The Harper's Quine (10 page)

Out in the street, they stood at the foot of the Hamiltons’
fore-stair and looked at one another.

‘A false scent,’ said Gil.

‘Luke was very certain,’ said Alys in faint apology.

‘Would the other men know any more? Or your maidservants?’ Gil suggested hopefully.

‘I asked them fast.’ Alys looked up and down the quiet
street. ‘I’ll send them out to ask at the market tomorrow.
No purpose in searching now, with nobody about. Once
they get together with their gossips, the word will pass like
heath-fire.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘What will you
do now?’

‘I have to find the other boy,’ Gil said, ‘the saddler’s
youngest, and confirm Andrew’s story. And since that
takes me down the Fishergait I will go by the harper’s
lodging and ask them about the harp key.’

‘May I come with you? I am concerned for them.’

‘Do you promise not to throw pepper at them?’

The smile flickered. ‘That was a special case. In general
I would deplore such a waste.’

‘Then it would give me great pleasure,’ he said, and
offered his arm.

‘And after the saddler’s house we must stop and buy a
jug of spirits to take with us.’

The sign of the Pelican swung crookedly from the front
of a tall building, apparently a former merchant’s house
which had seen better days. Gil, picking a careful path for
the two of them through a noisome pend, wondered if he should have brought Alys to the place, and felt his qualms
confirmed when they emerged into a muddy yard in
which children were squabbling on the midden. Two of
them turned to stare at the strangers from under unkempt
hair.

‘Where does the harper live?’ Alys asked.

‘Is it the wake ye’re after?’ asked the taller child. Alys
nodded, and the boy gestured with a well-chewed chicken
bone at the side of the yard which was probably the
original house. ‘He stays up yon stair, mistress. Two up
and through Jiggin Joan’s. Ye can hear them from here,’ he
waved the chicken bone again. There was indeed a buzz of
voices from one of the upper windows.

‘Through?’ Gil queried, and got a withering look.

‘Aye. She’s nearest the stair. D’ye ken nothing?’

Gil would have enquired further, but Alys thanked the
child and moved towards the stair tower. As Gil turned to
follow her, a woman hurried along the creaking wooden
gallery opposite.

‘Your pardon, maisters!’ she exclaimed, with an Ersche-
speaker’s accent even heavier than the gallowglass’s. She
leaned over the rail, pulling her plaid up round her head,
to ask in a tactful whisper, ‘Could you be saying, maybe,
when is the poor soul to be buried?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Gil. ‘It’s surely a matter for the
harper to determine.’

‘Oh, ‘tis so, ‘tis so,’ she agreed, ‘it iss for mac lain to
decide, but it will be needful to send round to the keeningwomen, and they will be wishing to know what time to
gather.’

‘Perhaps Mistress Mclan will know,’ Gil suggested.

The woman nodded, a dissatisfied look crossing her
broad face. ‘I will be at the wake as soon as the bannocks
is cooked,’ she said, drawing back from the railing. ‘I cannot be calling empty-handed.’

Alys was waiting at the stair-mouth. Gil followed her up
two turns of the spiral, past a doorway where a woman
was scrubbing a small boy’s face, on up where the protests were drowned by the sound of loud conversation which
came from the open door on the next landing. The untidy
room seemed deserted, but the noise came from within.

‘This should be it,’ Alys said doubtfully. ‘Dame Joan is
not at home, I think.’

‘Does the harper stay here?’ Gil called loudly. The door
to the inner room opened, and Ealasaidh appeared on a
redoubled blast of sound and a smell of spirits.

‘It is the man of law,’ she said, accepting Alys’s proffered
jug of brandy with grace. ‘Come within. Mac lain is at
home.’

The room was crowded, and so noisy that it was a
moment before Gil realized there was a baby crying somewhere. Amid the press of people, the harper was seated in
a great chair by the fire, dressed in saffron-dyed shirt and
velvet jerkin, the formal dress of the Highlander, with
deerskin buskins laced up his bare legs. A Flemish harp
with a curved soundboard hung behind his head. As Gil
entered behind Alys he rose and bowed to them, saying
with great dignity, ‘I bid you welcome, neighbours.’

He was not as old as Gil had thought at first, possibly
not yet fifty. Hair and beard were white, but his eyebrows
were dark and shaggy and the high forehead was relatively unlined. He listened courteously to Gil’s formal
words of sympathy, and bowed again.

‘I must thank you for your care of her, sir. Woman, bring
refreshment for our guests.’

Ealasaidh was already returning from yet another, further, room, the one where the baby was crying. She handed
Gil a tiny wooden beaker brimming with liquid, and
offered him a platter of oatcakes. As Gil had feared the
liquid proved to be barley eau-de-vie, fierce enough to
burnish brass, but he offered a toast to the memory of
Bess Stewart and drained his little cup resolutely. Around
him, the harper’s neighbours and acquaintances were talking, not in the least about the departed. Alys had disappeared.

.’You are not yet a man of law,’ said the harper
suddenly.

‘I soon will be,’ said Gil, startled.

‘But you will not be a priest.’

‘I must,’ said Gil, utterly taken aback, ‘or live on air. Sir,
I have a couple questions for you or your sister.’

‘In a little space,’ said the harper, turning to greet
another mourner. Gil stood quietly, wrestling with the
surge of conflicting feelings which assailed him. He was
used to the sinking in his stomach when he thought of his
approaching ordination (Lord, strengthen me, remove my
doubts! he thought) but why should he feel panic at the
thought of not being a priest?

The baby, he discovered after a moment, had fallen
silent.

‘Maister,’ said the harper. ‘We will not talk here. Come
ben and ask your question.’ He moved confidently
towards the other door, and those round him fell back to
let him pass.

The inmost room contained three adults and the baby,
and a quantity of stained linen drying on outstretched
strings. Ealasaidh, by the window, was opening another
flagon of eau-de-vie. Before the fire, Alys was dandling the
baby while a sturdy young woman looked on. The small
head turned when the door opened, but at the sight of Gil
the infant’s mouth went square and the crying started
again.

‘What ails the bairn?’ Gil asked, dismayed. His sister’s
children had never reacted like this.

‘He is looking for one who will not return to him,’ said
Ealasaidh remotely.

‘Every time the door opens,’ said Alys over the baby’s
head. ‘There, now! There, now, poor little man. Nancy,
shall we try the spoon again?’

‘Ask your question, maister lawyer,’ said the harper
again. ‘Here is mac lain and his sister both.’

‘And I must go out in a little,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘We will not be having enough usquebae for all the mourners, and
I must borrow more cups.’

Gil drew the harp key from his jerkin again.

‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked, through the baby’s
wailing.

Ealasaidh gave it a glance, then another.

‘It is hers,’ she agreed heavily. ‘The key to her little harp.
Where was AT

‘In the kirkyard,’ said Gil. The harper’s hand went out,
and he put the key into it. Mclan’s long fingers turned the
little object, the nails clicking on the metal barrel, caressing
familiar irregularities of the shape, and his mouth twisted
under his white beard .

‘It is hers. Where in the kirkyard?’

‘By the south door. Could she have dropped it?’

‘No,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘Not Bess - not that.’

‘She took care of what I gave her,’ said the harper
harshly, ‘for that it was given in love. This dwelled in her
purse always.’

‘Her purse? There was no purse at her belt. I must talk
to you,’ said Gil, ‘but this is not the moment.’

‘Aye, I must return to my guests. You will come back.’ It
was not an order.

Alys handed the baby back to the other girl and rose.

‘The bairn will be better with Nancy,’ she said, ‘and we
should be gone. My father the mason sends his sympathies, maister harper.’

A fine rain was now falling. They walked through it in
silence back to the White Castle, Gil turning over the
harper’s words in his mind. As they reached the pend Alys
paused, and he looked down at her.

‘I feared you might lead me on up the High Street,’ she
said, smiling at him.

‘I’m sorry - I was discourteous.’

‘ou were thinking,’ she pointed out. ‘And so was I. Will you come in, Maister Cunningham? My father will be
home, it is near Vespers.’

The mason was brooding in his closet with a jug of wine.
Alys showed Gil in and slipped away to see how Davie
did, and Maistre Pierre said with sour enthusiasm, ‘Sit
down, lawyer, and have some wine, and we consider
where we are at. I think we are no further forward than
this morning.’

‘I would not agree,’ said Gil. ‘We have named the lady,
and arranged for her burial. Father Francis will accept her
- he is willing to believe that since she had gone to meet
her husband she may have repented of her adultery. And
I told you I have spoken with Serjeant Anderson. He has
no wish to meddle in something concerning the
Chanonry.’

‘Of that I have no doubt. But in everything else we have
raised up two problems where one was before,’ complained the mason.

‘What do we know?’ said Gil. ‘She went out before
Compline, to meet her husband after the Office in St
Mungo’s yard. She was not waiting for him when
Compline ended. I think most likely she was already dead
inside the Fergus Aisle by then, for otherwise surely she
would have come out to meet him when she heard the
Office was ended.’

‘I suppose so,’ agreed Maistre Pierre, scratching his
beard with a loud rasping. ‘But how many people could
have killed her? We do not look for a beggar or robber,
no?’

‘I do not think it, although her purse is missing. Why
should she follow such into the chapel? There were no
signs of violence - fresh violence,’ he amended, ‘other than
the wound that killed her. Her husband is the most obvious, but he was inside St Mungo’s at the time I think she
died, and I would swear he was shocked to learn of her
death today. I saw the gallowglass come in - I suppose he
could have directed her there and then killed her. There is
also James Campbell, who has an Italian dagger, and I sup pose the Italian lutenist must have such a knife, but I do
not know why either of them should have killed her.’

‘The husband could have killed her quick, there in the
trees, before the rest came out of Compline,’ Maistre Pierre
offered, ‘and come back later to move her out of sight.’

‘Why would he need to move her?’

‘The man-at-arms knew where he was to meet her. He
needed to cover his tracks.’

Gil considered this. ‘No, I don’t think so. Sempill is
capable of it, but you saw the body. She lay where she was
killed. Who else?’

‘This wild woman with the difficult name?’

‘Euphemia Campbell, you mean?’

‘No, no, the other. The harper’s sister. How is it pronounced - Yalissy?’

‘Ealasaidh,’ Gil corrected. ‘I think it is the Ersche for
Elizabeth.’

‘You amaze me. Could she have killed her? Followed her
up the hill and knifed her for jealousy where she could put
the blame on the husband? She seems like a woman out of
tragedy - Iphigenie, perhaps, or some such. Or could it
have been the harper, indeed?’ .

‘The harper is blind.’

‘But he was her lover. Who better to get close, his hand
round her waist, the knife in his. sleeve, a kiss to distract
her and the thing is done. If he thought she was returning
to her husband?’

‘These are wild suggestions,’ Gil said slowly, ‘and yet we
are dealing with secret murder here, the reasons may be as
wild as any of these. Euphemia Campbell suggested that
Bess had taken other lovers, and that one of those might
have killed her, but that seems to me to add unnecessary
complication to the matter.’

‘It lacks unity of action, for sure; said the mason, peering into his wine-cup. ‘Did she have other lovers?’

‘I have no corroboration. I hardly liked to ask the harper
today,’ admitted Gil. ‘And it seems to me that a woman illused by her husband would be slow to trust other men.’

‘There is another to consider,’ said Alys from the doorway. Her father looked up and smiled at the sight of
her.

‘How is the boy?’ he asked. She came forward to sit
beside him, straight-backed and elegant in the faded
gown.

‘Still in a swound, but I think his breathing is easier.
Kittock reports that an hour or so since he gave a great
sigh, and said something she didn’t catch, and from that
time he has ceased that snoring. It is a good sign.’

‘God be praised,’ said her father.

‘Amen. But we must consider, father, whether Davie
might not be the person you and Maister Cunningham are
seeking.’

Both men looked at her, Gil in some surprise.

‘The boy would not hurt a fly,’ said her father. ‘He’s a
great soft lump,’ he added in Scots.

‘But suppose his girl finally said no to him and went off
home,’ she offered. ‘There is Mistress Stewart standing in
the haw-bushes, he makes a - an improper suggestion, as
I suppose all men do at times, and she is angry with him.
Then the argument grows heated and he kills her and runs
away and is struck down - No,’ she finished. ‘It doesn’t
work.’

‘It does not account for her presence in the Fergus Aisle,’
Gil said, ‘but you are perfectly right, we must consider
everyone who had the opportunity. Even your father. Even
me.’