The Counterfeit Madam

Chapter Eight

‘So what’s it to do wi us, if some auld wife got hersel killed?’ demanded Adkin Saunders the pewterer. He lifted a small hammer from his workbench and went on, ‘I’ve work to do, maisters, I’ll thank ye to get away and let me get on, and no stand about asking me questions I canny answer.’

His wife, tall and deep-bosomed in her checked gown, two children clinging to her skirts and another in her arms, scowled at them from the hearth. Outside, the lorimer’s dog barked from the door of his workshop. Gil said patiently,

‘The dead woman’s servant was taken up from this toft last night. Was she in this house?’

‘I’ve seen no woman’s servant,’ said Saunders, ‘nor do I want to. I’ve enough trouble wi her,’ he jerked his head, ‘without taking to do wi any more banasgaleann.’

‘So you knew she’s an Ersche speaker,’ said Gil quickly. Maistre Pierre frowned at this, and Saunders’ wife drew a sharp breath.

‘It’s a word I’d use o many women,’ said Saunders.

‘And the sack of coin,’ said Gil. ‘Did that come from this house too?’

‘They neither of them were coming out of this house,’ said the woman. ‘We knew nothing of any stranger here, nor of any sack of coin.’ She freed one hand to gesture about her, with expressive grace. ‘Do you think we have coins to keep in a sack?’

The house was not so bare as she implied; the bed was well furnished, the draw-bed under it seemed to have plenty of blankets, and a handsome assemblage of crocks was arranged on the sideboard next the wall. An iron cooking-pot hung over the hearth, probably her dowry, Gil surmised.

‘Never mind that, woman,’ growled her husband. ‘And you, maisters, if you want to know about some Ersche trollop, you can ask at Campbell the whitesmith down the toft a bittie, no at my door-’

‘My brother would be having nothing to do with it!’ began his wife indignantly.

‘Will you mind your tongue, woman, and no contradict me under my own roof!’

Gil drew breath to point out that it was not Saunders’ roof but his landlord’s, whoever that might be, and then thought better of it. His caution was repaid.

‘Is that you trying to get my brother into trouble, then? When he’s no more and no less in it than-’

‘Mind your tongue!’

The smallest child began wailing, and the next took up the note.

‘As for him across the way wi his leather scraps and his-’

Saunders flung the hammer down on the bench and took two strides across the room. The children screamed in unison, his wife flung up an arm to protect herself, Maistre Pierre seized the man by the shoulder. Gil stepped quietly away from the melee and inspected the bench closely. Rounds of pewter ready cast for shaping, moulds of differing sizes for cups and platters and bowls, hammers with heads of metal, of wood, of padded leather, a handful of metal dies with which to strike a pattern into the metal. He lifted these, but none of them bore the image of James Third, and in fact none was broad enough to strike a coin.

‘Here, leave my graith be!’ Saunders was at his elbow. ‘And away and let a man earn his bread in peace, will you?’

Gil stepped away from the bench, and nodded to Maistre Pierre.

‘I think we can leave you for now,’ he said. ‘But I’ll likely see you again. Maister Mason and I will be taking over the toft.’ He lifted his hat, with the caution it still required. ‘We’ll be your landlords.’

Out on the muddy path, Socrates and Luke were equally relieved to see them.

‘There’s been all sorts going on down there,’ Luke said, nodding down the toft, while the dog nudged Gil’s knees. ‘I seen a bairn run down from this house, and a woman came running up and into yon workshop,’ he indicated the lorimer’s ramshackle premises, where the dog still barked at Socrates, ‘and away again, and Danny Sproat came by and gave me a look, he’ll ken me again, and away down to the donkey’s shed. And then the man out that workshop went away down the toft as well, and hasny come back yet.’

‘Good lad,’ said Gil. So they were alarmed by his presence, were they? But Dod Muir the image-maker, whom the girl Cleone had seen strike him down, had not been mentioned.

This turned out to be because the image-maker was still not at home. Repeated rattling of the cast-iron ring on its twisted pin on the doorjamb had no result. After a pause, Maistre Pierre stepped to the window and peered in through a crack in the shutter.

‘No movement,’ he reported. ‘Dod Muir! Are you within?’

‘I could ask across the way, maybe,’ suggested Luke. His master hammered on the shutters, which rattled wildly under his big fist.

‘You might as well,’ he was saying, when there was a shout behind them.

‘There they are! Breaking in at Dod’s window, and all!’

Socrates growled. Gil turned, to see the whitesmith and the lorimer, all indignant eyes and pointing fingers, hurrying down the path from the Drygate. Behind them, large and important, strode not the Serjeant but Maister Andrew Hamilton, a neighbour from the High Street and present Dean of the Guild of Hammermen, wearing his Dean’s robe of office over his working clothes and shedding curls of shaved wood as he went.

‘You, Peter!’ he said. ‘I’d thought better of you! What’s afoot here, anyway? These two,’ he indicated his fellow guildsmen, ‘cam running to me saying they’re being harassed unlawful, and here I find you forcing Dod Muir’s shutters? That’s no like you!’

‘Nothing of the kind, Andrew,’ retorted Maistre Pierre, reddening. ‘We are here about two errands, one of them to find out why my good-son was assaulted on this toft yesterday morning.’

‘Nothing to do wi me,’ said the lorimer quickly. ‘I wasny on the toft!’ His dog, more courageous in his presence, snarled at Socrates from behind his knee.

‘Aye, I heard about that,’ said Maister Hamilton. ‘Was it on this toft then? Now that’s serious, lads,’ he said to his guildsmen. ‘Which of them was it struck you, maister? Was there any effusion of blood?’

‘No,’ said Gil, wondering why the whole of Glasgow wished to see his blood let. ‘It was this fellow Dod Muir that struck me,’ he nodded at the shutter still rattling faintly, and turned back towards Hamilton in time to catch a startled expression crossing Campbell’s face. ‘I’ve witnesses,’ he concluded. ‘He had help throwing me in the burn, and all.’

‘Oh, you have, have you?’ said Maister Hamilton grimly. ‘And who was the help, then?’

‘No me!’ said the whitesmith quickly, and the lorimer shook his head.

‘Aye, well,’ said their Dean, eyeing them, ‘I’ll see you right when you’re doing right, lads, but assault wi witnesses is a different matter. What had you done to provoke it, maister?’

‘Poking his nose in here, thieving in Danny Sproat’s stable,’ began the lorimer.

‘You know a deal about it for one that wasny here,’ Gil said. And you were here, he recalled, eyeing the bright red hair which hung below the lorimer’s blue bonnet. ‘Maister Hamilton, if the offer we’ve had still stands, Pierre and I will shortly be landlords here on wee John’s behalf. I was inspecting the place, trying to decide if it was worth taking on, and I was struck down all unsuspecting.’

‘Asking questions!’ said the whitesmith.

‘There’s no law agin asking questions,’ said Hamilton. He hitched up his black gown, stroked its velvet facings and braced his elbows importantly. ‘We’ll have to have this out, lads. Go and summon the other fellows, Saunders and the donkey man and all I suppose, and we’ll hear all here and now. And where might Dod be, d’ye ken?’

‘Never seen him the day,’ admitted the lorimer. ‘Nor yesterday neither, when I think on it.’ Danny Bell, that was his name, Gil recalled, and the whitesmith was a Campbell. And the pewterer’s brother-in-law. He stepped sideways, head cocked to hear Campbell banging on the pewterer’s door. The woman answered it, with a spate of anxious Ersche which got a ‘Wheesht, Vari!’ from her brother. Then there was a half-whispered exchange among the three adults, almost inaudible through the wailing of another of the children, in which he caught Dod Muir’s name, and then suddenly, clearly, the phrase Alan agus Nicol.

Next to him, the lorimer’s dog suddenly got its courage up and went for Socrates. Kicking it away Gil restrained his own dog, his mind working furiously.

He knew only a few words of Ersche, unlike Alys, but he could recognize that: Alan and Nicol. Two of Dame Isabella’s missing servants.

‘From Madam Xanthe?’ repeated Gil.

‘Aye, from my mistress,’ agreed the boy Cato.

‘What does she want?’ Alys asked, coming forward from the hearth. The boy gave her an ingratiating grin and bobbed nervously, scattering raindrops from his plaid. Gil turned the note over in his hand, broke the seal, and held the orange-scented paper to the light from the candle she held.

‘She wants to see me,’ he said after a moment. ‘About the false coin.’

‘When?’ said Alys.

‘Maybe now?’ said Cato hopefully. ‘She bade me say, if you’d see your way to calling on us the night, she’d be right glad of it.’

‘But I’m not,’ Gil began, and bit that off.

‘She bade me say and all,’ Cato assured him, ‘she kens you’re no charged wi it, but she’d like fine to talk wi you just the same.’

‘Did she say anything else?’ And how did she know that much? he wondered.

‘No, no, that’s all, excepting it was about Strathblane, she said. The coin, I mean.’

‘Strathblane?’ Gil looked at the boy, then at Alys. ‘I think I must go,’ he said in French.

‘I think you must,’ she acknowledged, eyebrows raised, ‘but not alone, surely. Maybe you could take Luke with you again. And the dog.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the group by the hearth; Maistre Pierre and the two McIans were still engrossed in a debate on the merits of different styles of harp. Socrates, recognizing chien, raised his head and looked at her.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘I won’t take your father out again tonight. Warn Luke, then, if you will, and I’ll put on my boots. And a cloak.’

‘Aye, you’ll want a cloak, maister,’ agreed Cato. ‘It’s right wet out there, we’ll ha a quiet time o it in the house. Keeps the customers away, so it does, the rain,’ he informed Alys, nodding wisely.

Sending Cato to the kitchen to alert Luke, Alys lit a lantern and followed Gil out into the rain and across the yard to their apartment, Socrates on her heels.

‘It’s curious she mentioned Strathblane,’ she said as they picked their way past the tubs of flowers.

‘Very curious.’

‘Sempill was out there today.’

‘Was he now?’ Gil looked down at her, and opened the heavy door to their stair. ‘What was he doing?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said regretfully, ‘but he came home in a great temper, saying there was some trouble, and that Philip wanted to involve you. Then he saw me, and would say no more.’

‘Did you ask?’

‘Of course I did,’ she said indignantly, ‘but he was rude to me, so Lady Magdalen rebuked him, and he went off in a sulk.’ She followed him into their outer chamber, put the lantern on a kist and sat down to watch him pull on his boots. ‘I learned some useful things today,’ she added. ‘I was waiting to tell you when we were alone.’

‘Go on.’ He straightened the heels of his hose, folded the wide leg of each boot about his calf, the soft leather waxy under his fingers, and buckled the straps while Alys recounted the visits she had made and the information she had gathered. He did not ask why she had not told him this before; supper had been a lively meal, with a sparkling conversation about the power of music and little opportunity to discuss the case.

‘This is all useful, sweetheart,’ he agreed at last, stamping to settle his feet in the boots. ‘It confirms all the servants’ stories, so far as it goes. I wonder what the bag of coin was doing in Clerk’s Land?’

‘Maybe Madam Xanthe will know,’ she suggested, with an odd emphasis on the name. Their eyes met in the lantern-light, and he nodded slightly, then looked about him for his plaid. She rose to fetch it from its nail in the inmost chamber, taking the light with her. He stood quietly in the dark, wondering what the reference to Strathblane might mean, while the dog nudged his knee.

The House of the Mermaiden was lit and humming with conversation behind its shutters, but Cato led them round the side of the house and in at the back door. Madam Xanthe, gorgeously dressed and turbaned, was alone in the room where Gil had been dried off the previous day, seated by a branch of candles with a ledger open on the table before her. When they entered she looked up, smiled, and pushed the heavy volume away.

‘Maister Cunningham! In a good hour,’ she declared. ‘Oh, and a wee lapdog wi you!’ She stretched a long white hand to Socrates, who paced forward to inspect it, then on to thrust his nose into her lap. She fended him off. ‘Cato, take Maister Cunningham’s man out to the kitchen and see him dried off, and then bring us some of the good wine.’

‘And the wee cakes, madam? Ste- Strephon’s made some of his wee cakes, they’re right good this time-’

‘Aye, you daft laddie, some o the wee cakes! Now get off wi the two o ye, till I get talking to my guest.’

Luke departed hopefully with Cato, and Madam Xanthe turned to Gil, her hand still busy about the dog’s ears.

‘You’re recovered from your wetting, then?’ she observed. ‘And the dunt on the head?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said politely. ‘I hope I see you well, madam?’

‘Oh, if we’re to be formal!’ She rose and swept him a magnificent curtsy, the wide folds of her dark blue taffeta gown rustling in a great pool round her, the gold turban gleaming in the candlelight. Gil responded, and she took his arm and drew him to a seat by the brazier in the centre of the chamber. Socrates padded about, inspecting the place.

‘And madam your wife’s in good health? Your good-father? Right, now that’s seen to,’ she went on without waiting for a reply, ‘will you tell me what you ken o these false coins, or will I go first?’

‘What was the reference to Strathblane about?’ he countered, watching the painted face, which was now partly shadowed. The paint and the turban combined to remind him suddenly of one of the players in a student play two years since, a repellent boy playing Dame Fortuna in fluent Latin, who met his death within the hour. With an effort he brought his mind back to the present. What was the purpose of this summons? How much information did this pretentious individual hold, and where had it come from?

‘Och, that was just to fetch you out.’ There was a burst of loud laughter from the hall above them; Socrates growled quietly, and Gil snapped his fingers to bring the dog to his side. ‘Mind you Danny Sproat and his donkey seems to have been out that way, which is likely what put it into my mind, for as I recall Isabella Torrance had some land there. Or claimed she had.’

‘Claimed is nearer it,’ Gil agreed. ‘So now you’ve fetched me, what can you tell me? I was warned off the false coin by Robert Blacader,’ he said, keeping his voice neutral, ‘but it seems to be involved in the matter of the old woman’s death, or at least there are more false coins floating about her than seems reasonable, so if you ken aught of any use, I’d be glad to hear it.’

‘I’ve no doubt of it.’ Madam Xanthe paused as Cato entered with two glasses, followed by Luke with a jug in one hand and a platter of little cakes in the other. Socrates cocked one hopeful ear, but did not move. ‘Good laddie, leave them there and we’ll serve ourselves. Away out to the kitchen now, do you hear me? Aye, that’s what I hear,’ she went on as the two young men left. ‘A great sack o the stuff found on the lassie that went missing, for a start, and did I hear there was another purse gone as well?’

‘You’re well informed.’

There was another burst of laughter from the hall, and a scattering of notes from a lute. Two voices rose entwined in sweet and inappropriate harmony; Gil identified the song about the hurcheon.

‘I have my sources,’ said Madam Xanthe, pouring wine. The light from the candles struck matching dark red glints from the brocade under-sleeve within the wide folds of taffeta. She handed him a glass. ‘So what else have you got?’

‘Very little,’ Gil admitted. ‘We’ve had coin from the market, one or two from the Gorbals, none from anyone that kent who he’d got it from. Or was willing to say,’ he qualified scrupulously, thinking of Ysonde’s tale. ‘I’ve spoken to the Provost about it, and I’d a talk wi Eckie Livingstone about coining and how it’s done. That’s it.’

‘And you’d nothing useful fro this afternoon on Clerk’s Land.’ Madam Xanthe was watching him under the long painted eyelids. ‘It didny seem like a peaceable gathering.’

‘It wasny.’ He shut his mouth firmly on that. The pale eyes did not move from his face. He sat still, thinking about the long argument on the drying-green, with Maister Hamilton exerting all his authority and his considerable voice to keep order while he questioned the three hammermen about the assault on Gil, questioned Gil and Pierre about their presence on the toft, refused to listen to complaints about the fine for a fire which nobody would admit to having set too close to the thatch, and finally directed his fellow-guildsmen to be civil to the Archbishop’s man.

‘And you’ll tell Dod I want a word wi him,’ he said ominously. ‘This is all a storm in a chopin, I hope I willny have to come out to it again, or there’ll be more than the one fine to pay.’

‘But he’ll no need to be searching our houses,’ said Campbell the whitesmith.

‘No, I wouldny say he’d any need to search your houses,’ agreed Maister Hamilton. ‘Right, Maister Cunningham?’

‘What are they hiding, then?’ speculated Madam Xanthe now. ‘Something the Provost’s men missed.’

‘Or wereny looking for,’ he said, and tasted the wine. It was more of the stuff she had offered them the other morning, smooth and heavy with a dark taste of apricots. ‘They were hiding the woman Forveleth, until Campbell put her out to fend for herself, I’m reasonably sure of that. It’s Campbell’s wife is her kin, by what she says, no doubt he feels less responsible for her. They had the big sack of false coin, and exchanged it for a parcel of potyngary she had on her, I assume in the hope of getting it off the place and at least off their hands, and I’d dearly like to ken why they had that much in their possession, but of course they denied all knowledge of it.’

‘Of course.’

‘They mentioned two of Dame Isabella’s men, two of the ones that are missing-’

‘Missing?’

‘Alan and Nicol, brothers I think.’ He shook his head, and took another sip of the wine. ‘The Serjeant was to cry them abroad, but there’s been no word of them. I think they’re not on the toft, there’s little enough room to hide two men, so where they can have gone-’

‘Plenty places to hide in Glasgow,’ remarked Madam Xanthe. ‘They’re not here, at least, maister.’

‘You disappoint me. Then there’s the matter of the fire that nobody admits having set, and the prentice that Campbell claims he doesny have, though two others have mentioned him.’

‘Prentice?’ Madam Xanthe looked at him, eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you that? I’ve never seen any sign o one.’

‘John Sempill told me he kept a prentice,’ Gil recalled, ‘and I think — aye, the Provost’s men arrested him on suspicion of theft, and had to release him when his master swore it was something he’d given him.’

‘Theft of what?’

‘No idea. This was yestreen, I wasny at my best.’ He eyed her across the heavy glow of his wine. ‘And what do you know? Have you other information?’

‘Some.’ She offered him the platter of cakes. He took one and nibbled it. ‘Have you had aught from the Gallowgate? Any coin I mean?’

‘The Gallowgate?’ He shook his head. ‘We’ve no trade down there that I’m aware of. I’d say,’ he added, thinking of the children again, ‘there are more false coins found at the foot of the town than up here, but that’s all I ken.’

‘Aye.’ She drank some of the wine, then suddenly set her glass down on the table and sat up straight. ‘The deil fly away wi this, I’m sick o playing Tarocco. Come away up, maister.’

‘Up?’ he repeated, startled.

‘Aye. Up to my chamber.’ The arch expression surfaced, for the first time this evening; she put a long white finger to her painted lips and looked at him sideways. ‘I’ve that to show you, will make you right astonished.’

‘Will it, now?’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

She lifted her glass again. ‘Bring the wine.’

Warily, he followed her from the chamber, through another where shadows jumped from her candle, to a narrow stair at its far corner. The dog was at his heels, claws clicking on the waxed boards.

‘This was what I liked about this house,’ she said, setting foot on the lowest step. ‘The second stair, completely separate from the hall. Come away up,’ she said again, holding the candle high. ‘I’ll tell you, once we’ve left, you should move in here wi your wee wife, set up your own household. A man should be maister under his own roof.’

‘You think?’

‘I know.’

She stepped off the stair into another darkened chamber, opened a door which was barely noticeable in the candlelight, set off upwards again. This time they emerged in a bedchamber, sparsely furnished, the box bed curtained with plain linen. Socrates set off to explore the room.

‘You don’t bring clients here,’ Gil recognized, looking about him. Madam Xanthe did not answer; setting down glass and candle on a stool she delved under her dark blue taffeta to produce a key, crossed the chamber, and unlocked another half-hidden door.

‘My closet. Come in, maister. Bring the candle, and come and unlace me.’

Gil paused in the doorway of the small place. It held even less furniture than the outer room: a desk, a couple of kists, two stools. A shelf with books, a lute in an open case. Its owner, staring challengingly in the candlelight.

‘Can you not unlace yourself?’ he suggested.

‘Oh, now!’ The pale eyes glinted, the husky voice was mocking. ‘You don’t want to disrobe me, reveal my white flesh and soft-’

‘I think,’ said Gil deliberately, ‘you’re about as soft as tempered steel. Sandy.’

Sandy Boyd gave a crack of laughter.

‘I wondered!’ he said. ‘I wondered if you’d jaloused me.’ He dragged off the gold turban, and ran his fingers through pale hair. ‘Christ aid, how can women wear these tight things all day? What gave me away?’

Gil shook his head.

‘Nothing particular, I think. You’re gey like your sister, and Madam Xanthe’s too good to be true.’

‘Oh, never!’ Boyd put a hand to his cheek, with Madam Xanthe’s simper. ‘How can you say so? Maybe true, but good, maister?’

Gil grinned. ‘What’s it in aid of?’

‘Aye, well.’ Boyd flung off the blue taffeta. ‘I wasny joking when I asked if you’d unlace me, Agnes has a strong arm and I’ll never reach the knot she’s used.’ He turned his back and Gil obediently began work on the knot in the lacing of the dark brocade kirtle. ‘As for what it’s in aid of, what but this false coin? I’m put in here by Robert Blacader to get at the source. See, it’s good stuff. Good silver. The Treasury wants to ken where it’s coming from.’

‘Oh, you are, are you?’ He took in the rest of the utterance. ‘What, you mean it’s purer silver than the coin of the realm?’

‘That’s just what I mean. Thanks.’ Boyd wriggled the kirtle loose, and began to work one arm out of the tight sleeve. Socrates clicked into the room and over to thrust his nose against the brocade skirt. Boyd pushed him away with his free hand. ‘Blacader said,’ another short laugh, ‘they could buy it all up at face value, coin it new and still make a good profit at the Mint, save that we’d not want word to get round.’

‘I can see that.’ Gil turned to the jug of wine where he had set it on one of the kists, and refilled his glass. ‘Does the old woman’s death fit in here, do you suppose? That’s my prime concern the now, particularly if you’re after the coin.’

‘You’d do better to look in other directions. Though as you say, there’s a lot of the stuff floating about her. It’s taken me the six month I’ve been here to get this far, Gil. Pour me some more o that wine and all, will you?’ He extracted his hand from the second sleeve and began easing the kirtle down over narrow hips. Beneath it he wore a woman’s shift, the neck elaborately worked and pleated. Stepping free of the heap of brocade he caught it up, threw it on top of the blue taffeta gown, and delved in the other kist.

‘Boots,’ he muttered, ‘hose, drawers, what the deil has Agnes done wi my — aye, there they are.’ He closed the lid, kicked off Madam Xanthe’s large but dainty Morocco leather shoes, and began dressing. ‘How is Maidie, anyhow?’ he asked. ‘You’ve seen her lately? And the charming John, a course.’

‘Just the day. Your sister looks well, and seems happy,’ Gil said. ‘I’d say she’s dealing uncommon well wi the charming John.’ He sat down beside the wine-jug, and went on, ‘So how far is that, you’ve got? Where does the stuff come from?’

‘If I’d jaloused that, I wouldny be here.’ Boyd tucked the shift into his hose. ‘It comes into Glasgow from somewhere, I’m assuming as bars o silver rather than lumps o rock, and gets struck into coin and then carried out to the Isles. We’re sure enough o the other end, it’s this end we want to track down, the workshop in Glasgow and the mine the stuff comes from.’

‘We?’

‘Those I work for.’ He was tying the points of his hose to a dark jerkin now and did not look up.

‘So that’s more than Blacader.’

‘I’m surprised they’ve no recruited you,’ said Boyd obliquely. ‘Mind you, a married man.’

‘And that’s how far you’ve got in six month?’

‘That and some other matters unrelated.’ He fastened a dark doublet and reached for his replenished glass. ‘Ah, that’s good. The barrel’s near finished, be time to move on soon, I canny contemplate Glasgow without a decent drink.’

‘So why am I here?’ Gil asked bluntly. ‘What do you want of me?’

‘I need a look at Dod Muir’s place, and I thought you’d like to come along.’

‘What?’

‘Wheesht! Are you wanting half Glasgow to ken you’re in my chamber? No that I’d mind, you understand, but-’

‘Why Dod Muir’s house, and why now?’ Gil asked, lowering his voice obediently. ‘There’s plenty folk about that toft, do you reckon they’ll all be asleep? Where’s Muir himsel sleep anyway?’

‘He dwells in the house, but he’s no been back there the day, at least no by the time it was dark.’

‘And how about the dog?’ Gil added, as Socrates nudged his elbow. ‘There was one there this afternoon.’

‘It’s Bell the lorimer’s. He takes the brute home wi him at night along wi the takings. The rest’ll be asleep. No, I think Dod Muir might ha been the source o the dies they’re using, and seeing it was him put you in the mill-burn …’ He let the sentence die away. Gil sipped wine and looked at the other man. The dark clothes he now wore receded into the shadows, leaving Madam Xanthe’s painted face floating in the candlelight surrounded by wild pale hair.

‘And if we’re heard,’ he said. ‘What will you do if we’re taken up for theft and rookery?’

Boyd gave him Madam Xanthe’s arch painted smile.

‘How fast can you run?’

This was madness.

Moving quietly after Boyd, the dog at his knee, Gil wondered how he had agreed to what was, in effect, housebreaking. The moon, he recalled, was a day or two past the full; it could not be seen, but the clouds gleamed faintly silver here and there. Clerk’s Land was asleep in the rainy night, snores sounding from behind the shutters of the pewterer’s house as they slipped past. Boyd’s shut-lantern gave them just enough light to see the path before them and threw a wet sparkle on the flagstones and on the doorway of the lorimer’s workshop. Beyond it, the image-maker’s house was black against the sky.

Boyd paused, held out the lantern. He was wrapped in a huge black cloak, his head covered by a felt coif, and his face and hands floated eerily, isolated in the night, as Gil directed the light at the fastening of Muir’s door. The handle for the latch had been drawn into the house, as if the man was at home; Gil said softly,

‘Are you sure he’s no here?’

‘Nothing’s sure,’ returned Boyd, equally softly. He produced a latch-lifter, inserted it into the hole in the door and turned it cautiously, seeking the point where the hook on the end would raise the bar of the latch, while Gil held the lantern steady and wondered whether the door had been barred from the inside as well. Socrates, perhaps catching his mood, leaned hard against his leg.

There was a click as the latch rose. Boyd exhaled, pushed gently, and the door moved under his hand. Not barred then, thought Gil, as the hinges creaked. They stood frozen on the threshold, listening for any movement within. Nothing stirred, and at length Boyd took the lantern from Gil and stepped inside the house. Gil followed, and pushed the door to behind the dog.

‘What are we looking for?’

‘Aught out o place.’ The lantern’s narrow beam moved slowly round the place. One small room, a workbench at one end, a hearth at the other. The light glinted on a rack of tools, raising a glow from blades of chisel and gouge, casting darkness beyond a mell on the bench, its head as big as Gil’s two fists. Two kists, a rack with papers, a table and two stools, another rack of shelves with kitchen stuff on them, a ladder in the corner leading to a dark loft. The place smelled of damp, of cold ashes, of something else. Socrates left Gil’s side and padded round, sniffing in corners, his paws rasping on the beaten earth floor. The lantern, in Boyd’s hand, moved towards the workbench, the light skimming over a clutter of wood shavings, several gouges, two small-bladed knives. The hearth, when Gil stepped over to it, was cold, though the two crocks washed out and set to drip beside it still had damp patches beneath them. He frowned. Something did not quite fit there.

‘Where’s the work-piece?’ he asked quietly. They were both using the voice a little above a whisper, the pitch least likely to disturb the sleeping neighbours. The light swung across the bench, round the room, dipped to the floor.

‘Here.’ Boyd stooped and came up with a piece of wood, set it among the shavings, held the lantern close. A figure emerged from the cross-lit surface like a corpse out of water, St Paul with book and sword, six inches high.

‘He’s been interrupted,’ Gil said. ‘A craftsman doesny leave his work like that, he makes all tidy and stows his tools. And yet he’s had time to wash the crocks, and not so long since at that.’

‘So where is he?’ wondered Boyd. He was inspecting the bench, and now bent to peer under it, the light showing a shelf with baskets ranged along it. ‘What have we here? Aye, different work, a couple wax medallions, an alabaster waiting to be mended.’ He was pulling the baskets towards him one by one, peering into each. ‘No metalwork. Where does he do his metalwork?’

‘He doesny,’ said Gil. ‘He’s a carver, a maker of figures and pictures.’

‘He does engraving. I’ve seen him. I’d wager it was him made the dies for the coiners. I hoped there might be something in the house to prove it.’ The other man straightened up, and the beam of light flitted round the room again, the shadows dancing away from it. Outside, a child wailed, an adult spoke, and Boyd snapped the shutter of the lantern closed. Darkness choked the little house, and they waited, listening, while the dog snuffled at something. Both mother and child spoke again. Gil, ears at the stretch, breathing quietly, realized that muffled in darkness as he was his other senses were heightened; he was aware of Boyd moving away from the bench, of air stirring past his face, of the smells of damp earth and new timber, ashes and cold meat. Socrates’ strong claws scraped at wood. The child had fallen silent; the strapping of a bed creaked. Sweet St Giles, he thought, you might as well live on the Tolbooth steps.

The lantern opened again, startlingly bright after the thick darkness, and showed Socrates, his nose pressed intently at the lid of one of the kists. Gil, wishing he had a light himself, moved past his dog to the second kist, while Boyd turned his attention to the papers in the rack.

‘Contracts,’ he said after a moment. ‘A St Francis for the Greyfriars, a Philip and James for St Thomas’s. He’s doing well enow.’

‘Clothes in here,’ said Gil. He dug cautiously among the folded garments. ‘Couple of medals, a purse wi a few coins. No metalworking tools that I can feel.’

‘See us the coins,’ requested Boyd. Gil obediently drew the purse out, and his companion took it to the workbench and tipped the contents out into the beam of the lantern. Gil moved to the other kist, elbowed Socrates out of the way and lifted the lid. ‘Two, no, three false ones,’ Boyd reported. Gil grunted, peering at what lay inside, something light and dark in patches which filled the kist to its top -

The lid fell with a bang as he recoiled with a shudder, fell over Socrates, and went down, taking one of the stools with him.

‘You great juffler-’ began Boyd. Outside, the child wailed again, and someone shouted. ‘Quick, bar the door, they’ll be out like a spilled byke-’

Gil scrambled to his feet and collected himself, pulling his doublet straight, patting his apologetic dog. Boyd was making for the door, but he put out a hand and seized the other man’s arm.

‘A moment,’ he said, and drew a slightly shaky breath. ‘I think I’ve found Dod Muir.’

‘What?’

There were loud voices in the house across the toft. Someone shouted about a light.

‘In the kist. He’s cold, and softened. I found his face.’ He wiped the other hand on his hose, trying to eliminate the feeling of the clammy flesh. ‘Let’s have some light on him.’

The body in the kist was folded up, knees on chest, head tilted sideways. The face was pale in the thin light, the features flattened by the lid of the chest. The eyes stared at them pleadingly. Socrates inserted his long nose under Gil’s elbow and sniffed curiously at the dead man’s ear, and Boyd said with reluctance,

‘Aye, it’s Muir right enough. How did he die, I wonder?’

‘I can smell blood,’ said Gil, ‘though it’s not fresh.’

‘Dhia!’ said a voice above them in horror.

The lantern jerked convulsively, but Socrates looked upwards, ears pricked. Gil followed the dog’s gaze. At the top of the ladder, against the darkness of the loft, a dark-browed face stared back at them, appalled.

‘Christ aid!’ said Boyd. ‘Who the devil are you?’

‘Dod!’ shouted someone outside, and there was a hammering at the door. Socrates scrambled to his feet, head down, growling. ‘Is that you, man? What’s befallen ye? Are ye scaithed?’

‘Euan Campbell,’ said Gil with resignation. ‘Come down out o there.’

‘It iss mysel, no my brother,’ said the man in the loft. ‘I will just be putting my boots on, maybe.’

‘Who’s in there?’ demanded the voice outside.

‘Niall, an tu a tha’ann?’ A woman’s voice, shrill with anxiety. The child was screaming now. Sandy Boyd calmly handed Gil the lantern and drew his cloak about him in an elaborate gesture. Suddenly, Madam Xanthe was back, simpering in the dimness.

‘I’ll let you deal wi’t, seeing you found him,’ she said archly.

‘My gratitude,’ said Gil with feeling, ‘knows no bounds.’ He opened another shutter on the lantern. The hammering on the door was growing more urgent, and Socrates was growling insistently. ‘Neil! Get down here, man!’

‘You were just wanting somewhere to sleep,’ repeated Otterburn. He stared at Neil Campbell, his expression baffled. Gil sympathized; conversation with the Campbell brothers often left him feeling the same way. ‘So why did you pick Dod Muir’s loft?’

‘My cousin was saying he was from home.’

‘Your cousin being,’ Otterburn referred to his notes, ‘Noll Campbell the whitesmith. Christ on a handcart, I think the whole of Scotland must be kin to the folk on this toft. And how did he ken the man Muir was from home?’

‘But he was not from home,’ the gallowglass pointed out earnestly.

‘What,’ said Otterburn with thinning patience, ‘made your kinsman think Muir was from home?’

‘Well, he was never seeing him all day. And nor was the women.’

‘Hmm,’ said Otterburn, gazing at Campbell in the candlelight. ‘What are you doing here anyway? Why are you in Glasgow the now?’

‘Visiting my cousin,’ said Campbell, innocence shining in his face.

‘So why were you not lodged wi him?’ Gil asked.

When he had opened the door of Dod Muir’s house, Saunders the pewterer, clad in shirt and boots, had almost fallen into the chamber clutching one of his bigger mells. Behind him his wife held her plaid about her over her shift, a lantern in her free hand, her gaze going past Gil into the dark corners, to Neil Campbell on the ladder.

‘You!’ said Saunders. ‘What are you at here? What have ye done wi Dod?’

‘The man Muir is dead,’ said the gallowglass, as the whitesmith appeared out of the rainy darkness.

Saunders’ wife screamed, and crossed herself. The whitesmith pushed past her into the house, staring round in the leaping shadows.

‘What are you about?’ demanded Saunders, raising the mell. ‘Seize the man, Noll, we’ve got him red hand!’

‘He’s been slain and hidden here,’ said Gil, ‘I’d say yesterday some time.’

Both householders began shouting, ably assisted by Saunders’ wife. The resulting broil had attracted the attention of the Watch; during it, somehow, Madam Xanthe slipped out and away without being noticed.

The Watch, five stalwart indwellers of the burgh in a mixed set of ill-fitting armour, had been deeply dismayed to find they had a murder on their hands.

‘Is it Dod Muir right enough?’ said their leader, peering into the kist in the lantern-light. ‘His face is all sideyways, it’s no that like him.’ He felt respectfully at the folded corpse, and shook his head. ‘Whoever it is, he’s caulder than charity, and he’s stiff and softened again, he’s been gone a while.’

‘Who else would it be?’ said his neighbour scornfully, hitching at a breastplate which Gil estimated had been made forty years since for a thinner man. ‘Hid here in the man’s own kist, in his own house?’

‘It might be someone he’s slew himsel,’ said one of the other watchmen.

‘You need,’ said Gil, exerting authority, ‘to send to the Castle. Get them to wake the Provost, and fetch a couple of his men back wi you.’

‘Wake the Provost?’ repeated the leader doubtfully.

‘Aye, and take up this nosy-’ began Saunders. Gil stared him down, but his wife said shrilly,

‘Ach, indeed, nothing but trouble, he is, always poking round here, uncovering what he ought not, high time he was taken up and locked away!’ She fell silent as her brother hissed something threatening in Ersche, and Gil said to the leader of the Watch,

‘It’s none of your duty to deal wi murder, man. Send one of your lads to the Castle, tell them there’s been a murder, bid them come and take over from you here.’

‘Aye, you’re right there,’ agreed the man, grasping at this idea with relief. ‘Wee Rab, away up to the Castle, d’ye hear? And the rest o us will just stay here,’ he said, with more courage now he knew the task was limited, ‘mak sure nobody moves aught they shouldny.’

‘Aye, well,’ said one of his henchmen. ‘It’s out the rain, and all. But how did ye come to discover him, hid away like this?’

‘I’ll ask the questions, Tam Bowster,’ said the leader. ‘How did ye find him, then?’

‘The dog led me to him,’ said Gil, having anticipated this question. The men looked askance at Socrates, who was now sitting politely at Gil’s side, his teeth gleaming in the light. The child was still screaming in the near house; Saunders sent his wife away with a mutter and a jerk of the head, and Noll Campbell the whitesmith said,

‘For one that claims to be our landlord, maister, you do a rare lot o spying and creeping about. What was bringing you in here, that the dog could sniff out a death? Did you ken he was there to be found?’

‘When did you last see him?’ Gil countered.

‘I’ll ask the questions,’ said the leader of the Watch. ‘When was deceased last seen, then? Was he at his work the day?’

‘He couldny ha been,’ objected the man in the antique breastplate, ‘he’s been deid since yestreen by the look o him.’

‘I’d an encounter wi him yesterday morning,’ said Gil rather wryly. ‘I’ve been looking for a word wi him ever since.’

‘And you!’ said the watchman to Neil Campbell, not waiting for an answer from the householders. ‘What are you doing here? You’re a stranger, are ye no? Was it you slew the man and hid him in his own kist?’

‘I never knew the man was there,’ protested Neil.

He said the same now to the Provost. Otterburn snorted.

‘Answer Maister Cunningham,’ he ordered. ‘Why were ye no lodged wi your cousin? What made him bed ye down in Muir’s house?’

‘I was sleeping there before,’ said the gallowglass. Otterburn snorted again, and set his tablets down with a bang on the table.

‘Take him away, Andro,’ he ordered. ‘Shut him away wi the rest o them, we’ll get a right word wi them all the morn’s morn. And yoursel, Maister Cunningham,’ he added as his man-at-arms removed the startled Campbell, ‘what’s all this about, anyway? Respected burgess like yoursel, creeping about the back-lands in the night? Don’t think I haveny noticed what ye were about.’

‘I found Dod Muir,’ Gil pointed out, aware that his face was burning. Otterburn glared at him. ‘I was in pursuit of a matter concerning Dame Isabella’s death,’ he continued.

‘And did you find it?’

‘No,’ he admitted. Otterburn grunted, and pushed his chair back with a scraping noise, very loud in the quiet tower.

‘Get away hame to yir bed,’ he said, ‘and be back here betimes, if you would, Maister Cunningham.’ It was not a request. ‘I’ll want a good word wi you and all afore the old dame’s quest, and I’ll want you wi me when we get a look at Dod Muir. He’ll keep in his box till daylight.’

‘Very well,’ Gil said, rising when the older man did.

‘And next time you’re taken up by the Watch,’ said Otterburn, ‘I’ll have you arrested same as the lave o them.’