Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘The die we found wi him was a worn head, right? Livingstone reckoned there were two heads and two crosses, one of each worn out, so we ought to have a good head here.’

‘Aye?’

‘This one’s damaged. There’s a great scratch across it, maybe from a chisel or the like, right across the king’s jaw.’

‘You mean Miller wanted him to make another and he refused?’ Otterburn came to look. ‘Why would he refuse? He was in it up to his neck any road.’

‘Maybe he hoped to get out of it.’ Gil admired the three dies where they lay in a row on his palm. ‘Maister Otter-burn, I think we’ve found our counterfeiter.’

‘Well, we’ve named him, any road,’ said Otterburn, prodding the dies with a long forefinger. ‘We’ve no found him yet, Maister Cunningham.’

‘No,’ said Gil, with a sudden rush of anxiety. ‘No, we haveny, and he’s out the same side of Glasgow as my wife.’

Sir Richie was astonished by their story. He was already out at the corner of his little church, staring up the glen, and when the little procession came in sight he vanished, to reappear shortly round the kirkyard wall, stole about his neck, a little box clasped carefully in one hand. Bearing this he made his way down to cross the burn by the plank bridge Alys had used, and came hurrying towards them.

‘Who’s hurt? Is there time to shrive them?’ he demanded as soon as he came within earshot. ‘Who is it? You’re all hale — who is it?’

Leaving Lowrie to direct his men and keep an eye on young Berthold, Alys came forward to explain. He listened attentively, crossing himself, then inspected the two dead men, flinching away from the burnt face of the boy’s father, exclaiming over and over.

‘And these were the demons? So they were flesh and blood after all! Bring them within the kirkyard at least. Were they Christian souls?’

‘I think it,’ said Alys. ‘The boy has a set of beads, I think he was praying for his father. Or perhaps for himself,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘Bring them in, then, bring them in. But what can we do, maister? If they’ve been murdered as you say, we should raise the hue and cry, but there’s never a soul to hear it in the Clachan, and none wi the authority to command the pursuit neither.’

‘Kirkintilloch would be the nearest,’ agreed Lowrie, lending a hand to steady one of the hurdles as Sim and Frank made their way down towards the burn. ‘Who would take charge in the usual way?’

Socrates’ ears pricked, and he growled. Alys turned her head, trying to hear over Sir Richie’s rambling answer. Was that more horses? Voices? She moved a little upstream and jumped across the burn, leaving the bridge to the bearers, then hurried up the rough grassy bank and, bending low, picked her way along the kirkyard wall with the dog at her heel. At the corner she paused, listening. Yes, there were voices, they had been heard, there was shouting about Someone’s down yonder by the burn . She moved forward to peer cautiously round the corner of the wall, and found herself almost nose to nose with Philip Sempill.

She sprang back quickly enough to take her beyond the reach of his aborted sword-thrust, and said, over the dog’s snarling,

‘Maister Sempill! What-?’

‘Mistress Mason!’ He lowered his whinger, gaping at her as she grasped Socrates’ collar. ‘Of all the people to meet here! What are you doing?’

‘Catching demons,’ she said, and indicated the procession behind her. ‘We have found silver miners in the glen, which I am quite certain your kinsman did not know of, and two of them are dead.’

‘Dead!’ he repeated, staring. ‘Who — who are they? How did you come to-’

‘Philip?’ John Sempill appeared behind his kinsman. ‘Who the deil are you speaking to? You? ’ he said incredulously. ‘Deil’s bollocks, woman, can you no keep out of what doesny concern you? You’re worse than that man o yours.’

‘Good day to you, sir,’ she said, tightening her grip on the dog’s collar, and dropped him a curtsy. ‘I hope you left Lady Magdalen well?’

‘And who’s yonder?’ he demanded, ignoring this. ‘Philip, what’s going on here? Is that that fool o a priest down there and all?’

‘Mistress Mason says they have found two dead men in the glen,’ said Philip, with care. ‘They were mining silver. Is that not amazing?’

‘What do you-’ His cousin stared at him, pale blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Oh,’ he said after a moment. ‘Aye, that’s amazing. Right enough. Who’s dead? I mean, who are they? Is there just the two? Who killed them, anyways? What are you doing here? And him!’ he added, as Lowrie approached up the bank.

‘There’s one still living,’ said Alys.

‘Lowrie Livingstone, is that you poking about on my land where you’re no wanted? Was it you killed these two? Why?’

‘It was not,’ said Lowrie levelly, ‘and I don’t see why you assume it was. And it’s no your land, Muirend, it’s either my faither’s or Dame Isabella’s.’

‘It’s my land,’ Sempill began, and bit the words off as his cousin kicked him on the ankle. Lowrie gave him a small tight smile and stepped round him, guiding the men with the two hurdles up towards the kirkyard gate, the boy Berthold keeping somehow on the further side of the group.

Inside the little church, the boy made straight for the small bright figure of the Virgin and dropped on his knees before her, and Sir Richie, much reassured by this, directed the bearers where to set the hurdles down and began doing what was required for the dead. Alys took time for a brief word with St Machan in his brown robes, but she had trouble concentrating. Yesterday John Sempill had said there was trouble in Strathblane, and today here he was, presumably to deal with it. But had he already taken some action? He must have known the miners were there; did he also know about their deaths? Had Berthold recognized him just now?

Emerging from the building she found the two sets of servants eyeing each other warily from different corners of the kirkyard, and a stiff, chilly discussion going on across a table-tomb near the east end.

‘It’s still part o the heriot,’ Lowrie was saying as she approached. ‘My faither has the original disposition, it was never Thomas’s to alienate, let alone Dame Isabella’s.’

‘She was very clear about it,’ Philip Sempill observed.

‘Maidie’s no going to be pleased,’ said his cousin grimly. ‘I don’t know why you had to come meddling out here. Or you!’ he added to Alys, with hostility. ‘Who is it that’s dead, anyway? Who did kill them, if it wasny you? Was it that ill-conditioned laddie that’s in there the now?’

‘The laddie was away hunting for the pot,’ said Lowrie, ‘came back while we were debating what had happened, and he seems right grieved by the deaths.’ Sempill snorted in disbelief. ‘My man Frank, that’s a good huntsman, found the traces of four men in the clearing, three of them wi footwear they never got hereabouts, the other wi a narrower heel than any of us. If we can get this laddie somewhere there’s a speaker o High Dutch we can learn more from him.’

Sempill snorted again, and gave the younger man a hard stare, but Alys thought the words good huntsman had their effect. No landowner was likely to argue with an experienced huntsman’s reading of the ground.

‘And where was all this siller they’ve been winning?’ he demanded. ‘Stacked waiting to be carried off, I suppose!’

‘There was no sign of it,’ said Alys. ‘Perhaps someone had collected it quite recently.’

He grunted, scowling at her.

‘You’d know all about that, I suppose,’ he said, ‘creeping about Glasgow asking questions. You and Gil Cunningham, you’re well matched.’