The Harper's Quine

Chapter Twelve

Matt was waiting on the strand at Dumbarton when the Mary and Bruoc beached just after Sext. Gil felt astonishingly glad to see him; he was a familiar figure, one of the remnants of his childhood, like Maggie, and it was reassuring to find him here in the midst of change.

‘Thrown out of all the ale-houses?’ he asked, wading out of the shallows. Matt grunted in reply, and gave the gallowglass the hostile stare of a small man for a tall one. ‘And have you found any word of Annie Thomson?’

‘Aye,’ said Matt.

‘Is she safe?’ asked the mason, turning from bidding farewell to the master of the Mary and Bruoc. Matt nodded, and Gil was conscious of a strong feeling of relief.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Where does she live? Is she in Dumbarton?’

‘St Giles’ Wynd. But …’ said Matt.

‘But what?’ asked the mason. Gil, more familiar with the man’s taciturn nature, simply waited.

‘Toothache,’ said Matt finally.

‘The poor lassie,’ said Neil with ready sympathy.

‘Bad?’ asked Gil. Matt nodded. ‘Bad enough to prevent us questioning her?’

Matt shrugged, and turned away to walk along the shore. Gil followed him, trying to concentrate his mind on what he must say to the girl.

He felt quite different this morning. He had slept, badly, two nights in these clothes, and certainly had acquired fleas from the infamous straw mattress, and yet his body felt cleaner than the wind which blew through his hair. His feet in the soggy boots were as light as the wood smoke spiralling up along the shore where someone was heating a tar-kettle. And beach and burgh, rock and hills, the smells of seaweed and tar, seemed as new and unfamiliar as if he had cast up on the shores of Tartary or Prester John’s country. He could not gather his thoughts at all, although that might be down to lack of sleep, or to the dream, which would not leave him.

He had lain most of the night in Sir William’s loft chamber, listening to his two companions snoring, and to the occasional rattle of rain on the slates of the chapel above his head, imagining strange and glorious ways in which he could earn land and money to support a wife. To support Alys. None of them, he had to admit, was practicable, and he had eventually fallen asleep, and dreamed that he was sailing a small boat, just big enough for one, across billows of grey ribbed silk. A rope in his hand led to a sail bluer than the sky. The boat sped on, until he came to a high rock rising out of the folds of silk. Seated on its crest, Euphemia was combing a lock of her long yellow hair and singing. At her side was an armed man, entangled in another yellow lock; as the boat slid past he raised a mailed fist in salute, or in farewell, and Gil saw without surprise that it was his brother Hugh. He looked back, but the boat sailed on, followed by the singing. The annoying thing was that he knew the tune, and he had woken trying to remember the words.

‘Do you know this one?’ he said to Maistre Pierre, and whistled a few notes. The mason joined in, nodding.

‘We sang it. The other night at my house, you remember? A new song Alys had from somewhere. D’amour je suis desheritee …’

‘I remember. I am dispossessed by love,’ Gil quoted, ‘and do not know who to appeal to. Alas, I have lost my love, I am alone, he has left me … to run after an affected woman who slanders me without ceasing. Alas, I am forgotten, wherefore I am delivered to death.’

‘What has brought that into your head?’ asked Maistre Pierre, at his most quizzical. ‘I hope it has no bearing on the present?’

‘I don’t know. Oh, none upon Alys or the — the matter you broached last night. Merely, I dreamed of Euphemia Campbell singing that.’

‘Hardly likely,’ said the mason.

‘She is singing like a ghillie-Bride — an oyster-catcher,’ said Neil, who had apparently taken Gil for his lord and protector. ‘High and thin and all on one note.’

‘It keeps coming back to my mind. Matt! Where are we going?’

‘St Giles’ Wynd,’ said Matt, jerking a thumb towards the vennel that led inland.

They could hear the screaming as they picked their way along the busy High Street, and when they turned in at the entry under the figure of St Giles the sounds echoed hollowly in the vault. A little knot of neighbours was gathered along the wynd outside the house, nodding and exclaiming, and as Matt pushed his way through someone looked round saying hopefully, ‘Here’s the tooth-drawer!’

‘That’s no the tooth-drawer,’ said someone else. ‘He’s away across the river to St Mahew’s to see to a horse, he’ll no be back before Vespers. Oh, my, will you listen to that, the poor lassie.’

‘What is it?’ asked the mason. ‘What is wrong?’

‘A lassie with a rotten tooth,’ said someone else. Several voices explained how the girl’s mouth was swelled the size of a football and she couldny eat or speak.

‘And her minnie waited till this morn to send for the tooth-drawer, and found him out of the town.’

‘Why’d she wait so long?’

‘The lassie wouldny have it. Aye, aye, she’s regretting it now.,

Gil, listening to the screams, felt it unlikely that the sufferer had thought for anything but her pain.

‘Is it Annie Thomson?’ he asked.

‘It is that,’ said someone. ‘Here, widow Thomson, here’s a man asking for Annie.’

‘If you’re no the tooth-drawer I don’t want you,’ said the widow Thomson, appearing in her doorway. She was a big-framed, bulky woman, with a strong resemblance to the girl they had seen in Glasgow. ‘I don’t know, there’s been as many folk asking for her since she came home, and the worse she gets the more folk come asking.’

‘Who else has been looking for her?’ Gil asked quickly.

‘Him yonder, for a start,’ said the widow, pointing at Matt, who ducked hastily behind the mason. ‘And a black- avised fellow in a green velvet hat came round the door yesterday stinking of musk, seemed to feel all he had to do was show enough coin and she’d tell him some story or other.’ She flinched as another scream tore at their ears. ‘I ask you, maisters, how could she speak to anyone?’ She wiped her eyes with the end of her kerchief. ‘What she needs is that tooth drawn, and then she can get some rest.’

‘Then maybe we can all get some rest,’ said a voice from the back of the crowd. ‘Two days this has been going on.’

‘I wish we could do something,’ said Gil helplessly.

‘I could,’ said Matt suddenly.

Gil stared at him. ‘Can you draw teeth, Matt?’

‘You can draw teeth?’ asked the widow. ‘Oh, maister, if you could help my lassie!’

‘He will need someone to hold her down,’ said the mason in practical tones.

‘Aye.’ Matt nodded at Gil. ‘You can help,’ he said firmly. At the sound of the word, the crowd around them began to break up like a dandelion-clock, but Matt put out a hand and seized the sleeve of a bowlegged man in a carpenter’s apron. ‘Pinchers,’ he said, and held out his other hand.

The next half-hour or so was among the most unpleasant Gil had ever spent. Inside, the house was small and dark and smelled of peat smoke, rancid bacon and illness. Matt took one look, scuffed at the earth floor, shook his head and said, ‘Out in the street.’ He looked about, past the oblivious girl writhing and sobbing in the bed. ‘Chair?’

‘Maister MacMillan’s got a fine chair he’d maybe lend us,’ said the widow. She hurried off to see to this. Matt stepped into the street and looked at the crowd, which was gathering again.

‘Rope,’ he said. ‘Clean clouts.’

People ran to and fro, and these were produced. The chair was set on a level patch in front of the house door, and Annie was carried out, struggling and screaming, and tied down. It took four of them to restrain her, the mason and Neil Campbell as well as Gil and Matt himself, with a great deal of advice from the onlookers, and it was clear that even a new tarred rope was not going to keep her still. Her face was indeed badly swollen, and she was conscious enough of her surroundings to offer considerable resistance when Matt tried to look at the tooth.

‘It’s one of the big ones,’ said her mother anxiously. ‘One of the wee big ones, not the great big ones, if you take my meaning, maister. I was packing it with pigeons’ dung pounded with an onion, but it never did any good.’

‘Oh, no, no!’ said the mason, hanging on to a flailing wrist. ‘The pigeon being a bird of Venus, its dung generates heat, excellent to draw a gumboil but not in this instance — ‘

‘Ah!’ said Matt, peering into the swollen tissue. ‘There!’ He let the girl’s mouth close and succeeded, with a few gestures, in placing his helpers in the most useful manner, despite complaints from the crowd that the mason’s broad back was obstructing someone’s view. Pliers in one hand, he got behind the screaming, squirming girl, issued a word of command, and grabbed her head in an arm-lock, forcing her jaw open with his left thumb precisely as Gil had seen him do to a horse.

There were a few minutes of hectic action. There were screams, and scuffling and sobbing, and then some really unpleasant noises. Gil, intent on keeping Annie’s shoulders as still as possible, was aware of the feet of the onlookers closing in. Then suddenly, all the noise ceased and the girl stopped struggling. Gil, wondering if he had gone deaf, let go and straightened up.

Matt was holding up a bloody morsel in his pliers. The girl was lying alarmingly still and was quite white where she was not already bloodstained, but as her mother hurried forward with a cry of, ‘Annie! Oh, my lassie!’ her eyelashes fluttered. The crowd was commenting freely and loudly on the success of the operation.

‘Clouts,’ said Matt, handing the pliers to Gil, who took them reluctantly. With a little difficulty Annie was persuaded to open her mouth, and Matt mopped gently at the mess, pausing to point out the amount of pus on the cloth.

‘Oh, maister, how can I thank you!’ said the widow, patting her daughter’s hand. ‘What’s your fee?’

Matt shrugged.

‘I hope there’s no trouble with the burgh tooth-drawer,’ said Gil, beginning to untie the knots in the rope.

‘Well, if he’d been here when he was wanted,’ said someone behind him.

The carpenter reclaimed his pliers and went out into the High Street, and the rest of the crowd, the entertainment over, began to drift after him. Annie was helped back into her house, her mother still exclaiming about a fee, and Matt delivered some terse advice which Gil expanded for him.

‘Make well-water hot, mistress, and put salt in it, and have her hold it in her mouth and spit it out — don’t swallow it — for the space of three Aves, three times a day till it stops bleeding. And feed her on broth for a day or two.’

‘What will that do?’ the widow asked suspiciously.

‘The salt will draw out the excess humours; said the mason quickly over Gil’s shoulder, ‘which is what has been causing the swelling.’

‘Should she no be bled?’

‘The tooth-drawer might want to bleed her,’ said Gil diplomatically. He handed the coiled rope back to its owner at the door, and turned back to the widow where she was heaping blankets on the shivering girl. ‘Mistress, did you tell me someone was asking for Annie yesterday?’

‘Aye, I did.’

‘Did you get his name? Or what he wanted to ask her?’

‘I did not. He’d some story about a boy and a bang on the head, but I’d more to worry about than a Campbell in a green hat. There, then, my lassie, he there and get warm. It’s over now, poor lass.’

‘He was a Campbell, was he?’

She paused in tucking the blankets at Annie’s feet.

‘Oh, he was a Campbell all right. You’d only to look at him.’

Sitting in a nearby ale-house, they stared at one another.

‘Poor lassie,’ said Neil again.

‘Thank you, maisters,’ said Matt.

‘And we still have not questioned the girl,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I would say it will be a day or two before she is fit to talk. Do we wait here for that?’

‘No need, I think,’ said Gil. ‘I have learned enough from her mother.’

‘What, that James Campbell was here asking for her? How does that help?’

‘We know he has an interest in what she heard or saw,’ Gil pointed out.

‘But we knew that already.’

‘And now we know that he does not yet know what she saw.’

‘Ye-es.’ The mason eyed Gil, scowling.

‘Are ye for ordering, maisters?’ demanded the girl at Matt’s elbow.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Gil. ‘There is something I want to do in Dumbarton, but if we get a bite here, we can be in Glasgow for a late dinner. What can you offer us, lass?’

David Cunningham came down to the door to meet them, spectacles in hand.

‘Well, well,’ he said as Gil dismounted. ‘Here’s a surprise. I’d not have looked for you before Vespers. Welcome back, Gilbert. Welcome back, maister. You’ll eat with us? Maggie has something ready, I dare say. Aye, Matt.’

Matt, gathering up reins, merely grunted. The gallowglass, silent, was keeping his horse between himself and the gateway of the Sempill house.

‘I thank you, maister, but no,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘I am anxious to get home to my daughter. After all, she will soon be leaving me,’ he added.

‘A drink of ale, to wash the dust from your throat, then?’ suggested the Official, his thin smile crossing his face in answer to the mason’s significant grin. ‘Maggie! And shall we see you later today, then? John Sempill has been sending twice a day to ask when you’ll be back. I think it would suit him to get this matter sorted with the bairn. Tam can go down to tell the harper, if we can arrange a tryst.’

Maggie was already bustling forward out of the kitchen gate, a tray in her hands. Gil, taking a pull at his beaker, realized with surprise that it contained the good ale, the stuff she rarely brewed. Is this for me, he wondered, or for the mason who will be visiting frequently this week, no doubt.

‘For you, of course,’ said his uncle, when the mason had clattered away and they went into the house. ‘I happened to mention the mason’s approach, and she was greatly moved. She is gey fond of you, Gilbert. I hope your bride can brew as well.’

‘I’m told she can bake and brew with the best,’ said Gil.

‘And had you good hunting in Rothesay?’

‘I did, but it’s good to be back. William Dalrymple sends his salutations. Sir, if John Sempill is to be here before Vespers I must talk to you, but before that I must shift my clothes and wash off the dust. Will you excuse me?’

‘Come to my chamber once you are dean. You are aware, I take it, that you have lost your hat?’

‘Have I? It must have fallen off. Likely when Matt drew the lassie’s tooth.’

His uncle paused in the door to the stairs, raising his eyebrows.

‘You have dearly a lot to tell me,’ he said.

Maggie looked up as Gil entered the kitchen.

‘You might have warned me you were bringing a Campbell back with you,’ she said. The Campbell, seated in a corner, ducked his head in embarrassment and took a bite of barinock and cheese. ‘And so you’re to be wed, are you, Maister Gil?’

‘So it seems,’ said Gil. ‘Are you pleased?’

‘Oh, aye. It’ll get you out from under my feet.’ She thumped at the dough under her hands. ‘And you’ll no be so far away, you’ll can visit your uncle, I’ve no doubt. Is she bonnie? I’ve seen her at the market, but no close to.’

‘I think so,’ said Gil.

‘That’s what matters. And I’ve heard she’s a rare housewife, which is more to the point.’

‘She runs her father’s household, which is a large one, and does it well, from all I’ve seen. Maggie, I must wash. Can you spare William to fetch more water?’

‘I can,’ she said doubtfully, looking at the kitchen-boy, who was hunkered down by the window staring vacantly at the gallowglass. ‘Tam’s faster, but he’s still down at the harper’s. It takes William a long time, and I’ll need him soon, to turn the spit for tomorrow’s dinner.’

‘I can be turning the spit,’ offered Neil Campbell.

‘There’s water hot,’ said Maggie, accepting this. ‘Get you in the scullery, Maister Gil, and shift that beard, in case the lassie comes up the hill with her father before Vespers. A three days growth is no way to commend yourself to a lass before you’re handfasted. You can fling that sark out here when you’re done and I’ll put it to soak. And then I’ll have a dish of eggs ready for you.’

To be fed, washed, shaved, combed and clad in clean linen simply accentuated the strange feeling of lightness Gil still felt. Kissing Maggie, who told him sharply to save that for his own lass, and clapping the startled gallowglass on the shoulder where he sat turning the spit, he sprang up the stairs to the hall and checked by his uncle’s oratory. On impulse he slipped behind the curtain, remembering the last time he had knelt here. Just as on that occasion, he found the words would not come, but this time only a boundless gratitude, which he offered up until he felt it turn to gold as if in sunlight and float away from him.

He knelt for a while longer, feeling the unseeable sunlight almost tangible behind his closed eyelids. When it faded he rose, signing himself, and went on up, crossing the solar to his uncle’s chamber.

‘Ah, Gilbert,’ said his uncle. ‘What is this about a lassie with toothache?’

‘The lass we were to find in Dumbarton,’ Gil answered. ‘The same lass we missed in the Gorbals. When we got to her house today we found her screaming with a rotten tooth, and Matt drew it for her. Did you know Matt could draw teeth, sir?’

‘I did not. Likely it’s a thing he learned away at the wars in Germany. He has already asked for a day off tomorrow to go to Dumbarton.’

‘I suppose he wants to see how she does.’

‘No doubt. And you, Gilbert? How do you do? This proposition of Maister Mason’s likes you, does it?’

‘I can think of nothing I would like better,’ said Gil, as he had to the mason, ‘and almost nothing of which I am less worthy.’

‘Well, well.’ His uncle looked down at his book, unseeing, for a moment. ‘I had hoped to deacon for your first Mass, Gilbert, but do you know I find I would rather say a wedding Mass for you and christen your first bairn.’ Gil murmured something. ‘There are too few of your father’s name left. Aye, I think you will do better out in the world, providing we can find you something to live on.’

‘That is what worries me,’ said Gil. ‘However well Pierre dowers the lass, I cannot live on her money. I’m a Cunningham, after all.’

His uncle shot him a sharp glance, and nodded.

‘You are a Cunningham,’ he agreed. ‘The lands out by Lanark are lost to us, I think, but there is property here in the burgh that does near as well, I can let you have in conjunct fee. The rents are all in coin, of course. As for income, I have one or two ideas. Let me ask about, Gilbert.’

‘May I know what they are?’ Gil asked politely. ‘You could say they concern me, sir.’

He got another sharp glance, and the corner of David Cunningham’s mouth quirked.

‘You could say so. Let me see. It is possible that Robert Blacader will consent to your employment here in the Consistory as we had planned, though you are in minor Orders only. You could hang out a sign and practise as a notary in the burgh, though I cannot see you growing rich at that.’

‘Nor I,’ agreed Gil, thinking of Alexander Stewart’s house with the tumbling children by the peat fire.

‘Since as Maister Mason’s son-in-law you will get your burgess ticket almost as a wedding-gift, you might find a post as one of the burgh procurators.’

‘What, and speak for poor devils taken up for theft?’

‘Or speak on the burgh’s behalf in the same case,’ his uncle concurred. ‘I have friends, and some influence, Gilbert. Let me continue asking about.’

‘I should be grateful, sir. I am grateful,’ said Gil, still aware of the unseen sunlight, ‘for everything you have done for me-these-past years.’

‘Well, well,’ said his uncle again. ‘You’re a good boy, Gilbert. Your father would have been proud of you.’ He closed his book, and opened it again at random. ‘Now, tell me about your hunting in Rothesay. What did you raise? Sit down, for mercy’s sake, and tell me about it.’

Gil, hooking a stool towards him with his foot, sat down and gave a concise account of the interviews with the lawyer, Mariota Stewart and the gallowglass. His uncle heard him attentively, asking the occasional question.

‘And the lassie in Dumbarton,’ he said at the end. ‘What did you learn from her?’

‘I had no speech of her,’ Gil said, ‘but her mother reports that James Campbell of Glenstriven came looking for a word with her yesterday, with no success.’

‘Did he so?’

Uncle and nephew looked at one another consideringly.

‘John Sempill will be here shortly,’ said Canon Cunningham after a moment. ‘No way of knowing, of course, how many of his household will come with him.’

‘No,’ agreed Gil. ‘I wonder, sir, might we borrow a couple of the apparitors from the Consistory?’

‘They will have gone home by now,’ said his uncle, glancing at the window. ‘No, we must make do with Tam, I think. And perhaps Maister Mason will bring one of his fellows with him. I wonder will he bring the lassie, hm?’

‘I hope he may,’ said Gil, feeling his face stretch into a fatuous grin. The image of Alys rose before him, in her plain blue gown with her hair down her back. He dragged his mind back to the point at issue. ‘There will be. the harper’s sister, of course. I’d back her against an army.’

‘Ah, yes, the harper and his sister. What are we to agree for the bairn, who is the main point on the agenda?’

‘I have no idea what my principal will ask for.’

‘You must get a word with him as soon as he arrives.’ The Official rose, and Gil stood politely. ‘I wish to be sure the bairn will be reared fittingly, and his property decently overseen. If that is in jeopardy I will say so.’

‘Understood, sir.’ Gil followed his uncle from the room and down the stairs. ‘Do we meet here in the hall?’

‘Considering the numbers, I think we must.’

Shouting down the kitchen stair for Tam, Gil began to move benches. Shortly, despite his uncle’s directions and Tam’s inclination to ask about Alys rather than lift furniture, he had an impromptu court-room arranged, with the great chair behind a carpeted table, and the two benches set on either side. He was hunting through the house for more stools when he heard a knocking at the door, and Maggie’s heavy feet descending to answer it.

Gil contrived to reach the hall with his latest find just as the mason stepped in from the stair, followed by a complete stranger in a French hood and a black brocade gown, wearing a string of pearls which gleamed in the light from the windows.

Gil’s jaw dropped, and the mason advanced on the Official and spoke.

‘Good evening to you, Maister Cunningham. May I present to you my daughter Alys?’

When she moved forward, of course it was Alys. Straight-backed and elegant, she curtsied to Uncle David. If his feet were rooted to the floor just inside the hall door, how was it that by the time she straightened her knee and raised her head, he was at her elbow?

‘Well, well,’ said his uncle. ‘Here’s as bonnie a lass as there’s been in this house since it was built, I think.’

The old man took Alys’s hands, embraced her, kissed her, as was an older relative’s right. Could this be jealousy, Gil wondered, barely aware of the nursemaid jiggling the baby at the mason’s back.

‘And here’s my nephew,’ said Uncle David.

She turned, and their eyes met. Her hand was in his.

‘Take her in the garden,’ said his uncle. ‘You have a quarter-hour.’

In the centre of the garden, in full view of the hall windows, the green mound was dry enough to sit on, but Gil took off his gown and spread it anyway, then handed Alys to the seat. Her silk brocade rustled as she sat down, and gave off a scent of cedarwood. He kept hold of her hand, and stood looking down at her. She looked up, a little shy, her face framed by the black velvet folds of the French hood.

‘You truly wish to marry me?’ Gil said at length. She looked down, blushing slightly, then up again to meet his eyes.

‘Truly,’ she said with that directness he admired so much. ‘And you? You truly wish to be married? Not to be a priest?’

‘You know the answer.’

The apologetic smile flashed.

‘I would still like to hear it.’

‘I wish to marry you,’ he said earnestly, ‘more than anything else I have ever had the opportunity to do. I have never felt like this about anybody before. I think I must have loved you from the moment you spoke to me on that stair by the Tolbooth.’

‘I too,’ she said. ‘From that moment.’

‘Alys,’ he said. He sat down, and somehow she was in his arms.

‘Gilbert.’

Her mouth, innocent and eager, tasted of honey under his.

When the mason interrupted them he swore they had had half an hour.

‘And Sempill is here, with his entire household, I believe,’ he said cheerfully, ‘becoming more thunderous by the breath, and the harper is sitting like King David on a trumeau ignoring everything while his sister mutters spells at his side.’

‘A merry meeting,’ Gil said. Alys was putting her hair back over her shoulders, so that it hung down her back below the velvet fall of her hood. He dragged his eyes from the sight, and said more attentively, ‘Sempill’s entire household, you say? Who is there?’

‘Sempill and his cousin, Campbell and his sister, the other gallowglass, the companion — why she has come I know not, unless as some sort of witness — ‘

‘Right.’ Gil drew Alys to her feet. ‘Go with your father, sweetheart. I must get a word with Maggie first, then I will come up.’

Her hand lingered in his, and. he squeezed it before he let go, drawing a quick half smile in answer, but all she said was, ‘Is my hood still straight?’

‘Square and level,’ her father assured her. She took his arm and moved towards the house, her black silk skirts caught up in her other hand. Gil turned towards the archway to the kitchen-yard, where the mason’s man Luke was drinking ale with the Official’s Tam.

Maggie’s face fell when he entered the kitchen alone.

‘And am I no to get a sight of your bride?’ she demanded.

‘And she’s well worth seeing. You’ll have the care of her later this evening, Maggie,’ Gil promised, ‘for I think things may get a little fractious upstairs. For now, I have an errand for you. And you, Neil, I want you to stay here handy until I call you.’

The gallowglass, seated by the fire with a leather beaker of the good ale, merely grinned, but Maggie scowled and objected, ‘I’ve to take wine up for the company.’

‘I will do that. You get over the road and get Marriott Kennedy to help you search for that cross you never found.’

Her gaze sharpened on his face.

‘Uhuh,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘And if we find it?’

‘Bring it to me, quiet-like.’

‘I’ll do it,’ she said, and went to the outside door where her plaid hung on a nail.

‘Maggie, you’re a wonderful woman.’

Her face softened.

‘You’re a bad laddie,’ she said, and stumped out of the house.

Gil reached the hall with the great jug of claret wine and plate of jumbles just as John Sempill leapt to his feet snarling, ‘If he’s no to compear we’ll just have to manage without him. Oh, there you are! Where the devil have you been? Vespers must be near over by now.’

‘I was concerned with another matter,’ said Gil, setting wine and cakes down on the carpet on his uncle’s table. ‘Have some wine and come over to the window and instruct me. Maggie has gone out, sir. Will you pour, or shall I fetch Tam up?’

Sempill, a cup of good wine in his hand, seemed reluctant to come to the point. Gil simply stood, watching him, while he muttered half-sentences. At length he came out with, ‘Oh, to the devil with it! If he’ll let me name the bairn mine — ‘

‘By “he” you mean the harper?’

‘Who else, gomerel? If he’ll let me name it mine, without disputing it, then I’ll settle Bess’s own lands on the brat immediately, and treat it as my sole heir unless I get another later.’

‘That seems a fair offer,’ said Gil. ‘Who gets the rents? What about your conjunct fee?’

‘That’s mine, for what good it does me,’ said Sempill quickly. ‘I suppose the bairn or its tutor gets the profit from the land, which willny keep a flea, I can tell you, so that’s between the harper and the nourice.’

‘You do not contemplate rearing the child yourself,’ said Gil expressionlessly.

‘I do not. You think I want another man’s get round my feet?’

Gil looked across the room at the assembled company. On one bench was Ealasaidh, dandling the swaddled baby, while Alys waved the coral for the small hands to grasp at and the harper and the mason sat on either side like heraldic supporters. As he looked, the mason broke out in a volley of sneezes. On the other bench, in a row, one Sempill and two Campbells drank the Official’s wine in a miasma of conflicting perfumes and discussed, apparently, the marriage of a cousin of Philip Sempill’s wife. Euphemia cast occasional covert glances at the rope of pearls which glimmered against Alys’s black Lyons brocade. In the background, Nancy on one side, Neil’s brother Euan and the stout Mistress Murray on the other, waited in silence. Canon Cunningham was sitting in his great chair, watching the infant, who was now grabbing at the fall of Alys’s hood.

‘Do you wish to stipulate who is to rear the child?’ Gil asked.

‘I’ll let the harper decide that,’ said John Sempill generously. ‘He’ll likely be more confident leaving it with someone else. Of course if it’s someone he chooses, he can settle the bills,’ he added.

‘That’s clear enough.’ Gil drank off the rest of his wine and gestured towards the makeshift court. ‘Is there anything else you wish to tell me? Shall we proceed?’

Sempill nodded, and walked heavily over to sit beside his mistress. She had decided to grace the occasion in tawny satin faced with citron-coloured velvet, which clashed with Sempill’s cherry doublet and gown and turned her brother’s green velvet sour. A large jewel of topazes and pearls dangled from a rope chain on her bosom, and more pearls edged her French hood. Finding Gil watching her, she favoured him with a brilliant smile, showing her little white teeth, and tucked her arm possessively through Sempill’s. Gil was reminded sharply of his dream. Well, Hughie is certainly gone now, he thought.

Gil took up position at the end of the bench, beside his client, and nodded to his uncle. He should, he realized, have been wearing a gown. The green cloth gown of a forespeaker, buttoned to the neck like his grandfather’s houppelande, would have been favourite, but failing that his decent black one, which he must have left in the garden, would have lent dignity. Too late now, he thought, hitching his thumbs in the armholes of his doublet. Perhaps I can imagine one. Or full armour, in which to slay dragons.

‘Friends,’ said David Cunningham, rapping on the table with his wine-cup. ‘We are met to consider a proposal made by John Sempill of Muirend, concerning a bairn born to his lawful wife when she had been living with another man, namely Angus Mclan of Ardnamurchan, a harper — ‘ Ealasaidh stirred and muttered something. ‘Who speaks for John Sempill?’

‘I speak for John Sempill.’ Gil bowed.

‘And who speaks for Angus Mclan?’

‘I am Aenghus mac Iain. I speak for mine own self.’ The harper rose, clasping his smallclarsach.

‘And I speak on behalf of the bairn. Is this the child? What is his name?’

Ealasaidh, rising, said clearly, ‘This is the boy that was born to Bess Stewart two days before Michaelmas last. His name is lain, that is John in the Scots tongue. Yonder is his nursemaid, who will confirm what I say.’

Nancy, scarlet-faced, muttered something which might have been confirmation.

‘Very well,’ said David Cunningham, ‘let us begin. What is John Sempill’s proposal for this bairn?’