Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘They wereny spending as much time thegither,’ offered Bowster, ‘but they were friends enough when we met for the play. The lassie’s well watched, ye ken, she’d have a word for them if her faither’s back was turned, but it’s no as if either lad got that close to her.’

‘And yet they quarrelled in the kitchen here,’ Gil said. ‘Was that over Agnes?’

‘Aye, well,’ said Bowster uncomfortably. ‘It was just shouting. A cause Nanty had a word wi the lassie. Seems they’d pledged no to get the advantage o one another.’

‘Tell me about Danny Gibson,’ said Gil. ‘He’s one of the armourer’s journeymen?’

‘Aye, he’s — he worked for William Goudie,’ said Bowster.

‘The armourer, ye ken,’ said Anderson. Gil, who had dealt with the burgh armourer for years, merely nodded. ‘Him and Davie Bowen both, which is how their fight was that good, seeing they had leisure to practise it any chance their maister would let them.’

‘It was good,’ agreed Gil, with the thought that anything to be salvaged from the afternoon might be a comfort to Gibson’s friends. ‘I don’t know when I last saw a display as accomplished.’

‘Has Maister Goudie been told?’ asked Maistre Pierre.

‘Aye, I’ve tellt him,’ Bowster said, sighing, ‘I’ve tellt the two houses where we were engaged to play the play the morn, I’ve let Archie Muir know that leads the other company in case he wants to take on the engagements in our place. I think I’ve tellt the most of Glasgow, maister, and it’s no been easy.’

Gil took the hint, and poured some more ale.

‘Has either man enemies?’ he asked. ‘Bothwell or Gibson, I mean. Have they quarrelled with anyone else lately?’

The two mummers looked at one another again, and Anderson shrugged his shoulders.

‘No that I ever heard,’ he said.

‘Nor me,’ agreed Bowster, and raised his beaker.

‘No rivals at anything else, no insults, nothing like that?’

‘Nothing like that, that I ever heard,’ Bowster said, emerging from the beaker. ‘A’body that I tellt just now that the lad was dead was right cut up about it, and all, and couldny believe it was Nanty’s doing.’

‘Now, the flask,’ Gil said, accepting this. ‘When did you see it was the wrong one?’

‘When Nanty drew it out of his scrip, I wondered,’ said Bowster, frowning. ‘See, he holds it up and points to it,’ he held up his beaker and imitated the gesture, ‘and tells how there’s all the herbs in it, and I saw then it was the bonnie paintit one. He’d said he’d not use one when I asked him afore, a cause they’re too expensive if it got dropped, and I thought, well, he’s changed his mind.’

‘I thought that and all,’ agreed Anderson.

‘But then when he opened it, there was no smoke like there should ha been,’ Bowster went on, ‘so it never made any sense when Sanders and me backed away. That’s our Bessie,’ he explained, when Maistre Pierre looked puzzled. ‘Sanders Armstrong, that’s whitesmith off the Fishergate. But that’s the first I kenned of it being the wrong flask.’

‘Bothwell never mentioned it earlier?’ asked Maistre Pierre.

‘No that I heard,’ said Bowster. He looked at Anderson, who shook his head blankly. ‘It might be he mentioned it to one of the other lads, I could ask them if you like, but it was a bit — down in the kitchen yonder, where we was supposed to robe up, and black Davie Bowen’s face, and that, it was going like a fair what wi the company above stairs and folk running up and down to fetch wine and cakes and the like, and that wee lassie getting underfoot — ’ He grinned wryly. ‘Asked poor Davie whether he was the Deil or St Maurice, she did. He didny ken what to say, the poor fellow. So as for hearing what any one of the lads said to another, it was a matter of who I was standing next to, that’s who I heard speaking, and I never heard a word of the wrong flask.’

‘No that I ever heard him mention,’ said Christian Bothwell. ‘No enemies, none to wish us ill in Glasgow at least.’

‘And outside it?’ Gil asked.

They were sitting by the fading hearth in the hall of the mason’s big sprawling house further up the High Street. When Gil and his father-in-law finally returned home they had found Mistress Bothwell here in colloquy with Alys and Catherine, the aged French lady who had been Alys’s duenna before their marriage. At Gil’s entry the wolfhound sprawled next to the ashes leapt up and hurried to greet him, tail swinging, and he had to acknowledge the animal’s welcome before he could speak. By the time he had persuaded his dog to lie down again, Alys had also come forward to greet him with rather more dignity and say softly in French:

‘I have let her tell me nothing, Gil, all is still for you to ask.’

He acknowledged this with a quick smile, and touched her hand. She returned the smile and slipped past him to see about something in the kitchen, and he went towards the hearth, taking the opportunity to study the guest while Maistre Pierre was expressing sympathy for her troubles. She was still dressed as she had been when she first hammered at Morison’s door in the twilight, though she had discarded the stained apron and released the long ends of her kerchief to hang down at her shoulders, in the custom of an older woman whose day’s manual labour was done. Her face was broad and plain, though her features were well proportioned; she looked strained and anxious in the candlelight, but her smile had a sweetness about it as she bade goodnight to the dignified Catherine.

‘Outside Glasgow,’ she said now. ‘Well, there are those we hold enemies, but they might not hold us enemies, having got the better of us.’ She noted his startled look, and folded her hands in her lap. ‘We’re no Glasgow folk by birth. Nanty and me were raised in Lanark,’ she said carefully, ‘and trained by our faither, that was apothecary in the town. But when he died there were those that claimed the shop and the workshop and all that was in it as payment for his debts, and we left Lanark and came here instead.’

‘That was two years or so since, I think,’ said Maistre Pierre. She glanced at him and nodded.

‘Had your father’s creditors any connections in Glasgow?’ Gil asked.

‘No that I’m aware.’

‘And your brother has built up his business,’ observed Maistre Pierre, ‘supplying the low end of the market, trading in pence rather than merks and turning over a tidy sum. Or so Maister Forrest tells me.’

‘That’s kind of him,’ she said obscurely. ‘Aye, we serve the Gallowgate and the lower town, wi packets of plain herbs and a few standard cures that sell well, and private consultations, discretion assured.’

‘No quarrels arising from that?’ Gil persevered. ‘A failed treatment, someone who doubts your discretion? What do the other two apothecary houses think of your work?’

She looked blankly at him, then said, ‘I see what you’re asking me. No, I’ve no mind of anyone that holds a grudge at us. Not all treatments succeed, you’ll understand, but the most of our custom recognizes that. Our discretion’s never failed that I mind, and as for the other houses, Wat and Adam are good friends, and Frankie’s aye treated us wi civility. We’re no looking at the same trade, after all. It might be a different tale if we were after his fine goods custom.’

‘What was in the flask your brother should have carried?’ Gil asked.

‘This and that, to raise a bit of smoke when it’s opened,’ she said, as she had before. ‘It’s harmless, so long as you didny drink it or the like, and makes a good effect. Nanty devised it himself.’

‘And it was the right stuff in the flask,’ he persisted.