Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘Madame your wife seems discomposed just now.’

‘She is,’ Gil agreed, and explained briefly, though he suspected she knew the reason.

She nodded, spooning the soft sweet concoction, and finally said, ‘One must accept one’s lot, however difficult it seems, and conduct oneself in accordance with one’s duty, with the help of God and Our Lady. I will speak to her.’

‘I wouldn’t ask her to do anything she found — ’ Gil began, and checked, groping for a word.

She waited until she saw he would not finish the sentence, and said firmly, ‘The duty of a married woman is quite clear, whatever her husband’s nature. The fact that he is a considerate man does not free his wife from her obligations.’

Gil, torn between amazement at the implicit compliment, dislike of the word obligation in this context and embarrassment at discussing such a subject with Catherine, simply swallowed and gaped at her. She smiled slightly, and put a hand on his sleeve.

‘Return to your duties, maistre , and let the women deal with women’s matters.’

When the dinner was cleared he repaired obediently to his closet. It was a little panelled chamber at the far end of their lodging, beyond the bedchamber, a small comfortable space fitted with a desk and shelves, with his gowns hung on a row of pegs behind the door and his books arranged where he could reach them easily. The report for Robert Blacader was the most pressing item; he applied himself to that, vaguely aware at one point of a disturbance in the main part of the house, women exclaiming and someone weeping. He paused to listen, decided that if he was needed they would send for him, and addressed himself to the report again. Within another couple of hours it was complete. He made a fair copy, with the usual formal salutations at beginning and end, folded the letter, addressed it, sealed it, and put it on his writing-desk to take up to the Castle later for despatch. After that he tidied up the papers he had used for reference, and looked briefly at the ceiling. The painted vines wriggling along the beams overhead did not offer inspiration, and he had to accept the fact: nothing stood between him and a further interview with Agnes Renfrew.

This turned out to be not quite the case.

In Maister Renfrew’s shop there was only young Robert, who looked up when the little bells rang on the door, and looked sourly at Gil.

‘Aye, maister?’ he said. ‘And how can I help you?’

‘I don’t expect you can,’ said Gil, disliking the tone of the question, ‘seeing it’s your sister I want to speak to. Is she home?’

‘Why would she not be?’ Robert reached under the counter and produced a marchpane cherry, which he popped into his mouth. ‘Still sulking in her chamber.’

‘Might I get a word with her, then?’

Robert shrugged, chewing with evident pleasure. ‘Hardly for me to say, maister. You’ll need to wait for the old man. He’s gone to hear Mass at Blackfriars, he’ll be a wee while. And Jimmy’s taken Eleanor down to St Mary’s Kirk, though why you’d take such a sour creature anywhere I don’t see.’

‘Is none of the other women home?’

‘Well, Meg’s no likely to be anywhere else, and I’ve no notion where Grace might be. Pursuing this invisible Erschewoman round Glasgow, maybe.’

What Erschewoman? Gil wondered fleetingly, but his chief reaction was irritation.

‘Robert, I need a word with your sister,’ he persisted. ‘Will you send for her, please?’

‘What’s it about, anyway? She’s in enough trouble wi the men she’s spoken to already, what wi one of them slaying the other, I don’t know that I want her talking to any more fellows.’

Slightly winded by this impertinence, Gil paused to assemble a reply of any sort, and Robert smiled at him, peered under the counter, and produced another marchpane cherry.

‘So you’d best wait and speak to my faither,’ he suggested, and bit into the sweetmeat.

The smile vanished. With an expression of horror he spat the morsel into his hand, stared at it, stared at Gil.

‘Pyson!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m pysont!’

Appalled, Gil sprang to the door that led into the house, flung it open and shouted into the hall beyond it, ‘Help here! Help in the shop, and quickly!’ He turned back, glancing about the shop for water to rinse out Robert’s mouth, and found the young man grinning triumphantly.

‘Hunt the gowk!’ he said, beginning to laugh, slapping his thigh with his other hand. ‘Your face, man! Your face when I said pyson!’ He put the broken sweetmeat into his mouth, still laughing, wiped at his eyes, chewed, and assumed the same horrified expression. Gil stood watching impassively as he spat the chewed mess out again, while hurrying feet approached through the house.

‘What’s amiss?’ demanded Grace Gordon, appearing in the doorway, looking from Gil to her brother-in-law. ‘Who called for help?’

‘I did,’ said Gil, ‘but it was a false alarm. Robert was playing the fool.’

‘No, I’m pysont,’ said Robert faintly. He was still standing, looking horrified, staring at the pulped stuff on his palm. The smell of almonds reached Gil. ‘I’m pysont, Grace. It was in the cherry.’

‘The cherry?’ she repeated, looking back and forth between the two men.

‘The marchpane cherry he ate a moment since,’ said Gil.

‘What’s ado here? Is this a joke or no, Robert?’

‘He claimed he’d been poisoned,’ Gil said, ‘and then fell about laughing.’

‘Robert, you’re a fool! It’s no a subject for joking on.’

‘I’m no joking now,’ he said, and sat down shakily on the stool beside him. ‘I’m done for, Grace. Who’s pysont me, in Christ’s name? Call a priest, quickly.’

‘Are you serious?’ She stared at him.

‘Aye, I’m serious. I’m a deid man, Grace, like Danny Gibson, and the same way.’

‘I think maybe he is serious,’ said Gil, in chill realization.

‘But what —?’ She stepped round the counter to Robert, touched his face and hands, sniffed at his mouth. ‘Oh, Body of Christ, he is serious. How did it happen?’

‘It’s truth, right enough.’ Robert grasped her wrist. ‘It was in the cherry, I tellt you. I can taste it, burning my tongue. It’s — ’

‘Rinse it out with this,’ said Gil, handing him a beaker of water from the bucket behind the inner door. ‘Quickly, now.’

Robert took the beaker, rinsed his mouth and spat, but said, ‘Too late, away too late. If it slew Danny with just a drop, that he never swallowed — ’ He was breathing heavily now, his face reddening. ‘Grace, Meg’s bairn can have all I have to leave. Will you see to it? And — and my soul to Almighty God, is that what I should say?’

Grace crossed herself, and said, ‘We need to get you within, my laddie, maybe to your bed. Maister Cunningham, would you step out and summon a priest to him? Or no — go through the house and shout again, I’ll need a hand.’

She looked anxiously down at her brother-in-law, who was wilting visibly, his breathing harsh and rapid. A shudder shook him as they watched. Gil turned to obey, just as the shop door opened with its cheerful jingle of little bells and first Maister Renfrew entered and then James Syme and his wife.

‘What are you at now, Robert?’ demanded Renfrew, glaring across the counter at his son. ‘Get on your feet and serve the — oh, it’s you, is it? And Grace, I want you — ’

‘No the now, sir,’ said Grace, on an odd warning note. At the same moment Robert raised his head and said gasping:

‘Faither, I’m pysont. I–I canny — ’

He slid from the stool, and Grace caught him and lowered him to the floor. Renfrew exclaimed in alarm, Syme hurried past him to help Grace, and Eleanor uttered a short scream.