’s more I think the assize will never understand it. You’re saying you think this lassie fetched a flask from her father’s house, that turned out to hold poison, and it was all an accident. But the lassie denies it, so does her father, and you’ve given me no reason why Frankie Renfrew should have strong poison lying about his place and not recognize it.’

‘I’ve been unable to speak to the lassie alone,’ Gil corrected, ‘and her father won’t hear of what I say, and laughed at my suspicions.’

‘I’m no surprised,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘He keeps a tight hand on his household, does Frankie, he’d never accept sic a notion, and no more do I. Is that the best you can do, Gilbert?’

‘Bear in mind, sir, I’ve yet to hear from my lord Archbishop, I’m acting on my own account for now, so I can hardly insist on speaking to Agnes against her father’s wishes. I’ve no notion whether she’d tell a different tale if I did. I’d hoped my wife might get a word with her, but she’s — ’ He broke off, unwilling to expand further on that. ‘She hasn’t succeeded yet,’ he finished. ‘There’s been no word from Stirling, I take it?’

‘No, no, I think there hasny. Walter clerk would ha brought it to me if there had.’ Sir Thomas hooted gloomily into the handkerchief again and wiped his eyes with his embroidered shirt cuffs. ‘Confound this rheum. No, Gilbert, I’m no willing to give you a direct order to question the lassie. It seems to me there’s little enough to connect her with the matter, other than that it’s one of her two admirers that’s slain the other. I’ll put young Bothwell to the question in the morning, and see what light he’ll cast on the matter, but — ’

‘She was heard speaking to him,’ Gil pointed out.

The Provost shook his head again. ‘So was the lad who died heard speaking to him, you tell me,’ he said, ‘and those two had high words. That’s a better argument for why he’s dead, though how Bothwell came by the poison so quick after the quarrel — did anyone think to search him or his scrip?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ admitted Gil in some embarrassment. ‘When I learned the flask he should have carried was left in the booth, I thought no further of it. That was unwise.’

‘Aye, well, maybe John Anderson searched it, though whether he’d write down all he found is another matter.’ Sir Thomas rubbed thoughtfully at his reddened nose. ‘No. Now, this flask that has the poison in it. We’ve got Bothwell and Frankie Renfrew both claiming it’s Both-well’s, your wife’s witness that it isny because all the ones he had are still in the packing and the docket wi them, and that daft Nicol Renfrew saying it’s one of his father’s that should have drops in it. If that’s right, and Nicol knows the flask, how come Frankie doesny? No, no, Gilbert,’ he added as Gil opened his mouth to interrupt, ‘I heard you the first time, but it’s how it will look to the assize that matters. Quiet, now, and let me think.’

Gil sat hopefully, watching the older man. Sir Thomas must be in his forties, a small neat balding individual, usually dressed with quiet, rich good taste. Today, packaged in several layers of different furred garments, he resembled a disaster in a skinner’s workshop. He was tapping on the desk before him now, considering the quest on Danny Gibson.

‘Aye,’ he said finally, drawing the papers toward him. ‘I’ll tell you what, Gilbert. I’ll direct the assize to the cause of death, and order them not to consider who’s guilty here. They’ll no like it,’ he admitted, ‘for they aye relish getting someone took up for slaying or murder, but they’ll have to live wi the disappointment for once. Then if you’re right, and my lord agrees, we can follow it up, and if you’re wrong, well, we’ve got young Bothwell locked up anyway, though I’ve a notion John Anderson would like rid of him. It’s no very convenient having a lodger in the Tolbooth.’ He blew his nose again. ‘Confound this rheum. I’m away to my supper and my bed, and hope I feel more like the thing the morn’s morn. My lady’s got some remedy or other for me to take, but to be honest I’d as soon a good dram of usquebae.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Gil, concealing his reaction. ‘When will you question Bothwell?’

‘Oh, that’s for the morn and all,’ said Sir Thomas, rising and clutching his furs about him. ‘I’ll not risk standing about there in the tower just now, all in the damp and cold. Bid you goodnight, laddie, and I’ll see you in my court.’

Gil left the Castle in some annoyance, but by the time he reached the Wyndhead he was more resigned to the situation. It seemed as if he had spent the entire day asking questions to no effect, and now Sir Thomas had put a stop to any further action this evening, except perhaps to find out what Wat Forrest had learned. However it was late in the day, darkness had fallen and the denizens of the upper town were making their way home for supper, and the evening was sufficiently cold that after speaking to Wat it was attractive to think of doing the same, and then of sitting by the fire, discussing what they had learned so far with Pierre and Alys.

Yes, with Alys. And what was wrong there? he wondered, with a rush of anxiety.

When they left the Renfrew house Maistre Pierre had set off to speak to his men at the other site by the cathedral, and Gil had gone straight home, to discover that though nobody in the main house knew she was there, his wife was in their dark lodging, curled up in the bed in her kirtle, dry-eyed and silent in a tight little ball. Socrates, who was not allowed on the bed, had been wedged in firmly at her side with his chin on her shoulder, and had made it politely clear to his master that he felt his mistress needed him. Alarmed and puzzled, Gil had lit candles, spoken to Alys, stroked her hair, tried to find out what was troubling her, but she would not speak except to tell him to go away. Obeying might not have been wise, he was aware, but he did not know what else to do.

He paused at the top of the Drygate, standing under the torch on the corner of someone’s house, to consider matters. In the last couple of months she had been quite unwell when her courses began, but a brief reckoning of the calendar had already told him that that was probably not the answer, and the dog’s response suggested something different. Nicol’s remark that she had had a fright might be nearer it. Where had she been this afternoon? She was going to call at the Renfrews’ house, and Jennet had said something about Kate. Neither of those should have been alarming, the social events round a birth were women’s work after all and Kate would hardly — unless she and Kate had discovered something she disliked.

He thought about that. Alys was inclined to make friends with the people involved in a case, and he was sure it did not help her to be impartial. Look at how she brought Christian Bothwell home, he reflected. If she had learned something this afternoon which reflected badly on Christian, or on Agnes Renfrew, would she have retreated from it in this way? No, probably not, he decided. Her ability to face unpalatable facts was one of the things he valued about her. So how unpalatable must something have been to reduce her to the state in which he had found her earlier? Perhaps Kate can tell me, he thought, I can go there after I speak to Wat. He set off down the Drygate, pulling his plaid up against the wind.

The Forrest brothers were closing up the shop, Wat fastening the shutters while Adam swept the debris of the day’s trading out into the street. They both looked up when he halted beside the door.

‘Gil,’ said Adam hopefully. ‘Have you learned anything?’

‘Nothing,’ said Gil. ‘Whatever I ask, it leads me no further. I’m more certain than ever it was an accident, but I canny prove it, and Nanty willny speak.’ He looked from one man to the other in the light spilling from their doorway. ‘Have you learned aught about the poison?’

‘No really,’ said Wat. He shook the shutters to check they were secure, and gestured to Gil to enter. ‘Come and I’ll show you what I’ve done so far.’

‘You’d hear Meg Renfrew had a wee lassie,’ said Adam, following them in. ‘The image of Frankie, so the howdies said.’

‘I did.’

Gil waited while the brothers stowed the last oddments about the shop, closed the box with the money and lifted the candles. Leading the way into the workshop, Wat said, ‘He’ll be after me within the week to betroth the bairn to our Hughie, I’ll wager.’ He set the box down within his sight and nodded at the pottery flask where it sat bright and innocent on the bench in the candlelight. ‘Now, this. We’ve tried this, we’ve tried that, we’ve tested it for colour and for how quickly it boils, for how it mixes with oil and milk and butter.’

‘Butter?’ repeated Gil, startled.

‘There’s some poisons can be combined with goose-grease or butter, to smear on the skin or work into a glove or the like,’ said Wat. He caught sight of Gil’s expression, and grinned. ‘If you’re wishful to poison someone, man, there’s a way to it, whatever care your victim takes.’

‘So I see,’ said Gil. ‘And does this stuff work that way?’

‘No need,’ said Adam. ‘It slew Danny just from touching his skin, we think. The best we can do is that it’s some plant infusion or distillation.’

‘But there’s this.’ Wat drew on a scorched and stained glove and reached for a small dish. ‘We emptied it out into a glass, to get a better look at the colour, and when we poured it back, there was this left as residue. You’d be surprised what gets past the searce.’ He carried the dish to the light, and poked with a spill at one of the objects which lay on it. ‘You see?’

‘I see it.’ Gil moved his head this way and that to get a better look at the fragments. ‘What would you say it is? It looks to me like scraps of nutmeat. A broken almond, or the like.’

‘I’d say the same,’ agreed Wat happily, ‘and Adam’s agreed. It’s about the hardness of nutmeat, and by daylight it’s white, like cream rather than like milk.’

‘Almonds. Who mentioned almonds?’ Gil recalled. ‘When the lad fell, someone — aye, it was Robert Renfrew — said he’d been eating almonds, for you could smell them on him.’

‘I mind that,’ agreed Adam. ‘You could smell them, the boy was right for once.’ Gil glanced at him, and he grimaced. ‘He’s not a natural apothecary, young Robert, for all Frankie says.’

‘I never heard that you could brew a poison out of almonds,’said Gil doubtfully.

‘Nor I,’ agreed Wat. ‘Nor there’s nothing in the books we have. Mind, if you put the right things to it, you can brew poison wi anything, but this hasny the look of something that’s been brewed from a complex receipt. The more you put to a compound, the muddier it gets.’

‘Not if it’s distilled out,’ Adam reminded his brother.

‘Frankie was working with some sort of nuts this morning,’ Gil recalled. ‘The label said Nux pines. Could that be it?’

‘Pine nuts?’ Wat guffawed. ‘Frankie? I wonder who those were for?’ He grinned at his brother, and added to Gil, ‘They’re reputed excellent for — ’ he gestured expressively — ‘propping up what willny stand. They’re no poisonous, save you take too many, and you’d need to eat a sackful at a sitting for that.’

‘I’ve heard they eat them in Italy and places like that,’ said Adam. ‘Gil, have you learned anything at all yet?’

‘A little.’ Gil leaned against the bench and summarized what he knew or suspected so far, while the two men listened with lengthening faces. When he finished, Wat shook his head.

‘I’ve aye kent it was a quarrelsome house,’ he admitted, ‘but I never thought it was that bad. I’m more than ever glad I turned Frankie down yesterday. I’d say your choice is a better one, Adam.’

Gil, keeping his face blank, asked, ‘Would you have said any of the household had the skill to produce this?’

‘Frankie himself,’ said Wat, ‘for he’s good at his trade. Jimmy, a course, and likely young Robert would know how though whether he’d achieve it I couldny say. How much Frankie’s taught his daughters I’ve no notion. But it’s hard to assess another’s craft without seeing them at work.’

The Morison household was preparing to sit down to supper. The great board had been set up in the hall, the two young maidservants were shaking out the linen cloths to go over it, and the little girls and their nurse were waiting to set out the spoons and wooden trenchers. As Gil followed Andy Paterson across the chamber, the older child, Wynliane, intercepted him, looking up earnestly at his face. Her eyes were blue, darker than Agnes Renfrew’s. He paused, and smiled at her.

‘Good evening, Maister Gil,’ she said in her soft voice, and bobbed a child’s curtsy. ‘Will you stay for supper?’

‘He better not,’ said Ysonde from her nurse’s side. ‘Isn’t enough pastries.’

‘Ysonde,’ chided Nan. ‘That’s no a polite lassie.’

‘Well, there isn’t,’ asserted Ysonde.

Gil went on to find Kate, his mood lightened slightly as it always was by contact with Ysonde. His sister was inspecting some linen with Babb in the next chamber, supported on her crutches and holding up one end of a long cloth opposite a candle.

‘It looks well enough by this light,’ she said to Babb. ‘Set it aside and we’ll have another look by daylight. Will you stay to supper, Gil?’

‘Ysonde says there aren’t enough pastries,’ he reported. Kate rolled her eyes. ‘I’m expected at home. I only called by to ask if you had seen Alys this afternoon.’

‘I did,’ she agreed, accepting two corners of the cloth from Babb and waiting while the big woman lifted the folded end of the cloth. ‘I gave her a message for you.’

‘Was she well?’

‘Well enough. Sit down a moment,’ she said, glancing at him, and helped Babb put the final folds in the cloth. ‘There, put it on the plate-cupboard, Babb, and we can search for stains by daylight. Ask Ursel if the supper will wait a quarter-hour, would you?’

‘She’ll likely no be pleased,’ Babb warned, ‘she’s wanting to go next door to hear about the mistress’s groaning-time.’

‘Offer her my apology,’ Gil said guiltily, sitting down on a chair against the wall. ‘I didn’t mean to hold back your meal, Kate.’

Kate, reared as strictly as he had been in the principle that one did not upset the kitchen, merely nodded, and turned to clump over to sit beside him, propping her crutches across her knee.

‘I spoke to my lassies,’ she said as Babb left the room. ‘They noticed Agnes come in by the kitchen door, right enough, and they were both certain that she looked at young Bothwell as she came in, not at the lad who died.’

‘And yet she had spoken to Bothwell earlier, so it should have been Danny’s turn. It’s proof of nothing, but it is suggestive. Did she speak to anyone?’

‘No, they said she went straight to the stair.’

‘Thanks for this, Kate. I’ve another question for your kitchen.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Ask Ursel, if you would, if anything she served the mummers had almonds in it.’

‘Almonds? Like marchpane, or the like?’

‘Anything of that sort,’ he agreed.

‘I’ll ask her.’ She looked at him sideways. ‘Now why are you asking me if Alys was well? I’d my doubts about her myself, Gil. She seemed right shaken. She ate all the cakes on the tray, which is not like her, she usually takes one or two for manners, no more. She — it seems she witnessed the birth next door, and by what I hear Meg’s time was none of the easiest. I had to ask her direct before she’d admit it. I think she’s had a bad fright.’

‘Oh.’ He swallowed, dismayed. ‘What — I mean, how — how alarming would that be?’

Kate gave him another sideways look, amusement in her face.

‘I’d not have wanted Augie present,’ she said.

He digested this, and after a moment braced himself, saying, ‘Thanks, Kate. That must be it. I’d best be up the road and see what I can do.’

‘She may not want your help,’ Kate observed. He looked sharply at her. ‘Gil, how do you get a bairn in the first place? It might take another woman to comfort her.’ He stared, working out her meaning in growing embarrassment, and she bit her lip. ‘I’d come back with you, but there’s the men’s supper here — ’

‘No.’ He rose. ‘See to your own household, Kit-cat. I need to sort this myself, whether she’ll let me or not.’

She looked up at him rather anxiously.

‘Bid her come down here the morn’s morn,’ she suggested. ‘I’d take it as a favour — the — the quest on Danny Gibson’s called for nine of the clock. I could do wi the company.’

He nodded. ‘Thanks, Kate,’ he said, and gripped her shoulder briefly.

‘Ursel’s saying,’ announced Babb in the doorway, ‘that the supper’ll spoil if she keeps it back any longer, so if Maister Gil’s no staying he’d best be off out the road, my leddy.’

‘You see where Ysonde gets her manners,’ said Kate resignedly. ‘Goodnight, Gil.’

To his astonishment, and initial relief, Alys was in the hall of her father’s house, overseeing the same tasks as had been in hand at Morison’s Yard. Socrates was lying on the hearth watching her carefully, though he scrambled up when Gil entered and came to explain his earlier dereliction of manners, tail wagging, ears deprecatingly flattened. There was no sign of Christian Bothwell; she must have decided to stay in her own house this night.

‘Am I late?’ he asked, acknowledging his dog’s apology.

‘No,’ said Alys lightly, with a tense note in her voice which he recognized. ‘We waited supper. I thought you were working.’

‘I was.’ He turned to wash his hands in the pewter bowl set by the door, peering into the sparkles of candlelight on the water as if they might tell him how to handle this. ‘I called by Morison’s Yard,’ he added, lifting the linen towel. ‘Kate asked me to bid you down there tomorrow, while the quest is held. I’d assume the men will all go up to the Castle.’

‘Likely.’ She finished setting out the spoons, added the small salt from the plate-cupboard, inspected the table, and nodded. ‘Bid them serve as soon as they like, Kittock. I’ll call the maister.’

Over supper she maintained the same light manner, discussing something Socrates had done during the day, to the dog’s evident embarrassment, and reporting what Nancy had said about John. Gil and her father, after an exchange of glances, supported her in this; Catherine silently absorbed stockfish-and-almond mould, and further down the table the mason’s men exchanged the day’s gossip with the maidservants. Gil caught two different versions of what Meg Renfrew’s mother had said to her son-in-law, and some speculation about why Danny Gibson had been poisoned.

‘Shall we have music?’ said Maistre Pierre as the board was lifted. ‘It’s a good time since you played the mono-cords for us, ma mie.’

‘No,’ said Alys unequivocally. ‘We have the case to consider.’ She brought the jug of wine over to the hearth and arranged herself on the settle, tense and upright. Socrates lay down heavily on her feet. ‘We need to compare what we know.’

Slightly to Gil’s surprise, Catherine joined them. The old woman would usually have retired to her own small chamber after supper, where he was aware she regularly spent some hours at prayer before sleep. Tonight she sat quietly in their midst, beads in hand, lips moving, eyes downcast under the black linen folds of her veil, although midway through Maistre Pierre’s account of their interview with Nicol Renfrew Gil realized that her attention was not on her beads but on Alys.

‘Can he really tell one flask from another?’ said Alys at the end of her father’s recital.

‘He seemed quite certain he could,’ said Gil. ‘We could test it. It must be part of the way his mind works.’ He ventured to put his arm along the back of the settle, behind Alys. She glanced up at him, with a tiny grimace which might have been a smile, then frowned at her hands. The dog looked up at them both, beat his tail twice on the boards and lowered his nose on to his paws again. ‘He thinks he last saw that flask, Allan Leaf he called it, in the workroom waiting to go up to Grace to be filled with Frankie’s drops.’

‘But the workroom was locked,’ Alys said. ‘Agnes must have found it somewhere else.’

‘He was also certain the poison was for his father,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘although Frankie himself found the idea ridiculous.’

‘One would, I suppose,’ said Alys thoughtfully. ‘What if I told you such a thing?’

‘I should laugh in your face,’ he agreed, ‘but then I think I am a good master.’

‘Probably Maister Renfrew does too. If it was not for him,’ said Alys, ‘if it was intended for Danny Gibson, then how could it have happened? Could Nanty Bothwell be lying? Could he have done it alone?’

‘I’d say not,’ said Gil. ‘There’s too much circumstance against it. He would have had to lay hold of a flask, not one of his own, and he had to have it ready before the mummers came to Morison’s Yard. And why go to so much trouble, why not use his own flask?’

‘If he used his own flask it would be known to be his doing,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘He could hardly avoid that, in the face of half Glasgow.’

‘But he claims it is his flask in any case,’ said Alys. ‘No, that doesn’t seem logical. Then could he be in conspiracy with Agnes?’

‘I’d believe it of her,’ said Gil, ‘but not of him. He’s quite clear-headed enough to see that he must be found guilty, as things stand.’

‘And if it was some other,’ said Alys slowly, ‘Robert for instance, conspiring with Agnes or not — ’

‘Or Renfrew himself,’ Gil offered. ‘If he keeps such close control over his workroom as he claims, it’s hard to see how any other could make the stuff in his house.’

‘Yes, but whoever it was, they could not know in advance that the flask would be needed. No, that doesn’t hold up. Which leaves us with Agnes alone,’ she finished, pulling a face, ‘acting on the spur of the moment. Father says you spoke to her,’ she said to Gil.

‘She denied all,’ said Gil, and Maistre Pierre nodded agreement. ‘I thought she was more angry than distressed, though she put up a good imitation of it.’

‘I think she is genuinely distressed at the death of her sweetheart,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She is also frightened. No doubt if she did provide Bothwell with the flask, she has seen that she must be suspected.’

‘Angry?’ said Alys. ‘But with whom? As if she had not expected what happened? She might blame Bothwell for her situation — after all if he had not forgotten the flask and asked her help, she would not be involved.’

‘Assuming he did ask her help,’ said Gil. ‘They both deny all this.’

‘The safest road for both of them,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘But when Renfrew announced that the boy had been poisoned,’ said Gil, the scene in his sister’s hall coming vividly to mind, ‘he asked Bothwell what was in the flask.’

‘And Bothwell,’ said Alys, clapping her hands together, ‘turned to look at Agnes!’ Socrates sat up expectantly.

‘Exactly,’ said Gil. ‘They gave no signal, but he clearly associated the flask with her.’

‘So where have we got to?’ asked Maistre Pierre. Catherine raised her head and looked at him, then went back to her beads. The dog lay down again with a resigned sigh.

‘It looks as if Agnes gave Nanty the flask,’ said Alys, ‘but neither of them knew it held poison.’

‘So if that is the case, who is guilty in Gibson’s death?’

‘I’d need to ask my uncle,’ said Gil. ‘I suspect the two of them must share some guilt, but if it was an accident, not murder, there would be a fine, kinbut, payable to Gibson’s father or kin, with the guilty parties all in their linen at Glasgow Cross for penitence, rather than hanging.’

‘Perhaps if we told Agnes that, we might persuade her to confess,’ said Alys.

‘I cannot see that young woman in her shift at Glasgow Cross,’ observed the mason.

‘Meanwhile, where did the poison come from, and why was it sitting about where Agnes could find it? I’d like to search the house, but Sir Thomas isn’t convinced, and without a direct order from the Provost Frankie would never countenance it.’

Ah, mon Dieu, what a thought,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Eleanor Renfrew,’ Gil recalled suddenly, ‘tells me they label poisons with a black cross. Agnes would have recognized that, I’d have thought. It must have had no mark.’

‘Simple carelessness?’ asked Maistre Pierre disapprovingly. ‘To keep a pig full of poison standing about the place unlabelled? If that is the case, we do no more business with them, Alys, I think.’

‘But where did it come from?’ Gil repeated. ‘Nobody we spoke to has recognized what it is.’

‘Or at least has admitted to recognizing it,’ Alys put in.

He nodded at that. ‘You’re right. Whoever brewed the stuff, he would hardly admit to knowing it now. The Forrest brothers are probably safe,’ he added, ‘they seem to be testing the flask quite thoroughly. They found scraps of what looks like nutmeat at the bottom of it, as if it had got through the bolting-cloth.’

‘Nutmeat?’ said Alys. ‘Do you mean they think it was brewed from nuts? I wonder what that might be? I never heard of a poison like that.’

‘Nor had Wat.’ Gil grinned, and retailed the conversation about the pine nuts. Maistre Pierre guffawed much as Wat had done, but Alys listened seriously.

‘He is right, they are not poisonous except in vast quantities,’ she agreed. ‘But I had not heard of that virtue in them. I must check my Hortus Sanitatis. I wonder — Meg’s mother, Mistress Baillie, said something about pine nuts when she was abusing Maister Renfrew. Could they have been for his own use?’

‘Myself, I have no wish to ask him that either,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘No, but,’ said Alys slowly, ‘his wife was — ’ She caught her breath. Catherine looked up but did not speak, and after a moment Alys went on, ‘Meg was in childbed, what was he doing preparing something of that sort?’

‘To be ready for later?’ Gil suggested. ‘Maybe he wants a son from her. Or perhaps he has a mistress, or planned to — ’ he glanced at Catherine, but she had bent her head to her beads again. — ‘visit Long Mina’s, or some such place.’

‘The man has a new young wife,’ Maistre Pierre said. ‘How many women does he need, in effect?’

‘And does it mean he is planning to poison someone?’ asked Alys.

Gil sighed. ‘I think, from what Eleanor tells me, any of the Renfrew household is at least capable of making up whatever it is. Poison is a woman’s weapon, or so I’ve read, but in this case it seems to me the men must be included as well, even Frankie.’

‘Robert would be my favourite,’ said Maistre Pierre darkly.

‘Let us consider them,’ said Alys. ‘Who might wish to poison someone, who might be a likely target.’ Socrates opened one eye as she bent to draw her tablets from the purse which hung under her skirts, then closed it again when she sat back slightly and took the stylus out of its slot in the carved cover. ‘Maister Renfrew himself. Not a pleasant man, I think.’

‘He might wish to rid himself of Nicol out of dislike,’ said Gil slowly, ‘or of the wife if he thought she was cheating him, but surely not any of the others of the household? He seems to favour Robert, he has wedded Eleanor off, Agnes is his pet.’

‘The good-mother?’ suggested Maistre Pierre. ‘Mistress Baillie, I mean.’

Alys nodded, and made a note.

‘Nicol himself,’ she said. ‘He hates his father, he dislikes his brother and sisters. Is he unbalanced enough to poison them from dislike alone? Or is there some benefit we can’t see?’

Cui bono? I suppose he could fear that Robert would take his place in the business,’ said Gil slowly, ‘but Nicol has changed since we were boys. It might be something he’s taking now has settled his mind, but he’s by far calmer than he used to be, almost out of the world at times. Just the same, I think his state is still what Aristotle called akrasia, or in Latin impotens sui, not master of himself.’

‘Behaving inconsistently,’ said Alys, ‘not in accordance with any discernible principles. Yes, I see. That would fit. So is he capable of killing, do you think?’

‘For something he cared about, maybe, and I wouldn’t think he would care enough about the business to kill for it. He’d rather go back to the Low Countries, I think.’

‘Grace asked him if he needed some of his drops,’ said Alys, and unaccountably blushed darkly in the candlelight. ‘Perhaps that’s what has changed him.’ She made a note. ‘And Robert?’

‘Robert dislikes everyone,’ said Gil. ‘His father, Agnes, probably Syme, certainly Nicol, possibly his stepmother. But he’s not someone I could imagine leaving a flask of poison about unlabelled by accident.’

‘So that if he left it,’ said Alys, ‘it was where his intended victim would pick it up. It becomes more and more important to know where Agnes got it from.’

‘Nicol said that everyone likes Syme,’ said Maistre Pierre reflectively, ‘but it does not mean that Syme likes everyone.’

‘I’d say he’d no good opinion of young Robert,’ agreed Gil. ‘And I suppose it would be to his benefit to be rid of Renfrew, though the method might be bad for trade.’

‘And the women,’ said Alys, writing busily. ‘I think we can dismiss Meg as poisoner, though not as victim. She has no training, and — ’

‘She must know stillroom work,’ Gil observed. ‘If she learned that a given receipt would brew up poison, she would be as able to follow it as you would. And Frankie said much the same of Grace Gordon,’ he recalled.

‘I suppose you’re right.’ She made more notes on her list. ‘Does Grace have enough reason to poison anyone, so far as one ever does? She loves Nicol, I think, though it was not a love-match, and surely she hardly knows his family. But Meg’s marriage is certainly not a happy one,’ she added. ‘She might wish to be rid of Maister Renfrew. I know I would, if I was wedded to him.’

‘Would you use poison, in such a case?’ Gil asked, half serious. She looked up at him, shook her head, and went on writing. ‘We can probably leave Eleanor out of it, in that she lives elsewhere now, but Agnes is fully capable of making and using such a thing.’

‘But if it was hers,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘she would not have given it to Bothwell, unless she intended the result.’

‘I think we must include Eleanor,’ said Alys. ‘She is probably about the house daily.’ She bit the end of her stylus, and studied her list. Gil looked over her shoulder, and said:

‘It gets us nowhere, you know. It looks as if everyone in the household would cheerfully dispose of any of the others.’

‘We need to find out where in the house Agnes got the flask from,’ said Alys. ‘It’s a pity her father insisted on being present when you spoke to her.’

‘I don’t know how we do that. Likely she won’t confess to you either, now we’ve had that tale from her. I have no direction yet from the Archbishop, so I can’t question her more pressingly,’ said Gil. ‘And you know, whoever brewed the stuff itself has committed no crime so far, unless it was Agnes after all. There’s no law about making up poisons, only about using them on fellow Christians.’

‘There is the moral crime,’ said Alys. ‘The burden of guilt in having provided the means of Danny Gibson’s death.’ She shook her head wearily, and closed up her tablets. ‘It must be wrong to do this. It’s one thing to draw up such a list as a — an exercise for the mind, it’s another entirely to use it to speculate on which of our neighbours might be planning to poison another. These are Christian souls, and — ’

‘If it offers a means to prevent a Christian soul from committing murder,’ said Catherine unexpectedly, ‘your list has done that person a great service, ma mie.’

‘As always, madame, you are right,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘And now, I suppose, having decided that we cannot decide, we had as well go and sleep on it. Will you go to the quest on Danny Gibson, Gilbert?’

‘I think I must,’ said Gil, watching Alys brace herself. For what? he wondered. For privacy with him? For what he might ask her? ‘Sir Thomas may change his mind and decide to call my evidence.’

Crossing the dark drawing-loft, the light from their candle making leaping shadows of wonderful curves and angles from the wooden patterns which hung from the ceiling beams, he reached out to take her hand. She did not withdraw it, but let it lie quietly in his, and when he drew her to a halt she stood beside him, her shoulders tautly braced. The dog sat down and leaned against her knee, looking up at her face.

‘What is it, Alys?’ he asked her. ‘Something is wrong. Can I help? Can I put it right?’ She shook her head. ‘Is it something I’ve done?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Gil, it isn’t you.’

‘Is it something about Christian Bothwell? Or about Agnes?’

‘No! No, it’s nothing like that.’

‘Wouldn’t it help to talk about it, then?’

‘No.’

‘Have you tried prayer?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about a distraction? Would that help?’ He let go of her hand to reach up and caress the line of her jaw within the drape of her black linen hood, and she reared back to snatch at his wrist and freeze, staring at him, her eyes round and dark with distress in the candlelight. Socrates reared up to paw at both of them, whining anxiously.

‘Very well,’ Gil said gently, his heart knotted in sympathy. ‘Not that. Come to bed, sweetheart, and sleep on it. Things may look different in the morning.’

For a moment he thought she would speak; then she turned obediently and moved on through the bounding shadows towards the other door, the dog adhering to her skirts. He followed, riven with anxiety. In the eighteen months since he had first met her he had grown used to her companionship, to her — Yes, he thought, her friendship, she is my good friend as well as my lover and spouse. It put the whole world out of frame if that conjunction did not agree, and he did not know how to put it right.

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