Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

‘And where anyone else would — ’ put in Babtie, shivering.

‘Like we did,’ agreed Isa grimly. ‘I’m away at the term too, Babtie, I’m no staying in a place where pysons is left lying about for anyone to lift by accident.’

‘But I believe her father keeps his workroom locked when he isn’t there,’ said Alys. ‘She would hardly work at such a thing under his eye. And how would she come by the poison?’

‘Made it up hersel, most like,’ said Elspet. ‘I’d put nothing past that one.’

Not if it must be distilled, thought Alys, that would certainly have been noticed.

‘She found some somewhere in the house on Hallowe’en,’ she observed, ‘for she fetched it next door to Nanty Bothwell. Did any of you see her that day?’

Heads were shaken, regretfully.

‘We were all in here,’ said Isa, ‘seeing they was all out, the mistress had said we could have a wee bit extra to wir dinner, and take the rest of the day. Then they come back early, and her groaning,’ she added darkly.

Don’t think about it -

‘She’d likely have it hid in her chamber,’ said the bruised girl. ‘She works in there often enough, likely she brewed it there and all. She’ll carry all she wants up there, and scold at me for disturbing her when I go in for something out my own scrip under the bed, and then there’s another tray of kickshawses drying by the window, and I’ve to sleep in there wi the smell of them driving me wild.’ She sniffled again, and rolled down her sleeve.

Isa gave her a hard look, and said, ‘If you’re feeling more like the thing, Jess, you can fetch me in a pail of water.’

‘But surely, she can’t have been working like that lately?’ Alys wondered.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Jess. ‘Just yesterday, she was.’ She got reluctantly to her feet. ‘After her wee sister was born, when I went to call her to see the bairn washed and wrapped, did I no get my head in my hands, only for opening the door. That’s likely when she was preparing what slew her brother.’

‘Never say it!’ said Isa, crossing herself. ‘And sitting in at the supper-table last night, making up to her daddy like a good daughter.’

That cannot be right, thought Alys. The timing is wrong, and she would hardly work a distillation in her own chamber.

‘But is that how they are all the time?’ she asked. ‘Such vindictiveness and ill feeling.’

‘Aye,’ said Babtie baldly.

Jess paused on her way across the kitchen and said, ‘It’s those two’s aye been the worst. Eleanor’s no as bad, and that Nicol,’ she giggled suddenly, ‘he’s aye a laugh, he’s no got the same temper as the rest.’

‘Och, you’re sweet on him,’ said Babtie.

‘You never heard him the night they came home, like I did,’ said Isa. ‘Him and his father, going at it like the Stewarts and the Douglases.’

‘The very night they came home?’ repeated Alys, making round eyes.

‘Aye. All seated round the supper-table, wi their baggage still lying in the hall, shouting about whether Nicol had any right to expect a place in the business, what his bairn could inherit — and the mistress half in tears, and Mistress Grace white as new milk, she was that tired wi the journey. And then she miscarried that same night, the poor soul.’

‘Oh, how sad,’ said Alys. That was what Kate told me, she thought. And how interesting that Grace gets her title when Eleanor does not.

‘She’s never taken again yet,’ said Elspet. ‘It’s a crying shame, that. She’s a good woman.’

‘Aye, but what sort a bairn would that Nicol get?’ objected Babtie.

‘You speak civil of your maister’s son,’ ordered Elspet.

‘But Mistress Grace being as wise hersel,’ said Isa, ‘you’d think it would even out, surely? And you’d think and all, she’d know of a pill or a ’lixir or the like would help her to what she wants. Or the maister, even, given the way he values her, he ought to know something would help. Aye asking her advice, he is.’

‘She is wise indeed,’ said Alys.

‘She couldny save Robert, just the same, Our Lady succour him,’ said Elspet, slicing white discs of carrot. ‘She was running up and down from her own chamber, wi almond milk and all what, but it never helped the laddie.’

‘She saved our John,’ said Alys, and crossed herself quickly at the thought of the morning’s disruption. ‘She knew exactly what to do for him.’

‘Oh, mem, I’d forgot that,’ said Isa, ‘what wi the rest of the day. How is your wee one? Did you ever find that Erschewoman? I tell you, I was working in the hall at the time, taking the dust off the panelling, to be handy for the door when the mistress’s gossips came calling, and the first I knew was Mistress Grace ran down the stair wi her apron full of crocks, and out the back way and down the garden. I never saw any Erschewoman or anyone else come through the hall.’

‘No,’ said Alys. ‘Nor did anyone. It’s — it’s very strange.’

‘Here, Isa, look yonder,’ said Elspet, on a warning note, looking out of the window into the yard.

Isa craned to see, and exclaimed in annoyance. ‘What’s that lassie up to? Is that one of John Anderson’s constables she’s daffing wi?’ She stepped quickly to the door. ‘Jess! Come in here now wi that water!’

Alys got to her feet. ‘He will wish to speak to you all,’ she said. ‘I should leave. Thank you for the ale — ’

‘Speak to us?’ said Babtie on a rising squeak. ‘What for? We’ve never done anything!’

The three women still in the kitchen seemed almost to draw together, though they did not move. Jess’s wooden soles clopped on the cobbles and she appeared in the doorway, the burly blue-gowned form of one of the constables looming behind her.

‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s Isa that heard her say it!’

Back in the house, Alys paused in the hall. She could hear the Serjeant in the room where Robert had died, still asking questions; Gil was there too, putting in the occasional word. She curbed her wish to hurry to his side and considered what she might usefully do now. She had no wish to speak to Agnes again, though poor Nell must still be with her since it was beginning to grow dark and there was nobody to walk her home. Perhaps Meg could tell me something useful, she thought reluctantly.

‘What’s ado?’ asked Nicol Renfrew in the doorway from the stair. ‘The house is full of constables, all asking questions. Who’s that? Oh, it’s you. Gil Cunningham’s wee wife.’ He giggled sleepily, and slouched forward through the shadows. ‘How are you the day, mistress?’

‘Do you know your brother is dead?’ she asked directly.

‘Oh, aye, Grace told me. Are they all in there?’ He ambled towards the open door. Alys followed him. ‘And there’s the Serjeant. Are you come to arrest us all, Serjeant?’

Within the room, Serjeant Anderson was interrogating Maister Syme about whether marchpane cherries habitually lay about the shop. Give the man his due, Alys thought, he was asking the right kind of questions, perhaps because whatever conclusion he reached would offend Maister Renfrew, who was standing over the settle, his beads clenched in his hand, his colour ominously high. Gil was over by the wall, listening, though he met her eyes and smiled as she entered, and there was a Dominican priest talking to Eleanor; there was no sign of Grace.

‘Where have you been all day?’ Maister Renfrew demanded of Nicol. ‘Here’s Robert dead of pyson and none to lift a hand to prevent it — ’

‘Pyson?’ said Nicol with interest. He looked at his brother’s body. ‘Better have him out of here, Faither, or he’ll set afore he’s washed.’

‘Is that all you’ve to say, you daftheid? Where have you been, anyway?’