The Counterfeit Madam (27 page)

Where the Glazert met the Kelvin, turning towards Glasgow, Lowrie and Philip Sempill consulted briefly and ordered more speed. There was little more traffic than there had been in Strathblane. The carts had found their destination or settled down somewhere for the night; they passed a few groups of riders, occasional people on foot, most with curious looks for the cavalcade. Ten riders at a fast trot through the spring twilight, thought Alys, one of them stripped to his shirt, can hardly be an everyday sight. She clung tighter to Lowrie, her teeth rattling.

At the Stablegreen Port the guards had heard them coming, and were waiting to swing the heavy gate across the way behind them in the very last of the light. Lowrie called his thanks, but John Sempill suddenly roused himself to say,

‘Right, Livingstone, you can tell the Provost I’ll be at home if he wants me, and you two wi me,’ he flung over his shoulder at his two men. ‘Philip, what are you doing?’

‘I’m for the Castle,’ said his cousin. ‘They’ll be glad of the extra hands, I’d think, to get this fellow into custody.’

‘Aye, well, if you’d let me put him on a rope you’d ha no need to worry,’ retorted Sempill, and clattered off into the night towards Rottenrow, his men behind him. Lowrie watched him go, lit by the lanterns on successive house-corners, and said to Philip, ‘Likely we’ll deal better without him, but we might need his witness about the property and the silver mine.’

‘He might prefer not to give it,’ said Alys. Philip made no comment. ‘Luke, leave your horse with Tam and go on home, and you can tell them where we are.’

‘What, here on the Stablegreen?’ said Luke blankly, and she realized the boy was nearly asleep, and Berthold was completely comatose in Tam’s grasp.

‘We’ll be at the Castle,’ she said. ‘Go on now, and tell them in the kitchen to put some food aside for me.’

Andrew Otterburn, roused from a domestic evening by his own fireside, was at first startled to be presented with a half-naked prisoner, but when he grasped who the man might be he was delighted.

‘We’ll get someone to identify him,’ he said, as Miller was manhandled away across the courtyard, struggling as fiercely as he had done outside St Machan’s. ‘The trouble the Clerk’s Land folk have caused me the day, it’s no pain to me to get one o them out to put a name to this fellow. Walter, see to it, will you, and see these beasts baited. And find someone that speaks High Dutch and all, maybe speir at the College if there’s none o the men.’

‘Or send to my father,’ suggested Alys. Walter nodded and hurried off.

‘And who’s the laddie, anyway?’ asked the Provost.

‘It’s a long tale,’ said Lowrie. ‘May we sit down? And might we beg a bite to eat? The laddie’s likely fasting since this morning, and the rest of us, well, it’s long while since dinner.’

‘Aye, come up, come up to my chamber and we’ll see to it,’ said Otterburn, but Alys was not listening. Socrates had pricked his ears and rushed away across the courtyard. Light shifted under the arch of the gatehouse, hasty feet echoed, and a tall figure with a lantern emerged into the torchlight, paused to look about, and made straight for where she stood, the dog dancing round him. Gil had come for her.

Neither of them spoke. A quick smile, a searching look exchanged in the torchlight, and they turned to follow Otterburn, hands brushing lightly back to back. But suddenly she felt she could go on for as long again.

The tale took a while. Food appeared, bread and cold meat and the remains of an onion tart, with a huge jug of ale; she ate, the jug went round, and Lowrie embarked on a competent and precise account of what had passed that day. Otterburn listened well, she thought. He asked a few pertinent questions, called Frank in to explain his part. That was when she realized that she and Gil, Lowrie and Philip Sempill, were the only ones in the Provost’s chamber; the servants and the boy Berthold had been left in the antechamber.

‘Have the men something to eat?’ she asked, interrupting Frank’s account of the capture of their prisoner. A grin spread across his face.

‘Our Lady love you, mistress, aye, we have. Much what you have here,’ he nodded at the laden tray, ‘so long as that greedy Sim hasny finished it afore I’m done here.’

‘Get on wi your tale, then,’ said the Provost, ‘and you’ll catch up wi him the sooner.’

‘Aye well, it’s soon ended,’ admitted Frank, ‘for that’s about all. Save for the man getting loose again, and Mistress Mason here capturing him. And then—’

‘I did not!’ she protested. Gil leaned away to look down at her, concern in his face. Socrates, sprawled across their feet, raised his head, then went back to sleep. ‘It was all of you took and bound him.’

‘Aye, once you’d fell on him and winded him,’ said Frank admiringly. ‘A neat trick that, mistress, I’d like to ken who taught you it.’

‘The drop-dead trick,’ she explained to Gil. He nodded, and she saw she would not get to sleep tonight without giving him a complete tale.

‘Then we stripped the man Miller, while he was in his swound,’ said Lowrie, ‘and while Sempill of Muirend set to questioning him I made an inventory of his goods, and found this in his
spoirean
.’ He drew the blue velvet purse from the breast of his doublet, and leaned to set it on the desk before Otterburn. The Provost looked at it gloomily for a long moment.

‘Well, well,’ he said finally to Gil. ‘Here’s us searching Glasgow and the Gallowgate, putting a watch on the ports, crying the fellow at the Cross, and your lassie falls on him out the sky and fetches him home.’

Gil’s arm was round her again. ‘I’d expect no less.’

Otterburn looked at them both with the hint of a smile, but all he said was,

‘And John Sempill questioned him, did he? What did he learn fro the man?’

‘Little,’ said Lowrie. ‘He denies all, or answers nothing.’

‘It’s a great pity John isny here to tell us himself,’ observed Gil.

‘He went home,’ said Alys. ‘I thought,’ she said slowly, assembling her recollections, ‘I thought he knew the man. When he asked his name, the man said,
You’re asking me?
As if he was surprised. And even before that, Sempill was very determined to hang him out of hand. He was very angry when we insisted on bringing him here to justice.’

Otterburn’s gaze went from her to Gil, and then to Philip Sempill, while Lowrie said,

‘You could be right at that, mistress.’

Philip said nothing, but his face darkened in the candlelight under Otterburn’s steady stare. After a moment the Provost said, raising his voice a little,

‘Right, Walter, how’re you getting on wi those tasks I set you?’

His clerk stepped in from the antechamber, looking smug.

‘It’s the man Miller right enough, maister,’ he said, ‘named afore witnesses and writ down on oath. As for what he swore he’d do to the woman that named him, well, it’s as well her Scots isny that good.’

‘She understood what she swore to?’ said Gil sharply.

‘I’m no caring,’ said Otterburn over Walter’s assurances. ‘She’s sworn and that’s that. And the interpreter?’

The interpreter proved to be one of the men-at-arms, a sturdy fairish man introduced as Lappy, which surely must be a nickname. He claimed he had spent time at the wars in High Germany and learned some of the language. Alys had doubts about the man’s vocabulary, but Berthold, roused and brought through, understood the first questions put to him clearly enough. The boy seemed so stunned by the events of the day that he did not react with surprise, but nor did he answer. A spate of words tumbled out, clearly a question of his own, and another.

‘Haud on!’ said the interpreter. ‘I’m no that fast.’ He paused, putting the words into Scots. ‘He’s asking, maister, what o his faither and his uncle, when are they to be buried, will he can get to the burial? Is that right, they’re dead?’

‘Tell him,’ said Otterburn, before Alys could speak, ‘if he answers my questions, I’ll see about it. Then ask him again why he’s in Scotland and what they were doing.’

The boy’s eyes turned to Otterburn, then to Alys. He spoke to Lappy, sounding surprised.

‘He says, did the other man no tell you? It was him called them here, he thinks, and him that gave them orders.’

‘Other man,’ said Otterburn flatly. ‘Does he mean the man Miller? The prisoner?’

‘
Nein, nein!
’ said Berthold as Lappy translated. ‘
Der böse Mann!
’ He pulled an angry, sulky face.

‘John Sempill!’ said Alys and Lowrie together.

‘I’m feart he’s right,’ said Philip.

‘This is a right tirravee,’ said John Sempill of Muirend angrily. ‘Why did you have to rout Maidie out her bed and all? It’s none o her mind, any o this.’

‘John,’ said his wife, putting a hand on his arm. ‘If it’s a matter for the law, I’ve no complaint, though I’ll not deny the time could be better chosen. Is it about my godmother, sir? Have you discerned who it was,’ she bit her lip, ‘that killed her?’

The servants had been sent home, Lowrie and Philip Sempill had made signed depositions and left reluctantly, the boy Berthold, asleep on his feet, had been tucked in a corner of the guardroom despite Alys’s objections. Otter-burn wanted him handy, he said. And four men-at-arms had been despatched to escort Sempill of Muirend and his wife to the Castle, and not to take any refusal.

Gil, watching from the window space, could not decide how much either of them understood of Sempill’s position. Three candles in the pricket-stand beside Otterburn’s desk did not show their expressions clearly, but Lady Magdalen certainly seemed ignorant of wrongdoing, merely puzzled. He looked down at Alys, and found her watching intently despite her weariness. Socrates was sprawled across her feet, snoring.

‘Aye, well,’ said Otterburn. ‘I’m tellt you’d likely prefer to be turned out your bed the night rather than the morn, what wi the morn being the Sabbath.’

Ah ah! thought Gil. So Otterburn has got there too, has he?

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sempill said quickly.

‘John.’ Lady Magdalen turned to the Provost. ‘Any day’s right for God’s work, and surely finding the truth is aye God’s work? May we no sit down, sir?’

‘Aye, get on wi’t,’ said Sempill. ‘I want my bed. I’ve had a long ride the day.’

‘So has my wife, John,’ said Gil, ‘and a fight wi a dangerous man forbye, while you stood and watched.’

‘You can keep out o this,’ snarled Sempill over his wife’s shocked exclamation. ‘If the pair o ye’d kept yir noses out fro the start it would ha been easier!’

‘Very likely,’ said Gil, ‘but would it ha been honest?’

Otterburn cleared his throat significantly.

‘We’ll all be seated, if you please,’ he said firmly, ‘and we’ve a few things to discuss. Maister Cunningham, will you begin?’

Gil drew his stool forward so he could see all four faces in the candlelight. Sempill was scowling, Lady Magdalen wore her usual calm smile, Otterburn and Alys were both watching him with care. He marshalled the facts in his head and began.

‘On Wednesday evening, John, you had a word wi Dame Isabella at her window. You were heard,’ he forestalled interruption, ‘after she’d kept you waiting, and then refused to see you. What was it she ordered you to do?’

‘None o your mind,’ retorted Sempill.

‘On Wednesday evening?’ queried Lady Magdalen. ‘No, no, you said you never had a word wi her, John.’

‘Aye, well,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘she wouldny see me alone, dismissed me like a groom, and after I’d waited as long. Was it those sleekit servants?’ he demanded of Gil. ‘Sneaking about listening in corners?’

‘By what I’m tellt,’ said Gil, amused, ‘there was no need for that. The whole of the Drygate might ha heard you. She gave you an order, and you said you’d see her in Hell afore you did that. What did she say then, John? Will we hear it?’

Sempill opened his mouth to answer, closed it and stared at him, cornered and baffled.

‘Did she bid you,’ Gil chose his words with care, ‘have no more to do wi the Ballencleroch toft? The one that holds Clachan of Campsie and the glen?’

‘Aye,’ said Sempill in relief. ‘That was it.’

‘The one you thought was mine, John?’ said Lady Magdalen. ‘Well, that was right. There was no need for you to be concerned wi that toft, unless she was to give it to me.’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Gil. ‘So what were you doing out there?’

‘That’s my business,’ said Sempill, with more confidence.

‘No, John, let us know,’ prompted Lady Magdalen. ‘Were you dealing wi the factor and so forth? Was that it?’

‘There’s no factor,’ said Gil. ‘He’s been collecting the rents, and taking an interest, haven’t you, John.’

‘Aye.’

‘Well, if that’s all—’

‘And he put the miners into the glen.’

‘Miners?’ Lady Magdalen looked from Gil to her husband, the dark woollen veil sliding over her shoulders as she turned her head. ‘Surely no, maister, there’s no mining in Strathblane. It’s no coal country.’

‘Not coal,’ said Gil, watching Sempill. ‘It’s silver, as my wife worked out, and there were three men working it. A nice wee vein, the boy tells us, and should last another year or so.’

‘Silver?’ Lady Magdalen repeated in astonishment.

‘Nothing to do wi me,’ said Sempill defiantly.

I never met so many liars in the one case, Gil thought. All along, folk have not merely concealed things, they’ve lied outright.

‘Silver,’ repeated Lady Magdalen. ‘I canny believe it, sir. Has it gone to the Crown, as it ought? You’d see to that, would you no, John?’

‘Well, I would have done,’ said Sempill unconvincingly, ‘but I never had the chance.’

‘How was that?’ Gil asked. ‘What prevented you?’

‘Surely, all you had to do was send to the Treasurer,’ Lady Magdalen said. ‘That’s no hard task, John. I could have writ the letter, if you wanted.’

‘The old – the old – Dame Isabella,’ Sempill burst out. ‘She wouldny let me! She insisted – she’s been buying it off me! It was all to come down here, and I never had the least notion what she was doing wi’t.’

And if you believe that, thought Gil, you’ll believe anything. Aloud he said,

‘So the silver was worked up in Strathblane, and run into ingots, or bars, or what you call them, and brought down to Glasgow. Was it Neil Campbell and his brother that fetched it?’

‘Aye, damn you!’ said Sempill grudgingly. His wife sat back, looking at him reproachfully. ‘If you’ve nosed out that much, why do you need to ask me?’

Gil thought about the rest of the detail Berthold had given them. It had been the angry man who had brought his father and uncle to Scotland, and put them in that narrow valley and told them to keep the local folk away. Well, miners were used to that attitude, so they had used the tricks they always had, which had worked. The man who fetched the silver had brought them meal, which they had disliked, and onions and cheese. They had spoken to nobody else. Nothing to unsettle Sempill there.

‘What happened to it next?’ he asked instead. ‘Where did the Campbell brothers take it to?’

‘Oh, that was all the old dame’s concern,’ said Sempill loftily. ‘None o my mind, so I got paid for it.’

‘What, you just let it out o your hands?’ Sempill nodded. ‘Well, well. So on Wednesday evening Dame Isabella ordered you to have no more to do wi the toft that holds the mine.’

‘Why would she do that?’ Lady Magdalen asked in puzzlement. Sempill glowered, but Alys looked up and caught Gil’s eye.

‘Dame Isabella had just learned that there was a confusion,’ she pointed out. ‘The toft with the mine on it was hers, not Lady Magdalen’s.’ Or possibly Archie Livingstone’s, Gil thought, but did not say. ‘She had been buying silver which was her own.’

‘Did she ask for her money back, John?’ Gil asked in some amusement.

‘Aye, she did, the auld—’ Sempill bit off the next word as his wife laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘I told her I’d see her in Hell first, and I meant it.’

‘Did you now,’ said Otterburn. Sempill looked at him in alarm, and then at Lady Magdalen’s dismayed expression.

‘Here – no, no, I didny mean it like that!’

‘You’ve just said you did,’ said Gil.

‘Aye, but I wouldny – I didny—’

‘John.’

He stopped, looked at the pale hand on his arm, and covered it with his own, met his wife’s gaze. She said earnestly,

‘John, tell me you didny kill my godmother.’

‘I didny kill her,’ he said obediently. ‘I swear it on—µ’ Her hand twitched, and he bit his lip. ‘I mean, my word on it, Maidie.’

She put her other hand on top of his.

‘That’s enough for me. But we need to find out who did, so he gets time to repent. You’ll tell Maister Gil all he needs to hear, won’t you, John?’

‘Aye,’ he said reluctantly.

Lady Magdalen smiled at him, nodded at Gil, and sat back, one hand still on Sempill’s arm. Gil, wondering whether he would know if Alys managed him in such an obvious way, said,

‘So what did you do?’

‘Do?’ Sempill stared at him. ‘Nothing. Went home to my bed.’

‘About the silver,’ Gil said. ‘The next morning, the Thursday, you were from home when I came looking for you. You came in about Terce, I’d say. Where had you been?’

‘Out looking for you,’ said Sempill boldly. ‘I tellt you that, I mind.’

‘And I’d said I’d meet you at the house. No, by what I hear you were down at Clerk’s Land, John.’

‘If you ken that, why’d you ask me? You hear a curst sight too much,’ Sempill added. ‘I was looking for you there, thought you might be spying round the place.’

‘You were speaking to Campbell and Saunders,’ Gil corrected him. ‘Letting them know there would be no more silver, no more of the old dame’s scheme. What was the scheme, John?’

‘Scheme?’ Lady Magdalen asked. ‘What was happening to the silver? Do you know, John?’

He threw her a hunted look.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I – I wasny in it, once she’d paid me for the silver. I’ve no idea what she was at.’

‘You knew enough to tell the Clerk’s Land folk,’ said Gil.

‘Aye, well, I kent that was where Neil took the stuff. Seemed only civil to let them hear it was all at an end.’

Gil, setting aside the combination of John Sempill and the word ‘civil’ for later contemplation, looked at Otter-burn and said,

‘Then we come to the Clerk’s Land folk.’

‘Aye.’ Otterburn grunted. ‘All in it thegither, save for the lorimer. And maybe Danny Sproat’s donkey,’ he considered. ‘Two hammermen and an image-maker, and their friend Miller the knife man from the Gallowgate.’

Sempill sat motionless.

‘After you left the toft,’ Gil resumed, ‘Campbell sent one of the Saunders children down to summon Miller up there, and passed the word to him. The pair of them decided to go and have it out wi Dame Isabella, and went off down the Drygate. Dame Isabella looked out from her window and saw them approaching, and she ordered her woman to give her the purse of blue velvet and leave her.’ Lady Magdalen’s pale eyes were fixed on his face, her lips parted. She must have been fond of the old woman, he thought, or is she feart I’ll prove John killed her after all? ‘The woman got no sight of the two men, she only saw a stranger leaving by the gate a few minutes later. Nobody else was seen about the place. But when they next went in to Dame Isabella she was dead.’

Lady Magdalen bent her head, and her lips moved silently. After a moment she said,

‘So is it one of these men, Campbell or Miller, that killed her? Where is the blue purse, sir? Is it found?’

Straight to the point, he thought.

‘We found it in Miller’s possession,’ said Alys. ‘It seems likely she gave him it. One of them must have kept her talking while the other went round into the house and into her chamber.’ She leaned forward to touch Lady Magdalen’s free hand. The dog raised his head, then went back to sleep. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a great loss to you, I understand that.’

‘My thanks,’ said the other woman with a tremulous smile. ‘But has neither o them confessed?’

Sempill glared at Alys, patted his wife’s shoulder awkwardly, and said,

‘Aye, you need to put them to the question, they’ll confess soon enough if you go about it right.’

‘They will the morn,’ said Otterburn confidently. ‘Either or both. Now, can one o you set light on a subject that’s troubling me? Why in the name o Christ and all His saints would a woman in her position be sending false coin out to the Isles?’

‘What?’ Sempill jerked upright. ‘To the Isles? Why in the Deil’s name?’

‘John.’

‘Aye, but what’s the point o that? You tellt me she was daft for John o the Isles,’ he recalled, scowling at her, ‘more sense surely to send it to him and let him pay for his escape if he wants to. No that he’s worth it,’ he added, ‘a burnt stock that one if ever I seen one.’

Of course, thought Gil, John of the Isles is pensioned at Paisley Abbey, not so far from Muirend.

‘It’s changing the balance of the region,’ he said. ‘It’s altering matters like who has more men, more ships, more importance. There’s been enough arguing since Earl John was dispossessed, if it comes to war out there, no knowing who’ll come out victorious.’

‘She knew him,’ said Lady Magdalen suddenly, in a faint voice. ‘Forgive me, maisters, this has been a great shock to me.’

‘You should lie down,’ said Sempill. ‘You should be home in your bed, no sitting here till all hours answering daft questions. We’ll be away, Otterburn—’

‘No yet,’ said Otterburn, quite mildly, but Sempill sat down again. ‘She knew him, you say, madam?’

‘She once tellt me.’ She put a hand to her brow. ‘I canny mind right. She must ha known Thomas Livingstone, that’s her last husband, sir, when they were all young, for she spoke o his sister, that was wedded to John of the Isles. They’d been good friends, I think.’

‘Dame Isabella and the Livingstone lady were friends?’ Gil interpreted, untangling this. She nodded.

‘And ever since, she’d had a great regard for him, by the way she spoke. So maybe, maybe,’ she bit her lip, ‘it doesny maybe make sense, but I wonder.’

‘You wonder if she wished to destabilize the Isles,’ Alys supplied. ‘Perhaps even hoping that John might get back to his possessions.’

‘Aye,’ she said gratefully. ‘It sounds right daft, when you put it like that, but she was, she was, she was aye one wi her own—’

‘She was a steering auld ettercap,’ said Sempill forcefully, ‘and I’ll no forgive her for putting you through all this.’

Gil met Alys’s glance, but kept his face straight.

‘Well,’ said Otterburn. ‘I can see we’ve a lot to think on, all o us present. I think I’ll ask you to take Lady Magdalen home to her bed, Sempill, but first,’ he went on, ignoring Sempill’s expostulations, ‘I’ll have you swear, and I’ll have your word, madam, no to depart fro Glasgow till I give you leave.’