Pat McIntosh - The Counterfeit Madam

‘You could always come with me to see the house by daylight,’ Alys was saying. ‘Now it’s empty, I want a longer look.’

‘So you are thinking of moving?’ Kate allowed herself to be diverted from the other topic. ‘I thought you were comfortable enough here in the High Street.’

‘Gil is to take an assistant,’ Alys announced. ‘We will need more room, if we are to have our own household.’

‘An assistant? What, an apprentice? Who will it be?’

‘An apprentice quaestor,’ Gil said thoughtfully. ‘I hate to think what we’d put in the indentures. Promise to teach the aforesaid all the mysteries of the craft, as, inspecting bodies, detecting poisons, studying wounds .’

‘ Asking impertinent questions ,’ Kate supplied, laughing.

‘ Nosing about ,’ said Alys, obviously quoting somebody.

‘And all the other ways of clearing innocent names,’ said Augie with feeling. Kate sobered, and put out her hand to him, and Gil said,

‘No, merely an assistant, to help me with the work and to train as a notary forbye. It’s Lowrie here. That’s why I brought him down the now, to introduce him.’

Lowrie looked up, smiled, accepted their good wishes. Augie poured more ale, and they drank a toast to the future and the signing of the contract. John and his wooden horse had galloped off across the wide hall, but Wynliane and Ysonde watched with interest.

‘What’s it for?’ Ysonde asked Lowrie, tugging at his sleeve.

‘I’m to serve Maister Gil,’ he explained, ‘and learn to be a man of law.’

‘Is it a good potition?’

‘A good position? One of the best,’ he assured her seriously.

‘That’s good. Then when I’m old enough, you can marry me, and I can help to catch bad men too. Will we do that?’

Her parents and nurse exclaimed at her forwardness; Gil covered a grin and avoided Alys’s eye; but Lowrie, flying scarlet at the ears, sat down again and held out his hand.

‘If your parents permit, and you’re still of the same mind, when you are old enough I’ll wed you.’

She put her hand in his.

‘I won’t change my mind,’ she said. ‘So they’d better.’ She leaned against his knee and smiled at the company. ‘That’s all right, then.’