Pat McIntosh - The King's Corrodian

‘Is it that woman that saw the Deil rise up from the man’s house?’ said Jennet, brightening. ‘We’ll can sit in her kitchen and hear it all from her servants, eh, Tam?’

‘If she’ll see me,’ said Alys.

Mistress Buttergask was very happy to see Alys. She was a well-padded woman in a gown of good dark-green wool, hastily assumed over a striped kirtle to welcome her guest, with a very up-to-date black woollen headdress framing a round, sweet face. Her eyes were pale blue and rather vague, though Alys suspected they saw more than appeared.

Having rattled at the pin by the door of the neat stone-built house she had been directed to, Alys found the three of them warmly greeted and drawn in out of the rain, to the accompaniment of a stream of unceasing, welcoming chatter. Tam and Jennet were despatched to the kitchen along with two young maids and orders to bring in spiced wine and cakes, and herself led into a cosy, untidy solar where a small woolly dog had been yapping endlessly since she stepped into the house.

‘Be quiet, Roileag!’ said her hostess without effect. ‘That’s right kind in you, my dearie, to call on me in this weather, I was near deid wi boredom mysel and those two lassies driving me daft wi their prattle. Come in, come in, hae a seat. Gie me that plaidie, we’ll just shake the rain off it,’ she cracked it like a whip and droplets spat and fizzled on the brazier in the centre of the chamber. ‘Hang it here, it’ll be dry by the time you leave, you’ll get the good o’t when you go out again. Be quiet , Roileag! My!’ She sat down opposite Alys and studied her with interest while her dog jumped onto her knee and growled faintly. ‘And who did you say you were?’

‘I’m Alys Mason, from Glasgow, at your service, mistress. We’re lodging at the Blackfriars the now, while my man looks into this matter o the fellow,’ she paused, choosing her words, ‘carried off by the Deil.’

‘Oh!’ Mistress Buttergask breathed, the blue eyes going round with excitement. ‘Oh, I can tell you-’

‘I hoped you might,’ Alys said, with a complicit smile. ‘Prior Boyd has tellt us what you saw, a course, but I thought I’d as soon hear it from you.’

‘And your man’s looking into it, you say?’ Mistress Buttergask tilted her head, frowning. ‘Why would he need to do that? It’s a’ seen to, is it no? Though a course they couldny ha a quest on him, seeing there was no corp to examine. My — my friend said they’d no notion what to do in the matter on the Council.’

‘Holy Kirk wants an inquiry,’ Alys said. Their eyes met, and both nodded. What Holy Kirk wanted, Holy Kirk got. ‘So I hoped you’d tell me at first hand what you saw, for I’m sure it was more than Prior Boyd ever said.’

‘D’you ken?’ Mistress Buttergask clasped her plump hands together. The dog Roileag lurched on her knee and complained, with a sound between a growl and a whine. ‘I was certain that would happen. He never wanted to hear what I saw, you could tell that, only acause I hear things, he thinks I canny tell what I see wi my own een. It was only when my — my friend bore out everything I tellt them that they listened at all.’

‘He saw it too?’ Alys said. The other woman relaxed slightly at her tone, and nodded. Alys wondered if her neighbours were inclined to be sanctimonious about her ‘friend’.

A tapping at the door heralded one of the young maids with a tray. It held two horn cups, which gave off a welcome spicy smell, and a platter of little cakes. Once she had departed, they had toasted one another, and Roileag had been fed one of the cakes, which she took under the chair to consume, Alys said, ‘Are you close to the Blackfriars here? I’m all turned about,’ she admitted, ‘wi the way the path winds to come here. I’m not sure what way the house looks.’

‘Aye, it’s like a morris-maze,’ agreed Mistress Buttergask. ‘But that’s the Blackfriars at the foot o my garden.’ She nodded at the window of the little chamber, shuttered against the January weather. ‘It’s the outside wall o the very house, mistress.’

Alys rose and went to the window. It was deeply recessed; a new-looking crucifix had been hung on the panelling at one side of the recess, a print of the Annunciation on the other. She peered through the small greenish panes of the upper portion. The garden was long and narrow, the typical shape of an urban toft, and dismal in the rain, the kale shining dark green; at the far end was a fence, and beyond that, presumably on the other side of a path of some sort, was a well-built stone wall. Slabs of dark-red dressed stone, in many shapes and sizes, well fitted together in the same style as the front of Pollock’s house, rose to a roof of what must be local slate. The wall extended right and left into the drizzle; further to her left the bulky shape of the Blackfriars’ church loomed darkly, to the right the roof ended, showing where the row of small houses stopped, but the wall itself continued. She looked intently at the nearest section again, and made out the blocked window, on a level with three other little windows carefully shuttered against the weather. It was indeed Pollock’s house which faced her, and those must be the windows of the other small lodgings.

‘Tell me about it,’ she said, returning to her stool.

Mistress Buttergask set down her beaker and clasped her hands again before her round bosom. ‘Oh, mistress!’ This was clearly a well-rehearsed tale.

‘Oh, it still makes me that wambly to think on it!’ She paused, considering her audience. ‘I rose in the middle of the night, see, and when I’d done wi the jordan and eaten a bite out the dole-cupboard, I went to the window to see how the night was progressing.’

‘The window looks the same way as this one?’

‘It’s the chamber above this.’ On the word, they heard footsteps overhead, and chattering voices. Roileag yapped, and Mistress Buttergask smiled tolerantly. ‘Och, those lassies, they’ll be showing your servants where I looked out and what it was I saw.’

‘Did you open the shutter?’ Alys asked, one ear cocked for the responses above her.

‘I did.’ Mistress Buttergask nodded. ‘I did that, for it was a mite stuffy in the chamber, for all it was so cold. Bitter cold it was, and a clear night, wi a hard frost. So I looked out,’ she went on, regaining her narrative, ‘and the moon was shining on the rooftops, and sparkling on the frost, right bonnie it was, and not a thing moving. And I was just thinking what a sight it was, wi the moon and the stars like jewels, when I seen this great black shape rise up fro the roof there.’

She waited expectantly. Alys obliged by saying, ‘A shape? What sort of a shape?’

‘Oh, my!’ The other woman set one hand at the base of her throat and looked away, down at the floor beside her. ‘What a sight it was! All hunched ower, ye ken, what wi carrying the man, but there was flames flitterin about it, and a pair o great red een. I crossed mysel, you can be sure,’ she suited the action to the words, ‘and woke Rattray, and got him out his bed to look. And he seen it and all, and bore me out when I tellt Father Prior,’ she added, ‘so he’s no need to doubt me or shorten the tale. I was feart for my mortal soul, I can tell you, mistress, and Rattray’s and all.’

‘He hadny shortened it by much,’ said Alys, studying her. There could be no doubt it had been a genuine account of something the woman had seen or thought she saw; she showed signs of distress now at the recollection. Roileag had jumped possessively onto her lap again, and now curled up firmly; her mistress stroked her fur, as if for comfort. ‘Will I call your servants for more of the wine?’ Alys asked. ‘Or should you eat one o the wee cakes, to settle your humours?’