The Harper's Quine (30 page)

‘Torquil Stewart of Ettrick,’ he said. ‘His will. You see, he
left his property divided between the two daughters, held
in their own right, to leave as they see fit.’

‘This is very clear,’ said Gil. ‘A nice piece of work.’

‘He was very clear about his wishes himself,’ said
Maister Stewart modestly. Seen by daylight, he was dark of
hair and eye like his children, the neatly combed elf-locks
hanging round a pale, intent face. He seemed, Gil thought,
to be not much past thirty. ‘He had raised his daughters to
know how to run a property, he trusted them to go on as
he had taught them. And this is Edward Stewart’s will,’ he
continued, setting open another book. ‘More complicated,
because more clauses, but in essence the same in respect
of the property itself. The house outright to his wife
Elizabeth, in her own right, to dispose of as she sees fit.
The use of the contents of the house entire, with provision
for it to be inventoried at his death, for the rest of her life.
Requirement that she does not sell any item, and replaces
items worn out or broken. All the liferent goods to revert
to his kin after her death. In fact when the house was let
the remainder of the contents went to Ninian Stewart like
the residue of the estate.’

‘This matter of the plate and money is very strange,’ Gil
said. He skimmed down the careful Latin sentences of Edward Stewart’s will, aware out of the tail of his eye of a
steady sauntering of passers-by out in the street, as Maister
Stewart’s neighbours came to admire his Latin conversation with the colleague from Glasgow. ‘There is no sign
that she came to the harper with a fortune in her kist. If it
were to surface, whose would it be?’

‘Interesting,’ said Alexander Stewart thoughtfully. ‘The
plate would certainly be the Provost’s, like the furniture.
The money I suspect was hers, or perhaps her husband’s.
It would have been rent for the land at Kingarth and the
two farms at Ettrick, all good land. Some of the rent would
be in kind, you understand, and some in coin. As to
jewellery, some of that would be paraphernal, and should
return to her kin, or I suppose it now belongs to the bairn,
but any the husband gave her would revert to him. All
subject to discussion, I suspect. An interesting question,
Maister Cunningham.’

‘Had she made a will herself?’ Gil asked.

‘Not one that I knew of, since her second marriage.’

‘I wish we had a copy of the conjunct settlement. What
was the value of the two properties? You say the land at
Kingarth is good? I had heard otherwise.’

‘I do not know who could have told you that,’ said
Maister Stewart disapprovingly. ‘It is very good land. Further, it is beside the St Blane’s Fair gathering-place, so it is
used for grazing and pound-land at the Fair, and the rents
for that every year would ransom a galley. As for the other,
it lies between the castle and the harbour, and is rented to
two merchants for a good figure. One of them has built a
barn on his portion.’

‘I saw it as we came into the bay. Trade through the
burgh is rewarding, then?’

‘Rothesay is the only burgh in the Western Isles licensed
to trade overseas,’ said Maister Stewart with some pride.
This is why I moved here last year, to be closer to the
centre of trade. There was no man of law here anyway,
I came here often or folk came to me in Inveraray to draw
up documents, and after I lost two or three clients in bad weather I thought, well, well, better to move the inkstand
than the mounting-block.’

‘Very wise. I hope it has been good for business.’ Gil,
only half attending, looked from one will to the other.
‘These properties,’ he said slowly, ‘I think are now the
bairn’s. There is no indication that either husband had a
claim on them. Do you have paper to spare? Would you
object to my having a true copy? I need to show them to
John Sempill, and to my uncle, who acts for the bairn. And
can you tell me who was the grantor of the conjunct fee?
Who gave them these two valuable properties? And who
is collecting the rents while Bess has been away from
Bute?’

The same man in both cases. Even if I did not draw up
the deeds, I know that. It will be the good-brother. Her
sister’s man, out at Ettrick.’

‘And who is he?’

‘Alexander makes a good living,’ said Sir William as they
made their way back down towards the castle. The street
was much quieter now, with only a last few townspeople
making their way home before curfew. ‘He is the only man
of law in Rothesay at present, and for some distance round
about, and-he-is a good lawyer.’

‘Where did he study, do you know?’ Gil asked. ‘I meant
to ask him, but we were so busy writing these copies that
it slipped my mind.’

‘St Andrews, I think. Yes, surely. If it had been Glasgow
I would have remembered, because he would have met
David - your uncle. Yes, indeed, I am sure it was St
Andrews. He is Master of Arts as well as Bachelor of Laws.
He told me so.’

‘He is certainly a good lawyer, and his Latin is excellent.
Why does he stay here? Could he not do better in Stirling
or Edinburgh?’

‘I believe he is happy here. There is plenty of business. Besides, he is one of the wealthiest men in the burgh,’ said
Sir William with vicarious pride.

‘Wealthy?’ said Gil despite himself.

‘Oh, yes. Did you not see the court-cupboard at the door,
and that desk? Those, cost him a penny or two. He gives
very generously to the poor, and they always have food on
the table. I have eaten there myself when the Provost has
been invited, and I am sure you could not have dined
better in Glasgow. And he goes daily in that saffron
shirt.’

But his children played half-naked in the street, and they
all slept under one roof with the cattle, like any poor
peasant and his family. Could I live like that, Gil thought,
if I remained a layman?

Entering by the postern gate as the curfew bell began to
ring across the burgh, Gil and the stout priest found
Maistre Pierre seated in the castle courtyard enjoying the
evening light and watching the guard detail gathering by
the main gateway.

‘And was that helpful?’ he asked as they reached him.

‘Oh, very useful,’ said Dalrymple immediately. ‘Maister
Stewart was very helpful, very helpful. Maister Cunningham has seen and copied all the documents he needs,
I think. Forgive me, maisters, I must say Compline.
I believe it is late.’

‘How was your walk?’

‘Interesting.’ The mason rose to follow Sir William into
the chapel. ‘That cog at the wharf had lately been to
Nantes. I had a word with her skipper.’

Gil looked at him consideringly.

‘You have more news than that; he observed. ‘I can
tell.’

‘I have indeed.’

‘And so have I. What is yours?’

‘Guess who I saw in the town?’

Gil paused in the chapel doorway. A seagull screamed
from the wall-walk, and then broke into a long derisive
cackling. As well it might, he thought. I have been slow.

‘Was it by any chance,’ he said, suddenly sure of the
half-heard voice at the door of the lawyer’s cottage, ‘was it
one of the gallowglasses? Neil or Euan?’

‘It was,’ said the mason, slightly disappointed, ‘though
I do not know which. Did you see him too?’

‘No, but I heard him. Now it is your turn. Can you guess
who is Bess Stewart’s good-brother, the man who is collecting her rents and who granted the two properties in conjunct fee?’

‘Now that,’ said the mason triumphantly, ‘is easy. It
must be James Campbell.’

‘But should one of us not stay in Rothesay,’ said the mason,
‘in the hope of laying hands on that gallowglass?’

They were riding out of the burgh in the wake of one of
the castle scullions, who had reluctantly volunteered,
when cornered by Sir William after Sunday morning Mass,
to guide them to Ettrick and the farm where Bess Stewart’s
sister lived. Their mounts were the best the stout priest
had been able to coax out of the stables, stocky, shaggy
creatures with large unshod feet and no manners, and
none was willing to go faster than a trot.

Grinning shiftily, their guide had led them over the
headland and round a broad sandy bay where the gorse
bushes grew down close to the shore, and then turned
inland. He appeared to know where he was going. They
were now bumping along a track which appeared to lead
westward through a broad shallow valley. The occasional
spire of sweet blue peat-smoke suggested that the place
was inhabited, but they had encountered nobody.

‘Whichever brother it was you saw yesterday, if we do
not find him in Rothesay we can surely find him in
Glasgow,’ said Gil. ‘I feel happier meeting Mistress
Mariota Stewart with some company at my elbow. She
may not yet know her sister is dead, poor lady.’

‘Ah,’ said the mason. ‘And apart from that, what do you
wish to say to her?’

‘I wish to ask her where the money is.’ Gil looked about
him. ‘This is good land. These cattle are sturdy and the crops look healthy, and that was a handsome tower-house
we passed a while back.’

‘It is when you make remarks like that,’ said Maistre
Pierre in resentful tones, ‘that I recall that you are of
baronial stock. Do not change the subject. Are we riding
into the wilds, on these appalling beasts, with a guide who
does not speak Scots, merely to ask the lady where the
money is? And which money, anyway?’

‘Well,’ said Gil. ‘Yes. And no. The money and plate
which vanished when Bess did, and the rent for her land
and the joint land. John Sempill doesn’t appear to be
receiving much for it, from what he said, and it must be
going somewhere.’

‘If it is going into James Campbell’s coffers, why should
she tell us?’

‘A good point.’

‘How much further are we going? Do we enter those
mountains?’ Maistre Pierre nodded towards the blue sawtoothed mass in the distance to their left.

‘Sir William said it was two-three miles. I think those
mountains must be the next island, for there is the sea.’

Their guide, whom Sir William had identified as Lachie
Mor, turned and gave them a snaggle-toothed, shifty
grin.

‘Arran,’ he said, pointing at the mountains. Then, pointing to the other side of their path, ‘Ettrick. Mistress
Stewart. Agus Seumas Campbell,’ he added, with great
feeling, and spat.

‘What is wrong with being a Campbell?’ asked Maistre
Pierre curiously. ‘The Fury - the harper’s sister - felt the
same way.’

‘If you’re a Campbell, nothing,’ said Gil. ‘But my understanding is that they all reserve their first allegiance for the
Earl of Argyll, the head of the surname, and next to
another Campbell. Local ties and feus, obligations to the
lord they hold their land from, come a long way after. And
since any Campbell worth the name can manipulate that
position to his own benefit, many people distrust them. These two, of course - James and Euphemia - are the
grandchildren of the present earl by one of his younger
daughters, and so even closer.’

‘I suppose that accounts for the air one detects in both
of them, of being accountable to no one else for their
actions.’

‘You could be right,’ said Gil, much struck by this. Their
guide, listening intently, nodded, spat again, and turned
his pony off the track on to a narrower path, down
towards a stony ford.

‘Ettrick,’ he said again, pointing to a thin column of blue
smoke visible over the near skyline.

The house, though not a tower-house, was at least stonebuilt, with shuttered windows tucked under its thatch, and
contained a long hall and a small chamber at its far end,
well away from the byre. Two little boys practising their
letters were dismissed to see Seonaidh in a separate
kitchen out the back, quite as if they were in Rothesay. Gil,
seated on a morocco-leather backstool in front of Flemish
verdure tapestry, sipped the inevitable usquebae out of a
tiny footed Italian glass, eyed the woman opposite him
and said carefully,

‘Mistress Stewart, what is the latest word that has
reached you about your sister Bess?’

Mariota Stewart, in her woollen gown and white kerchief, gazed back at him. She was unnervingly like her
sister, with the same oval face, the same build and wellbred carriage, but Bess’s sweet expression was lacking.
This woman looked out at a world which held no illusions
for her.

‘Word of her death reached me yesterday, maister.’
Her voice was quite steady. ‘It was no surprise to me. Half
the parish heard the washing at the ford yonder, on
Tuesday night, so we were waiting for something of the
sort.’ She sipped at her own glass. ‘I understand she was
murdered.’

‘Yes. I found her. She had been stabbed, without struggling. She probably felt nothing.’

The white kerchief bowed. After a moment, still quite
steady, she said, ‘Thank you. Do you know who …?’

‘I am acting on behalf of St Mungo’s, to find out who.
Maister Mason, here, is also concerned, in that it was on
his building site that she was found.’

Maistre Pierre offered some conventional words of sympathy, at which Mistress Stewart bowed her head again
and said levelly, ‘If I can tell you anything that will help,
ask it.’

‘Thank you.’ Gil paused, and took a bite of yesterday’s
oatcake to blot up the spirits. ‘Mistress, you and your sister
both inherited land. The rents are clearly valuable, but
your sister had not received hers since she left Bute. Can
you tell me where the money might have gone?’

She stared at him.

‘My husband collected them,’ she said, ‘coin and kind
both. The grain and kye he would store, or maybe buy in,
and the coin went to John Sempill, as was his legal right.’
Only the absence of expression conveyed what she thought
about Sempill’s legal right.

‘And yet,’ said Gil, equally expressionless, ‘John Sempill
is convinced that Bess was receiving the rents of her own
property, and also that the two conjunct properties, the
land by the shore and the plot in Kingarth, are worthless.
This suggests to me that very little rent is reaching him.’