Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘She’s made my mother’s life a misery,’ Lowrie contributed, ‘since ever Thomas died, two year ago at Yule, and why her woman Annot stays wi her I’ve no notion.’

‘Or any of them,’ said his uncle. ‘I’d think shame, to miscall honest workers the way she does, let alone the way she speaks to her equals.’

‘Is she lodged wi you just now? Has she said anything more about the Strathblane portions? What makes her so certain they’re hers, for instance?’

Lowrie covered his eyes with one hand, and his uncle groaned.

‘Cold tongue pie wi bitter sauce, we had for supper this night,’ he admitted. ‘We’re all of us lodged in Canon Aiken’s house, seeing he’s away to preach at his benefice, and he’s left us some of the servants. It’s a right good cook he keeps, but it was all wasted this evening, I couldny taste a morsel of it for the old dame haranguing us both. Ingratitude, enmity, lack of respect-’

‘Jealousy, bitterness,’ Lowrie supplied. ‘Oh, and ill manners. She’s aye been one to judge others by herself. She maintains that Thomas held everything in joint fee wi her, but when my uncle asked her for proof and the documents to it she began drumming her heels, and then-’ He paused, looking awkward, but his uncle took up the tale again with no qualms.

‘Then she announced that she would go to stool, and left the board. Her women went wi her, poor souls, Annot and the other one, but I’d had about all I could take o her nonsense and could face no more o the supper, good as it was. And then,’ he pursued, indignation warming his tone, ‘John Sempill turns up, saying she wanted a word wi him, as I recall her telling him in Canon Cunningham’s house, and she kept him waiting in her antechamber, then they had a roaring tulzie, I’m surprised you never heard it down here, and she dismissed him, and we had to listen to him raging about her manners and offer him a drink afore he’d leave us. Just afore we came out, that was.’

‘Well, it was an entertainment,’ said Lowrie.

‘So she has not offered any proof,’ said Alys.

‘What else has she given away?’ Gil asked. ‘And who did she give it to? Has she issue of her own?’

‘No bairns that we know of,’ said Maister Livingstone. ‘She’s right fond of Magdalen Boyd, we’ve met the lady a time or two in her company, and she’s mentioned your sister, maister. Thomas had no issue neither.’

‘I reckon Holy Kirk will be the ultimate beneficiary,’ said Lowrie.

‘As to what she’s alienated,’ pursued Maister Livingstone, ‘we aye suspicioned this other stretch of Strathblane, the next property, Balgrochan that Mistress Boyd mentioned, was rightly part of the heriot, but Archie could never prove it. She gave that to Mistress Boyd at her second marriage, whenever that was.’

‘There was the lands in Teviotdale she sold to the Maitlands,’ observed Lowrie. ‘My faither was certain he’d seen the names on something in the great kist, but there was nothing to be found when he searched, and the superior had nothing either.’

Gil nodded. The Livingstone family obviously held to the same custom as his own father, and most other landowners. The documents which embodied their right to occupy this or that portion of the realm of Scotland were kept in one place, protected with the rest of the family’s valuables. The overlord, the feu superior, would have a copy; the man of law who had drawn up the original document might or might not hold a third copy, but he would certainly have a record of the transaction written into his protocol book, his formal record of all the legal proceedings he had witnessed.

‘Who conveyed these portions for her?’ he asked. ‘How did she convince him the lands were hers to convey? An instrument of sasine granted to any man is not sufficient proof that his wife was seized in the same lands .’

Maister Livingstone blinked at the Latin, but both Lowrie and Alys murmured in agreement.

‘My faither might recall who handled the sale to the Maitlands. Whoever it was, if she just said they were hers, likely he’d accept it. It would take a better man than most to argue wi her,’ said Lowrie frankly. ‘She’s like a runaway cart when she gets going. What’s more,’ he went on, thinking aloud, ‘Thomas might never have had a paper for all that was his anyway, not everyone gets a new document drawn up when they inherit. Why pay for something you might never need?’

Gil nodded again, studying the spread of crabbed writing and looping signatures before him.

‘It’s clear enough by these,’ he said to Maister Livingstone, ‘that the lands of Ballencleroch with the Clachan of Campsie are rightly part of the inheritance, and therefore are now held by Livingstone of Craigannet — by your brother. I’ll proceed on that assumption for now, until the old dame can show me any different. I wonder where she had the Lanarkshire lands from?’

‘She said those had been in her family,’ said Alys. ‘Where would you go to confirm that?’

‘My uncle might ken who I should ask,’ Gil said. ‘And I should speak to your brother’s own man of law, maybe, maister. Who is he? Would he have dealt wi Dame Isabella? No, surely he’d have recognized the properties.’

‘Mm.’ Maister Livingstone’s face grew longer, and he crossed himself. ‘That was our kinsman George. A third or fourth cousin, practising in Stirling. Dee’d last Martinmas, he did. Archie’s had no call to replace him yet.’

‘His house went on fire,’ supplied Lowrie. ‘His papers went up in flames and all.’

‘Our Lady receive him,’ said Alys, and crossed herself. Gil sighed. This was not a simple trail, that was becoming obvious.

‘We need to ask your brother if he recalls who acted for the old dame,’ he said, counting off the points, ‘I need to ask my uncle what he knows about the Lanarkshire lands, and I need to get a closer look at the papers for the two properties again. Dame Isabella took them back, I think.’

‘We can send our man Jock Russell out to Craigannet,’ offered Lowrie, ‘he can fetch back word from my faither.’

‘That would help,’ Gil said. He turned away from the spread of papers and lifted the jug of Malvoisie which Ays had brought. ‘Time for another mouthful, I’d say. And while we drink it, what can you tell me, Maister Livingstone, about how coins are struck?’

‘What can I tell you?’ repeated Maister Livingstone, startled. ‘Why, about all you’d wish to ken, I dare say, for I was moneyer to James Third, along wi Tammas Todd, and oversaw the whole process for five year. What brings that into your mind? Is it this counterfeit coin you have in Glasgow? The auld carline’s never tried to pass you a false plack, has she!’

He chuckled at his joke. Gil smiled politely and refilled his glass with the dark gold wine.

‘Have a seat,’ he suggested, handing it over, ‘and tell me the process. How does it begin?’

In fact there was rather more than he wished to know. Maister Livingstone’s memory was excellent, but indiscriminate, and before long Gil’s head was whirling in a cloud of details, of the distinctions between different royal portraits on the one side of a coin and the decoration round the cross on the other, of different inscriptions and values, weights of silver and fineness of the alloy.

‘But the coining itself,’ he prompted. ‘How does that go?’

‘Oh, in the assay, as I’m just telling you.’ Livingstone sipped appreciatively. ‘Then when your metal’s been made equal to the fineness laid down by contract-’ His speech tumbled off again like a flight of pigeons, describing casting the ingots, finger-thick and a foot long, the annealing, beating flat, annealing again, the cutting into coin-sized squares which were stacked and beaten circular.