Pat McIntosh - The Fourth Crow

Annie stared. The beaker fell from her hand, rolling across the beaten-earth floor and spilling foam. The blue eyes rolled upwards into her head, and she collapsed bonelessly sideways, onto Mistress Forrest’s broad bosom.

‘Oh, my lamb! Annie!’ the older woman exclaimed. Jennet scrambled to help her. Alys rose to snatch the plaid hanging on a nail at the back of the door and spread it out, and they lowered Annie to the ground. She was already beginning to stir, her hands twitching as if she was fighting something off. Mistress Forrest, still exclaiming, began patting her cheeks and chafing at her arms.

‘She’ll be better in a moment,’ Alys said, observing Annie’s returning colour. ‘Have you spirits in the house, mistress?’

In half an hour or so, sitting up again and sipping cautiously at a small amount of usquebae in a tiny beaker, Annie protested,

‘No, I’ve never a notion who’d ha done that. It’s just the thought of the escape I had that turned me dizzy. What if I’d no- Or Christie had been late- Oh, it doesny bear thinking on!’

‘Well, don’t think on it,’ said Jennet robustly. ‘Maybe the saint was watching out for you indeed, I’d say you owed him a candle, mem.’

‘Aye, you’re right, lass,’ said Annie, though her teeth chattered on the rim of the beaker. ‘Two candles, at the least. But no, Alys, I canny think, I’ve never a notion who might have tried to, to, who might want rid of me that bad. Our household’s all good people, Meggot hasny an ill bone in her body, my sisters are fond enough I’d ha said.’

‘Dame Ellen?’ Alys asked.

‘No, no, she was at me to accept one or other of the Muirs. I think she was to share some o my land wi them if the match went ahead, by what Meggot hearkened one time when they thought they were all alone in the yard. So that wouldny be like, she’d still be hoping I might come round.’

‘Is there no still that cousin o your faither’s, my lamb?’ said Mistress Forrest, straightening up from the hearth. ‘What was his name, now? I canny mind.’

‘What cousin?’ Annie stared at her nurse.

‘Och, him that made all the outcry when your faither gied you the land, at your marriage, Our Lady grant him rest. Specially for the bit wi the quarry on it.’

‘Hallrig, you mean? I don’t mind that. I wonder if Sir Edward and my own daddy dealt with it all?’

‘Aye, Hallrig. Likely they did, you were naught but a wee lassie. Any road, he made a great stushie, this kinsman, about the land going out the Gibb family, which was a right laugh as we said at the time seeing he wasny a Gibb neither. Just afore I was wedded and left the household, that was,’ said Mistress Forrest sadly, ‘and the most o them I’ve never seen since.’

Alys murmured in sympathy, and set this aside for later consideration.

‘Once you left the Cross,’ she said, ‘and Peg tied to it, poor woman-’

‘Is that her name?’ Annie crossed herself, and murmured a swift prayer.

‘Did you come straight here?’

‘Aye, they did,’ said Mistress Forrest, ‘all arranged, it was, your doctor man had sent a laddie to warn me, so I kent it was for that night, and I was sitting up watching and waiting for them. Right quiet it was, and all, by that time. There was all the outcry the prentices made in their battle, and then all the folk going home from the alehouses, and then it was silent as the grave after that, till I heard them on the path, and then Annie said my name at the door.’

‘Did you see anyone?’

Annie shook her head.

‘There was none stirring. We went from shadow to shadow, you understand, once we were out of the kirkyard, and both of us wi our ears stretched for the Watch and anyone else we might need to hide from, but there was none afoot.’ She shut her eyes, the better to remember. ‘One or two dogs barking, here and there a bairn waking inside a house. Some fellow wi a handcart. A couple arguing ahint their shutters.’ She opened her eyes. ‘And then we were here, and Eppie had hot water and shears and comb waiting.’ She ran a hand through the short curls. ‘I’ll ha to find me a priest, to seek absolution from the vow, but Our Lady kens, it’s good to be clean.’

‘Och, it was foolishness,’ said Mistress Forrest comfortably. ‘You’ll be easy let off it, they should never ha let you swear such a daft thing. It’s no as if you washed yoursel, after all, it was me got you clean, just as I did when you were still in tail-clouts, and clipped your hair and combed out all the wee louses.’

Alys met Annie’s eye, but did not comment. It was clear the other girl was aware, if her nurse was not, of the serious nature of her position: a broken oath was perjury, no matter what the circumstances of its breaking.

‘What did the doctor do?’ she asked.

‘He went back to the hostel, to his duties.’ Annie drew a deep breath. ‘Alys, what do I do now? Should I go to them, to the household? My sisters will be needing me, and I’d like- I’d like a last word wi our daddy if he yet lives. Forbye easing their concern for me.’

‘Och, my lamb-’ began Mistress Forrest.

‘You could come wi me, Eppie. I’d be glad of it, in fact.’

‘I think you must,’ Alys said. ‘And I’ll come too, if I may. There are things I need to ask them all.’

‘I’d looked for you afore Terce,’ said Otterburn. ‘What’s all this at St Catherine’s? It’s got St Mungo’s going like a spilled byke. I’ve had the Dean sending to me afore I’d broke my fast, bidding me find the murderer by this afternoon, and a special despatch from my lord, the Stirling road must ha grooves in it by now, and you nowhere to be found.’ He pulled a sheet of paper towards him and unfolded it, to display a passage of William Dunbar’s neat secretary hand, with Blacader’s crabbed signature below it. ‘He’s to be in Glasgow this afternoon for the same meeting I’ve to find the murderer for, Christ aid us, and then he’ll pronounce the anathema and see to the reconsecration at the hostel. The most o that’s St Mungo’s concern, I hope he’s sent to the Dean as well, and our folk here ken how to prepare for my lord, but he’s expecting the King to follow him, which is no so good. Where were you, any road? Sit there and gie me your tale, and I hope it’s a good one.’

‘I was down at the shore.’ Gil drew up the stool the Provost indicated. Socrates sprawled across his feet with an ostentatious sigh. ‘Getting a word wi Stockfish Tam. Can you lend me three-four men the night? We might take the St Mungo’s thief if we’re careful.’

‘Oh, is that what you’ve been at? Aye, likely. That would be a good thing, and something to silence the Dean. We’ll get a word wi Andro about that directly. First let me hear about St Catherine’s. It’s a bad business, this, Cunningham. The woman’s lying in my storeroom, waiting till I call a quest on her. The family wants to get her in the ground, and I want to get her out my lord’s way.’

Gil summarised what he had found at the hostel. Lockhart listened attentively, his long gloomy face becoming even gloomier.

‘Inside or outside?’ he said at last.

‘Outside, I suspect,’ Gil admitted, ‘which is tiresome. It would be simpler by far if I thought one of the household was responsible, but they all speak for one another.’

‘Do they now?’

‘I think it’s genuine,’ said Gil. ‘The lassies in particular are too foolish to take their part in a plot.’

‘So who is there outside?’

Gil shrugged.

‘I’d ha said the Muirs were a good choice, but Henry tells me they were talking wi Canon Muir all evening till well after the time she died. Will Craigie’s another, but he seemed as shocked as any o the clergy by where she was killed, as well as being right squeamish over how it happened. Someone must ha come into the hostel, but who it was I canny guess.’