Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘Morple,’ ordered John, extending a hand, fingers wriggling. Gil handed him another slice of the apple, and Socrates’ nose quivered in indignation.

‘He must say If you please ,’ Alys prompted.

‘Pease,’ said John obligingly, and beamed, displaying some well-chewed fragments. He was a handsome child, with a strong look of his father the harper, and seemed to be intelligent as well as musical. Gil, who was his legal guardian, was beginning to think in terms of the universities of Europe, and set aside each quarter as much as he could of the income the boy had from his dead mother’s property towards that end.

‘Ed ockies,’ announced John, holding up one foot so that his red stocking showed.

‘Red stockings,’ Gil agreed. ‘Mammy Alys knitted them.’

He caught sight of Alys’s expression as she watched the child, but before he could say anything Catherine announced, ‘Then we must all go about our various tasks. You may tell Mistress Mathieson I have prayed for her, and also for her infant, ma mie .’

‘Well, if it’s one o mine,’ said Maister Renfrew sharply, ‘he must ha stole it. I’ve no wish to go through my books to prove it, for such a one as him, and I see no point in adding the charge of theft to a charge of murder forbye, but that’s the beginning and end of it, Maister Cunningham.’

‘Do you think?’ said Gil mildly.

‘Aye. Or else the sister’s lying.’

‘My wife said she saw the six still in their straw,’ said Gil, ‘and the docket itemizing six flasks of Araby ware in your own writing, lying beside them. That seems clear enough to me.’

‘Aye.’ Renfrew tapped irritably on his tall desk. In his workaday clothes of brown wool he was a less flamboyant sight than yesterday, but the two grouse feathers pinned in his felt hat by a brooch with a huge chunk of amber suited well with his bearing. Elbows out, shoulders squared, neck stretched, he had met Gil’s question about the painted flasks with lively indignation. ‘So he must ha stole it, whether from my shop or from one of my customers.’

‘The curious thing is, he says it’s one of his,’ said Gil.

‘The man’s a pysoner. Small wonder if he’s a leear as well.’

‘You’ve made good use of the shipment, I think. They’re bonnie things. I saw you had one about you, yourself.’

‘Aye,’ said Renfrew. ‘There’s two sizes, see, though I kept all the bigger ones for my own business, and the wee one holds a good quantity for the kind of draught that’s taen in a minimissimal dose. I’ve gave out a few in the last year.’

‘Have you any thoughts about what the poison itself might be?’

Renfrew blinked slightly at the change of subject, and his high colour lessened as he applied his mind to this question. He stared distantly at the shelves of his workroom for a space, while Gil looked round him. This business, as the other apothecaries had made clear, was aimed at the higher end of the market, with an emphasis on such luxury goods as cosmetics and perfumes, dyestuffs and sealing-wax and the more expensive foodstuffs. The outer room, which was the shop, was lined with sacks of raisins and rice, almonds and figs, pigs of honey and treacle, glass jars of lavender water. The workroom was laid out differently from Wat Forrest’s, but held a similar assortment of alarming equipment. Some of the jars on the crowded shelves were marked with a black cross, some had parchment or paper covers with writing on them. The nearest mortar held a quantity of large pale seeds which Renfrew had been pounding at when Gil came in; the box beside it was labelled with a flourish Nux pines . Do pines have nuts on them? he wondered. Not in Scotland, for certain.

His attention was recalled as Renfrew shook his head portentously.

‘I don’t deal in pyson as such,’ the older man admitted, ‘save maybe for killing rats, so it’s no a matter where I’ve great practical experience, but I’ve read as wide in the subject as any man in Glasgow. It’s not arsenical salts, that’s for certain, nor any of those that acts first on the belly, which cuts out a great number. It worked instanter , which lets us set aside all the slower ones, you’ll appreciate.’ Gil nodded at this, but Renfrew went on without looking at him, ‘I’d say it might be one of those that can be got by infusion or maybe distillation from plants, seeing it was in that cloudy liquid form, but I’d need time wi my books to get any closer. Has Wat never come back to you wi an answer?’

‘Not yet,’ Gil said. ‘If that’s the case, it’s something a good apothecary could brew up for himself, is it, rather than something that has to be imported from the Low Countries?’

‘If that’s the case,’ said Renfrew, ‘aye.’

‘Is Anthony Bothwell a good enough apothecary to do that kind of thing?’

‘I suppose he might be,’ admitted Renfrew with reluctance.

‘What about his sister?’

‘Oh, never. Women are all very well for carrying out the wee tasks,’ he elucidated, ‘concocting sweetmeats, compounding an ointment or reducing an infusion, all my lassies can deal wi sic matters, though times they overdo it,’ he added bitingly. ‘But the great tasks are men’s work. Women hasny the application, you see, on account of their natures are more cold and moist than ours, it means you canny rely on them.’

‘I see,’ said Gil, comparing this assertion with what he knew of the women in his life. It did not seem to match. ‘So you think this must be something Bothwell himself distilled.’

‘It could be,’ said Renfrew, ‘and that’s as close as I’ll say. We’ll ken more when Wat has done proving it.’

‘If Bothwell’s that good an apothecary,’ said Gil casually, ‘why did you not like the match for Agnes?’

Renfrew’s colour rose again.

‘That’s no concern of yours!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll wed my lassies where I choose!’

‘Just the same I’d ha thought,’ Gil persevered, trying to keep the same casual tone, ‘that since you’ve wedded Eleanor to one apothecary you might ha chosen another for Agnes.’

‘I can do far better than that for her,’ said Renfrew angrily. ‘She’s a bonnie wee thing, and she’ll have a good tocher, and once I let it be known — ’

‘So why not Bothwell?’ Gil asked. ‘He’s a hard worker, he’s built up the business from nothing in a couple of years.’ He and his sister, he qualified in his mind, and I hope she’ll forgive me for ignoring her contribution. ‘I’d have thought he’d seem like a good husband for any girl, until this happened yesterday.’

‘Aye, well, it’s as well I’d no thought of consenting to either of her choices,’ said Renfrew triumphantly, ‘or she’d be betrothed to either a pysoner or a corp by now.’

Rounding the corner of the Tolbooth, Gil encountered Eleanor Renfrew, a maidservant behind her. She was a plain young woman, with the same big blue eyes as her sister in a sour face both pinched and puffy with pregnancy. She was warmly clad against the sharp wind, the hood of her heavy cloak drawn over her everyday linen headdress and a plaid over all concealing her size. She did not seem to have been to market, since she had no basket or packages with her, and the servant was yawning.

‘Good day, mistress,’ he said, raising his hat. She curtsied, and would have moved on, but he said, ‘I was by your father’s house just now. There’s still no word of your good-mother.’

‘Likely no,’ she said. ‘It’s no going well.’

‘Might I have a word, mistress?’ he asked. ‘We could get a seat in St Mary’s Kirk — ’

‘Our Lady love you, no!’ she said. ‘I’ve spent all morning there on my knees asking aid for Meg, my back’s like toothache, and I’m about out of my head wi boredom. I was just on my way home, for I can tell my beads there as well as in St Mary’s, so you might as well come along.’