Pat McIntosh - The Fourth Crow

‘Well, we’ll see.’ Kate looked round as the house door opened. ‘Andy? Is all well out in the yard?’

‘Oh, aye, mistress.’ Augie’s steward, small and bowlegged, ducked his head in a bow to both ladies, and gave Babb a friendly nod. ‘It was just I seen the wee laddie out there, so I thought Mistress Mason might be wi you. I tracked the cadger’s lodging for ye, mistress.’

‘That was very quick,’ said Alys admiringly. ‘I hope it was not a great trouble.’

‘No, no, was nae bother. Turns out he goes drinking when he’s in Glasgow in the same howff our Jamesie’s brother favours, up at the Wyndheid. So he stays up the Stablegreen, it seems, near the port, at the back o a horner’s shop. His wife’s cried,’ Andy paused, and rasped his chin thoughtfully, ‘Eppie, that was the name. Eppie Forrest. She’s like to be at home even if Billy isny.’

One advantage of Jennet’s bad mood, Alys found, was that the girl accompanied her without comment. She had rather expected a stream of objections to her next excursion, since the Stablegreen was a very mixed area, but Jennet was still offended by having been left at home last night and merely followed her mistress one step behind all the way up the High Street, among the groups of gossiping women and shouting students, through the Wyndhead, across the Girth Burn and past the rose-brown sandstone walls of the Castle. The street led by St Serf’s almshouse, where aged voices upraised in chant suggested the residents were singing Nones, and St Catherine’s, where several priests were gathered outside the gate, talking in low shocked tones. Alys avoided these, and went on to where the houses became smaller, with workshops and weaving-sheds propped against them.

Lowrie’s directions were quite clear, and led her to a small cottage set end-on to the street. Under the sagging thatch a small window pierced the rubble wall near the house corner, its shutters open, and voices and a smell of stewed kale and fried onions floated out; Jennet followed as she picked her way along the muddy path to the door and rattled at the tirling-pin, the voices stopped, and there was a hoarse yapping. After a moment the door opened on a sturdy man in a sleeveless doublet, with his wife, in a blue kirtle, visible behind him restraining a half-grown dog of very mixed race.

‘Will Johnson?’ Alys asked over the continued yapping. ‘I think our man spoke to your wife yesterday. Could I have a word? About something you heard?’

‘A word?’

‘And is that the dog you went to fetch? It’s a very healthy beast,’ she said diplomatically, unable to think of any other commendation.

‘Aye, and warranted good ratters on both sides.’ Johnson eyed her up and down, surveyed Jennet, and stood back civilly. ‘Will you come in, mistress?’

‘We’re just at our kale,’ said his wife. The dog barked again, and she clamped its muzzle shut with an expert hand. ‘Will you hae a bite to eat? Come and sit in at the fire, mistress, and your lassie wi you. Was it about what happened yestreen? For I spoke to your man, I tellt him all,’ she freed the dog, which hurried forward to check the intruders, and crossed herself, ‘Christ forgive her, poor woman, naeb’dy deserves to end like that, and in a chapel and all, what’s the world coming to? Sit in and eat, mistress.’

Argument was futile. Seated by the hearth before a real chimney, in the man’s own chair, a bowl of kale and a lump of barley bread in front of her on a stool, the dog restrained from sniffing hopefully at the food, and Jennet beside her spooning at another generous bowlful, she allowed the couple to rehearse the events of the previous evening, offering corrections to their wilder flights of fancy but trying to give away nothing new.

‘She’s saying it was the Deil himsel,’ said Johnson drily, jerking his head at his wife, ‘but I’m thinking it wasny, they’d never a smell o sulphur or flames or the like. But who’d ha thought it, here on the Stablegreen?’

‘No, indeed,’ said Alys soothingly. ‘It is a very proper chapel, with figures of Our Lord and Our Lady and St Catherine, and a crucifix upon the altar, the Devil could never bear to enter such a place.’

‘But they’re saying the woman was struck down wi the crucifix itsel,’ said Mistress Templand, reluctant to abandon her theory.

‘It was the candlestick,’ said Alys, ‘so my husband told me. But I think you had spoken with Dame Ellen, not two hours before?’

‘I had that! Poor soul, and if she’d kent her end was that near, she’d ha dealt more civilly wi me, I’ve no doubt. Calling me for a’ things, she was, and accusing me o leeing, threatened to get her men to pit me out the place,’ recalled Mistress Templand, indignation rising. ‘And me doing naught but tell her o what my man heard, when her household’s still asking all about for news o that lassie that was throttled at St Mungo’s Cross.’

‘And what was it you heard?’ Alys asked, turning to the man of the house. ‘I think it might be helpful.’

‘That night the lassie was at the Cross, Will,’ his wife prompted. ‘You mind, you tellt me, you looked out and there was a hoor out there arguing wi a crowd o men.’

‘It wasny a crowd o men, woman,’ said Johnson. ‘It was two men. See, she was setting the morn’s meal to soak for the porridge, and rattling crocks, and the like,’ he said to Alys, ‘and I was the other end o the house and about to bar the shutters and the door, and I heard voices out in the street.’ Alys nodded. ‘So I keeked out, and it was a lassie, I’ve seen her about often enough, one o the lassies from the Trindle up the road a bit.’ His wife sniffed eloquently, but did not interrupt. ‘She was cammellin away at two fellows in fine clothes, threapin that they awed her for something they’d gied her, which doesny make sense,’ he added as if he had just thought of it, ‘surely she awed them if they gied her something? Any road, it was working up to a right stushie, yir two fellows were threatening her to keep her voice down and leave them alane, but then one of them seen me keeking out, and they went off down the road, and her after them. Last I heard she was still crying out that they awed her, and threatening to take it further.’

‘You must ha misheard,’ said his wife. ‘She’d gied them something, maybe, and that’s how it was them awed her for it.’

‘No, I never. You gied me it, she was saying, there was never a sign afore you -’ His eyes slid sideways to his wife. ‘Afore he rummelt her,’ he mouthed. His wife gave another eloquent sniff, but did not comment.

‘What were the men like, that she argued with?’ Alys asked. ‘Did you see them?’

‘No that well,’ admitted Johnson regretfully. ‘Two well-set fellows, young enough, maybe past twenty. Fine clothes the both o them, velvet gowns,’ he stuck out his elbows to show a short gown with its flaring body, ‘fancy braid on their doublets, great felt bonnets. One o them had a feather in his.’

‘You never saw their faces?’

‘No clear. It was near dark, it was just the moon and the lantern on the corner o Tammas Tamson’s weaving-shed showed me that much.’ He paused to consider. ‘Neither o them had a beard, nor long hair.’

Alys thought about this for a moment, stroking the young dog’s soft ears.

‘What time was it, do you suppose?’ she asked.

‘Time we should ha been in our bed. An hour afore midnight, two hour?’

Extracting herself and Jennet with difficulty from the house, Alys paused on the street to consider her next move. Jennet, thawing slightly, watched her but said nothing.

‘The cadger’s wife,’ Alys said aloud. ‘She dwells at the back of a horner’s shop.’