The Counterfeit Madam (30 page)

‘A resilient laddie,’ he said. ‘He should do well wherever he settles.’

‘I’d thought much the same,’ said Lowrie. ‘But someone needs to have a care to him for now.’ He held out his wooden trencher for Maistre Pierre to transfer a slice of the kale mould with powdered ginger, and added reflectively, ‘He might teach me High Dutch. It’s clear to me it’s a good thing for a man to speak more tongues than his own.’

‘Cloth,’ said Luke at the foot of the table.

‘C-lof?’ essayed Berthold. ‘Coff!’ echoed John.

‘Quite so,’ said Gil.

Lady Kate’s stepdaughters were not at home. John and Lowrie were probably equally disappointed, Gil thought as he introduced Lowrie to Kate’s husband, but John was the more vociferous about it.

‘Onnyanny?’ he demanded. ‘
Where
Onnyanny?’

‘Hush, John,’ said Nancy without effect. ‘Don’t wake the wee baba.’

‘They’ve gone for a walk,’ Kate explained across Edward’s cradle. ‘They won’t be long. They’ve gone to put flowers on their own mammy’s grave,’ she added for Lowrie’s benefit. ‘It’s a pleasant walk on a fine day and Nan has kin in the Greyfriars yard as well.’

‘Come and sit down,’ Augie Morison invited, waving at the wide, sunny window space where Kate’s great chair was set, ‘and tell us the truth of what we’re hearing. There surely canny be a silver mine in the Gallowgate!’

‘It’s yersel, Mistress Alys, Maister Gil.’ Kate’s gigantic maidservant Babb appeared from the kitchen stair, a tray in her hands. ‘And what’s this I’m hearing?’ She hooked a stool into place with her ankle and set the tray on it, nodding at Lowrie who had leapt to help. Alys expertly distracted John, who had appeared at her knee reaching for the cakes, by breaking one in half and putting a portion in each little hand, then lifted the platter to put it out of the boy’s reach. Babb looked down at her. ‘Did I hear you might be flitting, mistress?’

‘What?’ said Kate, astonished.

‘Cake John.
Two
cake, John!’

‘Where will you go?’ Augie looked from Gil to Alys. ‘When did you think of it?’

‘This morning,’ said Gil. ‘No more than thought on, and we’ve never mentioned it aloud, have we, Alys?’

‘Oh,’ said Babb in disappointment. ‘Your Jennet was saying when I saw her at the Greyfriars, when I went to hear Mass, she thought you’d be out o there soon.’

‘I must have a word with Jennet,’ said Alys. ‘No, we have no plans to leave soon, only I have thought of a bigger house and our own household.’

‘Aye, you’d be well to,’ agreed Babb. ‘Your own roof, and that.’

‘Thank you, Babb,’ said Kate. ‘Hand the cakes and ale, and you can go back to talk to Ursel.’

‘Do I no get to hear all the news?’ Babb asked, offended. ‘I want to hear how Mistress Alys fought wi the man that slew that old woman in the Drygate!’

She listened better than some of their hearers had done, Gil thought, with a few exclamations and muttered words of praise, but no interruptions. Kate and her husband also heard their tale with attention, much amused by the midnight interview, but Kate grew more puzzled as the account lengthened.

‘Aye, you’re a warrior, lassie, right enough!’ said Babb at the end, taking her leave to convey the news all hot to the kitchen. It seemed to be a compliment. ‘What a tale, is it no, mem!’

‘What an adventure!’ said Augie. ‘So the mine’s in Strathblane, is it? You never think of such a thing in a place like that.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Kate.

‘Onnyanny!’ announced John, waving his toy horse. ‘Onnyanny have cake.’

Out across the yard the smaller leaf of the great gates swung open and the two little girls came through with their nurse.

‘He must have heard them, mem,’ said Nancy proudly. The girls tumbled into the house, stopped at the sight of the guests, made their curtsies when prompted by Nan. Ysonde sprang up from hers and launched herself in glee at Lowrie.

‘You came back!’ she said, while her sister went shyly to her father’s side. ‘You said you’d come to tell us about the dusty man. Is it all made right now? Is he in prison for making the false pennies?’

‘He is,’ agreed Lowrie. ‘He’s a very bad man, so he deserves to be put in prison.’

She leaned against his knee, ignoring John’s cries of ‘Have cake!’

‘Tell me! Tell Wynliane too,’ she added generously.

Under cover of the distribution of cakes and Lowrie’s restricted version of the tale, Kate said again,

‘It doesny make sense. Why would the man Miller kill Dame Isabella?’

‘No,’ agreed Gil. ‘But he was quick to kill at other times. The man Muir, the miners. He clearly has a reputation for violence.’

‘No, Gil,’ she said. ‘That’s a good story to send Blacader and to tell the justiciars, but what really happened?’

‘Kate’s right,’ said Augie. ‘What did he gain?’

‘What did he gain by killing Dod Muir?’ Gil countered.

‘That was in anger, surely,’ objected Kate. ‘Did you no tell us Dame Isabella was killed in cold blood, by someone who went in to her ready armed? Why would Miller plan to do that?’

‘Miller,’ said Alys thoughtfully, ‘never wore a plaid, in any of the accounts we have heard.’ She looked at Kate. ‘There was a sighting of someone leaving the courtyard of the house,
wrapped in a great dark cloak or gown or the like
,’ she quoted. ‘That’s hardly how I would describe Miller as I saw him either.’

‘So does either of you believe it?’ Kate demanded. Gil looked at her in exasperation.

‘It’s what I’ll report,’ he said firmly. ‘As for your question, consider who else she was a danger to if she’d carried on as she was.’

‘Sempill?’ Kate said. ‘He was our aunt Margaret’s stepson, I mind him from her wedding.’

‘I’ve dealt wi him,’ said Augie unexpectedly. ‘I’d not think it was him. If he saw a threat coming I’d be gey surprised, though he wouldny want the Treasury looking closely into his affairs.’

‘Which of us would?’ Gil said. Lowrie was now entertaining the little girls with riddles. I hope he’ll teach them nothing unseemly, he thought.

‘Sempill was elsewhere when she died,’ said Alys.

‘The Crown? Was she executed for her treason? Without a trial?’

‘I suspect she was executed to prevent her coming to trial,’ Gil said. ‘Everyone connected to her and her scheme would have been drawn in.’ As Otterburn said, as my uncle said. How close was he working with Blacader’s agent? Did everyone in Glasgow know about it but me?

‘Which reminds me,’ said Alys improbably. ‘I have seen the painted chamber in the bawdy-house.’

‘What?’ said Kate. ‘How did you – no, no, I won’t ask. What like are they? He wouldny tell me,’ she jerked her head at Gil. ‘Are they as naughty as they say?’

‘No, nothing like that. I thought they were bonnie,’ said Alys, ‘very well painted and cheerful subjects, love and the muses and springtime and the like. I can’t believe that Lady Magdalen wanted us to whitewash over them.’

Kate laughed.

‘Gil told me that. She was aye a serious one, very pious as a lassie, by what my mother once said o her.’ She stopped, looking from Alys to Gil. ‘Ah. Oh! Is that it? No, she wouldny want to come to the law’s attention if that’s the case, would she?’ Gil nodded. ‘But Otterburn gave her no grief?’

‘He seemed sympathetic,’ Gil said cautiously.

Augie was looking puzzled; he always had trouble with the allusive nature of Cunningham exchanges, and this one must not be brought out in the open. Kate could tell him later, Gil thought. Magdalen Boyd would be safe enough, so long as her religious beliefs stayed outside the scrutiny of the law. Lollards, who preached against Holy Kirk, who believed that the saints were no more than idols and ordinary people could speak direct to God, were harmless enough provided they kept themselves to themselves. But they all had an unfortunate tendency to make their ideas public when questioned, and that could only end in tears and torture, and probably in flames as well.

I would kill to protect those I love, he thought. But I hope I would be less detached about it than Sandy Boyd.

‘You could always come with me to see the house by daylight,’ Alys was saying. ‘Now it’s empty, I want a longer look.’

‘So you are thinking of moving?’ Kate allowed herself to be diverted from the other topic. ‘I thought you were comfortable enough here in the High Street.’

‘Gil is to take an assistant,’ Alys announced. ‘We will need more room, if we are to have our own household.’

‘An assistant? What, an apprentice? Who will it be?’

‘An apprentice quaestor,’ Gil said thoughtfully. ‘I hate to think what we’d put in the indentures.
Promise to teach the aforesaid all the mysteries of the craft, as, inspecting bodies, detecting poisons, studying wounds
.’

‘
Asking impertinent questions
,’ Kate supplied, laughing.

‘
Nosing about
,’ said Alys, obviously quoting somebody.

‘And all the other ways of clearing innocent names,’ said Augie with feeling. Kate sobered, and put out her hand to him, and Gil said,

‘No, merely an assistant, to help me with the work and to train as a notary forbye. It’s Lowrie here. That’s why I brought him down the now, to introduce him.’

Lowrie looked up, smiled, accepted their good wishes. Augie poured more ale, and they drank a toast to the future and the signing of the contract. John and his wooden horse had galloped off across the wide hall, but Wynliane and Ysonde watched with interest.

‘What’s it for?’ Ysonde asked Lowrie, tugging at his sleeve.

‘I’m to serve Maister Gil,’ he explained, ‘and learn to be a man of law.’

‘Is it a good potition?’

‘A good position? One of the best,’ he assured her seriously.

‘That’s good. Then when I’m old enough, you can marry me, and I can help to catch bad men too. Will we do that?’

Her parents and nurse exclaimed at her forwardness; Gil covered a grin and avoided Alys’s eye; but Lowrie, flying scarlet at the ears, sat down again and held out his hand.

‘If your parents permit, and you’re still of the same mind, when you are old enough I’ll wed you.’

She put her hand in his.

‘I won’t change my mind,’ she said. ‘So they’d better.’ She leaned against his knee and smiled at the company. ‘That’s all right, then.’

The Harper’s Quine

The Nicholas Feast

The Merchant’s Mark

St Mungo’s Robin

The Rough Collier

The Stolen Voice

A Pig of Cold Poison