Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘You saw me open it, maister. It was the right stuff — at least, it smoked the right way.’

‘How did he come to leave it behind?’

She shook her head. ‘Likely he took it out of his scrip to fill it, while he was at the booth, and forgot to put it back afore he went out to the play. Better ask him yoursel, maister, if that Serjeant will let you anywhere near him. He wouldny let me in the cell to speak wi him, just took the food and the blanket I brought and sent me away from the door.’ She suddenly turned her head away, but her eyes glittered with tears in the candlelight.

Careful questioning built up an image of decent people, a fond sister, an easygoing and hardworking brother, a close friendship with the dead Danny Gibson.

‘Until the two of them took a notion to that silly wee lassie of Renfrew’s,’ Mistress Bothwell said wearily.

‘Is she so silly?’ Alys asked, crossing the hall from the kitchen stair. She had tied back the sleeves of her silk gown, and was carrying a wooden tray with several beakers and two steaming jugs. The dog Socrates thumped his tail in greeting, and Gil rose to draw a stool to the hearth to serve as a table.

‘If she thinks her faither would ever let her wed wi my Nanty,’ Mistress Bothwell answered, ‘she’s more than silly, she’s daft. He’ll give her a new gown if she asks it, or a feast for her birthday which was how she and Nanty met, but he’s got her marriage sorted, I’ll wager, and Frankie Renfrew takes interference from nobody, the more so since Andrew Slack dee’d and left him senior man in the craft within the burgh.’ She accepted a beaker from Alys, sniffed, tasted, and threw her an approving look. Alys smiled in response, and poured from the other jug for Gil and her father.

‘I would have thought your brother a good prospect,’ observed Maistre Pierre. ‘A man with his own business, another apothecary, a good age for her — ’

‘Nanty’s wife will have to work hard,’ Mistress Bothwell countered, ‘to earn her keep and her bairns’ when they come. It’s our own business, but we’re still building it up, maister.’

‘It was clear enough this afternoon Maister Renfrew does not approve,’ said Alys. ‘And you, Mistress Bothwell. Would you see it as a good match?’

‘No.’ She took a sip of her steaming beaker. Gil raised his eyebrows, and she said with more hesitation, ‘I’d be wary of any connection wi Frankie Renfrew. A man wi his own opinion on everything’s bad enough, one that canny let others alone wi their own ideas is more than I can take. He’d be present in the booth or the workshop daily directing what should be done or sold or ordered up. It’s enough trouble now to get him to put our wants on the docket for Middelburgh without altering them to what he thinks best, we’d never get the simples we needed if he had a share in the business.’

Gil was unsurprised, soon after they had retired, to hear Maistre Pierre’s distinctive loud knock at the outer door of their apartment. He padded across the further chamber in his stocking feet to admit his father-in-law, who said without preamble, ‘It must be some enemy of the young man, whatever the sister says.’

‘Or of both of them,’ said Alys, at the door of their bedchamber. ‘Or perhaps someone who dislikes Agnes Renfrew, or apothecaries in general.’

‘Hmm.’ Her father considered this, seating himself at Gil’s gesture in his usual chair by the cooling brazier. ‘I suppose.’

‘Or it could have been an accident after all,’ said Alys. She began to unpin her velvet headdress, and turned away into the other room to finish the task before the looking-glass.

‘All the man’s friends are agreed that it’s out of character,’ Gil concurred, lighting another candle from the one he held. ‘And it does seem a clumsy way to go about it, to poison your rival in front of half the High Street. What puzzles me is this business of it being the wrong flask.’

‘We must find where that one came from,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘And how it was exchanged for the right one, and by whom.’

‘And whether Bothwell knew it was that flask when he opened his scrip. Did either of you think he seemed surprised to find it?’

‘He might have been,’ said Alys from the bedchamber. ‘I wonder if he paused just a little when he touched it in his scrip.’

‘I was watching Frankie Renfrew,’ admitted the mason. ‘But I thought Bothwell as amazed as the rest of us when his friend fell, which suggests he did not know it to be lethal.’

Rustling sounds suggested Alys was unlacing the apricot silk with its wide sleeves. Gil, who would normally have helped her in this task, put aside the thought of the solid, slender warmth of her ribcage between his hands, and said resolutely, ‘I must speak to Wat Forrest tomorrow, to find out what he has discovered. And to young Bothwell himself.’

‘If the Serjeant will let you,’ said Maistre Pierre gloomily. ‘He has decided the man is guilty, as has Frankie, I suppose.’

‘I’ll go to the Provost if he won’t,’ said Gil. ‘But Alys, you could find out for me, if you will, if all the flasks Bothwell took from the joint order are accounted for, or if that could be one of them.’

‘Yes,’ she answered thoughtfully. Silk rustled again. ‘We must check those. But we need to account for the ones that went out to customers with some preparation in them, as well. It could be one of those.’

‘She is right,’ said her father. ‘And there is another thing I wonder at about young Bothwell. If the father’s substance all went to pay his debts, where did these two get the money to set up in business in Glasgow?’

Alys emerged from the inner chamber, fastening a bed-gown about her, and came to sit down with her comb.

‘Their mother’s portion?’ she hazarded. ‘It needn’t be much, if the season was right. They needn’t even have a physic garden. So much of an apothecary’s stock-in-trade is there for gathering in the countryside at the right time of year. Enough coin to lay in some ginger and liquorice, and a good eye for growing things, and perhaps a few crocks and mortars and paper for packaging, and you have the start of your trade.’

Maistre Pierre shook his head. ‘It puzzles me. Why Glasgow? Why not Edinburgh or Linlithgow, or another nearer town to Lanark?’

‘That’s a good point,’ said Gil. ‘It may not be relevant, but who knows what is relevant at this stage?’

Alys turned to smile at him, her face half obscured by the sheet of honey-coloured hair which gleamed gently in the candlelight.

‘I’ll see what I can learn,’ she said again. ‘And Gil — I know you would rather not have her here, but she would have been alone in the house tonight if she went home.’

‘Aye, very true,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘It was a wise decision, ma mie .’

Gil made no answer. After a moment she continued, ‘Gil, has anyone else prayed for the poor man?’

‘Father Francis was there,’ he pointed out.

‘No, I mean for Nanty Bothwell. Whatever happens, he has lost a friend, and he probably gave him the poison that killed him. He needs our prayers.’

‘I have a Mass said for him tomorrow,’ said Maistre Pierre. ‘And we can remember him in our devotions tonight. I have no doubt Catherine has already done so.’

She was silent for a few strokes of her comb, then said, ‘If it is not poison in the painted flask — well, no point in speculating on that yet, I suppose. The man fell so soon after the drops touched him it seems most likely to have been that. If we are right, we need to establish what it was, and how it got in the flask, and what it was doing there.’

‘Who was it intended for, and who put it there,’ Gil added.