Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

John was still crying, though the sobs were slower now.

‘He’s getting sleepy,’ said Nan, wiping the child’s mouth. Grace straightened up and came to check his pulse, then tilted up his head and raised one heavy eyelid to study his eye.

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘The pupil is enlarged but not greatly, the pulse is steady considering how distressed he is. Poisoning progresses rapidly in such a small form, but so does the antidote. I think we’ve caught it in time.’

‘You mean he’s safe?’ demanded Nancy through her tears. ‘Oh, is he safe, mem?’

‘He must be watched,’ said Grace, ‘for the headache, cold sweats, pains in his belly. I’ll give you something for him in case that happens. But if he sleeps naturally he should be safe.’

Alys crossed herself, tears starting to her eyes. Nancy dropped to her knees on the cold ground, snatching out her beads. Mysie imitated her, and they set up a murmuring of heartfelt thanksgiving, broken by Nancy’s occasional sobs. Nan made her way to a bench and sat down on it, rather heavily, one hand going up to stroke the drowsy child’s dark curls.

‘What did you give him?’ Alys asked anxiously, thinking of a candle to St John. The boy’s weight in wax, or even double -

‘A little ipecac, to induce vomiting, always the best beginning in a case of poisoning in a child,’ said Grace with some hesitation, as if she was translating the comments out of one or more other languages, ‘and to control the heartbeat a drop of fever-bark tincture, a valuable specific against the effects of May lily or foxglove.’ She felt the child’s pulse again. ‘I wonder — maybe another drop of that the now, to be certain.’

‘Christ and His saints be thanked that you came to our aid,’ said Alys fervently.

‘Thanks be to Our Lady your woman fetched me.’

‘Fetched you?’ said Kate. ‘I was about to ask what brought you. I’ve never been so relieved to see anyone, Grace. Who fetched you?’

Grace paused in measuring the water for the dose.

‘It was a woman,’ she said blankly. ‘Did you not send her? I was in my chamber, and she came in and said the boy had eaten berries of May lilies and needed my help. Is she not one of your women?’

‘We’d had no time to think of sending for anyone,’ said Kate. ‘What like woman? You’re sure it wasny one of the men?’

‘No, it was a woman. Tall, dark hair worn loose, a checked gown,’ said Grace. ‘I took her for an Erschewoman. She made it plain it was urgent. So I gathered the remedies I needed and ran down the garden and in by the gate there.’ She turned to administer her prescription, but at the look which Kate and Alys exchanged she halted. ‘What have I said?’

‘It sounds like Ealasaidh,’ said Kate.

‘But how can it have been? She is in Fife, I think, and the last I heard she was well.’ Alys shivered, and clasped her hands closer round the beaker of spiced ale, grateful for its warmth. ‘To think of what word I might have had to send her — ’

Dinner was over, a subdued meal at which Alys had been unable to swallow more than a mouthful. Both Wynliane and Ysonde, standing at the table beside Kate, had had to be coaxed to eat, and Ysonde had suddenly burst out with, ‘John might have died! Of poison berries!’

‘Yes, but he didn’t,’ said Kate, ‘and we’re going to pray for Mistress Gordon all our days, aren’t we? She saved him.’

Grace had gone back to the Renfrew house, matter-of-factly brushing off Alys’s fervent thanks. On her advice, John had been watched carefully until the meal was ended, but he had slept heavily in a nest of plaids in one of the window bays, and had not woken when Nancy lifted him to carry him home. It seemed to be a natural sleep; his colour was good, his skin dry and neither cold nor hot.

‘Don’t think of it,’ said Kate firmly now. ‘John is safe, and home in his own crib, thanks be to God, and we’ve all learned a valuable lesson. I’ll have Andy secure the fence before nightfall, and Nancy and Mysie both will keep a closer eye on the bairns from now on. But I don’t mean,’ she went on, returning to her point, ‘that it was Ealasaidh herself. I think it must have been her fetch. Danger to the boy would be enough to summon someone like her. She’s an Erschewoman, after all, as Grace said. They can do strange things.’

Alys eyed her warily. ‘Gil has mentioned such things too,’ she said. ‘I find it — how can a living person be a ghost? And how would such a ghost know that Grace was the one to tell?’

Kate shook her head. ‘As well explain one as the other,’ she observed. ‘Whatever happened, the boy is unharmed, we’ll both be grateful to Grace Gordon all our days, and there’s no sign of whatever woman it was on the rest of the High Street.’

Questioning the men in the yard and Maister Syme who was in the shop next door had elicited no sighting of a woman such as Grace described. They could not work out how the visitant had reached Grace’s chamber without being seen by someone, the more so since the Renfrew house was busy with company as Meg’s contemporaries called to congratulate her and admire the baby and the maidservants came and went with refreshments.

In the middle of their enquiry, John Paterson had returned, somewhat chagrined to discover he had missed the excitement, with the news that he had found Andrew Hamilton, working on a roof at the college, but Andrew said he had already spoken to Maister Gil about it and couldny be spared from the task at hand if they were to finish afore dark.

‘I wonder what Gil learned from Andrew,’ Alys said, trying to distract herself.

‘Likely he’ll tell you later,’ said Kate. ‘Is there anyone else he’s yet to speak to?’

‘He mentioned Nell Wilkie this morning,’ Alys recalled. ‘And Nell’s mother asked me to have a word with her too. She was still weeping, yesterday afternoon. I–I forgot about it,’ she finished abruptly, remembering the occasion. Just before she — just before — Think about something else. Someone else’s troubles are the best distraction, Mère Isabelle had always said. ‘I could do that now, I suppose. She might say more to me than to Gil.’

‘Poor girl,’ said Kate. ‘She seemed very troubled when — when it happened, and I’d not think Nancy Sproull would have much sympathy for that kind of distemper.’

They looked at one another.

‘I wonder what she knows?’ said Alys.

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Kate. Her eyes lit up. ‘I could do with a diversion, after a morning like that, Alys. May I come too?’

‘And we can call in at St Mary’s,’ said Alys, ‘and give thanks for John’s safety.’

Alys stepped in at the gates of Wilkie’s dyeyard along the Gallowgate, Babb on her heels leading Kate’s mule. Maister Wilkie and his men were dipping a batch of indigo, two men sweating at the winding-gear to raise the bolt of cloth from the vat and Maister Wilkie himself inspecting it critically as the blue colour developed in the air. The characteristic pungent smell of the dyestuff met them on the chilly breeze.

The dyeyard was set out much like Morison’s Yard, with the house to one side, the working space to the other, succeeded by long open sheds where swathes of cloth hung drying under cover, and beyond them the garden where in the summer weld and rocket showed yellow flowers and now the broad leaves of next season’s woad spread flat and green. More things laid out invitingly for little boys -

Alys nodded to the dyers, turned towards the house and rattled at the pin by the latch. The maidservant who came to the door looked doubtful when she asked for Nell.

‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘The lassie’s hardly ceased weeping since they cam home on Hallowe’en. Maybe you’d speak wi the mistress first, only she’s no very good the day. Will you come in, my leddy, mem, and I’ll fetch her?’