Gil’s reaction to the news of the postponed quest had been mostly relief. He did not feel like dealing with Sir Thomas’s irritated questions. He had slept badly, aware of Alys lying rigid beside him, but when he had asked her again, softly, if she wished to talk she had pretended to be asleep. Later he thought she was weeping.
‘Sir Thomas’s rheum must be worse,’ he said as they sat down to their porridge.
‘It gives you two extra days to make a case for young Bothwell,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘What will you do, do you think?’
‘Pray,’ said Gil succinctly. ‘Call on my uncle, perhaps call on the Renfrew household. What about you?’
‘We go to hear Mass at Greyfriars,’ said Maistre Pierre.
‘So should I,’ he said guiltily, recognizing the date. All Souls’ Day, the day when one recalled the faithful departed, a day for praying for those one had lost. ‘Maybe I should do that before I call on the Renfrews.’
‘They likely hear Mass as well,’ said Maistre Pierre.
The High Mass at Blackfriars, the university church, was soothingly familiar. The building itself, the processing canons and members of the university, the young voices of the students’ choir, the incense rising blue from the swinging censers, were all just as they had been when Gil was a student there himself. He found a pillar to lean against and let the chant wash over him, trying to call up the faces of his father and brothers, the sister who had died young, his grandparents, the other people to whom he owed a duty of prayer. The man whose death he had uncovered in Perth last August. Danny Gibson, still waiting for burial. Most of them remained stubbornly invisible, though oddly he had a clear image of Ealasaidh McIan, sister of the harper, aunt to young John. She was in good health the last he had heard of her, only a month or so ago, but now she seemed to be trying to tell him something. The boy, she said, over and over. Look to the boy. We keep him safe, he answered her, but she did not seem to hear him.
‘Gil?’
He opened his eyes. Standing beside him was his friend Nick Kennedy, Junior Regent in the faculty of Arts, expert on the writings of Peter of Spain and author of a book on the subject which, if he ever finished it, would make his name and that of his university known across Europe. There was a wide grin on his dark-browed face. Behind him the service seemed to be over, the Dominicans processing back into the enclosed part of the convent, singing as they went.
‘You were well away,’ said Nick. ‘Come and have some Malvoisie. John Shaw wants the barrel finished, there’s a new one due in a day or two and he needs the room.’
‘I need to pick up the dog — I left him at the west door.’
The Malvoisie was golden and tempting. Seated in Maister Kennedy’s chamber in the shabby university building, Socrates lying on his feet, Gil accepted the glass his friend handed him and said, ‘How’s Peter of Spain?’
‘Stuck fast,’ said Nick, grimacing. ‘I need a sight of one of Hermannus Petrus’ sermons. I’ve heard William Elphinstone has a copy at Aberdeen, but he’s no wrote back to me yet.’ He sat down, looking at Gil with some concern. ‘And how’s yourself? How’s Mistress Alys and the wee laddie?’
‘The boy’s fine. So is Alys.’
Nick’s scrutiny intensified.
‘Liar,’ he said after a moment. ‘Have you quarrelled?’
‘My business if we have, surely?’ said Gil a little stiffly.
‘No if your friends are concerned for you both. Is it a quarrel?’
‘No.’ The dog lifted his head to look at him. Nick waited, and he found himself saying, ‘I’m not sure what it is. Something has upset her, but she won’t talk to me about it.’
‘Does she need to?’ Nick wondered, and Gil suddenly recalled that his friend was priested. ‘Why should she talk to you about it?’
‘Because we usually do,’ he said. ‘No, Nick, I’m not one of your students, you’re not confessing me.’
‘I’m not offering to. Was it something you did?’
‘No, it wasn’t — at least, she says not. Nick, leave it.’
‘Do you know what it might be?’
‘She was at the Renfrews’ house. It seems as if she witnessed the birth. Kate thinks it might be that.’
‘Oh. Women’s business.’ Maister Kennedy subsided, and contemplated his glass of Malvoisie for a short time. ‘Did Lady Kate say aught else?’
‘She said,’ admitted Gil reluctantly, ‘that Alys might not let me help. That it might need another woman rather than a man.’
‘That’s a true word,’ said his friend. ‘She’s a wise woman, your sister. Take her advice, Gil. Leave it to the women and keep your distance. Would you talk to your wife if you’d trouble wi your engyne, after all?’ He jerked an expressive thumb. The blaes, the spaes and the burning pintle, thought Gil, and found his face burning.
‘She’d hardly miss noticing it if I did,’ he protested. Socrates looked up again, and beat his tail on the floor.
‘Aye, I’m glad to hear it, but would you discuss it?’ Maister Kennedy tossed off the remaining wine in his glass and reached for the jug. ‘Think on it, Gil. Now tell me what’s to do wi this mummer that died on Hallowe’en. What happened? Whose doing was it?’
Andrew Hamilton the younger was where Maister Kennedy had said he would be, some way up in the roof of the college dining hall, helping his father to assemble a tenon joint the size of his own head. Gil stood watching as the boy steadied the great oak beam, calling directions with aplomb to the two men on the ropes below him, and his father stood by with the maul ready to strike when the joint married.
‘North a bit,’ said Andrew. ‘South a wee bit. An inch lower — now!’
The maul struck, the joint slid home.
‘Is that her?’ said the older Hamilton. He bent to feel at the smoothed surfaces of the timbers, and nodded. ‘Aye, she’ll do at that. Good work. We’ll have the pegs in now, Drew.’
Father and son, working together, pinned the joint with the three great oak pegs, each thicker than a man’s thumb, two struck in from one side, one from the other. Socrates flinched at the banging and leaned hard against his mas-ter’s knee. The two journeymen had glanced at Gil, but they were obviously used to being watched while they worked and paid him no more attention until he went forward to call up into the rafters, ‘Maister Hamilton?’
‘Aye?’ The wright peered down at him. ‘Who is it? Oh, it’s you, Maister Cunningham. Good day to ye.’
‘And to you, sir. Might I have a word wi young Andrew?’
‘Wi him?’ Hamilton looked round and jerked his head at his son. ‘Aye, we’re done for the moment here. Away down, Drew, and see what Maister Cunningham wants.’
The boy set down his own maul and obeyed, descending the ladder with what seemed like reluctance. He must think it’s about that glass of Dutch spirits, thought Gil with sudden perception.
‘Aye, maister?’ said Andrew, reaching the ground. Then, possibly hoping to pre-empt a scolding, ‘That was a terrible thing to happen at the play. Is Lady Kate recovered from the fright?’
‘She’s well, thank you,’ said Gil, looking at the boy. He was just beginning to get his growth, and his feet and hands seemed much too big for him. ‘I was going to ask you about the play. I hope maybe you heard something when you were there that might help me.’
‘Me?’ said Andrew warily. ‘What kind of thing?’
‘Did you hear Nanty Bothwell talking on the stair to Agnes Renfrew?’
‘When would that be?’ prevaricated Andrew. ‘She never got a word wi him, he was all tied up and sitting wi two fellows guarding him. Agnes never went near him.’
‘Not then. Before the play,’ said Gil. Andrew looked at him under brows which were beginning to lower like his father’s. ‘On the kitchen stair.’
‘Oh.’ The boy looked down, and fidgeted one foot across the scuffed floorboards. ‘I don’t know about that. Was Agnes on the stair?’
‘You know fine she was,’ said Gil. ‘She came up the stair just behind you, and Nanty Bothwell followed her. So did you hear them?’
‘No — no really,’ protested Andrew. ‘I mean, I wasny listening. I wasny trying to hear.’
‘I’m sure you weren’t, Andrew. But it’s a choice between getting Agnes into trouble with her father, or letting Nanty Bothwell hang. Because he will hang, if we don’t find out where that other flask came from. So if you did hear anything at all, quite by accident, we need to know what they said.’
‘I don’t see that,’ said Andrew. ‘Besides — ’ He broke off.
‘She gave him the flask, didn’t she?’ said Gil.
‘Well, if you’re as sure, why are you asking me?’ Gil made no answer. Andrew slid a glance at him, and looked down at his feet again. Socrates stepped forward, his claws tapping on the planks, and Andrew scratched behind the dog’s soft ears. ‘Maybe she did,’ he said after a moment. ‘I never saw, for they were further down, round the turn of the stair. I only heard them. I couldny tell what they had.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘Well, he said — Nanty Bothwell said — Did you get it? and then he said, Here, what’s this? As if it was something unexpected, you ken?’ Gil nodded. ‘And then she said, He’d locked his workroom, I had to take what I could find. And then I heard someone else coming up the stair, so I went on up, for I didny want to be found eavesdropping.’
‘He’d locked his workroom,’ Gil repeated. ‘I suppose that means her father.’
Andrew shrugged. ‘She never said.’
Outside the college Gil paused to consider matters, reflecting gratefully on the value of scholarly discussion. It was mid-morning, the street still busy with people going out to hear Mass or fetch in the day’s marketing. He was guiltily aware that his uncle would take mild offence if he did not report the news of the last two days in person, and aware also of the paperwork still waiting for him at home, which he had not touched for several days, and after weighing up the relative merits of dealing with either of these and tackling an interview with Agnes Renfrew, with or without her father, he decided that nothing untoward would happen if he let Agnes wait.
A further hour’s discussion with his uncle, in his chamber in the Consistory Tower, proved very soothing. Much refreshed, he went home for dinner, where he and Catherine dined in splendour at the top of the table, exchanging stately French compliments, and the rest of the household discussed Nanty Bothwell’s chances. Over a dish of applemoy Catherine directed the conversation to a point where she could remark, with her usual formality:
‘Madame your wife seems discomposed just now.’
‘She is,’ Gil agreed, and explained briefly, though he suspected she knew the reason.
She nodded, spooning the soft sweet concoction, and finally said, ‘One must accept one’s lot, however difficult it seems, and conduct oneself in accordance with one’s duty, with the help of God and Our Lady. I will speak to her.’
‘I wouldn’t ask her to do anything she found — ’ Gil began, and checked, groping for a word.
She waited until she saw he would not finish the sentence, and said firmly, ‘The duty of a married woman is quite clear, whatever her husband’s nature. The fact that he is a considerate man does not free his wife from her obligations.’
Gil, torn between amazement at the implicit compliment, dislike of the word obligation in this context and embarrassment at discussing such a subject with Catherine, simply swallowed and gaped at her. She smiled slightly, and put a hand on his sleeve.
‘Return to your duties, maistre, and let the women deal with women’s matters.’
When the dinner was cleared he repaired obediently to his closet. It was a little panelled chamber at the far end of their lodging, beyond the bedchamber, a small comfortable space fitted with a desk and shelves, with his gowns hung on a row of pegs behind the door and his books arranged where he could reach them easily. The report for Robert Blacader was the most pressing item; he applied himself to that, vaguely aware at one point of a disturbance in the main part of the house, women exclaiming and someone weeping. He paused to listen, decided that if he was needed they would send for him, and addressed himself to the report again. Within another couple of hours it was complete. He made a fair copy, with the usual formal salutations at beginning and end, folded the letter, addressed it, sealed it, and put it on his writing-desk to take up to the Castle later for despatch. After that he tidied up the papers he had used for reference, and looked briefly at the ceiling. The painted vines wriggling along the beams overhead did not offer inspiration, and he had to accept the fact: nothing stood between him and a further interview with Agnes Renfrew.
This turned out to be not quite the case.
In Maister Renfrew’s shop there was only young Robert, who looked up when the little bells rang on the door, and looked sourly at Gil.
‘Aye, maister?’ he said. ‘And how can I help you?’
‘I don’t expect you can,’ said Gil, disliking the tone of the question, ‘seeing it’s your sister I want to speak to. Is she home?’
‘Why would she not be?’ Robert reached under the counter and produced a marchpane cherry, which he popped into his mouth. ‘Still sulking in her chamber.’
‘Might I get a word with her, then?’
Robert shrugged, chewing with evident pleasure. ‘Hardly for me to say, maister. You’ll need to wait for the old man. He’s gone to hear Mass at Blackfriars, he’ll be a wee while. And Jimmy’s taken Eleanor down to St Mary’s Kirk, though why you’d take such a sour creature anywhere I don’t see.’
‘Is none of the other women home?’
‘Well, Meg’s no likely to be anywhere else, and I’ve no notion where Grace might be. Pursuing this invisible Erschewoman round Glasgow, maybe.’
What Erschewoman? Gil wondered fleetingly, but his chief reaction was irritation.
‘Robert, I need a word with your sister,’ he persisted. ‘Will you send for her, please?’
‘What’s it about, anyway? She’s in enough trouble wi the men she’s spoken to already, what wi one of them slaying the other, I don’t know that I want her talking to any more fellows.’
Slightly winded by this impertinence, Gil paused to assemble a reply of any sort, and Robert smiled at him, peered under the counter, and produced another marchpane cherry.
‘So you’d best wait and speak to my faither,’ he suggested, and bit into the sweetmeat.
The smile vanished. With an expression of horror he spat the morsel into his hand, stared at it, stared at Gil.
‘Pyson!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m pysont!’
Appalled, Gil sprang to the door that led into the house, flung it open and shouted into the hall beyond it, ‘Help here! Help in the shop, and quickly!’ He turned back, glancing about the shop for water to rinse out Robert’s mouth, and found the young man grinning triumphantly.
‘Hunt the gowk!’ he said, beginning to laugh, slapping his thigh with his other hand. ‘Your face, man! Your face when I said pyson!’ He put the broken sweetmeat into his mouth, still laughing, wiped at his eyes, chewed, and assumed the same horrified expression. Gil stood watching impassively as he spat the chewed mess out again, while hurrying feet approached through the house.
‘What’s amiss?’ demanded Grace Gordon, appearing in the doorway, looking from Gil to her brother-in-law. ‘Who called for help?’
‘I did,’ said Gil, ‘but it was a false alarm. Robert was playing the fool.’
‘No, I’m pysont,’ said Robert faintly. He was still standing, looking horrified, staring at the pulped stuff on his palm. The smell of almonds reached Gil. ‘I’m pysont, Grace. It was in the cherry.’
‘The cherry?’ she repeated, looking back and forth between the two men.
‘The marchpane cherry he ate a moment since,’ said Gil.
‘What’s ado here? Is this a joke or no, Robert?’
‘He claimed he’d been poisoned,’ Gil said, ‘and then fell about laughing.’
‘Robert, you’re a fool! It’s no a subject for joking on.’
‘I’m no joking now,’ he said, and sat down shakily on the stool beside him. ‘I’m done for, Grace. Who’s pysont me, in Christ’s name? Call a priest, quickly.’
‘Are you serious?’ She stared at him.
‘Aye, I’m serious. I’m a deid man, Grace, like Danny Gibson, and the same way.’
‘I think maybe he is serious,’ said Gil, in chill realization.
‘But what —?’ She stepped round the counter to Robert, touched his face and hands, sniffed at his mouth. ‘Oh, Body of Christ, he is serious. How did it happen?’
‘It’s truth, right enough.’ Robert grasped her wrist. ‘It was in the cherry, I tellt you. I can taste it, burning my tongue. It’s — ’
‘Rinse it out with this,’ said Gil, handing him a beaker of water from the bucket behind the inner door. ‘Quickly, now.’
Robert took the beaker, rinsed his mouth and spat, but said, ‘Too late, away too late. If it slew Danny with just a drop, that he never swallowed — ’ He was breathing heavily now, his face reddening. ‘Grace, Meg’s bairn can have all I have to leave. Will you see to it? And — and my soul to Almighty God, is that what I should say?’
Grace crossed herself, and said, ‘We need to get you within, my laddie, maybe to your bed. Maister Cunningham, would you step out and summon a priest to him? Or no — go through the house and shout again, I’ll need a hand.’
She looked anxiously down at her brother-in-law, who was wilting visibly, his breathing harsh and rapid. A shudder shook him as they watched. Gil turned to obey, just as the shop door opened with its cheerful jingle of little bells and first Maister Renfrew entered and then James Syme and his wife.
‘What are you at now, Robert?’ demanded Renfrew, glaring across the counter at his son. ‘Get on your feet and serve the — oh, it’s you, is it? And Grace, I want you — ’
‘No the now, sir,’ said Grace, on an odd warning note. At the same moment Robert raised his head and said gasping:
‘Faither, I’m pysont. I–I canny — ’
He slid from the stool, and Grace caught him and lowered him to the floor. Renfrew exclaimed in alarm, Syme hurried past him to help Grace, and Eleanor uttered a short scream.
‘Pysont? How — who? Who’d pyson you, Robert?’
‘He is took very bad, Frankie,’ said Syme, looking up, ‘and I fear it’s the same as poor Gibson.’
‘The same as — What have you done?’ demanded Renfrew, seizing the front of Gil’s gown. ‘What did you give him? Why my laddie?’
Gil stepped back, catching Renfrew’s wrist to hold him off, saying stiffly, ‘See to your son, maister, he needs your help. I’m away out to call a priest to him.’
‘No, you’ll stay here where I can — ’
‘Who’d pyson our Robert?’ demanded Eleanor again. She began to giggle wildly. ‘It canny be Nanty Bothwell this time, he’s still locked away. There’s someone going about Glasgow poisoning laddies.’
‘Aye, Maister Cunningham, a priest as quick’s you like,’ said Grace, helping Syme to lift Robert. ‘Frankie, if you’ll leave that and take his feet, we can get him ben the house to his own bed, or at least more comfortable than this.’
Blackfriars Kirk was closest, and one of the Dominicans easily summoned. Returning on the heels of Father James, Gil found the Renfrew household swirling with fright like a spilled beehive. Several maidservants were weeping in a huddle in the shop, while Renfrew and his partner ran to and fro arguing over treatment, and in a room that looked on the dreary November garden Grace knelt by the stricken Robert, tilting tiny sips of almond milk into his mouth with encouraging words. Eleanor stood beside her with a hand over her mouth, still gulping and giggling in that uncontrolled way, and as Gil followed the priest through from the hall Agnes appeared at a further door, saying:
‘Meg wants to know what — ’ She broke off, and stared. ‘What’s going on,’ she finished, her eyes fixed on her brother. ‘Is Robert — ’
‘Robert’s been poisoned,’ said Grace, rising to let Father James take her place. ‘Eleanor, stop that noise.’ She shook the other woman by the shoulders, and when that had no effect dealt her a sharp slap. Eleanor swayed back, gasping, and Agnes clapped her hands and said brightly:
‘Robert? So it can’t have been Nanty on Hallowe’en, after all!’
‘The cataplasm never helped last time,’ said Syme, speaking over his shoulder as he returned from the shop. ‘Better something cold and moist like this, Frankie, if he’ll swallow it.’
‘Agnes!’ said Eleanor, apparently recovering her wits. ‘Robert’s like to die! Is that how you hear the news?’
‘Serve him right,’ said Agnes. She turned away, vanishing into the house, and Father James began the familiar quick murmur of the final questions, the prompts to the dying to confess sins and profess belief. Gil, watching, thought the young man stretched on the bench, his doublet unlaced, his head pillowed on his own short gown, was beyond hearing the priest’s voice, but the form of the questions assumed the answers, and absolution would be delivered, which must comfort the family. Eleanor had retired to a stool on the other side of the chamber and was watching, dry-eyed, her face pinched and white. Syme, a beaker in his hand, was looking at his wife, deep compassion in his face; Renfrew appeared from the shop with a heavy step and stood numbly glowering at the scene with an expression of dull rage. Gil suddenly recognized that his own dominant emotion was a matching rage, tempered by guilt; the boy had been murdered before his eyes, like Danny Gibson, and he had been able to do nothing to prevent it.
‘What did he take?’ Grace asked quietly. ‘What was it?’
‘As he said,’ Gil answered. ‘When I came into the shop he was eating a marchpane cherry from under the counter. We spoke, and then he took another one.’ He grimaced. ‘He bit into it, and pretended it was poisoned, so I called for help, and he laughed and ate the thing. And then he said it really was poisoned.’ He considered Robert’s scarlet, unconscious face. ‘If we’d believed him straight way, would it have made a difference?’
‘No,’ she said promptly. ‘If a few drops on his skin slew the other man, then swallowing it would kill this time, no matter what antidote — ’ She bit her lip and turned away.
‘I wonder why he never noticed it at the first bite,’ said Gil thoughtfully.
Father James withdrew his fingers from the pulse in Robert’s throat, bent his head, crossed himself, and began the prayers for the dead. Eleanor and her husband both knelt to join in. Maister Renfrew muttered briefly, signed himself, and crossed the room to demand of Grace in a furious undertone, ‘Where’s that daftheid Nicol?’
‘In his bed,’ she said, looking directly at him. ‘As you should ken, sir. He’s hardly moved this day. You’ll not blame him for this.’
‘Have I said I did?’ he said jeeringly. ‘And you, Gil Cunningham, wi your daft notions about my family. Did you pyson my laddie to prove your point?’
‘If you say that again,’ Gil said levelly, ‘I’ll have you for slander. I watched Robert eat the sweetmeat, I called for help when he said it was poisoned, he admitted he was joking and then found it truly was poisoned. I’ll swear that on anything you like to name, and Mistress Grace here will bear me out so far as she heard it.’
‘He said, I’m no joking now,’ she recalled. ‘Poor laddie. Frankie, I’m right sorry for this. He was a likely boy, and a — a — He was a likely boy,’ she said again.
Renfrew grunted, and said to Gil, ‘And what brought you here anyway? I can do without you underfoot now, I’ll tell you.’
Gil dragged the reason for his presence with difficulty from the back of his mind, opened his mouth, and closed it again.
‘I still need a word with your daughter Agnes,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve found a bit more evidence, and I need her story about it.’
‘Evidence of what?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘If you’re still at this tale of my lassie helping young Bothwell to pyson his rival, you can put it out your head, I’ll not hear a word of it.’
‘I think it was an accident,’ said Gil patiently, ‘and I want her version of what I’ve learned. It’s more important now than ever — ’
‘What, d’ye think she’s pysont her brother and all?’
‘Agnes?’ said Grace sharply, and then, ‘Maister Cunningham, this is surely no the time for yon kind of questions — ’
‘No, and it’ll never be the time,’ said Renfrew, ‘and you can just leave my house afore I put you out myself.’
‘My son, this is not the way to conduct yourself before the dead,’ said Father James, getting to his feet. He was nearly as tall as Gil, with shaggy dark hair which he pushed out of his eyes now to peer round the group. ‘What came to the poor boy? He was far gone when I reached him. Are you saying he was poisoned?’
‘Aye, pysont,’ said Renfrew angrily, and dashed tears from his eyes. ‘My bonnie laddie lost to me, and I’m left wi that daftheid above stairs, wi his cantrips and excesses and his names for everything, and if I catch the one that did it — ’
‘Have you raised the hue and cry?’ prompted the Dominican. ‘Has the Serjeant been sent for? I know you, maister,’ he bowed to Gil, who acknowledged this, ‘you’re Chancellor Blacader’s quaestor, can you set matters in motion?’
‘Maister Renfrew won’t have it,’ said Gil, with faint malice. Across the room a shadow moved, as if someone had passed the doorway.
‘I’ll go for the Serjeant,’ said Syme. He met his partner’s eye. ‘He must be told, Frankie. Unless it’s an accident, it must be murder, and how would strong pyson get into a marchpane cherry by accident?’
‘Syme,’ said Eleanor through tears, and put her hand out. ‘Don’t — don’t leave me — ’
He turned to her, took the hand and patted it reassuringly.
‘I’ll not be long,’ he promised her. ‘Stay with our good-sister the now, mistress.’
He strode out of the open door. His footsteps did not check; whoever had cast that shadow must have moved on. For a moment everyone in the chamber stood as if turned to stone; then Father James said, ‘Not for us to question the ways of Heaven, my son. If this poor boy was poisoned, and deliberately, the miscreant must be found, but your chief duty to your son now is to pray for the remission of his sins, to shorten his time in Purgatory.’
‘No, it’s to find who sent him there and see them hang for it,’ said Renfrew. He jerked his head at his older daughter, who was now sitting weeping quietly. ‘I’ve no doubt she could do wi your comfort the now, though why she’s bubbling like that, when she never had a civil word for the laddie when he was alive, is more than I can tell you. As for you,’ he said angrily to Gil, ‘come and show me these cherries you say slew my boy.’
The three maidservants were still in the shop, staring nervously about them. The oldest bobbed a curtsy as her master entered, saying, ‘Is he — is the laddie —?’
‘Dead,’ said Renfrew curtly, at which they all crossed themselves and one began weeping again. Renfrew snarled and ordered them out, then stopped them to ask whether they had touched anything.
‘No likely,’ said the third one, sniffing dolefully, ‘if something in here slew the poor laddie, that knew what was here, we’d no ken what was pyson and what wasny.’
‘Mind your tongue, Jess,’ said her master, ‘and get back to your duties, the whole parcel of ye. Now, maister, where was these cherries?’
‘Cherries?’ The weeping girl stopped in the doorway, looking back. ‘Was it cherries that slew the poor laddie?’
‘So it’s claimed,’ said Renfrew, peering under the counter. ‘Was it these?’ He lifted a small box, the kind of woven chip box commonly used to hold sweetmeats. Gil took it from him. It was more than half empty, holding five marchpane cherries and a scattering of the sugar they had been rolled in before they were boxed up.
‘They look no different from the usual,’ said Renfrew. He looked up. ‘Here, Babtie, what are you standing about for? Get to your duties.’
‘Was the cherries pysont?’ asked Babtie faintly. ‘Oh, maister, never say so!’
‘Did you eat one?’ asked Gil.
‘We all did,’ she confessed, twisting her hands in her apron. ‘We thought no — we thought — cherries is cherries, no like all the other things in the shop — ’
‘Well, that’ll learn you no to steal from your maister,’ said Renfrew. ‘And Jess saying you’d touched nothing, I canny believe a word you women say.’
‘Robert ate one without harm,’ Gil said. ‘It was the second one which killed him. They may not all be poisoned.’
‘But they might be,’ said Babtie. ‘Oh, maister — oh, what will I do — ’
‘You’ll go and get on wi your duties,’ said Renfrew, ‘for if the one you stole was pysont you’d be on the floor by now. Get away with you, lassie! What a tirravee about nothing, and my laddie lying there dead!’
The woman turned away, moving like a sleepwalker, and disappeared into the depths of the house. Renfrew snorted.
‘She’s frightened,’ Gil said.
‘She’s a fool, and a thief,’ said Renfrew.
Gil looked down at the cherries, tightening his mouth on a comment. ‘How are these things made?’ he asked instead.
‘My daughters make them. Dried cherries, I suppose, crystallized, and then stuffed with marchpane.’
‘Yes.’ Gil tilted the box so that the cherries rolled around. ‘Look at this. These four are the same as one another, but this one — ’ He looked round. ‘I’d rather not touch it. Is there a stick, or something?’
‘Here.’ Renfrew led him into the workroom. Searching briefly in a jar of instruments on the bench by the window, he handed Gil a small pair of tongs and a copper rod. ‘What have you spied? They all come out different, you’ll realize, for that all cherries is different and takes a different quantity of marchpane to fill them.’
‘It isn’t that,’ said Gil. ‘See this.’ He turned the sweetmeat, gripped it carefully with the tongs, and pointed. ‘The marchpane in the others is smooth, this one looks as if it’s been …’ He paused, searching for a word. ‘Reworked,’ he finished. ‘As if the marchpane has been broken open and mended again. Or perhaps …’ He paused again, and Renfrew snorted.
‘Or there’s been mice at it, or a cockatrice has laid an egg in it,’ he said sourly.
‘Not a cockatrice,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘but — may I have a wee fine knife, maister, and a dish of some sort?’
‘What are you after?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘I’ve matters to see to, maister. I can’t be standing about here watching you learn yoursel potyngary.’
Gil ignored this, accepted the implements the older man handed him, transferred the suspect sweetmeat to the pottery dish, and sliced it carefully in two. The halves fell apart, mirror images, the dark flesh of the cherry cupping the round ball of marchpane with the small, milky, oozing patch at its centre. The apothecary stared grimly at it.
‘Not a cockatrice,’ said Gil again, ‘but a rod like this one, I’d say, used to make a hole in the marchpane, then a drop of the poison placed into the hole and the marchpane mended over the top of it. That would be how Robert could take one bite with no harm,’ he realized. ‘The poison must have been in the other half of the marchpane. Do you see?’
‘Aye,’ said Maister Renfrew after a moment. ‘I see.’ He moved away from Gil and sat down on a stool at the end of the workbench. ‘I see plenty,’ he said. ‘Which of them can it have been? And was it meant for my laddie indeed? He’d a right sweet tooth, a box of those things left open under the bench wouldny be safe from him. No that he’d have taken a fresh box from the stock,’ he added defensively. Gil nodded, in complete disbelief of the encomium. ‘Aye, I’ll accept this as evidence, maister. It tells me clear enough, there’s someone in my household willing to use pyson on another.’ He turned his face away.
‘One of your household,’ said Gil with considerable sympathy, ‘and aimed at your son. Who dislikes him that much?’
‘You expect me to answer that?’
‘And what was the poison, do you suppose?’Gil persisted. Renfrew shook his head without looking round. ‘Maister Syme said it looked to be the same as what killed Danny Gibson. Wat Forrest thinks that might be something made from almonds, but he doesn’t know any more than that.’
‘Almonds?’ The other man visibly pulled himself together, to attend to the conversation. ‘And here was Grace giving the laddie almond milk? Well, he’d got his death long before we bore him through to the house. I never heard of a pyson made wi almonds.’
‘So everyone says,’ Gil commented. He looked at the evidence on the bench, and then at Renfrew’s back, still resolutely turned.
‘Well, well.’ A loud voice, a loud tread. Serjeant Anderson, entering by the house door, stepping into the shop and across to the workroom. ‘Aye, Maister Renfrew. I hear there’s been a murder. More pyson, is it? And you couldny save your own neither? Well, man, I’m sorry to hear it, sorry for your loss,’ he added more civilly. ‘And you again, Maister Cunningham. I suppose it’s no wonder I’m aye finding you where there’s been a murder, but you’d have to admit it doesny look good.’
‘Serjeant.’ Renfrew got to his feet. He seemed to have aged by twenty years since he had returned from hearing Mass. ‘He’s ben the house. Come and see him.’
‘I’ll hear what you’ve to tell me first,’ said the Serjeant, tucking his thumbs into his belt. ‘And you, Maister Cunningham. I’m told you were present when the dead man took the pyson.’
‘We’ve just now uncovered how it was ministered,’ said Renfrew. ‘Look here.’
Gil allowed him to expound the poisoning method as if it was his discovery, only relieved that he had accepted the idea. The Serjeant listened, and peered suspiciously at the drop of milky fluid oozing from the centre of the ball of marchpane.
‘And it slew him the same way as poor Danny Gibson?’ he said. ‘Danny never ate any marchpane cherries, did he?’
‘No,’ said Gil. ‘Danny’s friends say he couldn’t abide nuts, even almonds.’
‘Aye,’ said the Serjeant. ‘So it was maybe the same pyson, but it likely wasny the same person, if the way it was ministered differs like this. Well, we ken that, seeing Nanty Bothwell’s still in chains up the Castle, he couldny ha been down here pysoning expensive kickshawses.’
‘He could ha made it up earlier,’ said Renfrew rather desperately. ‘He could ha left them there, and my laddie only now found them. Or his sister — ask at her, Serjeant, whether she slipped in here and put them ready to his hand.’
‘Aye, right,’ said the Serjeant. ‘Now, maister, tell me what transpired when the laddie took the pyson.’
Gil gave him as clear an account as he could of what had passed. The Serjeant listened attentively, inspected the shelf under the counter where the box had been placed, and asked where Gil had been standing when Grace Gordon entered the shop.
‘Aye, aye,’ he said, scanning the unswept floorboards as if he expected to find footprints on them, ‘that’s clear enough, maister. And now I’ll see the corp, if you please.’
Flinching at the term, Renfrew led him into the house. Gil followed slowly, and was completely unsurprised to encounter Alys in the shadowy hall.
‘Gil,’ she said, coming to tuck her hand in his. ‘How terrible a thing for the family.’
She sounded very weary, but entirely herself. He kissed the high narrow bridge of her nose, feeling that the world had suddenly come straight round him.
‘Who have you spoken to?’ he asked quietly.
‘Agnes. She denies all. Nell Wilkie is with her now, but she may not stay long. I think she is quite dismayed by Agnes’s attitude.’
‘Do they know what has happened?’ He nodded towards the door of the chamber where the Serjeant could be heard questioning Grace.
‘Yes,’ she said baldly.
‘How did she take the news?’
She was silent a moment. ‘Agnes seemed pleased that her brother is dead. I was quite shocked. She said Serve him right, and would not pray for him, though Nell did. And then I asked her about the flask, and Nell reminded her of what she told her on the day, in Kate’s house I mean, about thinking it was her father’s drops for his heart. She denied all, laughed in Nell’s face, said she must be imagining things. We tried to show her that it would save Bothwell’s life if she came forward, but she said, Why should I get into trouble to save him? Poor Nell is quite distressed. She favours Bothwell herself.’
‘Unpleasant,’ said Gil, tightening his clasp on her hand. She returned the grip, and leaned her head against his arm for a moment. ‘Alys, I think you might look in at the kitchen.’
‘The kitchen? Why?’