Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘So Augie told me,’ Gil said. ‘Is it a difficulty, Kate?’

‘You could say that, Maister Gil,’ pronounced her wait-ing-woman Babb from behind the great chair.

‘It is,’ Kate said anxiously, looking about her. ‘Where is Agnes Renfrew?’

‘Yonder with Nell Wilkie,’ said Alys, pointing into the window without raising her hand from the carved rim of the cradle. Glancing that way, Gil identified the two unmarried girls, the bare heads tilted together so that gold curls and oak-brown waves mingled. Wat Forrest’s wife was with them, and seemed to find their conversation amusing. ‘And, Kate,’ Alys went on, ‘is the armourer’s lad not in the same company?’

‘Aye, Mistress Alys, he is,’ agreed Babb. ‘He plays the hero, they tell me. And the glover’s in it and all, playing Judas that does all the speaking.’

‘Dan Gibson and Tammas Bowster,’ said Kate, and sat back. Finding Mistress Hamilton looking at her across the chamber she smiled brightly, and said, so only Gil and Alys could hear, ‘Trust Augie, he never knows — Gil, we must just make the best of it, and hope the lassie behaves, but will you be on the alert for any trouble? And I don’t like the look of Meg Mathieson, either. I never expected her to be here.’

‘Best of what?’ Gil asked. ‘I don’t think I know any more than Augie.’

‘The apothecary and the armourer lad’s both been courting her all year,’ said Babb with relish. ‘But she canny decide which she favours.’

‘And her father favours neither,’ Alys completed.

‘So that’s what Nicol meant.’

Ysonde materialized beside them, peered possessively into the cradle, and said, ‘You leave our baby alone. That’s Mammy Kate’s baby. Mammy,’ she went on, before any of the adults could react, ‘there’s men in the kitchen talking to Ursel, and one of them’s got his face all black, and one of them’s wearing a bed-sheet. Is that for the play?’

‘A bed-sheet?’ said Kate in surprise. ‘Over his clothes?’

‘No.’ Ysonde reflected briefly on this. ‘On his head.’

The journeyman who had admitted them earlier appeared at the kitchen door and crossed the chamber to his master, who heard what he had to say and clapped his hands for silence.

‘The players are here, neighbours,’ he announced. ‘If we make oursels ready, they’ll be up any time to entertain us.’

Two sorts of bustle began at his words, the women shifting chairs and arranging themselves with Babb’s help, the men drifting reluctantly into the main chamber from the window space. Morison’s household clattered in from the kitchen and retired to a corner, the grizzled steward Andy glaring sternly at the younger maidservants, who had a tendency to giggle. Gil watched all in some amusement, having found himself a place against the wall.

‘Och, it’s only the old play,’ said one of the two girls Alys had pointed out. ‘What’s so wonderful?’

‘Guard your tongue, Nell,’ said the dyer’s wife briskly, and thrust a backstool at her daughter. ‘Here, set that for Meg, next Lady Kate, and come and get another.’

So that was Nell Wilkie, with the soft brown hair, a comely young woman but nowhere near as striking as her friend. Agnes was a plump little soul, with a head of gold curls, a pretty face, huge blue eyes, and a kissable mouth. A wise father would have had her married off before now, which probably meant that Maister Renfrew was not wise where his younger daughter was concerned. The cut and quality of her blue silk gown suggested the same.

‘There is Maister Renfrew’s new wife,’ commented Maistre Pierre in his ear. ‘Meg Mathieson. I am surprised she has come out. Do you suppose it is twins?’

‘No way to tell,’ said Gil, watching Agnes seat her burgeoning stepmother, place an assortment of cushions at her back and hand her a fan of swan’s feathers. ‘Could be a consort of four voices, by the size of her.’

His father-in-law guffawed, then straightened his face hastily as Maister Renfrew passed them, towing his younger son by the sleeve of his green brocade gown.

‘You’ll stand by your sister,’ he was saying, ‘and oversee her behaviour, and no argument from you.’

‘She’s none of my — ’ began the young man, a handsome youth if he had not been at the spotty stage, and swallowed as his father turned to glare at him. ‘Aye, sir.’

Neither Agnes nor her stepmother seemed pleased to see their menfolk; Agnes greeted her brother with a sniff and a flounce of her blue silk skirts and the stepmother, not many years older, eyed her husband warily as if uncertain of his mood. He smiled kindly at her, which seemed to alarm her more, patted her shoulder and turned away to join Gil and Maistre Pierre, tucking himself in beside the mason’s wide furred gown.

‘I’ll just stand ower here,’ he said softly, ‘where Meg canny see me. She’s the sizey a house, you’d think she was carrying a football team, and it makes her carnaptious.’

It took perhaps a quarter-hour of stir and argument to get the company seated in a half-circle round the door which led to the kitchen stair. Mistress Hamilton was in a draught, Nancy Sproull the dyer’s wife could not see past Eleanor Renfrew’s headdress and Andrew Hamilton the younger, all of thirteen and very grown-up in dark brown broadcloth, had to be separated from a glass of Dutch spirits his parents had not seen him acquire. Gil dealt with that for Kate without alerting either parent, the other problems were solved, the two little girls settled at Kate’s feet, Nicol Renfrew was persuaded to move his backstool beside his wife’s, and the audience was declared ready.

Morison nodded to his steward, who signalled in turn to a journeyman standing ready by the door, and the man slipped out to the kitchen. A distant set of ill-tuned small-pipes struck up a discordant noise; feet sounded on the stairs, there were three loud knocks on the door, and it was flung wide.

‘Haud away rocks, haud away reels!’ began a stentorian voice, and Judas entered.

Gil knew two or three versions of the play, but had not seen this company perform before. The other actors filed in behind the piper, whose small-pipes were eventually silenced, and bowing to their audience launched into the traditional song about Hallowe’en while their Bessie wielded a broom inexpertly round the legs of stools and backstools. They carried garlands of coloured paper and withies; their costumes were the usual mix of old clothes and ingenuity, discarded gowns turned to the lining, card mitres for Judas and St Mungo painted and stuck with gold braid, the Bessie character with plaits of horsehair dangling from her vast linen headdress, a bedspread train pinned to her ample waist. The two champions wore real, rather battered armour, though their swords were of wood, and one had his face blacked with soot. Gil had seen both combatants in the armourer’s workshop. Which of them was Agnes’s fancy? he wondered.

Judas was declaiming his next speech now, announcing the coming fight. His acting style was striking, ornamented with huge dramatic gestures which bore no relation to the words he was using, so far as those could be understood; the accent used by Lanarkshire folk on a stage had always puzzled Gil.

The young apothecary from the Tolbooth was indeed playing the doctor in an imposing tall hat of black paper. He was a stocky fellow, buttoned into a too-long gown tucked up over a shabby belt of scarlet leather, a vast scrip hanging at his side. He had glanced once at Agnes Renfrew, conspicuous in her blue silk, then stood silent against the wall while all were introduced.

‘If you don’t believe the word I say,’ Judas ended, with sudden clarity, ‘call for Alexander of Macedon, and he’ll show the way! Alexander! Alexander! Alexander!’