Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘No,’ said Gil, wondering why the whole of Glasgow wished to see his blood let. ‘It was this fellow Dod Muir that struck me,’ he nodded at the shutter still rattling faintly, and turned back towards Hamilton in time to catch a startled expression crossing Campbell’s face. ‘I’ve witnesses,’ he concluded. ‘He had help throwing me in the burn, and all.’

‘Oh, you have, have you?’ said Maister Hamilton grimly. ‘And who was the help, then?’

‘No me!’ said the whitesmith quickly, and the lorimer shook his head.

‘Aye, well,’ said their Dean, eyeing them, ‘I’ll see you right when you’re doing right, lads, but assault wi witnesses is a different matter. What had you done to provoke it, maister?’

‘Poking his nose in here, thieving in Danny Sproat’s stable,’ began the lorimer.

‘You know a deal about it for one that wasny here,’ Gil said. And you were here, he recalled, eyeing the bright red hair which hung below the lorimer’s blue bonnet. ‘Maister Hamilton, if the offer we’ve had still stands, Pierre and I will shortly be landlords here on wee John’s behalf. I was inspecting the place, trying to decide if it was worth taking on, and I was struck down all unsuspecting.’

‘Asking questions!’ said the whitesmith.

‘There’s no law agin asking questions,’ said Hamilton. He hitched up his black gown, stroked its velvet facings and braced his elbows importantly. ‘We’ll have to have this out, lads. Go and summon the other fellows, Saunders and the donkey man and all I suppose, and we’ll hear all here and now. And where might Dod be, d’ye ken?’

‘Never seen him the day,’ admitted the lorimer. ‘Nor yesterday neither, when I think on it.’ Danny Bell, that was his name, Gil recalled, and the whitesmith was a Campbell. And the pewterer’s brother-in-law. He stepped sideways, head cocked to hear Campbell banging on the pewterer’s door. The woman answered it, with a spate of anxious Ersche which got a ‘Wheesht, Vari!’ from her brother. Then there was a half-whispered exchange among the three adults, almost inaudible through the wailing of another of the children, in which he caught Dod Muir’s name, and then suddenly, clearly, the phrase Alan agus Nicol .

Next to him, the lorimer’s dog suddenly got its courage up and went for Socrates. Kicking it away Gil restrained his own dog, his mind working furiously.

He knew only a few words of Ersche, unlike Alys, but he could recognize that: Alan and Nicol. Two of Dame Isabella’s missing servants.

‘From Madam Xanthe?’ repeated Gil.

‘Aye, from my mistress,’ agreed the boy Cato.

‘What does she want?’ Alys asked, coming forward from the hearth. The boy gave her an ingratiating grin and bobbed nervously, scattering raindrops from his plaid. Gil turned the note over in his hand, broke the seal, and held the orange-scented paper to the light from the candle she held.

‘She wants to see me,’ he said after a moment. ‘About the false coin.’

‘When?’ said Alys.

‘Maybe now?’ said Cato hopefully. ‘She bade me say, if you’d see your way to calling on us the night, she’d be right glad of it.’

‘But I’m not,’ Gil began, and bit that off.

‘She bade me say and all,’ Cato assured him, ‘she kens you’re no charged wi it, but she’d like fine to talk wi you just the same.’

‘Did she say anything else?’ And how did she know that much? he wondered.

‘No, no, that’s all, excepting it was about Strathblane, she said. The coin, I mean.’

‘Strathblane?’ Gil looked at the boy, then at Alys. ‘I think I must go,’ he said in French.

‘I think you must,’ she acknowledged, eyebrows raised, ‘but not alone, surely. Maybe you could take Luke with you again. And the dog.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the group by the hearth; Maistre Pierre and the two McIans were still engrossed in a debate on the merits of different styles of harp. Socrates, recognizing chien , raised his head and looked at her.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘I won’t take your father out again tonight. Warn Luke, then, if you will, and I’ll put on my boots. And a cloak.’

‘Aye, you’ll want a cloak, maister,’ agreed Cato. ‘It’s right wet out there, we’ll ha a quiet time o it in the house. Keeps the customers away, so it does, the rain,’ he informed Alys, nodding wisely.

Sending Cato to the kitchen to alert Luke, Alys lit a lantern and followed Gil out into the rain and across the yard to their apartment, Socrates on her heels.

‘It’s curious she mentioned Strathblane,’ she said as they picked their way past the tubs of flowers.

‘Very curious.’

‘Sempill was out there today.’

‘Was he now?’ Gil looked down at her, and opened the heavy door to their stair. ‘What was he doing?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said regretfully, ‘but he came home in a great temper, saying there was some trouble, and that Philip wanted to involve you. Then he saw me, and would say no more.’

‘Did you ask?’

‘Of course I did,’ she said indignantly, ‘but he was rude to me, so Lady Magdalen rebuked him, and he went off in a sulk.’ She followed him into their outer chamber, put the lantern on a kist and sat down to watch him pull on his boots. ‘I learned some useful things today,’ she added. ‘I was waiting to tell you when we were alone.’

‘Go on.’ He straightened the heels of his hose, folded the wide leg of each boot about his calf, the soft leather waxy under his fingers, and buckled the straps while Alys recounted the visits she had made and the information she had gathered. He did not ask why she had not told him this before; supper had been a lively meal, with a sparkling conversation about the power of music and little opportunity to discuss the case.

‘This is all useful, sweetheart,’ he agreed at last, stamping to settle his feet in the boots. ‘It confirms all the servants’ stories, so far as it goes. I wonder what the bag of coin was doing in Clerk’s Land?’

‘Maybe Madam Xanthe will know,’ she suggested, with an odd emphasis on the name. Their eyes met in the lantern-light, and he nodded slightly, then looked about him for his plaid. She rose to fetch it from its nail in the inmost chamber, taking the light with her. He stood quietly in the dark, wondering what the reference to Strathblane might mean, while the dog nudged his knee.

The House of the Mermaiden was lit and humming with conversation behind its shutters, but Cato led them round the side of the house and in at the back door. Madam Xanthe, gorgeously dressed and turbaned, was alone in the room where Gil had been dried off the previous day, seated by a branch of candles with a ledger open on the table before her. When they entered she looked up, smiled, and pushed the heavy volume away.

‘Maister Cunningham! In a good hour,’ she declared. ‘Oh, and a wee lapdog wi you!’ She stretched a long white hand to Socrates, who paced forward to inspect it, then on to thrust his nose into her lap. She fended him off. ‘Cato, take Maister Cunningham’s man out to the kitchen and see him dried off, and then bring us some of the good wine.’

‘And the wee cakes, madam? Ste- Strephon’s made some of his wee cakes, they’re right good this time-’

‘Aye, you daft laddie, some o the wee cakes! Now get off wi the two o ye, till I get talking to my guest.’

Luke departed hopefully with Cato, and Madam Xanthe turned to Gil, her hand still busy about the dog’s ears.

‘You’re recovered from your wetting, then?’ she observed. ‘And the dunt on the head?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said politely. ‘I hope I see you well, madam?’

‘Oh, if we’re to be formal!’ She rose and swept him a magnificent curtsy, the wide folds of her dark blue taffeta gown rustling in a great pool round her, the gold turban gleaming in the candlelight. Gil responded, and she took his arm and drew him to a seat by the brazier in the centre of the chamber. Socrates padded about, inspecting the place.