Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘Why, thank you sir,’ she said, and dropped him another curtsy.

‘What brought you out here?’ asked Philip Sempill. ‘You came here for a purpose, it’s well out the way for a casual ride for pleasure.’

‘Unless you were here for pleasure,’ said his cousin, with an unpleasant grin. Alys found her face burning, but Lowrie said calmly,

‘Maister Cunningham asked my escort here for madam his wife, since I ken the road.’

‘Aye, but why?’

She had foreseen this question.

‘I came to see the two properties out here,’ she offered, hoping she did not sound glib, ‘because of the confusion over what my good-sister was to have. After all, Dame Isabella’s will is yet to be found, one of these might yet go to Tib, and we thought it wiser to-’

‘In other words, you were poking that long nose into what doesny concern you,’ said Sempill. ‘Life ’ud be a lot easier if you and your man wereny aye nosing about. Philip, I want a word.’

He flung away across the kirkyard, and Philip, with a resigned look, followed him. Alys turned to Lowrie.

‘What do you wish to do now?’ he asked her. ‘There’s the boy Berthold to think of, and two men to bury, and the murder to cry forth. It all needs seen to. What would Maister Gil do?’

‘He’d do what’s right,’ she said without hesitating.

‘Aye, he would,’ Lowrie agreed. ‘The trouble is to discern what’s right here.’

She bit her lip. ‘I had it in mind to take that boy to my father. He speaks High Dutch, he has been in Cologne and places like that, and he can question him kindly.’ Lowrie smiled, and nodded. ‘As to burying the men, that’s for Sir Richie to think on in the first place. If he’ll not have them, we have to think again, but he’s our first road.’

‘I agree,’ said Lowrie. ‘But the murder. It’s remarkable how those two,’ he glanced at the Sempill cousins, whose word was becoming an argument, ‘turned up so prompt after it.’

‘It is,’ Alys agreed slowly.

‘How do you read this, anyway, mistress? What’s afoot? If it was Sempill sent someone to kill those men, then he kent they were there and what they were at. So why kill them?’

‘And who did he send?’ She stared up at the trees beyond the kirkyard wall. ‘I think, though I’ve no proof yet, the silver from here is the silver being coined in Glasgow.’

‘It’s more economical to believe that,’ said Lowrie, watching her, ‘than that there’s another silver mine within reach. The stuff’s scarce enough, Christ kens.’

‘But at whose behest? Dame Isabella, or Sempill, or Lady Magdalen? What will your father do about it, maister?’

‘Report it to the Crown. I’d not think Lady Magdalen would act against the Crown, either. I reckon more like it was the old dame who caused the coin to be struck, seeing it was her making use of it.’

‘Was it?’

‘I thought it was,’ he said after a moment, ‘but I’m no so certain now.’

‘No, I think you are right,’ she agreed, ‘though I also think we have no proof yet. What is John Sempill coming to say to us?’

‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ began Sempill when he was still several graves away. ‘ You ,’ he nodded at Lowrie, ‘and Philip can go and see what’s all this about narrow heels. You can take your good huntsman wi you, and one o our lads and all, and you’ll be quick about it, for I want to get home for supper.’

‘But Mistress Mason-’ Lowrie began.

‘I’m sure I’ll be safe in Sempill of Muirend’s keeping,’ Alys said sweetly. Sempill of Muirend scowled at her, but Lowrie bowed, and said politely to Philip,

‘My pleasure, then.’

‘And I’ll go and take a look at these dead men, and see what I think they dee’d from,’ Sempill went on with emphasis, ‘and get a word wi the priest about getting them in the ground. You can come too if you must, I suppose,’ he added disagreeably to Alys. ‘And there’s never a word o use trying to talk to that boy, either, he’s got no more Scots than your dog there.’

Possibly less, thought Alys, considering the number of words Socrates understands, but how do you know that? She paused to speak to her own men about watering the horses and allowing them to graze a little, and followed Sempill into the little church.

Sir Richie, having dealt with the matter of conditional absolution and said a charitable Mass for the dead, was much more willing to talk to his visitors now. Exclaiming over the flesh-and-blood nature of the demons, thanking Sempill repeatedly for returning to take care of the problem, he displayed the corpses and their wounds as if he had discovered them himself, shooing Socrates away.

‘Terrible injuries, terrible,’ he said as he uncovered the older Berthold’s burns. ‘Only see how dreadful! Get away, away wi you!’

Alys stepped back from Sempill’s unmoved consideration of the sight, snapping her fingers to call the dog, and looked at the younger Berthold. He had turned from his intent conversation with the Virgin, and was watching anxiously. What must it be like, she wondered, to be trapped in a strange country, where you spoke none of the language, and you had just lost your kinsfolk. She moved quietly to his side and put a hand on his arm, making him jump.

‘Berthold,’ she said gently. He touched his brow to her, and bobbed a shy bow. She drew him to the stone bench at the wall-foot, and launched again into the mixture of language and gesture which she had used before. With difficulty, she established that he was fourteen, that his hunting had taken him further up onto the hills, that he had seen nobody, or perhaps that nobody had seen him. He seemed dubious about that. She raised questioning eyebrows, and he mimed someone peering from cover, watching something. She nodded understanding and looked cautiously over one shoulder and then the other, and he said, ‘ Ja, ja, ich fühlt’ überwacht, ’ and shivered. He pointed at the two dead men, and turned his face away.

Was it the man with the narrow heels, she wondered. And had he been watching as she picked her way up the burn? If the dog had not been with her — She put a hand on the rough hairy head at her elbow and shivered as Berthold had done.

She was about to assemble another question when the church door was flung wide and Luke tumbled in.

‘Mistress, are you here? Here’s Maister Livingstone coming back, and all them wi him, and he’s got someone prisoner, so he has!’

‘Prisoner?’ John Sempill swung round, staring. ‘What prisoner? What’s going on?’

‘I wouldny ken what prisoner, maister, but you can see for yoursel,’ Luke said, gesturing at the door. ‘You’ve only to look! They’re having a right time of it, Tam’s gone to gie them a hand.’

Alys was already hurrying out into the sunlight, shading her eyes to stare across the little burn. The party on the far bank was having some trouble, as Luke said, the figure in its midst writhing in the grasp of all four men. As she watched someone tired of the battle and clouted the struggling man across the head. It made little difference, but a second blow and then a third had more effect, and brought an approving grunt from John Sempill behind her, though Sir Richie protested faintly.

‘Aye, that’s the way to deal wi him,’ said Sempill. ‘Who is it, anyway? What were you no telling us, Mistress Mason? Have they found someone else at the mine?’

‘I’ve no more notion than you, sir,’ she said politely. The returning party hoisted their limp captive across the burn, and Lowrie, leaving Tam to take his share of the burden, hurried up the bank towards the kirkyard wall.

‘He was searching the place,’ he said, scrambling over the mossy stones. ‘Frank was in the lead, and took the huntsman’s approach, and saw him before he saw us, so we got him by surprise.’ He paused to acknowledge Socrates’ greeting.