Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘No, but think how difficult it would be if you took someone the dog disliked. Where is he, anyway?’

‘Waiting for us at the door.’

The house door opened at that, and as Socrates whisked inside out of the rain Maistre Pierre’s voice, lowered in deference to the hour, said,

‘Are you to stand out there till the dawn, or are you coming in?’

‘I’d not expected you so early,’ said Otterburn with faint irony. ‘How’s Mistress Mason the day?’

‘Weary.’ Gil grimaced.

He had not slept well, despite fatigue and the late night; conversations of the day had replayed themselves over and over in his head, while Alys breathed slowly beside him. This morning she was tired, stiff and cross, and dealing with a crisis in the kitchen. She had shown no interest in explaining to her father and Ealasaidh, who were agog to hear them, any of the details of her day in Strathblane. It had been left to Gil to convey the gist of her adventures and their results, with an account of the midnight interview with Sempill and Lady Magdalen. Ealasaidh had been first amused and then shocked, crying out in disapproval of Dame Isabella’s behaviour. Maistre Pierre had listened more carefully, taking particular note of one or two points, and then frowned at Gil.

‘Better this way,’ he said.

‘Och, yes, better indeed. But to be stirring trouble in the Isles!’ said Ealasaidh. ‘And her no kin to any of the folk there! That is simple badness, though I suppose,’ she added darkly, ‘it would be all you would expect of an immodest woman like that.’

Gil nodded.

‘I wish McIan was still here,’ he said. ‘He might make me understand how things are out to the West.’

‘No, no,’ said Ealasaidh seriously, ‘there is no understanding it, for as soon as it is settled, they are changing what they ask for.’

‘But do you think the old woman’s scheme will have had any success?’

‘No knowing at all,’ she said. ‘Money is not a thing they are using much, it might have made no difference at all.’

He had called briefly on his uncle, to give him the end of the tale, though he had skimmed over Alys’s Straunge Aduenture . Canon Cunningham’s reaction had been similar to Maistre Pierre’s.

‘We would certainly have had to question everyone in the matter,’ he agreed. ‘Better this way, without letting the light of day into everyone’s inmost thoughts. Indeed, Gilbert, almost one might say the old — dame had been executed ahead of her trial, it comes so convenient for the Crown.’

‘So one might,’ agreed Gil. His uncle shot him a sharp look.

‘As to this mad scheme of hers, to destabilize the Isles, I never heard of such a thing. Rank treason, at least in intent. I very much doubt whether it would have succeeded,’ he pronounced.

Now Otterburn was saying much the same thing.

‘No saying it would have worked. It’s a barter market out there, little enough coin changes hands.’

‘Aye, but the whole chain leaked,’ Gil said. ‘It was the coin getting away every time a purse moved that worried Blacader and the Treasury. It seems as if they kent it was going out to the Isles, but not where it was coming from, till we started digging here in Glasgow.’

‘Did they now?’ Otterburn was shuffling papers on his desk. ‘Aye, here we are. You might like a sight o my report, and then you can have a read at the man Miller’s deposition. Oh, and his Christian name, maister, you’ll never guess, I might as well tell you straight, is Hilary. What were his parents thinking on? No wonder he stuck wi his surname or his by-name! We got a confession off him for Dod Muir, seeing we had witnesses a plenty, and he’s admitted to the two miners wi a bit persuasion, well, one o them, he swears the other was an accident, but him and Noll Campbell both are determined neither of them slew Dame Isabella. How did ye get the blue velvet purse then, I asked him, and he says, She gied me it hersel . For all his hard work, he says. Can you credit it?’

Well, yes, I can, thought Gil, skimming Walter’s neatly scribed copy of the report to the Archbishop. It was a masterpiece of suppression and suggestion, and would fit neatly with his own; he was glad to see that Alys’s adventure and her part in the arrest of Miller was one of the items suppressed here too. Pride in her achievements was one thing, bringing these to the attention of senior churchmen was another. As for Dame Isabella, better to have her murdered by a passing counterfeiter than to put what really happened onto paper where anyone might read it.

‘And I’ve a couple o the lads down the Gallowgate now wi one o the clerks,’ Otterburn continued, ‘asking about among the neighbours to see if they can find out why they were all so feart for the man. We might clear up a couple more matters while we’re about it.’

‘So how many have you held, in the end?’ Gil asked.

‘It’s in there.’

‘What, no others? Miller, Saunders and Noll Campbell. You’ve let the women go? And the miners’ laddie?’

‘Oh, him!’ said Otterburn. ‘Aye, young Livingstone came by afore Sext, wi a tale of escorting the laddie out to see his kin put in the ground, so I released him into his hands, for there’s no reasonable charge I could bring against him. The deil kens what Livingstone will do wi him, but he’s no my problem any more. As for the women in the case! Sic a weeping and wailing as you never heard, and that bairn screaming and all, I bade them begone. Likely they were in the conspiracy and all, but it was their men did the work and broke the laws o Scotland.’

‘And the gallowglass?’

‘Could talk his way out o a locked kist,’ said Otterburn. ‘No, no, I’m happy wi what I’ve got, maister, and so will the justiciars be when the time comes. Save only that I’ve to hold them and feed them till then,’ he added gloomily, ‘but I might get that past wi the other expenses. Oh, that Ersche leear woman that was in the Tolbooth, I’ve sent to the Serjeant to set her free and all.’

Gil compressed his lips, reluctant to say what he was thinking. After a moment he said instead,

‘I see the House of the Mermaiden is empty again.’

‘Is that right?’ Otterburn’s close-set gaze was expressionless. ‘Walter did say he’d seen wagons loading at the door. I dare say their prices was too dear for Glasgow. Make someone a handsome dwelling, that would, save for the price of getting a new door put on.’

‘Easy enough to turn that one, hang it the other way. What about John Sempill?’

‘What about him? That wife o his, she minds you o an alabaster weeper on a tomb, but she’s fair got him muzzled. How does she do it? He was feart to answer our questions for what she’d think o him.’

‘Will you charge him, do you think?’

‘That’s a matter for the Crown,’ said Otterburn regretfully. ‘But I’ll tell you, whether they fine him or charge him wi treason, if the land the mine’s on really does belong to Livingstone o Craigannet, then by what his son was telling me when he fetched young Berthold away, Sempill’s got more to worry him than what his wife thinks about it. Archie Livingstone’s no one to let another man get credit for what’s his. I’d say the Stirling men of law will eat well this winter.’

Dissatisfied, but unable to work out why, Gil went out into the busy Sunday morning of the burgh. Families passed him coming from hearing Mass at St Mungo’s, apprentices, journeymen and maidservants were setting out to enjoy a day off, even the weather seemed on holiday with bright sunshine broken only by a few clouds. He drifted down the Drygate among the crowds, past the two silent tofts to Canon Aiken’s house.