A Pig of Cold Poison (16 page)

‘Bez,’ said John happily. He squatted down to gather more, and held up a bright red berry between thumb and forefinger. ‘Morple, pease?’

She stared at the patch of ground where he sat. Dark oval leaves flopped this way and that, and above them little stems nodded, each bearing a curve of bright berries. Not the laurel, but nearly as bad. How many had he eaten? How many would it take to –

She found she was running towards the gate, the child in her arms, wiping fragments of berries off her hands on his back and shoulders. He was struggling, and exclaiming, ‘No! No! Want bez!’ and the gate seemed to be getting no closer, as if she was running on the spot. Her mind was whirling round and round like a squirrel in a cage. What was the treatment? Was there an antidote? How many had he swallowed?

Nan was at her side, offering to take the boy from her. She clutched him closer, despite his indignant cries, and tried to run faster.

‘What was it? What had he got at, mem?’

She stared, open-mouthed, over John’s dark curls. Her Scots had deserted her.

‘
Muguet
,’ she said. ‘
Muguet des bois
. Little white – scented – I don’t know –’

They were in Kate’s garden, and Mysie was wailing and Nancy was hiccuping in shock. Edward was screaming, the two little girls were sobbing, everyone seemed to be crying except herself and Kate and Nan, but a ring of silent, appalled men stared at the scene. She set John down on the bench, and he pushed away from her, red-faced and cross.

‘Want bez,’ he reiterated. ‘Mine bez. Now!’

‘He had eaten berries of
muguet
,’ she said to Kate, still unable to find the Scots word. ‘I don’t know how many but it is poisonous. We should make him vomit, we should –’

‘Right,’ said Nan practically, seized the boy and pushed a finger down his throat. He screamed angrily at her, but did no more than hiccup and scream again when she withdrew the finger. Her next attempt obtained only furious roaring, which escalated rapidly into a full-blown tantrum.

‘He’s no having any,’ said one of the men. ‘I doubt, I doubt –’

‘May lilies,’ said Kate suddenly over her son’s screaming. ‘Lily of the vale, Our Lady’s Tears.’ She was shaking, but gathered her stepdaughters to her. ‘Come, come, lassies, no need to cry. You wereny to know he’d run off.’ She handed the baby to an awed Wynliane. ‘Can you stop Edward, I mean Floris from crying for me? Andy, get the men back to work, there’s nothing for them to do here.’

‘He’ll no throw it up,’ said Nan despairingly, looking down at the roaring child in her arms. ‘Should we try salt in water, mem?’

‘I don’t like his colour,’ said Alys. ‘He’s gone very pale if that’s a tantrum. And he’s slavering.’

‘Has he vomited?’ A new voice. Alys looked round sharply, and found Grace Gordon at her elbow, her apron full of crockery. She seemed out of breath. ‘Has he vomited?’ she repeated.

‘No, we can’t make him –’

Without comment Grace set down the things she carried on the bench beside Kate, poured water and a few drops of something into a small beaker, added a single drop of something else, advanced on the child still roaring in Nan’s arms. Mysie had stopped weeping and she and Nancy were clinging together staring. Edward was still crying.

‘Had you cleared his mouth?’

‘Yes, yes, I –’

‘Hold his head, then,’ Grace directed. Alys obeyed, and the entire contents of the beaker vanished into the square scarlet mouth. John choked, spluttered, began to cry rather than roar. Grace watched him tensely until he suddenly wailed in distress, dribbled at the mouth again and was very sick. Nan tipped him expertly forward, and Grace inspected the results in the grass.

‘Only some fragments,’ she said dubiously. ‘Is he finished, do you think? He needs to empty his wee wame.’

‘No, there’s more,’ said Nan as the child wailed again.

Grace stepped back, and said to Alys, ‘What has he eaten today?’

‘Bread, porridge,’ said Alys shakily, trying to recall. ‘Nancy, what did he eat?’

‘Two raisins,’ said Nancy. ‘An apple. Or was that last night? Oh, mem, I’ll never forgive mysel!’ Her face crumpled again, and she scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve.

‘Bread and porridge,’ repeated Grace, bending to study the second instalment. ‘I think that’s most of it, then, and the apple, and it looks as if he’d only swallowed one or two fragments of the berries.’ She broke off a twig of box from the nearest hedge and poked at the mess on the grass. ‘Good.’

John was still crying, though the sobs were slower now.

‘He’s getting sleepy,’ said Nan, wiping the child’s mouth. Grace straightened up and came to check his pulse, then tilted up his head and raised one heavy eyelid to study his eye.

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘The pupil is enlarged but not greatly, the pulse is steady considering how distressed he is. Poisoning progresses rapidly in such a small form, but so does the antidote. I think we’ve caught it in time.’

‘You mean he’s safe?’ demanded Nancy through her tears. ‘Oh, is he safe, mem?’

‘He must be watched,’ said Grace, ‘for the headache, cold sweats, pains in his belly. I’ll give you something for him in case that happens. But if he sleeps naturally he should be safe.’

Alys crossed herself, tears starting to her eyes. Nancy dropped to her knees on the cold ground, snatching out her beads. Mysie imitated her, and they set up a murmuring of heartfelt thanksgiving, broken by Nancy’s occasional sobs. Nan made her way to a bench and sat down on it, rather heavily, one hand going up to stroke the drowsy child’s dark curls.

‘What did you give him?’ Alys asked anxiously, thinking of a candle to St John. The boy’s weight in wax, or even double –

‘A little ipecac, to induce vomiting, always the best beginning in a case of poisoning in a child,’ said Grace with some hesitation, as if she was translating the comments out of one or more other languages, ‘and to control the heartbeat a drop of fever-bark tincture, a valuable specific against the effects of May lily or foxglove.’ She felt the child’s pulse again. ‘I wonder – maybe another drop of that the now, to be certain.’

‘Christ and His saints be thanked that you came to our aid,’ said Alys fervently.

‘Thanks be to Our Lady your woman fetched me.’

‘Fetched you?’ said Kate. ‘I was about to ask what brought you. I’ve never been so relieved to see anyone, Grace. Who fetched you?’

Grace paused in measuring the water for the dose.

‘It was a woman,’ she said blankly. ‘Did you not send her? I was in my chamber, and she came in and said the boy had eaten berries of May lilies and needed my help. Is she not one of your women?’

‘We’d had no time to think of sending for anyone,’ said Kate. ‘What like woman? You’re sure it wasny one of the men?’

‘No, it was a woman. Tall, dark hair worn loose, a checked gown,’ said Grace. ‘I took her for an Erschewoman. She made it plain it was urgent. So I gathered the remedies I needed and ran down the garden and in by the gate there.’ She turned to administer her prescription, but at the look which Kate and Alys exchanged she halted. ‘What have I said?’

*    *    *

‘It sounds like Ealasaidh,’ said Kate.

‘But how can it have been? She is in Fife, I think, and the last I heard she was well.’ Alys shivered, and clasped her hands closer round the beaker of spiced ale, grateful for its warmth. ‘To think of what word I might have had to send her –’

Dinner was over, a subdued meal at which Alys had been unable to swallow more than a mouthful. Both Wynliane and Ysonde, standing at the table beside Kate, had had to be coaxed to eat, and Ysonde had suddenly burst out with, ‘John might have died! Of poison berries!’

‘Yes, but he didn’t,’ said Kate, ‘and we’re going to pray for Mistress Gordon all our days, aren’t we? She saved him.’

Grace had gone back to the Renfrew house, matter-of-factly brushing off Alys’s fervent thanks. On her advice, John had been watched carefully until the meal was ended, but he had slept heavily in a nest of plaids in one of the window bays, and had not woken when Nancy lifted him to carry him home. It seemed to be a natural sleep; his colour was good, his skin dry and neither cold nor hot.

‘Don’t think of it,’ said Kate firmly now. ‘John is safe, and home in his own crib, thanks be to God, and we’ve all learned a valuable lesson. I’ll have Andy secure the fence before nightfall, and Nancy and Mysie both will keep a closer eye on the bairns from now on. But I don’t mean,’ she went on, returning to her point, ‘that it was Ealasaidh herself. I think it must have been her fetch. Danger to the boy would be enough to summon someone like her. She’s an Erschewoman, after all, as Grace said. They can do strange things.’

Alys eyed her warily. ‘Gil has mentioned such things too,’ she said. ‘I find it – how can a living person be a ghost? And how would such a ghost know that Grace was the one to tell?’

Kate shook her head. ‘As well explain one as the other,’ she observed. ‘Whatever happened, the boy is unharmed, we’ll both be grateful to Grace Gordon all our days, and there’s no sign of whatever woman it was on the rest of the High Street.’

Questioning the men in the yard and Maister Syme who was in the shop next door had elicited no sighting of a woman such as Grace described. They could not work out how the visitant had reached Grace’s chamber without being seen by someone, the more so since the Renfrew house was busy with company as Meg’s contemporaries called to congratulate her and admire the baby and the maidservants came and went with refreshments.

In the middle of their enquiry, John Paterson had returned, somewhat chagrined to discover he had missed the excitement, with the news that he had found Andrew Hamilton, working on a roof at the college, but Andrew said he had already spoken to Maister Gil about it and couldny be spared from the task at hand if they were to finish afore dark.

‘I wonder what Gil learned from Andrew,’ Alys said, trying to distract herself.

‘Likely he’ll tell you later,’ said Kate. ‘Is there anyone else he’s yet to speak to?’

‘He mentioned Nell Wilkie this morning,’ Alys recalled. ‘And Nell’s mother asked me to have a word with her too. She was still weeping, yesterday afternoon. I – I forgot about it,’ she finished abruptly, remembering the occasion. Just before she – just before – Think about something else. Someone else’s troubles are the best distraction, Mère Isabelle had always said. ‘I could do that now, I suppose. She might say more to me than to Gil.’

‘Poor girl,’ said Kate. ‘She seemed very troubled when – when it happened, and I’d not think Nancy Sproull would have much sympathy for that kind of distemper.’

They looked at one another.

‘I wonder what she knows?’ said Alys.

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Kate. Her eyes lit up. ‘I could do with a diversion, after a morning like that, Alys. May I come too?’

‘And we can call in at St Mary’s,’ said Alys, ‘and give thanks for John’s safety.’

Alys stepped in at the gates of Wilkie’s dyeyard along the Gallowgate, Babb on her heels leading Kate’s mule. Maister Wilkie and his men were dipping a batch of indigo, two men sweating at the winding-gear to raise the bolt of cloth from the vat and Maister Wilkie himself inspecting it critically as the blue colour developed in the air. The characteristic pungent smell of the dyestuff met them on the chilly breeze.

The dyeyard was set out much like Morison’s Yard, with the house to one side, the working space to the other, succeeded by long open sheds where swathes of cloth hung drying under cover, and beyond them the garden where in the summer weld and rocket showed yellow flowers and now the broad leaves of next season’s woad spread flat and green. More things laid out invitingly for little boys –

Alys nodded to the dyers, turned towards the house and rattled at the pin by the latch. The maidservant who came to the door looked doubtful when she asked for Nell.

‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘The lassie’s hardly ceased weeping since they cam home on Hallowe’en. Maybe you’d speak wi the mistress first, only she’s no very good the day. Will you come in, my leddy, mem, and I’ll fetch her?’

It was hardly surprising if Nancy Sproull was suffering, thought Alys, agreeing to the suggestion. Babb assisted Kate to dismount and handed her the crutches, then strode off to the kitchen, one of the men ran to take the mule, and the servant led them through the house, saying hopefully, ‘What was it happened? Is that right that Nanty Bothwell’s pysont the whole of the mummers, or is it just Dan Gibson that’s deid?’

‘It’s just the one man that died,’ Alys assured her, seeing Kate’s grim look. ‘Is Mistress Sproull in her own chamber, Sibby? Will we see ourselves there and save your feet?’

‘No, no, I’ll put you in the hall, for the mistress is in the kitchen, harrying the supper,’ said the woman, clearly reluctant to be parted from a source of information. ‘And what was it happened, then? Did he fall down dead in a moment, or was his belly afflicted first, or what? They’re saying the corp looks quite natural-like, as if he never felt a thing. And the quest on him’s put off till Monday, that should be a thing to hear!’

‘Very likely,’ said Alys, thinking that if this was one of her servants she would keep her home on Monday. ‘How is Nell?’

‘Still weeping, like I said.’ Sibby paused in the act of setting a chair for Kate as her mistress came into the hall. ‘Mistress? Here’s Lady Kate and Mistress Mason from the High Street.’

‘Och, Kate,’ said Nancy. ‘You shouldny ha bothered. How are you, my lassie? Are you recovered fro the fright yet? Sibby, fetch us a cup of ale, lass.’

‘I’ll feel the better for knowing who slew the lad,’ said Kate briskly. ‘And how are you, Nancy? How’s Nell?’

‘Oh, that lassie,’ said Nancy, putting a hand to her head. She drew up another chair and sat down opposite them, a pretty woman not yet forty, still slender, the dark-lashed eyes shadowed today. ‘She’s in her chamber still, would you credit it, hasny left it since we cam home from your house. If I hadny sic a headache I’d have her out of there, though to be fair she’s been busy at her sewing. Aye weeping, picked at her dinner which we put on a tray – she must be right sharp-set by now, the silly lassie. What it’s about she’ll no say, but it canny be Danny Gibson, her faither would never hear of her looking at a journeyman that young.’