Pat McIntosh - A Pig of Cold Poison

Grace seemed to relax faintly. He considered her position again, the hands folded on her lap, her shoulders back, her head in its Sunday wrappings of velvet and linen poised on her elegant neck. She had not moved her hands since she sat down. He had thought he saw simply her native stillness and calm, but now it seemed as if she was on the defensive. In defence of what, he wondered, or of whom? Was she relieved to hear there was nothing there, or to hear that Andro had missed something she knew was hidden? Or did she know about the woodcuts? Surely not, he thought, and briefly considered Alys’s probable reaction to such things. It was unlikely to be the most predictable one, but — He shook his head, and realized that he was becoming distracted from the point at issue, which was the questioning of Grace Gordon.

‘You’re tired, man,’ she said. ‘Have you eaten? Frankie refused to have you at the table, but I bade the kitchen — ’

‘My thanks for that. They gave us bread and cheese and ale,’ he said. ‘Mistress Grace, it’s gey strange to me that Agnes — or anyone else — ’ he added scrupulously, ‘could have contrived these poisoned sweetmeats without being seen at work.’

She considered this point.

‘If it was on Friday,’ she said slowly, ‘or yesterday morn, the lassie kept her chamber the whole time. I spoke to her through the door a couple of times, but she’d have no company, nor be any help about the house. Whether Jess saw anything, you could ask her, but the thing is Agnes’s chamber is the inmost of that set so unless anyone entered to speak wi her she’d have privacy for whatever she wished to do.’

Gil nodded. He had now discovered that Agnes’s chamber was reached through Maister Renfrew’s own bedchamber, a very proper way to lodge a daughter.

‘And you’ve no idea where the stuff came from,’ he said, without much hope.

She shook her head. ‘I canny help you there, maister.’ She tilted her head, and a corner of her black velvet veil slid back across the shoulder of her gown. In its shadow there was a fresh love-bite, dark against the white skin of her neck. ‘Is that it? Are you done wi me?’

‘For now.’

She rose, shaking out her grey silk skirts, and paused to ask with concern, ‘How’s your wee laddie? Did he sleep it off?’

‘He’s well.’ Gil had risen likewise. ‘Chattering away and eating his porridge when I saw him. We’re grateful to you for ever.’ She shook her head, making light of the matter. ‘When will you leave?’

‘Not for a day or two yet. There’s still things to see to wi Frankie.’

‘As soon as that?’

‘Aye, or sooner,’ said Nicol. ‘If it was for me to say I’d be down the river on this tide, but Grace wants to take her gear back wi her, and she’s still in hopes we can get Frankie to agree …’ He paused, and giggled. ‘You’ve no need to hear all the business of the family.’

‘I need to hear enough of it to determine how Robert died,’ Gil said.

Nicol looked at him in faint surprise.

‘He died of taking poison in a marchpane cherry,’ he said. ‘You were there, man, you saw more than I did.’

‘I need to find out how the cherry came to be poisoned.’

‘Why? It’s done, and Agnes taken up for it.’ He giggled again. ‘She’ll not poison anyone else now, that’s certain.’

‘Are you sure of that?’ Gil asked. ‘Where did she get the poison?’

Nicol shrugged. ‘Out of an apple, for all I ken. Or the Deil himsel popped up in the shop and offered it to her. Maybe Frankie’s trying to rid himsel of all my minnie’s bairns, and I need to watch mysel.’

Gil stared at him. This was one interpretation he had not thought of. After a moment he set the idea aside to think on later, and said, ‘How will you live, if you go back to the Low Countries?’

‘Set up as potyngars,’ Nicol said promptly. ‘It’s what we do, both Grace and me, and we know all kind of ways to get supplies you never heard of. I might,’ he added, considering the matter, ‘come to an agreement wi Wat Forrest to send some of it on. I should think he’d be glad of it. A good source of materia medica ’s worth a second income, so it is.’

‘So your father won’t have you back in the business?’ Gil said cautiously.

‘He’d sooner have wee Marion.’ Nicol considered this too. ‘Much sooner,’ he added, grinning. ‘And if you’re wondering, he says I’m to have no more share out of it either, I had my portion when I went overseas, and he’s had his will drawn up and signed and sealed declaring as much. So I’d be daft even to dream of poisoning Frankie, for all it’s a bonnie thought.’

‘You’re not daft, Nicol,’ said Gil firmly. ‘So what is it Grace is hoping to persuade your father to?’

Nicol shrugged again. ‘She’s got the notion he might let us have a bit more coin. I don’t see it mysel, unless as a payment to go away and no come back, but you never know.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Gil said, though privately he agreed with Nicol. Maister Renfrew had presented a slightly different view of the situation when he interviewed him earlier.

‘That daftheid!’ he had said explosively. ‘He’s after me to let him into the partnership, he’s wanting an allowance off the business, he’s — ’ He ended with a snarling sound.

‘You won’t consider it even now?’ Gil had asked. ‘I’d have thought you’d want one of your sons in the business.’

‘Hah!’ said Renfrew. ‘And my boy not buried yet!’

Making his way up the High Street in the November dawn with the dog loping at his heels, Gil felt he was no closer to learning what had distressed his wife. Her long talk on All Souls’ Day with Catherine, her nurse, governess, duenna, had left her very tearful but still unable to explain why. Anxious questions had got him the assurance that it was nothing he had done or said, nothing he could help with. He would have been more able to believe her if she had not spent the past three nights lying rigid with her back to him, refusing any overtures he made.

‘Aye, Gil,’ said a voice in his ear. He looked up, startled, to find Nicol Renfrew beside him, Socrates nosing his hand in greeting. That aimless, heavy-eyed grin lit the round face. ‘You were thinking, I can see that. Not a good idea, thinking, man. It makes your head ache. If you think too much it rots your brain.’

‘Is that so?’ Gil fell into step with the other man. ‘Where did you learn that?’

‘Oh, in the Low Countries. They all say that there. I’ll prove it, too,’ added Nicol, waving his arm largely and just missing a woman with a bucket of water. She shouted at him, but he appeared not to hear her. ‘I’d a dream last night, all because I was thinking too much yesterday.’

‘Is that right?’ Gil asked, hoping he was not to be regaled with an account of the dream. The hope was false; Nicol launched into a complex, rambling narrative involving his father, someone called Lord Simon who might have been another painted flask, Grace, and an extra hand, though whose that might be was not clear. Gil strode on up the High Street in the grey daylight, nodding at intervals, while Nicol expounded the different forms these elements had taken in the course of the night.

‘You’re not listening, are you, Gil?’ he said suddenly. ‘No that I’d blame you,’ he added, giggling, ‘it’s a daft tale and I’m daft to heed it, but it’s no good manners no to listen when someone talks to you.’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Gil resignedly, ‘and I was listening. Your father had just given you a hand to compound something.’

‘Aye, but it was all of wood. And it’s no use now, anyway.’ Nicol waved happily at the man on duty at the Castle gate as they passed into the courtyard. ‘Are you here for these quests, on Danny Gibson and our Robert? Have they set Nanty free yet?’