The Harper's Quine

Chapter Eight

‘But can you believe anything he says?’ Alys asked, jiggling the baby on her hip. ‘Dance a baby, diddy!’

,It is obvious he needs the child,’ said Gil, looking at it with more interest. ‘And if he’s wise, he’ll try to convince his uncle without showing it to him. Even by candlelight, it’s dearly the harper’s get.’

J 1 V The baby grizzled at this, but Alys said indignantly, ‘It’s a boy. Aren’t you, my little man?’ she crooned to the baby.

J ‘Why is he crying?’ asked her father resignedly. ‘Is he hungry?’

‘No, because we fed him just now. And he’s all clean …’ She sniffed at the child’s nether regions. ‘Yes. I think he wants his mammy, poor little boy.’

‘May I take him?’ Gil put his hands out. She hesitated. ‘I am an uncle,’ he assured her, and after a moment she handed him the bundled baby.

He had forgotten what it felt like to hold a child this age, small and solid and totally dependent on the adult arms. By the time he remembered, his left elbow was crooked to support back and swaddled legs, and his right thumb was offering itself as a grasp for the small hands. The baby, perhaps hoping this new person might be the one he was looking for, stopped wailing long enough to inspect him.

‘There’s a bonnie fellow,’ said Gil, and was suddenly assailed by longing. He bounced the baby gently, and turned the little face to the light. Dark wispy eyebrows and deep-set blue eyes scowled at him; the lip quivered above a jaw alarmingly like Ealasaidh’s. ‘What a bonnie boy,’ he said hastily, and tried one of the tossing-up tricks other babies had enjoyed. Although this baby did not laugh as his nephews did, he showed no immediate signs of disapproval, but waved his arms as he was caught. Gil tried it again, and the bells on the coral pinned to the infant’s chest rang merrily.

‘He’s not long been fed,’ Alys pointed out. ‘Shall I take him?’

‘That’s what my sister always said.’ Gil handed the baby over reluctantly. As Alys left, the small face peered round her shoulder, looking for Gil. He waved, feeling rather foolish, and sat back as the door closed behind them both, wondering why there seemed to be less light in the room.

‘It is late,’ said the mason. ‘We only got over the bridge because Sandy the tanner had not yet returned to shut the Brig Port. If you are to go back up the brae before the moon sets — ‘

‘True.’ Gil turned his attention to the box in front of him. ‘Have we something on which to make an inventory?’

‘I have,’ said Alys, returning. ‘And pen and ink.’ She stood at her father’s tall desk, dearly well accustomed to the position, and lit another candle, which gleamed on the honey-coloured fall of her hair.

‘Then let us commence,’ said Gil, drawing his gaze with reluctance from the sight.

The box was not a large one, but sturdy, the kind of thing a country joiner might make for a woman to keep jewellery in. The lock gave way after a little persuasion, and they raised the lid.

‘Documents!’ said Maistre Pierre eagerly.

‘A bundle of five documents,’ Gil agreed, dictating slowly to Alys. ‘Tied with a piece of red ribbon. We’ll look at them in a moment.’

‘They were at the top,’ Alys said. ‘Had she looked at them recently, do you suppose?’

‘Before she went out to meet Sempill,’ speculated Gil, ‘to refresh her memory or to be sure of the wording.’ He had a sudden vision of Bess Stewart, the fall of her French hood swinging forward past her scarred jaw, fingering through the handful of parchments, and then going up the hill to her death, trusting that Euan her familiar servant would see her home.

‘What else is there?’

‘Not a great deal. She did not bring much away from Bute with her.’ Gil peered into the box. ‘A gold chain for a jewel, in a little bag. A remarkably good Book of Hours.’ He turned the pages respectfully. ‘This is old. See the strange clothes the saints are wearing. Two more letters. A round stone. And a roll of cloth containing …’ He untied the tapes. ‘Ah, here is her jewellery. I wonder which of her husbands gave her these?’

‘Now you have unwrapped it, it must be inventoried,’ said Alys practically. ‘Item, one pin, set with a sapphire.’ She wrote carefully. ‘Item, one pair of beads with enamelled gauds. Item, a necklace of pearls. Mon Dieu, father, look at those pearls! I think they are better than mine.’

‘And she was carrying these about Scotland in a wooden box,’ said Gil, letting the string glimmer over his fingers in the candlelight. ‘Ealasaidh described the cross that is missing as her one jewel. She cannot have worn these since she left Bute. If Sempill ever got his hands on them he could settle his debt to the Crown at a single stroke.’

They completed the list of Bess Stewart’s jewellery, and turned to the packet of documents. Gil untied the red ribbon and spread the five slips of parchment out on his knee.

‘In fact,’ he said after a moment, ‘these are not all full documents. This and this,’ he lifted the two longer missives, ‘are attested copies of the title deeds to land on the Island of Bute. It seems as if she held that in her own right.’ He set those aside. ‘This is a memorandum of an item in the will of one, Edward Stewart of Kilchattan, whom I take to be her first husband, leaving her a property in the burgh of Rothesay outright, and the interest in two more until her remarriage. And these two are memoranda of grants of land in respect of her marriage to John Sempill.’ He tilted them to the light. The wording is not at all clear. They might be her tocher, though my uncle thought that was in coin, or they might be conjunct fee — ‘

‘Land given jointly in respect of their marriage,’ Maistre Pierre translated for his daughter.

‘I know that,’ she said absently, her pen scraping on the paper.

‘What these do,’ said Gil, ‘is confirm what we already knew by hearsay in respect of her own property, and if you like confirm how little we know in respect of the conjunct property. Even the names of the grantors are omitted.’

‘I do not like,’ said the mason gloomily, ‘but I take your meaning.’

Alys bit the end of her pen, frowning.

‘What difference does it make whether it was her tocher or a conjunct fee?’ she asked.

‘Quite a lot, now,’ said Gil. ‘Sempill keeps the conjunct property, the tocher may well go back to her family.’

‘So if we are still pursuing cui Bono we need to know,’ said Maistre Pierre. He scratched at his beard, the sound loud in the quiet room. ‘Do you suppose Sempill will tell us?’

‘I had rather speak to the man who drew these up,’ said Gil. ‘We need to go to Rothesay.’

‘Ah. When do we go?’

‘And we need to find Annie Thomson, if she really has gone to Dumbarton.’

‘If we go by Dumbarton and not by Irvine, we may look for her on the road. That is if the boy can still tell us nothing.’

‘Davie is still asleep,’ said Alys. ‘He is no worse, but he is no better either. Brother Andrew says we must continue to pray and keep him warm and still.’

‘So we must rely on finding Annie. We also need to think about Bridie Miller. I would like to look at Blackfriars yard where she was found. There may be some sign for us there.’

‘The beets,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘I take it they had not come home with her?’

‘Agnes did not mention them,’ said Alys, ‘and I had a rather detailed account of the event from her.’ She smiled quickly. ‘Poor soul, she has had a trying two days.’

‘So have I,’ said her father. ‘So we go to Rothesay after we look at Blackfriars yard, yes?’

‘I must speak to my uncle,’ said Gil. ‘But, yes.’

The great door of the house in Rottenrow was barred. Gil, untroubled, went along the house wall and in at the little gate to the kitchen yard. To his surprise, there was a light showing in the window there.

Within, the kitchen smelled of tomorrow’s bread, which was rising in the trough near the fire. Beyond the hearth, William the kitchen-boy was already asleep, curled up on his straw mattress in a bundle of blanketing. Beside it, Maggie was on the settle, spinning wool by firelight. She looked up when he came in.

‘My, you’re early home, Maister Gil.’

‘It’s all this loose living,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘Did you wait up for me, Maggie?’

‘Someone had to. The maister wanted the door barred. Do you want a bite?’

‘I’m well fed, thank you.’

‘So what’s come to Bridie Miller?’

He told her what they had learned. She listened carefully, watching her spindle twirling at the end of the yarn.

‘She’ll have stepped aside from the market,’ she said when he had finished.

‘What do you mean?’

‘To ease herself. Men can make use of a dyer’s tub, or a tanner’s, but a modest lass canny hoist her skirts in the street.’ She picked up the spindle and began to wind on the new thread.

‘In Blackfriars yard?’

‘It’s where we mostly go. It’s a long way back up the brae to your own privy, Maister Gil, and there’s a wee clump of bushes where prying laddies’ll not get a sight of your shift.’

‘That would account for the smell on her hair,’ said Gil, startled by this glimpse into another world.

‘Aye, it would. It gets a bit rich by the end of a morning.’

‘Why was she not found, I wonder? How many women step aside like this in a day?’

She shrugged, and set the spindle twirling.

‘I’ve never stood around counting. You don’t often meet anyone else.’

‘And somebody followed her, or lay in wait — no, that would mean he was expecting her. Someone saw her step out of the market and followed her, took her unawares — I must speak to Mally Bowen.’

‘I could do that for you,’ said Maggie. ‘What do you want — just the state she was in when she was washed?’

‘Yes,’ he said gratefully. ‘How much blood was there,

and where was it, and had she been forced? Were her hands clean? That kind of thing. Oh, and Maggie. I never said. Thank you for today’s work in the Sempill house.’

‘Oh, that,’ she said, and lifted the spindle again. ‘Aye. There’s more.’

‘More?’

‘See, I was sweirt to tell you this in front of the maister.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. It’s no very nice, and it might just be Marriott Kennedy spreading gossip, but …’

‘Go on,’ Gil encouraged.

‘Aye. Well. Marriott says. She took her time to it, and went all round about, but in the end she came out with it that Euphemia Campbell’s one of those with a taste for wee games.’

‘Wee games?’

‘And I don’t mean merry-ma-tansy,’ she said grimly. ‘Marriott says — this is just what she says, mind — she’s forever washing blood off shifts, and no just where you’d expect blood on a decent woman’s shift. And off his shirts as well.’

‘Agnes Yuill was complaining about having to get blood off her satin clothes today,’ Gil recalled.

‘No doubt. And there’s aye pieces of rope hidden in her chamber. Quite well hidden, it seems, but you’d need to be right fly to hide something from Marriott.’

‘Well,’ said Gil. ‘That is interesting, Maggie.’

‘You mean it’s likely true?’

‘It fits with another piece of information.’

‘Oh, aye?’ she said hopefully.

‘Sempill used his knife on Bess Stewart.’ He could not bear to detail the scars on that slender white back, but suddenly remembered the visible mark. ‘He had scarred her jaw, remember? And cut off the lobe of her ear.’

‘So maybe she’d not play his wee games, so he found one that would,’ she speculated.

`I think you may be right,’ he agreed. “Thank you, Maggie. That’s very useful.’ He got abruptly to his feet. ‘I’m for my bed. And so should you, if you’re to make the old man’s porridge before Sext. Can I have a candle?’

‘In the box yonder. You see why I didn’t like to say in front of the maister?’

‘What’s different about me?’ he asked, in some amusement. She eyed him in the firelight.

‘You’ve been longer in the world,’ she said. ‘He’s been a priest, and one that won’t take his promises lightly, for near forty year. He can still be shocked, though you’d not think it.’

`I will be a priest; said Gil, experiencing the familiar knotting in his stomach. Maggie nodded, still eyeing him.

‘And what sort of a priest you’ll make there’s no knowing. You’ll find it hard going, Maister Gil. You were aye one that was hungry as soon as the larder door was barred.’

She watched as he bent to light his candle from the fire’s glow, and then said, ‘Euphemia Campbell killed your good-sister.’

‘She what?’ Gil straightened up, staring at her in the dim light. William’s slow breathing checked, and resumed.

‘Oh, not herself, not herself, but it was her doing.’

‘This is my brother Hughie’s wife we’re talking about?’ Gil searched his memory. ‘Sybilla, wasn’t it? Sybilla …’

‘Napier,’ Maggie supplied. ‘Aye.’

‘I thought she died in childbed, poor soul. My mother wrote me at Paris.’

‘Aye, she died of their first bairn.’ Maggie crossed herself. ‘But that woman had been sniffing round your brother more than six months — and you know what Hughie was like.’

‘I know what Hughie was like,’ Gil agreed ruefully. ‘Euphemia would be just to his liking. And Sybilla took it ill out, did she?’

‘She moped and dwined, poor wee mommet,’ said Maggie, staring into the fire. ‘Your mother tried, and I tried, but nothing we said could bring him to his senses. And when it came her crying-time, he was from home.’ She paused, seeing something Gil could not.

‘Go on,’ he prompted.

‘Och, it’s five year since. The woman Campbell was married on a Murray at the time, though that never stopped her. When your father sent after Hughie, the man had to go to Stirling for him, and he wasn’t to be found at his own lodgings. They’d to get him out of Euphemia Campbell’s bed to tell him his wife and son were dead, and her barely sixteen.’

‘Oh, Hughie!’ said Gil in exasperation. ‘He never could get it right, could he?’

‘Likely he’s paying for it in Purgatory now,’ said Maggie, crossing herself again with the bundle of wool. ‘The maister’s never heard this either, Maister Gil.’

‘No,’ he said, staring at the dark window. He thought of Euphemia wrestling with Hugh by candlelight, and was aware of several conflicting emotions, including distaste and what he recognized with shame as a prurient curiosity. ‘No, I can see that.’

The hall was dark and silent. Gil crossed it slowly, and on a sudden impulse turned aside and ducked behind the curtain into the window-space which his uncle used as a tiny oratory. He set his own candle beside the two silver candlesticks on the shelf which served as an altar, and knelt, fixing his gaze on the small Annunciation scene propped behind them. Gabriel, wings and draperies blowing in a great wind, held out a stem of lilies to Mary, who turned, startled, from her reading desk. Through the painted window between them could be seen the towers of St Mungo’s.

Out in the house he could hear the quiet sounds of Maggie shutting up the kitchen and shaking out her bed before the fire. Boards creaked. A distant dog barked and was answered.

Trust Hughie, he thought. The oldest, the handsome one, the admired big brother with Edward in his shadow. Gil had spent his childhood trying to catch up, but by the time he could shoot with the little bow both Hugh and Edward had been given crossbows, by the time he could ride his pony they were on horseback.

Everything came easily to Hughie, and he took it for granted, even the admiration of his siblings. Likely he thought he could make it up with his wife when he got the chance. But the chance was taken from him, and he had lost something else taken for granted, something other people — something Gil would give his right hand for.

There, it was out in the open.

Please, God, give me strength, he prayed. Blessed Mother of God, give me strength. Sweet St Giles, pray for me, that I may be free of my doubts.

The decision had been taken imperceptibly, over the slow months. At the beginning, shocked by grief, without land or future, he had been willing enough to do from day to day what David Cunningham directed. He had never got up one morning and said, Yes, I will be a priest. It had simply, gradually, become obvious as the sensible thing to do, and at length he and his uncle had both come to take it for granted. But now — now that it was so close — with the vows and injunctions which he took so seriously …

Never to hold a bairn like that and know it was one’s own.

Does any man know that? asked a cynical portion of his mind.

A man married to a good woman can be reasonably sure, he answered himself. Unbidden, the image of Alys with the child on her hip rose before him.

And what about her? The mason must find her a husband. He would look for a good match for her, but Sybilla Napier’s family had accepted his brother Hugh, and presumably Bess Stewart’s kin had thought John Sempill a good match. Would Alys go to a man who would abuse her like that? Or one who would sell her books?

Coherent prayer on his own behalf was beyond him, but he bowed his head and petitioned every saint he thought appropriate for Alys. When he ran out of requests he simply knelt, emptying his mind, concentrating on the wind which blew Gabriel’s painted garments.

After a while he became aware that, although nothing had changed, he felt lighter, as if a burden had been lifted. Unlocking his stiffened limbs, he rose and took up the remnant of his candle, and made his way to the attic and sleep.

‘Do you think the harper will accept Sempill’s offer?’ enquired David Cunningham, stirring almond butter into his porridge.

‘Who knows?’ said Gil. ‘I think it is more a matter of whether Ealasaidh will accept.’

‘It seems as if the bairn may well be a person of sub stance in his own right, even without being declared John Sempill’s heir.’

‘Aye, and sorting that out might prove illuminating. Have you ever been to Rothesay, sir?’

‘I have not. You take a boat from Dumbarton, likely, you could ask the harper’s sister. Eat your porridge, Gilbert. You think you need to go to Rothesay?’

‘We are not doing well on the direct trail. Davie’s elusive lass is the only witness, and the tracks are confused.’ Gil stared out of the window at the house over the way, where nobody appeared to be stirring. ‘But before I can answer the question of cui bono with certainty I need to talk to the man who drew up the dispositions.’

‘That would be Alexander Stewart. He was in Inveraray but I heard recently he has now settled in Rothesay, which is certainly easier to get to. I can give you a letter for him. I will give you a docket for the Treasurer here as well. St Mungo’s should pay for the journey.’

‘And I am curious about Bess’s first husband,’ Gil said. ‘He was a Bute man, so I suppose their marriage would have taken place in Rothesay.’

‘Likely so. I would have heard, otherwise. When will you go? Not today, surely. It is Friday.’

‘So it is!’ said Gil, dismayed. With the holiday on Tuesday, my reckoning’s out. How long does the journey take?’

‘Four or five hours to Dumbarton by horse, I should think. Another five with a good wind after that, or several days’ waiting if the wind is wrong.’

‘Better if we leave in the morning, then, rather than this afternoon. Maister Mason goes too, I will need to speak to him.’

‘And what’s for today?’ said the Official, scraping his bowl. ‘This other lass that’s dead?’

‘I must be careful,’ said Gil, ‘not to offend the serjeant. But, yes, if he won’t ask questions, I must.’

As Gil reached the Wyndhead, Maistre Pierre in his working clothes emerged from the High Street, followed by his men.

‘Good morning, maister lawyer! I have thought, no one will put to sea on a Friday, so we will get a day’s work done and travel tomorrow. I cannot pay these sloungers to play at football any longer.’

‘Then I will go and get a word with the harper,’ said Gil, nodding to the grinning men. ‘Will you stay at St Mungo’s all morning?’

‘Indeed not. Once Wattie knows what is doing he will work better without the maister breathing down his neck. I meet you at Blackfriars? After Terce?’

Gil agreed to this, and the mason marched purposefully off along the flank of the Bishop’s castle, heading for the gate into St Mungo’s yard. Gil turned and made his way down the hill, past the houses of the Chanonry, past thatched cottages and the ale-house from which Ealasaidh had been thrown out. The street became busier as he descended, with people going out for work, taking down the shutters on the burgh’s scattered shops, beginning the day’s round of housework.

At the mouth of the wynd that gave on to Blackfriars kirkyard he paused. He ought, he felt, to go and inspect the scene of Bridle’s death as soon as he might. Then again, it had probably been well trampled when she was found. He stood for a moment, considering, then shrugged and turned to walk on, and a voice called across the street, ‘Maister Cunningham! A word with you, maister!’

The odd-eyed lutenist, Balthasar of Liege, crossed to him, avoiding a gathering of kerchiefed women who to judge by their gestures were discussing the death of Bridie Miller.

‘Good day to you, sir,’ he said as he reached Gil, and made a flourishing bow in the French manner. Gil, amused, responded in the same style, and the huddled women stared at them both.

‘Shall we walk on?’ suggested the lutenist.

‘I am bound for the Fishergait,’ Gil said, falling into step beside him.

‘To call on Angus and his sister?’ Gil nodded. ‘You’ll be a bit early. I went round there after things broke up yesterday, and we made rather a night of it. Harry was there — you saw him at the funeral maybe — and a couple more singers that knew Bess. The neighbours were not very pleased with us.’ Quick gestures suggested a displeased neighbour at a window. ‘We sank a lot of eau-de-vie between us, and the Mclans had the lion’s share. They’ll neither of them be fit to talk before Nones, I would estimate.’

‘Thank you for the advice.’

‘That wasn’t why I stopped you.’ Balthasar halted, to look Gil earnestly in the face. ‘Something came back to me I thought you might find important.’

‘Oh?’ said Gil encouragingly.

‘And when I heard of this new killing down in the town it seemed even more important.’

‘Go on,’ said Gil, well used to the kind of detail which witnesses thought important.

‘You mind I said I’d met Bess on the way up the High Street on May Day evening? Well, when I saw her, I’d just come out of an ale-house, and across the street there’s a vennel, and in the vennel there’s a couple playing Maygames, if you follow me. His hand down her neck, and so on, and a lot of giggling. I was just thinking the fellow was well dressed to be tousling a servant-lass in an alley when I heard Bess coming up the hill, talking away in Ersche.’

‘Yes?’ said Gil.

‘Well, the fine fellow opposite heard her too, and he reacted. Grabs his lass by the hand, looking alarmed, and tiptoes away along the alley with his back to the street. He didn’t want Bess Stewart to see him.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t want anyone to see him,’ Gil suggested.

‘There were others abroad who didn’t worry him. He’d thrown me a wink already. The point is, I saw him at the burial.’

‘Ah. Who?’

. ‘One of the two who came in with the husband. Not the cousin, the other one. The very decorative one.’ He struck a brief pose, quite unmistakable.

‘James Campbell of Glenstriven,’ said Gil, grinning.

‘Aye, that would be the name. I knew him when I saw him, but it took till this morning to fit it together and think, That’s odd.’

‘Was he avoiding Bess, or the gallowglass with her, do you think?’

‘Ah …’ The musician paused, casting his mind back. ‘No way to be. sure, of course, but I think it was Bess’s voice he heard first, that caused him to hide. I take your point, maister. But now here’s another girl dead, and the word is that she knew too much about Bess’s death. I just wondered if this fellow with the bad conscience was connected. in some way.’

‘It is certainly possible,’ Gil said cautiously. ‘Thank you. This may prove to be valuable.’

‘Glad to be of use to somebody,’ said Balthasar offhandedly. ‘If you’ll forgive me, I have to go and see about some lute-strings. I’m due in Kilmarnock tomorrow.’ He performed another grand flourish, to which Gil replied, and strode jauntily off in the direction of the Tolbooth.

Well! thought Gil, staring after him. That rearranges matters slightly. He turned and walked slowly up the hill, deep in thought. James Campbell had come into St Mungo’s late, just ahead of the gallowglass who reported Bess’s arrival. He had certainly been in the market yesterday morning, talking to a girl with a basket. (A basket of what?) He carried a narrow Italian dagger.

‘But what reason?’ he said aloud. ‘Why should he — ?’

His own voice startled him. Looking about him, he was astonished to find himself in the courtyard of the mason’s house. As he took this in, the house door opened, and Alys appeared, smiling broadly.

‘Maister Cunningham! My father is gone out, but there is good news. Come in, come in and hear it.’

‘What news is that?’

She stood aside for him to enter.

‘Davie has wakened. Just a short while ago. He is weak, and he can remember nothing — but he is awake and in his right mind.’

‘Christ and his saints be thanked!’

‘But yes, I was just going to do that when I saw you in the yard. Kittock is feeding him. I am sorry — I know it can’t help you, since he doesn’t remember — but I can’t stop smiling.’

‘You are so fond of the boy?’

‘He is a good laddie,’ she agreed, ‘and we are all fond of him. Come and sit down, and Catherine shall bring you bread and ale while I see if he is still awake and able to speak to you.’

‘I have only just broken my fast,’ Gil pointed out.

The smile became apologetic. ‘Catherine will insist. Sit here, Maister Cunningham. I won’t be long.’

He went over to the window, rather than sit in her father’s great chair, wondering at himself. If she had not opened the door, what would he have done? It could have been very embarrassing. Bad enough hanging about on street corners like any servant laddie, hoping for a glimpse of … Even if it paid off and you got a word with the lass, it was certainly something Uncle David would call undignified.

‘Eh, bonjour, maistre le notaire,’ said a gruff voice at his elbow. He turned to find the small woman in black studying him. Seen close up, her liver-spotted hands and wrinkled nutcracker face reminded him of nothing so much as a mummified saint he had seen once in a small church north of Paris. Behind her a servant-girl carried a tray with a jug and two little glasses. ‘You are admiring our garden, no?’

‘I am indeed,’ he said, seizing gratefully on this topic. ‘Who works it? Is it the demoiselle?’

‘She orders it. It is not so good as the one we had in Paris, but it is pleasant to look at.’ She sat down, straightbacked, and waved him to another stool. ‘You will take our elderflower wine, maistre? This is also Alys’s work. She can bake and brew with the best.’

The wine was light and delicate in flavour. Gil drank her health, and took a marchpane sucket from the tray when it was offered, saying, ‘Had you a large garden in Paris?’

‘Sufficiently large.’ She sipped elderflower wine. ‘And you, maistre? Does your family own land for a garden?’

‘My uncle has a very agreeable garden in Rottenrow,’ he answered.

‘And your parents? But perhaps they are no longer alive.’

‘My mother lives. She has a charming garden to stroll in, and a good kail-yard.’

She lifted her little glass of wine again, turning it gracefully by the foot in her twisted fingers.

‘You visit her, one hopes? She is not far from Glasgow?’

‘Of course. Her home is near Lanark, not thirty miles away,’ he supplied, recognizing the style and purpose of the questions. She must be more governess than nurse, if she took it upon herself to inspect her charge’s acquaintance like this. Her hair, which appeared to be still black, was dragged back into a cap like a flowerpot and covered by a fine black linen veil through which the embroidery showed; her neck and bosom were concealed by a snowy linen chin-cloth. The style was old-fashioned; he remembered his grandmother in something similar. It was certainly not that of a peasant or even, he reflected, a woman of the tradespeople. Her French, despite her want of teeth, was clear, elegant, but not that of Paris.

‘One hopes she does not lack,’ she was saying now. ‘The lot of a widow is not easy.’

‘Bishop Muirhead was her cousin, and her remaining kin will not see her reduced to begging.’ It felt like the bidding round in a game of Tarocco.

‘Ah, she is a Muirhead?’

‘Of Lauchope. And the present Dean of St Mungo’s is also a kinsman.’ Gil smiled at the black eyes glittering at him, and drained his glass. She replenished it without consulting him.

‘And your father, maistre? What land did he hold? I believe he fell at the late battle, just before we came into Scotland.’

These cards were not so good.

‘He did,’ agreed Gil. ‘With my two older brothers. We held lands here in Lanarkshire, near to my mother’s dower lands, but I am heir to nothing, because all was forfeit after the battle, and there were no funds to recover it with.’ And was that Hughie’s doing too? he wondered, for the first time.

‘And so you must be a priest,’ said the gruff voice. ‘One must condole with you and your mother. And our master thinks you do not wish to be a priest.’

‘I have no choice. I must live on something.’

‘Is this a right way to approach Holy Church?’

‘I have prayed over it,’ he admitted, ‘but St Giles has not yet shown me another path.’

`Perhaps you have not prayed enough, or asked in the right way.’ She set her little glass on the tray and rose. ‘Alys has not returned, which makes me think the boy is still awake. Come and see him, but do not start asking him questions.’

In the tapestry-hung store-room, Alys and one of the maidservants were watching while Brother Andrew, the nearest thing the burgh possessed to a doctor, examined his patient by the light of a branch of candles. The boy was a curious yellowish white, and had lost substance so that all the angles of his bones showed through the skin, but he was answering the little Franciscan’s questions about his physical state coherently enough.

‘And what is the last thing you remember?’

Alarm crossed the thin face.

‘I was playing at football. Did I take a tumble? I’ll need to get up! The maister’ll need me to mix the mortar.’

‘Do not worry about that, Davie,’ said Alys. ‘You can mix mortar again when you are well.’

Brother Andrew nodded approvingly at her, and drew the cover over the boy’s chest.

‘Your dame is quite right,’ he said comfortably. ‘You are proof of the good effects of strong prayer and careful nursing. You have been ill, laddie, but you will recover if you he quiet and get your strength back. I will come and see you again tomorrow.’

He turned away from the bed, lifting his uroscope and scrip of medicines, and paused in the doorway to bestow a blessing on all present. Alys, with a quick smile at Gil, followed to see him out.

Davie lay back against his pillow as if he would dissolve into it, and said weakly to the maidservant, ‘What was it? What’s come to me, Kittock?’

‘You hit your head,’ said Gil, moving forward. Davie’s eyes flicked to him and back to Kittock. ‘I found you.’

‘I dinna mind that.’

‘Don’t fret about it,’ said Gil. ‘It often happens after a bang on the head. It addles one’s wits. You will find it comes back bit by bit.’

The boy stared blankly at him.

‘Don’t fret,’ he said again. ‘And, no, you do not know me. I found you.’

The yellowish face relaxed, and the eyes closed.

‘I think he’s sleeping, maister,’ said Kittock. Alys slipped back into the room and lifted the bowl and spoon from the floor by the bed.

‘We are to tell him as little as possible,’ she said. ‘Answer his questions, but don’t add anything. He will be quite childish for a while, Brother Andrew says.’

‘He’s away now,’ said Kittock, sitting down with her spindle. ‘Is he still to be watched, mem?’

‘Until he is stronger, yes,’ said Alys. She went out, and Gil followed her.

‘He remembers nothing,’ he said, drawing the door to behind him.

‘And may never remember,’ she — answered. ‘Brother Andrew says we still cannot tell how well he will mend. It is clear he will be able to walk and talk, but his thinking is still to recover.’

‘So we must continue to pursue the other girl.’

‘And quickly, before she too is knifed. I hope she has really gone to Dumbarton.’

Gil glanced at the sky.

‘I must be gone. I am to meet your father in Blackfriars yard after Terce, to look at where Bridie Miller was lifted up.’

Alys paused on the fore-stair and turned to him with that direct brown gaze. She was wearing the faded blue gown again, and Gil found himself admiring the way her hair fell across the tight wool sleeve.

‘May I come too?’ she said. ‘Not to stare at where she died, never that — but you and my father learned such a lot just by looking in St Mungo’s, and I would like to see how it is done.’

‘About time, too; said the wiry Dominican in the porter’s lodge. ‘I’ve turned away a many gapers this morning already. It’s down yonder corner, my son, not the College corner but the other one, and watch where you put your feet.’

He gestured back towards the wall which divided the small public graveyard from the back of the High Street tofts. In the south-western corner, further from the friars’ obstreperous neighbour, was the clump of bushes Maggie had described.

‘I suppose you saw nothing?’ Gil asked. Brother Porter shook his head regretfully.

‘Nothing I can recall. A good few lassies wandered in, with it being market, casual the way they do, trying to pretend they’re not here, but no fellow with a foreign knife came in when I was looking. I’d have chased him out of that corner; the brother declared. ‘It’s hardly proper, what they’re doing in a kirkyard, but spying on decent lassies is even less right.’

Thanking him, Gil made his way towards the place, Alys behind him with her skirts held fastidiously up off the grass.

‘This does not make sense,’ she said as they reached the bushes. ‘The market is all down by the Tolbooth. Bridie would have passed her own house to get here.’

Gil turned to stare at her.

‘Agnes Hamilton said the same thing. I never paid any attention,’ he admitted. ‘So she must have accompanied her killer here for some other reason, rather than have been followed.’

‘And why come here to talk or — or anything else, when there are prettier and more comfortable comers to be private with another person?’

‘We asked ourselves the same question in St Mungo’s,’ Gil said, gazing round him. ‘Ah — that trampled space.’

He picked a careful path between the bushes, inspecting each one and the grass beneath it as he went. His movements stirred up wafts of a scent which made his nostrils flare. It reminded him of a dyer’s tub, which he felt was not surprising, but there were overtones which puzzled him. He found himself thinking, with great clarity, of Euphemia Campbell as he had seen her two nights since, half naked by candlelight, wrestling passionately with her lover.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Alys from where she stood. He dragged his mind back to the task at hand.

‘Anything. Sign. Broken branches, trampled grass. There will be very little of use, I suspect, the searchers have been everywhere.’

‘Footprints? That kind of thing?’

‘Yes. In fact I can see prints of many feet, going in different directions.’

‘That’s just like hunting, isn’t it?’

,it is very like hunting,’ said Gil. ‘I find myself trying to judge the mind of the quarry in the same way, as well as identifying sign.’

‘There are fewmets here, too.’

‘I had noticed that.’ Gil was at the centre of the trampled patch. ‘Now, I think this is blood. She must have fallen here.’ He looked round, to see her buckle at the knees. ‘Ah, Alys, I am sorry!’

Three quick steps took him to her side, but she was already straightening up.

‘No. I am sorry. I was interested, watching you, and forgot that that poor girl died here. It took me by surprise.’

‘Do you want to go into the church? Perhaps sit down, pray for her?’

I can pray for her here.’ She pressed his hand gratefully, and moved towards the wall, skirts held up again. ‘Ugh, more fewmets. And someone has been sick.’

“That’s odd.’ Gil followed her, to look down at the unpleasant splatter. ‘Someone had been sick in St Mungo’s, near where Bess lay.’

‘Do you think it is important?’

‘It might be, or it might be nothing.’ He turned his head. ‘Maister Mason. Come look at this. And I have found where she fell.’

The mason, after a cursory glance, offered the opinion that some girl was regretting St Mungo’s Fair.

‘What, last January?’ said Alys. ‘She would have stopped throwing up by now, father. It’s too soon for it to be the effects of May Day, I suppose it could be from Fastern’s E’en.’ She smiled a little tremulously at Gil, who was gaping at her. ‘One has to know these things when one runs a house, Maister Cunningham.’

‘And where did Bridie Miller lie?’ asked her father.

‘Here. You may step as you please, the searchers have trampled everything. See, there is blood, though there was none in St Mungo’s, but that may have been due to the way she fell. I wish we had seen her before they took her up.’

‘I think we should have come here sooner,’ admitted the mason. ‘And have we found the beets yet?’

‘I can see them,’ said Alys, from where she stood by the wall. ‘Under that bush to your left.’

Gil and her father both looked round without success.

‘No, that one there. The elder-bush with the low branches.’

Gil pulled back the branches, to find a basket lying on its side, a bunch of beets beside it.

‘Curious,’ he said. ‘It was never dropped here, under the branch like that.’

‘It is more as if it was set down and then overturned,’ the mason agreed. He bent to lift basket and greenstuff.

‘Those little new ones are dear on the market just now,’ observed Alys. ‘Agnes will be glad to get them.’

‘I hope she washes them well,’ said Gil. ‘Do you suppose Brother Porter has water at the lodge? I must get the smell of this place off my hands.’

They turned, after a final look round, and began to walk towards the buildings.

‘Now what must we do?’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘I need to get a word with the harper, and I must speak to the other girls at the Hamiltons’,’ said Gil. ‘To ask if Bridie had a new sweetheart.’

‘I could help you do that,’ said Alys hopefully.

‘If you can spare the time from your duties,’ said Gil, ‘I would be grateful.’

‘Talking of St Mungo’s,’ said the mason, ‘we found a plaid.’

‘A plaid? Where?’

,is it hers?’ demanded Alys.

‘I do not know. It is black and green, quite vivid, and it was folded up neatly in the lodge, up out of the way under the roof.’

‘In the lodge?’ repeated Gil incredulously.

‘In the lodge. It seems Luke found it spread out on the ground the morning all this began, Tuesday or whenever it was, and folded it up and put it away all tidy.’ He looked from one to the other, well pleased with his effect. ‘He never thought it might be important.’

‘In the lodge,’ said Gil again, thoughtfully. ‘On the other side of the wall from where Bess died.’ He followed the mason towards the gatehouse, abstracted. ‘Bess was in the trees. Suppose she left her plaid there when she went into the building site — ‘

‘Why?’ asked Alys.

‘So John Sempill would know she was not far away? But Davie and his new girl found it, and took it into the lodge to make the ground more comfortable, and overheard — part of the conversation? Bess’s death?’

‘And ran away in fear and were pursued? But I thought we agreed it was someone else who struck the boy down.’

‘Oh, it was,’ said Gil. ‘We have been very slow. It was someone else, and he is still there, with his weapon.’

‘Still there?’ Maistre Pierre turned to stare at him.

‘I know,’ said Alys, pulling her plaid tight round her. ‘The tree.’

The tree?’ repeated her father, but Gil nodded.

‘The boy was running bent over, with his head down.’ He demonstrated. “That’s why the mark on the branch is so low.’

‘He ran into the tree,’ said Alys. ‘And the girl ran on and never looked back, thinking they were still pursued. Maister Gil, you must find her. It becomes more urgent every hour.’