Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘How well did she hear, do you know?’ asked Alys.

‘A good point,’ said Gil. ‘Certainly her voice was like a deaf woman’s.’

‘I thought she had no trouble when we saw her yesterday,’ objected Maistre Pierre.

‘There’s many can hear well enough if they know they’re addressed,’ said Ealasaidh.

Gil frowned, trying to fit this into the sequence he had assembled.

‘She’d have seen him — or her,’ he added scrupulously, ‘over the back of the settle.’ He rose and paced about the hearth, gesturing to place the furniture of the chamber where Dame Isabella died. ‘A settle much like that one, perhaps a little lower, near the window. The close-stool behind it. The bed about here, in the midst of the chamber, so one must approach round one side of it or the other. No chance of creeping up on her.’

‘So someone she trusted,’ said Alys. ‘Gil, did you say her head was bare when she lay dead? Could one of her women have been combing out her hair?’

‘That would fit,’ he agreed. ‘It was all about her head in locks. Not Annot, I think, she mentioned combing her earlier but not just before she was sent out. Perhaps it was the other one.’

‘So you seek the woman who is gone missing,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘Do you think the Serjeant will find her?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Alys. ‘We need to speak to her, but she may not have the answer. Even if she had returned, the woman might have left her mistress again for some reason, and the killer took advantage of the moment.’

‘I do not think the Serjeant will find her easily,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘All his shouting of names at the Cross does is tell the pursued he must go to ground.’

‘Ah. And if she has kin in Glasgow, they will not give her up. You are right, maister,’ said Ealasaidh. ‘But she has also robbed her mistress.’

‘She or another.’ Gil put a hand to his head. ‘I wish I knew how long it was before Annot discovered her, and when the men came back and sat watching the door.’

‘You suspect more than one person is involved?’ Maistre Pierre deduced.

‘I don’t know.’ He leaned back against the settle, wishing he could think clearly. Alys looked at him anxiously, but before she could speak Socrates scrambled up from where he lay sprawled before the hearth, and stood glaring at the door, head down and hackles up. Maistre Pierre rose, feet sounded on the fore-stair outside, someone knocked loudly.

There were two of the Provost’s men on the step, wearing triumphant grins and bearing a message.

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed the senior man, ‘we went through the toft like ripe fruit, me and a couple lads from the top, four more at the back gate wi their arms open, and we got a few things that was well worth it, one suspicion o theft, one fine for a fire too close to the thatch. We never got into the man’s workshop that we was to search, he wasny present, there was no key to his house and no sufficient reason for breaking down the door. But the best of the catch, maister, was the woman that’s wanted by the Serjeant for this matter in the Drygate.’

‘What, already?’ said Gil in amazement. ‘She was on the toft you searched? What was she doing there? Who was she hiding wi?’

‘Now that, maister,’ admitted the man, ‘I’ve no notion o. Dickon, you took her up, did she say aught in your hearing?’

‘No to say a useful word,’ said his companion. ‘She’d a bundle wi her, and a bit roastit cheese in her hand, and cam running out the back gate like a roe deer, right into my arms.’ He rubbed his ear. ‘Gied me a good bang on the lug wi her bundle, she did, right heavy it was, and I was one o the lucky ones, and calling us for everything, so we searched the bundle, and here was this bag o siller. We’ve got her for theft any road, whatever else she’s done.’

‘Aye,’ said the other man, ‘and the Provost says, if you’d wish to see her questioned afore she gets handed to the Serjeant, come by first thing the morn’s morn and you can ask her what you will, and he’s sent the same word to Maister Livingstone that’s her maister.’

‘She will have kin there,’ said Ealasaidh from the background. ‘There will be someone on the toft that is out of the Highlands, I have no doubt.’

‘At least two of the women,’ agreed Gil. ‘Tell Maister Otterburn I’ll be at the Castle at Prime, man.’

‘If the woman,’ said Maistre Pierre, closing the great door behind the two men, ‘is a speaker of Ersche, you need an interpreter.’

‘She speaks Scots well enough to be employed,’ Alys said.

‘None the less.’ Maistre Pierre looked at Ealasaidh. ‘It might be wise to take another speaker of the language with you.’

‘Och, yes,’ she agreed, ‘I would be happy to help. I can find out for you why she killed her mistress, no trouble.’

‘Why did your father do that?’ Gil asked. ‘I’ve no need of help to question the woman, and if I do, I’ve no doubt Otterburn can put his hand on an Ersche-speaker.’

Alys, shaking her hair out of its long braid, lifted the comb and said,

‘Perhaps she will be useful.’ He grunted, and she looked intently at him in the candlelight. ‘How is your head?’

‘Sore. I’ll live. I am soo ful of knyghthode that knyghtly I endure the payne .’ He unlaced his doublet and drew it off. ‘I suppose I can hardly take you as well now, it would look-’

‘As if I really couldn’t trust you,’ she finished, and gave him an enigmatic stare. ‘No, not after today’s work.’

‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ he said ruefully. ‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry if you’re to be embarrassed by it.’

‘I can deal with it,’ she said. ‘I sent Luke to the apothec-ary’s when he came in, with a list of sweetmeats and delicacies. Tomorrow by daylight he will take them round to the bawdy-house in a basket with ribbons, to the front door, as a gift from me. Oh, and a purse for the laddie. Cato, did you say he was called?’

‘ The wisdom of an heap of learned men ,’ he quoted. ‘Alys, that is true cunning.’

She looked at him sideways, round the honey-gold curtain of her hair. Her mouth twitched as if she was repressing a smile.

‘And what is it worth,’ she asked, ‘if I promise not to tell your mother?’

‘Fights like a wildcat,’ Otterburn said succinctly. ‘One man wi a hot ear, two more wi scratches, and wee Allie wi a bitten thumb, and we’ll all pray that doesny infect.’

‘Annot’s saying she’s aye had a temper,’ said Maister Livingstone sourly.

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of that,’ objected Lowrie beside him. ‘She’s aye seemed to me one that took what life threw at her, and stayed calm about it.’

‘So she’ll stay in chains, maister,’ continued Otterburn, ignoring this, ‘but apart fro that you can all ask her what you please. And Mistress McIan to be interpreter, I take it?’

‘What was in her bundle?’ Gil asked. ‘The men said something about coin.’

‘Oh, aye.’ Otterburn looked slightly less gloomy, and indicated the rack of shelves behind him, where a swathe of checked cloth suggested a plaid knotted round a collection of objects. ‘That’s a rare piece of good fortune. Well, I think it is. She’d a leather bag o coin about her, which I take to be the one that’s missing from the dead woman’s kist, according to her other waiting-woman, as you reported to me last night. Where’s that note, Walter? It’s quite a sum, and the interesting thing about it, maister,’ he accepted a sheet from his clerk and turned it towards Gil, ‘is that it’s all false money, every piece.’

‘False?’ Livingstone repeated, startled. ‘How would the old — woman come by false coin?’