Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘And then you were wedded to Sempill,’ said Alys. ‘Gil tells me you are happy with the match.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ The smile was genuine. ‘John’s as kind to me!’

‘And it pleased your brother?’

The smile remained, though it seemed to lose its light somewhat.

‘I’ve not seen my brother these six months. He came to see me wedded to John, but he’s been out o sight, I hope it’s no down to any misliking between the two o them.’

‘You’ve not heard from him? Does he know about — about-’

‘About this?’ Lady Magdalen looked down at her still-flat waist. ‘Likely no.’

‘And you’ve no idea where he is?’ Alys persisted, her mind working. The other woman shook her head, and reached for the ale-jug.

‘He’s got his own dealings,’ she said again. ‘Likely he’ll turn up.’ She turned her head sharply as a door banged and voices rose in the hall below them. ‘Is that John come home?’

‘Maidie?’

Lady Magdalen put out a restraining hand as Ays prepared to rise, and called,

‘I’m here, John. Here in my chamber.’

‘Maidie?’ The loud voice again, heavy feet on the stair. ‘No, Philip, I’ll no have him brought in on it, it’s my business and none o his! Maidie, are you here?’

‘I’m here,’ she said. His boots sounded on the landing and then on the broad pine floorboards as he entered the chamber, still hidden from them by the great bed, saying,

‘Here’s a bit trouble out yonder, and Philip wanting to get Gil Cunningham in-’ He stopped, staring at Alys. ‘-volved, of all the daft things,’ he finished.

‘So what’s it to do wi us, if some auld wife got hersel killed?’ demanded Adkin Saunders the pewterer. He lifted a small hammer from his workbench and went on, ‘I’ve work to do, maisters, I’ll thank ye to get away and let me get on, and no stand about asking me questions I canny answer.’

His wife, tall and deep-bosomed in her checked gown, two children clinging to her skirts and another in her arms, scowled at them from the hearth. Outside, the lorimer’s dog barked from the door of his workshop. Gil said patiently,

‘The dead woman’s servant was taken up from this toft last night. Was she in this house?’

‘I’ve seen no woman’s servant,’ said Saunders, ‘nor do I want to. I’ve enough trouble wi her,’ he jerked his head, ‘without taking to do wi any more banasgaleann .’

‘So you knew she’s an Ersche speaker,’ said Gil quickly. Maistre Pierre frowned at this, and Saunders’ wife drew a sharp breath.

‘It’s a word I’d use o many women,’ said Saunders.

‘And the sack of coin,’ said Gil. ‘Did that come from this house too?’

‘They neither of them were coming out of this house,’ said the woman. ‘We knew nothing of any stranger here, nor of any sack of coin.’ She freed one hand to gesture about her, with expressive grace. ‘Do you think we have coins to keep in a sack?’

The house was not so bare as she implied; the bed was well furnished, the draw-bed under it seemed to have plenty of blankets, and a handsome assemblage of crocks was arranged on the sideboard next the wall. An iron cooking-pot hung over the hearth, probably her dowry, Gil surmised.

‘Never mind that, woman,’ growled her husband. ‘And you, maisters, if you want to know about some Ersche trollop, you can ask at Campbell the whitesmith down the toft a bittie, no at my door-’

‘My brother would be having nothing to do with it!’ began his wife indignantly.

‘Will you mind your tongue, woman, and no contradict me under my own roof!’

Gil drew breath to point out that it was not Saunders’ roof but his landlord’s, whoever that might be, and then thought better of it. His caution was repaid.

‘Is that you trying to get my brother into trouble, then? When he’s no more and no less in it than-’

‘Mind your tongue!’

The smallest child began wailing, and the next took up the note.

‘As for him across the way wi his leather scraps and his-’

Saunders flung the hammer down on the bench and took two strides across the room. The children screamed in unison, his wife flung up an arm to protect herself, Maistre Pierre seized the man by the shoulder. Gil stepped quietly away from the melee and inspected the bench closely. Rounds of pewter ready cast for shaping, moulds of differing sizes for cups and platters and bowls, hammers with heads of metal, of wood, of padded leather, a handful of metal dies with which to strike a pattern into the metal. He lifted these, but none of them bore the image of James Third, and in fact none was broad enough to strike a coin.

‘Here, leave my graith be!’ Saunders was at his elbow. ‘And away and let a man earn his bread in peace, will you?’

Gil stepped away from the bench, and nodded to Maistre Pierre.

‘I think we can leave you for now,’ he said. ‘But I’ll likely see you again. Maister Mason and I will be taking over the toft.’ He lifted his hat, with the caution it still required. ‘We’ll be your landlords.’

Out on the muddy path, Socrates and Luke were equally relieved to see them.

‘There’s been all sorts going on down there,’ Luke said, nodding down the toft, while the dog nudged Gil’s knees. ‘I seen a bairn run down from this house, and a woman came running up and into yon workshop,’ he indicated the lorimer’s ramshackle premises, where the dog still barked at Socrates, ‘and away again, and Danny Sproat came by and gave me a look, he’ll ken me again, and away down to the donkey’s shed. And then the man out that workshop went away down the toft as well, and hasny come back yet.’

‘Good lad,’ said Gil. So they were alarmed by his presence, were they? But Dod Muir the image-maker, whom the girl Cleone had seen strike him down, had not been mentioned.

This turned out to be because the image-maker was still not at home. Repeated rattling of the cast-iron ring on its twisted pin on the doorjamb had no result. After a pause, Maistre Pierre stepped to the window and peered in through a crack in the shutter.

‘No movement,’ he reported. ‘Dod Muir! Are you within?’

‘I could ask across the way, maybe,’ suggested Luke. His master hammered on the shutters, which rattled wildly under his big fist.

‘You might as well,’ he was saying, when there was a shout behind them.

‘There they are! Breaking in at Dod’s window, and all!’

Socrates growled. Gil turned, to see the whitesmith and the lorimer, all indignant eyes and pointing fingers, hurrying down the path from the Drygate. Behind them, large and important, strode not the Serjeant but Maister Andrew Hamilton, a neighbour from the High Street and present Dean of the Guild of Hammermen, wearing his Dean’s robe of office over his working clothes and shedding curls of shaved wood as he went.

‘You, Peter!’ he said. ‘I’d thought better of you! What’s afoot here, anyway? These two,’ he indicated his fellow guildsmen, ‘cam running to me saying they’re being harassed unlawful, and here I find you forcing Dod Muir’s shutters? That’s no like you!’

‘Nothing of the kind, Andrew,’ retorted Maistre Pierre, reddening. ‘We are here about two errands, one of them to find out why my good-son was assaulted on this toft yesterday morning.’

‘Nothing to do wi me,’ said the lorimer quickly. ‘I wasny on the toft!’ His dog, more courageous in his presence, snarled at Socrates from behind his knee.

‘Aye, I heard about that,’ said Maister Hamilton. ‘Was it on this toft then? Now that’s serious, lads,’ he said to his guildsmen. ‘Which of them was it struck you, maister? Was there any effusion of blood?’