Pat McIntosh - The Fourth Crow

‘They’s one there,’ said Jennet. ‘And another yonder, and two more there.’

She began by asking at the one nearest the port. Her second enquiry was more fruitful, and the workshop itself far less unsavoury. The trade clearly necessitated working with the cut horns of animals, which must be soaked and cleaned, but the stinking barrels they were soaked in did not have to be kept by the shop door, she felt. This man’s green stock seemed to be stowed somewhere out of sight. She hoped it was also out of reach of his two small sons, who were squabbling over a hobbyhorse outside.

‘Mistress Forrest?’ said their father, a short stout man in a red doublet. ‘Oh, aye. Dwells down the back yonder,’ he jerked his head. ‘The path’s at the side o the shop. I canny interest you in a new comb, mistress? Or you, lassie, for that bonnie brown hair?’

Alys had already cast her eye over the items arranged neatly on the shelves behind the man’s workbench. Beakers, spoons, combs, a stack of bowls, a broad platter, gleamed in the light from the door. A pot of water steamed on a brazier beside the bench, and a clutter of mysterious tools, knives and chisels, pincers and clamps, lay to hand.

‘See, I’ve all sizes,’ continued the horner. ‘Carved wi flowers, plain as you like, long teeth or short. Best combs in Glasgow, mistress, I’ll warrant you.’ He lifted half-a-dozen and spread them out on a cloth with a deft movement. ‘See, here’s a bonny one. ’At’s a good size, so it is, there’s as many ladies buys that size. In fact Mistress Forrest that you’re asking for, she bought one of them off me, no two days since, seeing she’d lost her old one. Or so she said.’

‘Is that right?’ Alys turned the pretty thing over, admiring the stripes of black and tawny colour. ‘One like this, was it? She has good taste.’

‘Aye, just like it, wi the wee flowers, save the raying wasny as dark. Her man buys them off me and all, to take out on his wee cairt.’ He glanced at the window. ‘I’ve no seen her the day, she’s likely in the house, if you wanted to ask her how she’s found her comb.’

Half an hour later, having bargained successfully for a dozen bowls, a set of beakers, and the flowered comb, and arranged for them to be sent home, Alys and a less sullen Jennet picked their way down the side of the horner’s little workshop.

‘The second door, he said it was, mem,’ Jennet said, pausing before a sturdy, well-maintained cottage, its timber framed walls whitewashed, a tub of herbs on either side of the doorsill. Movement within suggested kitchen work, clinking crocks, chopping sounds. ‘Is it this one?’

‘I’d think so.’ Alys paused, collected her mind and rattled at the tirling-pin.

The sounds within stopped abruptly. After a moment the door was opened, wide enough for a face to peer out. A plump, mature face, wary and apprehensive, surrounded by a decent kerchief of sparkling white linen.

‘Mistress Forrest?’ Alys asked.

‘Aye.’

Alys waited, but there was nothing more.

‘I think you’ve not been out to the market the day. May I come in?’ she said.

‘It’s no right convenient.’ Mistress Forrest glanced over her shoulder, into the house, and looked back at Alys. ‘I’m in the midst o making, making, apple cheese.’

‘In August ?’ said Alys involuntarily. ‘I’d like some of those apples. I think you should let me in, for I’ve a word for Annie Gibb, mistress, but I can deliver it here on your threshold if you prefer.’

‘Who would that be?’ countered the woman. Alys, aware of Jennet staring at her, said patiently,

‘I think Mistress Gibb needs to know that Dame Ellen Shaw is dead.’

Mistress Forrest began to answer, shaking her head, but behind her another voice said sharply,

‘Dame Ellen dead? Eppie, let her in!’

‘Let me go first!’ said Jennet urgently. ‘You be careful, mem, she’s maybe-’

‘Nonsense,’ said Alys, stepping forward as Mistress Forrest reluctantly drew the door wider. ‘She’s as sane as you or me. She never was mad, were you, Annie?’

The house was small, its roof composed of one bay of rafters, but it was neat and well stocked. Its floor, of that strange mixture of ash, clay, straw and gravel, rammed down, oiled and burnished with a flat stone, which was common in the better cottages, was clean and well swept. At one end a ladder led up to a loft, where a mattress was airing, and two sturdy kists suggested enough possessions to fill them. At ground level two good wooden chairs and a pair of stools were enough to seat four women round the open hearth; a folding table against the wall, two more kists, a stack of bags and smaller boxes which must be the cadger’s stock-in-trade, furnished the place well, and a quantity of cushions and hangings stitched from well-worn verdure tapestry made it easeful and suggested that Mistress Forrest was a good needlewoman.

‘Dame Ellen dead,’ said the girl who sat opposite Alys, for the fifth or sixth time. ‘I still canny take it in.’

‘And I hope she has her reward for the way she’s dealt wi you, my lamb,’ said Mistress Forrest. She was a comfortable woman in her forties, neatly and decently dressed in good tawny wool; her apron was as white as her headdress. She had clearly been working on the dinner, for a wooden board with a knife and carrots for chopping had been set aside, but there were no apples visible. Beside her, Annie Gibb was young and slender and bundled in what must be her host’s second best kirtle, from the way it was belted in folds about her waist and exposed ankles swathed in clean but faded cloth hose. Her feet were thrust into an elderly pair of wooden-soled shoes. Her hair was fair, and cut short and curling round her head; it seemed as if her vow was set aside.

‘But how did you find me?’ she asked now. ‘I’d ha heard the word of the death soon or late, when Eppie went out to the street or when Geordie Horner came by to tell her the news, but here you are on the doorstep to tell me it.’

‘You know the whole of Glasgow is seeking you?’ Alys said carefully.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Mistress Forrest. ‘I seen the men out beating the Stablegreen, keeking under bushes, and the Provost’s men asking at all the houses. But nobody kent my lammie was here, and I never said a thing, and let Geordie and his wife think I’d some woman’s trouble on me and couldny talk at the door, so they’ve never found her. And yet here’s you, lassie, come straight to my door as Annie says.’

‘My mistress kens a’ things,’ said Jennet proudly.

‘Annie’s good-sisters mentioned the cadger, more than once,’ Alys said. ‘I wondered if he had carried some message for you. Then I learned that he was a Glasgow man, and had a wife. I thought it was worth looking here, seeing nobody else had tried it. Were you Annie’s nurse, mistress?’

‘I was that,’ said Mistress Forrest fondly, ‘and her mammy’s before her. Who else would she turn to? We set it all together, her and Billy and me, so soon as the scheme of St Mungo’s Cross was mentioned. And that foreign fellow that helped and all.’

‘But how did you get free of the Cross?’ asked Jennet, and looked from her mistress to Annie. ‘I just wondered,’ she added. ‘Was it St Mungo himsel freed you, mistress?’

‘No,’ said Annie regretfully. ‘Though I- No.’

‘I thought it couldny be,’ said Jennet, equally regretful.

‘It was Doctor Januar, wasn’t it?’ said Alys.

Annie stared at her, her colour rising, and crossed herself.

‘Who are you? You ken too much by far!’ she said in alarm.

‘I told you, my man is Blacader’s quaestor, charged with finding you and with determining who has killed Dame Ellen,’ Alys reminded her. ‘I have spoken with your family, and with the doctor. He is clever, very clever, but he could not disguise that he was not concerned for you.’