Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘You think?’ said Gil, spooning raisin sauce over the turnips on his plate. Since this had been his own conclusion he merely went on, ‘And did she know the folk on the toft? Was she telling the truth when she said she was just passing through?’

‘Of that I have no knowledge,’ admitted Ealasaidh, her dark brows drawing together. ‘Not all she spoke was truth. She is more frightened than she appears.’

‘She’d be a fool otherwise,’ Gil said. ‘Pierre, are you busy? Could you spare me the rest of the afternoon?’

Maistre Pierre, on hearing what Gil’s errand was, enlisted Luke’s presence as a further bodyguard, and all three walked up the High Street, the dog at Gil’s heels, past houses and pends where working people were just stepping out into the afternoon drizzle to return to whatever task earned their daily kale. At the Castle Socrates raised his head to sniff at the strong smell of boiling stockfish which drifted from the buttery; the same air had found its way into Otterburn’s chamber, where it mixed badly with the spices he had cast on the brazier.

‘Put you off your supper, it would,’ he complained, holding a pomander under his long nose. ‘Never could stand the smell o stockfish. What did they find yestreen? Apart from the woman wi two names, you mean? See us your notes, Walter.’

His clerk searched briefly in one of the trays at his end of the table, and passed over a sheet of paper. Otterburn turned it for Gil to read.

‘Three households and an extra workshop, as you can see, one house holds a single man working his lone, two wi married men though only the whitesmith keeps a journeyman. Whom my lads lifted on suspicion o theft, though we had to let him go, his maister swore he’d given the fellow the stuff himsel, no that I believed him. Also one fine for a fire too close to the thatch, same household, which got us a few curses so Andro said but at least they moved the fire down the yard a piece.’

‘A fire in the open yard? What did they burn?’ Maistre Pierre asked.

‘Wood scraps, shavings, some old rags, a hantle kale stalks. Stink and smoke and no great heat, so Andro said.’

‘And that’s the lot.’ Gil was studying the page of neat writing. ‘They never looked at the workshop, and not at the hammermen’s graith either, I suppose? What mells they have, what other kind of tools? Were they looking for coin, or silver, or the like?’

‘No, it was just the usual,’ said Otterburn. ‘Checking there was a fire-cover to every hearth, counting the windows, frightening the weans. Here, are you thinking it was someone from Clerk’s Land nailed the woman Torrance?’

‘Not entirely, though it could ha been,’ said Gil. ‘Then again, it could ha been anyone in the burgh, by what I can make out. Has the Erschewoman been questioned again?’

‘Aye, wi my own interpreter,’ said Otterburn, ‘no that it made any odds, she lied like the wife of Ananias, or else she claimed she couldny mind.’

‘I’d like to know where she was all day,’ said Gil. ‘It might lead us to the missing servants.’ He turned the paper round and passed it back to Otterburn. ‘We’ll away and question them on Clerk’s Land again, see if we can find out why they assaulted me.’

‘See if you can provoke an effusion of blood this time,’ recommended Otterburn, ‘then we can take the whole lot up.’

‘I’m no right certain I can do that, mem,’ said Jennet, pausing with the brush in her hand and Alys’s light brown riding-dress in the other. ‘I never met the lassie, how can I get talking wi her?’

‘The same way you talk to any other lass you meet at the pump or the market,’ Alys suggested. ‘You all bring home news daily, some of it must come from folk you’ve never spoken wi before.’ Jennet looked dubious, and applied herself to brushing the garment. After a moment Alys went on, ‘But if you’re not sure you can manage it, I’ll take one of the other lassies with me. Nancy, maybe, or perhaps Kittock would like to get out for a bit.’

‘Nancy!’ repeated Jennet. ‘She’s never let a word past her lips she doesny need to, the soul. She’d as soon find out what you want to ken as soar to the moon!’ She stopped, staring at her mistress, and began to laugh. ‘Aye, you’re a fly one. Very well, mem, I’ll try it. But no blame to me if it doesny work, right?’

‘Right,’ agreed Alys, ‘so you may help me into the blue broadcloth, and then we will go out to the Drygate.’

They set out shortly, Alys in the good blue broadcloth and her second-best Flemish hood, Jennet with a clean apron tied on over her striped kirtle, both of them wrapped in plaids against the chill drizzle and mounted on sturdy wooden pattens against the mud.

‘I wish May Da was past,’ complained Jennet, pulling her plaid over her head. ‘It’s no that cold for April, but the rain! We’ll all get washed away.’

Alys made no answer, thinking of the May Day two years since when she had first spoken to Gil. It did not seem so long — or else, she thought, we’ve known one another for ever. She set off up the High Street, nodding and smiling to acquaintances. There went Maister Hamilton their neighbour, large and imposing in his Deacon’s gown with the black velvet facings. How glad he must have been that Agnes his wife had seen him in it before she died. The two men with him did not seem to be his journeymen.

The wright and his two companions were still ahead of them when they turned into the Drygate. Alys was peering through the drizzle, trying to make out which pend they were making for, when Jennet broke off her account of something John had done to say,

‘Mistress, here’s the potyngar’s wife calling after you.’

She turned, startled, to see that they had just passed the shop where the Forrest brothers purveyed apothecary goods and other items to the Upper Town. Christian Bothwell, the new wife of the younger brother, was hurrying towards her, calling her name.

‘Mistress Mason! Alys! A moment, will you?’

‘Christian!’ She put out her hands. ‘How good to see you. Are you well?’

‘I’m well. And you, lassie?’ Christian stopped in front of her, a stocky woman in a new gown of tawny woollen, staring earnestly at her face, and took a firm grip of her hands. ‘Have you a moment? I’ve a thing to tell you, we think your man ought to hear of.’

Both brothers were in the shop, serving a very stout cleric whom Alys did not recognize, their manner confidential. All three paused as the women shed their pattens and went past them, and though Adam smiled at his wife he did not speak; only when Christian led the way through into the house and closed the door did the low voices start again.

‘In here,’ said Christian, and opened another door. ‘They’ll no hear us, or we them. He’s come all the way fro Paisley to consult,’ she divulged. ‘Little point, for he’ll not listen to the first advice any potyngar will give him.’

Seated by the window of the little parlour with its view of the Drygate, she put aside a tray of wizened roots which she had obviously been sorting, gave Alys another earnest look and said,

‘It’s maybe no connected, but we talked o this last night, and then the day-’ She paused, and visibly put her thoughts in order. ‘We’d a gathering yestreen, see, all the potyngars o Glasgow.’

Alys nodded. There were three apothecary businesses in the burgh: Syme in the High Street dealt with the luxury end of the trade, selling cosmetics and spices and exotic candies, this shop sold herbs and spices and medicaments, and a hair-dye which some of Canon Cunningham’s colleagues found very useful, and Christian’s brother Nanty Bothwell still ran the booth by the Tolbooth which served the lower town and the suburbs across the river. The three households were close, mainly as a result of the traumatic events six months since when James Syme had inherited his business.