Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

Wondering what use such grudging prayers would be, he turned to accompany her, and was surprised to be led into a wynd just above the Tolbooth.

‘I thought you’d have stayed under your father’s roof,’ he said. ‘There’s certainly room in that house.’

‘Syme wished to have his own place.’ She raised the latch on the door of a small narrow house, and stepped inside. ‘Buttered ale, Maidie, and then we might as well get on wi the supper. Hae a seat, maister.’

She looked about her with evident pleasure, shedding cloak and plaid to hang behind the door. The chamber was sparsely furnished, but the few pieces were good, and there were embroidered hangings at the windows to keep the draughts out. A door at the back led into the kitchen, where Maidie was now rattling crocks, and a stair in the corner suggested at least one upper chamber. Syme must be doing well out of the business to cover the rent here, Gil thought, surrendering his own plaid.

‘What was it you wished to say?’she asked, sitting down by the brazier and poking at it with a piece of kindling.

‘Yesterday, at my sister’s house,’ he said. ‘Would you tell me what you saw?’

‘What I saw?’ she repeated, startled. ‘A bad business, that. I hope Lady Kate’s none the worse of it today. As for what I saw, maister, why, the same as a’body else. Nanty Bothwell gave Danny Gibson something that slew him, with all the guests looking on.’

‘That’s true,’ Gil agreed. ‘Did you know the flask he had?’

She shrugged. ‘They’re all over Glasgow. One of a batch my father had from Middelburgh and sold on to the other potyngars.’

‘No way to tell whose it was?’

She laughed sourly. ‘Ask at my brother Nicol, why don’t you. He’ll likely have a name for it.’ Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘Daftheid that he is, he has names for everything about him. He’s no so bad as he was, when he was a boy you had to call his platter Barnabas and his eating-knife Maister Lute or he would eat nothing. It would surprise me not at all if he had a name for the very flask and told you where it had been afore Nanty Bothwell showed it to the company.’

‘Now I think of it,’ Gil said slowly, ‘when we were at school he had names for both inkhorn and penknife. And yesterday he was very sure it was the wrong flask.’

‘I think we’d all jaloused that by the time he spoke.’

‘Have you had a word with your sister since then? How has she taken it?’

‘Ill, I’d say,’ she turned to accept the steaming jug from the maidservant, ‘but I’ve never spoken wi her. She slammed away into her own chamber as soon as we got Meg up the stairs, and then I was packed off out the house.’ He nodded; it would be bad luck, he knew, for a woman carrying a child to be under the same roof as another in labour.

‘Did she seem badly affected?’

‘She was gey quiet, which is no like her. I’d have said she’d had a shock,’ agreed Mistress Renfrew, ‘but then so had the rest of us. It’ll not suit her, to have one of her admirers hanged for poisoning the other,’ she added.

‘Has she favoured either of them over the other?’ Gil asked carefully, leaning forward to take a beaker from her. The buttered ale was not as hot as he would have liked, but well spiced.

‘I’d not have said so. But I’ve not spoken to her of them more than once or twice. I’m not round the house as much now I’ve my own place to see to,’ she looked round her again with satisfaction, ‘and she’s not like to confide in me anyway.’ She saw Gil’s raised eyebrows. ‘We don’t get on, maister. There’s none of us gets on, save for Meg, poor girl.’

Gil, whose siblings had squabbled and then made up on a daily basis throughout his childhood, concealed his thoughts on this.

‘So you’d not know which she would have preferred,’ he prompted.

‘Neither of them, like I said. No point in preferring either one anyway, she likes keeping them hanging round her heels, but she kens fine the old man will have a match for her soon.’

Does she? Gil wondered. And does she accept the idea?

‘Who will he choose?’ he asked.

‘You don’t think he’d tell us? I’ll say this for Syme, he listens to what I have to say. My faither never minded me in his life, and for all Agnes can get anything she wants out of him — did you see that gown she had on yesterday? — she’ll not dare cross him either.’

He drank some of the buttered ale, and changed the subject. ‘Do you think it was a deliberate poisoning?’

‘How would I — ’ She stopped. ‘No,’ she said at length, ‘I’d say not. Nanty Bothwell’s a decent man, and he’s got sense enough to see that would never work. What good to get rid of your rival if you’re clapped in the Tolbooth in chains?’

‘Or by anyone else?’

‘Not likely, surely? Danny Gibson was a decent fellow too by all I’ve heard. Agnes wouldny harm her two lapdogs, and none of the rest of us …’ Her voice trailed off; she thought for a brief space, then looked at him with what seemed to be genuine reluctance. ‘The only thing I can think — Robert’s one for malicious tricks. He sent Meg a pair of gloves at her birthday, all in secret so the old man took it they were from,’ she bit her lip, ‘from someone she knew. He blued her ee, she’d to keep the house for a week till it faded. Then Robert boasted of it to Syme, and denied it when Syme told the old man, which led to — But I don’t see how he could ha done this. It must ha been a mischance of some sort.’

‘If it was a mischance, where might the poison have come from?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve never a notion. Do they ken what it is yet?’

‘One of the plant infusions, we think.’

‘Our Lady save us, that’s little help.’ She pulled a face. ‘What’s more, sir, any of us, any woman in Glasgow that’s got a stillroom, could make up such a thing if we knew what to infuse. There’s some skill in the work, but more in knowing what to put to it, and to get something that acted so quick I’d say you’d need to look for someone well up in the craft.’

‘You’re better up in the craft yourself than your father gave me to think,’ he said deliberately.

She snorted. ‘Him! He’ll not admit the women in the house do the most of the work. It’s Grace makes half the face-creams and that, as well as his drops for his heart, and me that makes the other half, and Agnes and me that makes the sweetmeats. Syme’s a good worker, and knows the trade,’ she added approvingly, ‘which he should, having been my faither’s journeyman, but all our Robert ever does is stand about looking useless and eat the sweetmeats.’

‘And your brother Nicol?’

‘What use a daftheid like him? If I’d my way I’d send him away again, wi his moonstruck ideas, and keep Grace wi us for the sake of the business.’

‘What ideas are those?’

‘Och.’ She paused to think, looking at her empty beaker. ‘He’d give the old man willowbark tea for his heart, and such nonsense. All stuff he’s got from some foreigner he met in Middelburgh. As for what he thinks about the circulation of the blood, you’d need to hear it.’ She set the beaker back on the tray beside the jug. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to ask, sir, for I’ll need to get on wi the supper.’

‘How do you think it happened?’

She looked blank for a moment. ‘You saw how it happened as well. Oh, d’you mean how it got into the flask? I’ve never a notion, like I said already. There’s aye potions and pysons lying about an apothecary’s shop, maister, but my faither has us all trained well, we’d label sic a thing.’

‘What, a label reading “poison”?’

‘Little use that for the servants,’ she observed. ‘No, it’s a big black cross, well inked in, stuck or tied or drawn on the cover-paper. So if it was something from our house, it ought to ha been labelled.’