The Harper's Quine (22 page)

‘Not a great deal. She did not bring much away from
Bute with her.’ Gil peered into the box. ‘A gold chain for
a jewel, in a little bag. A remarkably good Book of Hours.’
He turned the pages respectfully. ‘This is old. See the
strange clothes the saints are wearing. Two more letters. A
round stone. And a roll of cloth containing …’ He untied
the tapes. ‘Ah, here is her jewellery. I wonder which of her
husbands gave her these?’

‘Now you have unwrapped it, it must be inventoried,’
said Alys practically. ‘Item, one pin, set with a sapphire.’
She wrote carefully. ‘Item, one pair of beads with enamelled gauds. Item, a necklace of pearls. Mon Dieu, father,
look at those pearls! I think they are better than mine.’

‘And she was carrying these about Scotland in a wooden
box,’ said Gil, letting the string glimmer over his fingers in
the candlelight. ‘Ealasaidh described the cross that is missing as her one jewel. She cannot have worn these since she
left Bute. If Sempill ever got his hands on them he could
settle his debt to the Crown at a single stroke.’

They completed the list of Bess Stewart’s jewellery, and
turned to the packet of documents. Gil untied the red
ribbon and spread the five slips of parchment out on his
knee.

‘In fact,’ he said after a moment, ‘these are not all full
documents. This and this,’ he lifted the two longer missives, ‘are attested copies of the title deeds to land on the
Island of Bute. It seems as if she held that in her own
right.’ He set those aside. ‘This is a memorandum of an
item in the will of one, Edward Stewart of Kilchattan,
whom I take to be her first husband, leaving her a property
in the burgh of Rothesay outright, and the interest in two more until her remarriage. And these two are memoranda
of grants of land in respect of her marriage to John Sempill.’ He tilted them to the light. The wording is not at all
clear. They might be her tocher, though my uncle thought
that was in coin, or they might be conjunct fee -‘

‘Land given jointly in respect of their marriage,’ Maistre
Pierre translated for his daughter.

‘I know that,’ she said absently, her pen scraping on the
paper.

‘What these do,’ said Gil, ‘is confirm what we already
knew by hearsay in respect of her own property, and if you
like confirm how little we know in respect of the conjunct
property. Even the names of the grantors are omitted.’

‘I do not like,’ said the mason gloomily, ‘but I take your
meaning.’

Alys bit the end of her pen, frowning.

‘What difference does it make whether it was her tocher
or a conjunct fee?’ she asked.

‘Quite a lot, now,’ said Gil. ‘Sempill keeps the conjunct
property, the tocher may well go back to her family.’

‘So if we are still pursuing cui Bono we need to know,’
said Maistre Pierre. He scratched at his beard, the sound
loud in the quiet room. ‘Do you suppose Sempill will tell
us?’

‘I had rather speak to the man who drew these up,’ said
Gil. ‘We need to go to Rothesay.’

‘Ah. When do we go?’

‘And we need to find Annie Thomson, if she really has
gone to Dumbarton.’

‘If we go by Dumbarton and not by Irvine, we may look
for her on the road. That is if the boy can still tell us
nothing.’

‘Davie is still asleep,’ said Alys. ‘He is no worse, but he
is no better either. Brother Andrew says we must continue
to pray and keep him warm and still.’

‘So we must rely on finding Annie. We also need to think
about Bridie Miller. I would like to look at Blackfriars yard where she was found. There may be some sign for us
there.’

‘The beets,’ said Maistre Pierre.

‘I take it they had not come home with her?’

‘Agnes did not mention them,’ said Alys, ‘and I had a
rather detailed account of the event from her.’ She smiled
quickly. ‘Poor soul, she has had a trying two days.’

‘So have I,’ said her father. ‘So we go to Rothesay after
we look at Blackfriars yard, yes?’

‘I must speak to my uncle,’ said Gil. ‘But, yes.’

The great door of the house in Rottenrow was barred. Gil,
untroubled, went along the house wall and in at the little
gate to the kitchen yard. To his surprise, there was a light
showing in the window there.

Within, the kitchen smelled of tomorrow’s bread, which
was rising in the trough near the fire. Beyond the hearth,
William the kitchen-boy was already asleep, curled up on
his straw mattress in a bundle of blanketing. Beside it,
Maggie was on the settle, spinning wool by firelight. She
looked up when he came in.

‘My, you’re early home, Maister Gil.’

‘It’s all this loose living,’ he said, sitting down beside
her. ‘Did you wait up for me, Maggie?’

‘Someone had to. The maister wanted the door barred.
Do you want a bite?’

‘I’m well fed, thank you.’

‘So what’s come to Bridie Miller?’

He told her what they had learned. She listened carefully, watching her spindle twirling at the end of the
yarn.

‘She’ll have stepped aside from the market,’ she said
when he had finished.

‘What do you mean?’

‘To ease herself. Men can make use of a dyer’s tub, or a
tanner’s, but a modest lass canny hoist her skirts in the street.’ She picked up the spindle and began to wind on
the new thread.

‘In Blackfriars yard?’

‘It’s where we mostly go. It’s a long way back up the
brae to your own privy, Maister Gil, and there’s a wee
clump of bushes where prying laddies’ll not get a sight of
your shift.’

‘That would account for the smell on her hair,’ said Gil,
startled by this glimpse into another world.

‘Aye, it would. It gets a bit rich by the end of a
morning.’

‘Why was she not found, I wonder? How many women
step aside like this in a day?’

She shrugged, and set the spindle twirling.

‘I’ve never stood around counting. You don’t often meet
anyone else.’

‘And somebody followed her, or lay in wait - no, that
would mean he was expecting her. Someone saw her step
out of the market and followed her, took her unawares -
I must speak to Mally Bowen.’

‘I could do that for you,’ said Maggie. ‘What do you
want - just the state she was in when she was washed?’

‘Yes,’ he said gratefully. ‘How much blood was there,

and where was it, and had she been forced? Were her
hands clean? That kind of thing. Oh, and Maggie. I never
said. Thank you for today’s work in the Sempill house.’

‘Oh, that,’ she said, and lifted the spindle again. ‘Aye.
There’s more.’

‘More?’

‘See, I was sweirt to tell you this in front of the maister.’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. It’s no very nice, and it might
just be Marriott Kennedy spreading gossip, but …’

‘Go on,’ Gil encouraged.

‘Aye. Well. Marriott says. She took her time to it, and
went all round about, but in the end she came out with it
that Euphemia Campbell’s one of those with a taste for
wee games.’

‘Wee games?’

‘And I don’t mean merry-ma-tansy,’ she said grimly.
‘Marriott says - this is just what she says, mind - she’s
forever washing blood off shifts, and no just where you’d
expect blood on a decent woman’s shift. And off his shirts
as well.’

‘Agnes Yuill was complaining about having to get blood
off her satin clothes today,’ Gil recalled.

‘No doubt. And there’s aye pieces of rope hidden in her
chamber. Quite well hidden, it seems, but you’d need to be
right fly to hide something from Marriott.’

‘Well,’ said Gil. ‘That is interesting, Maggie.’

‘You mean it’s likely true?’

‘It fits with another piece of information.’

‘Oh, aye?’ she said hopefully.

‘Sempill used his knife on Bess Stewart.’ He could not
bear to detail the scars on that slender white back, but
suddenly remembered the visible mark. ‘He had scarred
her jaw, remember? And cut off the lobe of her ear.’

‘So maybe she’d not play his wee games, so he found
one that would,’ she speculated.

`I think you may be right,’ he agreed. “Thank you,
Maggie. That’s very useful.’ He got abruptly to his feet.
‘I’m for my bed. And so should you, if you’re to make the
old man’s porridge before Sext. Can I have a candle?’

‘In the box yonder. You see why I didn’t like to say in
front of the maister?’

‘What’s different about me?’ he asked, in some amusement. She eyed him in the firelight.

‘You’ve been longer in the world,’ she said. ‘He’s been a
priest, and one that won’t take his promises lightly, for
near forty year. He can still be shocked, though you’d not
think it.’

`I will be a priest; said Gil, experiencing the familiar
knotting in his stomach. Maggie nodded, still eyeing
him.

‘And what sort of a priest you’ll make there’s no knowing. You’ll find it hard going, Maister Gil. You were aye one that was hungry as soon as the larder door was
barred.’

She watched as he bent to light his candle from the fire’s
glow, and then said, ‘Euphemia Campbell killed your
good-sister.’

‘She what?’ Gil straightened up, staring at her in the dim
light. William’s slow breathing checked, and resumed.

‘Oh, not herself, not herself, but it was her doing.’

‘This is my brother Hughie’s wife we’re talking about?’
Gil searched his memory. ‘Sybilla, wasn’t it? Sybilla …’

‘Napier,’ Maggie supplied. ‘Aye.’

‘I thought she died in childbed, poor soul. My mother
wrote me at Paris.’

‘Aye, she died of their first bairn.’ Maggie crossed herself. ‘But that woman had been sniffing round your brother
more than six months - and you know what Hughie was
like.’

‘I know what Hughie was like,’ Gil agreed ruefully.
‘Euphemia would be just to his liking. And Sybilla took it
ill out, did she?’

‘She moped and dwined, poor wee mommet,’ said
Maggie, staring into the fire. ‘Your mother tried, and
I tried, but nothing we said could bring him to his senses.
And when it came her crying-time, he was from home.’
She paused, seeing something Gil could not.

‘Go on,’ he prompted.

‘Och, it’s five year since. The woman Campbell was
married on a Murray at the time, though that never
stopped her. When your father sent after Hughie, the man
had to go to Stirling for him, and he wasn’t to be found at
his own lodgings. They’d to get him out of Euphemia
Campbell’s bed to tell him his wife and son were dead,
and her barely sixteen.’

‘Oh, Hughie!’ said Gil in exasperation. ‘He never could
get it right, could he?’

‘Likely he’s paying for it in Purgatory now,’ said
Maggie, crossing herself again with the bundle of wool.
‘The maister’s never heard this either, Maister Gil.’

‘No,’ he said, staring at the dark window. He thought of
Euphemia wrestling with Hugh by candlelight, and was
aware of several conflicting emotions, including distaste
and what he recognized with shame as a prurient curiosity.
‘No, I can see that.’

The hall was dark and silent. Gil crossed it slowly, and
on a sudden impulse turned aside and ducked behind the
curtain into the window-space which his uncle used as a
tiny oratory. He set his own candle beside the two silver
candlesticks on the shelf which served as an altar, and
knelt, fixing his gaze on the small Annunciation scene
propped behind them. Gabriel, wings and draperies blowing in a great wind, held out a stem of lilies to Mary, who
turned, startled, from her reading desk. Through the
painted window between them could be seen the towers of
St Mungo’s.

Out in the house he could hear the quiet sounds of
Maggie shutting up the kitchen and shaking out her bed
before the fire. Boards creaked. A distant dog barked and
was answered.

Trust Hughie, he thought. The oldest, the handsome one,
the admired big brother with Edward in his shadow. Gil
had spent his childhood trying to catch up, but by the time
he could shoot with the little bow both Hugh and Edward
had been given crossbows, by the time he could ride his
pony they were on horseback.

Everything came easily to Hughie, and he took it for
granted, even the admiration of his siblings. Likely he
thought he could make it up with his wife when he got the
chance. But the chance was taken from him, and he had
lost something else taken for granted, something other
people - something Gil would give his right hand for.

There, it was out in the open.

Please, God, give me strength, he prayed. Blessed
Mother of God, give me strength. Sweet St Giles, pray for
me, that I may be free of my doubts.

The decision had been taken imperceptibly, over the
slow months. At the beginning, shocked by grief, without land or future, he had been willing enough to do from day
to day what David Cunningham directed. He had never
got up one morning and said, Yes, I will be a priest. It had
simply, gradually, become obvious as the sensible thing to
do, and at length he and his uncle had both come to take
it for granted. But now - now that it was so close - with
the vows and injunctions which he took so seriously …

Never to hold a bairn like that and know it was one’s
own.

Does any man know that? asked a cynical portion of his
mind.

A man married to a good woman can be reasonably
sure, he answered himself. Unbidden, the image of Alys
with the child on her hip rose before him.

And what about her? The mason must find her a husband. He would look for a good match for her, but Sybilla
Napier’s family had accepted his brother Hugh, and presumably Bess Stewart’s kin had thought John Sempill a
good match. Would Alys go to a man who would abuse
her like that? Or one who would sell her books?

Coherent prayer on his own behalf was beyond him, but
he bowed his head and petitioned every saint he thought
appropriate for Alys. When he ran out of requests he
simply knelt, emptying his mind, concentrating on the
wind which blew Gabriel’s painted garments.

After a while he became aware that, although nothing
had changed, he felt lighter, as if a burden had been lifted.
Unlocking his stiffened limbs, he rose and took up the
remnant of his candle, and made his way to the attic and
sleep.