The Counterfeit Madam (25 page)

‘Maister Cunningham!’ Otterburn called from outside. Gil followed the sound across a small yard of beaten earth well-sprinkled with goat droppings, past a turf-banked furnace to a substantial shed whose door stood wide.

‘The man thinks more of his work than his dwelling,’ he observed, ducking under the lintel.

‘Aye, very like. See what we’ve found here,’ said Otter-burn, gesturing largely. Gil looked about the dark interior. There was a shuttered window, and a bench below it, the sort of low structure a man could sit astride with his workpiece on a raised portion before him. A rack of small hammers and mells was fixed to the wall below the window. Two wooden bins held scrap metal of different qualities, other tools and materials were neatly stowed.

‘A hammerman’s workshop,’ said Gil.

‘There’s more.’ Otterburn was grinning in the shadows. ‘There’s more. Show him, Andro.’

Part of the back wall of the shed swung open, and Andro stepped through.

‘There’s no air in there!’ he complained, fanning himself with one hand. ‘Aye, sir, it’s all there, all Maister Livingstone described, so far’s I saw afore you shut the door on me. A bar o siller, a sack o blanks waiting to be struck, a sack o powder I suppose could be dried argol. And here’s the dies.’

‘It’s no that secret,’ said Otterburn disparagingly, ‘but you’d no spot it unless you were right next it, in this light, and it’s a right neat wee press when you get inside, all well stowed. It’s a false back wall to the shed, see, you’d no guess unless you paced it out. See us the dies, then, man.’

There were three of them, identical in size and heft to the one which had been hidden with Dod Muir’s body. Gil moved to the door to inspect them. Two showed the cross and four mullets, with no balls as Madam Xanthe had said. One of these was badly worn. The third should be the king’s head, he thought, turning it to the light.

‘Here’s a thing,’ he said. ‘Could this be why Dod Muir was slain?’

‘Eh?’ said Otterburn from the hidden press.

‘The die we found wi him was a worn head, right? Livingstone reckoned there were two heads and two crosses, one of each worn out, so we ought to have a good head here.’

‘Aye?’

‘This one’s damaged. There’s a great scratch across it, maybe from a chisel or the like, right across the king’s jaw.’

‘You mean Miller wanted him to make another and he refused?’ Otterburn came to look. ‘Why would he refuse? He was in it up to his neck any road.’

‘Maybe he hoped to get out of it.’ Gil admired the three dies where they lay in a row on his palm. ‘Maister Otter-burn, I think we’ve found our counterfeiter.’

‘Well, we’ve named him, any road,’ said Otterburn, prodding the dies with a long forefinger. ‘We’ve no found him yet, Maister Cunningham.’

‘No,’ said Gil, with a sudden rush of anxiety. ‘No, we haveny, and he’s out the same side of Glasgow as my wife.’

Sir Richie was astonished by their story. He was already out at the corner of his little church, staring up the glen, and when the little procession came in sight he vanished, to reappear shortly round the kirkyard wall, stole about his neck, a little box clasped carefully in one hand. Bearing this he made his way down to cross the burn by the plank bridge Alys had used, and came hurrying towards them.

‘Who’s hurt? Is there time to shrive them?’ he demanded as soon as he came within earshot. ‘Who is it? You’re all hale – who is it?’

Leaving Lowrie to direct his men and keep an eye on young Berthold, Alys came forward to explain. He listened attentively, crossing himself, then inspected the two dead men, flinching away from the burnt face of the boy’s father, exclaiming over and over.

‘And these were the demons? So they were flesh and blood after all! Bring them within the kirkyard at least. Were they Christian souls?’

‘I think it,’ said Alys. ‘The boy has a set of beads, I think he was praying for his father. Or perhaps for himself,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘Bring them in, then, bring them in. But what can we do, maister? If they’ve been murdered as you say, we should raise the hue and cry, but there’s never a soul to hear it in the Clachan, and none wi the authority to command the pursuit neither.’

‘Kirkintilloch would be the nearest,’ agreed Lowrie, lending a hand to steady one of the hurdles as Sim and Frank made their way down towards the burn. ‘Who would take charge in the usual way?’

Socrates’ ears pricked, and he growled. Alys turned her head, trying to hear over Sir Richie’s rambling answer. Was that more horses? Voices? She moved a little upstream and jumped across the burn, leaving the bridge to the bearers, then hurried up the rough grassy bank and, bending low, picked her way along the kirkyard wall with the dog at her heel. At the corner she paused, listening. Yes, there were voices, they had been heard, there was shouting about
Someone’s down yonder by the burn
. She moved forward to peer cautiously round the corner of the wall, and found herself almost nose to nose with Philip Sempill.

She sprang back quickly enough to take her beyond the reach of his aborted sword-thrust, and said, over the dog’s snarling,

‘Maister Sempill! What—?’

‘Mistress Mason!’ He lowered his whinger, gaping at her as she grasped Socrates’ collar. ‘Of all the people to meet here! What are you doing?’

‘Catching demons,’ she said, and indicated the procession behind her. ‘We have found silver miners in the glen, which I am
quite certain
your kinsman did not know of, and two of them are dead.’

‘Dead!’ he repeated, staring. ‘Who – who are they? How did you come to—’

‘Philip?’ John Sempill appeared behind his kinsman. ‘Who the deil are you speaking to?
You?
’ he said incredulously. ‘Deil’s bollocks, woman, can you no keep out of what doesny concern you? You’re worse than that man o yours.’

‘Good day to you, sir,’ she said, tightening her grip on the dog’s collar, and dropped him a curtsy. ‘I hope you left Lady Magdalen well?’

‘And who’s yonder?’ he demanded, ignoring this. ‘Philip, what’s going on here? Is that that fool o a priest down there and all?’

‘Mistress Mason says they have found two dead men in the glen,’ said Philip, with care. ‘They were mining silver. Is that not amazing?’

‘What do you—’ His cousin stared at him, pale blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Oh,’ he said after a moment. ‘Aye, that’s amazing. Right enough. Who’s dead? I mean, who are they? Is there just the two? Who killed them, anyways? What are you doing here? And him!’ he added, as Lowrie approached up the bank.

‘There’s one still living,’ said Alys.

‘Lowrie Livingstone, is that you poking about on my land where you’re no wanted? Was it you killed these two? Why?’

‘It was not,’ said Lowrie levelly, ‘and I don’t see why you assume it was. And it’s no your land, Muirend, it’s either my faither’s or Dame Isabella’s.’

‘It’s my land,’ Sempill began, and bit the words off as his cousin kicked him on the ankle. Lowrie gave him a small tight smile and stepped round him, guiding the men with the two hurdles up towards the kirkyard gate, the boy Berthold keeping somehow on the further side of the group.

Inside the little church, the boy made straight for the small bright figure of the Virgin and dropped on his knees before her, and Sir Richie, much reassured by this, directed the bearers where to set the hurdles down and began doing what was required for the dead. Alys took time for a brief word with St Machan in his brown robes, but she had trouble concentrating. Yesterday John Sempill had said there was trouble in Strathblane, and today here he was, presumably to deal with it. But had he already taken some action? He must have known the miners were there; did he also know about their deaths? Had Berthold recognized him just now?

Emerging from the building she found the two sets of servants eyeing each other warily from different corners of the kirkyard, and a stiff, chilly discussion going on across a table-tomb near the east end.

‘It’s still part o the heriot,’ Lowrie was saying as she approached. ‘My faither has the original disposition, it was never Thomas’s to alienate, let alone Dame Isabella’s.’

‘She was very clear about it,’ Philip Sempill observed.

‘Maidie’s no going to be pleased,’ said his cousin grimly. ‘I don’t know why you had to come meddling out here. Or you!’ he added to Alys, with hostility. ‘Who is it that’s dead, anyway? Who did kill them, if it wasny you? Was it that ill-conditioned laddie that’s in there the now?’

‘The laddie was away hunting for the pot,’ said Lowrie, ‘came back while we were debating what had happened, and he seems right grieved by the deaths.’ Sempill snorted in disbelief. ‘My man Frank, that’s a good huntsman, found the traces of four men in the clearing, three of them wi footwear they never got hereabouts, the other wi a narrower heel than any of us. If we can get this laddie somewhere there’s a speaker o High Dutch we can learn more from him.’

Sempill snorted again, and gave the younger man a hard stare, but Alys thought the words
good huntsman
had their effect. No landowner was likely to argue with an experienced huntsman’s reading of the ground.

‘And where was all this siller they’ve been winning?’ he demanded. ‘Stacked waiting to be carried off, I suppose!’

‘There was no sign of it,’ said Alys. ‘Perhaps someone had collected it quite recently.’

He grunted, scowling at her.

‘You’d know all about that, I suppose,’ he said, ‘creeping about Glasgow asking questions. You and Gil Cunningham, you’re well matched.’

‘Why, thank you sir,’ she said, and dropped him another curtsy.

‘What brought you out here?’ asked Philip Sempill. ‘You came here for a purpose, it’s well out the way for a casual ride for pleasure.’

‘Unless you were here
for
pleasure,’ said his cousin, with an unpleasant grin. Alys found her face burning, but Lowrie said calmly,

‘Maister Cunningham asked my escort here for madam his wife, since I ken the road.’

‘Aye, but why?’

She had foreseen this question.

‘I came to see the two properties out here,’ she offered, hoping she did not sound glib, ‘because of the confusion over what my good-sister was to have. After all, Dame Isabella’s will is yet to be found, one of these might yet go to Tib, and we thought it wiser to—’

‘In other words, you were poking that long nose into what doesny concern you,’ said Sempill. ‘Life ’ud be a lot easier if you and your man wereny aye nosing about. Philip, I want a word.’

He flung away across the kirkyard, and Philip, with a resigned look, followed him. Alys turned to Lowrie.

‘What do you wish to do now?’ he asked her. ‘There’s the boy Berthold to think of, and two men to bury, and the murder to cry forth. It all needs seen to. What would Maister Gil do?’

‘He’d do what’s right,’ she said without hesitating.

‘Aye, he would,’ Lowrie agreed. ‘The trouble is to discern what’s right here.’

She bit her lip. ‘I had it in mind to take that boy to my father. He speaks High Dutch, he has been in Cologne and places like that, and he can question him kindly.’ Lowrie smiled, and nodded. ‘As to burying the men, that’s for Sir Richie to think on in the first place. If he’ll not have them, we have to think again, but he’s our first road.’

‘I agree,’ said Lowrie. ‘But the murder. It’s remarkable how those two,’ he glanced at the Sempill cousins, whose word was becoming an argument, ‘turned up so prompt after it.’

‘It is,’ Alys agreed slowly.

‘How do you read this, anyway, mistress? What’s afoot? If it was Sempill sent someone to kill those men, then he kent they were there and what they were at. So why kill them?’

‘And who did he send?’ She stared up at the trees beyond the kirkyard wall. ‘I think, though I’ve no proof yet, the silver from here is the silver being coined in Glasgow.’

‘It’s more economical to believe that,’ said Lowrie, watching her, ‘than that there’s another silver mine within reach. The stuff’s scarce enough, Christ kens.’

‘But at whose behest? Dame Isabella, or Sempill, or Lady Magdalen? What will your father do about it, maister?’

‘Report it to the Crown. I’d not think Lady Magdalen would act against the Crown, either. I reckon more like it was the old dame who caused the coin to be struck, seeing it was her making use of it.’

‘Was it?’

‘I thought it was,’ he said after a moment, ‘but I’m no so certain now.’

‘No, I think you are right,’ she agreed, ‘though I also think we have no proof yet. What is John Sempill coming to say to us?’

‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ began Sempill when he was still several graves away. ‘
You
,’ he nodded at Lowrie, ‘and Philip can go and see what’s all this about narrow heels. You can take your
good huntsman
wi you, and one o our lads and all, and you’ll be quick about it, for I want to get home for supper.’

‘But Mistress Mason—’ Lowrie began.

‘I’m sure I’ll be safe in Sempill of Muirend’s keeping,’ Alys said sweetly. Sempill of Muirend scowled at her, but Lowrie bowed, and said politely to Philip,

‘My pleasure, then.’

‘And I’ll go and take a look at these dead men, and see what I think they dee’d from,’ Sempill went on with emphasis, ‘and get a word wi the priest about getting them in the ground. You can come too if you must, I suppose,’ he added disagreeably to Alys. ‘And there’s never a word o use trying to talk to that boy, either, he’s got no more Scots than your dog there.’

Possibly less, thought Alys, considering the number of words Socrates understands, but how do you know that? She paused to speak to her own men about watering the horses and allowing them to graze a little, and followed Sempill into the little church.

Sir Richie, having dealt with the matter of conditional absolution and said a charitable Mass for the dead, was much more willing to talk to his visitors now. Exclaiming over the flesh-and-blood nature of the demons, thanking Sempill repeatedly for returning to take care of the problem, he displayed the corpses and their wounds as if he had discovered them himself, shooing Socrates away.

‘Terrible injuries, terrible,’ he said as he uncovered the older Berthold’s burns. ‘Only see how dreadful! Get away, away wi you!’

Alys stepped back from Sempill’s unmoved consideration of the sight, snapping her fingers to call the dog, and looked at the younger Berthold. He had turned from his intent conversation with the Virgin, and was watching anxiously. What must it be like, she wondered, to be trapped in a strange country, where you spoke none of the language, and you had just lost your kinsfolk. She moved quietly to his side and put a hand on his arm, making him jump.

‘Berthold,’ she said gently. He touched his brow to her, and bobbed a shy bow. She drew him to the stone bench at the wall-foot, and launched again into the mixture of language and gesture which she had used before. With difficulty, she established that he was fourteen, that his hunting had taken him further up onto the hills, that he had seen nobody, or perhaps that nobody had seen him. He seemed dubious about that. She raised questioning eyebrows, and he mimed someone peering from cover, watching something. She nodded understanding and looked cautiously over one shoulder and then the other, and he said, ‘
Ja, ja, ich fühlt’ überwacht,
’ and shivered. He pointed at the two dead men, and turned his face away.

Was it the man with the narrow heels, she wondered. And had he been watching as she picked her way up the burn? If the dog had not been with her – She put a hand on the rough hairy head at her elbow and shivered as Berthold had done.

She was about to assemble another question when the church door was flung wide and Luke tumbled in.

‘Mistress, are you here? Here’s Maister Livingstone coming back, and all them wi him, and he’s got someone prisoner, so he has!’

‘Prisoner?’ John Sempill swung round, staring. ‘What prisoner? What’s going on?’

‘I wouldny ken what prisoner, maister, but you can see for yoursel,’ Luke said, gesturing at the door. ‘You’ve only to look! They’re having a right time of it, Tam’s gone to gie them a hand.’

Alys was already hurrying out into the sunlight, shading her eyes to stare across the little burn. The party on the far bank was having some trouble, as Luke said, the figure in its midst writhing in the grasp of all four men. As she watched someone tired of the battle and clouted the struggling man across the head. It made little difference, but a second blow and then a third had more effect, and brought an approving grunt from John Sempill behind her, though Sir Richie protested faintly.

‘Aye, that’s the way to deal wi him,’ said Sempill. ‘Who is it, anyway? What were you no telling us, Mistress Mason? Have they found someone else at the mine?’

‘I’ve no more notion than you, sir,’ she said politely. The returning party hoisted their limp captive across the burn, and Lowrie, leaving Tam to take his share of the burden, hurried up the bank towards the kirkyard wall.

‘He was searching the place,’ he said, scrambling over the mossy stones. ‘Frank was in the lead, and took the huntsman’s approach, and saw him before he saw us, so we got him by surprise.’ He paused to acknowledge Socrates’ greeting.