The Harper's Quine (33 page)

‘Gil,’ said the mason. ‘Gilbert.’

Gil looked up.

‘I have a proposal to make. I have a marriageable
daughter and you are a single man. How would you wish
to marry my daughter?’

Gil stared, and felt the wooden bench of the porch shift
under him with the whole of St Bride’s Hill.

‘I …’ he began, and his voice dried up. He swallowed.
Had he really heard that?

‘Not, of course, if you do not wish to be married,’ said
Maistre Pierre. ‘But it seems to me it would be a good
match.’

‘I …’ began Gil again, and recognized, with glorious
clarity, the hind’s message, the next step he had asked for.
‘I can - I can think of nothing I would like more, and
almost nothing of which I am less worthy.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Maistre Pierre. That is well, then.’ He
put out his hand. ‘We are agreed in principle, yes?’

‘Well,’ said Gil blankly. ‘Yes. But Alys? How does she
feel about marriage? About me? I am six-and-twenty, she is
not yet seventeen, she scarcely knows me.’

‘Alys,’ said her father, ‘came home on May Day and told
me she had seen the man she wanted to her husband.
When I said, Well, cherie, but he might be married, she
said, No, father, for he is to be a priest. But I think he
doesn’t want to be a priest, says she, so he might as well
marry me.’

‘How did she know that?’ Gil wondered.

‘She knows everything,’ said the mason. ‘She is not,
perhaps, as pretty as her mother, but I think she is wiser.
But there you are. Clearly she affects you. And you? Do
you affect her? Is there some feeling there?’

‘Je desire de voir la douce desiree … I wish to see the sweet
desirable woman: she has everything, beauty and science,’ Gil
quoted. ‘I have thought of her day and night since I first
saw her. But I am not - Pierre, I have no land, no means.
How should I keep a wife? What would I bring to a
marriage?’

‘Yourself,’ said the mason, ‘warranted sound in wind
and limb, your profession, your descent. Your learning
and, if you will forgive me, your attitude to Alys’s learning. Alys herself will be well dowered. These are matters
for your uncle and me to discuss. If we are satisfied, so
may you be.’

‘And what my uncle will say -‘

‘He was in favour of the idea when I spoke to him. Are
you trying to cry off already?’

‘God, the old fox -!’

Gil began to laugh, and took the hand which the mason
was still offering.

‘You have turned my life round with a few words,’ he
said, and realized he was trembling. ‘My hert, my will, my
nature and my mind Was changit clean right in another kind.
I am finding it difficult to grasp such a shift in my
fortune.’

‘Do not try,’ said Maistre Pierre seriously. ‘Let it be. You
will grow used to it soon enough. Meantime, I think
Compline is ended, since there is no singing to slow matters. Sir William will be with us shortly, and we can go
back to those appalling mattresses.’

Matt was waiting on the strand at Dumbarton when the
Mary and Bruoc beached just after Sext. Gil felt astonishingly glad to see him; he was a familiar figure, one of the
remnants of his childhood, like Maggie, and it was reassuring to find him here in the midst of change.

‘Thrown out of all the ale-houses?’ he asked, wading
out of the shallows. Matt grunted in reply, and gave the
gallowglass the hostile stare of a small man for a tall one.
‘And have you found any word of Annie Thomson?’

‘Aye,’ said Matt.

‘Is she safe?’ asked the mason, turning from bidding
farewell to the master of the Mary and Bruoc. Matt nodded,
and Gil was conscious of a strong feeling of relief.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Where does she live? Is she in
Dumbarton?’

‘St Giles’ Wynd. But …’ said Matt.

‘But what?’ asked the mason. Gil, more familiar with the
man’s taciturn nature, simply waited.

‘Toothache,’ said Matt finally.

‘The poor lassie,’ said Neil with ready sympathy.

‘Bad?’ asked Gil. Matt nodded. ‘Bad enough to prevent
us questioning her?’

Matt shrugged, and turned away to walk along the
shore. Gil followed him, trying to concentrate his mind on
what he must say to the girl.

He felt quite different this morning. He had slept, badly,
two nights in these clothes, and certainly had acquired
fleas from the infamous straw mattress, and yet his body felt cleaner than the wind which blew through his hair. His
feet in the soggy boots were as light as the wood smoke
spiralling up along the shore where someone was heating
a tar-kettle. And beach and burgh, rock and hills, the
smells of seaweed and tar, seemed as new and unfamiliar
as if he had cast up on the shores of Tartary or Prester
John’s country. He could not gather his thoughts at all,
although that might be down to lack of sleep, or to the
dream, which would not leave him.

He had lain most of the night in Sir William’s loft
chamber, listening to his two companions snoring, and to
the occasional rattle of rain on the slates of the chapel
above his head, imagining strange and glorious ways in
which he could earn land and money to support a wife. To
support Alys. None of them, he had to admit, was practicable, and he had eventually fallen asleep, and dreamed
that he was sailing a small boat, just big enough for one,
across billows of grey ribbed silk. A rope in his hand led to
a sail bluer than the sky. The boat sped on, until he came
to a high rock rising out of the folds of silk. Seated on its
crest, Euphemia was combing a lock of her long yellow
hair and singing. At her side was an armed man, entangled
in another yellow lock; as the boat slid past he raised a
mailed fist in salute, or in farewell, and Gil saw without
surprise that it was his brother Hugh. He looked back, but
the boat sailed on, followed by the singing. The annoying
thing was that he knew the tune, and he had woken trying
to remember the words.

‘Do you know this one?’ he said to Maistre Pierre, and
whistled a few notes. The mason joined in, nodding.

‘We sang it. The other night at my house, you remember? A new song Alys had from somewhere. D’amour je
suis desheritee …’

‘I remember. I am dispossessed by love,’ Gil quoted, ‘and do
not know who to appeal to. Alas, I have lost my love, I am alone,
he has left me … to run after an affected woman who slanders
me without ceasing. Alas, I am forgotten, wherefore I am
delivered to death.’

‘What has brought that into your head?’ asked Maistre
Pierre, at his most quizzical. ‘I hope it has no bearing on
the present?’

‘I don’t know. Oh, none upon Alys or the - the matter
you broached last night. Merely, I dreamed of Euphemia
Campbell singing that.’

‘Hardly likely,’ said the mason.

‘She is singing like a ghillie-Bride - an oyster-catcher,’
said Neil, who had apparently taken Gil for his lord and
protector. ‘High and thin and all on one note.’

‘It keeps coming back to my mind. Matt! Where are we
going?’

‘St Giles’ Wynd,’ said Matt, jerking a thumb towards the
vennel that led inland.

They could hear the screaming as they picked their way
along the busy High Street, and when they turned in at the
entry under the figure of St Giles the sounds echoed hollowly in the vault. A little knot of neighbours was gathered
along the wynd outside the house, nodding and exclaiming, and as Matt pushed his way through someone looked
round saying hopefully, ‘Here’s the tooth-drawer!’

‘That’s no the tooth-drawer,’ said someone else. ‘He’s
away across the river to St Mahew’s to see to a horse, he’ll
no be back before Vespers. Oh, my, will you listen to that,
the poor lassie.’

‘What is it?’ asked the mason. ‘What is wrong?’

‘A lassie with a rotten tooth,’ said someone else. Several
voices explained how the girl’s mouth was swelled the size
of a football and she couldny eat or speak.

‘And her minnie waited till this morn to send for the
tooth-drawer, and found him out of the town.’

‘Why’d she wait so long?’

‘The lassie wouldny have it. Aye, aye, she’s regretting it
now.,

Gil, listening to the screams, felt it unlikely that the
sufferer had thought for anything but her pain.

‘Is it Annie Thomson?’ he asked.

‘It is that,’ said someone. ‘Here, widow Thomson, here’s
a man asking for Annie.’

‘If you’re no the tooth-drawer I don’t want you,’ said the
widow Thomson, appearing in her doorway. She was a
big-framed, bulky woman, with a strong resemblance to
the girl they had seen in Glasgow. ‘I don’t know, there’s
been as many folk asking for her since she came home, and
the worse she gets the more folk come asking.’

‘Who else has been looking for her?’ Gil asked
quickly.

‘Him yonder, for a start,’ said the widow, pointing at
Matt, who ducked hastily behind the mason. ‘And a black-
avised fellow in a green velvet hat came round the door
yesterday stinking of musk, seemed to feel all he had to do
was show enough coin and she’d tell him some story or
other.’ She flinched as another scream tore at their ears.
‘I ask you, maisters, how could she speak to anyone?’ She
wiped her eyes with the end of her kerchief. ‘What she
needs is that tooth drawn, and then she can get some
rest.’

‘Then maybe we can all get some rest,’ said a voice from
the back of the crowd. ‘Two days this has been going
on.’

‘I wish we could do something,’ said Gil helplessly.

‘I could,’ said Matt suddenly.

Gil stared at him. ‘Can you draw teeth, Matt?’

‘You can draw teeth?’ asked the widow. ‘Oh, maister, if
you could help my lassie!’

‘He will need someone to hold her down,’ said the
mason in practical tones.

‘Aye.’ Matt nodded at Gil. ‘You can help,’ he said firmly.
At the sound of the word, the crowd around them began
to break up like a dandelion-clock, but Matt put out a hand
and seized the sleeve of a bowlegged man in a carpenter’s
apron. ‘Pinchers,’ he said, and held out his other hand.

The next half-hour or so was among the most unpleasant
Gil had ever spent. Inside, the house was small and dark
and smelled of peat smoke, rancid bacon and illness. Matt
took one look, scuffed at the earth floor, shook his head
and said, ‘Out in the street.’ He looked about, past the
oblivious girl writhing and sobbing in the bed. ‘Chair?’

‘Maister MacMillan’s got a fine chair he’d maybe lend
us,’ said the widow. She hurried off to see to this. Matt
stepped into the street and looked at the crowd, which was
gathering again.

‘Rope,’ he said. ‘Clean clouts.’

People ran to and fro, and these were produced. The
chair was set on a level patch in front of the house door,
and Annie was carried out, struggling and screaming, and
tied down. It took four of them to restrain her, the mason
and Neil Campbell as well as Gil and Matt himself, with a
great deal of advice from the onlookers, and it was clear
that even a new tarred rope was not going to keep her still.
Her face was indeed badly swollen, and she was conscious
enough of her surroundings to offer considerable resistance when Matt tried to look at the tooth.

‘It’s one of the big ones,’ said her mother anxiously. ‘One
of the wee big ones, not the great big ones, if you take my
meaning, maister. I was packing it with pigeons’ dung
pounded with an onion, but it never did any good.’

‘Oh, no, no!’ said the mason, hanging on to a flailing
wrist. ‘The pigeon being a bird of Venus, its dung generates heat, excellent to draw a gumboil but not in this
instance -‘

‘Ah!’ said Matt, peering into the swollen tissue. ‘There!’
He let the girl’s mouth close and succeeded, with a few
gestures, in placing his helpers in the most useful manner,
despite complaints from the crowd that the mason’s broad
back was obstructing someone’s view. Pliers in one hand,
he got behind the screaming, squirming girl, issued a word
of command, and grabbed her head in an arm-lock, forcing
her jaw open with his left thumb precisely as Gil had seen
him do to a horse.

There were a few minutes of hectic action. There were
screams, and scuffling and sobbing, and then some really
unpleasant noises. Gil, intent on keeping Annie’s shoulders as still as possible, was aware of the feet of the
onlookers closing in. Then suddenly, all the noise ceased
and the girl stopped struggling. Gil, wondering if he had
gone deaf, let go and straightened up.

Matt was holding up a bloody morsel in his pliers. The
girl was lying alarmingly still and was quite white where
she was not already bloodstained, but as her mother hurried forward with a cry of, ‘Annie! Oh, my lassie!’ her
eyelashes fluttered. The crowd was commenting freely and
loudly on the success of the operation.

‘Clouts,’ said Matt, handing the pliers to Gil, who took
them reluctantly. With a little difficulty Annie was persuaded to open her mouth, and Matt mopped gently at the
mess, pausing to point out the amount of pus on the
cloth.

‘Oh, maister, how can I thank you!’ said the widow,
patting her daughter’s hand. ‘What’s your fee?’

Matt shrugged.

‘I hope there’s no trouble with the burgh tooth-drawer,’
said Gil, beginning to untie the knots in the rope.

‘Well, if he’d been here when he was wanted,’ said
someone behind him.

The carpenter reclaimed his pliers and went out into the
High Street, and the rest of the crowd, the entertainment
over, began to drift after him. Annie was helped back into
her house, her mother still exclaiming about a fee, and
Matt delivered some terse advice which Gil expanded for
him.

‘Make well-water hot, mistress, and put salt in it, and
have her hold it in her mouth and spit it out - don’t
swallow it - for the space of three Aves, three times a day
till it stops bleeding. And feed her on broth for a day or
two.’

‘What will that do?’ the widow asked suspiciously.