Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘Pysont? How — who? Who’d pyson you, Robert?’

‘He is took very bad, Frankie,’ said Syme, looking up, ‘and I fear it’s the same as poor Gibson.’

‘The same as — What have you done?’ demanded Renfrew, seizing the front of Gil’s gown. ‘What did you give him? Why my laddie?’

Gil stepped back, catching Renfrew’s wrist to hold him off, saying stiffly, ‘See to your son, maister, he needs your help. I’m away out to call a priest to him.’

‘No, you’ll stay here where I can — ’

‘Who’d pyson our Robert?’ demanded Eleanor again. She began to giggle wildly. ‘It canny be Nanty Bothwell this time, he’s still locked away. There’s someone going about Glasgow poisoning laddies.’

‘Aye, Maister Cunningham, a priest as quick’s you like,’ said Grace, helping Syme to lift Robert. ‘Frankie, if you’ll leave that and take his feet, we can get him ben the house to his own bed, or at least more comfortable than this.’

Blackfriars Kirk was closest, and one of the Dominicans easily summoned. Returning on the heels of Father James, Gil found the Renfrew household swirling with fright like a spilled beehive. Several maidservants were weeping in a huddle in the shop, while Renfrew and his partner ran to and fro arguing over treatment, and in a room that looked on the dreary November garden Grace knelt by the stricken Robert, tilting tiny sips of almond milk into his mouth with encouraging words. Eleanor stood beside her with a hand over her mouth, still gulping and giggling in that uncontrolled way, and as Gil followed the priest through from the hall Agnes appeared at a further door, saying:

‘Meg wants to know what — ’ She broke off, and stared. ‘What’s going on,’ she finished, her eyes fixed on her brother. ‘Is Robert — ’

‘Robert’s been poisoned,’ said Grace, rising to let Father James take her place. ‘Eleanor, stop that noise.’ She shook the other woman by the shoulders, and when that had no effect dealt her a sharp slap. Eleanor swayed back, gasping, and Agnes clapped her hands and said brightly:

‘Robert? So it can’t have been Nanty on Hallowe’en, after all!’

‘The cataplasm never helped last time,’ said Syme, speaking over his shoulder as he returned from the shop. ‘Better something cold and moist like this, Frankie, if he’ll swallow it.’

‘Agnes!’ said Eleanor, apparently recovering her wits. ‘Robert’s like to die! Is that how you hear the news?’

‘Serve him right,’ said Agnes. She turned away, vanishing into the house, and Father James began the familiar quick murmur of the final questions, the prompts to the dying to confess sins and profess belief. Gil, watching, thought the young man stretched on the bench, his doublet unlaced, his head pillowed on his own short gown, was beyond hearing the priest’s voice, but the form of the questions assumed the answers, and absolution would be delivered, which must comfort the family. Eleanor had retired to a stool on the other side of the chamber and was watching, dry-eyed, her face pinched and white. Syme, a beaker in his hand, was looking at his wife, deep compassion in his face; Renfrew appeared from the shop with a heavy step and stood numbly glowering at the scene with an expression of dull rage. Gil suddenly recognized that his own dominant emotion was a matching rage, tempered by guilt; the boy had been murdered before his eyes, like Danny Gibson, and he had been able to do nothing to prevent it.

‘What did he take?’ Grace asked quietly. ‘What was it?’

‘As he said,’ Gil answered. ‘When I came into the shop he was eating a marchpane cherry from under the counter. We spoke, and then he took another one.’ He grimaced. ‘He bit into it, and pretended it was poisoned, so I called for help, and he laughed and ate the thing. And then he said it really was poisoned.’ He considered Robert’s scarlet, unconscious face. ‘If we’d believed him straight way, would it have made a difference?’

‘No,’ she said promptly. ‘If a few drops on his skin slew the other man, then swallowing it would kill this time, no matter what antidote — ’ She bit her lip and turned away.

‘I wonder why he never noticed it at the first bite,’ said Gil thoughtfully.

Father James withdrew his fingers from the pulse in Robert’s throat, bent his head, crossed himself, and began the prayers for the dead. Eleanor and her husband both knelt to join in. Maister Renfrew muttered briefly, signed himself, and crossed the room to demand of Grace in a furious undertone, ‘Where’s that daftheid Nicol?’

‘In his bed,’ she said, looking directly at him. ‘As you should ken, sir. He’s hardly moved this day. You’ll not blame him for this.’

‘Have I said I did?’ he said jeeringly. ‘And you, Gil Cunningham, wi your daft notions about my family. Did you pyson my laddie to prove your point?’

‘If you say that again,’ Gil said levelly, ‘I’ll have you for slander. I watched Robert eat the sweetmeat, I called for help when he said it was poisoned, he admitted he was joking and then found it truly was poisoned. I’ll swear that on anything you like to name, and Mistress Grace here will bear me out so far as she heard it.’

‘He said, I’m no joking now ,’ she recalled. ‘Poor laddie. Frankie, I’m right sorry for this. He was a likely boy, and a — a — He was a likely boy,’ she said again.

Renfrew grunted, and said to Gil, ‘And what brought you here anyway? I can do without you underfoot now, I’ll tell you.’

Gil dragged the reason for his presence with difficulty from the back of his mind, opened his mouth, and closed it again.

‘I still need a word with your daughter Agnes,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve found a bit more evidence, and I need her story about it.’

‘Evidence of what?’ demanded Renfrew. ‘If you’re still at this tale of my lassie helping young Bothwell to pyson his rival, you can put it out your head, I’ll not hear a word of it.’

‘I think it was an accident,’ said Gil patiently, ‘and I want her version of what I’ve learned. It’s more important now than ever — ’

‘What, d’ye think she’s pysont her brother and all?’

‘Agnes?’ said Grace sharply, and then, ‘Maister Cunningham, this is surely no the time for yon kind of questions — ’

‘No, and it’ll never be the time,’ said Renfrew, ‘and you can just leave my house afore I put you out myself.’

‘My son, this is not the way to conduct yourself before the dead,’ said Father James, getting to his feet. He was nearly as tall as Gil, with shaggy dark hair which he pushed out of his eyes now to peer round the group. ‘What came to the poor boy? He was far gone when I reached him. Are you saying he was poisoned?’

‘Aye, pysont,’ said Renfrew angrily, and dashed tears from his eyes. ‘My bonnie laddie lost to me, and I’m left wi that daftheid above stairs, wi his cantrips and excesses and his names for everything, and if I catch the one that did it — ’

‘Have you raised the hue and cry?’ prompted the Dominican. ‘Has the Serjeant been sent for? I know you, maister,’ he bowed to Gil, who acknowledged this, ‘you’re Chancellor Blacader’s quaestor, can you set matters in motion?’

‘Maister Renfrew won’t have it,’ said Gil, with faint malice. Across the room a shadow moved, as if someone had passed the doorway.

‘I’ll go for the Serjeant,’ said Syme. He met his partner’s eye. ‘He must be told, Frankie. Unless it’s an accident, it must be murder, and how would strong pyson get into a marchpane cherry by accident?’

‘Syme,’ said Eleanor through tears, and put her hand out. ‘Don’t — don’t leave me — ’