The Harper's Quine

Chapter Four

Out in the street, they stood at the foot of the Hamiltons’ fore-stair and looked at one another.

‘A false scent,’ said Gil.

‘Luke was very certain,’ said Alys in faint apology.

‘Would the other men know any more? Or your maidservants?’ Gil suggested hopefully.

‘I asked them fast.’ Alys looked up and down the quiet street. ‘I’ll send them out to ask at the market tomorrow. No purpose in searching now, with nobody about. Once they get together with their gossips, the word will pass like heath-fire.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘What will you do now?’

‘I have to find the other boy,’ Gil said, ‘the saddler’s youngest, and confirm Andrew’s story. And since that takes me down the Fishergait I will go by the harper’s lodging and ask them about the harp key.’

‘May I come with you? I am concerned for them.’

‘Do you promise not to throw pepper at them?’

The smile flickered. ‘That was a special case. In general I would deplore such a waste.’

‘Then it would give me great pleasure,’ he said, and offered his arm.

‘And after the saddler’s house we must stop and buy a jug of spirits to take with us.’

The sign of the Pelican swung crookedly from the front of a tall building, apparently a former merchant’s house which had seen better days. Gil, picking a careful path for the two of them through a noisome pend, wondered if he should have brought Alys to the place, and felt his qualms confirmed when they emerged into a muddy yard in which children were squabbling on the midden. Two of them turned to stare at the strangers from under unkempt hair.

‘Where does the harper live?’ Alys asked.

‘Is it the wake ye’re after?’ asked the taller child. Alys nodded, and the boy gestured with a well-chewed chicken bone at the side of the yard which was probably the original house. ‘He stays up yon stair, mistress. Two up and through Jiggin Joan’s. Ye can hear them from here,’ he waved the chicken bone again. There was indeed a buzz of voices from one of the upper windows.

‘Through?’ Gil queried, and got a withering look.

‘Aye. She’s nearest the stair. D’ye ken nothing?’

Gil would have enquired further, but Alys thanked the child and moved towards the stair tower. As Gil turned to follow her, a woman hurried along the creaking wooden gallery opposite.

‘Your pardon, maisters!’ she exclaimed, with an Ersche- speaker’s accent even heavier than the gallowglass’s. She leaned over the rail, pulling her plaid up round her head, to ask in a tactful whisper, ‘Could you be saying, maybe, when is the poor soul to be buried?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Gil. ‘It’s surely a matter for the harper to determine.’

‘Oh, ‘tis so, ‘tis so,’ she agreed, ‘it iss for mac lain to decide, but it will be needful to send round to the keeningwomen, and they will be wishing to know what time to gather.’

‘Perhaps Mistress Mclan will know,’ Gil suggested.

The woman nodded, a dissatisfied look crossing her broad face. ‘I will be at the wake as soon as the bannocks is cooked,’ she said, drawing back from the railing. ‘I cannot be calling empty-handed.’

Alys was waiting at the stair-mouth. Gil followed her up two turns of the spiral, past a doorway where a woman was scrubbing a small boy’s face, on up where the protests were drowned by the sound of loud conversation which came from the open door on the next landing. The untidy room seemed deserted, but the noise came from within.

‘This should be it,’ Alys said doubtfully. ‘Dame Joan is not at home, I think.’

‘Does the harper stay here?’ Gil called loudly. The door to the inner room opened, and Ealasaidh appeared on a redoubled blast of sound and a smell of spirits.

‘It is the man of law,’ she said, accepting Alys’s proffered jug of brandy with grace. ‘Come within. Mac lain is at home.’

The room was crowded, and so noisy that it was a moment before Gil realized there was a baby crying somewhere. Amid the press of people, the harper was seated in a great chair by the fire, dressed in saffron-dyed shirt and velvet jerkin, the formal dress of the Highlander, with deerskin buskins laced up his bare legs. A Flemish harp with a curved soundboard hung behind his head. As Gil entered behind Alys he rose and bowed to them, saying with great dignity, ‘I bid you welcome, neighbours.’

He was not as old as Gil had thought at first, possibly not yet fifty. Hair and beard were white, but his eyebrows were dark and shaggy and the high forehead was relatively unlined. He listened courteously to Gil’s formal words of sympathy, and bowed again.

‘I must thank you for your care of her, sir. Woman, bring refreshment for our guests.’

Ealasaidh was already returning from yet another, further, room, the one where the baby was crying. She handed Gil a tiny wooden beaker brimming with liquid, and offered him a platter of oatcakes. As Gil had feared the liquid proved to be barley eau-de-vie, fierce enough to burnish brass, but he offered a toast to the memory of Bess Stewart and drained his little cup resolutely. Around him, the harper’s neighbours and acquaintances were talking, not in the least about the departed. Alys had disappeared.

.’You are not yet a man of law,’ said the harper suddenly.

‘I soon will be,’ said Gil, startled.

‘But you will not be a priest.’

‘I must,’ said Gil, utterly taken aback, ‘or live on air. Sir, I have a couple questions for you or your sister.’

‘In a little space,’ said the harper, turning to greet another mourner. Gil stood quietly, wrestling with the surge of conflicting feelings which assailed him. He was used to the sinking in his stomach when he thought of his approaching ordination (Lord, strengthen me, remove my doubts! he thought) but why should he feel panic at the thought of not being a priest?

The baby, he discovered after a moment, had fallen silent.

‘Maister,’ said the harper. ‘We will not talk here. Come ben and ask your question.’ He moved confidently towards the other door, and those round him fell back to let him pass.

The inmost room contained three adults and the baby, and a quantity of stained linen drying on outstretched strings. Ealasaidh, by the window, was opening another flagon of eau-de-vie. Before the fire, Alys was dandling the baby while a sturdy young woman looked on. The small head turned when the door opened, but at the sight of Gil the infant’s mouth went square and the crying started again.

‘What ails the bairn?’ Gil asked, dismayed. His sister’s children had never reacted like this.

‘He is looking for one who will not return to him,’ said Ealasaidh remotely.

‘Every time the door opens,’ said Alys over the baby’s head. ‘There, now! There, now, poor little man. Nancy, shall we try the spoon again?’

‘Ask your question, maister lawyer,’ said the harper again. ‘Here is mac lain and his sister both.’

‘And I must go out in a little,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘We will not be having enough usquebae for all the mourners, and I must borrow more cups.’

Gil drew the harp key from his jerkin again.

‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked, through the baby’s wailing.

Ealasaidh gave it a glance, then another.

‘It is hers,’ she agreed heavily. ‘The key to her little harp. Where was AT

‘In the kirkyard,’ said Gil. The harper’s hand went out, and he put the key into it. Mclan’s long fingers turned the little object, the nails clicking on the metal barrel, caressing familiar irregularities of the shape, and his mouth twisted under his white beard.

‘It is hers. Where in the kirkyard?’

‘By the south door. Could she have dropped it?’

‘No,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘Not Bess — not that.’

‘She took care of what I gave her,’ said the harper harshly, ‘for that it was given in love. This dwelled in her purse always.’

‘Her purse? There was no purse at her belt. I must talk to you,’ said Gil, ‘but this is not the moment.’

‘Aye, I must return to my guests. You will come back.’ It was not an order.

Alys handed the baby back to the other girl and rose.

‘The bairn will be better with Nancy,’ she said, ‘and we should be gone. My father the mason sends his sympathies, maister harper.’

A fine rain was now falling. They walked through it in silence back to the White Castle, Gil turning over the harper’s words in his mind. As they reached the pend Alys paused, and he looked down at her.

‘I feared you might lead me on up the High Street,’ she said, smiling at him.

‘I’m sorry — I was discourteous.’

‘ou were thinking,’ she pointed out. ‘And so was I. Will you come in, Maister Cunningham? My father will be home, it is near Vespers.’

The mason was brooding in his closet with a jug of wine. Alys showed Gil in and slipped away to see how Davie did, and Maistre Pierre said with sour enthusiasm, ‘Sit down, lawyer, and have some wine, and we consider where we are at. I think we are no further forward than this morning.’

‘I would not agree,’ said Gil. ‘We have named the lady, and arranged for her burial. Father Francis will accept her — he is willing to believe that since she had gone to meet her husband she may have repented of her adultery. And I told you I have spoken with Serjeant Anderson. He has no wish to meddle in something concerning the Chanonry.’

‘Of that I have no doubt. But in everything else we have raised up two problems where one was before,’ complained the mason.

‘What do we know?’ said Gil. ‘She went out before Compline, to meet her husband after the Office in St Mungo’s yard. She was not waiting for him when Compline ended. I think most likely she was already dead inside the Fergus Aisle by then, for otherwise surely she would have come out to meet him when she heard the Office was ended.’

‘I suppose so,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, scratching his beard with a loud rasping. ‘But how many people could have killed her? We do not look for a beggar or robber, no?’

‘I do not think it, although her purse is missing. Why should she follow such into the chapel? There were no signs of violence — fresh violence,’ he amended, ‘other than the wound that killed her. Her husband is the most obvious, but he was inside St Mungo’s at the time I think she died, and I would swear he was shocked to learn of her death today. I saw the gallowglass come in — I suppose he could have directed her there and then killed her. There is also James Campbell, who has an Italian dagger, and I sup pose the Italian lutenist must have such a knife, but I do not know why either of them should have killed her.’

‘The husband could have killed her quick, there in the trees, before the rest came out of Compline,’ Maistre Pierre offered, ‘and come back later to move her out of sight.’

‘Why would he need to move her?’

‘The man-at-arms knew where he was to meet her. He needed to cover his tracks.’

Gil considered this. ‘No, I don’t think so. Sempill is capable of it, but you saw the body. She lay where she was killed. Who else?’

‘This wild woman with the difficult name?’

‘Euphemia Campbell, you mean?’

‘No, no, the other. The harper’s sister. How is it pronounced — Yalissy?’

‘Ealasaidh,’ Gil corrected. ‘I think it is the Ersche for Elizabeth.’

‘You amaze me. Could she have killed her? Followed her up the hill and knifed her for jealousy where she could put the blame on the husband? She seems like a woman out of tragedy — Iphigenie, perhaps, or some such. Or could it have been the harper, indeed?’.

‘The harper is blind.’

‘But he was her lover. Who better to get close, his hand round her waist, the knife in his. sleeve, a kiss to distract her and the thing is done. If he thought she was returning to her husband?’

‘These are wild suggestions,’ Gil said slowly, ‘and yet we are dealing with secret murder here, the reasons may be as wild as any of these. Euphemia Campbell suggested that Bess had taken other lovers, and that one of those might have killed her, but that seems to me to add unnecessary complication to the matter.’

‘It lacks unity of action, for sure; said the mason, peering into his wine-cup. ‘Did she have other lovers?’

‘I have no corroboration. I hardly liked to ask the harper today,’ admitted Gil. ‘And it seems to me that a woman illused by her husband would be slow to trust other men.’

‘There is another to consider,’ said Alys from the doorway. Her father looked up and smiled at the sight of her.

‘How is the boy?’ he asked. She came forward to sit beside him, straight-backed and elegant in the faded gown.

‘Still in a swound, but I think his breathing is easier. Kittock reports that an hour or so since he gave a great sigh, and said something she didn’t catch, and from that time he has ceased that snoring. It is a good sign.’

‘God be praised,’ said her father.

‘Amen. But we must consider, father, whether Davie might not be the person you and Maister Cunningham are seeking.’

Both men looked at her, Gil in some surprise.

‘The boy would not hurt a fly,’ said her father. ‘He’s a great soft lump,’ he added in Scots.

‘But suppose his girl finally said no to him and went off home,’ she offered. ‘There is Mistress Stewart standing in the haw-bushes, he makes a — an improper suggestion, as I suppose all men do at times, and she is angry with him. Then the argument grows heated and he kills her and runs away and is struck down — No,’ she finished. ‘It doesn’t work.’

‘It does not account for her presence in the Fergus Aisle,’ Gil said, ‘but you are perfectly right, we must consider everyone who had the opportunity. Even your father. Even me.’

‘Why would you kill her, father?’ she said, turning to look at him. He looked at her quizzically and shrugged, declining to join in. ‘In fact you were at Compline in the Greyfriars’ church with Catherine and me and half the household, so we may all stand surety for one another. And you, Maister Cunningham?’

‘Oh, I went out for a breath of air during Compline, and she took me for a priest and wished to make confession, at which I grew angry and knifed her,’ Gil said, and pulled a face. ‘It isn’t funny.’

‘Would it anger you, if one took you for a priest?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply.

‘But I thought one must be a priest, to be a lawyer.’

‘It isn’t essential,’ Gil said carefully, ‘but I have no money to live on. To get a living, I must have a benefice. To be presented to a benefice, I must be ordained. My uncle has been generosity itself, but he is not a young man, and his own benefices will die with him.’

‘So you must be a priest.’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

The familiar chill struck him. When it had passed, he said, ‘I will be ordained acolyte in July, at the Feast of the Translation of St Mungo. I’ll take major orders, either deacon or priest, at Ember-tide in Advent, and my uncle has a benefice in mind for me. Then I can say Masses formy father and my brothers. It will be good,’ he said firmly, ‘not to have to rely on my uncle. He has fed, clothed and taught me these two years and more, and never complained. At least, not about that,’ he added.

‘And then you can practise law in the Consistory Court? Is there no other way you may practise law?’

‘Alys, you ask too many questions,’ said the mason.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said immediately. ‘I am interested.’

‘I am not offended; said Gil. ‘Yes, there are other ways, but I need the benefice. It always comes back to that — I must have something to live on.’

‘Let us have some music,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘to cleanse the thoughts and revive the spirits.’ He turned a bright eye on his daughter. ‘Alys, will you play for us, ma mie?’

‘Perhaps Maister Cunningham would play?’ said Alys, turning to a corner of the room. From under a pile of papers, two more books and a table-carpet of worn silk she extracted a long narrow box, which she set on the table.

‘Monocords!’ said Gil as she opened the lid. ‘I haven’t seen a set of those since I came home. No, no, I am far too rusty to play, but I will sing later. Play us something first.’

She was tapping the keys, listening to the tone of the small sweet sounds they produced. Her father handed her a little tuning-key from his desk and she made one or two adjustments, then settled herself at the keyboard and began to play the same May ballad that the harper and his two women had performed at the Cross on May Day. Gil, watching the movement of her slender hands on the dark keys, heard the point at which she recollected this; the music checked for a moment, and she bent her head further, her hair curtaining her face and hiding the delicate, prominent nose.

‘What about something French?’ he suggested as soon as she finished the verse. ‘Binchois? Dufay?’

‘Machaut,’ said Maistre Pierre firmly. Alys nodded, and took up a song Gil remembered well. He joined in with the words, and father and daughter followed, high voice and low voice, carolling unrequited love with abandon.

‘That was good,’ said Alys as the song ended. ‘You were adrift in the second verse, father. The third part makes a difference.’

‘Let us sing it again,’ said the mason.

They sang it again, and followed it with others: more by Machaut, an Italian song whose words Gil did not know, two Flemish ballads.

‘And this one,’ said Alys. ‘It’s very new. Have you heard it, Maister Cunningham? D’amour je suis desheritee …’

I am dispossessed by love, and do not know who to appeal to. Alas, I have lost my love, I am alone, he has left me …

‘The setting is beautiful,’ said Gil. Alys smiled quickly at him, and went on singing.

… to run after an affected woman who slanders me without ceasing. Alas, I am forgotten, wherefore I am delivered to death.

‘Always death!’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘At least let us be cheerful about it.’ He raised his wine-cup in one large hand. ‘What do they sing in the ale-houses here? Drink up, drink up, you’re deid a long time.’

‘You’re deid a long time, without ale or wine.’ Gil joined in the round. Alys picked up the third entrance effortlessly, and they sang it several times round until the mason brought it to a close and drained his cup.

‘I think we finish there. Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we must bury Bess Stewart, poor soul, and find out the girl Davie was really with. We must search the kirkyard again, though by now I have little hope of finding the weapon. If it was there, it has been found by some burgess and taken home as a trophy. Half the town came to see what was afoot this afternoon.’

‘I will set the maids to ask about the girl,’ Alys said, closing up the little keyboard. ‘hey can enquire at the well, and at the market. Some lass in the town must know.’

‘I wish to question that gallowglass further,’ said Gil. ‘The only Ersche speaker I know of is the harper’s sister, and I hesitate to ask her to interpret — ‘

‘I should think she would relish the task,’ observed Alys.

He smiled at that. ‘You may be right. And I must speak further with Ealasaidh herself and with the harper.’

‘Meanwhile,’ said Maistre Pierre, ‘the day is over. Maister Cunningham, we go to hear Compline at Greyfriars. Will you come with us?’

The Franciscans’ church was full of a low muttering, as the people of the High Street said evening prayers before one saint’s altar or another. One of the friars was completing a Mass; Alys slipped away to leave money for candles to St Clare, and returned to stand quietly between Gil and. her father as the brothers processed in through the nave and into the choir.

Gil, used to St Mungo’s, found the small scale of the Office very moving. Kentigern’s foundation was a cathedral church, able to furnish a good choir and handsome vestments for the Opus Dei, the work of God which was praising Him seven times daily. The Franciscans were a small community, though someone had built them a large church, and the half-dozen voices chanting the psalms in unison beyond the brightly painted screen seemed much closer to his own prayers than the more elaborate settings favoured by Maister Paniter. I will lay me down in peace and take my rest; for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety.

Beside him Alys drew a sharp breath. He looked down at her. Light glinted on the delicate high bridge of her nose. Her eyes were shut and her lips moved rapidly as the friars worked their way through the second of the Compline psalms. For when thou art angry all our days are gone…So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts with wisdom. Tears leaked from Alys’s closed eyelids, catching the candlelight, and Gil thought with a shiver of Bess Stewart lying in the mortuary chapel by the gatehouse, still in the clothes in which she had died, with candles at her head and feet.

For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.

The Office ended, the congregation drifted out into the rain. Alys had composed herself, but was still subdued. Gil found it very unsatisfactory to say a formal goodnight at the end of the wynd and watch her go home beside her father, followed down the darkening street by two of the men and several maids. He stood until the household was out of sight and then turned for home.

It had been a most extraordinary day. Almost nothing was as it had been when he got up this morning. He was free of his books, at least for a little while, until he had solved the challenge, the puzzle, with which he was faced. He had a new friend in the mason, whose company would be worth seeking out. His mind swooped away from the suspicion that the mason’s company was the more attractive because it promised the company of Alys as well.

Yesterday, the prospect of winning a few groats from the songmen had been something to look forward to.

Past the firmly shut door of the University, beyond the stone houses of the wealthier merchants, at the point called the Bell o’ the Brae where the High Street steepened sharply into a slope too great for a horse-drawn vehicle, the Watch was attempting to clear an ale-house. Gil, his thoughts interrupted by the shouting, crossed the muddy street to go by on the other side. Several customers were already sitting in the gutter abusing the officers of the law. As Gil passed, two more hurtled out to sprawl in the mud, and within the lighted doorway women’s voices were raised in fierce complaint. One was probably the ale-wife, husky and stentorian, but among the others Gil caught a familiar note.

He paused to listen, then strode on hurriedly. He did not feel equal to dealing with Ealasaidh Mclan, fighting drunk and expelled from a tavern.

His uncle was reading by the fire in the hall when he came in, his wire spectacles falling down his nose.

‘Ah, Gilbert,’ he said, setting down his book. ‘What news?’

‘We have made some progress,’ Gil said cautiously. His uncle indicated the stool opposite. Sitting down, Gil summarized the results of his day. Canon Cunningham listened carefully, tapping on his book with the spectacles, and asking the occasional question.

‘That’s a by-ordinary lassie of the mason’s,’ he said when the account was finished.

‘I never met a lass like her,’ Gil confessed.

The Official was silent for a while, still tapping his book. Finally he said, switching to the Latin he used when considering matters of the law, ‘The man-at-arms. The dead woman’s plaid and purse. Whatever girl was with the injured boy.’

‘I agree, sir.’

‘One more thing. Did Maggie not say there was a child?’

‘Yes indeed there is, I saw it. Born last Michaelmas, it seems.’

‘And when did Mistress Stewart leave her husband’s house?’

‘Before St Martin’s of the previous — Ah!’ Gil stared at his uncle. ‘Within the twelvemonth, indeed. I think Sempill cannot know of it.’

‘Or he does not know it is his legitimate heir.’

‘I am reluctant to tell him. What he would do to a child he needs but knows is not his own I dare not think.’

‘Keep your own counsel, Gilbert,’ said his uncle approv-

ingly. ‘Now, what difference will the child make to the disposal of the land? Can you tell me that, hm?’

Trust the old man to turn it into a tutorial, Gil thought. Obediently he marshalled the facts in his head and numbered them off as he spoke.

‘Imprimis, property the deceased held in her own right, as it might be from her father’s will, should go to the child rather than to her kin, unless she has made a will. And even then,’ he elaborated in response to his uncle’s eyebrow, ‘if she has left the property out of her kin, perhaps to the harper, they could challenge it, on their own behalf or the child’s.’

‘And moveables?’

‘Secundus, the paraphernal matter, that is her own clothes and jewellery and such items as her spinningwheel — I hardly think she was carrying a spinning-wheel about Scotland — these are the child’s, unless there is a will, but anything Sempill can show he gave her in marriagegifts returns to him. And, tertius, joint property held with her husband also returns to him, to dispose of as he sees fit. Unless,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘it transpires that he killed her.’

‘Unless,’ his uncle corrected, ‘it can be proven that he killed her. In which case it reverts to the original donor, whether his kin or hers. Very good, Gilbert.’

‘I’ve been well taught,’ Gil pointed out.

Canon Cunningham acknowledged the compliment with a quick glance, and pursued thoughtfully, ‘And what uncle is it that might leave John Sempill money, I wonder? Not his father’s half-brother Philip, for sure, anything he had would go to his own son, and that’s little enough by what I remember. And the Walkinshaws keep their property to themselves.’ He paused, lost in speculation, then noticed Gil stifling a yawn, and raised a hand to offer his customary blessing. ‘Get you to your bed, Gilbert. It’s ower late.’

Gil’s narrow panelled room, just under the roof, was stiflingly hot. Whichever prebend of Cadzow had built the house had not lacked either pretension or money, and even here in the attics the upper part of the window was glazed. Gil picked his way across the room in the dim light and flung open the wooden shutters of the lower half, reasoning that the night air was unlikely to do him any more harm now than half an hour since. One would not sleep in it, of course.

Returning to his narrow bed he lit the candle and sat down, hearing the strapping creak, and lifted his commonplace book down from its place on the shelf, between his Chaucer and a battered Aristotle. He turned the leaves slowly. Each poem brought back vividly the circumstances in which he had copied it. Several pieces by William Dunbar, an unpleasant little man but a good makar, copied from his own writing when he had been in Glasgow with the Archbishop. Two songs by Machaut, dictated by Wat Kerr in an inn near St Severin. Ah, here it was. The Kingis Quair, made be the King of Scots, or so Wattie had insisted, when Gil had transcribed it one long afternoon in a thunderstorm from a copy owned by … owned by … was it Dugald Campbell of Glenorchy? No matter. He skimmed the rime-royal stanzas, his eye falling on remembered phrases. For which sudden abate, anon astart The blood of all my body to my heart. Yes, it was like that, the effect of the sight of her against the light in the doorway of her father’s house, the blood ebbing and then rushing back so that his heart thumped uncontrollably.

Quite ridiculous. I am to be a priest, he thought.

And here were the descriptions, as if this long-dead king had seen Alys Mason in his dream. He read on, picking out the cramped lines with satisfaction, until the candle began to flicker.

It was, he realized, very late. He rose, returned the book to its place, and went to the window to close the shutters.

He leaned out first, breathing in the scent of the gardens after the rain. The sky was clearing, and the bulk of the Campsie hills showed against the stars to the north. Late though it was, there were lights in the Sempill house, one where he could see a table with cards and several pairs of hands, and above that and to one side, nearly on a level with him, a room where someone came and went slowly.

It was only when she paused and began to comb her wealth of golden hair that he realized that Euphemia Campbell was undressing before a mirror.

He watched, fascinated, the movement of little white hands and dainty arms, the tilt of the slender neck, the fall of the rippling gold locks as she turned her head before the mirror. How many candles was she burning? he wondered. There was certainly one to one side, and another beyond the mirror, to judge by the way the white shift was outlined, and maybe more. Little surprise that Sempill was short of money.

Euphemia turned her head and moved gracefully out of his sight. The square of light stood empty, while on the floor below the card-game continued, apparently at the stage of declaring points from the new hands dealt. Gil leaned on the sill a moment longer, then drew back into the room and reached for the shutters.

Euphemia came back into view, but not alone. The man with her was still fully clothed, although she was enthusiastically attempting to remedy this, and he had already got her shift down over her shoulders.

Gil stood, hand on the shutter, watching in astonishment. The man’s face was buried in her neck and his movements were driven by what could be presumed to be strong passion, but even at a distance and from this angle he felt sure it was not John Sempill. The fellow was not much taller than Euphemia, and his hair was dark in the candlelight and surely longer than Sempill’s sandy pelage.

The woman spoke to him, apparently laughing, and he raised his head to answer her. Gil stared, frowning. The urgent manner might be put down to the circumstances but that dark, narrow face, black-browed in the candlelight, was certainly not Sempill’s. It was the little dark fellow who had been outside St Mungo’s, who had been in the procession which rode through the May Day dancing — dear God, was it only yesterday? — and who had not been present when he questioned the household today. The Italian musician. He suddenly recalled the expression he had seen on Euphemia’s face when the man was mentioned.

Euphemia’s shift had fallen to her waist. Gil was conscious first of regret that she had her back to him and then of sudden disgust. Such behaviour could be excused in the mastiff down in the courtyard, but not in a human being.

The two entangled figures moved out of sight, presumably in the direction of Euphemia’s bed. Thoughtfully, Gil closed the shutters and turned to his own.

He spent longer than usual on his prayers, but nevertheless he found when he finally lay down that sleep was a long time claiming him. Images of women danced behind his eyelids, of Bess Stewart as she lay under the scaffolding in the half-built chapel, of Ealasaidh in her grief, of Euphemia just now in the candlelight wrestling the battle of love, and then of Alys weeping for a woman she had never met while the Franciscans chanted psalms in the shadows. He was disconcerted to find that, though he had spent a large part of the day in her company, and though he could remember the tears glittering under her lashes, his image of Alys was that of the princess in the poem, and he could not remember clearly what she really looked like.

I am to be a priest, he thought again

Exasperated, he turned over, hammered at his pillow, and began firmly to number the taverns on the rue Mouffetarde. In general it never failed him.

He had reached the Boucher and was aware of sleep stealing over him when he was jolted wide awake by a thunderous banging. As he sat up the shouting started, a piercing voice which he recognized without difficulty, and then a monstrous barking which must be the mastiff Doucette. Cursing, Gil scrambled into hose and shoes, seized his gown and stumbled down the stairs as every dog in the upper town roused to answer its peer. Matt appeared blinking at the Official’s chamber door, carrying a candle, as Gil crossed the solar.

‘What’s to do? The maister’s asking.’

‘Ealasaidh,’ Gil said, hurrying on down.

The moon, not yet at the quarter, gave a little light to the scene in the street. The gate to the courtyard of Sempill’s house across the way was shut and barred, but a tall shadowy figure was hammering on it with something hard, shouting in shrill and menacing Gaelic. Shutters were flung open along the street as first one householder, then another leaned out to shout at his dog or to abuse the desecrator of the peaceful night.

Gil picked his way across to the scene of the offensive and caught at Ealasaidh’s arm. Above the sound of the dogs and her own screaming, he shouted, ‘Ealasaidh! Madam! They will not let you in!’

She turned to stare at him, her eyes glittering in the moonlight, then returned to the attack, switching to Scots.

‘Thief! Murderer! What have ye done with her purse? Where is her plaid? Where is her cross? Give me back the plaid I wove!’

‘Ealasaidh,’ said Gil again, more quietly. ‘There is a better way.’

She turned to look at him again.

‘What way is that?’ she asked, quite rationally, over the mastiff’s barking.

‘My way,’ he said persuasively. ‘The law will avenge Bess Stewart, madam, and I hope will find her property on the way. If not, then you may attack whoever you believe stole it.’

‘Hmf,’ she said. She reeked of eau-de-vie. Gil took her arm.

‘Will you come within,’ he asked politely, ‘and we may discuss this?’

‘That is fery civil of you,’ she said.

For a moment Gil thought he had won; then, behind the gates, somebody swore at the mastiff, and somebody else demanded loudly, ‘ho the devil is that at this hour?’

Ealasaidh whirled to the fray again, staggering slightly, and launched into a tirade in her own language. There was a series of thuds as the gate was unbarred, and it swung open to reveal John Sempill, not entirely sober himself, with his cousin and both of the gallowglasses. Torchlight gleamed on their drawn swords.

‘Oh, brave it is!’ exclaimed Ealasaidh. ‘Steel on an unarmed woman!’

‘Get away from my gate, you kitterel besom, you puggie jurrock!’ roared Sempill. ‘You stole my wife away out of my house! If she had never set eyes on you I would have an heir by now Away with you!’

‘It was not your house,’ said Ealasaidh shrilly. Several neighbours shouted abuse, but she raised her voice effortlessly above them. ‘It was her house, entirely, and well you know it. Many a time she said to me, how it was hers to dispose of as she pleased, and never a straw of it yours.’

‘I will not listen to nonsense at my own gate,’ bawled Sempill with stentorian dignity. ‘Get away from here and be at peace, partan-faced baird that you are!’

There were shouts of agreement from up and down the street, but Ealasaidh had not finished.

‘And you would never have had an heir of her, the way you treated her! I have seen her back, I have seen what you — ‘

‘Shut her mouth!’ said Sempill savagely to the nearest Campbell, snatching the torch from the man’s grasp. ‘Go on — what are you feart for?’

‘In front of a lawyer?’ said Gil, without expression, under Ealasaidh’s dreadful recital.

Sempill turned on him. ‘You call yourself a man of law, Gil Cunningham? You let her stand there and slander me like that in front of the entire upper town — ‘

‘Rax her a rug of the roast or she’ll rime ye, indeed,’ Gil said, in some amusement. Sempill snarled at him, and slammed the gate shut, so fast that if Gil had not dragged her backwards it would have struck Ealasaidh. The bar thudded into place as she reached her peroration.

‘And two husbands she may have had, ye countbitten braggart, but it took my brother to get a bairn on her she could carry to term, and him blind and a harper!’

On the other side of the gate there was a momentary silence, then feet tramped away towards the house-door. The mastiff growled experimentally, then, when no rebuke came, began its full-throated barking again. Other dogs joined in, to the accompaniment of further shouting.

Ealasaidh turned triumphantly to Gil.

‘That’s him tellt,’ she said.