The Counterfeit Madam

Chapter Two

‘What is your kinsman about, making such an offer?’ asked Maistre Pierre, and hitched the collar of his big cloak higher. ‘Confound this wind. It would bite through plate mail.’

‘I’ve no notion,’ admitted Philip Sempill, closing the gate of his town house behind them. ‘If John was acting alone I’d assume he was up to no great good, but Maidie Boyd is a different matter. She’ll deal honestly.’

‘If I hadn’t recognized the house, she would never have pointed it out to me,’ Gil observed.

‘Caveat emptor,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘She is not obliged to do so, after all.’

‘How did John come to wed her? Was it you promoted the match, Philip?’ Gil asked, setting off down Rottenrow towards the Wyndhead.

‘It was,’ the other man agreed, falling into step beside him.

Gil turned to catch his eye.

‘So that was your revenge,’ he said, grinning. ‘And a good one, too.’

‘Revenge?’ Philip repeated, his expression innocent. ‘I proposed a match I thought would suit my kinsman, is all.’

‘But why the whorehouse?’ persisted Maistre Pierre. ‘I should have thought, if it brings in so good a rent, they would sooner hold onto it.’

‘I think Maidie’s embarrassed by it,’ said Philip.

‘I’m flattered,’ said Gil obliquely.

They made their way down the slope of Rottenrow and into the busy Drygate, walking fast in the chill wind. Here the sound of hammers, of shuttle and loom, of wood and metal tools, was all round them. Glass-workers, wax-pourers, metalworkers of many kinds, embroiderers and makers of images, occupied the smaller buildings on the back-lands, practising all the amazing variety of trades which supported the life of a cathedral church. Further down the Drygate itself, past the narrow wynd which led to the tennis-court, a row of shops such as those of the burgh stationer and Forrest the apothecary gave way to houses of stone and then of wood. There were fewer passers-by, and the slope levelled out. Gil stopped beside a gable-end of wattle and daub, looking along the muddy alley which led past the house door.

‘That’s the toft belongs to Holy Rood altar there,’ he said, gesturing at the building they had just passed, ‘so this and the next one are the ones that concern us. This must be Clerk’s Land, where we have three houses and two workshops-’ He craned from the end of the alleyway, counting. ‘There are more buildings than that, we’d need a closer look. What do you think, Philip?’

‘There is a hammerman in this nearest shop,’ observed Maistre Pierre over Philip’s agreement. ‘Smallwares, I think,’ he added, listening to the metallic beating. ‘Perhaps a pewterer. And there is a lorimer yonder, to judge by the leather scraps on the midden.’

‘We can check that later,’ said Gil. ‘For now, I’d be well in favour of accepting this toft on John’s behalf, subject to closer inspection. Would you agree?’

‘Oh, certainly.’ His father-in-law braced himself. ‘Now do we visit this bawdy-house? They will be disappointed when they find we are not customers.’

‘It’s the paintings that interest me,’ said Philip, grinning. ‘Eckie told me more about them.’

The house fronting the street on the next toft was rather more impressive, a wooden-clad structure of three storeys whose doorframe and the beams of the overhanging upper floors were carved and painted with foliage and flowers. The street door bore an incised and brightly-coloured image of a mermaid, well-known symbol of sexual licence.

‘Well, that should attract the passing trade,’ said Gil, surveying this. ‘Was it done for the madam? Did she change the name of the house when she moved in here?’

‘I’ve no a notion,’ said Philip.

Gil rattled the ring up and down its twisted pin. The shutter nearest the door swung open and a maidservant in a headdress of good linen leaned out, gave them one swift assessing glance, and said,

‘We’re closed another hour or more, maisters.’

‘I’d like a word with your mistress on a matter of business,’ Gil said. The woman studied them again, and nodded.

‘Come away in. I’ll fetch the mistress down to ye.’ She drew her head back in and appeared shortly at the door. ‘Come up out the cold and be seated. Madam willny be long.’

She was a pudding-faced woman of forty or so, confident and discreet in her bearing, clad like an upper servant in a gown of good cloth with its skirts pinned up over a checked kirtle. She led them up a newel stair to a wide, brightly painted hall, set padded backstools for them by the warm hearth, and vanished up a further stair. There were footsteps overhead, and women’s quiet voices and laughter. Someone began tuning a lute. Gil, who had been in Long Mina’s establishment once or twice on legal business, recognized that this house was in a different category.

‘I fear we cannot afford their prices,’ said Maistre Pierre, echoing his thought. ‘They must ask enough to recover the cost of these walls.’

‘It was never a local man painted this,’ said Philip, turning about to stare. ‘It’s been someone that studied overseas, surely.’

‘In High Germany,’ said Maistre Pierre confidently. ‘I have seen a St Barbara from Cologne with just such waving gold hair.’ He went over to look closely at a lady clad in nothing but the hair, depicted in a niche of greenery in the company of an armed man. ‘Also that helm is German work.’

‘The colours certainly aren’t local,’ Gil said.

‘Well, now,’ said a husky voice behind them. ‘Three new guests, and I can see you all appreciate the arts. That’s a day to put a nock in the bedpost!’

The woman who came forward from the stair was tall, nearly as tall as Gil, and lean. She was richly gowned and jewelled, and her face was painted in a way the women of Glasgow did not use, the pale blue eyes darkly outlined and the strong mouth tinted a deep red which showed up sharply against her white skin. An elaborate headdress concealed her hair completely, but Gil found himself wondering if her brows were really that dark. Behind her the maidservant slipped past and down to the lower floor.

‘Good day, maisters all,’ she went on, curtsying, and looked from one to the other. ‘I’ve met none of you, but I think I can place you all three. Je crois que vous êtes monsieur le maçon français,’ she said to Maistre Pierre. ‘Which means you must be his good-son, I think, Maister Cunningham, and you,’ she paused, considering, ‘you’re no Sempill of Muirend, but you’re gey like him. Sempill of Knockmade.’

‘You’re well informed, madam,’ said Gil. ‘And you?’

‘Oh!’ She touched her chin with a lean forefinger and tipped her head sideways in a parody of coyness. ‘You can call me Madam Xanthe,’ she said after a moment. ‘Seat yourselves, maisters. Agrippina will bring us a refreshment, and you can tell me what fetches you here, for I can see it’s no a matter of the usual business of the house.’

Xanthe and Agrippina, forsooth, thought Gil. Maister Livingstone had heard right.

‘Does living in Glasgow agree with you?’ he asked in Latin. His father-in-law shot him a sharp glance; Madam Xanthe drew breath as if to answer, then tittered improbably and batted the question away with a long white hand.

‘Oh, you’ll ha to excuse me, maister! French I can manage, and I’ve a few words o High Dutch, but Latin’s beyond my skills.’

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I took it a lady like yoursel would read in the Classics. How do you like living in Glasgow, then?’

‘It makes a change.’ She turned as the same woman returned with a tray of glasses and a jug of wine. ‘Set it there, lass, and I’ll serve. Aye, a change,’ she continued as Agrippina withdrew quietly. ‘And yoursels, maisters? Does Glasgow agree wi you?’

‘Well enough, seeing I was born here,’ said Philip Sempill. ‘Where were you before you came here?’

‘Ah, where was any of us afore we came here?’ she responded, handing him a brimming glass. ‘That’s too deep for me and all.’ She handed wine to Maistre Pierre and to Gil, and sat back, raising her own glass. ‘Your good health, maisters. Now, what can a poor woman do for three burgesses of Glasgow? Is it about the counterfeit coin we had?’

‘Ah!’ said Gil. ‘I took it it was Long Mina who’d had that. Tell me about it.’

She spread her free hand. ‘What’s to tell? Counting the takings the eve of Thomas Sunday, I recognized two false silver threepenny pieces, and took them to the Provost as my duty is.’

‘That’s more than most burgesses would do,’ observed Maistre Pierre. ‘It’s a loss of six silver pennies, after all, not to be accepted lightly.’

She tipped her head back, and looked sideways at him beneath the pleated gold gauze of her undercap.

‘This is a house of honest dealing, maistre. I’ll no give out false coin even in taxes. So once it’s in my hands it’s a loss any way, the Provost might as well have it. Besides, I hadny his acquaintance yet, the chance was no to be missed.’

‘You recognized them?’ Gil said. ‘How? What showed you they were false?’

‘No balls,’ she said, and tittered. ‘Four wee mullets about the cross, instead of two mullets and two balls. Oh no, I mind Eckie Livingstone called them pellets,’ she added reflectively, ‘and he ought to ken, wi his experience.’

‘What, is he that Livingstone?’ asked Gil in surprise. ‘I hadn’t realized. Alexander Livingstone was moneyer to James Third,’ he explained to his father-in-law. ‘It must be twenty year since, but I mind my father talking of him. If this is the same man I must get a word wi him about the process, we need to know what to look for, whether it’s like to be hidden in Glasgow. I’ve no idea what size of a workshop we’d be seeking.’

‘No hope, I suppose,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘that you would tell us where the false coin came from, madame?’

‘Never dream o’t, maistre!’ she said. ‘Mind you, if you were to attend here on an evening, you’d be one of the society, and could learn all sorts o secrets and mysteries.’

‘Is that right?’ said Gil, turning his glass in his hand. ‘Such as where you get this wine, madam? It’s uncommon good.’

‘Oh, some secrets are no for sharing!’

‘What do you mean by the society?’ asked Philip. ‘Are your customers all in a league, or something?’

‘That’s it exact,’ she agreed. ‘But we call them guests, maister. Once a man’s called here of an evening, taken part in our entertainment, which is music and singing and the like, whether he stays late or goes home to his own household, he’s a member of the society. You’d be surprised at some of the names I’ve got writ down,’ she added, then looked away, hand over her crimson mouth, in a play of realizing she had said too much.

‘And the false coin came from one or more of your — guests,’ said Gil, ‘rather than from the market.’

‘Two silver threepenny pieces? No from the market, sir, and I’ve had no dealings wi the merchant houses lately that would leave me wi coin to that value in my hand.’

Gil nodded, recognizing the slight stress on houses. It was possible she could be persuaded to give him more precise information, but not in front of two other people. He did not relish the thought of a more intimate conversation; something about Madam Xanthe repelled him, and it was nothing to do with her striking appearance and arch manner, which reminded him of a bawd-mistress he had encountered in Paris.

‘In fact,’ said Philip Sempill, ‘we’re no here about the false coin, though I’ve no doubt Maister Cunningham welcomes what you’ve tellt him.’ She looked sharply, briefly, at Gil then turned to face Philip, opening her eyes very wide. ‘I’m here to represent Mistress Magdalen Boyd, who I believe is your landlord.’

‘Mistress Boyd?’ she repeated. ‘Aye, she is, maister. What’s she at? I do trust she’s well?’

‘She has offered this toft and the next one to my foster-son,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘as severance, I suppose you might say, in recognition of the boy no longer being John Sempill’s heir.’

‘John Sempill? The new husband?’ The arch manner had vanished.

‘The same,’ agreed Gil.

‘Maybe you should explain it from the start,’ she said. ‘Who is the heir, then? What’s it about? If I’ve to pay over a heriot fee to a new superior, I’d as soon know why.’

Gil, with a glance at Philip, set out the history of the offer. Madam Xanthe listened without interrupting him, and finally nodded.

‘She’s within her rights, I suppose, if she wishes her own bairn to be the legitimate heir. And you’ll accept the offer?’

‘We have not yet decided,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘We thought to inspect the property, to clarify the decision.’

‘Oh, I’d advise you to accept,’ she said, with a return to her former manner. ‘I pay a good rent, maistre, and it’s a handsome house; once we move on and it’s right fumigated you’ll find another tenant easy enough.’ That titter again. ‘You might even be able to leave the image on the door.’

‘Once you move on,’ Gil repeated. ‘So you don’t see staying in Glasgow, madam?’

‘Our Lady save us, no,’ she said. ‘We leave afore folks get bored.’

‘I do not think folk would so soon tire of you, mistress,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘Oh, you’d be amazed,’ she responded, looking at him sideways. ‘You’d be amazed. So I suppose you’ll wish to view us, maisters? A wee tour of the fixed assets?’ She turned her head, not waiting for an answer, and called, ‘Agrippina! Send Cato to me. The laddie will show you about,’ she went on. ‘I’ll leave you wi him, for there’s matters to see to above stair. My lassies need to keep abreast of the news, you might say, and we open for business in an hour or so.’

Cato proved to be a gangling boy of sixteen or so, who emerged from the stair dragging on a velvet jerkin and grinning nervously. Madam Xanthe exclaimed in exasperation and rose, towering over the boy, her fur-lined brocade swinging, to cuff him briskly about the ear.

‘I’ve tellt you often enough, you fasten the jerkin out-by, you don’t come in here dressing yoursel!’ He rubbed the ear, looking sulky, and she went on, ‘Put yoursel straight, you’re trussed all awry, and then show these maisters about the outhouses and the kaleyard.’

‘All o them? And the wee pleasance and all?’ asked Cato. She sighed.

‘Aye, the wee pleasance and all, and the kitchen if Strephon allows it. All but the house.’ She turned to her guests again with a coy crimson smile, and curtsied. ‘If you’ll forgive me then, maisters. And I hope to see you all again some evening.’

‘I should wish to see the house as well,’ said Maistre Pierre, rising.

‘Oh, no, maister, I couldny allow that,’ said Madam Xanthe. ‘That’s a privilege has to be earned, you might say.’

‘Nevertheless-’ began Philip.

‘An account of what offices it contains would be enough for now,’ Gil said. ‘How many chambers, madam? And closets?’

‘Seven chambers,’ she returned promptly. ‘Including this we’re standing in. One, two-’ She counted visibly. ‘Three closets. Four hearths. That’s under this roof, and then under their own roofs there’s the kitchen, the washhouse, the stores — Cato can show you those. I’d hope he’s able for that,’ she added, looking sourly down at the boy, who gave her a deprecating grin. ‘I’ll bid you good day, maisters. And if you’re to look into the matter of the false coin, Maister Cunningham,’ she digressed again, with another sideways glance from the painted eyes, ‘I’m right glad to hear it, for I’m sure we’ll all rest easier in our beds for knowing you’re on the hue and cry.’

Leading them down the stair and across a chamber where the woman Agrippina was mending linen, the boy called Cato led them out by the back door of the house and across a paved yard. Early flowers in tubs shivered in the wind on either side of the doorsill.

‘The flowers are bonnie. Do you tend them?’ Gil asked.

‘No me, maister, I’ve a black thumb,’ confessed Cato. ‘A’thing I tend to dies. No, that’s Kit- Cleone,’ he corrected himself, ‘that sees to the plants. She says it makes a nice change, raising up something that stays up.’

Gil looked sharply at the boy, aware of Philip Sempill on his other side reacting in the same way, but Cato, apparently oblivious to the double meaning in his words, went on,

‘This is the kitchen, maisters. Are you wanting to see in? Only that Ste- Strephon isny in a good mood the day, and if the supper spoils-’

‘It’s a good kitchen,’ Gil said, assessing the little building. ‘Two doors and plenty windows. You’d get out easy enough if it caught fire.’

‘That’s what Strephon says,’ agreed Cato. ‘And yonder’s the privy, and the coal house, and the lime house, and the feed store, and-’ He led them onwards, telling off all the buildings as they passed them.

‘When did Madam Xanthe move in here?’ asked Maistre Pierre, looking about him.

‘A month afore Martinmas last,’ said Cato promptly.

‘Early October, so more than six month since,’ observed the mason. ‘And I would say no maintenance done in that time and longer.’ He nodded at the row of storehouses. ‘Two broken hinges, peeling paint, the limewash not renewed this winter. The window-frames are dry, they need a coat of linseed. The bawdy-house may pay a good rent, but it is not a good tenant. These houses of timber must be groomed like a horse, daily.’

‘I hardly think maintenance was in the lease,’ said Philip Sempill.

‘I’ve never been tellt to do aught about that,’ said Cato, equally defensive. ‘Madam aye has other tasks for me. And Hercules,’ he mangled the name badly, ‘is aye waking nights, in case of trouble, so he has to sleep daytimes.’

Gil nodded. It had seemed likely there was some more impressive guardian about the place than this lad. He wondered what Hercules might own for his baptismal name.

They followed Cato past the storehouses, across a second small courtyard, and through a gap in a wicker fence into a garden which sloped down towards the Molendinar and a further sturdy outhouse by the distant gate. To left and right more wicker fencing marked the edges of the property. The hammering from the next toft was clearly audible.

‘That’s the pleasance,’ the boy said unnecessarily, waving at the low bristles of box hedging. ‘It was right bonnie when we came here, but I’ve no notion how to keep it, and nor’s Kit. And yonder’s the washhouse, where the lassies has a bath every month and washes all their hairs. They’ve a right merry time of it,’ he said wistfully, ‘I’d like fine to join them, for they take in cakes and ale and all sorts, and bar the door. But that’s when madam has me empty the privy and the garderobe, and stands over me to see I do it right.’

‘There is a garderobe?’ enquired Maistre Pierre with professional interest. ‘Where is it? Where does it drop?’

Cato turned, grinning, and pointed back at the house. It rose above the cluster of outhouses, much plainer on this side, with a row of small upper windows which engendered regular waves in the thatch, and a high stone chimney with four octagonal pots.

‘You see the upstairs windows, maister? That’s Cleone and Daphne’s chamber at this end, and then the next one’s Armerella’s and Calypso, and then Galatea and Clymene.’ He was stumbling over these names too; it took Gil a little while to recognize Amaryllis. ‘And at that end it’s the two windows of madam’s chamber and closet, see, and the garderobe’s atween them and it drops down the outside of the house next the privy.’

‘Typical,’ said Maistre Pierre, shaking his head. ‘It need not be so, there are ways to keep the soil from the house walls, but local wrights never make use of them.’

‘It’s no so bad,’ said Cato. ‘The rain washes the most o’t down. Stinks a bit when it’s a dry spell.’

‘So have you seen enough to make a decision?’ enquired Philip Sempill over the boy’s head.

‘We’d like a bit time to consider,’ said Gil promptly. ‘I told the old — dame it would be longer than two days, after all.’ He moved towards the house, saying to Cato, ‘Are the neighbours any trouble? There’s a good many folk working on the toft on this side that we passed. Who dwells on the other side?’

‘That’s Maister Fleming,’ said Cato. ‘He’s the weaver, ye ken, has his weaving-shed out the back there. He’s no bother, no since madam bought all the blankets for the house off him and cleared his warehouse. This side’s more trouble, they’s aye a din ower the fence. See, there’s Adkin Saunders the pewterer for a start, a short temper he has, him and his wife’s aye arguing and their weans screaming-’ This was patently true, the children could be heard screaming now. ‘And then there’s Noll Campbell the whitesmith, he’s a good craftsman, we’ve some o his tinwares in the hall, but he’s a right grumphy fellow. Madam says the two o them has a competition to see who can work longest, and then they has great arguments and shouting and their wives joining in and all.’

‘A pewterer, a whitesmith — who else is there?’ asked Philip Sempill.

‘Danny Bell the lorimer,’ supplied Cato, counting carefully on his fingers, ‘Dod Muir the image-maker, that took a stick to me when I went to fetch Ki- Cleone’s shift when it blew ower the fence. And thingmy wi his donkey-cart. That’s all five.’

‘So you have to disentangle the ownership,’ said Alys, ‘and then make certain Dame Isabella gives the right piece of land to Tib. How can you do that? Does your uncle expect you to cast a horoscope, or raise an incantation over a brazier of herbs, or something?’

‘The Canon has confidence in his nephew,’ said Catherine in faint reproof.

‘Rather too much confidence,’ Gil said. ‘I’ll go up in the morning and get a word with him.’

‘And with Sempill or his wife, I suppose,’ offered Maistre Pierre.

The supper was over and the table dismantled. They had given a brief account of their afternoon over the meal, but now Gil was describing in more detail what had been said and what they had seen.

‘And these two tofts on the Drygate,’ Alys went on. ‘You said one of them is the new brothel. What does a two-year-old want with a brothel? Do you mean to accept it?’

‘It’s a valuable property,’ Gil said, ‘and the madam says she plans to move on soon. I’d be in favour, so long as we had that in writing.’

‘Mm.’ Alys shook out the bundle of linen in her lap and hunted for the needle in the seam. ‘And the other property?’

‘Busy. Four craftsmen and Danny Sproat with his don-key-cart. Again, a good rent-roll, probably we’d get as much as Sempill sends us each quarter from that one alone.’

‘A wise investment, then. How will you proceed?’

‘Maister Livingstone is to come here,’ Gil said, glancing at the fading light from the windows, ‘about now, indeed, and tomorrow I’ll wait on Dame Isabella, and as Pierre says I must get a word with Magdalen Boyd, though I suppose Sempill will be present. Likely the rest of the day’s my own.’

‘And this question of the false money,’ Alys said, and bit off her thread. She selected a second needle from the row stuck ready-threaded into the cushion of the bench beside her, drew the candles closer and began another row of neat stitches. ‘When will you have time to look into that?’

‘When I’ve sorted the other thing.’ Gil grimaced. ‘Though if my lord orders me to see to it, it ought to take precedence.’

‘Is there any person in Glasgow who is suddenly wealthy?’ asked Catherine. ‘I have heard nothing, maistre, but you speak to many people in a day’s work.’

Gil glanced at her in surprise. This small, aged, devout woman knew an amazing amount about what went on in Glasgow despite her lack of any spoken Scots; it was unusual for her to admit ignorance.

‘Nor have I,’ he admitted, ‘but that’s no help. We don’t know that the coiners are in Glasgow, and in any case it wouldn’t be wise to spend all the coin you had forged in the one place. Most folk know exactly how well off their neighbours are. A handful here, a couple of placks there, would be easier to pass off.’

‘As in the Isles,’ observed Maistre Pierre.

‘How noisy is the work?’ asked Alys. ‘I suppose if one must strike each coin the hammering would be heard.’

‘Noisy enough. Hard to keep it secret in the countryside,’ said Gil thoughtfully, ‘unless the workshop was very isolated, and yet in a town the neighbours are just as alert.’

Alys raised her head, listening.

‘Not hammering,’ she said, ‘but someone in the courtyard. Could it be Maister Livingstone?’

‘I’ll take him up to our lodging,’ said Gil, rising as the sound of feet on the fore-stair reached them. ‘We can sit in my closet.’

‘You see,’ said Alexander Livingstone finally, contemplating the array of documents on the bench cushions, ‘we’ve the whole chain here, from when my grandsire Archibald took sasine from Albany’s steward in ’35, down to my brother Archie’s payment of the heriot fee ten year since when he inherited.’ He turned to lift his glass of wine from the window-ledge where he had set it, and drank appreciatively.

‘It’s very clear,’ observed Alys. ‘Is it unusual to find so complete a record?’

‘Not particularly,’ said Gil. ‘My father had a set of papers very like this, the record of sasine from the Hamiltons, with all the succession from his grandsire.’ He bent to the nearest, to reintroduce its crumbling seal into the little linen bag which protected it.

‘I mind my grandsire telling me,’ offered Lowrie, ‘how his faither, that’s old Archibald, had to go to take sasine all over again and get that first instrument given in his hand, only because the King wanted all writ down so it would be clear at law. He aye said there was no need of papers until the King started meddling.’

‘Ah!’ said Alys. ‘So all Scotland suddenly had to get all written down.’ She looked at Gil, her eyes dancing. ‘Notaries’ wives must have come out in new gowns that year.’

‘Those that were wedded,’ said Maister Livingstone seriously, hitching his yellow velvet round his shoulders. ‘Notaries were mostly churchmen at that day.’

Gil’s closet at the end of the short enfilade of chambers was barely big enough for two guests, let alone the armful of documents the Livingstone men had brought. They had abandoned his writing-desk and returned to the outermost room just as Alys arrived with the wine; she had stayed to watch fascinated while Maister Livingstone spread out the succession of parchments under the two candles on the pricket-stand, with a brief comment about each, like a fortune-teller laying out cards.

‘So that’s the original,’ he went on now, gesturing again at the first document with its crumbling seal. ‘Then it passed from Albany to Alan Stewart as feu superior, and then to the present man, John Stewart, that’s now titled Earl of Lennox-’

‘All very clear,’ Gil agreed. ‘And here’s the record of renewal of sasine at your grandsire’s death in ’62, and then at your father’s death ten year since, with the sasine-oxen duly noted.’

‘I like this one,’ said Alys, bending to one of the papers. ‘Twa oxin, gra hornit and white checkit. They must have been handsome beasts.’

‘They were,’ said Maister Livingstone sourly. ‘I mind those. Best plough-team on the lands, they were.’

‘Where are these usually kept?’ Gil asked, nodding at the array of documents.

‘The strongbox at Craigannet,’ said Lowrie. ‘My faither and me sorted them out afore we set out for Glasgow, all that seemed germane to the auld body’s plans. You should see what we kept back,’ he added, brushing dust from his person.

‘Why?’ asked Gil. Both men looked at him a little blankly, but Alys nodded. ‘Why did your father think the sasines might be needed?’

There was a pause, into which Lowrie said,

‘Ah. Well.’

‘She’s done something of the sort afore,’ said his uncle with reluctance. ‘Archie said, take these along in case, and no to lose them.’

‘Are you saying, in fact, Thomas may not have alienated the lands we’re dealing wi today? That her claim is false?’

‘I’d be surprised if he did,’ said Maister Livingstone, hitching up his yellow velvet again.

‘Tell me about it. When did she wed your uncle? Why did they wed? They must ha been both well up in their age.’

‘For mutual comfort of each other’s possessions,’ muttered Lowrie. Alys suppressed a giggle. ‘He once tellt me he’d known her when they were both young,’ he added. ‘I think they both knew Elizabeth Livingstone. Her that was wedded to John of the Isles,’ he elucidated, ‘she and Thomas, and I suppose my grandsire, were second cousins or thereabouts.’ He found his uncle staring at him, and subsided.

‘Isabella and Thomas was wedded in ’90,’ said Maister Livingstone, returning to the point. ‘I think Thomas had his eye on some lands she had in Strathblane at the time, which would sit nicely alongside these two Livingstone holdings that we’re at odds about now. But she kept a tight grip on their management, no joint feus for her, and yet somehow Thomas’s own property all turned out to have been held in joint feu after he died.’

‘Were they fond?’

‘Doted, more like,’ said Lowrie.

‘In fairness, no,’ said his uncle to that. ‘Thomas was deaf as an adder by then,’ he explained to Gil, ‘which you can see would be an advantage, and the old carline would pat his hand, order his favourite dinner, and go her own way. They were easy enough together. Mostly.’

‘There were some rare brulzies,’ said Lowrie, ‘if he crossed her, but mostly he did as she pleased.’

‘So she’s changed little in the time.’

‘Changed not at all. She’s aye been like that, an arglebarglous steering old attercap, fit to tramp on any man’s toes, or woman besides.’

‘She’s made my mother’s life a misery,’ Lowrie contributed, ‘since ever Thomas died, two year ago at Yule, and why her woman Annot stays wi her I’ve no notion.’

‘Or any of them,’ said his uncle. ‘I’d think shame, to miscall honest workers the way she does, let alone the way she speaks to her equals.’

‘Is she lodged wi you just now? Has she said anything more about the Strathblane portions? What makes her so certain they’re hers, for instance?’

Lowrie covered his eyes with one hand, and his uncle groaned.

‘Cold tongue pie wi bitter sauce, we had for supper this night,’ he admitted. ‘We’re all of us lodged in Canon Aiken’s house, seeing he’s away to preach at his benefice, and he’s left us some of the servants. It’s a right good cook he keeps, but it was all wasted this evening, I couldny taste a morsel of it for the old dame haranguing us both. Ingratitude, enmity, lack of respect-’

‘Jealousy, bitterness,’ Lowrie supplied. ‘Oh, and ill manners. She’s aye been one to judge others by herself. She maintains that Thomas held everything in joint fee wi her, but when my uncle asked her for proof and the documents to it she began drumming her heels, and then-’ He paused, looking awkward, but his uncle took up the tale again with no qualms.

‘Then she announced that she would go to stool, and left the board. Her women went wi her, poor souls, Annot and the other one, but I’d had about all I could take o her nonsense and could face no more o the supper, good as it was. And then,’ he pursued, indignation warming his tone, ‘John Sempill turns up, saying she wanted a word wi him, as I recall her telling him in Canon Cunningham’s house, and she kept him waiting in her antechamber, then they had a roaring tulzie, I’m surprised you never heard it down here, and she dismissed him, and we had to listen to him raging about her manners and offer him a drink afore he’d leave us. Just afore we came out, that was.’

‘Well, it was an entertainment,’ said Lowrie.

‘So she has not offered any proof,’ said Alys.

‘What else has she given away?’ Gil asked. ‘And who did she give it to? Has she issue of her own?’

‘No bairns that we know of,’ said Maister Livingstone. ‘She’s right fond of Magdalen Boyd, we’ve met the lady a time or two in her company, and she’s mentioned your sister, maister. Thomas had no issue neither.’

‘I reckon Holy Kirk will be the ultimate beneficiary,’ said Lowrie.

‘As to what she’s alienated,’ pursued Maister Livingstone, ‘we aye suspicioned this other stretch of Strathblane, the next property, Balgrochan that Mistress Boyd mentioned, was rightly part of the heriot, but Archie could never prove it. She gave that to Mistress Boyd at her second marriage, whenever that was.’

‘There was the lands in Teviotdale she sold to the Maitlands,’ observed Lowrie. ‘My faither was certain he’d seen the names on something in the great kist, but there was nothing to be found when he searched, and the superior had nothing either.’

Gil nodded. The Livingstone family obviously held to the same custom as his own father, and most other landowners. The documents which embodied their right to occupy this or that portion of the realm of Scotland were kept in one place, protected with the rest of the family’s valuables. The overlord, the feu superior, would have a copy; the man of law who had drawn up the original document might or might not hold a third copy, but he would certainly have a record of the transaction written into his protocol book, his formal record of all the legal proceedings he had witnessed.

‘Who conveyed these portions for her?’ he asked. ‘How did she convince him the lands were hers to convey? An instrument of sasine granted to any man is not sufficient proof that his wife was seized in the same lands.’

Maister Livingstone blinked at the Latin, but both Lowrie and Alys murmured in agreement.

‘My faither might recall who handled the sale to the Maitlands. Whoever it was, if she just said they were hers, likely he’d accept it. It would take a better man than most to argue wi her,’ said Lowrie frankly. ‘She’s like a runaway cart when she gets going. What’s more,’ he went on, thinking aloud, ‘Thomas might never have had a paper for all that was his anyway, not everyone gets a new document drawn up when they inherit. Why pay for something you might never need?’

Gil nodded again, studying the spread of crabbed writing and looping signatures before him.

‘It’s clear enough by these,’ he said to Maister Livingstone, ‘that the lands of Ballencleroch with the Clachan of Campsie are rightly part of the inheritance, and therefore are now held by Livingstone of Craigannet — by your brother. I’ll proceed on that assumption for now, until the old dame can show me any different. I wonder where she had the Lanarkshire lands from?’

‘She said those had been in her family,’ said Alys. ‘Where would you go to confirm that?’

‘My uncle might ken who I should ask,’ Gil said. ‘And I should speak to your brother’s own man of law, maybe, maister. Who is he? Would he have dealt wi Dame Isabella? No, surely he’d have recognized the properties.’

‘Mm.’ Maister Livingstone’s face grew longer, and he crossed himself. ‘That was our kinsman George. A third or fourth cousin, practising in Stirling. Dee’d last Martinmas, he did. Archie’s had no call to replace him yet.’

‘His house went on fire,’ supplied Lowrie. ‘His papers went up in flames and all.’

‘Our Lady receive him,’ said Alys, and crossed herself. Gil sighed. This was not a simple trail, that was becoming obvious.

‘We need to ask your brother if he recalls who acted for the old dame,’ he said, counting off the points, ‘I need to ask my uncle what he knows about the Lanarkshire lands, and I need to get a closer look at the papers for the two properties again. Dame Isabella took them back, I think.’

‘We can send our man Jock Russell out to Craigannet,’ offered Lowrie, ‘he can fetch back word from my faither.’

‘That would help,’ Gil said. He turned away from the spread of papers and lifted the jug of Malvoisie which Ays had brought. ‘Time for another mouthful, I’d say. And while we drink it, what can you tell me, Maister Livingstone, about how coins are struck?’

‘What can I tell you?’ repeated Maister Livingstone, startled. ‘Why, about all you’d wish to ken, I dare say, for I was moneyer to James Third, along wi Tammas Todd, and oversaw the whole process for five year. What brings that into your mind? Is it this counterfeit coin you have in Glasgow? The auld carline’s never tried to pass you a false plack, has she!’

He chuckled at his joke. Gil smiled politely and refilled his glass with the dark gold wine.

‘Have a seat,’ he suggested, handing it over, ‘and tell me the process. How does it begin?’

In fact there was rather more than he wished to know. Maister Livingstone’s memory was excellent, but indiscriminate, and before long Gil’s head was whirling in a cloud of details, of the distinctions between different royal portraits on the one side of a coin and the decoration round the cross on the other, of different inscriptions and values, weights of silver and fineness of the alloy.

‘But the coining itself,’ he prompted. ‘How does that go?’

‘Oh, in the assay, as I’m just telling you.’ Livingstone sipped appreciatively. ‘Then when your metal’s been made equal to the fineness laid down by contract-’ His speech tumbled off again like a flight of pigeons, describing casting the ingots, finger-thick and a foot long, the annealing, beating flat, annealing again, the cutting into coin-sized squares which were stacked and beaten circular.

‘Then they’re cast into a vat of argol and boiled,’ he related, ‘and then they’re struck.’

‘Argol?’ questioned Alys. ‘What is that, maister?’

‘Er — it’s what you’d call tartar of wine, likely-’

‘The same as I’d use to make sponge-cakes rise?’ she said in amazement. ‘What does that do to them?’

‘I wouldny ken, mistress.’ Livingstone tasted the Malvoisie again. ‘It makes the blanks more ready to take the impress, softens the metal I suppose. Anyway then they’re struck, like I said. You’ve your pile, that’s a column of iron,’ he curved thumb and middle finger of his free hand to demonstrate the breadth, ‘wi a spike at the base to hold it secure in the block, and your trussel, that’s another column. And each of them has one face of the coin engraved on the flat end, so when you put your blank between the two and strike it a few times wi a mell, there’s your coin. Your groat or whatever you set out to strike.’

‘It seems a great deal of work to make a groat,’ she said dubiously.

‘Oh, it’s that,’ he agreed, ‘but you don’t make just the one groat. A good man working wi a basket of blanks can strike twenty or thirty in an hour.’

‘So it is a noisy process,’ said Gil.

‘Aye, it’s noisy. Your moneyer has to strike hard and straight every time, and the pile and trussel ring out, being iron, and then there’s the beater and the shear-man. Plenty o noise in a Mint, there is.’

‘Do the dies have to be iron?’ Gil asked. ‘Would a softer metal do?’

‘Oh, it would do,’ agreed Livingstone, ‘but it wouldny last. You’d need a fresh die afore the six month was out, and you never get them quite the same, no matter how good your craftsman is. You’d get the Mint accused o making false coin!’ He laughed at that.

‘And how about waste?’ asked Gil. ‘Things go wrong in any craft.’

‘They do,’ Maister Livingstone nodded solemnly. ‘You’ve to make certain each groat’s worth a groat, that there’s as many coins out of a pound of siller as there should be, no more and no less. You need to be sure both images are struck clean and single, wi no double strikes or part strikes, and you need to weigh it all in and all out again to make sure none of it’s walked out in your moneyer’s shoon. And the dies has to be locked up at the day’s end and given out again the next morning.’

‘The dies? So they never go missing?’ said Gil. Maister Livingstone grinned.

‘What do you think, maister? But they’re generally found again. There’s no that many folks can dispose of them, a wee session all round wi the torturer uncovers what happened quick enough.’

‘But surely,’ said Lowrie, and stopped as they all looked at him. ‘Surely an engraver could make you a die if you wanted one? No need to risk stealing what would be missed, just get the man to copy a coin for you — you might even get the same engraver that made the originals, if you paid him enough.’

‘Aye, you could,’ said his uncle with scepticism, ‘but you’ve still to get the siller, which is one of the scarcest things in all Scotland, I’ve no need to tell you, laddie, as well as finding the other craftsmen you need.’

‘How much room does the coiner use for working?’ asked Alys. ‘The Mint must be a good size, I suppose, but if you need not have the assay-house and the strongroom and so forth, could a man work by his own hearth?’

‘Aye, or in an outhouse,’ agreed Livingstone. He considered. ‘The other work has to be done somewhere, a course. I’d agree wi you, a counterfeiter likely won’t trouble himsel wi the assaying, but the metal still has to be cast and cut and annealed.’

‘Somewhere wi space for metalworking, then,’ said Gil. ‘Even if they clear it all away when they’re not at the task. A fire or a furnace, tongs and a crucible and ladle-’

‘Furnace,’ said Livingstone. ‘You’ll not melt siller on a kitchen fire.’ He set down his glass, and looked at the dark window. ‘We’d best away up the road, maister. The auld wife has to be watched, or she’s up to all sorts. I’ll not weep at her funeral, I can tell you. Have I tellt you all you need for now?’