The Merchant's Mark

Chapter Eight

‘It must have been terrifying,’ said Alys, her brown eyes round. Not, Kate noted, You must have been terrified, but, It must have been terrifying.

‘I’d not have forgiven myself,’ said Augie Morison earnestly, ‘if you’d come to any harm, Lady Kate. Whatever he was after, it could never have been worth that.’

‘It’s one thing about a life of pilgrimage,’ Kate said lightly. ‘You meet soon or late with every ragabash in Scotland. Babb and I have trapped pilferers before now — though never so redhand,’ she admitted.

They were seated in the castle courtyard on a bench, which two of the Provost’s men had carried out for Kate rather than have Babb heave her up and back down several turns of the tower stair to Maister Morison’s lodging. About them, members of the castle household scurried back and forth carrying furniture and rolled-up tapestries, readying the Archbishop’s lodging for the arrival of the King’s party the next day.

‘But what was he after?’ Alys asked.

‘The second half of the treasure. He seemed quite certain it should be there.’

Morison shook his head, biting his lip.

‘I took him for an honest man,’ he said sadly. ‘Well, as honest as any of them.’

‘Most of us are honest till we’re tempted,’ said Kate. ‘I think maybe Billy was tempted beyond his limits.’

‘By the man with the axe,’ said Alys, nodding.

‘Axe? What man with an axe?’

‘We saw him in Hog’s tavern,’ Alys explained.

Morison looked from one to the other of them in horror.

‘What have you lassies been up to?’ he demanded, and then, ‘I’m sorry, Lady Kate, that slipped out. But what your brother will say when he hears this I just don’t know.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t tell you, then,’ said Kate.

‘I’ve heard this much,’ he said. ‘I’d better hear the rest.’

‘Oh, it gets worse,’ said Kate. She recounted the episode in the Gallowgait, while Morison’s mobile face reflected amazement, anxiety, concern, and finally a stern determination.

‘Lady Kate,’ he said when she had finished, ‘I can’t accept any more help if it brings you into sic danger. You could have been badly hurt there in the tavern, and as for Billy Walker breaking into the chamber where you lay sleeping, well! I can’t bear to think of it. I must ask you to leave my house, my lady, and go back to your uncle’s in Rottenrow.’

‘What, and leave your bairns alone?’ said Kate. He paused, open-mouthed. ‘I’m not finished, Maister Morison.’

‘Aye you are. I’ll send the bairns to our Con out at Bothwell,’ he said, recovering himself. ‘Andy can take them. Con’s got an altar at St Bride’s, you know that, he can surely find a woman in the town to mind them till I can bring them home again. The Provost’s men will question Billy and learn what he knows, and you can stay out of it in safety, Lady Kate. And yoursel, Mistress Mason,’ he added belatedly.

Kate exchanged a glance with Alys past Morison’s shoulder.

‘I’m still not finished, maister,’ she said. ‘There’s more to tell you yet. I said it gets worse, and it does.’

‘Why, what’s happened? Not the bairns?’ exclaimed Morison in alarm.

‘No, no, the bairns are well. One of Mistress Mason’s lassies is with them just now,’ she assured him, ‘teaching them to play at merry-ma-tanzie.’ She took a breath, and plunged on before he could interrupt again. ‘No, maister. Last night, after all was quiet again, there was a second inbreak. Whoever it was, he never got into the house, but he found where we’d shut Billy in the coalhouse.’

‘And?’ He looked intently at her face, and read the news there. Appalled, he put out a hand and covered hers where they lay in her lap. ‘Lady Kate, you’ve met a deal of trouble and pain for me. Was it you found him?’ She shook her head, thinking of the moment when Andy had stumbled into the house, grey-faced with shock, blood on his boots. ‘Our Lady be praised for that mercy, at least. How was he killed?’

‘Cut to pieces,’ said Kate carefully. ‘With an axe, or something of the sort.’

‘With an axe?’ Morison looked down at his hand, retrieved it hastily, and crossed himself. ‘Our Lord have mercy on him,’ he muttered, and both girls said Amen. After a moment he continued, ‘Did nobody hear anything? The other men? Ursel? No, Ursel wouldn’t hear the Last Trump once she gets to snoring. How did he get in the yard, Lady Kate?’

‘The same way Billy did, Andy reckons,’ said Kate, ‘up from the stable yett. Babb and I never heard a thing. One of the men said he thought he heard shouting, or maybe something fall, out in the yard not long before dawn, but there was nothing else so he jaloused it was maybe a cat. Andy had a word to say to him about that, but as he said, who’d have thought there would be two inbreaks in the one night?’

Morison nodded, took a deep breath, and passed a hand down across his face. ‘Have you taken it to the Provost?’

‘We told him first,’ said Alys. ‘He agreed you must be informed, maister.’

‘I’m grateful.’ He smiled wryly. ‘At least I think so. The poor fellow. God and Our Lady have mercy on him,’ he said again. ‘Lady Kate, you must see — this is not safe for you. Tell me you’ll go back to your uncle’s house.’

‘Babb’s with me,’ said Kate, looking across the yard at her waiting-woman, who was towering over the two men at the castle gate. ‘She’s an army in herself.’

‘Not against a man with an axe. I want you out of my house, my lady.’

‘That’s not very friendly,’ she reproached. ‘I am right glad when ye will go And sory when ye will come, is that it?’

He coloured up. ‘Once this is done wi you’ll be a welcome guest if you choose, but right now it’s not safe. Lady Kate, I beg you, will you go back to Rottenrow?’

‘Aye, when I know the bairns are safe.’

‘Send Andy to me when you get back down the brae,’ said Morison. ‘I’ll gie him his orders. If you’d just let him have a bit coin out the small kist in the counting-house — I’ll gie you the key. Ursel can show you where it is.’ He patted his doublet, and drew a key on a chain from inside it.

‘He’ll come up as soon as he’s free.’

‘Is there anything he should bring with him?’ Alys asked.

Morison shook his head. ‘I’m right well treated,’ he confessed. ‘I think Sir Thomas doesn’t believe ill of me. Unless,’ he added hopefully, ‘Andy brought one of my books.’

‘Where are they?’ asked Kate, turning the key over. It was warm in her hand.

‘They’re in my counting-house and all, on the shelf above the desk. Just send any of them, but you’ll make sure, Lady Kate, won’t you, if it’s one that’s bound in two-three volumes, that they’re all there?’

‘No,’ said Kate deliberately, ‘I’ll send you one volume of this and another of that.’ He stared at her and laughed uncertainly. ‘It adds variety,’ she told him, straight-faced, and opened her purse to stow the key safely.

‘What have you in mind?’ asked Alys as they made their way down the crowded High Street.

‘In mind?’

Alys turned to look up at Kate, her quick smile flickering. ‘You did not say you would leave Morison’s Yard,’ she observed.

Kate, perched on the back of her mule, answered the smile, but at her other side Babb said, ‘Leave? I should think not, my doo! Leave those bairns wi nobody to see them safe but a pack of daft laddies and that bauchle Andy?’

‘I’m glad you agree,’ said Kate, but Alys said:

‘Oh, the bairns! I meant to ask Maister Morison what ails the older one.’

‘I asked that Ursel this mornin,’ said Babb. ‘She said she’s been that way a year or more. Seems they’d both had a right dose o the rheum, they got it a year past at St Mungo’s tide when the lass that was minding them let them get chilled at the Fair, and the older lassie took a rotten ear wi it, and after that she seemed never to hear what was said to her, says Ursel, except it was her sister. What’s her daft-like name, now?’

‘They’re both daft-like names,’ said Kate. ‘Wynliane and Ysonde.’ And how, she wondered, had such a gentle soul managed to get away with naming his daughters out of the romances, instead of after their grandmothers in the proper way? There was a strong current of determination, she recognized, under the gentleness.

‘Aye,’ said Babb, striding onwards down the hill. ‘Wynliane.’

‘There are simples for a rotten ear,’ said Alys, clicking her tongue in annoyance. ‘And for the rheum, indeed. Poor poppet. So what do you have in mind?’ she asked again.

‘The house, for one,’ said Kate. Alys nodded. ‘The yard. Those men will sit about all day playing at dice if they’re not put to work.’ Alys nodded again. ‘The bairns. I asked Jennet this morning and she says there’s barely a stitch in their kist that fits them, and little more in the wash.’

‘And with the rest of the day?’ asked Alys, the smile flickering again.

Kate looked at her, then at Babb, occupied in coaxing the mule past an assertive cockerel on his midden. ‘I thought,’ she said airily, ‘we could ask about a bit, see if we can learn anything about Billy Walker and the man with the axe. Maybe even have a drink in the Hog.’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Alys.

‘Oh, no, my doo!’ said Babb. ‘Back in that nasty place? Do you want the other pole cut down and all?’

‘I’ll go without you, then,’ said Kate.

‘You will not!’

‘Indeed aye!’ said Ursel, stirring a pot over the fire. ‘There’s store of linen in one of the presses up the stair, we can easy stitch them shifts.’ She paused for thought, her spoon suspended over the kale. ‘I’ve a notion there’s a bolt of woad-dyed and all, that would make wee kirtles to them. Better for them running about in than Wynliane’s good brocades.’

‘Excellent,’ said Alys. ‘We can cut them out after dinner.’

Kate was only half attending. She had two of Maister Morison’s books in her hands, a printed Bevis of Hampton and a handwritten collection of long poems, and was leafing through them. The printed book had occasional pencil marks in the margins, which somehow seemed very personal, but the choice of tales in the other book gave her a strange feeling of looking right into the man’s mind. She could visualize him, sitting over these books like the reader in Chaucer’s poem. How did it go? Here it was, indeed, and the page well-thumbed. In stede of reste and newe thynges, Thou goost hom to thy hous anoon; … thou sittest at another book Tyl fully daswed is thy look. What else had he copied? The whole of Sir Tristram and a portion of Greysteil were followed by an extraordinary poem which seemed to be English and involved babies stolen by wild animals, and then by Lancelot of the Laik. None of the humorous or bawdy tales which went around in such collections, no sign of Rauf Colyer or the Friars of Berwick. But alle is buxumnesse there and bokes, to rede and to lerne. Morison was clearly a romantic, through and through.

And yet a brief glance at the account book lying open on his tall desk had revealed still another side of the man. Details of load after load of goods from Irvine or Dumbarton or Linlithgow, with exotic ladings and amazing prices, showed a trim profit on every barrel.

‘Aye, well, mem,’ said Jennet from the kitchen doorway. She cast a glance out into the yard, where Babb and several reluctant men were weeding or shifting rubbish, and the two little girls were constructing an elaborate maze out of shards of pottery. ‘I washed them both as best I could last night, but they could do wi a bath.’ She grimaced. ‘And their hair needs a good seeing to, mem, if you tak my meaning. We’ll likely need to cut it and all, afore we’ll can get a comb through it.’

‘It’ll take all of us to bath them,’ Ursel warned. She put the lid back on the pot and turned away from the fire. ‘Wynliane screams till she boaks at the sight of that much water. That’s how they’ve no been washed right for months.’

‘Well,’ said Alys, ‘we must start the bath heating, and then get to work on the house.’ She craned to see past Jennet as the yett swung open. ‘Who is this? Someone with a horse?’

‘Three folk,’ said Jennet. ‘Is that Maister Gil’s Matt? Who’s he got there on the crupper?’

‘And here’s that Mall Anderson,’ said Ursel, swelling with indignation. ‘The cheek!’

Firm footsteps on the flagstones by the door heralded Matt, who dragged off his bonnet and ducked in a general bow.

‘Brought ye a nourice,’ he said. ‘Name’s Nan Thomson. Widow woman. Raised five. Great hand in a house and all.’

His passenger’s voice floated in from the yard. ‘My, that’s a fine building. What’s it to be?’

And, after a pause, Ysonde’s reply, almost civil by her standards: ‘It’s the Queen’s palace. Can you no see that?’

Anything Mistress Thomson might have said to this was lost in an explosion from Andy as he recognized the third arrival at the yett.

‘Mall Anderson, what are you doing in this yard? Get your thievin’ shiftless face out of my sight afore I slap it for you!’

‘Fetch Mall in here,’ said Kate urgently, setting the books aside. ‘I want a word with her.’

‘I’ll get the bairns out of the yard,’ said Alys. ‘I want to try physicking that ear. Ursel, have you tartar of wine?’

Mall was propelled into the kitchen by a furious Ursel, with Andy exclaiming angrily behind them. Ignoring them both, she stopped in front of Kate, wringing her plump hands in her apron. There were tear stains on her face, and her lip quivered.

‘Oh, mem,’ she pleaded, ‘what’s this they’re saying about my Billy? Tell me it’s no true, mem?’

‘Oh, my dear lassie,’ said Kate, with a rush of sympathy. ‘I’m afraid it is. Billy’s dead, Mall. He was slain in the night.’

She was aware of Alys pausing in the doorway on her way out to the children, but all her attention was on the girl in front of her, who had collapsed in a wailing heap, flinging her apron over her head. Amid the racking sobs words could be made out.

‘I tellt him no to do it, I begged him to leave it! He wouldny listen to me. Oh, my Billy, my dawtie, my dearie!’

Andy abandoned his indignation, heaved the girl up and set her down beside Kate. Ursel, in grim practicality, dragged away the apron and forced a mouthful of aqua vitae down her throat, which made her choke but stopped the wild sobbing, and Kate took her hands with a sudden recollection of Augie Morison clasping her own hands not an hour earlier, and said earnestly, ‘Mall, if you tried to persuade him against it, you did your duty by him. Now tell me all about it. Who put him up to it? It was never his own idea.’

Mall nodded, gulping, and freed one of her hands to scrub at her eyes with her apron.

‘Tell me what happened to him, mem,’ she begged, sniffling. ‘Was it one of the household took him? How did he dee? Tammas constable wouldny tell me, he just said he was found. .’

Kate bit her lip.

‘He was taken redhand in the night,’ she said carefully, ‘here in the house, breaking into a lockfast kist. We questioned him, but got no sense of him.’

‘No, you wouldny,’ said Mall, shaking her head. Subdued like this, with the cockiness all gone out of her, she seemed much more reasonable than her lover.

‘So we bound him, and shut him in the coalhouse for the rest of the night,’ Kate continued. ‘Now, Mall, he was man alive when Andy here shut him in.’

‘And cursing,’ put in Andy.

‘He can curse like a mariner,’ agreed Mall, and her lip quivered.

‘But when Andy went to fetch him out this morning, to see if he’d tell us any more before we sent for the serjeant, he was lying dead.’

‘How?’ the girl whispered.

‘It looked as if someone wi an axe went at him,’ said Andy bluntly. Mall stared up at him, open-mouthed. The high colour receded from her face, leaving two patches of red flaring on her round cheeks; then she put up her hands to cover her mouth. A thin high wail escaped from behind them, and she began to rock back and forward.

‘Some more usquebae, I think, Ursel,’ said Kate.

‘It’s no usquebae,’ said Ursel, pouring out another small measure. ‘It’s the good stuff, come from the Low Countries.’

She pulled Mall’s hands from her mouth and administered the dose with efficiency. Mall choked on it, hiccuped a couple of times, and began to weep again, but when Kate said, ‘What can you tell us about the man with the axe, lassie?’ she shook her head and said coherently enough through the sobs:

‘Aye, it must ha been him. It must ha been him. I never heard his name, mistress. Billy said he cam from Stirling, or Edinburgh, or one of those places. He speaks strange-like.’

‘How, strange?’ asked Kate. ‘Is he maybe no a Scot? Could he be foreign?’

Mall sniffled. ‘He might be. I never heard anyone foreign speaking.’

‘Mistress Mason’s French,’ said Andy.

The girl considered this briefly, and shook her head again. ‘No, I canny tell. He doesny sound like Mistress Mason, but that’s all I ken.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Oh, my dear, my Billy. Oh, if he’d never met that man.’

‘When did he meet him?’ Kate asked gently.

‘Yesterday.’ Mall stopped to think. ‘After the noon bite.’

‘What did he tell you about him?’

‘Oh, he’d no need of telling me. I heard it all.’

With careful questioning, she produced an account of how, after the household had eaten, she had slipped away for a tryst with Billy. Ursel exchanged a glance with Andy at this, but neither said anything. Waiting for her sweetheart in the hayloft of the stable, down at the end of Morison’s property next to the mill-burn, Mall had heard voices on the path beyond the fence.

‘So I keeked out,’ she said, ‘at the eaves where the swallas fly in, and I seen Billy out on the path by the burn, talkin wi this big ugly man. A grim-lookin’ chiel.’

The man had been all dressed in black, with a long-hafted axe, and a silly wee bit beard. He had told Billy that some task was not yet finished; Billy had claimed he was paid only to open the yett, and had done more than that already.

‘What yett?’ demanded Ursel. ‘This yett here?’

‘He never said. No here, I dinna think, no this one. But Billy said, if he’d kent what he’d have to do he’d never ha taken the chiel’s money.’

The man with the axe had pressed Billy to complete the work, threatening to tell his master what he had done already.

‘He didny want to,’ Mall assured Kate, wiping her eyes again. ‘He tellt me after, it didny seem right. But I think he was feart what the man wi the axe would do to him, no just for him telling the maister. The man said he cheated him, and he never did.’

‘What was he to do?’

He had been instructed to tell the Provost at the quest that afternoon that he and the other men had been got out of the way when the barrel was opened. Kate, listening, decided the two must have been talking for some time before Mall heard them; the stranger already seemed to know a great deal about Billy’s part in the day. Billy had objected, saying it would get his master arrested, and the man with the axe had laughed.

‘It fair made my spine creep,’ said Mall, remembering. ‘Then he said, That was the point, to get the maister out the road, and Billy was to get the key to his kist and all. So after,’ she closed her eyes, and tears leaked under her lashes, ‘he tellt me to get the key. And if Andy hadny sent him off — ’ Andy snorted at this — ‘it would ha been easy, and he’d never been taken, and never …’ She scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘Where is he? Can I see him?’

‘The serjeant took him away,’ said Kate gently. ‘There has to be a quest on him.’

‘Up at the castle?’

‘He was mighty cut about,’ warned Andy. ‘You’d maybe no want to see it.’

‘I want to say farewell to him,’ said the girl. ‘And when I think just yesterday …’ Her face crumpled again.

‘What else did Billy and this man say?’ Kate asked. ‘Did they say what Billy had done already? Did you hear anything about what the man wanted him to find?’

‘Just the rest of the treasure,’ said Mall, ‘that he said was in the barrel.’

‘There was no — ’ began Andy.

Kate shook her head at him. ‘The rest of it?’

‘Aye. He kept on about that, and Billy kept telling him he kenned naught about it. He said, he said,’ Mall shut her eyes to think better, ‘You tellt us it was in the barrel already. You can find the rest of it, wee man. Then he laughed.’ She shivered. ‘Made my skin creep, so he did,’ she admitted again, and dabbed her eyes with her apron.

‘That’s why Billy was so certain there should be another bag hid in the house,’ said Kate thoughtfully. ‘And you never learned his name, or anything about him? He never mentioned any other names?’

Mall shut her eyes again, thinking.

‘No,’ she said after a moment. ‘No that I recall. I canny mind clear.’ She sniffed, and managed a watery smile. ‘Oh, aye. There was one orra thing. He was saying the Baptizer wanted his goods and gear back, and Maidie would help him. Was that no a strange thing to say?’

‘The Baptizer?’ Kate repeated. ‘St John Baptist, did he mean? Was it a joke, maybe? Was he talking about the man whose head was in the barrel?’

‘Maybe he was.’

‘And who might Maidie be?’ said Andy.

‘Oh, his strumpet, for certain,’ said Ursel grimly.

Mall shook her head. ‘I wouldny ken.’

‘Have you kin in Glasgow, Mall?’ said Alys from the doorway to the stairs.

The girl looked at her, while the question sank in. ‘My sister dwells in Greyfriars Wynd,’ she said drearily. ‘I lay there last night.’

‘I think you should go to her now. Andy, may one of the men take her there?’

‘No need to disturb the men, when they’re working,’ said Ursel grimly. ‘I can leave the dinner for now, mistress. I’ll see her to her sister’s door.’ She untied her apron and took her plaid down from its nail on the back of the door, saying with rough sympathy, ‘Come, lass. You’ll be best wi your kin the now.’

‘And Mall,’ said Kate urgently, ‘don’t say aught about the man with the axe.’ Mall, halfway across the kitchen, turned to stare at her. ‘Not to your sister, nor anyone else, unless the Provost himself.’

Mall’s pale eyes grew round again. Her hand went up to cover her mouth, and she nodded emphatically as Ursel drew her from the kitchen.

‘Well!’ said Andy.

‘Well!’ said Alys.

‘How much did you hear?’ asked Kate.

‘From the hayloft onwards.’ Alys came forward, her smile flickering, and sat down beside Kate on the settle. ‘She may have more to mind Billy by than she bargains for, poor lass, if they trysted in a hayloft.’

‘And what’s this daft stuff about the Baptizer?’ said Andy. ‘What’s he mean by that?’

‘The Axeman’s maister, surely,’ said Kate. ‘Some kind of by-name, I suppose. Could it be a priest? Someone who baptizes people? Is he from Perth, maybe, or is there a church of St John hereabouts?’

‘Could it be the Knights of St John?’ suggested Alys.

‘You mean, the Axeman is from Torphichen?’ Kate frowned. ‘There was no cross on his cloak. And would the Knights kill, in secret like that?’

‘They would kill,’ said Alys, ‘but not like that. Either more secret, so that nobody knew how or who, or else quite openly.’

Kate eyed the younger girl speculatively, but said nothing. Andy said, ‘And was that Matt Hamilton in the yard, my leddy?’

‘It was, with a nurse for the bairns.’

‘A good woman, too,’ said Alys approvingly. ‘She held Wynliane for me to wash her ears and put drops in them — oh, they were bad, I’ve never seen such a crust on a bairn’s ears — and she paid no attention when the little one was rude. I left her just now singing to them.’

She turned her head as footsteps clopped on the stairs, and Ysonde appeared round the curve of the spiral and stepped into the kitchen with her sister and their new nurse behind her. Seeing Kate, Ysonde made her way directly towards her and announced gruffly, ‘This is Nan. She’s come from Dumbrattan — Dumbarton,’ she corrected herself, ‘to mind us for a bit. She kens stories.’

Nan Thomson bobbed a brief curtsy and smiled at Kate.

‘You’re Matt’s Lady Kate, mem, aren’t ye no?’ she said. ‘He’s tellt me about you.’

She was a bulky, black-browed woman in a widow’s headdress and a worn homespun gown, but she had a comfortable bosom and capable hands, one of which was curved round Wynliane’s shoulder at the moment.

‘I can see there’s plenty for me to be doing,’ she added.

‘Has Matt explained?’ asked Kate.

The linen headdress nodded. ‘We’ll see how we all get on, mem,’ Nan said firmly.

Introduced to Ursel and Andy, she gave them both a friendly smile, and then gathered up Ysonde’s hand and announced, ‘We’ll see you all later. These two good lassies are going to show me their chamber where they sleep, aren’t you, my poppets?’

Ysonde stuck out her lower lip and nodded; Wynliane peeped up at her and turned obediently back to the stair.

‘She looks a good worker,’ said Ursel once the footsteps had died away into the hall.

Alys’s eyes danced. ‘Matt got a very hearty buss when he left. I think they know one another well.’

‘Andy,’ said Kate, ‘tell me again how you found Billy.’

Nothing loth, he sat down on a stool and launched into what was clearly becoming a well-practised recital.

‘I went to the coalhouse, like you tellt me, my leddy, to fetch him in to see if he’d changed his story at all, afore we called the serjeant. And the first thing I noticed, the bar wasny on the door.’

‘Where was it?’ Kate asked.

He halted, clearly not having considered this before. ‘Laid on the ground at the side of the door,’ he said after a moment, gesturing with his left hand. ‘And I thocht to mysel, I thocht, Oh, our man’s away, he’s got out while we was all sleeping. The next I noticed was the marks on the door, like someone’s hand. So I opened the door, and what I saw — ’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I’ve been on a battlefield, my leddy. I’ve seen the kind o thing afore. But this was, this was — and a man doesny expect to meet it in his own yard.’

‘No,’ agreed Kate, since something was obviously expected of her.

‘It wasny — ’ He stopped again, and swallowed. ‘It wasny a clean kill. He’d tried to get away, poor loon. That’s why I wanted to stop the lassie going to see him. Thievin’ wretch she may be, but he was her leman. Hacked into pieces, he was, and blood all over the coalheap.’

‘We must wash that,’ said Alys immediately, ‘before it sets any further.’

‘Likely you could sell the whole load o coals to Mattha Hog just as they are,’ said Andy darkly. ‘If I ken my maister he’ll no want to burn them, that’s for sure, washed or no. Our Lady be praised, we’ve enough broken barrels and that on the woodheap to burn till we can order up more.’

‘Aye, we could sell it and be rid of it, if the serjeant has seen all he needs to,’ said Kate.

‘He’s seen it,’ said Andy. ‘He looked at the coal-house, and the blood everywhere, and he looked at me and the men, no what ye’d call clean since they’re good workers but none o us wi blood on his shoes or his clothes, except my boots from when I found him, and he said it wasny any of us, it must ha been another intruder, maybe Billy’s accomplice, and lucky we were no to have been cut up oursels. And for once in his life,’ he added drily, ‘I think John Anderson’s right.’

‘I want a look at these marks on the door,’ said Alys.

‘And I,’ said Kate, and reached for her crutches.

The coalhouse was part of the stone structure containing the kitchen, the laundry and several other storehouses. Each of these had a stout door of broad planks, the storehouse doors secured by a wooden bar lodged in slots in the stone jambs. The coalhouse was nearest to the kitchen; Kate, approaching it, looked back along the length of the house and saw that the kitchen building was not so deep as the timber-framed hall and chambers, so that its doors were set some way back compared to the house windows. Besides, the windows of the room where she and Babb had slept, with difficulty, after the excitements of the midnight had been firmly shuttered. Small wonder that she had heard nothing.

The men at their weeding and tidying glanced sideways at them, but carefully paid no more attention. Babb, restacking huge yellow pots on a rack near the gate, straightened up to see if her mistress required her, then went back to her task.

‘There ye are,’ said Andy, gesturing at the coalhouse. ‘That’s about how I found it, my leddy.’

The door was standing shut, the bar lying on the ground beside it. There was a single large handprint, slightly smudged and now quite dry, showing dark against the bleached wood, as if someone had set his hand against the door to push it to. Kate, balanced on her crutches, put her own hand up without touching the mark.

‘A bigger hand than mine,’ she said, ‘and someone taller than me.’ She remembered the big man she had seen in the Hog, the flat, ugly face with its wisp of beard, and shivered.

‘His left hand,’ observed Alys. ‘And the bar laid down this side. I wonder if the man is left-handed?’

‘He went by on my right,’ contributed Kate, ‘and hacked at this pole.’

Alys nodded. ‘May we open the door?’

‘You don’t need to open the door,’ said Andy roughly. ‘I’ve tellt you what’s inside.’

‘I want to see,’ said Alys. Kate moved aside, and Andy opened the door with reluctance. Kate peered inside, and swallowed. She had not been prepared for the way the heap of coal betrayed Billy’s last moments so clearly, the pits and hollows where he had trampled about trying to escape his executioner, and the blood smeared among the coal-dust halfway up the walls as well as caked among the loose coal. She thought of the man in the Hog, and the long reach and swing of a Lochaber axe. With that great bulk blocking the doorway, there would have been no escape.

Beside her Alys stared dispassionately, but her hand crept out and closed over Kate’s where it gripped the crutch.

‘We must certainly have this out of here,’ she said, her voice trembling slightly. ‘And the walls scrubbed down before you order a new load of coals.’

‘Christ and Our Lady have compassion on him,’ said Kate, and crossed herself. ‘It is still extraordinary,’ she added, ‘that none of us heard anything. Surely he had time to cry out?’

‘Perhaps he was t-too busy trying to get out of reach,’ said Alys, her hand still tight over Kate’s.

‘Seen enough?’ said Andy, and shut the door without waiting for an answer. ‘What now, my leddy?’

‘I want to look at the back gate,’ said Kate, ‘where he likely got in, and then the men must have their noon bite, and someone must take those books to Maister Morison, and then …’

She looked at Alys.

‘What are you planning, Lady Kate?’ asked Andy suspiciously.

‘That’s just it,’ she said. ‘I think now it might not be so clever.’

Alys nodded ruefully.

‘What’s no so clever?’ Andy looked from one to the other of them. ‘Oh, no. No back to the Hog. I’ll take your mule up to Rottenrow my ain sel’ first, to keep you from going out.’

‘No need,’ said Kate, setting off towards the back of the yard. ‘I can see for myself that sitting in the tavern asking openly about this man that slips into places to kill by night is no the best way to carry on the enquiry.’

‘Just the same,’ said Alys. Kate paused, and looked at her again. ‘What if …’ she began. ‘What if someone went down to the Hog — don’t worry, Andy, we could send one of the men — to offer Mattha the chance to purchase these coals.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps he could take money,’ she continued, thinking aloud, ‘to buy Billy’s friends a drink.’

‘The whole of the Hog would turn out to be his drinking-fellows,’ objected Andy.

‘So they would. Then how can we learn more?’

‘What are ye after?’

‘Anyone who overheard him yesterday,’ said Kate. ‘Anything we can learn about the man with the axe and what he and Billy said to one another.’

‘But without the man with the axe learning we are seeking for him,’ supplied Alys.

Andy gnawed at his lip. ‘A tall order,’ he commented. ‘Jamesie and William might manage it. If we gied them some drinksilver after their dinner, and the message for Mattha right enough, they could sit a while and see what they might hear.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the industrious men, and grinned suddenly. ‘I’ve a notion they’d like it better than shifting broken crocks. I’ll have to let them all have the evening off.’

The back of the yard, beyond the barn and the cart-shed, was defined by a tall fence of split palings, well maintained, though the whitewash had worn off it. Kate commented on this, and Andy grunted.

‘I’ve kept the palings tied on,’ he said, ‘for it keeps the hens out the yard mostly, but we’ve no had the time for whiting things for a while. See, while we were at Linlithgow last week,’ he explained, dragging the gate open, ‘William and our John stayed here to mind the yard, but the other two fellows had the other cart to Irvine wi three great pipes for Ireland, laden wi crocks and St Mungo kens all-what gear. They brought back a couple of tuns of wine and some small stuff for Clem Walkinshaw and a few others, and they’d ha been out again the morn with another load if this hadny happened. He’s been driving us and himself, ever since — well, for the last couple of years.’

Beyond the gate the rest of the property sloped down towards the mill-burn, ending in another, lower fence with a gate in it, and the stable where Mall had waited for her sweetheart. Kate stood at the top of the slope, looking about her. The kale-yard nearest the fence, where the chickens were pecking, was obviously being worked, and was well tended, but beyond it to one side was a small pleasance whose formal shapes were outlined by untrimmed box hedges and full of weeds. There was a bench, disappearing under a rampant honeysuckle, and two strips of standing hay which were probably intended to be grassy paths, Kate thought.

‘The mistress sat there often,’ said Andy, seeing the direction of her glance.

Kate nodded. She remembered Agnes Cowan, a round-faced girl with brown curls, a ready laugh and a significant tocher. What, she wondered, had brought her down so far that she drowned herself, leaving her two little girls motherless?

Alys bent to look at the neat plots of vegetables.

‘I would like some seed off these turnips,’ she said. ‘They are different from mine. Who minds the garden?’

‘Our John,’ said Andy.

‘He would make a gardener,’ said Alys. ‘Kate, have you seen all you want?’

‘Aye. Not hard to get in by the fence down yonder,’ she said, ‘and this gate can be opened from either side. He’d have had no trouble getting into the yard.’

As they turned to go in, one of the men threaded his way between the buildings with a word for Andy, glancing sideways at Kate and Alys as he delivered it. Andy nodded, and sent him back.

‘That’s one of the constables at the yett, Jamesie says,’ he reported. ‘We’re all summoned to the quest on Billy. They want it for the morn, after Terce, to get it out the way afore the King gets here.’

‘I have never seen such a quest,’ remarked Alys.

‘I’ve seen one too many,’ said Andy sourly. ‘You can come along if you will, mistress. I’ve no doubt Lady Kate’d be glad o yir company.’